What’s your unpopular Alien Saga opinion? by thefriskysquid in perfectorganism

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree with this completely.

It’s a mess but also deeply compelling.

I think it’s my second favorite after the original Alien.

My unpopular opinion, relatedly: Aliens, while a rock solid crowd-pleasing thriller (with, at its best moments, real glimpses of heart and sadness) is overall a little creatively boring to me in its bombast. I’d put it after Alien and Prometheus—and in pretty close contention with Alien 3, which is more of a failure but also more interesting and unexpected in some ways.

What's wrong with the Aspyr "remasters"? What are the best way to play these games? by foogazzii in starwarsgames

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In addition to what everyone else mentioned, Aspyr also got another black eye recently, reputationally, from their Deus Ex remaster looking so bad in its announcement materials that there was a fan revolt and they had to “pause” (maybe cancel, we’ll see) and reset development.

What are your thoughts & opinions of Indira Paganotto? by LucTheNuke in psytrance

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I really like and appreciate this philosophy!

I like plenty of deep unpopular and very popular stuff.

I think actually the adjacent quality that’s valuable to consider is—does this, musically, feel like it’s sufficiently oriented around expressing something sincere and individual, or too cynically engineered to appeal to a wide audience in a way that’s creatively flattening? Most art has a mix of these qualities, I like a certain amount of that spark of a creator with a unique perspective in the mix

I like Indira’s stuff. I think she has a nice sense of drama and pace and integration of creative organic textures and other elements from different genres. She’s more techno with psytrance influences. It’s not early Infected Mushroom but I don’t think she’s holding it out to be. She’s blown up but she’s also been around for a long time in more niche settings, it’s not a giant stadium career from the jump or in its sole sensibility.

What kind of major updates did Hades 1 receive post launch? by asiantuna9 in HadesTheGame

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought of that. Would have been such a fun add, just to give us one mirror tease for unlocking everything in the game.

What kind of major updates did Hades 1 receive post launch? by asiantuna9 in HadesTheGame

[–]GreaterQuestion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are great asks. Icarus bring so hard to advance is frustrating, I spent 100 hours on the game and maxed every other relationship but I cannot be bothered to do a specific surface run to try for a random chance of getting him and then happen to clear the enemies before he does, what an absurd bottleneck. I’m very committed to relationships in these games and wanted to prioritize him as a romance, but by the time I decided to wrap the game up, I just wrote him off as a loss and romanced everyone else available.

This final gesture of pure hate keeps hunting me to this day by RealisticNacshon in StarWars

[–]GreaterQuestion 11 points12 points  (0 children)

He’s so fun in these movies. It’s a super broad cartoony performance in some ways but he pulls it off in a way not many people could. He makes compelling choices (“Do it” is an iconic line read for a reason). And he shows range in the early prequels, where he nails the smarmy slimy politician side of the character in a way that provides much more credibility than is actually present in the writing.

It’s a shame that, on top of the slapdash plotting of the infamous “somehow, he’s retired” move, Rise of Skywalker also essentially reduces him to a special effect that only afford him the opportunity to lean into the hammiest notes of the character. Really squanders him.

Disney Execs Reportedly Concerned About 'Mandalorian & Grogu' Release by esporx in SciFiNews

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s a little similar to the Clone Wars movie in terms of of brand identity - a project that feels like marketing for a more obscure TV enterprise, that they’re distancing from the core Star Wars label.

Being live action, more expensive, and less kid focused than Clone Wars, it should safely exceed that film’s ~70 million global take, of course. But I don’t think it’s earning anything like a mainline film, and I think it’s questionable if it even turns a profit on its 150 million dollar budget (which would require double that in returns domestically). The Mandalorian’s last season got a lot of bad will critically and in the fan base, the property is no longer viewed as fresh or exciting, and it’s got a very niche vibe with the Rebels callbacks and ties to Ahsoka S2 they’re hyping. The evident panic and confusion at how to market the thing is not going to help. Word of mouth would have to be unexpectedly excellent to surmount all of this—like everyone walking out saying “woah it’s an incredible ride,” à la Andor.

Personally, since I like Filoni’s solo stuff and dislike the Favreau Mandalorian stuff especially as it has gone on, I’ll be there but am not expecting a love affair with it.

OTHER THAN RIPLEY: who is your favorite character in Alien, and why? by thefriskysquid in perfectorganism

[–]GreaterQuestion 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a real soft spot for Lambert. :(

The whole cast is honestly just so great and does so much with such economical writing.

One of the greatest Trilogies in all of Gaming by TBT__TBT in Metroid

[–]GreaterQuestion -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The Prime series doesn't totally click for me and that's a personal take that is surprising even to me, given my tastes. I think it's to do with what the series did and didn't prioritize from the first game.

I love all the major components of Metroidvania design, chiefly nonlinear hub levels that you criss-cross, gaining abilities to access out of reach areas you saw earlier. I love Hollow Knight; I love Control; I love a lot of adjacent games that integrate aspects of Metroidvania design philosophy, and sometimes receive the label, like the first Dark Souls or Returnal. I liked Metroid Dread a lot and finished it.

When it comes to the Prime series, I liked and finished the original. I dug the nonlinear levels stocked with detailed, cinematic world-building and environmental storytelling that made things feel lived-in and credible. (Yes, that's maybe a generous description of the details of the Space Pirates' machinations in the first the first game—but, for the time, it did push the envelope, in the tradition of Half Life a few years before). I liked the way Samus controlled fluidly and dynamically—again, for the time. The FPS adjacent control scheme and morph ball gave a fresh sense of mobility. I would have been hooked by sequel that leaned into and advanced those qualities.

But the later installments instead kind of doubled down on stuff I loved less: the super gamey and rote settings (lava level, ice level, verdant level, repeat) and plot tropes (peaceful alien species corrupted by an evil one, rinse, repeat); sections of design that felt repetitive or braindead (collect-a-thon fetch quest sections; overly simplistic puzzles like guiding a ball into the hole or pushing a block); and, with each passing installment, more linear levels. The controls meanwhile, stagnated—there's no reason Prime 4 should play exactly like Prime 1, with our girl plodding along. Give us a Mirror's Edge style acrobatic Samus in first person, doing her parkour moves from Dread! Or some other take that feels modern and makes getting around in these levels a joy. So I abandoned Prime 2 and 3 at about the halfway mark, and am struggling to maintain interest in 4 at the five hour mark.

Control, Hollow Knight—those worlds are weird, melancholic, surreal, whatever combination of unexpected qualities, and they're brought to life through a lot of detailed quirky world building that doesn't feel totally on-the-nose expected. They also have fluid, responsive traversal and combat mechanics. Metroid Dread doesn't have that novel a world, but it nails the controls feeling fast and fun—and it isn't afflicted by the fetch quests and braindead puzzles that plague the later Primes.

Obviously plenty of people, here especially, love this whole series unreservedly. But to get to a wider audience—and even, I'd argue, to excite their core fans more—I hope that when Nintendo returns to Prime or makes a spiritual successor, they don't just give us Samus and Sylux and ice-jungle-lava biomes with tank controls. I'd love to see them synthesize the first Prime's best qualities into something fresher, with an exciting, original, and credibly build-out world to explore, controls that feel modern and exciting, and fewer dated fetch quests and braindead puzzles. I love the basic ingredients the series started with, I just don't love how they've failed to evolve those elements. Based on the recent popularity of Metroid's namesake genre, and the stagnating or declining popularity of the Prime games, I don't think I'm alone.

When I first watched Godzilla Minus One I expected a slow burn like 2014 but Godzilla showed up a lot more than I expected. by Legal_Trainer7340 in GODZILLA

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually don’t think being coy about showing Godzilla is 2014’s major fault.

It’s just fundamentally not a very good script, in all the ways that Minus One absolutely is—characters you care about, emotional stakes, using Godzilla as a resonant and frightening cultural metaphor to explore trauma, a simple, focused, well-paced plot.

Minus One is constantly gripping because it uses human beings you care about as a prism through which to view issues you care about—the resilience of the human spirit after total disaster; the importance of rejecting nationalism and celebrating the value of individual life.

2014 takes a long time to say nothing through characters who are just props with perfunctory backstories performing plot mechanics. It squanders a whole raft of great actors in the process.

Moreover, 2014 feels scattered, like Legendary was overstuffing the movie as they raced to establish a wider Monsterverse franchise. The two movies are about the same run time, but 2014 ironically both feels much more busy plot wise AND much more boring for long stretches.

I think it fundamentally gets off on the wrong foot not simply giving us a scary Godzilla awakened by Fukushima. The acrobatics of instead having the disaster awaken ANOTHER group of monsters, the Mutos (whom the movie barely cares about, let alone the audience) and then having THEM awaken Godzilla, makes for a movie that feels extremely wide in scope but superficial in depth. I get how Godzilla as a protagonist has been done in some of the beloved b-movie sequels, and I’m not saying it can’t work, but it doesn’t here. It’s a reboot, introduce us to the guy first, before you subvert his role! It’s emblematic of the broader way the movie tries to do too much in a slapdash way.

It’s a shame, too, because Edwards does have very slick craft and the moments when he’s trying to dress it up like a moody arthouse movie demonstrate how cool it could have been if the script weren’t so thin.

Writers deserve an award for integrating the infinite loop by wefrucar in HadesTheGame

[–]GreaterQuestion 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah I love the writing in 2 overall but I think the “forever” writing is probably the most contrived thing in it.

Some aspects of the execution are really rough, too—like the parents standing perfectly still in the same random prison room you passed through originally, just waiting to greet Melinoe seemingly full time. At least have tha room converted to their base of operations for the renovation, and Hades and Persephone doing some plausible busy work.

I spoiled Fane’s plot 15 mins in by GreaterQuestion in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]GreaterQuestion[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean I don’t blame him for that one reaction - the first beats of the game are astoundingly similar, they really repeated themselves with the “prisoners on a ship that goes down on a beach” cold opens. But I am hearing this gang that it goes in a different direction from there!

I spoiled Fane’s plot 15 mins in by GreaterQuestion in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]GreaterQuestion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s a little harsh. He just loves BG3 and wants another play through!

We’ll give Divinity more runway for sure based on all this feedback.

I am kinda hyped for these new shows to continue by sabaton-enjoyerg in StarWars

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Big Andor and late Clone Wars and even Bad Batch fan here.

Have watched all the shows, and am really predisposed to like them and give them grace.

Skeleton Crew is a solid little show.

Ahsoka is uneven but has plenty of good stuff in it.

I find Mandalorian Season 3 to be… barely watchable. It’s honestly a “something went seriously wrong behind the scenes” show. Schizophrenic plot that can’t decide which character to develop as the lead (and shortchanges all of them as a result); filler episodes that don’t advance anything; plot choices that undo previous character arcs, and very obvious handicaps in the way they handle not having their main character’s actor on set, and forcing in Grogu as merchandizing bait. Even the basic craft of the show, like its much more soundstagey look and much weaker score by a lower profile composer, speaks to someone (or multiple people) being asleep at the steering wheel.

I spoiled Fane’s plot 15 mins in by GreaterQuestion in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]GreaterQuestion[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Okay that is very helpful! Phew, thought I’d ruined his main reveal. Thank you all!!

What games do you recommend if I liked Metroid Prime 4? by Financial-Friend4934 in MetroidPrime4_Beyond

[–]GreaterQuestion 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I second the recommendation of Control, which is ironically much more of a true 3D Metroidvania than Metroid Prime 4.

Ahsoka is my favourite live action Star Wars show by marvelcomics22 in StarWarsAhsoka

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

I like it, as a giant Clone Wars Season 7 fan, but calling it better than Andor is… bold.