Quintus

Bloodborne has some of the best art direction I've seen in a game tbh. It's at once nightmarish and wondrous. People tend to praise the gloomy gothic feel, but some of the locations have more of a "rural Brothers Grimm" style about them.

Bloodborne was awesome, loved it. I rarely play those sorts of games anymore, but I will occasionally put myself into "the mode" when one comes along which I really fancy. It's all about the early grind, gradually becoming intimately knowledgeable of environmental hazards, and progressing into an absolute beast of a warrior once it all clicks. Very satisfying gameplay loop which requires deep reserves of patience before it becomes apparent. Nine times out of ten though my game time involves chilling, so something much more accessible and less punishing.

I don't fancy it much but I normally attribute mixed reactions with "potentially something of interest", which, speaking for myself, find much more motivating or reliable than "overwhelmingly positive/absolutely terrible" declarations often found on places like Rotten Tomatoes (sorry Alex). The Witcher had similarly confused responses, and I enjoyed that enough, it did enough to make me watch S2 (which I'm still yet to do). It's never easy establishing a brand new sci-fi/fantasy series on TV, and I'd definitely have expected a Halo one to struggle in that objective, but apparently there's viewers out there who have welcomed its initial attempt, even if I think it looks every bit B-Grade schlock. But I'll definitely give it at least a go.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

No, and Jackson has reiterated that the theatricals are the preferred versions more than once. I agree with him, especially in regards to the the first film. I own the 4K EEs (Apple streaming), and I thoroughly enjoy a great deal of the additional content (certain parts I even consider essential), but on balance I still think the original cuts are the best overall presentation of the story in cinematic form. Those "essential" moments I refer to... they're really just indulges, when it boils down to it. Years later, The Hobbit movies would be entirely designed around such indulgent excesses. To their detriment.

Imagine still giving a crap about the oscars anyway.

Haven Holiday clubs and gift shops have really gone downhill since then.

Superhero flicks are single-handedly keeping theatre chains going whilst simultaneously killing cinema. Just got to hope the fad does in the end pass, but I think there's still quite a few years left to go, especially with all this infinite multiverse bollocks they've conveniently thought up. Normy cinemagoers (buffs) basically got to wait till today's teenage boys grow up to be grumpy disenfranchised old men. I personally am absolutely sick to death of the sight and sound of superhero stuff, it all bores me to tears. I actually like the genre, but come the fuck on. Another downside is... the genuinely ambitious projects, such as The Batman... I tar with the same brush, I bundle them all up together and instantly dismiss anything new featuring lycra and capes. I avoid the ones that are actually worth giving a chance because of association. That, plus I'm also just really tired of Batman reboots.

In the mid eighties when he was visiting Wales he stayed in a four berth static caravan and he had a Yamaha keyboard plugged in just to keep him going in case he had any cool ideas.

Re: Hogwarts. I'd guess it's following the older zelda/metrovania template. Either that, or Mass Effect/Witcher 2.

Yeah him. He was cheap.

I found out after the fact that I'd beaten one of the game's hardest bosses in drastically the wrong order. Naboris by Gerudo Town, my son tells me I should have taken that Divine Beast on last. I did it first though. I only had six hearts, and it was an absolute fucker. I almost put the game down, thinking all the bosses would see these ridiculous difficulty spikes. But on the bright side at least it's now out of the way.

I finally got around to installing the necessary prerequisites (CEMU Emulator) and setting everything just right to play Breath of the Wild on my PC, blown up on a 65" C1 OLED displaying at 4k but internally rendering at 5k. It is indeed a spellbinding, if not stupendously flawless (as they say), adventure. It looks beautiful, even by today's standards. Visually almost timeless, quite possibly. So I've been chilling in the evenings, slowly making my way through the game. It's a very relaxing pastime, chipping away at the serenely paced central quest line and experimenting with the world's delightful systems. I'm enjoying it a lot.

Sounds too hardcore difficulty for me these days, given its otherwise lovely art style and cutesy protagonist. I just associate that sort of thing (isometric adventure) with gameplay that is somewhat more laid back and less intensive. When I feel like an actual satisfying challenge in a game I'll eventually just pick up Elden Ring.

Trailer on repeat accepted, every aspect of this screams pre streaming era TV to me. It looks cheap and tacky upscaled for the latest 4K TVs, as if veneered fidelity alone is expected to do the brunt of the heavy lifting. Only the black dude from Fargo gives me reason enough to maybe trial it, because everything else is terrible - as seen in the trailer. I don't care about the game's actual lore, that's not my issue with this spinoff at all. It just looks like broad sci-fi with the budget of a live action video game cutscene.

Trash.

These kind of comparisons (the most common nauseating one being with JW) are what piss me off about Gia, or more particularly, his fans. It just seems like the vast majority of listeners are cloth eared. Bernard Herrmann, sheesus give me strength

Hi

Story wise, Knights of the Old Republic was probably the most convincing Star Wars expansion, with a legitimately ESB rivalling plot twist to boot - no mean feat, remarkably so considering it's a video game. But yeah, one inseparable component of Star Wars discussion and debate is that the god tier fanboys simply cannot handle the criticism - serious and jocular, and generally struggle to be tolerant of dissenting views and opinions, however idle, often preferring to block it out by surrounding themselves with other like-minded gush pansies. It's always been like that since the internet really took off in tandem with the ongoing almighty blunder of the prequel trilogy, which was being laid bare in the old IRC chat rooms of the late 90s and early 2000s. Some of those places were jealousy exclusive at the time, where the extent of the damage was being assessed. Even I was in denial, right at the beginning. But then I got real.

The squeeze-through area loading transition animation where Obi Wan leaves the desert biome for the internal cave section. Probably a side quest.

No, because a mere three years was all there was till the enormous sequel. There was no necessary passage of time for the things I'm talking about to occur and manifest.

I doubt younger members will fully appreciate my rather wistful point, but Star Wars originally held an almost supernaturally mystical status when it was part of the past classics pantheon of western cinema, an untouched one-off of a legendary trilogy, eminently looked back on as being the predominant science fiction phenomenon of the Reagan era. There were no sequels and none were ever really expected; and the fans, casuals and die-hards alike, were actually fine with that - it allowed the Luke Skywalker saga to "bed-in" and become entrenched as a major nostalgic mainstay of popular culture at the time and for almost fifteen years after: it was always just Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and people would rewatch them over and over like Bond movies, like Bridge Over the River Kwai and The Great Escape. That's why they became endlessly quotable and constantly referenced everywhere. The Star Wars trilogy was a sacrosanct icon of American cinema, locked in time. Nowadays it's treated like the latest Assassin's Creed instalment, watered down to the point where the extraordinary "magic" has all but evaporated and been replaced with curdled cow's milk, to be forcibly twisted from the teat on demand, ready for the next "audience engagement". Disclosure: I really liked The Mandalorian overall, but that doesn't mean I don't also lament the changing and diminishing of Star Wars as a part of the untouched lexicon of exceptional cultural highlights. I sound like a jaded old superfan here, but the irony of my remarks is that I didn't even bother to watch it (the trilogy) till my late teens (the 90s), and whilst I enjoyed a short fad of personal fandom, I was never that into it after. Yet I had always appreciated its status and its impact. It makes me feel a little sad to see it's ongoing basardisation now, and this latest spin off may as well have been produced by Ubisoft. But I'm sure it'll be "fine". Though something else, something of abstract significance, shall nevertheless be lost. I guess time moves on.

C-Grade 20-30 years ago. Elevated to B-Grade now due to the current state of play.

Rampant and seemingly ingrained ageism toward elderly directors is pretty annoying actually. I swear kids today stir up more division now than ever before, considering how much they feign and pontificate their advocacy of acceptance and equality all the time. They're a horrible bunch a lot of them.