Mr. GOH!

God of War because it's already my GOTY.

A statement about an awesome character and a rumination on another character with a prediction and possible spoilers based on basic Norse mythology:

I love how banal people can make this game sound when trying to hide spoilers! Also, @Atomsk88 and anyone who knows what he's referring to: Edit: I cannot overstate how much I am enjoying this game. Very light spoilers for the overall structure of the game so far (I am maybe 20 hours in and have done all the side quests I can find):

Avengers Infinity War. It is a terrible stand alone movie, actually, but a really fun serial episode. Since I watched all the other movies in the MCU, I'll put it in the "good" category on this forum. More discussion in the MCU thread later.

This game is not a big escort mission. Atreus takes care of himself for the most part. If he gets overwhelmed he may not be available to shoot arrows, but he's very easy to get back and there's no game over based on Atreus. Only Kratos can die, really.

There will be lots of deaths in IW or the next Avengers movie, which will all be undone when the universe is rebooted at the end of Avengers 4.

This game is very good, at least after the 10-ish hours I've put in after immediately playing through the entirety of GOW 3 Remastered over the last week. The combat is different than the previous entries, but I think it is better. It's essentially Dark Souls-lite; it's more deliberate than the previous GoW games, but still waaaaaaaaaay faster and action game-y than the Souls games. The camera is over-the-shoulder and player-controlled, which is far less frustrating that the old GOW games' camera. Kratos now wields an upgradeable magical axe, having ditched the Blades of Chaos at the end of GoW III. Melee combat is built around the Souls R1 for light attack and R2 for heavy (this can be remapped to the old GoW games' square and triangle buttons if you'd like). L1 raises your shield, with which you can parry-stun some enemies. As you upgrade your equipment and Kratos's skills, you gain access to a bunch of different combos as well as equipment-dependent magic attacks. Ranged combat consists of throwing the axe and then summoning it back to you like Marvel's Thor with Mjollnir. Except Kratos's axe can stick into enemies, which sometimes has a special effect such as freezing the enemy while the axe remains buried in it. The animation and sound of the flying axe are top notch; it feels *incredibly* badass to throw the axe and summon it back to your hand. While the axe is out of Kratos's hands, he is very adept at punching enemies to death, particularly since unarmed combat causes a stun gauge to fill on each pummeled enemy and once it is full, Kratos can do an auto-finisher reminiscent of the QTE finishers in the old GoW games, albeit without a QTE (at least yet). The second aspect of ranged combat is your son; Atreus fires his bow at targets you specify at the press of the square button and, as you level up skills and equipment, assists Kratos in other ways (some of which I have clearly not yet unlocked). Atreus's ranged attacks also fill the enemies stun gauges, which is helpful. This integrates Atreus and his bow into combat in a very useful, fun way, making him a million times more helpful than, say, Ellie in TLoU or your various henchpeople in the Uncharted games. I am not sure if Atreus can die, really, but he can be overwhelmed and need Kratos's help to escape enemies ganging up on him. There are a lot of different options for armor and runs you can put into the axe to make it behave differently or to give you special attacks. You can also add enchantments and gems and upgrade equipment in other ways. I have just started to scratch the surface of the equipment systems, so I can't really comment on how they work together, but it appears deep and vast. The first five or so hours of the game is a linear introduction to the basic systems and the game world. The game gets the tutorializing right, balancing narrative and a gradual ramp-up of combat difficulty and options with effective storytelling that is never exposition-heavy . The game is also committed to the single-take camera, and it has worked so far, particularly in a specific early boss fight with a human-sized opponent and when Kratos encounters the series' trademark Enormous Monsters. The game also looks gorgeous, easily as good as any Naughty Dog game and better than Horizon: Zero Dawn, even on my regular PS4. As many reviewers have said, like BOTW, discovering different areas and game systems is part of what makes GoW so good, so I will put the rest of this post behind spoiler tags. The first tag will hide a very paragraphs about how the game has been structured so far, and the second will go into detail about the narrative so far.

I got God of War III Remastered and preordered the new God of War for PS4 after the reviews were so glowing last week. I played GOW1 and 2 a long time ago but never played much of 3 on PS3, so I thought I'd finish it before playing the new one. I think I'm about halfway through GOW3 now and it certainly is the third GOW game. It's a fun mythical murder spree, but I look forward to the new one mixing up the game design.

Ready Player One It was slick-looking as all hell, but so very mediocre and, of course, Spielberg can't help but fuck up the ending. This is a movie I will forget all about in a month because it was 100% fluff.

I totally missed that post, @TheMightyEthan ! I toyed with playing Mario Odyssey with the kickstand out, but I couldn't see the screen clearly enough and just went back to handheld mode.

No; I had a coupon to watch it for free from my cable company and I had watched most of the dumb movies on my list to watch or re-watch while home with my son. Specifically, I generally watched something mindless during the late-night bottle feeding between 1 and 2:30 am every morning. Nevertheless, it was not worth it.

It is; it took me a while to figure out that I should disconnect the right joy-con to make the gyro puzzles much much much easier in handheld mode. That's what made me consider the stand for a hot minute before I realized I would never want to game for more than a few minutes like that.

I get that the herders had hi-tech weapons; it just seemed like they nonetheless live in mud huts. Edit: I thought Spider-Man's quip was a throwaway line, but I get that vibranium's a fantastic material. Nothing has suggested that it also bequeaths magical powers to people, however. The movie was pretty clear that the heart-shaped herb's properties are based on vibranium and the soul-stone is not mentioned. I'm all for good fantastic materials and powers, but vibranium seems to be becoming a lazy way to give folks invulnerabilties and superpowers. See: https://www.theonion.com/sci-fi-writer-attributes-everything-mysterious-to-quant-1819570928 I guess a retcon/reveal in Infinity War that it was the Soul Stone all along that gave BPs their powers is probably likely.

I recenlty re-watched Justice League and, man alive, is it terrible.

Annihilation. I liked the movie, but I truly love the book and the compromises and changes Garland made to make a shorter, less interesting film made it, well, less interesting. If it weren't for the super dumb ending (which is NOTHING like the book), I probably would have put this in the good movie thread.

Black Panther. I think that Black Panther is not as good a movie as a lot of folks claim. It's still one of the strongest Marvel movies, though it's not as good a film as, say, The Dark Knight or Logan. that said, it's still very fun and the performances were all quite good. Killmonger is among the best MCU villains, along with Zemo, Robert Redford, and the Purple Man, even though I think BP does not do a very good job actually exploring his worldview (and those of other Wakandans). That the story itself was about Wakanda's role in the world rather than another Infinity Stone or baddie seeking to blow up a city was refreshing. I also liked how T'challa very much depended on his family and friends for support and those characters were central to the story rather than set dressing or teases. Coogler also does a good job, for the most part, of establishing Wakanda as a place, although the film does not really explain how it all works together to make a cohesive nation-state. I do have a few questions and gripes about the setting. Why are some Wakandans low-tech herders while others work in labs that look like they belong in Guardians of the Galaxy movies? Why does Wakanda City sometimes look super-sleek and other times looks like it was built on the same sets used for the trash planet in Thor: Ragnarok? How does vibranium give people magical powers? It also felt weird that a super-advanced society would happily adopt and maintain a rulership-by-combat system, which strikes me as a particularly this-setting-was-designed by-well-meaning-but-still-kinda-racist-white-people sort of thing. There was a huge helping a standard Marvel nonsense, from the first- and second-act action sequences for the sake of action sequences, to the "battle where two groups charge at each other in a conveniently abandoned area as if that made any sense." I particularly disliked how the last battle felt like it took place on an empty lot with a freshly-mown lawn conveniently near some Disney studio and, for the BP/Killmonger fight, in CGI befitting 2004 rather than 2018. Edit RP1 is a fine adaption? So it's just as silly and dumb as the book?

Doesn't fix the fact that the screen is too small to play on if it's further than 2 feet from your face. Which is fine, it just makes me wonder about the kickstand and the peripheral you just posted. I mean, I thought about ordering the stand but quickly realized there are no situations in which I would want to use it disconnected from the TV with the joy-cons detached.

Jesus Christ is this game good.

Does anyone ever use the Switch's kickstand? It seems both impossible to use and completely useless since you would have to be super close to the tablet to see the screen anyway.

Oh, yes, I misunderstood Mal's question.

As a federal civil litigator, my professional opinion is that Trump's lawyers range from skilled but very foolish to delusional clowns. His personal attorney is not very good; the Stormy Daniels agreement is laughably bad in many respects, at least under federal and NY law. @TheMightyEthan huh? Privately funded groups sue elected and appointed government officials all the time. Taxpayers pay for civil suits when AGs or USAs or other government attorneys/subdivisions bring suit.

I blame parenthood and the ebay $250 deal. Going to get Zelda and Mario Odyssey after it arrives. Edit: Also got Surviving Mars, which is neat so far.