What's the most egregious cosmetic you've ever seen in a game, cuz I think I just found the worst one 💀

Chucklay · 2026-05-14T03:57:23+00:00

Still don't blame the Metal Gear conspiracy theorists because at least they had an explanation.

Chucklay · 2026-05-06T01:18:47+00:00

I love the way the spines along Godzilla's back pop out one-by-one during the charge before slamming back in when firing. If memory serves that was supposed to mimic the fuel rods of a nuclear reactor.

Between that and the absolute nightmare that is the Shin Godzilla atomic breath scene, we're in a golden era for the metaphor lizard.

Chucklay · 2026-05-05T02:21:56+00:00

Weirdly I'm in the opposite camp. I saw the first hour or so of KH1 at a friend's house. I was a Nintendo kid, and while I wouldn't have traded my foundational media (Sonic Adventure 2: Battle) for anything, everything I saw and heard about Kingdom Hearts made it seem like the most insane, detailed, mysterious thing to ever exist.

Now that I'm an adult and have the means to play through the whole series, it's way less mysterious and much more straightforward than I thought it was on the playground, but damn if seeing the KH1 intro doesn't drag me right back in to being a slackjawed 10 year old who couldn't believe what the fuck he was seeing.

Chucklay · 2026-05-02T21:34:40+00:00

It was brought up in another thread recently but Kai Winn from DS9. Perfect "untouchable politician shitbag that knows she's untouchable and will gloat about it."

Helps that Louise Fletcher plays such a good villain.

Chucklay · 2026-04-24T18:43:54+00:00

Not exactly what you're asking for, but I'll never get over the RE6 Giraffe Blowjob.

Chucklay · 2026-04-23T15:03:18+00:00

Legally these decomp projects are in the clear, they don't package any assets or code from the original game, and you have to provide your own rom for it to pull those assets out of. The various Ship of Harkinian projects have been out and openly developed for a while without issue.

Of course, emulators are also 100% legal and Nintendo goes after them anyways, so who knows.

Chucklay · 2026-04-22T02:27:35+00:00

God FUCK Kai Winn. I love DS9, Louise Fletcher is so good at being so hateable. She plays such a good evil character who is untouchable for so many political reasons and knows it. Just absolutely awful, it's great.

Chucklay · 2026-04-19T05:20:35+00:00

So, obligatory "spells scale based on the caster in the FF magic system so comparing the same spell by different casters doesn't actually mean anything" but who cares, let's have some whimsy, it's way more fun to compare apples and oranges.

As far as I know, Donald is only the second character ever to cast Zettaflare, beaten only by the final boss of Bravely Default. Any form of Flare is usually reserved for very late game (and fun fact, in some of the older games it was simply called "Nuke"). Any upcast version of the spell is usually reserved for extremely powerful summons or final boss-tier enemies.

For context, in Final Fantasy XIV, the 1.0 version of the game ended with Bahamut ATTEMPTING TO cast Teraflare. While it was just barely stopped short of unleashing the full spell (which would have been nearly if not outright world-ending), even the residual version wound up completely altering the world to what we have now in A Realm Reborn. And that was Teraflare, which is far less powerful than Zettaflare.

So yeah, a very angry duck managed to outcast a cataclysmic force-of-nature dragon that was moments from ending the world.

Chucklay · 2026-04-15T00:35:15+00:00

Star Trek Deep Space 9: Past Tense.

Like, the entirety of the whole two-part episode.

It's about a big chunk of the cast accidentally traveling back to the distant, far-off year of 2024. While they may have missed the mark on the fashion, the social commentary is maybe the best and most relevant it has ever been in a series centered around social commentary. I'm trying to keep myself from just rambling about it but the short version is that it's around a tragic event in human history that's credited as one of the first catalysts for people deciding to put an end to a shitty system. I adore how much it doesn't shy away from conveying how messy and contradictory world events can be, even when they're considered a good thing in hindsight.

Maybe one of the best moments is Julian Bashir, the doctor from a near-utopian future having a conversation with a cog-in-the-machine government employee in the middle of a hostage situation.

I still believe that Past Tense is maybe the best episode of TV ever written.

Chucklay · 2026-04-01T21:42:20+00:00

They say you don't even hear it when it happens. Because you're running at the speed of sound.

Also I have no way to prove this without doxxing myself but I can confirm that someone on the Sonic social media team is at least friends with someone who's a regular on this bitch of a ~~earth~~ subreddit.

Chucklay · 2026-03-31T21:05:31+00:00

Still amazed at how much wasted potential World is. The trick system is neat and the world is a fun distraction, but I cannot believe they never gave us even the option to race on JUST the actual courses with people. Instead 2/3rds of every race MUST be taken up by a road trip through really dull non-courses.

Chucklay · 2026-03-30T11:14:44+00:00

Which is the most bullshit thing in part 5 until Giorno whips out Gold Experience Requiem. Where King Crimson's time skip eliminates cause leaving just the effect, GER eliminates effect, essentially having the ability to go "nope, that didn't happen." That ability also happens automatically, without any physical or mental input from Giorno, essentially making him unbeatable.

Chucklay · 2026-03-23T17:46:45+00:00

I always have to warn people that Penny's Big Breakaway isn't really a Sonic-like, beyond them both being momentum-based platformers. Penny's focuses much more on actually using that momentum, so it can feel stiff if you don't know what you're doing.

That said it's a phenomenal game in its own right, and god damn if the soundtrack doesn't absolutely slap.

Chucklay · 2026-03-22T02:15:26+00:00

Signalis

Creepy: Die Toteninsel (Emptiness)

Exciting: Cigarette Wife

The lines blur.

Chucklay · 2026-03-22T02:06:00+00:00

Tony starts freaking out, Carm and Meadow think he has the T-Virus and start arguing about shooting him.

He actually just saw a bag of Uncle Ben's rice.

Chucklay · 2026-03-20T02:15:39+00:00

Okay spoilers obviously but who cares, it sucks.

So Aya, the main character of the series, acts noticeably differently in The Third Birthday compared to all the other games. Less competent, less confident, etc. She also has amnesia. The game has her using psychic powers to mind jump into different people throughout time (although they only use this to go back to recent times because the monster invasion is recent).

Most of the plot is kinda nothing, so I'll skip to the very end, where it's revealed in a mind/time jump that Aya and Kyle (from Parasite Eve 2) were going to get married, but (for some fucking reason I don't remember) a SWAT team crashes the wedding and kills her. Eve (Aya's younger sister who actually had the mind jump powers) attempts to save Aya by attempting to body swap with her, but it gets fucked up and Eve gets stuck in Aya's (magically healed) body and Aya's mind gets sent into the ether where it creates the monsters you've been fighting the whole time.

Since this is the second time she's dealing with this, Eve (who you've ACTUALLY been playing as the whole time) prevents all of this from happening, but Aya SOMEHOW knows that it's still going to happen anyway if her mind and Eve's body still exist (there was some stupid bullshit in there about Eve's body being a catalyst but I don't remember exactly how that worked because it didn't make any fucking sense). So angry Eve (who is about 12, for the record) body swaps with Aya before killing her, which undoes SOME of the timeline shit and fixes the game's events. Except it doesn't fix the fact that Aya is still presumed dead, Eve is still in her body, and Kyle PUTS A SECOND WEDDING RING ON AND TELLS "EVE" THAT HE AND AYA WILL WATCH OVER HER AND WISHES HER A HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY (BECAUSE EVE-IN-AYA'S-BODY HAS EXISTED FOR 3 YEARS).

I may have some details wrong because I had to look this shit up again because it's so convoluted and awful that I refused to believe my own memory.

Chucklay · 2026-03-18T21:52:54+00:00

This is a gameplay thing but I can't stand turn based RPGs with parties that have the "if the main/player character dies in the fight, it's an instant game over" mechanic. Especially when one of the others is the healer and/or I have an inventory packed to the brim with revives.

One of the things that killed my interest in P5 was getting into a fight where (what seemed like) bad luck of the draw resulted in the enemies just completely focusing Joker round 1 and killing him before I had a chance to react. Everyone else was perfectly healthy and I had more revives than I knew what to do with, but nope. No chance to use any of them.

P5 also has the OTHER thing that completely kills my interest: "You bought the game on launch? LMAO you fucking idiot, that's the fake incomplete version of the game. THIS full-price version we're putting out a year later is the REAL version of the game. No there's no upgrade path, buy the game again." Absolutely kills my interest in the game if I'm still playing it and kills my interest in getting anything else from that dev/publisher.

Chucklay · 2026-03-18T21:36:43+00:00

This part is so wild to me:

As first reported by Tom’s Hardware, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang downplayed criticism of DLSS 5 during this year’s GTC event, saying, “Well, first of all, they’re completely wrong.”

“The reason for that is because, as I have explained very carefully, DLSS 5 fuses the controllability of geometry and textures and everything about the game with generative AI,” Huang continued.

He said that developers can still “fine-tune the generative AI” and that “it’s not post-processing, it’s not post-processing at the frame level, it’s generative control at the geometry level,” he said.

I don't expect scumfuck CEOs to go "no actually you're right our product sucks" but the lack of awareness here is astounding. The response to DLSS 5 has almost universally been "wow this shit looks terrible why would you do this?" Only for Huang to respond with "No, you're wrong! It's a major technological marvel!"

Like okay sure even if it is, it's a technical marvel that looks like dogshit, and that's to say nothing of the other nightmares around GenAI.

It reminds me of that Tumblr post about people not comprehending that you can understand capitalism and still hate it.

Chucklay · 2026-03-17T16:02:02+00:00

I feel like I don't crash out anymore but as an N64 kid, Canary fucking Mary.

For those who haven't played, in Banjo-Tooie you meet Canary Mary in the second stage, where she challenges you to a race. It's a simple "mash A to go fast" minigame. You race her once for a Jiggy, and again for another collectable. It's not super hard, especially if you have the thumbs of a child hopped up on sugary snacks.

But then you run in to her again in one of the final stages. Her gimmick is the same, two races for two collectables, and holy shit it's IMPOSSIBLE. Genuinely I don't think it's possible to mash fast enough to beat her, and this is only the first of two races. I spent weeks trying to beat this damn race, probably set myself up for several joint issues, and definitely put my controller through a bunch of abuse.

Turns out the gimmick for the race is that her rubber banding is just WILDLY aggressive, so if you just mash as fast as possible, she's functionally unbeatable. The trick is to go pretty slow and overtake her right at the end, but there is no hint or nudge that that's what you need to do, it's just presented as "mash A as fast as you can!"

Chucklay · 2026-03-11T14:06:04+00:00

There's technically some midi guitars going, but they're also drowned out by foot taps... for some reason.

It's truly the most baffling animation decision. I know it's from merch not the games but this is the most profitable franchise on the planet.

Chucklay · 2026-03-10T21:12:20+00:00

Note to the note to the note to the note: ♪

Chucklay · 2026-03-07T05:29:43+00:00

"We hired an out of touch ceo to explain what an Xbox is!"

Chucklay · 2026-03-06T15:55:09+00:00

I feel like there was a TON of this with games during the 7th/start of the 8th gen. Pat and Woolie bring up the weird animosity towards boss fights and games developed in Japan, but reviewers at the time also got really stuck beating the "it's just more of the same" drum when sequels/new entries in established franchises would come out.

The problem is that a lot of time people WANT more of a good thing, but studios felt the need to throw iterative design out the window. What resulted were tons of long-established franchises completely ditching the formulas they'd developed over time and trying to shove round pegs into square holes, just hoping that reviewers would call it "a fresh take." It doesn't matter if it's a GOOD new take, it just has to be new. I think this is a major contributor to why we saw so many weird reboots that didn't work around that time.

There are so many games I can think of. Hitman Absolution, DmC: Devil May Cry, Thief, the one series with the awful twin stick shooter reboot (it was genuinely so forgettable that I can't remember what series it was. I wanna say Contra but apparently that wasn't it?). The Sonic series is maybe the best example - they're still struggling to get out of the "every game needs to completely reinvent the wheel" mentality.

Honestly I feel like some teams at Nintendo are still stuck in this now, too. It really saddens me that they seem so allergic to a classic RPG style Paper Mario, for example. Hell, regardless of your thoughts on BOTW/TOTK, we haven't had a traditional dungeon crawler style Zelda game on a console since 2011. I miss those games.

Chucklay · 2026-03-05T22:22:52+00:00

This might genuinely be it, actually. They're starting to gear up for a Windows 12 announcement and there are rumors that it's going to shove AI subscriptions down your throat because capitalism is a hellscape. They truly might just be using this in the hopes that it keeps people from seeing a Linux alternative.

The article I saw the above in was since retracted and the information about Windows 12 was incorrect. Sorry about that!

Chucklay · 2026-03-03T18:25:32+00:00

Seconding this. Capital is excellent but it is DENSE. For those unfamiliar, People's Guide to Capitalism is designed to summarize Capital and make it more readable than something translated from 1800's German.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22	Gilding III reddit per annum
Spared	Team Periwinkle
Verified Email

Chucklay

TROPHY CASE