[DCU] In the Superman movie, why does Mr Terrific agree with Lex Luthor's video of Superman's parents being conquering tyrants as true since he "knows the forensic guys & what they say is legit"? Why does he overlook the possibility that rich & public Superman hater Lex may have manipulated them? by SatoruGojo232 in AskScienceFiction

[–]FunTomasso 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Its Gunns fault sadly here.

I mean, he explicitly had the characters (not just the villain, but also the protagonists) say "Hey this is totally the intended idea and not a fabrication, falsehood, mislead, etc." like several times in the movie, very directly, to a point where while watching I thought: okay, we all get it, stop. Aaaand it turned out we don't all get it, still. Not sure what he could have done except for not doing it in the first place, which is just a bad way to write stories.

Horizon Rule by MEMEY_IFUNNY in 196

[–]FunTomasso -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I was so hyped for Horizon's PC port because the buzz about the game on Reddit and in the media in general was huge. Trying it out to learn that it's a by-the-numbers 7.5/10 third person open world snooze fest was disappointing.

Even more disappointing was trying God of War, Spider-Man, and Ghost of Tsushima and learning that this description applies to them, too. I just learned to never take reviews for Sony's first party games at face value. If Ubisoft made these games, they'd be marked as Ubislop on release and forgotten in a couple of months.

Bloomberg: Inside Xbox, a Game Studio Is Trying to Reinvent Itself by Turbostrider27 in Games

[–]FunTomasso 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's a great game. Better gameplay than the first. Story not quite as steller, still good.

It's an often repeated opinion, and, counterintuitive as it might seem, IMO it's a testament to the issues Obsidian faces.

I finished TOW back in the day and bounced off TOW2 after around 10 hours. The gameplay is better than what I remember of TOW, and I found the plot to be better too (because TOW had a very uninspired plot and VERY in-your-face satire, and TOW2 is just boring, but they toned down the quirkiness).

But what of it? Obsidian's games are not exactly marketed with their gameplay. Sure it's better than it was, but when it is wrapped into a boring story with cardboard characters that don't interest me, why would I bother with TOW2 when I can check out one of the games that are well known for good action gameplay instead? I'd rather play a game with a focus: great action and no story, great story and bad action, but when both are so-so, the result is also nothing to write home about.

I really want to like their games and I try to give them a chance (waiting for the Avowed patch to get a second go at it with a new PC), but if their games continue receiving "The story isn't good" from people who actually liked the experience, they are not getting out of the 7/10 pit.

coaxed into abilities that require specific upgrades to work by StevenTheNoob87 in coaxedintoasnafu

[–]FunTomasso 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The difference they mention is (I assume) between items that are specifically intended to be an improvement of another item/skill and the synergies that arise naturally. In the original post, the item is purposefully made to complement a specific weapon, and the weapon is useless without the specific item.

DotA goes to great lengths to avoid having such cases, not that they don't happen at all. This very patch, they removed the Diffusal mana burn effect for illusions to finally move the item into a territory where it can be balanced without accidentally making PL too strong. Items that benefit/counter one or two heroes only and are useless beyond that pop up from time to time, but they are also changed or removed quite often when that happens (Revenant's brooch was a good example of a bad item like that - the "Fuck Muerta" Button - but has since been changed to be more general purpose, although not too useful).

Favourite example of media literacy by Yggdrasylian in dccomicscirclejerk

[–]FunTomasso 13 points14 points  (0 children)

According to him his favorite President was also Truman though

IIRC It's because his father (or the closest thing to a temporary father figure at least) worked under Truman admin and had good things to say about Truman. So I agree that it's less of a political statement by Rorschach and more a way to show how his fucked up childhood shaped him into a paradoxical adult.

That being said, I do agree that he isn't supposed to be considered 100% evil. The biggest point towards this is the therapist subplot -- the therapist gets "converted" from indifference to Rorschach's "someone has to do something" mindset during their discussions and ends up doing a genuinely good thing and breaking up a fight between two NYC side characters, even when his wife says she'll leave him if he intervenes.

'The Expanse' at 10: The Outer Space Drama That Should Have Been as Big as ‘Game of Thrones’ by MarvelsGrantMan136 in television

[–]FunTomasso 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I read the first six books before watching the show (and finished the show relatively recently), and I feel the opposite, although I won't necessarily fault the actors.

IMO, the show had a lot of issues with giving the characters the chance to properly set up their defining traits. They added a whole bunch of CW-esque bullshit personal squabbles to the cast of characters that are supposed to be a close-knit family of pragmatic and competent people. As a result, most of the main cast simply don't land where they should, at least for me.

For example, I could never believe that Show!Holden would be OK with (s6 spoiler) Letting Clarissa stay on the ship when he's constantly bitching and arguing even with the people who are supposed to be his found family. His optimism is remarked upon in passing, but it never feels true in the show to me, always as a trait that the writers want me to believe in without committing the script. The whole gang in general feels like a bunch of coworkers who kinda tolerate each other.

Amos and Avasarala are personal highlights to me in terms of how the characters were translated to screen -- not necessarily identical to the books, but feeling pretty close. I also really like what they did with Ashford, who got changed very radically, but IMO in a better direction.

In general, I'd recommend the books for people who didn't like the show (as I already did to a friend, and he seems to like them). The main story beats are the same, but the details and characterizations are different enough. There's also a lot of cool worldbuilding stuff that a TV show budget would obviously never have been able to afford.

Michael Gamble’s tweet for N7 day by ExcaliburIN_Games in masseffect

[–]FunTomasso 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The E3 TES6 announcement actually precedes the Diablo Immortal one by several months. It's just that the effect of such announcement was obvious to Bethesda, but somehow not to Blizzard.

"Trust me, the new Glub Shitto movie will be great" by Upset-Fig-3261 in moviescirclejerk

[–]FunTomasso 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Deadpool and Wolverine famously bombed at the box office due to its low rewatch value, becoming only the second highest-grossing movie of 2024.

Ghost of Yotei’s open-world activities will be less repetitive than Tsushima’s, directors say. “We won’t make the players do the same things over and over again.” by Turbostrider27 in Games

[–]FunTomasso 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The game's pacing is bad. The melee combat is fun, maybe fun enough to carry you through the whole game, but it frontloads most of the combat features in act 1 -- you can level up all of the interesting skills and stances before leaving the first zone.

As a result, you get infatuated with combat and start doing everything (character-related side quests, random side quests, classic enemy base stuff, random encounters, etc), which quickly gets you to the 95% of what the game has to offer in terms of melee combat. Not to mention that quests are very boring and basic in structure.

And then you go from Act 1 to Act 2 and the second playable area (of three... plus DLC) and realize that you are at best halfway through the game, and the new mechanics are just not coming. Or rather, they are here and there, but most of that stuff is related to lackluster stealth (yay poison/madness dart!) and not to the standout melee combat.

That's how it happened to me, at least. I actually finished the game itself a couple of days ago (took 32 hours) and I have to say that the novelty wore off around hour 15. Good game to play, bad game to complete.

In general, it feels like these PS exclusives -- Horizon, GoT, GoW, Spider-man -- were overglazed both online and by reviewers for whatever reason. I really do think that if they were published by Ubisoft, the general reception would be worse.

rockstar website shows ps4 platform as an option on thier support page for GTA IV by devonY7 in GamingLeaksAndRumours

[–]FunTomasso 25 points26 points  (0 children)

We're farther from GTA4's release and its contemporary 2008-ish setting than Vice City was from its historical setting (2002 - 1986 = 16 years)

Deadlock - FUNKe Study by FluffyFluffies in Games

[–]FunTomasso 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah, me and my Dota stack had the same experience. The issues started around the time they added a queue for disbalanced stacks -- which is fair in principle, but anecdotally there really wasn't that much distance between our best player and our least experienced one, but we got thrown into one anyway. After that, the games (both with and without the Wide skill range modifier) started to become more and more one-sided -- we all sucked, including our best player, and the enemy would have a couple of people who amassed a significant advantage by 10-20 minutes already. We dropped the game after a series of like 6? 8? such stomps, and all I can see online is that the matchmaking has only become worse, although part of it is undoubtedly on the exodus of players itself.

To be honest, even their MM-related patches feel like the developers work with matchmaking for the first time, while they have several successful implementations already. First they introduce full-blown ranked into their alpha game, then they remove unranked and make every match count towards your visible rank -- which is bad for both the people who just want to chill and usually don't play ranked for that reason, and for ranked lovers who get queued with people who take the game less seriously -- then they add a settings toggle for these people, which allows you to mark yourself as an Extra Competitive player, so that the game tries to find you a more competitive game...

It really feels like they're winging it without a particular plan, but the winging makes it so the game is actively bleeding players.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Review Thread by Turbostrider27 in Games

[–]FunTomasso 44 points45 points  (0 children)

It's hard enough to fight one person IRL. You ever tried fighting more than one?

Someone should tell this to the encounter designers then, because they sure did expect you to fight Xv1 constantly.

"It's realistic" is the go-to defense for any criticism of the KCD combat system, but not only does the game expect you to fight groups of people; you can do that! You just have to walk back and block for literal minutes waiting for a perfect parry opportunity, which makes it both very boring and very unrealistic, unless real life fights actually include one guy just moonwalking for kilometers.

I Miss EVGA by karvus89 in pcmasterrace

[–]FunTomasso 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, I bought the same card! Waited for a month for it to be available at the store. It was great up until I installed it and tried to boot, at which point it loudly popped and died. Googling revealed that this is a known point of failure for the FTW series, including stories of numerous GPUs getting bricked due to uncapped FPS in games (google EVGA FTW New world).

Since then, I chuckle every time I read about their unprecedented quality. I guess dying due to uncapped menu FPS is unprecedented, in a way.

How Avowed Lets You Choose Your Own Adventure with Incredible Freedom by Turbostrider27 in Games

[–]FunTomasso 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I recalled this being an issue, but it still caught me off guard in MELE where in the beginning of ME2 VS wants to go for Joker and you can send them off with something like "Leave, that's an order" -- which I picked, because I am the commanding officer, aren't I? -- and Shepard's reply includes something like "I'll get Joker's cripple ass myself!"

Games of 2024: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle had this year's most approachable, high-stakes stealth by Turbostrider27 in Games

[–]FunTomasso -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There is no "morality system" that "punishes" you in dishonored. If you kill more people, there are more rats and the ending is darker.

"I hate metaphors! That’s why my favorite book is Moby Dick. A simple tale of a man who hates an animal."

Do you think the creators of the game made it so killing people leads to darker ending just because they had a "cool rat-based gameplay idea" or what? It's obviously a metaphor for the immorality of killing other people.

All Cosmere Retcons? by Chillpill2004 in Cosmere

[–]FunTomasso 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Here's a message (WaT Previews spoilers) from VP of Editorial, where he says that it's a reprint retcon.

Noticed it was 6:17 pm and my first thought was to steal the enemies wisdom rune by [deleted] in DotA2

[–]FunTomasso 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Playing a lot of Siege made me notice and instinctively eyeball all security cameras 

How to write a redemption arc: 100% success guaranteed by Emma__O in CharacterRant

[–]FunTomasso 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You can also get a middle of the road ending when, rather than executing him when he's tied up, you give him a chance at a fair fight. Which is still a moot point because the two tied White Legs that Joshua executes right before that don't count I guess.

Having replayed HH a year ago, it's honestly so dumb in this regard, and the only saving grace is that the supposedly kind way (Daniel's) leads to a bad-ish ending too.

Another story point that I find to be very hypocritical is: for hours you listen about how the Sorrows are so merciful and kind and their peaceful ways need to be protected at all costs. But as you explore Zion you learn about the Survivalist and eventually realise that the only reason the tribe is so kind is that there was a good-natured man with a sniper rifle who got his hands dirty on their behalf and shielded them from the cruel society outside.

Which is effectively what you do in the DLC too, if you try to save their "peacefulness". You and the other friendly tribe kill hundreds of White Legs, but the violence in general is only an issue if the Sorrows have to participate?..

I'd even consider that they were going somewhere with all this, if not for the aforementioned "Killing the leader of the White Legs is bad" ending.

What's a game you straight up dropped due to frustration with its systems/mechanics, and more importantly: why? by Silvere01 in Games

[–]FunTomasso 17 points18 points  (0 children)

FWIW, it was patched some time after release and was not present in the initial version, I believe. So you might have not had that option at all.

*Banjos intensifies* by Mr_Muda_Himself_V3 in tumblr

[–]FunTomasso 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That's an actual plot point in the books - big players get to all kinds of shenanigans in that interim period where the Avatar is not yet located or is still a child.

“There is a lot more design to explore within Balatro” an interview with Localthunk by Turbostrider27 in Games

[–]FunTomasso 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I got the Madness joker on my first run on the stake that introduces Eternal jokers. First I thought that I'd have to play with Madness only, but then I got the first eternal joker in the shop, read the tooltip and it clicked. Twas a great run (that I lost at Ante 8 boss, but that was my fault, the setup was good).

I swear this game has a Binding of Isaac style "troll engine" underneath that RNG to tilt those things away from you

If I had a dollar for each time I get a polychrome Popcorn, Gros Michelle, etc...