Kal-El814

Black Panther 2 just made close to $900M, Strange 2 almost hit $1B, Love and Thunder hit almost $750M despite not being a critical darling. I don't think the MCU is tarnished, Quantumania was just a bit of a stinker. If you asked what people liked most about the first 2 Ant-Man flicks, it was probably heist hijinks, the supporting cast, and them having fun with shrink / growth powers. Quantumania has almost none of those things! I think there's a ton of real estate between the superhero movie doom that people have been predicting for at least a decade now and MCU flicks being an automatic money printer.

The notion that any of these streaming services have any kind of "brand identity" beyond Disney+ and maaaaybe HBO in the Game of Thrones era is bananas, but I'm sure they all spend heaps of cash on market research that suggests the opposite.

Happy Multiple Slurp Juices on a Single Ape Day to all who celebrate.

Finished. It's a really fun game and an interesting one. No spoilers... I'd say the story and pacing are a little backloaded. It peaks a bit before it actually ends, but it's still a really strong Star Wars story overall. Most of the characters are really great but the villains for the most part felt a little undercooked. No big complaints or anything for the non spoiler section, but if you like "classic" Star Wars yarns it's difficult to imagine you'd walk away from this one unsatisfied. The game world itself is interesting. I feel like between games like this and Spider-Man / Miles Morales, we're seeing games that realize the 3D world approach from the N64 / PSX - Cube / PS2 era just on a grander scale. Koboh specifically feels like a weird mishmash of Diet Dark Souls mixed with Diet Banjo Kazooie or something. There's shit just floating in the air for absolutely no reason other than to lead you to powerups or collectibles. Pyloon's Saloon feels like a JRPG town on steroids. I feel like a lot of last gen stuff with polish, particularly from studios like Naughty Dog, tried to move away from that earlier design philosophy. Here you find haircuts in boxes. It's fun. One common theme that goes along with stuff like Ragnarok... there's probably a little too much here. I don't feel like this game has any areas that were as over engineered as some of Ragnarok's were, and it's not like the game feels padded... but I think there are more stances and moves than there are variety to justify all of them. Anyway, it's really good! Spoiler stuff, including the whole game. Don't click unless you want to know what happens through the whole game.

Another really charming episode when it comes to Ted. Potential issues but he works through them, his concerns and his fears are understandable, and he ends up making the right decision. Am I forgetting if they established why Jacob was at the bar for breakfast with Ted’s ex and son? I get that he’s there for the trip generally but like… take a walk? Good on Ted for dealing well, but that seems like a big ask. Nate and Jade continue to bore. They seem to be setting up some kind of confrontation between Rupert and Nate, likely about Nate’s relationship, but it’s still just not interesting. I think the show did a good job of handling the topic of celebrity leaks in broad strokes; men online are often too willing to seek these things out, which is gross. Presenting that as a violation is both accurate and a good thing for the show to do. But the stuff with Jack was weak. It’s not unexpected that someone Keely’s age would have made those kinds of videos for a lover and the “are there more videos” thing is silly. We didn’t need more of a problem than Jack expecting Keely to apologize when Keely was the victim. Roy being a shit was an unfortunately real moment.

Yup. That's so weird, I never had that targeting problem.

Yeah I'm pretty sure that after that thing, there's a flat area with an upgrade and 2 enemies (one legendary) that you can fight. There's an elevator behind you, right? Maybe the timing is different on the PlayStation compared to the PC or something, for me it was pretty generous. Or maybe there's another spot in the swamp with 3 columns you have to pull up? You're not starting with the one that's highlighted on your screenshot, right? There's another one closer to you.

I said this before, Nextdoor is rife with people who openly talk about how they hope some kid plays ding-dong ditch at their door so they can shoot them.

This is where you jump to fight a couple monsters beyond that echo, right? I... don't get the problem?

im gonna nut

Depends on the game. I’m close to finishing this, I assume. And I’m enjoying it.

I genuinely don't think this is true, and I think I'm pretty defeatist about this topic. The main thing preventing a decent amount of stuff like red flag laws, better background checks, banning assault style weapons, etc., is lobbying. Those measures are very popular across the political spectrum, gun lobbyists ensure that it doesn't seem that way if you consume any mass media at all. I'm not kidding myself to think that snapping all of what I listed into existence would make a meaningful dent overnight (again, handguns cause more deaths than assault weapons, as is often brought up in these threads) but I do think there's something to be said for groundswell building towards more meaningful legislation.

I never saw one of the ones I got wrong in week 2, but I saw one of them... a bunch of times.

Ah, boo.

I'm not reading that right now I have what I assume / the game is setting up to be one more admin task before the finale and I've gotta say... the back half of this game is really strong. Hopefully they don't fumble the bag.

Oh yeah, no complaints. They went full Arrowverse that episode and it was rad. I feel like the show has been its weakest since it went to the "graphic novel" model a few years back and all the strongest episodes since then, for the most part, have been one-offs or ones where they get to have more fun. I'm still hopeful for a Legends sendoff, but less so after the Arrow one. Alas.

Ken M has you covered.

She was getting her Bach thrown out

Nope.

Kicked the tires on the PC version after the patch. No discernable difference for me.

Okay, some speculation about a character here. I have not peeked ahead and looked at spoilers, so this is based solely on what has come up in game. Don't read unless you don't care about spoilers or you're far enough in the game to be able to grapple onto the floating balloons and shit sprinkled around the maps. The last time I did this, I correctly guessed that Arthur was sick in Red Dead 2 after having blood coughed up on him, so maybe I'll go 2 for 2. Also a 3.3GB patch just became available, woo. List of burn centers in the United States - Wikipedia EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

I assume I'm most of the way through the game now. Maybe 60 - 75%. It's quite good! There was one of the little dream challenge things that I had to drop the difficulty to clear, the framerate hit Kodak Carousal speeds and I just couldn't hang. No crashes yet. On all high settings with RT on, I'm getting mid 40 FPS at 4K on my i12900K and a 3080. So far I think the first game did a better job of driving the plot; the more open nature of this one ends up giving you some, "oh shit we gotta go there now now now! ... lemme see if there's a haircut or some pants in this box first tho," moments. Other than that this does a really good job of building on the character foundation of the first and some of the new NPCs fit in nicely as well. The traversal is a lot of fun once you get some upgrades. More games should let you build a base and fill it with friends and swag. Who doesn't like walking around places like Pyloon's Saloon or your home base in Ass Creed Brotherhood? This game has a grappling hook and a cool place to crash, just giving the people what they want. There are some funny meta moments in the game. I like that you can talk to everyone at the bar, then run to the Mantis... and everyone you just talked to got to the Mantis quicker than you did with enough time to sit down and relax. While I appreciate that the game lets you keep almost all your abilities from the first game, I do think it's silly that you have to play a dozen hours or so before (very small ability spoilers) I've been lucky to avoid bugs and crashes so far. My only "disappointment" so far is that the crossguard stance is either bad or I just can't see the utility of it. You attack so much more slowly when using it, but with the rare exception of a couple one on one non-boss fights, the benefits seem to be outweighed by the costs. You do get to do a WWE flying dropkick attack in it though, and that's fun. Also while it's really cool to see references to and character from in this... the only other let down so far is that the villains seem less interesting and personal than the ones from the first game. Maybe that'll change before the end. Anyway, super fun... shame it launched in such a state.

They’re so easy to avoid, they’re the only characters without name previews.

This was a dense 35 minutes of television.

Checking in to see if @Commissar SFLUFAN is doing alright after the official POTUS Twitter account tweeted about Dark Brandon making an appearance at the Correspondent's Dinner. It's like a singularity of nonsense, I hate it so much.