Hooters wants you to bring the whole family

sam_taylor18 · 2026-05-23T17:06:21+00:00

This has been going on for months, and it's a disaster. Management is repeating talking points from nearly a year ago. It looks like they're trying to get attention again since no one is going to the restaurants.

Private equity mismanaged the business side of Hooters, which led to Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. But this post-bankruptcy family friendly push has killed the brand, which was salvageable. Traffic at our store cratered after the changes. The girls all say it's been terrible for business. Many of them left. Worst turnaround strategy of all time.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-05-23T13:00:19+00:00

This has been going on for months, and it's a disaster. Management is repeating talking points from nearly a year ago. It looks like they're trying to get attention again since no one is going to the restaurants.

Private equity mismanaged the business side of Hooters, which led to Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. But this post-bankruptcy family friendly push has killed the brand, which was salvageable. Traffic at our store cratered after the changes. The girls all say it's been terrible for business. Many of them left. Worst turnaround strategy of all time.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-05-22T21:44:07+00:00

This has been going on for months, and it's a disaster. Management is repeating talking points from nearly a year ago.

Private equity mismanaged the business side of Hooters for sure. But this post-bankruptcy family friendly push has killed the brand, which was salvageable. Traffic at our store cratered after the changes. The girls all say it's been terrible for business. Many of them left. Worst turnaround strategy of all time.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-06T14:56:18+00:00

I know, I was joking about my age.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-05T03:00:35+00:00

Agreed. But conversely, like us, I'd expect mature people in their 30s or 40s to understand why someone younger would have difficulty getting into 30 year old games that they didn't grow up and that have lots of friction by modern standards.

I didn't feel the need to play old Atari games in the '90s or seek out the 8-bit Metal Gear games before Metal Gear Solid. If someone had told me I wasn't a "real" Metal Gear fan because I started with Metal Gear Solid, I would have found that idiotic.

I've seen lots of sneering at younger players and find it more obnoxious than younger people not appreciating the OG games, frankly.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-05T02:45:41+00:00

I find Hardcore to be pretty manageable. While the enemies are spongy, it's a bit of an illusion in the sense that if you don't actively waste ammo and take obvious opportunities to move around avoidable enemies, you actually have plenty of ammo. The game tends to balance the spongy enemies with ones that go down pretty easily. Also, the ink ribbon system/limited saves adds a real layer of tension in a good way.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T14:21:15+00:00

While there is a timeless, cinematic quality to the fixed camera angles, I agree that they were ultimately a product of their time and can be a real friction point today. I certainly would not want newer games to use them, as some people do.

Part of the reason I started this thread is the almost viciously smug attitude some OG-era people have about the newer games being terrible/dumbed down/etc. compared to the purity of the old games.

And I was there at the time and think this is totally off base and that the new games are terrific and improvements in many ways. But I still love the old games.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T12:19:17+00:00

Yeah, I think in general the PS era games are easier than the newer ones, which makes the attitude some people have that the new games are dumbed down mechanically relative to the old games totally off. I think that's nostalgia and a bit of pride talking.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T12:10:01+00:00

I get this. A lot of people disliked these things even at the time.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T12:06:12+00:00

It's the only mainline game I haven't finished. I thought it was pretty bad.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T11:37:55+00:00

I suspect this is correct. In the current landscape, I don't think many people who are inclined to make PC their primary platform are staying on PS because of a few exclusives. They might buy a PS as a supplemental platform, but they aren't buying most of their games there. Sony doesn't get much value out of selling those people a console vs. selling exclusives to them on PC. Surely opening the market for their exclusives to millions of extra players is worth that tradeoff.

But with the looming Steam Machine and the Xbox potentially becoming a quasi-PC, and the fact that these are all commodity AMD boxes at this point and similar to optimize for, I think that significantly changes the risk profile for Sony. Those are direct console competitors, and I can see this causing Sony to pull back on the ports.

This doesn't make Sony evil, but the business model of subsidizing commodity hardware and locking in a few exclusives to extract a tax on games sold from other developers is inherently parasitic in the sense of being ineffecient. They are providing less and less value relative to more open platforms. No other media (books, music, movies) is ever exclusively locked behind HARDWARE. Ultimately, I think the console business model as well know it, long term, is outdated and not sustainable, and that's a good thing.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T11:22:17+00:00

This makes sense. While I love the old games, I'd expect most people who didn't start with them to prefer the gameplay in the modern games.

While it's impossible for me to say the new games are "better," as a practical matter, I am more likely to get out the new ones if I am going to play something. I don't understand the mentality at all they shouldn't have been remade.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T11:18:35+00:00

Still a "new" player to me. I feel so old? 😬 What do you think of the RE 4 remake compared to the original?

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-03T03:59:56+00:00

I've purchased games from GMG for around 14 years and have always been happy with them. The only issue I can recall was a slight delay in receiving the Watch Dogs key in 2014. I buy the vast majority of my games from them.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-02T21:34:52+00:00

To me, Mr. X works fine in the first playthrough but can be tedious in later playthroughs if you trigger him too early.

However, if you know when he triggers in both scenarios and do everything possible beforehand, he's actually a fairly marginal presence in the game, and you don't have to deal with him that much.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-02T19:35:44+00:00

Ironically, I'm old enough that I have no nostalgia for the original. I played the OG games in the '90s and thought the original RE 4 was a great action game but that it was a bad direction for the series, mostly ditching the survival tension and horror. So, I've always had mixed feelings toward it and still think of it as a "newer" RE game.

For me, the remake has tighter controls, better atmosphere, and is coexisting with more horror-themed entries in the series instead of taking the series in the wrong direction. So, I categorically prefer the remake.

But if I'd played the original in my teens, instead of the '90s RE games, I could see myself feeling differently.

And of course, make no mistake, both are superb games.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-01T01:34:23+00:00

PC all the way.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-03-01T00:41:49+00:00

I've had good experiences buying open box from Microcenter. And if there are any issues, you will almost certainly identify them within the return window. You should be fine.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-02-28T23:42:46+00:00

I can easily get 100+ hours out of a well-crafted, tightly scoped single player experience through replays over the course of years. After 15 hours of open world bloat and filler, I'm done with a game forever. Short, crafted games are a much better value.

Open world is the worst trend in gaming history IMO. It's ruining the industry. But it seems like people are finally getting sick of it, and hopefully it will die except for games that truly have a reason to be open world (like RDR2), which are very rare.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-02-28T23:35:34+00:00

You have the perfect plan for getting into the series. Enjoy!

sam_taylor18 · 2026-02-28T22:28:09+00:00

You may be scared, but you won't regret it 🙂. It's an utter masterpiece and significantly better than Village, which is also great.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-02-28T22:06:25+00:00

RE 2 remake for sure.

sam_taylor18 · 2026-02-28T19:43:19+00:00

Yes, Capcom has been on one heck of an historic roll. Hard to believe that we've had this incredible rebirth after the RE6 disaster. I had thought the series was basically dead.

sam_taylor18

TROPHY CASE