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yeonchi · 7 months ago

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Warriors Orochi: The Recollective Redux Part 1: Introduction and Features

Introduction

In 2015, I created Warriors Orochi: The Recollective (named after the intended localised name of Musou Orochi Z) as a way of sharing my take on a combined remaster of the first two Warriors Orochi games using the characters from Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends (and Xun Yu from Empires) and Samurai Warriors 4-II. Over the next 8 years to 2023, Warriors Orochi 4 came out (to low expectations) and I started playing basically every Warriors game I could get on the gaming PC I built.

While looking back on this series, I realised that I forgot a few characters in some places and I also noticed that some maps I had were duplicated and that it didn’t make sense to essentially have four less stages for Jin with the split route design I had back in 2015. In short, it was time for me to do a refresh of this series and reflect on some of the decisions I made for it in light of Warriors Orochi 4’s release.

The spirit of this project remains – I wanted to give some characters more screentime compared to the original games and I wanted to make the character unlock conditions for some characters easier (most notably the unlock condition for Wu’s Chapter 8-X to unlock Lu Bu).

Without further ado, please enjoy my 2023 remake of Warriors Orochi: The Recollective. Posts will be released every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Abilities/Items/Treasures will not be detailed in this series.

Changes from the original series

I realised that it was easier to leave the maps from the original games instead of adapting them to the maps from newer games. As such, all original stages from Musou Orochi Z retain their original designs from Dynasty Warriors 5, Samurai Warriors 2 and their Xtreme Legends expansions.

Some new stages from the newer Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games, namely those that haven’t been featured in Warriors Orochi 3 or 4, are used for the original stages in this game.

The Dream Mode adaptation stages from the Orochi and Wei stories (for Sanzang, Benkei, Orochi’s backstory and Orochi X) along with the side stories in the Orochi Story Mode have been removed.

The first four stages of Jin’s upper and lower routes (which have been renamed the Sima Yi and Sima Zhao routes) have been unmerged and the stages divided into either one of the two routes.

Both the Orochi and Jin stories have been reorganised and new stages have been written to fill in the gaps.

Originally, I neglected to feature Jia Xu, Wang Yuanji, Wang Yi and Yu Jin in the A stories and Naomasa Ii and Guo Jia in the B stories. As such, the officers appearing in each battle have been balanced (to the best of my ability) so as to allow all playable officers to appear as allies or enemies at least once.

Side stages where more than one character can be unlocked have been changed with the extra characters being moved to the A stories for Jin.

The unlock stages for Dong Zhuo, Keiji Maeda and Masamune Date have been changed so that Koshōshō‎‎, Lu Lingqi and Gracia are unlocked instead. This is to retain the former three officers’ statuses as staunch officers of the Orochi Army.

Game features

All Story Mode and Dream Mode stages from Musou Orochi Z are adapted into this game, with certain generic officers upgraded to playable officers where applicable.

8 original stages have been added to the Orochi story to bring it in line with the other stories. Those stages will also cover how Himiko, Kiyomori Taira and Sun Wukong joined the Orochi Army.

Two original stories have been created for the Jin kingdom, following Sima Yi and Sima Zhao respectively. This is to allow room for newer characters to be featured (where they wouldn’t fit in the other stories).

Shennong, Diamondback and Hundun are added as bonus characters from Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate with their own scenarios in Dream Mode (like Sanzang and Benkei).

An additional 40 stages have been added to Dream Mode to accommodate the newer characters (but I won’t be detailing them in this series).

Some unlock conditions for the characters in the Warriors Orochi side story battles have been made easier.

Features in battle

Summoning horses is similar to that of Dynasty Warriors 8: press the up/down button to call your horse and hold the button to automatically mount it.

Dynasty Warriors characters have two EX attacks. All characters use their weapons from DW8XL (except for Xun Yu whose weapon is from DW8E).

Samurai Warriors characters have the Hyper Attack Moveset (Shinsoku Action). Mighty Strikes (Tate) are unfortunately removed, but they regain the ability to perform a Dash Attack (adapted from the Shadow Dodge follow-on).

Musou attacks:

Dynasty Warriors characters use a ground Musou Attack that takes up a portion of the Musou gauge. The Rage Musou is used as the True Musou Attack (that is, when your health is at red or when you have a weapon with the skill Verity).

Samurai Warriors characters use up the full Musou gauge. They will have the finisher when they use their normal Musou attack. In the True Musou Attack, the Ultimate (Kaiden/Frenzy) Musou is used following the normal Musou attack in the style of Samurai Warriors 3/Warriors Orochi 3.

Character types and combat systems are the same as in Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, save for the True Triple Attack, True Musou Burst and changing battle styles (all 3 characters on the battlefield). Musou Chains (WOZ)/Musou Switch Combos (WO4) are not used.

When the character’s life is in the red or if you have a weapon with the skill Teamwork, a Triple Attack can be used like in Warriors Orochi 2.

New Characters

All older characters will follow their configurations as per Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, including Special Attacks and Aerial Special Attacks (Type Actions). However, it should be noted that some Dynasty Warriors characters have changed weapons in either DW7E or DW8. After testing their Special Moves, I can see that most of their Special Moves can be retained, however they can be changed if they are too hard to adapt to their new weapon (ie. Cao Ren and Huang Gai, aerial only for the latter). Newer characters debuting in newer games will require original Special Attacks and Aerial Special Attacks to be created.

Below are lists of predicted character types for the newer characters (and predicted Musou Attacks for the Dynasty Warriors characters). Since Warriors Orochi 4 has come out, I’m going to see how many of these I got right.

New Power Characters

Cao Ren (uses normal Musou, Charging Bull 廬山)

Li Dian (uses R1 Musou, Royal Lightning 雷公)

Han Dang (uses normal Musou, Hostile Action 怒気開放)

Guan Yinping (uses R1 Musou, Sparring Practice 組手)

Xiahou Ba (uses R1 Musou, Castle Crusher 崩城轟雷撃)

Kagekatsu Uesugi

Toyohisa Shimazu

Reflection:

In regards to Musous for DW characters, I matched Li Dian and Han Dang; Guan Yinping uses her normal Musou, Military Training 演武.

When I originally wrote this series, I was unaware that Xiahou Ba had changed weapons and Musous in DW7 Empires. Although he maintains the same character type between WO3 and WO4, he actually uses his normal Musou, Lightning Spear 雷貫槍 in WO4. The same goes for Cao Ren as well; he used his R1 Musou, Cascading Falls 瀑布 in WO3.

In regards to character types, I matched Li Dian, Han Dang, Kagekatsu Uesugi and Toyohisa Shimazu. Guan Yinping and Kojūrō Katakura are Speed type characters in WO4.

New Technique Characters

Lu Su (uses normal Musou, Boulder Wave 岩隆波)

Zhang Bao (uses normal Musou, Rapid Thrust 連刃千撃)

Fa Zheng (uses R1 Musou, Binder 始伏陣)

Takatora Tōdō

Nobuyuki Sanada

Lady Hayakawa

Reflection:

In regards to Musous for DW characters, I matched Zhang Bao and Fa Zheng; Lu Su uses his R1 Musou, Mountain Strike 大山隆落衝.

In regards to character types, I matched Lu Su, Fa Zheng and Lady Hayakawa. Zhang Bao is a Power Type, while Takatora Tōdō and Nobuyuki Sanada are Speed Types in WO4.

New Speed Characters

Yue Jin (uses R1 Musou, Flurried Strike 震身連斬)

Xun Yu (uses R1 Musou, Divine Emperor Formation 天煌翔覇陣)

Zhu Ran (uses normal Musou, Conflagration Arrow 烈火椋穿弾)

Guan Xing (uses normal Musou, Skyslider 天空滑閃)

Jia Chong (uses R1 Musou, Darkness Blade - Destruction 闇刃・滅)

Zhang Chunhua (uses normal Musou, Crazed Web 狂沸糸)

Chen Gong (uses R1 Musou, Puppeteer - Submission 召兵劇・伏)

Naotora Ii

Yoshitsugu Ōtani

Koshōshō

Reflection:

In regards to Musous for DW characters, I matched Yue Jin, Zhu Ran, Guan Xing, Jia Chong and Zhang Chunhua; Xun Yu uses his normal Musou, Comet Formation (流煌陣) with the pillars activated through his C1, while Chen Gong uses his normal Musou, Puppeteer – Horizontal (召兵劇・横).

In regards to character types, I matched all of the DW characters except Guan Xing and Zhang Chunhua; said characters alongside the SW characters are all Technique types.

New Wonder Characters

Yu Jin (uses normal Musou, Cauterisation 灼絶)

Wen Yang (uses R1 Musou, Instant Flash 奥義・逆鱗閃)

Lu Lingqi (uses R1 Musou, Zero Point 零鋒覇)

Munenori Yagyū

Hisahide Matsunaga

Naomasa Ii

Reflection:

In regards to Musous for DW characters, I did not match any of them; Yu Jin uses his R1 Musou, Hell Blade 獄刃, Wen Yang uses his normal Musou, Raging Billows 八十一鱗, and Lu Lingqi uses her normal Musou, Angel Blade 天翔刃.

In regards to character types, the Wonder type is removed and incorporated into the Technique type in WO4. If we take this assumption into this series, only Munenori Yagyū, being a Technique type, would have matched my prediction. With the exception of Naomasa Ii who is a Speed type character, other listed characters are Power types in WO4.

Unlock conditions for other characters:

Orochi/Da Ji (Orochi story): Clear Chapter 8 for the Shu, Wei, Wu and SW stories.

Zuo Ci: Clear Chapter 8 for the Shu, Wei, Wu and SW stories.

Dodomeki: Obtain 10 treasures.

Gyūki: Obtain 20 treasures.

Sanzang: Clear Chapter 16 for Wei.

Benkei: Clear Chapter 16 for Wu.

Orochi Z: Clear Chapter 16 for all stories.

Shennong: Clear Chapter 16 for SW.

Diamondback: Obtain 25 treasures.

Hundun: Unlock all other characters.

#dynasty warriors #samurai warriors #warriors orochi #warriors orochi z #warriors orochi: the recollective redux

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c0rpsedemon · 2 years ago

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as a big figure collector myself i'd love to hear your hot takes

oo okay i'm going to ramble abt freeing b-styles for a bit bc it's what mfc is imploding itself over this week so they're the first thing i could think of. i think freeing's b-style line Might be the most mismanaged figure line within recent history.

the thing abt b-styles is that they have the potential to be so so so good sometimes. the siren song of "huge figure of my fave" is real and common, and it's p hard to fuck up enough to make a playboy bunnysuit look bad. but not even freeing knows what the b-style line is even meant to be, it's not their 1/4 line bc of the 10 count and i'm-being-harrassed-by-the-sexiest-man-of-the-year 1/8 scale bunnies (put a pin in those two), and it's not their bunnysuit line bc of the mikus, fate characters, touhou girls etc. which are all part of the line and yet in their canon outfits. additionally, freeing's paint jobs and sculpts have notoriously been lacking. i think gil's b-style is a good example of what i mean by this, partially bc i think it's more than safe to assume you're very familiar w him, but also bc he's the fig that made me start to pick up on b-style's common issues. i like him a lot and i want to love him but his pose looks more like that of a cosplayer replicating his iconic pose than one he's making naturally, and his face is... not the worst gil face i've seen but also farrr from the best. his shading, especially on his hair, is near-nonexistent in photos and his armor is more piss yellow than gold. and he's an average b-style quality-wise, not one of the particularly bad ones, like the marin mydressupdarling one that mfc is currently flipping its shit abt, or the melody oc w the pink hair and green lingere. b-style is prone to (and getting increasingly comfortable with) releasing figures w bad qc, minimal shading, and merely 'ok' sculpts for ~30,000 jpy (with increasing prices).

additionally, i think their rerelease policy is somewhat predatory. it used to be a widely agreed aspect of figure collecting that bare-leg bunnies are kinda really ugly but w the kirigiri danganronpa bare-leg going up for preorder, the bare-leg activists have been coming out of the woodwork under the impression that they're an oppressed group bc of their... anime figure preferences. subjective taste regarding bare-legs aside, there's no claiming that a bare-leg release is the same as a rerelease, especially when the tights being real fabric is part of the original's selling point. the few remakes that actually change something besides the tights, ie. recolors or like. tiger taiga, are always something fans want more than the og and always announced not until after people who would have otherwise skipped out on the plain version had already paid for it. it's all deliberate. if freeing doesn't do straightforward rereleases, then their aftermarkets continue to skyrocket, and they can charge more no matter how subpar their figures can be bc people have gotten used to paying insane prices for b-style bunnies.

and then there's the actual designs of the bunnysuits themselves. don't get me wrong here, freeing has done a great job on some of its bunnies. madoka and homura come to mind as some of its best original bunny designs, and they've done a great job adapting some canon bunny designs, like miku and haruhi's, percival's even came out so nice that i'm this close to playing eiyuu senki just to justify hunting her down. and i'm not even completely opposed to plain bunny designs, i adore black rock shooter's b-style and there are a lot of complaints to be had with hers if you're looking for them (she's literally had canon bunnysuits which were more visually interesting + almost all brs figures are variants of THE gsc 1/8 scale just w slight differences and this one is no exception + the combination of the two make it downright lazy). but most freeing bunnies tend to fall less into the category of 'how would this character wear a bunny suit' and more 'we put this character in a bunnysuit!' the love is war girls come to mind as an example, but there's also that one girl who always wears an american flag bikini top in her show, and who got a bikini top on her bunny but it was just plain blue, or komi, famous anime girl from a show i've never watched, who every1 briefly lost their shit over bc (allegedly) she's wayyy too shy to wear something like that and also should've been a cat and although i don't know who tf she is, i'm inclined to agree w them. you could remove the head of almost every b-style bunny and without fail it'd be hard to guess who's who. which is where some of the criticisms regarding 'hey why are there so many underage characters being made' come in, and while i think that it should be judged on a case by case basis (esp considering how bunnysuits seem to have a slightly different cultural connotation in japan vs the west), a lot of the time when underage girls' heads are thrown on the bunnysuit-clad body of what could have easily been any other adult, and when the bunnysuit takes priority over the character, i can really get where they're coming from. i want to praise bicute bunnies as being better than b-styles in regards to character > bunnysuit but tbh i think they sort of moe-blobify every1 they make but so far it's only been miku, sonico and re:zero girls so. it remains to be seen.

and this is the point where i have to cycle back to the 10 count and i'm-being-harrassed-by-the-sexiest-man-of-the-year bunnies and the fact that freeing is weird abt the concept of anyone amab being viewed as attractive, esp in a bunnysuit. i feel like bunnymen have to be one of the most highly sought-after figures by the rapidly expanding female collector-base (esp those on tiktok and youtube) and yet there are.... 4 b-styles by freeing, and all 4 are 1/8 scales instead of 1/4s like the rest of the line. more specifically, they're the only figures in the line which are less than 1/4 scale, save for one singular 1/6 that wasn't Just produced by freeing (it has 2 manufacturers listed) and seems to be a much more complicated case than any of the others so i'm just going to ignore it as the exception that proves the rule. it's almost as if ppl who are attracted to men are being de-prioritized in the eyes of freeing as lesser consumers. it's not even justifiable to say something along the lines of "oh. well clearly they were taking a risk and thus decided to go with the most popular scale" bc 1/8s are... not that. 1/7s have ruled the figure world for a while (and for good reason) but that's not what male figures would have you believe, as 1/8s are the most common scale. i just think that it says a lot for the figure line which has a gimmick of making figures that are huge going for the literal most common scale (which is also tiny) the second it comes time to make a man is. hm. freeing does have an amab nonbinary* (*i've never watched the show but the wiki uses they/them) 1/4 scale bunny coming up of rimuru from the fucking. slime isekai. but. 1. they look more like a girl in the b-style than they do in p much any other figure of them, and 2. with the extreme popularity of certain similar characters, why is this only happening now? and it's at this point where i have to turn to a question which has been bugging me since i started writing this: why is there no bridget b-style? i honest to god think that, out of the wave of bridget announcements that swept through last wonfest, freeing b-style has to be the only major figure line that didn't announce a bridget. which could mean nothing. but also there's no b-style of felix from re:zero, who actually didn't get any mass-produced figures overall so i guess she wasn't that popular in japan, poor girl, and despite the fact that my introduction to figure customization was through b-styles being made of this character, and i've never seen a b-style custom that Wasn't of this character (beyond putting tights on a bareleg or w/e), and this character notably having an alternate bunny-themed outfit, there's still no b-style astolfo. and yeah. could mean nothing. but also if it does mean nothing that's a massive loss of revenue on freeing's part. but it generally rubs me the wrong way to think abt how the only """male""" (which i say bc figure collectors can be inc transphobic at times and i doubt there's that big a gap between customer and manufacturer in this regard considering... everything) figure who isn't openly presenting masculinely allowed to be in the 1/4 scale b-style line is uhm. technically a slime. and thus isn't polluting the good pure bunnies w the presence of a penis.

also this is a nitpick but the fate b-styles are generally inconsistent and it makes me mad. gil artoria^2 in their normal outfits i get bc they're super popular but also it'd make even more sense to have mash there. a few canon fgo bunnies (scáthach artoria ruler koyanskaya) makes sense but i'll still be upset abt no saberstolfo and there's an infinitely larger audience for her than koyanskaya. and then there's chloe and illya from prillya and all i can think of is who wanted this. i mean i know who but they're proof that type-moon aren't stopping freeing from putting their characters in bunnysuits even when they don't wear them in any official sources so like. where are the f/sn heroines. why aren't there more fgo bunnies. where's nero. freeing's character decisions upset me a lot of the time.

also the marin mydressupdarling bunny is lazy and looks bad and they should be ashamed of themselves for that one.

#srry this took so long i ran out of time while working on answering it on the day it was sent and then lost all of #yesterday and most of today to headaches #n e ways. b-styles. THE love-hate relationship of all time #romeo.txt #number1mongrel

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fanboys-anonymous · 11 months ago

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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pocketbelt · 1 year ago

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Neon Genesis Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo

(3.33 is just the BD home release edit/version, I need to find a source for movie posters and shit for these)

It's difficult to talk about this one in this context because it's one of those things you just need to go into first. It's fucking excellent, I'll say that easily, from start to finish it's a fucking ride, but it's also third in a set of four movies that are very tightly bound and it is distinctly aware of and is using that fact.

It's not even purely a "NO SPOILERS YOU NEED TO GO IN BLIND" thing, though I'd say that's ideal, it's that a lot of what made this work for me is predicated on the two that came before, 2.0 especially. You really do need to watch these as a set.

I'm going to put spoiler/specific detail shit under the Read More, just to have them down somewhere, but suffice to say I'm dying for the cinema release of the fourth movie (which I have found out is coming over a year after the US release because The PAL Delay never truly left)

Dying to see 3.0+1.0 now.

First off, each of these mimics the original show's "Next Time on Evangelion" episode previews at the end after the credits, and like most of the elements these have drawn from the original it uses it very cheekily and cleverly. Which is to say, 2.0's Next Time drops some brand new facts (there being an 8th Eva Unit, when only up to 6 had been mentioned) in and around detailing the events prior to the original show's end/the End of Evangelion's opening events (NERV being sieged, personnel shot or arrested, the dawning of Third Impact). This was preceded by a post-credits scene of Kaworu in Eva Unit 06 beaning a lance through 01's head seemingly to interrupt/prevent Third Impact from taking off.

So 3.0 opening in what is very explicitly, from visual alone, a post-Third Impact world with Asuka and Mari in their Eva Units retrieving a sealed Unit 01 with Shinji inside in a very flashy action sequence against a brand new Angel is an eye-opener of a punch. It's this fascinating thing where 1.0 and especially 2.0 deviate in clear ways that are rather important and obviously meaningful, and thus not even showing a changed or redone version of End of Eva's events suggest it happened more or less exactly as it did before, excepting what was said (in 2.0's Next TIme) about the actions of Unit 08 (Mari's Eva). This is reinforced by Asuka wearing an eye-patch over the eye the Lance of Longinus pierces in EoE, and Unit 02 having a disabled eye to match (purposefully so for aesthetic reasons, I love Asuka and her dedication to keeping an aesthetic): even if Asuka isn't the same Asuka as she was in the original (with her different surname and all), in the end it still broadly happened the same way.

It's all delivered so cleanly through character designs and the Third Impact visuals and starting where it does, it's top tier stuff.

That's basically what I mean when I said above that talking about this one "in this context" was tricky, because basically I just want to gush about shit like that with it. How the entire lengthy battle sequences against the Angels following Shinji's retrieval is a super-long sequence of establishing how far man has come, re-emerging from Third Impact and now able to step to Angels through more than just Evas, and more importantly underlining just how much everyone has changed with the passage of time and why...but Shinji hasn't, as the time between the end of 2.0 and now just passed basically instantly. We didn't get to see what happened, and neither did he, and the unmooring effect is well done.

I have a pretty good idea of where this is all going in a thematic sense (it's about change, in all the ways one can - and should - change, from the simple and surface things to the more personal) but for the actual "where is the story going" i've no idea. 3.0 is completely and entirely new, the remake directive has been thrown off and it's going to new territory. The very title of the fourth, "3.0+1.0", is rife with meaning, though I don't know that I'm thinking of the same meanings.

I can't imagine waiting for these as they came out, though at the same time I kinda wish I did. The waiting must have been a hell of a thing. I'm fucking dying for 3.0+1.0 now.

#pocket-media-tag

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hervygervy · 1 year ago

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I wasn’t pinged for this, but I’d like to join since I haven’t made a big post in a while (sorry, I’m so busy).

It’s also all Nintendo games. Sorry.

1. Kid Icarus Uprising. First played it when I was 12 years old, a good three years after its original release. People who’ve known me since middle or high school probably associate me with this game. I wish I had a more interesting favorite game of all time so I get better reactions when I tell people, but it’s special to me so I think that’s all that matters when it comes to determining a favorite. It’s at the top of the list because it was arguably the most influential for me for teaching me a very key part of my personality: I am a media-obsessed lunatic with a tendency to obsess and fixate.

2. Pokémon X. First played it when I was around 10 or 11, less than a year after it released. It was my first Pokémon game. I was obsessed! I played this game after Fossil Fighters, so X truly cemented the monster collecting RPG as my favorite genre of game. This also got me into watching YouTube, actually. I used to voraciously watch playthroughs and battle videos, as well as clickbait videos on where to find legendary Pokémon that aren’t in the game, like Lugia and Ho-oh.

3. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Probably the first game I can remember playing on a neighbor’s Wii. I was five, I think. I remember being obsessed with the wolf form and running around in the hidden village with all the cats. I replayed it when I was 13 when the remake came out on Wii U. I think this was when I thought of myself as really into gaming. It introduced me to the rest of the Zelda franchise, which was a happy thing I could look forward to throughout my depressive teen years.

4. Super Smash Bros for Wii U. I was 11 when I played it. It introduced me to all the Nintendo franchises I now know and love. I’d like to think it really made me a Nintendo fan. Funny thing is I was originally iffy on the game at first until I watched that Smash direct that revealed some of the Pokéball summons, and saw Mario holding a Pokéball. Kid me thought that was the coolest thing of all time.

5. Super Paper Mario. Also one of the earliest games I could recall playing, around age 5, also on our neighbor’s Wii. My brother and I later got a Wii of our own and our own copy of the game. Can’t remember how old I was, maybe I was 7 or 8? Anyway, my brother and I played it together, and we loved it. I know it’s a mixed game, but it’s one of the few things I have nostalgia for. It’s a wild Mario anime fan fiction game, like how surreal. It stirred my imagination as a kid and I made cringey isekai fan comics of it. I’d like to think I got my sense of humor from this game.

Some honorable mentions might be Mario vs Donkey Kong Mini Land Mayhem, Fossil Fighters, and Minecraft.

Minecraft, DDLC, Yandere Sim, FNAF, and Animal Jam 🫡

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canmom · 3 years ago

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2ku Twosday 2×2×2×2×2×2 + 2 + 2 +1: Cube

Ah, would that we could have a more numerically auspicious number this Twosday 22/02/2022! The twosiest day for the next two hundred years! By which point, who knows, the Gregorian calendar may no longer be in use.

To celebrate the number two, I had the idea of watching a series of cult Canadian horror films all themed around a very twosy shape, the cube. After all, what is a cube but the result of repeated doubling?

Like I said, very twosy shape.

So yeah, we’re gonna watch the movie Cube (1997)! And its sequel Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) and prequel Cube Zero (2007). For ‘Toku Tuesday’ purity, it would be nice if I could show the Japanese remake of the first movie that came out last year, but it’s not on nyaa, presumably bc it hasn’t seen the BD release yet. Maybe another day.

So what’s Cube about? It’s about people dying in a big cube full of lethal traps! That’s basically it! It’s a kind of guro-y psychological horror thing I guess.

youtube

Why is there a big death cube? This question is pointedly not answered, though characters speculate. The cube was built by some kind of mysterious bureaucracy, and one of the prisoners helped design it; Wikipedia terms the film’s ‘Kafkaesque’ tone one of the major reasons for its cult following.

The writer and director of the first film, Vincenzo Natali, developed the idea from the 1961 Twilight Zone episode Five Characters in Search of an Exit, which also imagines five characters of diverse origins thrown together in a confined space. To gain funding, he shot a short film Elevated that takes place entirely in a... lift (¬¬), selling the money men on the idea of a film taking place in confined spaces.

The Cube itself was designed by, who else, a mathematician:

The fictional Cube device in the film was conceived by mathematician David W. Pravica, who also served as the film's math consultant.[19] It consists of an outer cubical shell (the sarcophagus) and the inner cube. Each side of the outer shell is 434 feet (132 m) long. The inner cube consists of 263 = 17,576 cubical rooms (minus an unknown number of rooms to allow for movement, as shown in the film), each having a side length of 15.5 feet (4.7 m). There is a space of 15.5 feet (4.7 m) between the inner cube and the outer shell. Each room is labelled with three identification numbers, for example, 517 478 565. These numbers encode the starting coordinates of the room and the X, Y, and Z coordinates are the sums of the digits of the first, second, and third number, respectively. The numbers also determine the movement of the room - the subsequent positions are obtained by cyclically subtracting the digits from one another, and the resulting numbers are then successively added to the starting numbers.[20]

To shoot this, they built a single cube-shaped room, whose colour could be changed with gel panels. The tiny budget could only stretch to five colours of panel rather than the planned 6.

Natali apparently wrote a script for a followup film taking place outside the Cube, but destroyed it when it became clear that this film wouldn’t get made. Instead, the film saw two sequels by other directors: Hypercube brought in Polish cinematographer Andrzej Sekuła, trying to make a more abstract scenario with a 4D hypercube with odd gravitational effects, although the CGI of the time struggled to portray this convincingly; Zero saw Ernie Barbarash, the producer of Hypercube, step into the director’s chair to tell a story taking place, in part, outside the cube. These films go a little further to try to explain the existence and purpose of the cube, bringing in a concept of a government inducing amnesia in prisoners and sending them into the cube in lieu of outright execution. It is, apparently, less psychological horror and more gore oriented.

They all get... mixed reviews, but I think the premise sounds very interesting - I actually had the whole trilogy on DVD for years and... never watched it, for some reason, so tonight I feel like remedying that. If that sounds like fun, drop by in a couple hours at around 7pm UK time (may be a bit later, I’ll keep you posted!) at twitch.tv/canmom...

#toku tuesday #toku twosday

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slade-neko · 3 years ago

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Saw this video game tag thing pop up on my dash a few days ago. Wanted to do it.

1. First game you played obsessively? Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I believe I was 5yo. Still waiting on that FF7 Remake treatment.

2. A game that has influenced you creatively? Writing, drawing, etc. Well if I play a game and like it, then I'll create sims of it. Does that count?

3. Who did you play with as a kid? My brother from the day I was born.

4. Who do you play with now? My brother FROM THE DAY I WAS BORN.

5. Ever use cheat codes? I wasn't lying when I made this post. {link}

6. Ever buy strategy guides? Yes! Mainly to look at the artwork though. (Don't need no guide!)

7. Any games you have multiple copies of? Lots of games, most being Left 4 Dead with 6 copies (3 Xbox 360, 1 PC case, 2 PC digitally.) What can I say, its a GOOD GAME!

8. Rarest/Most expensive game in your collection? Gold cartridge Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (maybe that's rare?)

9. Most regrettable purchase? I don't regret my purchases, but I have received games I have never played like Cubix (PS2) no clue where that game came from, but I have it somehow. Madagascar (Xbox 360) came with my Xbox 360, never opened it from its case. And Monsters Inc. Scream Arena (Gamecube) or something... it was a gift.

10. Ever go to a midnight game release or stand in line for hours? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

11. Have you ever made new friends from playing video games? I'm only friends with people BECAUSE of video games, so yes.

12. Ever get picked on for liking games? No, that'd be ridiculous.

13. A game you’ve never played that everyone else has? Probably a lot, I'd say Call of Duty, but I technically played CoD 1, 2, and 4. The campaign mode was alright, but I don't really care for CoD games at ALL.

14. Favorite game music? Koji Kondo and Grant Kirkhope are two BIG ones.

15. If it was a requirement to get a game related tattoo, what would you pick? Triforce is the most basic option, but I'd rather not get a tattoo.

16. Favorite game to play with your friends IRL? Super Smash Bros. Brawl with hacks, but that was over a decade ago.

17. Ever lose a friend over a game? No, that'd be ridiculous.

18. Would you date someone that hates gaming? No, that'd be RIDICULOUS.

19. Favorite handheld console? PSP. 3DS is great, but PSP Monster Hunter has ALL of my portable gaming memories. Like playing in school after End of Grade tests with my friend.

20. Game that you know like the back of your hand? Sims 4 I like to think I know everything about Left 4 Dead. Quite a bit about Monster Hunter, more so of a series though than a specific game.

21. Game that you didn’t like or understand as a kid but love now? I'd say Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. I loved it as a kid, but had a lot of complex pen & paper RPG mechanics that I never understood. I understand a lot more of it now, but its still complex as all heck. I just know you hit things, they die.

22. Do you wear game related clothing/accessories? That's the only thing I wear.

23. The game that you’ve logged the most hours into? Not sure so I'll list a few. Sims 4, Smash Bros. Brawl, Monster Hunter (its a series though), or Left 4 Dead

24. First Pokemon game? Leaf Green

25. Were you ever an arcade game player? No, don't like paying to play.

26. Ever form any gaming rivalries? No.

27. Game that makes you rage? I don't get mad at games, but I had a custom modded Hard Eight mutation in Left 4 Dead that is absolute bullsh*t!

28. Ever play in a tournament? No, because then I'd have to interact with people.

29. What is your gaming set up? A giant wall of video game consoles spanning from NES to Switch, 4 TVs, but I sit at a desk with a PC.

30. How many consoles do you own? "I own every console that's ever existed." - I Don't Play Games When I Play Games (My STRENTH) original song by Smooth McGroove BUT no seriously I own 32 consoles including handhelds.

31. Does the 3DS and/or Virtual Boy hurt your eyes or give you headaches? Yes. 3DS gave me headaches though I only really played with the 3D feature in Ocarina of Time 3D. I think my eyes broke because I couldn't get my 3D to work very well after.

32. Did you ever play a game based on your favorite show/cartoon/movie/comic? Sure I play games based on a lot of things. Literally any anime game. If I had to pick Dragon Ball Xenoverse is kinda like a dream Dragon Ball game. Oh, Attack on Titan 2 is pretty neat too!

33. Did you ever have any bootleg games or plug-n-play games? Some SEGA plug-n-play thing once. Played it like once and now its lost to time (or my closet.)

34. Do either of your parents play video games? Yes. Mom and Dad played NES Super Mario Bros. My Dad went HARD at that game until he saved the Princess. Then he quit forever.

35. Ever work in a game store? Or do you have a favorite game shop? "Hi. Welcome to Gamestop!"I never want to hear that again, but it was my main store until I went full digital/ online orders.

36. Have you ever shed actual blood, sweat or tears over a game? No, I don't tend to get upset or emotional, but Bill dying in Left 4 Dead made me pretty pissed.

37. Have you played E.T. for the Atari 2600? Do you think that’s the worst game ever, or do you have another nomination? Never played it. I don't really play "bad" games, but maybe Sims 4.

38. A game you’re ashamed to admit that you like? The Sims 4

39. A sequel that you would die for them to make? Dragon's Dogma 2 WHICH I think is actually in development, so I'd have to say Fallout New Vegas 2. C'mon Bethesda you cowards, hand the keys back over to Obsidian so they can make another good Fallout game!

40. What to you think of virtual reality headsets or motion controls? Two part question, two answers. VR Headset to immerse in world, yes. Motion Controls, no.

41. A genre that you just can’t get into? MOBAs and MMOs. I don't like paying to keep playing.

42. Maybe it wasn’t your first game, but what was the game that started you on your path to nerdiness? Nintendo 64 opened me up to what video games could be as a kid. Sad to say my parents' NES didn't really do that for me. And years later Fallout 3 was a big game changer for me too.

43. Ever play games when you really should have been concentrating on something else? Every day of my LIFE.

44. Arcade machine that has consumed the most of your quarters? None. I'd rather emulate.

45. How are you at Mario Kart? Pretty dang good. 3-STARS MARIO KART WII, BABY!

46. Do you like relaxing games like Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon? Yes, both of those. I preferred when Animal Crossing had more character to it. New Horizons looks so pretty, but feels so bland compared to classic AC.

47. Do you like competitive games? No. Not really. Usually amongst friends or if I can get competitive against AI Bots. I love my machine bot friends cause they don't cry like 10 year olds when they lose.

48. How long does it take your to customize your player character? Too long. I've seriously restarted games because I wasn't happy with my character's appearance.

49. In games where you can pick your class, do you always tend to go for the same type of character? Yes, I am always the magic man, my brother is always brute warrior, and my friend is the ranger.

50. If you were a game designer, what masterpiece would you create? I don't really know. Honestly, I'd rather mod already good games to make them better than create something completely new.

51. Have you ever played a game for so long that you forgot to eat or sleep? No, that'd be ridiculous. But I've had a friend fall asleep playing games at my house 3 different times and currently dozes off during our Minecraft sessions. So, maybe that's not a completely ridiculous thing after all.

52. A game that you begged your parents for as a kid? Kirby 64 apparently. My brother tells me we had to count out pennies to buy it. I must've been too young with no recollection, but I believe it.

53. What’s your opinion on DLC these days? It's good if its not in the game's files from the beginning and is actually developed AFTER launch... and pre-order bonuses should be standard DLC a month or two later. Some games have content lost to time because of that pre-order bullsh*t.

54. Do you give in to Steam sales? Of course. If you want a game and its on sale then why not? I typically wait just for Steam sales to get games.

55. Did you ever make someone you hated in the Sims and did mean stuff to them? No? I typically make people and characters I like in Sims. I've made villains like Dio, but he's an anime villain and I don't really HATE him despite the horrible things he's done.

56. Did you ever play Roller Coaster Tycoon and kill off your guests? No. Never played that game.

57. Did you ever play a game to 100% or get all of the achievements? I try to for all the games I really like.

58. If you can only play 3 games for the rest of your life, which ones do you pick? The Sims 4, Skyrim, & Fallout: New Vegas. Mods make them live forever. Left 4 Dead and Monster Hunter are good choices too.

59. Do you play any cell phone games? Those aren't games.

60. Do you know the Konami Code? No? But I'll take a guess. Is it make an IP and forget it exists?

61. Do you trade in your games or keep them forever? Keep forever... even the bad ones.

62. Ever buy a console specifically to play one game? PS4 Pro for Monster Hunter World. It was basically for early access since the PC version was being developed and releasing after PS4, but I don't like waiting.

63. Ever go to a gaming convention or tournament? Sort of. Been to anime cons and walked into the gaming tournament rooms only to walk out less than 10 minutes later.

64. Ever make a TV or monitor purchase based on what would be best for gaming? No, but I'm going to be doing that soon, hopefully.

65. Ever have a Game Genie, Game Shark or Action Replay? Did it ever mess up your game’s save file? GameShark for N64, PS2, Gameboy, and Action Replay for Gamecube, DS, 3DS. And no not really, I would cheat responsibly... but there was this one time at school my friend and I borrowed another friend's Gameboy game, loaded it up with my Gameshark, tried playing, it crashed, loaded it back up, save file corrupted... we just stared at each other jaws dropped, "Here's your game back, dude. Make sure you don't play it til you get back home!"

66. Did you ever have have an old Nokia with Snake on it? No, but I remember seeing them on billboards in the game DRIV3R on PS2.

67. Do you have a happy gaming-related childhood memory you want to share? Every game I play is filled with happy memories (mostly.)

68. Ever save up a ton of tickets in an arcade to get something cool? These tiger plushes. My brother got white and I got orange. They were the coolest. Got a butt load of tickets from some jackpot spinning light game thing as I was good at the timing with repeated jackpot hits.

69. In your opinion, best game ever made? I've played quite a few masterpiece games, but to pick one, I'd say Fallout: New Vegas

70. Very first game you ever beat? Super Mario 64. I was a mere child on a Sunday morning and ate celebratory pancakes made by my Dad.

Wow, that was long... I get the feeling this was supposed to be a "send me ask with numbers" thing, but answering all at once is more fun.

#personal #video games

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zerochanges · 4 years ago

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2020 Favorite Video Games

I don’t know if I am an outlier or if this is the same for everyone else but I really did not play a lot of games this year. 2020 was a very harsh year for all of us, especially for me for some personal reasons. So to get to the chase, I am just gonna say it left me not doing much in what little free time I did have, and I didn’t play much either. Usually I try to keep my lists for ‘favorite of the year’ to only titles released that year but since I played so little this year, screw it. I am gonna include any game I played this year regardless of release date.

Collection of SaGa

By far a flawed rerelease. It’s bare bones: there are no advance features you would usually expect out of these kinds of emulated rereleases like save states, fast forward, or rewind, and there was no real effort made to touch up almost 30 year old localizations that had to meet Nintendo of America’s then harsh standards. This really is just 3 roms slapped into a nice looking interface with an option to increase the game speed (which by the way you better use, the characters walk very slow in these old games).

I am bit harsh here, but only because I thought the Romancing SaGa remasters and the upcoming SaGa Frontier remaster all looked like they got a great budget and a lot of love while this is just another Collection of Mana situation (moreso specifically talking about Seiken Densetsu 1/Final Fantasy Adventure/Adventures of Mana part of that collection). I would have loved to see Square Enix do a bit more for these older games. Or at least include the remakes. Seiken Densetsu 1 had two great remakes, both unused in Collection of Mana, and all three of these original SaGa titles have remakes that have never seen the light of day outside of Japan. How great would it have been to get the Wonderswan remake of SaGa 1, as well as the Nintendo DS remakes of Saga 2 and SaGa 3?

But my gripes aside, these games are still fun as they ever were. Replaying SaGa 1 specifically during the holiday season really helped calm me down and made me feel at ease. It’s easy to forget but even in their Gameboy roots there are a lot of funky and weird experimental choices being made in these games. They aren’t your run-of-the-mil dragon quest (or considering the gameboy, maybe pokemon would be more apt) clones.

Raging Loop

Perhaps my favorite game of the year, Raging Loop is one of the best visual novels I have ever played hands down. The level of creativity and splitting story paths that went into it is simply mind blowing. The basic premise is both a wonderful throwback to the old days of Chunsoft sound novels while still modern and somewhat reminiscent of both Higurashi and Danganronpa. Essentially you play as Haruaki, a poor slub that got lost in the mountains with no clue where to go until you stumble upon an old rural village with a strange history and even stranger superstitions. Before you know it there has been a murder and the Feast is now afoot.

The less said about Raging Loop the better, although I do want to say a lot about it one day if I ever can write a proper review of it. This is a gripping game that will take hold of you once you get into it though and never let go. I actually 100%-ed this and I very rarely do that. I got every ending, every bonus hidden ending, played the entire game twice to hear all the hidden details it purposely hides on your first play through, played all the bonus epilogue chapters, unlocked all the hidden voice actor interviews, collected all the art work, etc, etc. I was just obsessed with this game, it’s that damn good! And the main character is maybe the best troll in all of video games, god bless Haruaki.

Root Double

From Takumi Nakazawa, long time contributor to Kotaro Uchikoshi’s work comes a game any fan of Zero Escape or Uchikoshi in general will probably enjoy. Root Double, like its name suggests is a visual novel with two different routes, hence Root Double. The first route stars Watase Kasasagi, the leader of an elite rescue team in the midst of their greatest crisis yet that could lead to nuclear devastation as they try to evacuate a nuclear research facility that has gone awry.

The other route stars Natsuhiko Tenkawa, an everyday high schooler whose peaceful life is thrown into turmoil when he stumbles upon a terrorist plot to destroy the nuclear facility in the city and his attempts to stop them. Together the two separate plots weave into one and creates a really crazy ride. Part Chernobyl, part science fiction, any fan of the genre will easily enjoy it. And hey it’s kind of relevant to include on this list too since it just got a Switch port this year (I played it on steam though).

Snack World

I was shocked upon starting Snack World as it is instantly incredibly charming, witty, and downright hilarious at times yet I heard almost zero people talk about it. EVER. This game is Dragon Quest levels of quirky though, and the localization is incredible. The game has such an oddball sense of humor that works really well with its presentation right down to the anime opening video that sings about the most bizarre things. Instead of the usual pump up song about the cool adventure ahead we get stuff like wanting to go out to a restaurant and eat pork chops.

The self aware/fourth wall breaking humor is just enough to be really funny, but doesn't overstay its welcome and always makes it work right in the context of the dialogue. And finally, just everything; with the menus, the name of side quests and missions, and the character dialogue -- are all just so witty and full of quirky humor. This is one hell of a charming and funny game and addictive to boot.

Trials of Mana

Trials of Mana has gone from one of those legendary unlocalized games, to one of the first major breakthroughs in fan translation, to finally getting an official English release complete with a fully 3D remake. In a lot of ways from a western perspective this game has had an incredible journey. As for this remake itself, I really found myself having tons of fun with it. I loved the graphics, and the voice acting while a bit on the cheaper side almost kind of adds to the charm since both the graphics and acting really give it an old PS2 vibe. I know that is probably just more me being weird but yeah, I had to say it.

I really hope Square Enix sticks to this style of remake more often, instead of just doing Final Fantasy VII Remakes that break the bank and involve extensive tweaking to both plot and game play. I’ll take smaller budget projects that play more like the original game any day personally. I wouldn’t mind if they also deliver a brand new Mana game all together in this engine either.

Utawarerumono Trilogy

This year saw the release of the first entry in the series, Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen--and thus finally after three years since the sequels Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth came out in 2017 the trilogy is now complete in English. I ended up binging through Prelude to the Fallen very fast shortly after it came out and immediately jumped on to the sequels. Perhaps the best part of 2020 was that I finally played all three of these fantastic games, and did so back-to-back-to-back. Playing the first Utawarerumono was an experience I will never forget, it was like visiting old friends again that I haven’t seen in ages, by and large thanks to the fact that I saw the anime adaption of the game when I was much younger, nearly a decade ago. Back then I would have never of dreamed that I would get to play the actual game and get the real experience.

And it only got better from here, as all three games are such wonderful experiences from start to finish. The stories are all so deep, and by the time you get to the third entry, Mask of Truth, it’s crazy to see how they all connected over so many years and weaved together into a plot much bigger than they ever were. What carries it beyond all that though has to be the fun and addicting strategy role playing game aspect, which while a bit on the easy side, is still so much fun and helps make the game feel better paced since you get to play the conquests your characters go on and not just read about all the battles they fight. Beyond that the games are packed full of awesome characters, and I know I’ll never forget the amazing leads in all of them. Hakuowlo, Haku, and Oshtor will all go down as some of the greats to me.

Ys: Memories of Celceta

Ys: Memories of Celceta is a full 3D remake of Ys IV, a rather infamous game in Falcom’s Ys series. Not to get bogged down too much into the history of Falcom but by this point they were facing a lot of hardship and had to outsource this entry to other developers, and thus passed it on to two particular developers they had a business relationship with, creating two unique versions of Ys IV. Tonkin House who had worked on Super Famicom port of Ys III with Falcom ended up creating their own YS IV entry, Mask of the Sun for the very same system, where Hudson soft who had produced the much beloved Ys Books I & II remakes for the Turbografix (PC Engine) CD add-on created their own Ys IV entry Dawn of Ys for that console. Both games followed guidelines and ideas outlined from Falcom themselves but both radically diverged from each other and turned into completely different games.

Falcom finally putting an end to this debate on which version of Ys IV you should play have gone and created their own definitive Ys IV in 2012 for the Playstation Vita. I played the 2020 remastered version of this remake on my PS4. I even bought this on the Vita when it first came out but I am horrible and only horde games, never play them. So it was a lot of fun to finally play this.

Memories of Celceta is probably one of the best starting points for anyone looking to get into Ys, especially if you only want to stay with the 3D titles as out of all the 3D entries this explains the most about the world and series protagonist Adol Christian. Beyond that it’s just another fantastic entry in a wonderful series that has a few good twists hidden behind it, especially for long time fans of the series.

Random Video Game Console Stuff

Xbox Has Blue Dragon: I actually got an Xbox One this year for free from my brother. Because of that I started to play Blue Dragon again and there’s a lot I would love to say about this game. I don’t know if I am fully committed to replaying it all the way through however but I find myself putting in a couple hours every few days and enjoying myself again. Does anyone else remember Blue Dragon? I feel like it really missed its audience and had it come out nowadays and probably for the Switch it would have really resonated with the Dragon Quest fandom a lot more instead of being thrown out to die on Xbox and constantly compared to Final Fantasy VII and the like which it had nothing at all similar with.

The Turbografx 16 Mini: This was probably one of the best mini consoles that have come out and I feel like thanks to the whole 2020 pandemic thing it was largely forgotten about. That’s a shame, it has a wonderful variety of great games, especially if you count the Japanese ones (god I wish I could play the Japanese version of Snatcher included), and a wonderful interface with fantastic music. One of these days I would really like to be able to play around with the console more seriously than I have already.

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon Never Existed: So Nintendo localized the first ever Fire Emblem game on Nintendo Switch which is awesome to see them touching Famicom games again--I haven’t seen Nintendo of America rerelease old Famicom titles since Mysterious Murasame Castle on the 3DS, but their trailer hilariously made it seem like this is the first time ever they released Fire Emblem when in fact they had already localized the remake Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS nearly 10 or 11 years ago. I and many other fans I talked to all found this really hilarious, probably solely because of how much they kept repeating the fact that this is the first time you will ever be able to experience Marth’s story.

All that aside though I have to say the collector edition for this newly localized Famicom game is probably the most gorgeous retro reproduction I have seen in a long time, and I really spent many many hours just staring at the all clear glass mock cartridge. I have found myself really obsessing over retro reproductions during 2020, and obtained quite a few this year. I really hope this trend continues to go on in 2021 as recreating classic console packaging and cartridges is a lot of fun.

#video games #collection of saga final fantasy legend #SaGa #SaGa I #SaGa II #SaGa III #Raging Loop #Root Double #Snack World #Trials of Mana #Seiken Densetsu 3 #Utawarerumono #Ys #Ys IV #ys memories of celceta

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Close Enough Season 2 Review! or Josh Murders About 10 People

It's been hard to put into words just how wonderful a surprise this season getting released this month was. For starters before JG Quintel announced it last year shortly after season 1, I honestly was convinced season 2 wasn't happened. Do NOT get me wrong, Season 1 of Close Enough was one of the best parts of last year: It was funny, had a lot of heart, a great voice cast, and a great cast of characters that was throughly likeable and broke sitcom stereotypes, having a doofy husband and more straight laced wife with layers who clearly love and respect each other and BOTH can be prone to taking things too far instead of JUST Josh screwing up. Add in two great fellow leads Bridgette and Alex played by two of my faviorite va's, Kimiko Glen and Jason Mantzokus, whose name I finally learned how to spell, an adorable daughter and neat but out of focus neighbors and supors pearle and randy, and the show was just damn near perfect and felt like an improvement on regular show, taking the same humor and animation style but to an older cast and audience with more nuanced and likeable characters, and far more character development per episode. I wanted to see where the show would go.. but I was convinced given the show was leftover inventory from an animation block that never happened held over to give HBO Max some content it'd be canceled after one season, because I can't have nice things. But....

And very happily so: JG Quintel revealed the show had been picked up for season 2 not long after season 1 dropped, having listned to fans. As it turns out though they hadn't.. they just had a ton of faith in the show as I got ANOTHER bombshell earlier this month. While the show had showed up on the schedule for this month late in January, with no release date on said schedule, I wasn't 100% sure the show was coming back this month or that it wasn't just an error. But once again, I was wrong, it was earth all along, and they merely saved it for the press release for their adult animation lineup: alongside the huge and welcome bombshell they were the ones picking up the Clone High reboot and for two seasons, Close enough not only got two more seasons publicly announced, but fimrly revealed season 2 launched February 25th. LIke they likely had with infinity train the show was quitely picked up for another season, and they simply waited to announce it till the right time. Though unlike infinity train, they had faith in it to become a big hit and while they SHOULD HAVE with infinity train and should've accepted it was already a big hit simply not with the target demographic, it's still nice to see that after all it went through Close Enough not only got renewed but is now the network's flagship adult animated show, closely tied with harley quinn, and will likely go on as long as it wants to.

So naturally given I reviewed all of season 1 in the hopes i'td get renewed, I was happy to make room for season 2 and continue covering it and over the moon it was happening so soon. However I'm doing things diffrently this time: instead of flooding the tag with individual longform reviews, i'm reviewing the season all one go, to see if this format could work for me as I have tons of other shows i'd love to cover in this format that are either heavily comedic like say the Great North, regular show or the simpsons and thus dont' lend themselves to riffing as much and leave me less to do per episode, or more seralized shows like she ra or ones that are entirely complete like Steven Universe or Gravity falls that I could cover alone but this format could help expidite covering. Gravity Falls is also one of my patreon stretch goals if your instrested as is a whole lot of ducktales stuff, link on my blog. It also works with my much larger workload with a much tighter schedule, 6 reviews a week with a flex day in case I get behind so everything comes out as good as it posisbly can be, versus my original method of...

TLDR: One big post with smaller reviews each episode and an overall coverage of what changed this season and how good it is as a whole. We good? Good, then join me under the cut for some delightful sentient presents, couch ghosts, and jim fucking crunch as we get close enough to the heart.

I will never get tired of that image. I want it blown up and put on a banner at my funeral. But death plans aside let's get into the season

Slight Tweaks to a Great Formula: Given it's slice of life format based largely around likeable multi layered characters in comedic absurdity, not a lot has changed nor did it need to. What has are just simple tweaks to make things even better. For starters a natural result of getting to the episodes now produced directly for the 11 minute format means the pacing is much focused, subbing in full subplots for the occasional runner instead, and often only using what characters the episode needs. It will use the main five often, but the lack of subplots for the most part allows stronger focus on one or two characters to give the stories added weight and nuance and often laughs. While i'll always love season 1, this allows for much tighter stories and allows for everyone to get some major screen time instead of mostly Josh and Emily in season 1. It does mean we sadly get less of my boy Alex per episode but it's a sacrifice i'm willing to make if it means the show can grow and take more risks and evolve naturally. Though the former probably wasn't help by two of his three episodes being kinda weak, but i'll get to that.

The other noticeable change is Pearle and Randy. While they were promoted as main characters, even getting profiles along with the rest, they were in practice recurring characters in season 1, showing up pretty frequently but with only one starring episode for Randy and none for Pearle. And givne Pearle has an interesting backstory as a cop who likely had to put up with a LOT being a black woman officer, as well as raising a white redneck, while also being hilarious and having a fun energy to her, I felt they kinda wasted her in season 1.

Here though? Both have been bumped up to main cast proper, getting two focus episodes a piece (compared to the other main adults each getting three, some of those shared, and Candace getting one, hopefully more in the future as it was really good, along with, to my delight, mr.cambell also getting one), appearing far more in supporting roles and generally showing up with the main group a lot more. They still don't hang out with our loveable family all the time, but it makes sense as they have their own apartment and stuff to deal with, but it feels far more like their part of the main group. The show always treated them like this mine, but showing up more makes their friendships with their tenants feel more genuine, as it feels like their part of their lives more, whlie having their own to deal with we get to see now.

So while the series didn't change much, as I said it didn't need to and all of this is stuff is the kind of thing I wanted, especially Pearle getting a larger role and Randy being fleshed out from a dollar store version of muscle man into his own similar but difference character, and i'm happy to have it. So now i've talked about how the seasons' changed, let's talk about the episodes themselves. Grab a snack this is going to take a bit.

The Episodes!:

Josh Gets Shredded:

Our premier and honestly it's a solid one with a singular premise on poking fun at gym culture, though in a nice twist Jim Crunch, the guy who runs the Gym Josh ends up going to to strengthen his core to play with Candace and whose voiced wonderfully by Kevin Michael Richardson is a genuinely good guy and there's no horrifying twist with him. He just wants Josh to get ripped and dosen't know his training is keeping josh from candace. IT's a simple setup of a father doing something for his daughter but getting distracted by it and while not new it works well here and we get plenty of fun gym jokes, including an exchange from Jim and Josh when Josh wants to become an "absolute unit", which in this case ends up meaning turning into the hulk but with the glowing firey eyes of an angry god, feels like it came straight out of the hockey bros from letterkenny, which is a good feeling to have. There's also a nice setup with Candace wanting to play king kong with Josh due to seeing it in class (Specially the Peter Jackson remake, also Candace knows who jack black is which I buy because of who her daddy is. I wouldn’t be surprised if Josh had Saving Silverman on a loop for several days until emily threw it out the window like a frisbee. ), which kicks off the whole thing.. and ends with ultra instinct hulk josh taking her to the top of a building and swatting away helicopters. It’s more of an average episode for the series and the runner about Emily being REALLY hot for buff josh comes off as a weaker version of the plot from family guy where Lois likes a thinner peter, apart from one inspired bit where in order to talk to him about candace without getting distracted, Emily pours an entire bag of ice down her pants.. and subtly after Josh talks about becoming an absolute unit, it’s gone nad rather than animation I like to believe it melted. Still a decent start to a great season.

Meet the Frackers: A Randy Spotlight episode and unlike his season one episode rather than be a subplot in another episode it’s a full episode about him. And the starting incident is great as the gang gets their ancestry results back from costco, with Emily and Bridgette having ancestors in Guadalajara and Kiyoto.. and Josh being white (”Can you believe it?”). Alex coming from a long line of creeps is also pretty funny, those are his actual results by the way.

But what the episodes truly about is Randy finding out his parents are alive in Malibu after Pearle claimed they were dead when he was a kid. She had a very good reason though: Randy’s parents were serial gas thieves, and Pearle nearly caught them one night with the two chucking him at her to escape. And to her credit Pearle TRIED to reach out to them once they ended up in jail for their crimes.. but they again chucked him at her which is hilarious. She simply didn’t want him to feel abandoned. He instead feels betrayed.

His parents are hilariously white trash and played by two faviorite va’s of mine, David Kochner and Wendy Malick, who i’m happy is finally playing a lead roll on Owl House. They drink redneck maragretihas and eat mcribs (As Randy puts it “God’s favorite sandwich!”) every day and still steal gas, just legally now as frackers. Naturally though the two are still assholes and soon use a carnival as a cover to illegally frack and it’s up to Randy an dhis real mom to stop them> It’s a touching story with Randy genuinely wanting to hlep his mom, though I feel it would’ve been more interesting if Randy’s parents hadn’t been scum an dhe had to genuinely deal with having three parents now. Still it was worth it for some great lines from Malick and Kochner , so it works. Decent ep.

Sauceface: Now we come to both one of the best eps of the season, and the series so far, and one of it’s most unique as it stars Candace and dosen’t feature the other main cast hardly at all, only Emily who kicks things off by, in a great bit, breaking Candace’s illusion their rich as “they live in a castle with alex and bridgette”, with her slowly realizing “Were poor”. Which is just a very kid thing to think that your parents are rich when they very much aren’t.

But the episode really is a crime boss parody story, as the title would imply as Candace and her best friend start selling hot sauce, which is banned from the school due to it’s political correctness having gone mad and it being offensive to “sensitive palates” (They’ve also banned general tso’s chicken for mitlarialism and everything bagels for being “too much”). This leads where you’d expect: Candace getting drunk with power and forgetting why theys tarted, wet willies, and an art room brawl, all leading to candace’s friend getting pinched and candace having to use the money to buy Mr. Cambell a pelaton to get him off their backs, which leads to this lovely exchange “YOur letting them off just because they bought you a present?” “This is a 2000 dollar bike”. We also get the subtle reveal Mr. Cambell is gay which given how straight the main cast is, is nice. But this was a great one with too many good gags to mention, a great setup, a great rolling stones song played during the montage I do not know the name of, and I hope we get other candace advnetures at her school in the future, because this was a real delight. Again one of the best episodes of the season.

The House Guest From Hell: Speaking of best episodes, this is probably the best pairing of episodes yet, as both are standouts of the season.

Emily’s old friend Becca drops back into her life, to everyone’s annoyance as Becca is an utter leech who constantly take advantage of Emily’s lack of boundaries with her to constantly talk about whatever drama she’s wrapped herself in and mooch off her. Josh and Bridgette want her to set firm boundaries, but Emily fails to and instead only gets Becca to set boundaries with her boyfriend.. which leads to her moving into the apartment temporarily, and annoying the hell out of everyone. Becca is a great character, being that asshole in the most over the top and annoying way possible, to the point she takes alex’s room, watches tv on a loop and doesn’t seem to realize Emily is married (Despite being part of her bridal party), or that candace is Emily’s daughter and not a tiny butler (Which Candace assumes is a game. )

Naturally for this show things escalate hilariously as Emily finds out she’s pregnant when she tries to throw her out and the pregnancy is escalated.. and we soon find out it’s because the pregnancy is demonic: She has Hecate as her dula (And Alex naturally asks if she’s single, get it guy get it), needs goats hoves, locusts and the blood of the innocent (Which is the only item that trips josh up who hopes they can get it at costco, which made me have to pause as I could not stop laughing). This would be funny enough. .but what takes it into making this episode a classic is when Emily tricks her boyfriend Luke over he’s unsurprisingly a devil.. but also a hilariously over the top douchebag dudebro played by Beck Bennet, who it’s not only nice to see outside of ducktales, but is also just totally game. Luke is so odious it wraps around to being funny, to the point he unsurprisingly hits on Bridgette while his girlfriend is in labor, messily makes out with her and they try to move in, though thankfully Emily cathartically screams Becca out midbirth. Also they end up going to hell, with Luke getting there by doing donuts. Yes really. This episode is a treasure and does the series schitck of taking a relatable problem and escalating it to perfection.

Joint Break:

Another unsurprisingly good one, as Pearle deals with the fact that despite her decades of service, the force’s health plan doesn’t cover her needed hip surgery after she slides over a car wrong (Which also leads to a great riff on the old csi Miami parody). She then finds herself between her oath as an officer and her needs for help as she befriends a gang of saucy old women at water aerobics who are also bank robbers and want to cut her in. And they provide a tempting offer, getting what their owed and ti feels like a genuine dilemma, even if Pearle ends up siding with the police, not that she should. It’s also full of great bits of the old lady gang weaponizing stereotypes about old people, with the three of them dawning classic old lady getups to fool an officer, and having one of them i a walker slowly cross the street to stop an armored truck. Fun stuff helped by their leader being voiced by Jane Lynch, continuing this season’s red hot guest star streak, not that the series has ever been light on them (They got David Hasselhoff and weird al in season 1, so yeah), but this season ramps up the good guest voices to the point there’s one per episode almost.

Cyber Matrix: This one’s okay though the setup is good. Unsurprisingly given both his dale gribble-esque penchant for conspiracies and his hipster holier than thou ways, Alex has never had a smart phone, and has a very old flip hone that’s horrifc to look at and naturally gets destroyed, leading to him getting addicted to the thing.. and this being the show it is fusing with it. What makes this one is the climax, as the rest of the main group scramble to take out the cell tower so Alex’s phone doesn’t upload him to the cloud while Josha nd Alex open everything they can to slow her down. The result is the phone hacking Emily’s and ordering packages, task rabbits to punch her inthe face (With randy taking it so they can go) and outright hijacking a car in a clever chase. The ending though does sink this as suddenly their in veirutal reality again and it just feels weird given the series, while not really using continuity much so far, dosne’t have negavite continuity punch out endings outside of this one ep and I hope this dosen’t happen again. Otheriwse a decent one if sadly not one of Alex’s best and he equally sadly onlyg ets one truly great episode this season, compared to having a good chunk of the best plots last season. Still you can’t win em all and i’m sure my boy will return to form and said great episode, which we’ll get to soon, certainly shows they didn’t loose their touch. They just fumbled a bit and that’s okay.

Haunted Couch: Balancing that out is the fact that Bridgette, who didn’t get nearly as many good eps as Alex or as much focus as the rest, gets some great episodes this season with this one being my out and out favorite as it fleshes her out more and has some really great gags. Josh brings in a street couch (And he and Emily’s argument over it is great including him using the fact she forced them to get a savings account as leverage somehow), just as Bridgette is in emotional turmoil over her latest boyfriend suddenly ghosting her.

Naturally she ends up falling for a REAL ghost, a french couch designer who had a habit of cheating on his lovers, died for it by one of their hands, and his soul ended up bound to the couch. Naturally hea nd Bridgette hit it off and we get a LOT of good stuff in a montage as the two take the couch everywhere, and her friends, minus Alex who surprisingly rather than being jealous, simply dosen’t like the fact there’s a ghost in the house technically haunting them which surprisingly goes nowhere, are happy for her and like him after the initial shock wears off, though Josh still wants to sit on the couch. He and Bridgette even have really good sex using Randy’s body, with him being a willing vesel for Marcus. And i’d just like to point out that an intensely weird comedy show that also has a sentient present, bob vila with saw hands, and dude bro satan in this very season, 2/3 of those to come.. STILL did this better than wonder woman 87, as they actually asked someone to let the ghost of the couple use his body so they could fuck, and he gave full consent to it. And no I sitll haven’t let that go, it was a very bad plotline with nightmarish implications and the fact close enough did it better in a joke, they also have the song from ghost in the background by the by, than a big budget movie from the same company, is a really large bilboard saying:

But while the episode was thoroughly interesting and funny.. it’s what happens next that makes it one of the series best. While the series is amazing at comedy, it’s the character growth slid in between it that makes it so awesome and this episode is a great example. Bridgette turns cold towards Marcus as it’s clear he’s serious, and he’s even moved a tooth brush in. She gets more and more hostile until eventually Marcus calls her on it, and prevents her from leaving with a vortex of furniture.. which could’ve gone bad very quick but instead just means she has to face him.. and is hit with a rather painful relization when he asks “Do you what me to, how you say, ghost you?” (She explained the concept earlier). She says no.. but quickly a series of flashbacks puts the previous breakup in context as the guy she was seeing asked to leave a toothbrush, a simple escalation and she got real nasty real quick without saying what the problem was. We see more of this with a previous boyfriend and hilaroiusly one before that guy who not only had a toothbrush in a ringbox but was also in a hot air ballon she casually cuts the anchors too and has float away. Which does mean Bridgette probably killed a man but that’s one compared to josh’s 10 this season. Yes, 10. We’ll get to that.

Point is she realizes “oh shit i’m the dick”, and has a genuine talk with Marcus, realizing why: “You know how women feign being submissive because society’s taught them to so they don’t get raped or murdered or kidnapped?” “Oui”, best bit of the episode and damn if it ain’t horribly true. But due to tha Bridgette simply got terrible quick to scare guys off when she really just wanted to break it off instead of take things further and breaks it off with marcus.. and is surprised and relieved when he doesn’t want a big fight and takes it acceptably, Marcus having grown from his past of being a women using cad and genuinely wanting to treat them better. For once Bridget gets to have an emotionally mature breakup with someone, and while you could say her relationship with alex is like that, it’s very clear from an upcoming episode it wasn’t a very clean break at first and while their amicable now their marriage was a hot volcano of arguments. This allos Marcus to pass.. if also destroying the couch to Josh’s misery. An instant classic and one of the season’s highlights and one that really fleshes Bridgette out a bit by giving another reason for her relationships not working besides alex that fits the character perfectly and has her grow from it.

Also just a quick sidenote, this episode vaguely reminded me of the Nightmare Time, theater troupe team starkid’s zoomcast I highly recommend set in their hatchetfield multiverse, episode “Jane’s a Car” , which is about a man’s wife possessing his car and also involves an object. Both are very diffrent mind you, Jane’s a Car ends up way more depressing, but its’ stil la story involving ghost fucking though Bridgette found a vesel instead of straight up fucking a couch the way tom went to town on that car. It also involves the lead’s perosnal issues, if far more severe in Jane’s a Car’s case, reflected by their relationship with a ghost. I mean it is a stretch but these are the weird connectoins my brain makes and I mostly bring it up because an upcoming episode in the season goes from kind of similar but only to me to very similar, and a very fun concidence that these two episodes existed in the same year, especially since this happened last year with this show and Ducktales. But first josh doing a murder on some people.

Man Up:

Okay for starters the title man up reminds me of this short lived abc sitcom I never saw but given it was about three guys tapping into their “inner man” it sounds like aresnic somehow took the sentient form of a tv show. This actual poster for it not only proves the point but why it lasted one season if not why the hell I remembered this existed at all despite never seeing it, not recognizing anyone in it and not wanting anything to do with it.

Given I have 8 more episodes to go after this one, I do not have time to disect all the way that poster is a waking nightmare, though i’d love to, and instead i’m going to talk abotu the episode itself. The intro is funny enough, with the Ramierz-Singletons going to a bank for Candace’s first bank account, the Bank of Hollywood. An alien seemingly attacks, it turns out to be a promotional stunt with high budget effects a great gag in of itself, but Josh runs out on his family. Naturally he’s horribly rattled by this, and wants to be a better dad, a John McClane type. So two things: I now want a crossover with this show and brooklyn nine nine along with the hatchefield one in my head and the regular show one most fans want. And the second is that John wasn’t the best dad or husband, and both the original film, the sequel josh saw, and the fourth film all spell this out. The fifth does too but I feel if I wish hard enough a good day to die hard will just spontaneously cease to exist and we’ll all be happier that way.

So Pearle agrees to help him, and we get a fun training montage, with Josh protecting a candace made of eggs Alex made, because of course he did, and an emily made of the same because of course he did, and get punched in the junk by randy in a dog costume, as you do. He actually feels tough and is ready for phase 2, pearle hitting him with something unexpectdly.

Instead what he thinks is Phase 2 is actually a die hard style hyjacking of Emily’s company christmas party, which josh misses due to being in the bathroom after panickily running into corn. As a result.. we get josh killing about 8-10 people not realizing it’s not a simulation but not really caring about that part when it’s revealed. Which granted it is in self defense but he still kills a LOT of people this episode, and I will be forever haunted by the fact that stringbean can REALLY do some murders. Seriously who knew JOSH had it in him. That is terrifying to comprehend. Naturally after he john mclanes his way up, he finds out it wasn’t a simulation panics but instead of running away runs the hans gruber knockoff, whose sadly not very entertaining out of the building and onto some exploding corn, saving the day, earning his family’s respect and cemnting himself as a badass. The reveal of what the text actually was is just.. perfect as it’s just a bat on a string with Alex saying “he’s totally going to shit”. The perfect capper to good ep only hampred by hans being really weak.. seriously he just has a weird sentence sturcture tha’ts hte joke. They can do better. Otherwise a good die hard parody. John would be proud.

Handy:

Another decent one not a standout but it has a truly astounding bit. Randy finds out, after going to Guy Fieri’s flavor diaster for Pearle, that she hired another handyman and he’s not good at his job as as he puts it “I’m going to do what troubled young men have done for years : i’m going to sea!”. Which is funny enough but leads to him stranded on a desert island, hallucinating and then meeting his idols in handy manning who may or may not be hallucinations: Bob Vila, The Ikea Mascot (Who speaks only in pictures and is a fun gag despite never having seen him before this episode) and my favorite tim the tool man taylor, whose tie is constantly pointed up for some reason and who amazingly only speaks in grunts. I didn’t know I needed this so thank you close enough. We also get the three helping with bob turning his hands into buzzsaws, ikea man creating nails and screws and Tim using his head as a tool. All accurate to their original shows and in ikea man’s case brocures. Really good adaptation. But through this he discovers the clog the guy is trying to fix at the house is loadbearing and rushes home to save the house, leading to a fun actoin scene and a weird version of the celebration from the end of return of the jedi, complete with force ghosts. So we also get a tim taylor force ghost which I did not know I needed and as much as that show makes my stomach churn I badly hope shows up in the finale of last man standing. A decent one and givne how I keep sayin ga decent episode over and over you can kinda see why I didn’t review all these. LIke season 1 I simply don’t have a full review in me for every single one of these episodes. We’re now at the halfway mark, only 8 more to go, I envy the dead, let’s do this.

Birthdaze: This was the episode most heavily promoted in the trailer and for good reason as it’s the best of the season. Also relatable as while not having kids I do get how Kids Birthday parties feel and how they often end up weirdly close together. In this case both coalse as Josh and Emily have three birthdays in one weekend, their friends Emily’s friend Trish from “Cool Moms”, who is so far some of the only continuity the series has, but a nice sign it has it, and that we could see Jim Crunch (who rose from the grave after an utterly wonderful funeral) or Dog Boy again. Or this episode’s standout gifty. But we’ll get to that in a second. So Josh and Emily well intentiondly decide to throw a party for the parents at the same time as Candace’s.. but end up neglecting Candace. While their idea is good, to reward the other parents for having to sit through so many parties, putting it at the same time was a horrible idea as giving a bunch of pent up people with low alcohol tolerance booze ends up resulting in drunken antics and them heckling the magicain... and given the world we’re in, that’s a horrible mistake as he makes the children disappear to a world of perptual brithday parties and forces JOsh and Emily to follow him if they want their child back. What results is an utter delightly as we meet the wonderful and incomprable Gifty, a giant living present who works iwth the magician, named sardini, and is voiced by Kate Miccuci, heart eyes> Just.. evey bit with gifty is great, from her genuinely being animated and looking like a muppet, to her casually going demonic to explain if the kids stay too long they forget parents, to as seen up top playing a pipe organ that is apparently made of gold plated clown bones, and her best bit, which I posted on this very blog, where she assures the trapped kids if JOsh and Emily fail their final test, they’ll get to live of nutricious necco wafers before vomiting a giant cloud of them at the poor children. Those things are gross and we now knwo it’s because they come from a giant present’s stomach.

We get a great montage before most of that of our heroes treking through a weird and awesome birthday landscape with too many good parts to mentoin, before finding Sardini who puts them through tests before they can get candace back.. and one of those are you human image tests via the ball from phantasm. As gifty puts it “We have to make sure your not a bot”. But the tests, about candaces faviorite things, help the two realize she liked them because they did it together, and a final talk with candace, as the final test has her ask why theyd idn’t want to spend time with her, with the two warmly apologizing and explaning why they did it but that they went too far. Candace reconclies with her parent,s the kids and our heroes go home, and Sardini finds himself sad no one stayed.. but at least he has gifty... and then start making love to her “Unwrap me!” which is far and away the best gag in the season’s best episode by a mile.

Time Hooch:

Now to talk about two things I hinted at earlier: The only good Alex episode this season and the one that vaugely resembles one of the Nightmare Time episodes. And while their two very diffrent stories with very diffrent outcomes and only one of them involves this guy

And suprisingly it’s NOT close enough that has the eldtrich horrifying goat monster with a goofy cartoon voice who says things like “I’m coming for your ass Teddy Bear!” But both are stories about a sketchy (mildly for alex, entirely for Ted) middle aged man who feels one moment is where his life went wrong then accidently time travels after drinking 80 tons of liquor and decides to use said time travel to save a relationship, and fails at it in some fashion. There’s even a jaunt to a distopian future with robots and cyborgs. So while it’s not 1:1, alex is far more sympathetic than Ted, Time Bastard is dark horror comedy, and it again dosen’t involve a horrifying goat man suprisingly enough, it’s till way too many happy coincidences for me to outright ignore. Also check out nightmare time and especially the musicals it spun off from The Guy Who Didn’t LIke Musicals and Black Friday. It’s good stuff. But I couldn’t help but make the comparison, or now imagine Alex, Ted and Professor Hidgens as some weird diasterious power trio. This is how my brain works now.

But to the episode itself it’s just great from start to finish: Bridgette finds out while rumaging for an old photo in an old box of their stuff that Alex never signed the divorce papers. Turns out he was hoping they’d get back together.. and while not doing it and not telling her was a VERY selfish and horrible action.. you still sympathize with him. He hoped things would work out and they’d get back together, and given they had some close calls with that in season 1, to the point I shipped them, you can see where his sprig of hope came from. But with this he’s realized there probably isn’t any hope and drinks some old moonshine he and Josh made in college. Said moonshine was from a recipie in an old blues record, the titular time hooch that true to form, allows them to travel back in time. And since he was thinking of when he thought the relationship truly hit it’s breakig point, when Bridgette at a sandwitch of his and he’d said in the heat of it he wished he’d never met her, they end up there and Alex tries to use it to help. Also Jason’s delivery of Alex saying what the recipie was “rye, barely, a dead man’s pocket watch, mixed under a full moon (Laughs) okay we probably should’ve seen this coming.

Naturally here’s where it really gets intresting. As you’d probably guess, our heroes are the ones who made the sandwitch disappear and in desperation, alex kidnaps his past self before he can say the fatal words> We also get another spectacular bit where all past alex needs from alex to know he’s really him from the future is what year he was born (1982), meaning he’s defintely older than the rest of the cast. Though I wouldn’t be suprised if he was held back.. like at all. Look i’m not thinking too hard into it this is also a story about whiskey based time travel.

But with that said intresting part takes hold as Josh’s past self reminds him of another fight that made things tense for a while.. and you can see where this goes. Alex keeps going back, and back, and back and back and back and back and back... and back, to try and stop the one fight, only to find a bigger one, leading to a montage.. to the point he ends up at the start of the relationship, the day they met at a college bar. The younger Alex’s have decided screw it it was always wrong, let’s end the relationship.

We also get more of Alex’s backstory as it turns out he’s at a community college rather than UCLA, where he used to teach because of his own dumb actions: He met bridgette, let her enroll in his class and didn’t try to convince her to take another one. Don’t get me wrong the decade age gap and power dynamics are iffy.. but it’s not as bad as it could be. They met before the class, and it comes off more as both being too stupid or too horny to realize how her being in his class came off before it was too late. She got with him entirely on his merits, and yes he has some trust me. Case in point.. Alex realizes a few things. The first is that no amount of time travel can save his relationship. They fought all the time clearly, and there were inherent problems. It’s also clear just from the series itself that while they have chemistry their just not that compatible as people. Bridgette is obessed with image, social media, and herself while Alex just two episodes ago called phones the downfall of society and likes feeling superior to the exact kind of person bridgette is. They have chemistry but sometimes it’s jut not enough. You have to have some common ground or your going to fall in a big hole. It’s honestly feels like a much more tolerable and realistic version of Leonard and Penny from the Big Bang Theory. And yes I know that show’s not the most popular with my core audience, nerds, and I bring it up because mom’s been watching it a lately, and any time I see Leonard and Penny on screen it annoys me into a tizzy as the two just have NO REASON to be together other than boning, and even then he’s apparently not a good partner so why then. They have nothing in common and she mocks and belittles him all the fucking time, mocking his hobbies, finding his job boring, and mocking him as a person. And not sharing hobbies or finding his job intresting would be fine, and still work but it’s the constant teasing about it that comes off far more vitrolic than probably intended that just makes me hope for a divorce. Here it’s not only much milder but they did actually get a divorce because their just diffrnet people and i’m not mad the ship was sunk. It was done in a poetic way.

And part of that poetry is Alex realizing that as doomed as things ended up being, via a very sweet montage of their time together.. he realizes he can’t loose this all together. That sure he’d gain a lot and porbably woudlnt’ be living in a closet, but he’d loose all the good times, and he’d loose a friend. His marriage wasn’t so bad he wants to erase it it just ended and that happens. Naturally the other alex’s don’t feel that way but Alex stops them.. Josh is too drunk at this point to help, and ends up creating a time vortex. The vortex sends our heroes home, where Alex realizes his mistake and apologizes for it to bridgette and signs the papers in front of her. As for the Alexs we get a horrifying and hilarous gag as, given they’ve all commented each other is handsome.. start having an orgy, and are later found in amber and their dna is used to create our alex apparently. How does that work?

Point is this episode.. is a masterwork. It’s emotoinal, hilarious, and really good character work, with Alex having a really stellar arc that shades him in and putts a final button in his and bridgettes relationship. And having seen many ships I like end horribly, it’s nice to have one end in a satsifying way like this. Also we see Alex in his borat thong, and i’d just like to point out how funny I find it that the same year they made a borat joke, specifically on it being from a decade or two ago, we ended up getting a second Borat movie. Very niceeee.

World’s Greatest Teacher: This one was alright. On the bright side we got a Mr.Cambell episode! I”ve loved the guy since first meeting him in 100% no stress day, it was the first episode and that hasn’t changed and he’s always a bright spot when he shows up. So an episode about him dealing with a rival teacher, MS. Lake a twice a week music teacher gunning for his job and his students love sounded made for me. In practice he gets a bit too petty to be symapthetic which takes things down a peg, even if it turns out Ms. Lake really is coming for his ass Teddy Bear, but it has enough good gags to help it still be a fun episode.

The biggest one and the biggest reason I sitll like the episode is Timothy’s coffe mug for world’s greatest teacher.. which naturally comes to life, possibly as a psychotic break possibly for real because of the show this is, and starts speaking in the dulcet tones of keith david. ANd i’ve made no secret I love and am thirsty for Keith David on this blog and never will, and having him voice an abusive fowl mouthed coffee mug is something I dind’t know I need but boy did I always need it my entire life. Yes even as a baby. It’s just glorious every time he shows up. The climax is also great as the two teachers end up bonding over the greatest love of all and george micheal after Candace invites River to a part sh’esd having for her tooth coming out, and end up becoming frinemies, a nice solution i was glad to see. Even if i’ll miss evil keith david coffee mug. Rest in power my dude.

Where’d You Go, Bridgette? The second major Bridgette episode of the season and like “Haunted Couch” this one’s an instant classic. After realizing Bridgtte’s already out of control addition to her phone has gotten even worse, Pearle confinscates it and takes her to detox. This leads to two great plots; Bridgette going into withdrawl, complete with an inspired nightmare sequence about her aps and missing her friends death because she was on her phone and the rest of the cast thinking sh’es been kidnapped because she’s not on social media, which while stupid is DELIGHTFULLY stupid and makes some sense given how glued to her phone she is. They end up calling a true crime podcast over, two egosticial college girls who quickly blame them for it despite it making no sense and their fans torm the apartment, and don’t belivie it when bridgette actually shows up.. It takes an inspired speech from Bridgette, whose developed as a person and after actually tasting a late for the first time sees how good they are, and Pearle posting that speech online to dismiss them and our heroes are saved. It’s an utterly amazing plot from josh being excited about the mob attacking them, to Pearle revealing part of the reason she’s so dedicated to helping bridgette is due to her own weird addiction to six flags, which is just so oddly specific I love it.

The Erotic Awakening of A.P. Lapearle This one STARTED well, with Alex reading his viking erotic to everyone, and not getting that Candace maybe shouldn’t be there, only for Pearle to be the only one to actually enjoy it and be inspired by her enjoyment of his work to submit it to a publisher. The publisher ends up making a valid point that women want erotic fantasy from someone they can feel safe by and alex is well.. alex, so he suggests using pearle as a front. it goes how you’d expect: he wants actual credit, the publisher slowly pushes him out, she regrets it, they fight an army of fans and make them vomit with alex reading the book.. standard stuff. It’s just not very funny or a great insight into either characters, and is easily the weakest episode of the season.. though the next one gave it close compettition.

Men Rock!

This one was a chore to sit through, and is only ahead of the last one because it has some really good josh bits and musical numbers which is more than the last one gave me so hey. In a nutshell Emily is on the verge of quitting her and Bridgette’s music careers as she feels they’ll never be famous only for their latest song Men Rock!, an ironic title for a sarcastic song poking fun at a bunch of toxic masculinty bs that is a good song, has hit it HUGE in a fictonal foreign dicatroship and get invited to go, reclutantly agreeing. If you haven’t seen the ep, you can still guess how this goes: say it with me THEY TOOK IT AT FACE VALUE. So our heroines have to help inspire the repressed women and inspire a bloody cou, helped by josh finding some improisoned femisinists in a bathroom. They also gain a fan. it has a few good gags, mostly Candace trying to remind her dad to help her find a place to pee after he keeps getting sidetracked by being taken back by Emily’s sucess. I’ts just a very bad, very predictable episode with very obvious misogyn is bad jokes. And misgoyny IS bad but other shows, paticuarlly tuca and bertie with one early episode, have tackeld this topic better. This episode did not. Last one.

Secret Horse:

This one in stark contrast is one of the series best and an utter joy to watch. On a bad day for the whole apartment with some santa anna winds, an adorable, poofy mained utterly precious horse gets free and ends up at the apartment. Thus we get a vingettte episode, as the horse has a delightful adventure with each of our main 7, and each up tot he last try and hide the horse badly only for the horse to suddenly sprout up and help their mood.

I do love a good vinegtte episode, with two of my faviorite simpsons episodes being 22 short films about springfiled (Minus kirk dragging MIlhouse away from the bathroom, fuck you you balding asshat, it makes the episode hard to watch) ,and trilogy of error, and this is a classic example of it as we get some fun adventures fro each of the housemates: Candace plays with the horse, adorably so, Josh finds it in the garage as his car breaks down and takes them on an install with him, even stuffing them into a suit and we get a great bit of the horse getting fed sugarcubes and josh money. Brigette gets help living in the now instead of posting about it all the time.

My faviorite comes next as Alex needs new patches for his suit but obviouslyc n’t afford them so he takes the ponyt ot he track.. to help him pick which horses to bet on. It’s just such an inherntly funny idea, especially since it works, and really the horse is just hilarious wherever it ends up. It next helps randy win a skating contest, we get a touching story as Pearle misses her old tragically dead horse partner and uses our boy as a subtitute and finlaly we get emily who needs help relaxing and while she naturally calls animal control she hangs up as she falls for hte horse. The group all fight over the horse in the end, the horse leaves and they let it go home, wonder if it was a hallucination and it whizes on thier car. Overall a really great finale and a wonderful note to go out on.

Overall Ranking I’ve decided eveyr time I do one of these, or a post season wrapup of a show i’ve covered every episode of the season to rank them from best to worst sooo

Birthdaze Time Hooch Haunted Couch Secret Horse Where’d You Go Bridgette? Sauce face Houseguest From Hell Joint Break Josh Gets Shredded World’s Greatest Teacher Meet the Frackers Handy Man Up Cyber Matrix Men Rock! The Erotic Awakening of A.P. Lapearle

And i’d like to note that outside of the bottom two hear.. I enjoyed ALL of these. WHich leads to

Final Thoughts; This season was excellent. It had everything the first season had the heart, the character and the utterly great sense of humor, and fine tuned it to be a well oiled machine I could hardly stop laughing at and with tons of great character stuff. Before it had the potetial to surpass regular show but now it has as despite having a few dud episodes itself, as is intievitble in any show, now, they still aren’t as bad as a lot of RS’s early misteps. And Regular SHow as a FANTASTIC show and really stuck the landing, so i’m only saying this is even better and can only go up from here. And even if it stays about the same quality wise, that won’t be a bad place to be. This season was near damn perfect, i’ll probably watch it again and again, and I can’t wait to devour more and given the current tragectory probably will this year. And I couldn’t be more excited.

If you like this blog follow for more reviews, become a patreon to help reach stretch goals or comission a review outright, details for the latter two on my blog. And i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#close enough #josh singleton #emily rameriz-singleton #bridget yoshida #pearle watson #randy watson #candace ramirez-singleton #hbo max #animation #reviews

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scottymcgeesterwrites · 4 years ago

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Final Fantasy II Review

Year: 1988

Original Platform: Famicom

Also Available on: GameBoy Advance (Final Fantasy I &II: Dawn of Souls), PlayStation One (Final Fantasy Origins), PSP (Anniversary Edition), Android, iOS. Wii/3DS/Wii U Virtual Consoles and WonderSwan Color releases are only in Japan.

Version I Played: PSP

Synopsis:

Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon are recent orphans from Emperor Palamecia’s attack on the city of Fynn. They are picked up by Minwu, an agent of the rebellion against the Emperor led by Princess Hilda. The orphans wish to join the fight against the Emperor, and so Minwu helps them on missions to foil the Emperor’s plans.

Background:

So, here's where the history of Final Fantasy games gets a little choppy. Final Fantasy II was not initially released in the US, nor outside Japan for that matter. The reason was because the US localization was taking too long and the Super Nintendo was already being developed and on the verge of released. The same thing happened with Final Fantasy III. The US localization for both games were trashed in favor of working on Final Fantasy IV. Square released Final Fantasy IV as Final Fantasy II for Western audiences, so they wouldn't get confused. Final Fantasy V was also unreleased outside of Japan for other reasons, and so Final Fantasy VI became known to Western audiences as Final Fantasy III.

Then when Final Fantasy VII came around they said "Fuck it" and left it numbered like that for Western audiences too.

The real Final Fantasy II wasn't released to Western audiences until 2003 with Final Fantasy Origins for the Playstation One. The real Final Fantasy III wasn't released to Western audiences until the 2006 remake for the Nintendo DS. Final Fantasy V was first released outside Japan as part of the collection in Final Fantasy Anthology for Playstation One in 1999.

Gameplay:

Final Fantasy II is the black sheep of the series. Even though it sold well on its first release, it’s the lowest selling Final Fantasy game to date. This is in part to the gameplay, which sounds great on paper but doesn’t work out well in execution.

Instead of conventional leveling up - meaning you gain experience points (XP) and your stats rise - you raise your skills and stats based on how often you use them. Everybody has the ability to use any weapon or magic spell. But the more you use one certain weapon or certain spell, the more you level it up. For example, I could have Firion use a sword. The more often I make him use a sword, the greater his skill with a sword. If I give him an axe, he will start with a Level 1 axe ability, and not deal as much damage as he would with a sword.

The problems arise in matters of defense and HP. By that logic, the more you get hit, the more your HP grows. This is pretty infuriating because if you want to grind to raise your HP, you fall in danger of dying. To raise defense, you have to equip a shield and get hit. It also really sucks late in the game if you neglect one particular stat that becomes important.

By the time I reached the third act of this game, I was frankly fed up. I just had the sole purpose in mind of finishing the game. The frequent random encounters near the end infuriated me. Not that they were hard, but they used up my resources and I really wanted to end it once and for all.

However, the game has a nice feature where you can learn key terms and words when talking with people. This helps you remember what to do and where to go next. That part was cool.

Graphics:

Very little had changed between the first and second Final Fantasy games, as you can see.

The same is true for the PSP Anniversary Edition.

The graphics are exactly the same as that of Final Fantasy PSP Anniversary Edition. As such, they feel homogeneous and somewhat uninspired. Once again, they rip the opening FMV sequence from the Playstation One version. Why do they do that? Just give a little extra effort to make it unique. Just a little.

Story:

Final Fantasy II was the first story-driven RPG for the series. It introduced a lot of the trademark elements that the series is known for, like Cid and Chocobos, and so it’s a shame that it wasn't memorable.

Critics bash the story because they compare it to Star Wars from 1977. The plot is similar in that there is a rebellion against an empire and a princess who gets imprisoned inside the empire’s secret weapon of mass destruction. The Emperor even has a right-hand man clad head to toe in armor with a SECRET IDENTITY. While there is no Death Star in Final Fantasy II, there is a massive airship that the Emperor builds to crush the rebellion - the Dreadnought - and Princess Hilda, just like Leia, is taken prisoner there.

But in my opinion, plot parallels should really be the least of your worries. I think the story is a tad bit underrated. Just a tad. Well, the main characters are bland. Firion is a cool name. Other than that, there's nothing to say about them. They are less fleshed out than the secondary characters, which is ironic. I was more interested in any other character than the main cast. Guy (or Gus in some versions) is a stereotypical friendly giant, only saying short phrases or one-word answers. Firion and Maria don't really do much except want to fight for the rebellion. Leon has a story arc that's too quick and convenient.

The secondary characters that you run into are much more interesting – Josef, Minwu, Gordon, Ricard, Leila and Scott. They come and go during certain events and they all have even the slightest ounce of backstory more than the main characters.

The story tapers off after you rescue Princess Hilda. While I won’t spoil anything (though I doubt you’d care but still), there are stupid moments when the Emperor could have easily crushed the rebellion but instead chose a different route. Ultima, the ultimate spell, becomes an important plot device that the heroes seek – and yet it doesn’t end up being effective for the final battle nor is it mentioned again in the story. Overall, Final Fantasy II appears to be the Final Fantasy game with the most plotholes. The strongest part of the story lies in its secondary characters. The game left me wanting more of them instead of playing a group of stereotypical orphans without any personality.

Even though Final Fantasy II has an actual storyline, its predecessor feels much more original despite the fact that it’s more like a series of episodic events. Whether Star Wars was an intentional inspiration or not, it makes sense as a first jab at creating a storyline. It’s simple and tropey.

Music:

Despite Final Fantasy II lurking in the shadows for years, it has good music. The Rebel Army theme is great, especially when you hear it orchestrated in Final Fantasy medleys and the Distant Worlds concert. The final battle with the Emperor has the first true final battle music in the series, and it’s awesome. You can tell Uematsu had fun expanding his repertoire.

Like before, the PSP version adds more tracks and gives a more orchestrated feel.

Notable Theme:

As the chocobos debuted in this game, so did their theme song, which was quite repetitive here. In later games, Uematsu added another stanza of music.

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Verdict:

Most likely the worst of the Final Fantasy games. You’re really not missing much if you never play it. It strikes a jarring note in both gameplay and story, like when you play the piano and keep hitting the wrong key.

The PSP version is probably slightly more interesting. Still, I wish they buffed up the story somehow. Why not remake the entire game? There is potential with the characters. Keep your basic elements but just make the story, you know, not boring and stupid.

Direct Sequel?

Yes. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls introduced a second part to the story called Soul of Rebirth. The PSP version also has it. It's dumb. I tried it and for whatever reason it’s very difficult right away and so I lost interest entirely.

#final fantasy #final fantasy ii #firion #final fantasy maria #final fantasy minwu #minwu #final fantasy leon #final fantasy guy #final fantasy review #square enix #square #sony playstation #nes #famicom #video games #onvideogames

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killscreencinema · 5 years ago

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Final Fantasy VII Remake (PS4)

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We all have a precious work of art in our lives that made a profound impact on who we eventually grew up to be, whether it be an album, a painting, a movie, or especially nowadays, a video game. Final Fantasy VII was that for me, and when it came out in 1997, it would go on to define my high school years.

Which would go a long way towards explaining why I never got laid during those said years. Le sigh....

All kidding aside, I never got laid in high school mostly because I was a mess when it came to the social scene. I had trouble connecting with others and taking what I perceived to be “big risks” like going to parties, joining after school clubs, or -GULP- asking out a girl I liked! I was very withdrawn socially, but I did have friends, and one of them, whom I’d consider my best friend, managed to get his hands on the original Final Fantasy VII before I even owned a PlayStation (I had foolishly bought a Nintendo 64, believing the next Final Fantasy was going to be released on that).

My friend and I were already very close, but we bonded even more as we experienced this new adventure together. He had his own save file that he was pecking away at, but he created a new one for us both to play whenever I’d spend the night or vice versa. The both of us were completely immersed in this world and these characters. It was one of a few positive experiences I can remember from my high school years.

The reason for this preamble is to make you understand how much this game means to me on an emotional level. So when the remake was announced years ago, I was extremely apprehensive. First of all, Square Enix is a pale shadow of its former glory as Squaresoft. Final Fantasy XIII was a goddamn mess and Final Fantasy XV was a step in the right direction, but hardly the stuff of legends like its PSone and SNES predecessors. The Kingdom Hearts games... well, I’ll eventually talk about the rest of those in my blog. Suffice it to say, I had completely lost faith in Square Enix as a company, whereas there was a day I’d play ANYTHING they released because I knew it would be quality.

So lets get to point - did they fuck up Final Fantasy VII Remake as well or is it an absolute masterpiece?

Well... that’s kind of a hard question to answer right now as this is only “Part 1″ of what I assume will be a trilogy of releases that comprise the actual FULL game. However, judging this game alone, I’m going to lean towards masterpiece... with huge “but”. I’ll talk more about that below and warn of spoilers before I get to it.

Make no mistake about it, though, Final Fantasy VII Remake (part 1) is a goddamn masterpiece. The care put into the game by the development team is evident from top-to-bottom, with even the most minute details from the original faithfully adapted. However, this isn’t a strict beat-for-beat retread of FFVII, nor did I expect it to be. While the game follows the basic story almost exactly, some tweaks have been made here or there to better pad out both the gameplay and the story as a whole. I had no issue with any of these changes, until the final chapter revealed the implications of them, which I guess I’ll discuss next to get it off my chest...

SPOILERS

During the last chapter, your party is confronted by Sephiroth outside of Midgar, who then goads you into entering the “Singularity”, where you finally fight the ghostly “Whispers” who have been stalking you throughout the whole game. These Whispers are a significant part of the new story “tweaks” that have been added, which I found annoying at first, but didn’t really mind so much as the story went on until now, because it is revealed that they are “arbiters of destiny”, whose jobs are to ensure fate plays out like its supposed to. During your fight with them at the end of the game, after defeating each Whisper boss, the characters experience “flash forwards” to important story points in the future, such as Aerith’s death and the summoning of meteor, implying that they have more or less nullified these events now as a result of defeating “destiny”... I think. Part of my problem with this portion of the game is Square Enix’s current “naval gazey, head-up-their-asses” story telling style is in full effect here, and I began to get Vietnam flashbacks to the completely incoherent plot of Final Fantasy XIII.

Square Enix, it’s so simple - part of why Final Fantasy VII endures is because it’s a great story ALREADY. By all means, give it a tweak here and there to give the characters more depth or make the story more dramatically impactful, but for the love of Jenova, please don’t tell me it’s going to turn into a philosophical shit show about the nature of destiny and fighting fate. More importantly, Square Enix, please don’t tell me you are going to change CRITICAL plot points for shits n’ giggles or to “swerve” the audience.

For one, Aerith has to die. I love Aerith, especially his incarnation of Aerith in the Remake. She’s so sweet and yet has a delightfully mischievous personality. She’s absolutely perfect. But the reason why her death still haunts fans of the game to this day is because THAT was the point in the story when shit got REAL. The stakes were raised and Sephiroth cements himself as an evil son-of-a-bitch that must be stopped. He doesn’t kill her just to be evil either - he kills her because she’s actively trying to foil his plans by using her white materia. However, unbeknownst to Sephiroth, her death is what ultimately triggers the white materia to work when it needs to most. It’s kind of like how Obi-Wan Kenobit warns Darth Vader “If you strike me down, I’ll become more powerful than you an imagine”, but in this instance it actually makes sense.

So that has to happen. It can’t be Tifa, or Yuffie, or Cid, or Marlene, or some other swervy “gotcha” bullshit - it has to be Aerith.

Secondly, Sephiroth must successfully summon the meteor - it’s in the fucking logo for crying out loud! I can’t imagine what “imminent threat” for the whole world they could do instead. Fat Chocobo gains a massive amount of weight and jumps on Midgar? It’s baffling to imagine the developers would even *flirt* with the idea of changing these important story elements of the game, so hopefully we’ve all just hysterically misinterpreted the meaning of the last chapter.

Oh, one more thing - the final boss fight with Sephiroth was dumb too, if only because it cheapens the eventual actual final boss fight with him at the end of the game. I liked how in the original he was basically a phantom that kept evading your party, leaving behind Jenova pieces for you to fight instead. It’s like how in wrestling, a heel character talks tough, but then runs away when the “baby face” comes out to confront him. Fighting Sephiroth now, not to mention beating him, kind of makes him look weak sauce. Ohh legendary SOLDIER, my ass - I beat him at the beginning of the whole story. To borrow from Star Wars again, it would be like Luke fighting Darth Vader in A New Hope and kicking his ass immediately. Vader sure wouldn’t seem like much of a threat after that.

Anyway..

SPOILERS OVER

God, sorry, this review is out of control and much too long, but I have a lot to say!

Okay, so my worries above aside, the game itself is very well done. The graphics are beautiful, despite the environment being a constant barrage of grey, industrial imagery (hey, that’s Midgar for ya). They find ways to change things up visually, depending on what part of Midgar you’re in, such as Sector 5 having more greenery than usual (cause, you know, it’s Aerith’s home, so that makes sense!). Wall Market, the “red light district” of Midgar, is a treat for the senses, especially at night, what with all the lights and the music playing everywhere. It really feels like a lively, party town.

One major change that had me, and probably a lot of FFVII purists, concerned is the combat system. Gone is the turn based combat of old, replaced now with a more fast paced hack-n-slash style reminiscent of a From Software game than Final Fantasy (though not even as remotely as sophisticated). However, I enjoyed the change, as this makes the battles much more engaging and fun, as opposed to the tedium that can come with turn-based combat, not to mention random encounters. You can still use magic, items, and Limit Breaks like in the old days, so it still feels like the original, but with tweaks that make it better.

And you know, that pretty much sums up my super long review nicely - the game feels like the original but with tweaks that make it better. Even the soundtrack is improved, which is a feat I didn’t think possible considering the original FFVII’s soundtrack is some of the best video game movie ever composed. The Remake does a superb job of weaving in certain themes and remixing themes at appropriate points in the story. “Aerith’s Theme” is more tear jerking than ever, while “One Chosen by the Planet” (otherwise known as Sephiroth’s theme) is even more chilling and fearsome than ever before.

So overall, I fucking loved this game. I rarely get emotional while playing video games, unless you consider cursing and screaming “emotional”, but damned if this one didn’t constantly give me warm and fuzzy feelings (especially whenever Tifa was onscreen - *growl*). I’m eager to play the next part and explore more of this “new” world, despite my concern it might be “too new” in the worst ways.

#final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy vii remake #square enix #ps4 #playstation 4 #sony #rpg #action #cloud strife #Sephiroth #aerith #ffvii

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theladyfromplanetx · 4 years ago

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Dear Lawrence Kasdan So, You Say You Love Han Solo

Dear Lawrence,

I hear there’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on about the Han Solo movie you’re EPing and have co-written with your son. I wish I could tell you I was sorry to hear that, but in all honesty I’ve been hoping for the last few years that someone would kill this project with fire and then nuke it from space for good measure. Sure, most of the reason that large chunks of the nerd world have responded to the very idea of this film is that a lots of people, including me, think it’s a fool’s errand for any actor other than Harrison Ford to strap on Han Solo’s DL-44 blaster. But ever since the release of The Force Awakens, I’ve had a second reason for saying:

to this venture.

I kind of hate to say it, Lawrence, but it’s not me: It’s you.

You see, the The Force Awakens did something to me that even The Star Wars Holiday Special, painfully delivered prequel lines about sand, and the very existence of Jar Jar Binks couldn’t do: The Force Awakens made me regret that Star Wars is still a thing.

It made me regret that children were being introduced to something that used to be innocent and good-hearted by a film that shows that the end game of youthful heroism is failure and running away (and that Han should have stuck to his initial demand of $10,000 all in advance in A New Hope).

It made me angry that nobody among the-powers-that-be looked at it, took a deep breath and said “wait a minute. In shadow-rebooting A New Hope, do we really need to make two of the biggest characters in film history pathetic runaway losers and the other a heartless automaton who would kill her son on (not a)Death Star unless hapless sucker Han showed up to do her bidding and die trying to bring him home…even though that request made not a lick of sense given that the Force-sensitive parent who could actually have had an influence was the bidding mother would have just blown Kylo clear out of the sky had Han not shown up to (1) solve her problem by getting yet another (not a)Death Star shield down and (2) die?“

It made me rue how far we’ve fallen as a critical thinkers when we can be hoodwinked so easily that we spend a couple of billion at the movie theatre on a film that’s dressed up to look and feel like Star Wars, but is utterly life- and hope-denying at its core and presents a kind of nihilism that we’d probably reject as an audience if the words STAR WARS weren’t plastered on it.

Oh, also, the story doesn’t really make any sense.

As you can see, eighteen months later, I can still get a bit aggrieved by all this. However, to quote one of the most egregiously jaw-dropping placeholder lines in The Force Awakens, that is “a story for another day.” (Sorry, Lawrence and JJ, but in a past life, which I call the late 1990s, I went to film school and put in my time in the screenwriting trenches as well. You know and I know that line right there would have gotten you laughed out of an on-line screenwriting class at an unaccredited diploma mill.)

The story for today is that I’m not really keen on the idea of you touching the character of Han Solo again, both because of TFA and because of whatever happened to upend the Solo standalone’s directors. The weight of the evidence coming from the usual suspects (aka unnamed sources) is that the disagreements over the tone of the film and the character of Solo became so vast that somebody had to go. Lord/Miller, as I’ve read in the millions of lines of digital type about this and to which I’m now adding, saw the film and the character as funny, while you insisted that Solo was not funny, but was selfish and sarcastic. Other descriptors of Solo that have been thrown around and attributed to you re: Solo are “narcissistic,” “uncaring,” “out for himself,” and “mean.”

Oh, and you’ve also been quoted as saying you “love Han Solo.”

And therein lies the problem.

Now no one wants a Han Solo movie…hm. I could just stop there for a lot of the fandom, but I’ll proceed.

No one wants a Han Solo movie in which Solo keeps trying to get Chewie to pull his finger, but I’d like to propose, Larry, that perhaps Lord/Miller weren’t the only problem here, because it seems that you actually don’t love the same character that the audience loved in the Original Trilogy. You love the darker version of the character that was tossed around in story conferences and in early drafts and you love the darker story that Lucas toyed with, but decided against using (thank the Makers) in Return of the Jedi. You love the Han Solo that Lucas and Leigh Brackett introduced as the “before” Han at the beginning of A New Hope, but not the “after” he became by the end of that film and the “after-after” he became by the end of ROTJ. Now that Lucas and his lighter view of the Star Wars universe are no longer on the scene, it feels like you’re trying to retcon Han Solo to win a battle you fought and lost long ago and in the process create a smuggler whose heart isn’t actually made of gold anymore.

I know that’s not a very nice thing for me to say, but I can’t help but say it, given how you and JJ had your way with the character in TFA, because he certainly wasn’t the character we left at the end of ROTJ. Nor, I should note, is he the character that we met in Bloodline, the Disney/Lucasfilm novel released after TFA and set five years before it, in which Han and Leia are still happily married and Han is pretty much an identifiable older version of ROTJ Han. TFA Han was an awkward mash-up of a script portraying an aged version of the character we met at the beginning of A New Hope and an actor playing hard against the script to show us a broken man wandering the galaxy and trying to make it work.

That impetus — to remake a beloved hero in a less heroic image — is kind of ugly in any context, despite all the folks who will insist “BUT IT’S REAL” as if real had anything to do with a franchise that for forty years has appealed to the little, innocent part of us that still wants to believe in Santa. It’s particularly a problem when applied to the character of Solo and the role that character plays for Star Wars.

Solo’s not the kid who, twenty minutes into the Original Trilogy, decides he wants to be a Jedi and spends the next five hours and forty minutes of film becoming just that. He’s not the character with royal roots who has been fighting for the good guys since before the first film started and continues to do so until the trilogies end.

He’s the character who has to find his better angels, who has to change in order to become the hero/man/boyfriend/partner/friend he decides he wants to be. He’s a guy who has to overcome his natural instincts for self-preservation. He needs to learn to say “I’m sorry.” He’s snarky, FUNNY, and sometimes grudgingly follows the conscience he’d rather not have in order to do the right thing. He’s not always really convinced about the whole “religion” thing, he’s had some rough times, he’s done some rotten things, and he likes money.

It’s no big mystery why Solo is a fan favorite. It’s Harrison Ford, yes, but its also because Solo is as much like all of us as someone can be in a universe with hyperdrives, lightsabers, and Wookiees. He gives the Star Wars universe some identifiable grounding — and HUMOR. (If you don’t believe me, see: prequels.)

And by the end of Return of the Jedi, Solo became the person we’d all like to believe we are or can be— the one whose better angels have won out and given him a real shot at a happily ever after.

Oh, right, that didn’t happen. Well, it did for 30 plus years, and then it didn’t. Thanks, Larry. Always good to remind myself of Han Solo’s utterly pointless death scene in TFA, a death that many of us steeled ourselves against because we were pretty sure it was coming. It was gutting, though, not because it happened, but because it came at the top of act three of a film that had already stripped the character of his OT arc and also because the death was utterly devoid of heroic meaning or salvific result, given that all it did in the context of the film was turn Darth Emo into Darth Lyle Menendez and make Leia sit down and look somewhat upset.

But it can’t just be a pointlessly sad death of a character who, for all the talking up JJ did about cool rogue Han Solo, wasn’t played that way and didn’t come off that way, right? We all know that when you take down an iconic character like that, you do it with the endgame all planned out. You know exactly how that death — of a parent who rouses himself from his brokenness and ennui to risk his life for son he believes is likely already beyond his reach because the woman he loves has asked him to — will reverberate across the sequel trilogy and, ultimately, we’ll see that Solo’s final act WAS heroic. In fact, it was Kenobi-like. Aslan-like. Christ-like. You gave Solo the ultimate 180-degree arc, didn’t you? He died to save his kid, he died so everybody else could live, and you know it, right, Larry? You’ve got this whole thing mapped out, right, bud? I mean, c’mon, you love Han Solo, so you wouldn’t strip the character of his growth, throw him down an endless shaft (holy cow, dude, you literally shafted him!), and walk away to write another movie about him NOT being a hero, would you?

Oh.

Maybe you did.

So…you’re telling me that it’s possible Han’s final act was utterly futile, solely a device to tell us Darth Emo is really, really evil ? I think we already knew that, given the platypus mask, Vader lust, and the blowing up of a solar system. But, hey, thanks for getting people in our already messed-up world to argue that patricide can be justified; what’s been missing from our pop culture crap stew for the last decade is Star Wars fans arguing that the vastly immoral may be moral because they identify with the patricidal emo character whom they want to end up with the Mary Sue whose mind he attacked in the TFA version of a rape scene. I’ll never know how you avoided feminist outrage there, but count your lucky stars that feminists were so happy to have a female (not)Luke Skywalker in Star Wars that they overlooked that.

So now you move onto the Han Solo film, wherein, after meeting loser, regressed, lost, runaway and dead Han in TFA, we’re going to meet selfish, sarcastic, mean, narcissistic, and out for himself but not funny Han.

Can’t wait. By which I mean I could have happily waited forever, because I wasn’t waiting. I WASN’T WAITING, LARRY.

I get it, though. I’ve seen most of your work. You’re a serious filmmaker — you went from Larry to Lawrence. The Big Chill, Grand Canyon, Accidental Tourist, Mumford. I’ve seen ’em all. God help me, I even saw Dreamcatcher…but that’s a story for another day. What I know from those films is that when you’re calling the shots, nothing is black and white. Everything is a shade of gray.

What I also know is that those films are not made for the part of us that still wants to believe in Santa and that gray is not a good color for Star Wars. Star Wars became the cultural touchstone it is precisely because it jumped into a very gray period in our history, with gas lines and Soviets and malaise, with a black-and-white, good versus evil morality that made everyone just a little bit happier when they left the theatre. You didn’t question if the heroes were heroes or the villains were villains. In its own goofball way, Star Wars — with its complete faith in the power of hope — was countercultural.

Now? The new Star Wars took one look around at our current culture and instead of being countercultural, happily jumped right into the morass and is swimming around in the sludge of relativism. Heroes become failures and run away. Evil characters are given some sort of justification for being evil. Rebels fighting against the Empire are portrayed as assassins instead of people fighting a monstrous evil. The Resistance is some kind of non-governmental paramilitary group. Luke Skywalker thinks the Jedi must end. Oh, and the last two films you’ve written focus on a less noble version of the character you claim to love.

Star Wars is starting to look like a reflection of the worst of us as adults and as a society, instead of a goofy, lovable, out-of-this-galaxy inspiration to kids (and the kid in everyone) to be the best version of themselves.

Hey, I’m sure everyone at Lucasfilm is just fine with this, because these films, despite their shaky worldview, are also printing money, but, Larry, consider that maybe Wonder Woman has proven that there’s still a huge audience for naivete, goodness, and hope. Since you now have Ron Howard, who’s specialized in empathetic leads even in complex films over the years, can you maybe jettison the gray and try to create just one more time not the Han Solo that you love, but the Han Solo that is a combination of you, George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Harrison Ford, and Leigh Brackett?

That’s the Han — the funny, snarky, constantly-irked one who talked a good game about being out for himself but somehow never was when the chips were down — that the audience has loved for forty years, because, in the end, CS Lewis was as right about this as he was about most things:

Oh, and if you could de-age Harrison Ford so he could play the role, that’d be great too…kthxbai.

Best,

Annie

Written in 2017 by Anne Michaela.

#Star Wars #The Force Awakens #Solo #Lawrence Kasdan #Medium.com #sequel trilogy #original trilogy #Han Solo #Anne Michaela #Iron Ladies #2017

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benisasoftboi · 5 years ago

Text

Gushing time.

Rune Factory 4 Special arrived a day early, so my entire day has been consumed in nostalgia. The original Rune Factory 4 was the first video game I ever bought on release day - I remember saving up all my money and making my mum drive me to like three different shops trying to find one that had it. I was already a fan of the franchise - before then, Rune Factory 3 had been my favourite video game, across the board. Aside from a playthrough of the first game last year, I haven’t played a Rune Factory game in a long time, certainly not RF4. But just starting up the game and hearing the music again, it was like it was suddenly seven years ago. Running around Selphia and seeing all the characters again - I love JRPGs, have played a lot of them, and I can think of very few that have characters that have stuck with me this long. And the aesthetics - the best thing about the Rune Factory franchise has always been the aesthetics, the music, the scenic and character design, just the general world. It’s a beautifully whimsical balance of urban and fantasy, and it’s the only JRPG world I think I’ve ever come across that I would genuinely want to live in. Rune Factory may no longer be my favourite game franchise - but I don’t think there has ever been another series that has felt so much like home to me.

Here’s a very long selection of personal highlights from the art book (by which I mean photos of the art followed by my rambling opinions):

Yeah, see, here’s the thing - Rune Factory 1 is not a good game. I could write an entire essay on why it’s bad (I actually started and got pretty damn far before realising no one’s interested in my two thousand word review of a game that came out over a decade ago - the short version is ‘Misty Bloom-fucking-Cave’. Anyone who’s played RF1 knows exactly what I mean). Don’t get me wrong, it has good qualities - excellent boss fights, for one, and also, as with the rest of the franchise, it is aesthetically wonderful. But ultimately, it feels less like playing a video game, and more like playing a proof of concept for a game. Which I guess it kind of was - and I can’t hate it because we wouldn’t have the rest of the series without it.

But it literally ends with a dragon spewing plant breath on a tank to make a turnip grow out of the gun. ‘Profound’, my arse.

It’s Raguna! The “master sowrdsman!” (that is not a typo on my part that is a direct quote from the ending of Rune Factory 1 this game’s script had so many issues-). And Mist! My favourite of the ‘canon’ love interests!

Best girl! When I was a kid, my favourite love interest in RF1 was Rosetta. As an adult, it is Tabatha. I don’t know what it is about her that I find so likeable (she’s as lacking in personality as any other RF1 character), but... idk, I just like her a lot.

Camus’s big ambition is to leave town like even once. He will never achieve it

Fun fact about Melody is that she’s extremely depressed, a fact that comes up once in an optional side quest and is never addressed again. It’s incredibly dark for an RF game

Fun fact about Lukas is that he sucks (he’s one of those ‘obsessed with talking about how hot all the girls are’ characters, an archetype that thankfully doesn’t show up again in these games). But also, interestingly enough, thanks to one of RF1′s many, many script errors, if you marry Rosetta (the girl Lukas is the most obsessed with), he’s supposed to express disappointment that he lost her to Raguna - but instead, he implies that he’s disappointed to have lost Raguna to her. The translators typoed their way into giving him a sexuality change. Which is honestly kind of amazing.

LOOK AT THIS SLIME THIS IS SUCH A COOL SLIME LITERALLY EVERY OTHER JPRG SLIME GO HOME DRAGON QUEST GET FUCKED (jk I like Dragon Quest a lot and its slimes are cool too). Wish you could see in-game that this is what they’re meant to be like.

I just generally love the monster designs, they’re really charming

Rune Factory 2! The RF game with the most weirdly mundane protagonist name (Kyle. In the main four games of this franchise we’ve got Raguna, Micah, Lest, Frey... and Kyle). The two generations thing was actually very cool, but when they say ‘each chapter captures a different lifestyle’, what they really mean is ‘the first half is a weak Harvest Moon I’m sorry, STORY OF SEASONS game, and the second half is a pretty good Rune Factory game’

lookit this little fuck

Yue Yue Yue! I love Yue so much, she’s great. She’s kind of like a much chiller version of Anna from Fire Emblem.

It’s really cool that we got to see grown up Cecilia (she was in RF1). I have this silly headcanon that if Kyle doesn’t marry Mana, Nicholas (her friend in 1) comes to visit Cecilia one day in the hazy-post game future, and meets Mana, and they get together. While Yue is my favourite, I do genuinely like Mana a lot, and I just want her to find love, I guess.

Here’s original Barrett! There’s a reason he was popular enough to make a reappearance (well, aside from the whole grumpy pretty boy thing he’s got going on) - he was a great character in this game. His and Dorothy’s relationship is also definitely the most compelling of the rival romances. Bonus Max, who also has a little shout-out in RF4 (check the diary in what will become Dylas’s bedroom at the start of the game)

Ray is male, but apparently he was originally going to be a female character, as he has an unused portrait in a wedding dress. My friend and I agree that this makes him a Trans Icon

Monster designs remain excellent. Especially the goblins

Skipping over Frontier (and also Oceans later), as I never got to play it growing up due to not having a console, and still haven’t got around to it - might try this summer. Except I do need to point out that these guys should be memes. I don’t know in what way. But they should.

Rune Factory 3! My first RF game. The transformation thing was very cool, even if it was basically useless outside the main story. My friend and I spent hours mucking about in the WiFi dungeon. I loved the desert settlement and all of the dungeon designs in general, and man, RF3 is just great. I hope it gets a remake one day.

Raven Raven Raven! I LOVE Raven (as do most). Her story with Micah is the first time I can remember getting genuinely invested in a video game romance. I’m so glad she cameos in RF4. I love her. She’s wonderful.

I have an odd fondness for Marian. When I was about twelve, I decided to do a playthrough where I deliberately romanced the least popular bachelorette. After poking around on forums, I determined that character to be Marian, and did a run with her. And... I actually came to really like her. I find her endearing. I get that people find her annoying and don’t like her... unethical medical practices, but doing that run has still made me a pretty protective of her. It’s been a long time since I played RF3, so maybe I’d change my mind if I replayed now, but currently, as far as I’m concerned, Marian’s a good’un.

I think I also used to low key ship her with Collette lol

Pia’s official art has always been super weird to me because it’s so not what her character is like in-game. She’s a ditzy airhead. This makes her look so serious

RAINBOW! Another character whose art makes them look way more serious than they actually are. Daria is great and would be a meme if this game was more popular. I think she’s also implied to be a relative of Margaret.

I’ve always been super confused about what Kuruna’s skirt is meant to be. Is it fur? Is it part of her shirt? Is it even a skirt at all?

Check it out, it’s the guy everyone would ship Micah with if this game was more popular

I want Zaid to make a reappearance and interact with Doug. Pretty sure it’s canon that they’re from the same clan? Think it would be very interesting.

RF3 definitely had the coolest farm. Also, still love the desert settlement.

This is from Oceans, so I have no context, but it’s just so cool that I had to share

Rune Factory 4. Culmination of the series is right - when I was playing it for the first time, I remember being blown away by just how much it is a true love letter to the franchise. I have never come across another game series that so consistently grew and improved from entry to entry. RF4 was a perfect ending.

Not that I’m complaining about getting RF5. Quite the opposite.

But if it had been the end (as we all thought it was until about a year ago), well, like I say. Perfect.

Well. Aside from soda can nipples. Can’t believe they didn’t fix those. Though in some ways, that would have made me sad too

Dolce has such a cool design, in both human and monster form. I’ve always kind of crack-shipped her with Margaret, for no real reason at all

Vishnal! I love Vishnal. Vishnal is pure as heck. Marrying him this time around.

Doug! My choice from last time around. Another character who looks more serious in his official art than he is in-game (well... most of the time)

And then there’s Dylas, who looks much happier here than he does most of the time. Kind of looks like he and Doug swapped bodies, actually. There’s a fanfic prompt for you.

Their ship name is Dyldo. I love them

Leon is nostalgic for me mostly because my friend and I used to get into a lot of arguments about whether or not he’s the hottest character in the game. She maintains that he is, because muscles. I maintain that muscles aren’t actually that attractive. It is a rift that divides us to this day

(He looks oddly... younger in this art though? Weird)

Sechs Empire is such an unfortunate name. Seriously. How rushed was RF1′s localisation team? All those script errors, and then this (the Sechs were the antagonists in the first game, and were only referenced in passing in the rest until RF4 - so it was a bit of a ‘sins of the father’ situation by then).

Seriously, try saying ‘Sechs Emperor’ out loud and tell me you can take this man seriously

I??? Love??? Them???

I??? LOVE??? THEM???

Still confused as to why Kiel, Xiao Pai, Arthur and Margaret are on the cover now. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, but... Amber, Dylas, Dolce and Leon made way more sense? Even the Archival Cover makes more sense (Vishnal, Clorica, Forte), as those three are all kind of Lest/Frey’s servants (well, Forte for the whole town, but still). Of those first four, all but Arthur basically lift right out of the game with little-to-no impact on the story

NO HAT TABATHA NO HAT TABATHA

I’ve always really loved this Raven picture

And I am thankful for you <3

#rune factory #rune factory 4 #rune factory 4 special #rf4 #rf4s #rf4srelease #i love these games <3

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