Example; the Legend of Zelda: BotW and TotK weapon degradation system. At first I was annoyed at it, but once I stopped caring about my “favorite weapon” I really started to enjoy the system. I think it lends really well to the sandbox nature of the game and it itches that resourcefulness nature inside me.
I didn’t read the GOT books. That said, I enjoyed the show through to the last episode and wouldn’t have thought twice about any of it if the fans weren’t so angry. Idk why but I just don’t have the ability to be critical of (or follow very well) story or writing, or anything really. Maybe I’m just too good at suspending disbelief?
I thought the general broad strokes of what happened were fine (IE with
spoiler
Daenerys being the big villain and stuff
), I just thought it was rushed and done in a kind of sloppy way. I really didn’t like
spoiler
Bran becoming the king though
'cause I fucking hate that character lol.
Yeah, the broader plot points would have been totally workable if the execution hadn’t been so rushed and half-arsed.
Everybody says Dark is a better Stranger Things (around the Season 1/2 time period), but Dark is a really boring alternative to Stranger Things that replaced cool Lovecraftian shit with boring ass “it’s sooo deep when you call it a time travel paradox instead of endless meandering and plotholes”.
And to be fair, Stranger Things Season 4 (which was already in decline) also retconned all the cool Lovecraftian shit with boring ass “some random asshole has super powers for literally no reason”.
also Interstellar pisses me off because it’s a dumbass time travel bullshit movie that branded itself as hard scifi with space travel but was actually about invisible space wizards doing a Deus Ex Machina.
Minecraft is the funkopops of retrogaming.
One that always stood out to me was the ending of the Tom Cruise war or the world’s movie.
Now to be clear, this is not a good film and I don’t recommend that anyone bothers to go watch it, but a criticism I regularly saw was that the ending was bad - the aliens all just die suddenly.
That was literally the only thing that film got right from the source material. They changed literally everything else in an attempt to modernise it, it didn’t work but they at least kept the ending and that’s the bit people didn’t like.
Yeah. It’s a movie about surviving. Not winning. And the opening sets up the end.
In the last season of The Crown, Princess Diana’s “ghost” makes an apperence to Charles and the Queen. People were super upset, saying that it’s offensive to speak for her in that capacity.
That show is not fantastical, and they have never shown “ghosts.” I took it as those characters having a mental conversation with her, like, technically talking to themselves, as part of their grieving process, and not that the actual spirit of Diana came from the afterlife to tell Charles it’s cool.
Memory or not, they’re putting words in the mouth of a deceased woman to make a survivor feel less guilty
I guess, but wouldn’t that complaint apply to the whole show? I took the scene(s) as them being so far removed from Diana that they couldn’t even conjure her memory properly. Her kids didn’t have scenes like that, and I can’t imagine her “ghost” not seeing them. I think it’s because they didn’t feel guilty, at least not like those two, so they didn’t have manufacture an apology, they had nothing to apologize for.
I’m also reading way, way, too much into it.
The movie Tomorrowland. I don’t understand why anyone could not like it. Maybe because I watched it in German, but I love this movie. It has character, it has character arcs and development, it has fun gadgets and delivers more than once a great message, that’s motivating and gives you something to think about. It has an amazing fantasy world and I enjoy the dialogues too.
Sure they could’ve shown more of the high tech society and some lines are a bit cheesy, but I never saw the audience to be 18+ and more on being also entertaining to kids.
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People have a boner for Simpsons seasons 3-8, the Conan years.
The Simpsons were excellent pretty much through season 12, much of seasons 13 and 14 are still legit.
I don’t disagree that most of the best episodes are in that era… But Trilogy Of Errors is forever my favorite Simpsons episode, and that’s S12E18. (Linguo… Dead??? “linguo IS dead.”)
I woukd go as far as to say that seasons 9 - 13 all contain at least one ‘top 30 of all time’ episode.
The fall off was not swift with Conan’s departure.
The newest season has a nicer animation style I’ve noticed. It feels almost season 8ish, and has none of that digital gloss that pervaded in the last ten seasons. I’m genuinely interested to see if they stick with the classic almost hand-drawn style.
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Between season 18 and 19 was when the movie came out it IMDb’s dates are correct.
Rewatched the Golden Years of the Simpsons recently and I think it’s crazy that season 2 isn’t included in that era. Season 2 Simpsons is fantastic.
Omg I love that episode too. I quote that grammar robot so the time “shuddapa yer face” “shut up your face”
I also am a software developer and use 123 fake street for testing forms all the time.
I’m surprised at how late it was, would have assumed it was pre double digits
I thought he was a party robot 🤖
The truth is there are SO MANY great episodes of The Simpsons. Even the current seasons have a lot to offer.
I also think that the earlier seasons get an advantage because they’re the episodes we’ve all seen dozens of times.
Obviously I won’t deny that the earlier seasons have 10/10 episodes. Maybe there are fewer 10/10 as you go along, but even a “bad” episode will have some great jokes in it.
In fact the “I’m a sign, not a cop” meme/macro, that’s a season 20 episode.
Yeah I think seasons 4-12 are the kind of ‘safe’ era, but you can go a few seasons either way and still get some bangers, it’s just a little more patchy.
Almost every case of movie purists. The Hobbit trilogy was great. The new Star Wars trilogy was great. The old ones are great too.
I have similar issues with music and video games. I almost always love the most hated albums or games in a series based on the loudest commentary online. I also find the most popular entry to be kind of meh. I think average people have boring taste or just follow a crowd or something.
I’m right there with you on Eps 7 and 9 of Star Wars. TFA was loads of fun, and goofy though some of it was, I still loved TRoS.
Hated TLJ though, for what it’s worth :-)
Whenever certain keys words are thrown around to criticize something, you bet it’s actually not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. I went through the entirety of The Last Us Part II and she-hulk just because of the hate, and boy was the hate overblown.
Felt the same about Ms Marvel, you’d think it was some crime against humanity. There were a couple cheesy moments (and I love cheese) for sure but I enjoyed it.
Both She-Hulk and Ms Marvel had flaws as TV shows. On account of being TV shows. The over focus on those flaws was driven by people who wanted to hate them for not being about white American men.
some people think harry potter is actually well written, they probably think it, because they read it as a kid and it was one of their first books, but the writing is quite plump and the storytelling mid at best imo
It depends on the book, tbh. I’ve read them all as an adult and was surprised how the quality varied
A big complaint I saw about the live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation for Netflix was that the acting was too cartoony/over-the-top.
Personally, I thought the acting was spot-on for what they were trying to accomplish. It was meant to be a live-action anime, so it was never intended to be 100% tethered to reality to begin with. The characters are meant to be characters, and I thought they did a great job with it. Spike, Faye, and Jet were all perfectly-cast, IMO, and they all felt like their original characters felt from the animated series. There are so many times where you can just close your eyes and listen to them talk to each other, and it feels exactly like it felt watching the anime on Adult Swim back in the early 2000s as a kid.
I honestly loved the live-action adaptation and thought it was amazing. I’m still immensely disappointed that the reception was so poor that Netflix decided to cancel it halfway through the story. There are so many characters I wanted to see that didn’t appear until later in the original series. I would’ve loved to see a live-action Toys In The Attic or Heavy Metal Queen.
I really liked it too, and was deeply disappointed that it was cancelled prematurely.
TBH, it seems like Netflix cancels everything that I really end up enjoying, and dragging out shows that should have been a limited series (e.g., Stranger Things).
I wholeheartedly agree. I also loved the live action and I usually hate live action. It definitely isn’t because of nostalgia.
Yea, if anything my main compliant about the show was that they took away too much levity.
Cowboy Bebop had some really stark messages about family, relationships, and the impermanence of time - and it delivers that through characters that live life fully in the moment and run from their fate. In the live action version the characters were too willing to fall into morose reflection and focused too much on their eventual fate - for me the seriousness of the show really undercut how serious the underlying message was.
I heard a lot of complaints about the twins in borderlands 3.They’re shallow, they’re obnoxious, they remind you of wanna be tiktok influencers, on and on.
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Guys, Handsome Jack was bottled lightning. He was a masterpiece of good writing, good design, well placed improv, and just plain dumb luck. They were never going to pull that off again. You’d need to open a real vault to find that level of treasure.
The Calypso’s are exactly what they say on the tin. They’re all those obnoxious, unfunny things I mentioned because sometimes villains aren’t well thought out, complex characters. I fucking love shooting Troy in his smug hot topic weeb face. I don’t need to consider the complexity of a man driven to an extreme or the show erosion of one’s moral character in pursuit of power, they were two shitty kids on an ego trip with no regard for the damage they did. It is plain, and simple, and easy.
Are there problems with the rest if the story? Absolutely. Are there some awful plot-holes? Oh my fuck, yes. But are the Calypsos the thing that ruined the game? Fuck no, they’re fine and perfectly shootable as a bad-guy needs to be.
Just gonna chime in to say I bought Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands cause it’s on sale right now for like $12 on steam (the season pass is only $5 too) and MY GOD IS IT AN ABSOLUTE BLAST TO PLAY!
I’m just having straight up fun with this game, and I’m already wishing there was a sequel coming out tomorrow so I could dive right in when I finish this one. The bright vibrant world is fun to explore, the enemies are entertaining to fight with their quips and banter, the new mechanics (spells instead of grenades, new dedicated melee weapons and inventory slot, enchanted rings/amulets/armor to change that can all act as individual class mods to switch up your play style a bit) feel right at home in the fantasy setting.
I’ve heard about the lack of endgame and DLC stories, but I don’t care. I’m just having fun with my bowguns and magic missile launchers.
Forspoken is low key incredible and like, exactly one sound bite sealed it’s fate, once it became a meme, people already made up their mind about it.
It was one of the best games I played last year and I found the story to be compelling and the gameplay fresh.
I think it’ll be regarded as a hidden gem in the future unironically.
It also didn’t help that it was one of the first $70 games when the norm was $60.
Everyone is on fire in this thread. Every comment legitimately interesting and well thought out. Upvotes abound. (Apologies for the meta)
I really like the big bang theory. I know online everyone hates it but I enjoyed the characters and the story lines. I generally like all of the actors who are in it. It just a silly sitcom. It’s comforting.
I think the big issue people have is that it made nerdy things more mainstream but they already were mainstream. or maybe they felt like it was mocking them in some way but I don’t think that is the case.
I liked it. I’m not going to pretend it was the best TV media ever or anything like that, it was just a bit of harmless fun.
You’d think all the haters were forced to watch it against their will. We live in an age where you can watch anything you want whenever you want. I think some people just like a good moan.
I hated it, but good for you for sticking to your opinion
I once read a comment on the old site about how Skyrim’s combat is like mashing WWE action figures together.
I completely agree but I don’t think that’s a weakness at all. Maybe when it released, the game was seen as a grand RPG by more casual people and as a watered down Oblivion by older ES players.
But I think by looking at it not through the lens of a grand RPG, but as a familiar, comforting brain-off experience, it really shines. It really gave us the most it could for how low effort it is to play, and I mean that in a good way.
I remember getting recommended a YouTube video (by the algorithm) called something like “why do we still like Skyrim” and I thought the video was very disappointing. And I think the video’s thesis was about the same as mine in this comment. I wanted it to be something like this:
I associate the game with a long tradition of RPGs that I wasn’t around for, as one of the last great games we got before the priorities of the industry shifted again. The graphics didn’t need to be perfect, the comically small number of VAs didn’t need AI bullshit, the straightforward story lines don’t need to be groundbreaking. The music and atmosphere though are immaculate. It’s a game with a ton of flaws, even some jank that is endearing in hindsight. It just works!
Throw on the modding aspect and you have a very “pure” PC gaming experience. This is exactly what I want from a game, something that’s good enough to just be fun to run around aimlessly in, without feeling like I need a podcast to play in the background, that I can just lose hours in.
I’m playing a much higher effort game now. Workers and Resources Soviet Republic makes the Cities Skylines 2 look like drawing stick figure houses. WRSR is absurdly complex and is super engrossing when you’re in it, if you’re wired to enjoy these types of games. However, I need to be mentally ready to jump in.
With Skyrim I just launched it when I was bored, and I was less bored after.
I insist: Skyrim’s simplicity is what made it work.
and as a watered down Oblivion by older ES players.
Uh… What?
A lot of complaints around release were that the game wasn’t as complex as Oblivion or Morrowind, to the point that it was a disappointment for more hardcore players.
Idk man. I was just living in my first apartment, had played both Oblivion and Morrowwind, and I don’t ever recall hearing anything like that.
Everyone I knew who was in to the games was fkin psyched over it. The mechanics were cool even if the world might’ve felt smaller to some.
It was definitely a thing some people felt. There are several reasons some people like one TES game over another, and while visual styles and the world in general are large parts of it, the streamlined feel is a component for many that’s divisive. Not just changed made to systems, but how arcane a previous version felt is absolutely a positive to some people. They felt the games hit a sweet spot and later game(s) went too far.
Were you there?
Do you know what Oblivion didn’t have, for instance?
Dual Wielding.
Yeah, I was there. I’m 44. I loved all three games and played them on release (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim.) I don’t want to oversell it. It was game of the year almost everywhere. Famitsu even gave it a 40/40. Maybe their first Western game reviewed as such? I remember that being a big deal. It was very well loved and very popular. A co-worker I knew who mostly only played Madden was sheepishly admitting he not only was paying it, but really loving going around picking plants for recipes.
But the skill system caught a lot of guff, which I recall being an issue some people had. I definitely remember the skill system being a thing that made a lot of people angry.
A lot of the other things were complaints you’ll find in other TES games, but people think a new game should’ve changed these things. For instance, there was the normal physics issues we get in a 3D TES game, which being the third game in a row, was adding up for some people. Then cities (and some buildings in cities) require loading was hated by some people who considered it old fashioned. Especially once a mod came out that got rid of that for cities. Also, the popularity of mods was instant. Not just people trying to add content, but initially a lot of that was people replacing models, and really talking shit on their modeling and textures.
Yeah, it got a lot of shit. But those people were playing it too. These are fellow gamers we’re talking about. People absolutely complain.
But the skill system caught a lot of guff, which I recall being an issue some people had. I definitely remember the skill system being a thing that made a lot of people angry.
You’re a decade or so older than me, and I think that affects our experiences of how it was received.
Personally I wasn’t on any online forums (at least ones which discussed TES) back then. I only had friends of my own age, people who had been tweeners/teeners when Morrowind came out and older teenagers when Oblivion came out.
I genuinely don’t remember any gripes about the game in comparison to older TES. Well, except that I really loved how open-ended the crafting was in Morrowind. You could do seriously OP items if you had the skill and gold.
Popularity of mods was instant
This is also a difference between us, as I played it on PS3 back then, so didn’t have mods. Neither did my friends.
I was much more critical of the games I played when I was 30 compared to when I was 20. So perhaps that’s a bit of the explanation? I’m not saying none of your complaints are true, they’re probably all true from a certain pov. I just didn’t experience any of them myself, and seemingly neither did my TES playing friends, and we weren’t into reading online reviews or anything.
