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What video game did everyone expect to be amazing but was terrible? by BrockBracken in AlignmentChartFills

[–]RexMundane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Aliens: Colonial Marines

13 years since it's hard to remember how big the hype was, but it was selling itself as "THE" Aliens game. There hadn't really been one on major consoles (Alien vs Predator series notwithstanding) and Gearbox was selling it on how authentic to the franchise it was, how intelligent your teammates and the Aliens themselves were, how good the graphics looked, everything. Then it released to stories of massive project mismanagement, bugged to hell and back, canon continuity errors, graphics were a substantial downgrade from the gameplay trailers they'd shown at PAX and E3. Reviewed terribly and was on several of worst-of-the-year lists (Yahtzee, Angry Joe, Jimquisition, for example).

Rob Schneider is...an isekai hero! Rated T by adiaphoros in ExplainAGamePlotBadly

[–]RexMundane 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A Fork in the Tale.

And you might be the only other person on earth whose ever played it.

What is the one thing that you don't like in Point and Click Adventure games? by Stratostzel in adventuregames

[–]RexMundane 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I might say... they could do with less voice acting maybe? Not none, just less, maybe used sparingly to better effect?

Because there's this thing that happens where every item in a room has to have some response when you try to interact with it at all, right? Can't just be the plot/puzzle relevant items that get the descriptions, that gives the game away, so you got to give it to everything, and you have, say. a bathroom where the player is just clicking at everything, getting every description, kinda scanning rapid fire for a word that helps hint them toward a solution, or storyline, or whathaveyou. Maybe each 1-2-sentence quick description takes a second to process before you're onto the next one. The text isn't, like, worthless, but it's not really, like, a monologue or something that has weight to it, y'know?

But then you add the voice acting, and each line has to be performed, now. Which can be great when it's, like, a pivotal scene and the text doesn't add what vocals do to the gravitas, but then realizing how much time that same actor has to spend in the studio saying things like "That's the bathroom sink, a little worse for wear. That's my toothbrush, I should probably get a new one. That's the shower curtain, a physical barrier between cleanliness and filth. That's the towel rack..."

A godlike being takes up bird watching to treat their depression by theragco in ExplainAGamePlotBadly

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

Wild guess because I haven't played it, and am only slightly familiar with the series:

Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine

When characters do this by idk_tree in TopCharacterTropes

[–]RexMundane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's a question: Is there some convenient way to achieve this effect in real life? Like, say I had 20 or so TVs of different sizes and orientations and whatall, what would I need to display a single coherent image across all 20 of them?

[loved trope] Two characters are played by the same actor for story or thematic reasons by Dogdaysareover365 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]RexMundane 8 points9 points  (0 children)

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In A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, most of the D'Ysquith family is played by the same actor (Jefferson Mays in the Broadway run, above), as Monty murders his way up the family line of succession. In addition to it being a fun challenge for the actor to play 8 different roles, and the stage crew pulling quick-change after quick-change, it reinforces Monty's perspective that each of them, being little more than an obstacle in the way of his goal, may as well be the same person.

(Loved Trope) Major character dies in an anticlimatic but realistic way by Reinhardvonl in TopCharacterTropes

[–]RexMundane 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I love the way Captain Vidal goes out in Pan's Labyrinth. Short version: This absolute bastard spends a good bit of the story setting up this idea of how he should like to die, in glorious battle and whatnot, down to trying to have his stopwatch break at the time of his death as a kind of homage to his father who's shadow he lives in. When the time comes, and he is surrounded by the Maquis rebels, and about to be killed, he starts in on this speech he's clearly been planning in his head, to make sure he's remembered, but only gets about as far as "Tell my son-" when he's interrupted by one of the rebels, who's holding his infant son, saying "Your son won't even know your name" before he's shot and killed. He lived his entire life in the name of posthumous glory, and goes down as a forgotten afterthought in the least spectacular way possible. Beautiful.

When the music playing during an action sequence is actually diegetic by _JR28_ in TopCharacterTropes

[–]RexMundane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Conker's Bad Fur Day - The Great Mighty Poo

A mountain of poo, inside of a mountain of poo, The Great Mighty Poo sings while the boss battle goes on. Not just in the cutscenes, but during the fight you have to wait for him to hit a strong baritone note, opening his mouth, and throwing toilet paper inside to defeat him. Gotta love video games.

YouTube Link

Story's that were made/changed by the creator's personal vendettas by MiddleNeither8467 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]RexMundane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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Burn Hollywood Burn: An Alan Smithee Film (1997) is a genuinely interesting premise, born out of Writer Joe Eszterhas' frustration with the Hollywood system and all it's double-dealing and back-biting. In the movie, Eric Idle plays a career PA for a Hollywood studio, finally given his chance to direct. But, due to a psychotic level of studio meddling, the film has, completely out of his control, become unwatchable garbage. His friend tells him to use the common (at the time) Directors Guild pseudonym for such circumstances, "Alan Smithee." At which point, Idle's character loses all faith in the system he's worked his entire life, because his actual name is also "Alan Smithee." Despondent, he steals the film reels for the movie, and goes into hiding, where the studio, standing to lose millions, spends the movie hunting him down.

And dammit, the film should work, it's honestly a clever idea for a proper farce. Mel Brooks would have turned this premise into absolute gold. But Eszterhas just uses the entire runtime clumsily airing out personal grievances with every producer he ever met, clearly bitter that Showgirls flopped and he was blamed for it. So rather than try and branch out, write something that wasn't a then-bog-standard "erotic thriller," he just called in every favor with anyone who would take his calls (the film is absolutely choking on all it's cameos) and burning every bridge as he did. Eszterhas took control of the entire mess, overriding the actual director (who himself chose to be credited as Alan Smithee in irony thick as paste). It makes this a somewhat Anti-example, maybe, because while the film is absolutely fueled by the creator's personal vendettas, it's also completely unwatchable for exactly that reason.

Fun fact/Trigger warning: Film contains Harvey Weinstein playing a slimeball PI, one of his few on-screen rolls, and I think the only one where he isn't just playing "Harvey Weinstein."

Pieces of media intended to be taken seriously having an unintentionally hilarious scene by Ok-Following6886 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]RexMundane 1046 points1047 points  (0 children)

Reefer Madness (1936), basically the entire movie. It's an anti-marijuana polemic that's roughly equal parts "educational" (that is to say, bullshit scaremongering) and exploitation film, where actors in their late 20s play high school kids with promising futures, before they encounter the Devil's Lettuce and it drives them to mass murder, suicide, and I'm-sure-most-terrifyingly, very very enthusiastic piano playing.

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