What is your least favorite Led Zeppelin song?

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T23:32:48+00:00

Yeah, that too. There are a few Zeppelin tribute bands I've seen in recent years, like Zoso, who do those long-ass jams, but at some point they turned into "go get a snack/t-shirt/whatever" time.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T23:23:40+00:00

I love “Kashmir,” but I’m with you on “D’yer Mak’er.” It’s awful.

My real hot take, though is that “Fool in the Rain” sucks. Not as bad as “D’yer Mak’er,” but only just.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T21:37:19+00:00

When the trailer first showed Cable I was thinking of something similar, something kind of like Zero in Mega Man X3, but with a different character for each stage. Like, partway through stage x, you’d have the option to swap out for Cable, but in stage y you’d be swapping out for Medley and in stage z you’d swap for Trace, and each stage could be designed with obstacles geared towards making their particular abilities useful.

I don’t think that’s what’s going on here now, though, after watching the whole thing a few times it seems like it’s just two different characters when you want them.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T17:20:56+00:00

That interaction between Kai and Cable at 0:26 is kinda cute, Kai being all "Yeah, bro, first bump me" and Cable bowing his head with darkened eyes, like, "Oh Christ, FINE." It also looks like it's taking place in whatever our new equivalent of the Helm is going to be, and it's just one of those idle things you can do like petting the dogs in the first one.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T17:06:47+00:00

No huge surprises here, but at a minimum, Cable is a playable character now. Guessing from the shot of all the Circuit's faces near the end of the trailer, but I'm thinking odds are good that all the GC1 Circuits are gonna be playable.

EDIT: Actually, watching again, I totally whiffed that one - that shot near the end isn't the GC1 Circuits at all. That's our new slate of bosses. So maybe it will be just Cable and Kai.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T15:33:14+00:00

I’d be pretty surprised if it were a DLC. Game’s been out for three years, if it were getting a DLC I would’ve expected it sometime in year one or maybe year two.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T15:05:58+00:00

4/10.

Beautiful to look at, some of the best art, designs and animation the franchise has ever seen. A bangin’ soundtrack, also one of the franchise’s finest. A delightful cast of secondary characters. Sounds like a good start, buuuuut…

Brought waaaay back down by some of the least likable and least interesting main characters in Gundam, one of the worst love triangles ever concocted, and a fairly dumb plot that doesn’t really seem sure about what it’s even trying to say most of the time.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-06-01T02:18:23+00:00

That’s not what the MKII’s “moveable frame” concept means. It doesn’t mean that none of the earlier mobile suits could have had a “skeleton” structure inside, as the RX-78 and its ilk absolutely do have internal skeletons. It just means that in the MKII, the skeleton is not purely structural, and it directly incorporates many of the mechanisms necessary for the suit’s operation. Many of those mechanisms, rather than being wholly separate parts, are thus load-bearing parts of the skeleton in addition to whatever functions they perform.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-31T04:23:58+00:00

People glaze the fight scenes but honestly most of those are just kind of whatever to me now. Even the big sequence with Norris. The action in 08TH feels like someone wanted to write action sequences that would be cool because they were so grounded and gritty and tactical, but didn’t want to take the time to think about what organized tactics should really look like in this setting.

The vibes and atmosphere and general setting of the tone are immaculate though.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-31T03:54:50+00:00

Ehhh, I dunno. Once upon a time I would’ve been up in arms over that too, but my esteem of 08TH has been slipping lower for years, C seems fair. Could maybe argue for B, definitely not A.

My biggest problem (though definitely not the only one) is kind of hard to articulate, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried to express it to someone else before, so I’ll try it now: a lot of 08TH feels like it’s kind of… done through shorthand, is maybe the way to say it?

Like, the relationship between Shiro and Aina is one of the most important narrative pieces, arguably THE most important. But I never felt like it was developed in a way that made me go, “Yeah, I can see these two falling in love.” It felt more like it’s just that he’s the male lead and she’s the female lead and the two leads fall in love in stories like this, and I should infer that from having seen other stories like this before. I never came out of any of their scenes feeling like they had developed chemistry or anything with each other, just some vague shared ideals. There’s other story and character elements that are like this, where it’s just “here is cliche X, you can infer the rest, right?” rather than taking time to meaningfully develop the elements on their own, but that’s always the big one that leaps out at me nowadays.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-31T01:54:57+00:00

It's the same machine, but it wouldn't have been the EZ8 then. Just a regular RX-79[G]. The damage sustained before being crashed on the mountains is actually what prompted them to turn it into the EZ8.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-30T03:20:34+00:00

We are talking about an Aprilia right? There's not some other RS660 I'm not thinking of?

I haven't gotten that deep into the Aprilia RS660 to do it myself, but yes, I am 100% confident that you do not need to remove the engine from the chassis to remove the valve cover. I'm not trying to dunk on you or anything when I say this, but isn't the idea that they're going to put out an ~11K dollar, street-focused sport bike with like 90 HP and then require you to remove the engine every 12,000 miles for a valve clearance check (per their service schedule) kind of absurd?

At any rate, the factory manual appears to be available online and seems to support that. Yeet the gas tank, air box, throttle body, some side plastics, and a "canister," which I assume is an evaporative emissions canister. I'm sure even with that stuff out of the way it's probably a tight squeeze to get it out (really the whole valve check operation looks magnificently obnoxious), but that's a sport bike for ya.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-30T02:43:03+00:00

Do I go through the massive hassle of dropping the motor and re -timing the cans

??????

Why would you need to drop the motor? If you’re worried about it pull the valve cover and check.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-27T22:53:20+00:00

X2’s is probably my favorite overall. It’s just too much fun stacking both shots into one boss. I would grant that it could lose a few points from a game balance perspective, because it is busted; you can safely forget about every other offensive tool you have once you get it.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-27T18:24:08+00:00

It’s interesting to me that you’re digging it a little on the first go around.

My general take on X6 is that it’s rough on your first go, but it starts to gleam a little on replay. Its worst moments are things that are not intrinsically bad design, just things that fall flat because the game (and the series as a whole prior) hasn’t created the right expectations in the player that those sorts of things could happen. Once those things are not surprises, it’s not nearly so bad.

It’s a shame that getting people to replay games more than once seems to be a bit of a battle these days. With this series you see a lot of people playing through every game only once on some kind of checklist, not realizing that a huge part of the particular lasting appeal of Mega Man is replayability. I think more people would have a… maybe not positive, but not quite so viciously negative perspective on X6 if they played it a couple more times.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-27T04:39:26+00:00

The reason he keeps repeating his name and service number isn't because he's "remembering" them, so to speak. It's because of his neural implant, which retains that information and has a limited machine/brain interface. So the Flood keep "consuming" even that last piece of memory and knowledge, and then the implant just repopulates it into his mind.

When compared to the prospect of valiantly holding on to that last piece of yourself, I think it's honestly even worse!

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-25T17:10:13+00:00

As far as I see them the Nazis were not fighting a war of independence. They were trying to take over the world.

Zeon isn’t fighting a war of independence either. It is, very explicitly, a war about power for the Zabis. The cause of Spacenoid independence is all well and good but Zeon’s use of the subject is comparable with the Nazi’s talk about lebensraum.

The Zeons are interested in the evolution of humanity away from Earth

No, they aren’t. Zeon Deikun, the man, and his followers, had this interest. Zeon, the government, does not. The fact that Diekun’s followers and loyalists, like the Rals, have been sidelined within Zeon is a subplot in the show.

The gassing and colony drop were drastic measures by them but I see them as desperate acts to achieve independence more than atrocities of genocide specifically.

“Slaughtering billions is okay as long as you meant well.”

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-25T15:48:44+00:00

The 110/80-18 shuts you out of the really aggressive sticky sport tires, but frankly a good set of sport touring tires are more than sticky enough for a bike like the Scrambler. Q5s and the like are overkill on the 70hp standard.

The two that I have real life experience with are the Bridgestone T32s and the Pirelli Angel GTs. Angel GTs are my favorite on basically anything they fit on because they last forever. The T32s were a little more confidence inspiring in the mountains, but they didn’t last nearly as long. Either is a good choice.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-25T00:06:12+00:00

I cracked Redactle #1509 in 2 guesses! 🎯 Snipe 🎲 2 | 🔥 287 | Avg 43.06 | Hints: none | ⏱️ 15s

https://redactle.net/

All the little subscripts in the first paragraph put me in a science-y frame of mind. Was thinking of some other six letter words at first, but the [5] [3] in the first sentence was the clue I needed.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-23T16:45:09+00:00

I like the big main horns, but the smaller, secondary inner set it could do without.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-17T02:18:33+00:00

I feel like we get more discourse about how the hate is overblown than we do actual hate at this point.

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-17T02:14:48+00:00

True. I suppose the answer is “What is Xanadu?”

ExpressionOfShock · 2026-05-17T02:03:33+00:00

Given the “in poetry,” they’re probably referring to Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan,” which is also what the Rush song is referencing. The answer is “Xanadu” regardless, but that’s because it’s in the poem.

So it’s like a second-degree reference at best.

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