Mister Jack

Indeed

I'm actually willing to excuse this for two reasons.

Frozen II This was a really weird movie. It seems fine when you are watching it, but after you're done and you start asking yourself how certain elements are supposed to work the whole thing falls apart like sand through your fingers. The plot goes by so fast during your viewing that you don't really have time to stop and ask yourself these things, but the unfortunate fact is that upon reflection the story to this movie makes no damn sense at all. It doesn't make sense as its own narrative and it especially doesn't make sense as a follow-up to the original Frozen. It's really, really obvious that they didn't have a plan for a sequel when making the original and had to clumsily build something from scratch that just doesn't feel quite right. There's all this new lore dumped on you that ends up retroactively causing the original movie to not make sense either. It gets pretty bad. The reason I'm still putting it in this thread is because some of the visuals are absolutely beautiful and there are some good songs in here. Anna has a stronger part to play and Olaf is also much less annoying than he was before, which is appreciated. Truth be told, everything presented here was at least decent...except for the story. And, you know, that's kind of a big deal.

So I'm in a weird place emotionally while writing this review since I saw this movie on the same day I had a personal tragedy so please bear with me if this post is all over the place. I just figure it'll help me get my mind off of things by focusing on something else for a bit. Sonic the Hedgehog No, really. I'm surprised too. I went to see this expecting a total trainwreck I could laugh at and make fun of and was surprised to find myself actually enjoying it. To clarify, this is on the softer side of good. If I tried to be "objective" and rank this movie based on the movie making skills and creativity on display here it would be firmly in the OK movies thread. The plot is very familiar and it's pretty corny and silly at times. It's hardly elevating video game movies the way Marvel elevated comic book movies beyond what they were in the early 2000s, but it still must be said that this is not typical licensed garbage that they shat out to make a quick buck on. Regardless of how you feel about the movie, you can plainly see that they were at the very least trying to make a good film that would make fans and kids happy. That was probably already evident based on the year long delay to redesign Sonic himself. Whether or not they succeeded in their goal is up to personal taste, but I appreciate that they even cared to consider what would make Sonic lovers happy. Full disclosure, I have nostalgia for Sonic. I'm not so blinded by it that I'm going to claim his more recent games are good, but I have many a fond memory of playing the original Genesis games as a kid. I am this movie's target audience, along with young children, and I think they did good. Not all the jokes land, but I still found myself genuinely laughing more than I expected to. Movie Sonic is funny and likable and he might even be sympathetic if you're a softy like me since a big part of his character arc is his loneliness due to never having any friends thanks to living his whole life in hiding. This part of his character demonstrates why the redesign was absolutely crucial. If you want me to feel sympathy for Sonic he has to look cute and approachable. There's just no way around it. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I even liked the human characters. Not just Robotnik, who I'll get to in a bit, but the main human cop character, Tom, who helps Sonic out on his quest. I completely expected him and his wife to be forgettable, throwaway characters with no personality who did nothing but take time away from Sonic, but they were actually much better written than I thought they'd be. Tom isn't just some put upon everyman who mugs for the camera when Sonic does something wacky like what you'd expect from the Smurfs movie or something like that. He's a small town cop who wants to move to San Fran where he can actually save lives and make a difference, and he's just about to get that opportunity when Sonic drops in his lap and disrupts everything. This isn't the most original premise, I know, but Tom's relationship with Sonic can actually be kind of sweet sometimes. Sonic is clearly a burden on him and making his life much more difficult just by being around, but Tom also understands that Sonic is a lonely creature with nowhere to go who has never had a real friend in his life so he isn't just spending the entire movie yelling at Sonic when he acts up. This isn't Alvin and the Chipmunks. He tries to be kind to Sonic and give him a little of that friendship he's always craved, so I actually enjoyed watching the two of them interact. It's a cliche, I know, but it feels genuine here. They also have some decent banter, which doesn't hurt. I expected to hate Jim Carrey as Robotnik but son of a bitch, he won me over. If you like Jim Carrey's comedic performances then you should like him here just fine because...well, Jim Carrey plays Jim Carrey. Robotnik looks different in this movie, but it didn't bother me as much as I expected it to. Carrey's Robotnik is an enormous, power hungry dickhead who is constantly bemoaning how he's the only smart man in the room and getting violently frustrated with all the supposed idiots who surround him, which is honestly perfect for that character. I've been fellating this movie for a while now so I need to throw in some criticism to seem less biased. Like I said before, not all the jokes land. It's maybe around 50-50. Maybe 60-40 if I'm being generous. It won't have you in stitches, but I bet you'll still get at least a few laughs out of it. There are some legitimately funny jokes in there. Of course, there was also a fart joke I could have done without and a couple of product placement jokes that made me roll my eyes, but they go by fast and can be quickly forgotten so I'm not going to make a huge deal about it. The plot is cliche, but cliches can still be entertaining if they're presented well. You might know exactly what to expect from a story like this, but I don't really mind as long as I can enjoy the ride. This goes without saying, but if you don't already like Sonic you might as well not bother. This movie isn't going to make you into a new fan. Sonic's backstory before he came to Earth is also glossed over in about two minutes so it feels kind of underdeveloped, but I suppose it's functional. They do start off with one of those "I bet you're wondering how I got here" moments, which I loathe. Sonic himself is mostly a lovable character who doesn't have a cringe inducing level of totally radical attitude but he does floss a couple of times. That's when I have to close my eyes and remind myself that the movie is also targeted at young kids. If they wanna see Sonic floss then fine, I guess it's their movie too. I'll live with it. He still feels pretty faithful so I can deal. Lastly, I have issues with the moral Tom learns in this movie. In fact, I might go as far as to say I think it's wrong, but I dunno. It's ultimately a small part of the story so whatever. If you like Sonic and you go into this with reasonable expectations I think you can have a pretty good time with this movie. It's not trying to be anything more than silly family entertainment and I think that's okay. It's okay to do a silly family comedy with a talking hedgehog as long as you respect your audience and make an effort to give your viewers more than the bare minimum, and I think they did that here. I'd put it more or less on the level of Detective Pikachu, maybe slightly beneath it, but if you've seen Detective Pikachu then just keep your thinking around that level and you should have a good idea of what you're getting into here.

So I read a rumor that Netflix is working on a Bloodborne TV show starring John Boyega and got super excited for a moment, then immediately after that I read another rumor saying that it wouldn't have any cosmic horror elements and immediately lost interest. I don't think I've ever done a complete 180 on a show so fast.

So I like this new Fire Emblem quite a bit but I have a problem with the support cutscenes. The pre-rendered story cutscenes are fine, but the ones where they are just standing around and talking are bare minimum. Cutscenes with people just standing around and talking don't bother me that much. What bothers me is when they start acting like they're doing something that they clearly aren't because you can see it plain as day. For example, there was a cutscene where a big, muscular character is talking about how he's carrying a whole bunch of heavy objects in his arms and on his back, but he's not carrying jack shit. He's just standing there like normal. The argument in favor of this might be something about budget or time, but to that I say that if you don't have the time, money, or talent to animate somebody performing a physical action, maybe don't write a scene that requires them to perform physical actions. I can look past this sort of thing for little indie games where small teams or sometimes even single creators are just trying to make the best of what they have, but Fire Emblem is a sixty dollar AAA title from a major studio so there's no excuse for that.

Good point. I forgot for a minute that Rockstar might have the worst crunch in the entire industry. Top 5 worst for sure, at the very least.

So you remember that guy who stole a bunch of money from my mom and we were gearing up to take him to court? Yeah, he's dead now. We ain't getting that money back, and yet I don't really feel angry about it.

I just hope it brings down the price of the S10. I want a new phone but only suckers pay for the latest model.

Never underestimate corporate greed. Look what EA did to Madden despite being the only football game in town.

You may already know this by now but it looks like Dan Houser has left Rockstar. Allegedly it was because 2K is pushing Rockstar to make shorter single-player games and focus more on online microtransactions, but I haven't seen any confirmation on this. It wouldn't surprise me in the least, though, and unless I hear otherwise I'm willing to believe it.

@TheMightyEthan Byleth was announced as the last DLC character for Smash Bros season 1 character pass, making him/her the eighth Fire Emblem rep so far. People are especially sore because a while back Reggie had said all the paid fighters would be from unrepresented franchises.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses So I know everyone hates Fire Emblem and Byleth right now but this might just be the best game in the series. I've only played a few of them but I feel pretty confident in that assessment. There's a ton of content and branching paths here and you don't have to buy the game three times to see it all (fuck you, Fates). Your choices, while they are few, actually matter to a significant degree and change the entire course of the story in wildly different ways. The students can be a little tropey, but I still couldn't help getting attached to most of them. Except for Hubert. Fuck Hubert. This game is quite clearly influenced by Persona with the new school system and time management mechanics, but it's not so similar that I would call it a total rip-off. I enjoyed that stuff in Persona anyway so I like it here too for the most part. There were some story beats that went unresolved, but I'm going to assume that playing the other routes will give me the full picture. When it comes to battling I really appreciate that they deemphasized the rock-paper-scissors weapon triangle. That was always my least favorite thing about the series next to the permadeath. It feels limiting, like you have to play a specific way if you want to get anywhere. It's not completely gone and certain weapons will still have an advantage over others, but it's not so huge that it forces you into a specific play style anymore. Speaking of permadeath, I turned it off. Yeah yeah, filthy casual, but I'm the kind of guy who will reload a whole battle and do it over again if someone dies until I get a result where someone doesn't die. I can't stand losing units because it means missing out on content, so I just cut out the middleman to save time. The new combat arts system kinda feels like an afterthought. I don't know if I was doing something wrong but after a while my regular attacks were doing more damage than my combat arts so I never had any reason to use them except for Bernadetta's long range archery skill. Even skills specifically meant to do extra damage to certain enemy types were somehow doing less damage. I found that very strange and I don't know why that was the case. I don't have any other major complaints about battles, though. The new battalion system is cool and it feels a little more balanced than Awakening did when you could pair up and steamroll over everybody. Battles in the first half of the game are still kind of easy though, at least on the normal difficulty. When there weren't any special objectives like defending a certain VIP or killing a specific enemy I often got by just fine on the auto-battle. I wasn't expecting to jump back into this game right away but with the New Game+ file I should be able to see the other paths without taking so much time so I'll probably replay it soon.

I actually think this is kind of cool but I can understand how that can be subjective.

I'm finally playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses and it's good so far but I absolutely refuse to believe that Nintendo wasn't looking very closely at Persona 5 when making this game.

Tough call. There's some great stuff slated for this year just like it was really hard to choose last year. If I absolutely have to pick one, though, I'm going to go with the FFVII Remake simply because this game has been hyped up for, what, ten years? And what we've seen so far looks pretty great.

Luigi's Mansion 3 This game was delightful. Luigi himself only has a small handful of moves and abilities and you get most of them at the beginning, but the game cleverly finds new ways to utilize them for every floor that keeps it feeling fresh. For example, your vacuum will always use suction but on one floor you might use it to grab vines for swinging and on another you'll be using it to steer a boat. Each floor of the hotel has a different theme and is full of puzzles that can sometimes be tricky but not too difficult. The boss fights with the various ghosts are all quite unique and no two bosses ever really feel the same throughout the whole game, which is great. Luigi himself is ridiculously charming and lovable, jumping at every loud noise and trembling before every ghost yet always pushing ahead with his quest to save his friends even if he's timidly calling out for Mario the whole time. Top it off with a bunch of optional gems to find and a ghost hunting multiplayer mode and I can see myself coming back to this every now and then. I'm a sucker for ghostbusting gameplay and catching ghosts in this game feels great. Grabbing onto a ghost and slamming it into other ghosts who are suddenly afraid of Luigi after all their previous taunting and bullying is super satisfying. I can only really think of two criticisms. First, it isn't always apparent what you're supposed to do. Since every floor is different that means they're constantly expecting you to solve puzzles in different ways you haven't ever done before. You can usually figure it out yourself but on one occasion I had to consult a guide to find out that you're supposed to pull on a statue's arm to open a door even though I hadn't been doing anything with statues whatsoever for the past 8 hours. My second gripe is that the game can be a little too fond of pulling a bait and switch on you. The objective for each floor is to find an elevator button to get you to the next floor, but sometimes when you've beaten the boss and picked up the button the game will yank the rug out from under you to take the button away, forcing you to jump through more hoops to get the button back. It does this at least three times that I can remember, and by the last time I was yelling "Oh come on!" Even with those nitpicks I would still recommend this game to anybody with a Switch unless you just hate fun or something.

Playing Luigi's Mansion 3 at the moment and god this game is absolutely adorable. I'm kicking myself for not getting into the series earlier.

@FLD As much as I liked Sekiro, I think I'd still say Bloodborne is my favorite From game. I'm a sucker for cosmic horror themes too as well as gothic horror and putting the two together is just...mwah. It also helps that the lore is much easier to grasp than any of the Dark Souls games. Even with From's minimalist style of storytelling, I still had a pretty good idea of what was going on. The Old Hunters really adds a lot and the sawblade on a stick from it became my go-to weapon, though there are lots of other interesting options including actual eldritch body parts if you go for a high arcane build. If you ever somehow get the opportunity to revisit the game with all the content included I highly recommend it because the DLC's additions can make it feel almost totally new again depending on how you play. As far as the armor goes I found it's more about maximizing resistances than increasing your defense stat and I would often change my outfit depending on what I was up against. You definitely notice a difference between armor with low or high frenzy resistance when you're up against those damn winter lanterns. God I really hope we get a Bloodborne 2 on the PS5.

How is this not infringing on Nintendo's patents?

Snatcher Yeah, the old Sega CD game that was one of Hideo Kojima's first projects. I modded my Genesis mini to play CD games and loaded this onto it because it's always listed as being one of the few good games on the system, and it is. It's got a few shooting segments that are meant for a light gun, although they work fine with a controller, but for the most part this is a visual novel. It's a pretty cool premise, though. It takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk future 50 years after a bioweapon has killed 80% of the Eurasian population and society is starting to rebuild itself over there, with Japan being a hub for people and refugees of all races to live together. In the last three years, however, androids called Snatchers have appeared out of nowhere, named such because they are killing humans and replacing them with identical replicas. You play as a junker (Snatcher hunter) with memory loss who is assigned to a government junker agency as a new recruit along with a little robot buddy named, wait for it, Metal Gear. Over the course of the game you investigate a murder and naturally get caught up in a conspiracy while working to regain your memories and find out where the Snatchers came from in the first place and what they want. If this sounds a lot like Blade Runner and Invasion of the Body Snatchers to you, you're not wrong, but the two ideas marry together pretty well and it's a pretty interesting narrative for such an old platform. The final act is mostly an extended ending with minimal interaction, but apparently this was added to the Sega CD version after the original game's cliffhanger ending didn't result in a sequel. It still manages to provide a decent payoff for the story. I wouldn't really say you need to play this game yourself since the shooting sections are just kinda tacked on and the rest of it is just going through menus, but it's worth at least checking out on Youtube sometime. Kojima had his unique style even back then.

It's 2020! I know we have a Game of the Year thread for 2019, but this is a little different. This is about picking any game between 2010 and 2020 that you feel defines the whole generation for you. If some time traveler asked you to look back at one game from the last ten years and point to it as being the most influential, the most memorable, the most popular, or even just better than every other game, what would it be? I know what my pick would be. To this day I still maintain that Witcher 3 is the best open-world game ever made. Yes, better than Grand Theft Auto. Yes, better than Red Dead Redemption 2. Yes, especially better than Breath of the Wild. It's just amazing what they put together here. A story I actually care about? Check. Side quests and missions that are actually interesting? Check again. Combat that can be challenging but not too frustrating? Check. Choices that actually matter? Check check check. On top of that, Geralt is probably the best open-world protagonist I've ever played. In almost every other open-world game the main character, especially a custom one, gets so much shit dumped on him or her by every other character and all they can really do is sit there and take it. There are so many times when I wish I could just push a button and tell them exactly why what they just said is fucking stupid. Witcher 3 actually heard my wish because Geralt is a master of snark and an absolute riot, but despite this you can still take him seriously as a character and care about his journey. If there's anything that pushes this game over into GOTD territory, though, it's the open world. It's wonderfully designed, full of color and interesting things to see and people to meet. A pet peeve I have with many open world games, and this does apply to Rockstar, is that sometimes it feels like it's just big for the sake of being big. There are long stretches of nothing that are supposed to impress me but just make me feel very aware that I am playing a video game right now and I become impatient to get to the next objective. Witcher 3's world is big without feeling too big. There are a generous amount of fast travel points so you don't have to waste too much time riding aimlessly unless that's your thing. Most importantly, the world is littered with a bunch of really cool stuff to see and do. Thanks to the bizarre human characters and diverse monster population you can never really be sure what the game will throw at you next. And all of that isn't even getting into the fantastic expansions that I still remember fondly even today. I imagine most people have played this by now, but if you never got around to it because you feel like you have to play the first two games before you do (which is why it took me so long) then put that feeling aside and just do it. Skip the first game. Your choices in it literally do not matter and it's barely referenced at all aside from some old acquaintances of Geralt's. Watch a Let's Play or something of the second game. Witcher 2 is good and your choices in it do matter, but if you don't have time to put it on your backlog then just do what you gotta do to let yourself play Witcher 3 because it is the game of the decade.

Let's not forget Kathleen Kennedy made the unfathomable business decision to let the guy who wrote Batman v Superman do the script.