SleepingSilence

What shows/movies are you watching?

Re:Zero's third season has been a mixed bag (of highs and lows) in my opinion. Something that disappoints me quite a bit. But it's impossible to deny that the pacing for some of these episodes are failing to make an impact.

The showrunners also clearly understand this too, and are cutting the third season short and delaying it into a fourth season.

So...can we get some good movies and shows for 2025 please? I'll settle for more anime that's worth watching.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Steam has once again put everything (on my wishlist) on sale. So I’m debating on grabbing a game or two that I don’t need.

But I’ve been playing through Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m relieved to say that it’s as good as advertised. (Especially with mod support.) Strong characterization, plenty of solid set piece moments, and it’s good at rewarding you for exploration. And I’ve found this much easier to get into than Divinity Original Sin 2. So there’s very little to complain about, aside from how the “pseudo-RNG” dice are rigged to low roll constantly. So you’re practically encouraged to save scum at more important moments. (And maybe that encumbrance is a mechanic that only exists to be a nuisance in games.)

R.E.P.O (flavor of the month game) is entertaining, and I like its voice-to-text chat. But that laugh-cry emoji banner is one of those things (like doing a dumb face on a youtube thumbnail) that would’ve made me instantly ignore it otherwise. So I’m glad it was given to me. It definitely feels like a game where more players (a group of 6) would have an infinitely easier time to accomplish rounds (where the challenge is often having enough players in one place to lift heavier objects).

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Other games that I’ve played recently, from best to worst.

Lorelai And The Laser Eyes: This game was almost nothing like I expected it to be. But it's about as good as a puzzle game can reasonably be. Has a solid atmosphere and soundtrack. Tons of variety and layers to its puzzles. And it was quite challenging, as many things required note taking/taking pictures on my phone. Though I found a lot of puzzles to be quite clever. (And I only had to brute force myself through one of them.) I do unfortunately think the game uses a certain maze too much & I think the finale (after the final puzzle) wears out its welcome. But this might be an easy recommendation to (hard) puzzle game fans.

Sanabi: An action platformer that has one of the better implementations of a grappling hook used as its main gimmick. The story (while entertaining and very stylish in places) is predictable, and frequently gets in the way of the enjoyable core gameplay. But its ending is sweet. So it’s an overall positive experience.

CATO: Buttered Cat: A decent puzzle game that takes a couple of worlds to become more challenging. The boss fights and rail sections are not particularly fun. But there’s enough customization options and charm in this to be worth playing.

Hollow Floor: A decent and fairly challenging metroidvania with a unique moveset. It’s content per dollar. (About 3 hours for 3 bucks.) Although, I do wish the collectable coins actually did something.

Plants vs Zombies: Battle For Neighborville: A far more enjoyable solo experience, and less appallingly/greedily monetized than its predecessor. But its hub world is worse and almost no one plays this version compared to the prior two games. So for the harder missions and objectives that seemingly require partners — you’re kind of screwed.

Ogu and the Secret Forest: Basically an easier version of Nobody Saves The World. I enjoyed it for a while. But it does get a little tedious in its exploration, and the combat is pretty lacking. (A good example of an average game.)

No Man Sky: 70 major updates later and…yeah this gameplay loop feels incredibly dull. With a bunch of pointless inconveniences that I question how it’s supposed to add anything to the game. (I can’t imagine how bad it felt to play at launch.) And I’ve given it more time and grace than I usually do for games like this.

The Thaumaturge (Demo): Surprisingly janky for those who claim its beginning is the strongest part of the game. With obvious graphical bugs in every cutscene. I appreciated the atmosphere and combat. But I’m not the least bit surprised that the combat is considered far too easy and becomes tedious later on.

The First Berserker Khazan (Demo): Unimpressed with the obnoxious first area and its sluggish combat. Platforming without a jump button leads to landable terrain that you cannot escape from. And Nioh’s garbage loot drop system is a bad mechanic to copy.

Frogsong: Boring game that almost plays itself. (NPC’s beat the bosses for you.) And the unlikable MC has a victim complex, that only becomes more ridiculous considering how many times people give her free items and services.

What shows/movies are you watching?

Flow was what "The Wild Robot" trailer was. It was a nice little time waster with no dialogue/real plot. It's like watching all the cutscenes in a video game. (And missing out on further context and a true conclusion that this movie doesn't really have.) Maybe due to the fact that it only had six months of production time.

But it does manage to have more cat tropes than Stray did. While also making them more anthropomorphic in their behavior. Though "a golden globe" award doesn't mean much when you have scenes like this winning one too.

"Best Musical of 2024"



I don't even like Wicked. But c'mon Hollywood.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Random leftover games in my Steam Library that I tried…

Beholder: Easily the best of a bad batch. Has a decent set up & an interesting idea for a gameplay loop. But the tutorialization is poor, and it’s not very clear what you’re meant to be doing.
The Marvellous Miss Take: Just play Werecleaner instead.
Distrant 2: There was a Distrant 1?
Else Heart.Break: It told me to answer the phone on my desk. But when I hung up to put it away, my character put it down on the floor. Quality at its finest.
Braveland: Might as well be a mobile game. A bad mobile game. Its dialogue text is too big for the text boxes.
Cloudbuilt: Incredibly clunky controls and you have to create your own saves. This is absolutely not worth its $20 asking price.
Kromaia: This instantly crashes on boot up.
Nex Machina: Almost every arcade shooter I’ve played was more interesting than this.
Distrust: Takes a literal minute of time to unlock a door that you have the key for.
The Flame in the Flood: I went on a raft and damaged it by crashing into nothing.
Tulpa: A worse Limbo, as if that was possible.

Finished Playing
Last Epoch: It’s okay. But I don’t think it does anything particularly well. (Skill and class variety aside.) The campaign is uninteresting, the difficulty is impossibly easy, until it’s suddenly not. The loot is endless trash to be used for its RNG crafting system, and the end game (doing monoliths ad-infinitum) sucks. So I’d recommend playing Grim Dawn instead.

Paper Trail: It’s a well made puzzle game. With nice visuals, no bugs, actual challenge and optional collectables for those who want more of it. With ambient tracks that my gaming group described as "Bloodborne music". But the narrative falls flat for me & I didn’t find the puzzles very fun to solve. (Too much trial-and-error & not enough variety in the puzzles themselves.)

Mercury Abbey: Gorgeous pixel art and very little else to recommend. I hoped to play a detective game, and I fought a giant spider boss from Zelda instead. A bizarre highlight (compared to the serviceable puzzles, the near non-existent deduction, and bad elements like a forced stealth section) in a poorly paced plot. With a narrative full of boring characters, stilted dialogue, and plenty of typos.

Currently Playing
Sekiro: Alright. I haven’t played enough of this game to give it a definitive thumbs up or down yet. But anyone who claims this game is the most polished FromSoft game. ‘Because it fixes problems that other Souls games have.’ Is absolutely full of it.

Between the camera that frequently has trouble showing the player on screen, the enemy mob spam, the off screen teleportation and weapon tracking of enemies, enemy attacks that go through the terrain, being vulnerable during deathblow animations, how the ‘stealth’ makes all enemies spot you from a million miles away - through walls - and takes them all five minutes to stop being aggroed, the early merchant NPCs being pointlessly hidden away within tiny corners. And all the other “meant to be frustrating” elements feel a lot closer to Dark Souls 2 than I think most will admit.

But there is still some fun (in overcoming challenges) to be had. So I’m going to “Git Gud” and keep going. (Though Lies Of P was both challenging and immediately engaging.)

Edit: After writing this earlier in my playthrough, I’ve defeated several mini-bosses that were giving me trouble. By spamming the Axe prosthetic and hit-trading them to death. (And I think it’s more than a little egregious that I’ve already fought three early bosses that require you to dodge all their attacks.) The NPCs feel less interesting than other Souls games. And I got to say, this game really isn’t impressing me. As I’ve spent so much time grinding mobs, that I’ve only just started to feel those “moments of interconnectivity” in Sekiro’s world design/and I’ve noticed maybe one notable background track in twenty three different locations.

What Are You Listening To?

A Basket of Undead

I've come to say that @Dark Cloud is dealing with things IRL and plans to come back later this week.

THE WAR FOR MYTHERIA - Isekai Adventure

I've come to say that @Dark Cloud is dealing with things IRL and plans to come back later this week.

What shows/movies are you watching?

I think 2024 was pretty good for media. There were some great movies and some pretty decent television shows.

@Fabricant451

Maybe there's a few gems sprinkled in there. (I think Amazing Digital Circus has made a few entertaining episodes.) But overall, I'd struggle to give myself a "Top Ten" this year. (Even for video games. And I played a hell of a lot more of those than watch films this year.)

I guess I'd have to ask what you considered to be great movies and good television? (And if you'd consider them to be better than last year's offerings?)

Honestly, most of this year seemed to be spent on making worse sequels and unnecessary (at best) remakes to better things.

Just looking at "Top Grossing movies" of the year in comparison. (Via Wiki.)

We have John Wick 4 & Oppenheimer, Barbie (a thing most people seemed to like okay.) The Super Mario Bros. Movie (a thing most people seemed to like okay.) and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (a thing most people seemed to like okay.)

Versus, bad sequel no one seemed to like, bad sequel no one seemed to like, bad sequel no one seemed to like, a lesser Barbie Wicked, and Dune 2. (And I really doubt this one is a better action movie than John Wick.)

And the shows everybody hyped up this year like "Shogun" & "The Gentleman" are pretty terribly written. (Even if I like "The Penguin", the plot is incredibly contrived.) And I refuse to believe the show featuring Concord characters was a good piece of entertainment.

(And my favorite anime of the year, was left unfinished.)

So, I don't know. Please do give me your recommendations to prove me otherwise. (Can always use a film to watch when I'm bored.)

What shows/movies are you watching?

Squid Game Season 2 is the best example of "The Idiot Plot" I've seen in recent memory. Where all the characters in it have to be impossibly stupid for the drama to work. (Every twist and character death is easy to see coming.) And aside from liking some of the actors. There's very little to recommend about it. It's far less compelling than Season One was. Every character arc and plot thread introduced goes unresolved, for what will very likely be a terrible 3rd season.

And an example of that blatant stupidity, is in the third game where it's trying to be a "999" (The game), where there's a limited number of rooms. (Fifty of the fuckers.) And you need to go into those rooms in pairs of a specific/basic number.

But it instead becomes closer to that one Saw trap with the four giant spaces that FIVE whole people needed to go into. And it was impossible to believe that so many fucking people died here, when the amount of rooms (versus the people who needed to go in them) only became relevant at the very end. So your only conclusion in the last few episodes is that these adults cannot count.

I really do hope there's some better television, movies, and anime on the horizon. Because 2024 was *not* a strong year for media.

Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread Number Two

Rise Of The Golden Idol is a pretty tedious follow up to a game that had promise. The narrative is really lame and inexplicably watered down, compared to the prior game's murderous death cult plot. And unlike the last game's too long final chapter, I was getting a little sick of solving "How did bumblefuck steve hurt his leg?" mysteries past the first decent chapter.

Inspector Waffles was a more enjoyable narrative for its amusing puns and wholesome vibes. But its point-and-click adventure puzzle gameplay was *very* typical of its genre propensity for using moon logic.

Example: You need to give your female colleague a cinnamon coffee, before she'll give you a warrant for a murder case. (And you can't immediately call for her firing.) So you find a coffee machine in a unique painting and trinket selling shop, where the owner won't allow you to use it until you can find her something worthy of selling to her clients. So what do you do? Well, find an old love letter related to your murder case and spill some worse coffee onto it. Then seek help from a stranger in the apartment next door, that'll let you use their hairdryer to blow your soggy/ruined piece of evidence. And that...somehow...translates to being something that the art owner can sell...(Glad I looked that up, instead of wasting too much time on solving that.)

And I'm going to hold off on buying more games on Steam. (Tempting as it may be.) So I can focus on all the stuff that I got for Christmas. Last Epoch, you're next in line. Sekiro, you have to wait for the holidays to be over. I want to be happy for those...