Episode 256 - 10 Year Anniversary Reflections and Burlesque

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

21 minutes ago, RyanSz said:

I've now put more thought and search for logic in a mediocre film than I have for any of the great films I have seen within the last year.

Of course you have, you're an HDTGM fan.

[GrahamS. 803]

6 hours ago, RyanSz said:

Just a bit of warning in that it really does not hold your hand in regards to how you solve cases or where you go in the world as while you can set waypoints on your map, you will continually refer to it to find where the hell you are going. Plus some of the clue and reference searches can be a bit tedious if going through city archives and records and cross-referencing things isn't your cup of tea. I had no problem with it but being a librarian that was kind of already par for the course for me.

As long as the stuff you’re looking up is interesting, I’m in. If it’s just busywork to fill time (which I thought the paperwork in Control was—they really could have made the reports more interesting than they were), not so much.

[GrahamS. 803]

5 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

I’m just saying there should have been rules. Something to establish what he can or can’t do. Like, a wish cannot be used to directly harm someone, or the Amazonian armor protects her. We’re just supposed to believe this person with powers unto a God, never worked out a complication.

I also didn’t understand why he took so ling to heal himself. As soon as my health started to waiver, that’s the first thing I would have done. Or, after he hurt his son’s feelings, why not make it so his son forgot what he said? He should have a surplus of wish dollars and he spends it on making... traffic light?

I dunno, I agree, they should have set some rules and set some stakes, but ANY movie where the ultimate baddy comes down to an intangible thing like wishes is going to have a shitload of problems. 

[RyanSz 3140]

9 hours ago, GrahamS. said:

As long as the stuff you’re looking up is interesting, I’m in. If it’s just busywork to fill time (which I thought the paperwork in Control was—they really could have made the reports more interesting than they were), not so much.

It all depends on your idea of interesting, but it does play an important part in finding out where you need to go in this city to continue cases. It's not a huge part of the gameplay and doesn't deter from the great environment and sense of dread built within it. It was also one of those games I had to push through at points as I have a fear of open water and there are creatures aplenty inside the water of this game.

[grudlian. 4725]

9 hours ago, GrahamS. said:

As long as the stuff you’re looking up is interesting, I’m in. If it’s just busywork to fill time (which I thought the paperwork in Control was—they really could have made the reports more interesting than they were), not so much.

I played righ Control last month, I'm glad to see someone else who found the notes to be not helpful. I liked the game okay but by the time (I assume) they explained anything, I gave up trying to follow the plot.

[RyanSz 3140]

So the game I'm playing now is Cyberpunk 2077 and holy shit if it isn't a direct sequel to Johnny Mnemonic.  Keanu's character is essentially what Johnny would have become after the movie and there are characters that are addicted to upgrades or see them as a religious venture like Dolph Lundgren's character, plus a version of the Ice-T anarchist group live out in the barren wastelands surrounding the city. The game even has the laser whip as an optional weapon!

[GrahamS. 803]

21 hours ago, RyanSz said:

So the game I'm playing now is Cyberpunk 2077 and holy shit if it isn't a direct sequel to Johnny Mnemonic.  Keanu's character is essentially what Johnny would have become after the movie and there are characters that are addicted to upgrades or see them as a religious venture like Dolph Lundgren's character, plus a version of the Ice-T anarchist group live out in the barren wastelands surrounding the city. The game even has the laser whip as an optional weapon!

I’m playing it now as well. Bugs haven’t been too bad so far. Just got to the Keanu section. I’m enjoying it!

[RyanSz 3140]

33 minutes ago, GrahamS. said:

I’m playing it now as well. Bugs haven’t been too bad so far. Just got to the Keanu section. I’m enjoying it!

Same, I expect there to be bugs in a game this size and have just learned to live with it, but damn some people go nuts when a game isn't as perfect as they pictured it would be in their head.

[grudlian. 4725]

1 hour ago, RyanSz said:

Same, I expect there to be bugs in a game this size and have just learned to live with it, but damn some people go nuts when a game isn't as perfect as they pictured it would be in their head.

Are you playing on a PS4 (or possibly Xbox One)? Everyone I've seen saying it's not that bad or no major issues are playing PC or current gen consoles. The only person I know who played it on PS4 said that it's about as bad as people are saying.

As someone who wasn't particularly interested in ever playing it, I don't really care too much how well it plays but it certainly seems dishonest that CDPR wouldn't let reviewers play on consoles and the consoles are having issues. That isn't a coincidence in my mind.

[RyanSz 3140]

3 hours ago, grudlian. said:

Are you playing on a PS4 (or possibly Xbox One)? Everyone I've seen saying it's not that bad or no major issues are playing PC or current gen consoles. The only person I know who played it on PS4 said that it's about as bad as people are saying.

As someone who wasn't particularly interested in ever playing it, I don't really care too much how well it plays but it certainly seems dishonest that CDPR wouldn't let reviewers play on consoles and the consoles are having issues. That isn't a coincidence in my mind.

Playing on a PS4 here and yeah not having major issues. Out of the 65 hrs I've already put into it it's only crashed three times and the rest is the usual bugs you see in huge open world games. Yeah it's dishonest to put an review embargo on consoles, but seeing some of the clickbaity reviews after the fact where article thumbnails make it look like PS2 graphics are equally as bad. It's a funny thing I've noticed with how critics and players react to major Triple-A titles that have a bit of build up to them.

On one hand you have CDPR who have been teasing and promoting the shit out of this game for eight years by the time of its release and by all accounts went at a pretty steady pace to develop the game with no real crunch until this last year to try and get the game out in the current generation. The end result was a game that had serious problems and needed massive patches on release to fix them (the patch I had to download when I put the disc in the first time was 47GB,) and it is being lambasted for said result. On the other hand you have a developer like Rockstar that even though everyone knows they are working on a game, no one really knows what it is until about 18 months before its release and it's a gradual marketing strategy that usually starts with a title/logo reveal followed by quick teasers and eventually full trailers and gameplay footage. They got lambasted with the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 because it was revealed that they were working almost 100hr work weeks to make the game and make it as immersive as many had every seen in a video game.

The difference though was that the game came out with virtually no bugs and only the usual glitches an open world game has like animal skins being on the wrong animal. Outside of that the game was the game of the year in both critical and financial terms. I'm not saying time crunch is the way to go but the hypocrisy of the game playing public with these two games is astonishing, because you can bet if CDPR was allowed to finish the polish on the game and do a proper release on next gen systems it would be lauded as a masterpiece, but the push was being made for a release NOW. And of all the people playing RDR2 who also bemoaned the crunch had noticed a glitch or some piece of realism they felt should have been there that wasn't, because Rockstar didn't crunch to get it made, they would be giving it the treatment Cyberpunk is getting right now. I mean in RDR2 the balls on the horse you ride retract if it's too cold, that was a time crunch decision, and if it wasn't in the game there would be some reviewer who also studied equine science in college who would go after Rockstar for the lack of realism in the game and say more time should have been spent on adding to the overall experience.

Not saying one is more ideal than the other but everything I've been seeing and reading regarding this debacle has been a bit overblown by quite a few outlets. Granted CDPR did not help their cause with how this was marketed, but the backlash and clickbait was insane in response to the game.

[grudlian. 4725]

2 hours ago, RyanSz said:

Playing on a PS4 here and yeah not having major issues. Out of the 65 hrs I've already put into it it's only crashed three times and the rest is the usual bugs you see in huge open world games. Yeah it's dishonest to put an review embargo on consoles, but seeing some of the clickbaity reviews after the fact where article thumbnails make it look like PS2 graphics are equally as bad. It's a funny thing I've noticed with how critics and players react to major Triple-A titles that have a bit of build up to them.

On one hand you have CDPR who have been teasing and promoting the shit out of this game for eight years by the time of its release and by all accounts went at a pretty steady pace to develop the game with no real crunch until this last year to try and get the game out in the current generation. The end result was a game that had serious problems and needed massive patches on release to fix them (the patch I had to download when I put the disc in the first time was 47GB,) and it is being lambasted for said result. On the other hand you have a developer like Rockstar that even though everyone knows they are working on a game, no one really knows what it is until about 18 months before its release and it's a gradual marketing strategy that usually starts with a title/logo reveal followed by quick teasers and eventually full trailers and gameplay footage. They got lambasted with the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 because it was revealed that they were working almost 100hr work weeks to make the game and make it as immersive as many had every seen in a video game.

The difference though was that the game came out with virtually no bugs and only the usual glitches an open world game has like animal skins being on the wrong animal. Outside of that the game was the game of the year in both critical and financial terms. I'm not saying time crunch is the way to go but the hypocrisy of the game playing public with these two games is astonishing, because you can bet if CDPR was allowed to finish the polish on the game and do a proper release on next gen systems it would be lauded as a masterpiece, but the push was being made for a release NOW. And of all the people playing RDR2 who also bemoaned the crunch had noticed a glitch or some piece of realism they felt should have been there that wasn't, because Rockstar didn't crunch to get it made, they would be giving it the treatment Cyberpunk is getting right now. I mean in RDR2 the balls on the horse you ride retract if it's too cold, that was a time crunch decision, and if it wasn't in the game there would be some reviewer who also studied equine science in college who would go after Rockstar for the lack of realism in the game and say more time should have been spent on adding to the overall experience.

Not saying one is more ideal than the other but everything I've been seeing and reading regarding this debacle has been a bit overblown by quite a few outlets. Granted CDPR did not help their cause with how this was marketed, but the backlash and clickbait was insane in response to the game.

My opinion is that both companies were wrong.

I think crunch is dumb and Rockstar shouldn't be doing it. Every game they release is functionally an event and they could push it back whenever they want and still get a few billion dollars. They have no excuse for crunch unless we're talking the last couple weeks. As for the horse testicles thing, I remember Rockstar getting laughed at way more than anything for including that; anyone seriously complaining would have been laughed at would be my guess.

CDPR was supposed to release this many times but back in April was the first serious release date. They weren't just putting polish on a game for nine months that crashes three times in 65 hours. I also refuse to believe there wasn't crunch time if they kept pushing it back but coincidentally made the pre-Black Friday sales in a pretty buggy state.

I'm normally fine trashing gamers because they are the whiniest group of people over the most minuscule complaints. I've seen enough videos of very weird stuff far outside of normal open world quirks or from friends I trust to be honest that this isn't just gamers overreacting. But, again, I haven't played it and I'm going largely on what people I know have said.

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

On 1/4/2021 at 3:33 PM, Cameron H. said:

Even so, there are plenty of options. He could take away her power, he could give her amnesia, he could send her back in time, make her mute, break her leg, teleport her to Utah, etc etc.

I guess the issue I have is no limits were placed on his power. He’s essentially omnipotent. And with a billion + wishes giving him a billion + power points (or whatever), it shouldn’t have been close. Like, he can turn Kristen Wiig into a Cheetah woman, but he can’t be, like, maybe I should get rid of one or two of those nukes so my son isn’t fried?

 

I THOUGHT that, like Genie in Aladdin, he could only do what other people wished for. But then there were times he ordered soldiers around and they just listened, so that confused me. You are correct that the rules were unclear. There also seemed to be some confusion between “wants” and “wishes.” Again if we use the “Aladdin” model, he has to say my second wish is... etc. but I do think Cheetah saying she wants to be an apex predator was supposed to count as a wish. Perhaps because the dreamstone is designed to create chaos and not actually to grant wishes, it had very loose policies. 

I also wondered about timezones. Because why would everyone be awake to hear Lord and Diana talk to them? Do they not e it’s this world. What do we think? Russia was awake. So was the US East Coast, Egypt, I think China?

[RyanSz 3140]

17 hours ago, Elektra Boogaloo said:

I THOUGHT that, like Genie in Aladdin, he could only do what other people wished for. But then there were times he ordered soldiers around and they just listened, so that confused me. You are correct that the rules were unclear. There also seemed to be some confusion between “wants” and “wishes.” Again if we use the “Aladdin” model, he has to say my second wish is... etc. but I do think Cheetah saying she wants to be an apex predator was supposed to count as a wish. Perhaps because the dreamstone is designed to create chaos and not actually to grant wishes, it had very loose policies. 

I also wondered about timezones. Because why would everyone be awake to hear Lord and Diana talk to them? Do they not e it’s this world. What do we think? Russia was awake. So was the US East Coast, Egypt, I think China?

Yeah for the most part the montage was all daytime but that shouldn't work given you had shots in Asia, England, the Middle East, and across America. It was the same mistake made in Hostel 2 where they were showing people involved in an auction for potential victims and every shot of a bidder was during the day but showed places like  Japan, the Midwestern US, and Italy. The shots could have worked if they had just made some of them set at night or even early morning, especially in WW where Lord was being simulcast across the world.

As for the soldiers, the ones from the kingdom were under Lord's control because when he granted the king's wish for the wall he took control of his security force which as it was said was very gray and all encompassing. As for the American soldiers, they weren't under his spell, but he had been given that uber authority by the President after granting his wish so they were following that executive order, granted they were following it pretty blindly but that's what it was.

[DirtyRandyandRafi4Life 1]

If anyone is interested this is the alcoholic cookie company that from the mini episode this work. 

thecookiebarlv.com

[Peter Destructo 70]

I just want to say that this Wonder Woman 1984 sure sounds like a slog of a movie and I'm grateful to all who have done the work to comprehensively warn me away from it.