Quick CoronaBreak
I have a comic about Alrick Rosas half done but due to errands and other obligations I didn’t have time to finish it, so here’s a doodle of a machine from Nier Automata, which I recently finished.
Since the states are starting to re-open and in a few weeks will probably shut down again because we did absolutely nothing to handle the virus during the downtime, I figured I’d ask you fine folks what cool new stuff you’ve played/listened to/seen during the quarantine. We’ve mostly all been stuck indoors with nothing open to spend time at, what have you discovered in that extra free time? I’ve played a bunch of video games and seen some new shows that will be added to my favorites of all time.
GAMES
-The Witcher 3 – Some of the best stories and writing in a game I’ve ever seen and a few moments that will stick with me forever. However, that was about all it did well. I found the gameplay itself very clunky, the combat was total ass, half the systems seemed irrelevant (like potions and alchemy in general) and could have been cut or severely streamlined with little of value lost, and the world was too big for it’s own good. Basically, a great universe with great characters on a great quest that wasn’t much fun to actually play.
-Nier Automata – A weird depressing existential masterpiece with probably the best soundtrack I’ve heard in a game in years. If you can get past the extremely anime designs of the main characters you are in for one crazy ride. Also a rare case of a game sticking the landing (as long as you play to the true ending and not just the first ending).
–Resident Evil 2 Remake – Really good until you leave the police station, then it becomes mediocre and I’m not sure why so many people thought this was game of the year material
–Resident Evil 3 Remake – Just straight up mediocre as hell, do not recommend
SHOWS
-Avatar The Last Airbender – I didn’t watch Nick as a kid (I was a cartoon network boy) so this one never reached me until they just put it on Netflix. It’s perfect. I love it. Possibly the best super powers/magic powers universe I’ve ever seen. Harry Potter and Marvel movies can eat my ass.
MOVIES
Ready or Not – Pretty good horror/comedy movie with a great premise and an ending I did not expect that filled me with glee
BOOKS
The Expanse series- I didn’t read the whole series in quarantine but I got caught up with everything released so far, and the latest two books were incredible. Probably the best sci-fi universe going right now. The show is great too, and it gets better as it goes.
Outside that I’ve mostly been biking, drawing, and giving myself anxiety headaches because 2020 is literally hell. What’s been getting you through it?
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Have a safe and righteous Juneteenth, everybody Lets make today a national holiday.
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Don’t know what system you have but the absolute best story in a game I have ever experienced is The Last of Us on PlayStation. The Last of Us 2 comes out today. The first games story will blow your mind. Also because it is such a good story the writer of Chernobyl on HBO is making into an HBO series which I have no doubt will be epic. Look it up and enjoy
Also a book to get, The End of October, came out very recently by Lawrence Wright. He has been working on in for 3 years and is all about a coronavirus Pandemic. It is very on point to recommendations of shelter in place, to us having a shortage of ventilators. A really good read.
Apparently, the fandom’s in a rage over the Last of Us 2’s story and how it basically dumped over the first game. Proceed with caution. Also, do you really need to shill it in two separate comments?
‘The fandom’ isn’t in a rage- there is a very loud group online that is railing against it based on leaks but, as the game comes out today, they haven’t played it yet, so I’d call any criticism from non-reviewers premature.
I was severely disappointed in The Last of Us. The gameplay was samey and the story was predictable and cliche (but executed very well). I do not care for the extreme movie railroading Naughty Dog does. It was just sneak around and stealth kill, quiet exploration section, sneak around clickers…there were multiple instant fail parts if you missed a queue, it just wasn’t what I wanted and I have no interest in the sequel which is apparently just more misery porn.
My goodness. I thought that I was the only one who felt this way about TLOU. From the opening tutorial mission that introduced Joel, I felt like the game was screaming “YOU WILL FEEEEEL THINGS.” Literally the #1 reason I got a PS4 was to play TLOU (I hadn’t owned a console since the OG NES), and when I finally did it fell pretty far short for me.
Fortunately, Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man made me quite happy that I had a PS4. I have no interest in TLOU2 though.
Of course, I also have a ton of other bad video game opinions: FFVII is a bad game and Aerith is a terrible character, Dragon Age 2 was the best Bioware game, the first Knights of the Old Republic game was better than the second (and is also the best Star Wars story since 1980), Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is the best Assassin’s Creed game and Unity is close behind except for the terrible ending, Bioshock is greatly overrated and Alien: Isolation is the best game in the System Shock coaching tree, the Arkham games are *fine* but are carried heavily by “you are Batman”, the looter/shooter game loop is boring and the process of discovering new gear every five minutes in a game is tedious, Morrowind was better than Skyrim, Tomb Raider 2013 is better than any of the Uncharted games (but the subsequent Tomb Raider games dropped the ball), and Saints Row the Third has the best opening level of any video game ever.
I also bought a PS4 for TLOU. We got the Bundle that came with the game. I barely touched the console for a year after we got it because I found it so overrated. The souls games and Horizon rescued me and now the ps4 was my favorite of the generation.
Your opinions aren’t too bad. I have my own share. I also found Breath of the Wild overrated despite being a huge Zelda fan. I also straight up despised Bioshock infinite by the end
Check out The Last of Us on PlayStation best story of all time on a video game. HBO is making a series of it with the Chernobyl creator at the helm. The sequel hits shelves tomorrow and I will be glued to it
Downtime? What downtime? I’ve been to work 5, 6 days a week every week this year. Yay being an essential emoloyee! And what’s this nonsense about being stuck indoors? Plenty of people were out and about in parks and whatnot, its not like the police were enforcing anything. I spent most of the ‘shelter in place’ time either working, or oit hikings/camping/backpacking.
And hopefully no states shut down again. The economy is already in shambles, people are running out of money, and forcing people (or at least trying to force them) to stay in their homes non stop and never leave is fucking cruel beyond belief. If you shut down for as long as there isn’t a vaccine (2021, no guarantees it will be effective either) the amount of businesses and more importantly people that will never recover financially will be mind boggling. Granted, there is a slice of people that WANT everything to fall apart, because them they can expand the government to new reaches from which it will never get pulled back but let’s not talk about those pinko commie jizzstains.
And no more holidays for christ’s sake. Theres to many already.
Imagine being such a fucking slave to the cult of work that you don’t want more days off. Who the fuck doesn’t want more holidays? Get out of here. Hell, remove Columbus Day and give us Juneteenth instead. A far more honorable holiday.
Maybe it’s less that people want the economy to fall apart and more that we dont want 100k MORE people to fucking die for an economy that already leaves them behind for billionaires, but apparently empathy ain’t your thing, so fuck off
You sound like a fun person at parties.
jesus fuck
everything in that comment is wrong
Make sure you see The Legend of Korea, the steampunk-ish follow up to Avatar. The first season in particular is delightful – I still go back and watch the end of the season finale for goosebumps.
Ugh The Legend of Korra. Stupid autocorrect. Though Legend of Korea sounds like a good video game…
Can 100% confirm. Legend of Korra is like Avatar, but with 0 filler, way fewer fart jokes, and the only ship in the franchise I really care about becoming cannon.
Legend of Korra has way more fart jokes than ATLA. I can think of literally one fart joke in the Last Airbender, that being in the episode The Avatar and the Fire Lord when Aang lets one rip while he’s in a trance, while Meelo is basically a walking fart in the first season of Korra.
I love Legend of Korra. The first two seasons are fine, but the third and fourth seasons are amazing.
Legend of Korra is a good follow-up to The Last Airbender, but I personally wouldn’t overhype it for new fans. The first season is a drag at times with Avatar’s version of Quidditch playing a central part of the plot. It also gives us “Fartbending” as a special type of airbending, which… Wasn’t for me.
If you can get through that and some of the teen angst parts of the character arcs, it’s totally worth your time though. I do absolutely recommend it, and I thought it got continually better throughout the show’s run.
Not gonna lie, the Pro Bending stuff is one of my favorite parts of Season One. It feels like a game that could actually exist in that world with rules that make sense and it provides us with exciting low stakes action scenes that puts Korra’s airbending training to practical use.
I absolutely love ATLA and have gotten 4 or 5 other people to watch it and they’ve all loved it too. However, I was really disappointed in LOK. There were a lot of interesting ideas that weren’t fully developed – namely villains with sympathetic positions and where the resolutions were very deus ex machina and didn’t address the actual causes or symptoms brought forward as problematic. Also, the spirit stuff was just too flexible as a story device to make any sense or give any gravitas to the story. It also felt much more like a soap opera. ATLA forever!
If Avatar was a 10/10, Korra as a whole was a solid 8, and probably a 9 if you excluded the back-half of Season 2.
Oh man, I started playing The Long Dark and I am hooked! Both story mode and survival mode are great. I was playing one day and looked out the window and thought, “That’s odd. I’ve never seen the sun illuminate the street like that when it’s setting.”
That’s because it was rising.
So yeah, when you no longer know what day it is or time of day anymore, you should probably take a little break from your video game. Anyway, Narcos is great too. Have a good weekend!
Witcher 3 – when you want to read a novel but think you’re playing a video game. Using my old man voice I declare “why in the fuck make the text so goddamn small when 99.7% of this game is reading?!”
The Witcher 3 is awesome and I’m surprised it took me so long to play, considering my hours in Morrowind, Skyrim, and Oblivion. Pretty much started watching after the Netflix series even though I bought the game on Steam a million years ago. If you haven’t looked into it the Mod community is quite involved, they have a ton of Gfx enhancements and even mods that make the characters look like the Netflix actors. I’m really worried someone is gonna butcher the eventual Elder Scrolls show.
I shamefully admit to playing Dwarf Fortress finally.
Been teaching my 3 year old how to PC on Need For Speed.
I “rediscovered” Veronica Mars and Scrubs and finally watched The Good Place.
“The Looming Tower” might be my new favorite miniseries.
Watchmen was awesome and HBO is letting people watch it for free this week.
Nazi Hunters was just ok. Lots of good parts but could have been a lot better.
Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse is my new favorite Spiderman movie (ITSV, Spiderman 1, Spiderman 2, Homecoming, Away From Home, Spiderman 3, those other 2 is my new order).
Into the Spiderverse looked really weird in trailers and I was really doubtful but the reviews were so good so I went and saw it in the theatre. I’m so glad I did. Twice.
It’s a visually sumptuous feast of animation that deserves the big screen!
Right? When people were crying about marvel losing Spiderman I thought well at least Sony is working on more Into the Spiderverse stuff
Final Fantasy 7 Remake – gameplay, soundtrack, and the story are amazing. I loved the original, ate up the CGI movie, and played through the PSP prequel Crisis Core. FF7M is well worth the time.
I’ve been playing a lot of Backyard Baseball 2006 on my old Gameboy Advance, the Picross S series on the Switch, and I recently finished the first season of the Syfy show Vagrant Queen. Hope it gets renewed because it’s pretty good, but I don’t have high hopes, it seems rather niche.
the “trap” system with a neutron star just on the precipice of supernova blew my fuckin mind
fuck sorry wrong op my comment made no sense, carry on
I spent the last month or so replaying all the Batman: Arkham games after a sale on Playstation, having only played the first one (Asylum) before. They’re good, the story is pretty dang good after Asylum, but the combat just made me want to play Spider-Man PS4 again, so I’m stupidly excited for the Miles Morales PS5 game coming out.
I got the Hunger Games prequel, ‘A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ when it came out and finished it last week. It does a lot of good tie-in to the older world of Panem and future president Snow’s character, but the last third of the book seemed a bit rushed, which is a weird feeling for a 500 page book. I am now re-reading World War Z, which makes me hate the movie abomination all the more.
For TV I mostly just turn on cooking competitions and mock people’s poorly seasoned vinaigrettes while eating my instant ramen/microwave burritos/takeout. I love cooking I’m just so bad at it.
The Expanse books are incredible! As you have seen, shit is getting CRAZY! #AlwaysABiggerFish
Amazon video has Season 1-4 right now that cover maybe 1-4 books? I dont remember, but its pretty loyal aside from some expected cuts made going from TV to books. Bezos and Amazon are dumping hella money into the budget where SyFy Channel couldn’t, but stays true to form.
the “trap” system with a neutron star just on the precipice of supernova blew my fuckin mind
After slacking off for a year (or two) – the usual wahwahwah excuses (moving, injury, etc tc) – i’ve been getting back into yoga and tai chi. it’s was slow going at first, but i feel better than have since, well, since i started slacking off. still haven’t found a local group i like, but even individual practice is great.
it was always the plan for this year, but i’ve been doing more gardening than before, and eating the results.
media stuff: let’s see. i rewatched the wire, been wanting to for some time now. it not only holds up to a repeat viewing – i feel it improved. i listen to rock&metal/classical/jazz/hiphop, but often stay with the artists i know i like, but i’ve diggin into more niche stuff of late. some of the obscure composers (the bach kids and grandkids, the “minor” russians), newer metal (not nu metal! crypt sermon out of philly is pretty great classic-but-modern doom. i found this austrailian band named Portal that i call terror metal – -seriously warped stuff – – ), older rock (mostly bands associated with the talking heads and the scene at the time, television). most new rap sucks a xanax-limp dick, but there’s some good newer acts around (logic, lucas joyner). i’m digging the new Run The Jewels.
oh yeah, for the first time in my life i have a bathtub can fit into – so i’ve rediscovered proper baths – – ooooh baaaybee. chopin’s nocturnes are excellent bath music. as is Earth, ploddingly slow, heavy wordless. my gf calls it heroin music, but damn is it relaxing.
oh, and I BEAT ROGUE! i remember playing it as a kid and not really knowing WTF i was doing, but last month i successfully retrieved the Amulet of Yendor, and i wanted to make t-shirts proclaiming the fact. (i figured out a cheat, but i also beat t straight-up.)
OMG, I was an Angband player, but when I finally got “over the hump” and made it to a strong late-game and carefully beat all the endgame stuff it was such a huge thing. after so many years of getting killed because of one stupid mistake in the mid game
i don’t know what that means. i’m talking original rogue, text-based dungeon crawler. like where you are a “@” and “D” is a dragon and will kill your ass flat. i assume it’s a roguelike? me pa, despite not being a tech guy at all, had our house wired with xenix (microsoft unix!) terminals, and i could play rogue on them.
Rogue came out in 1980
it quickly split into Hack and Moria by 1983
Hack became Nethack, and Moria became Angband, which represent the 2 major branches of roguelike development for 30ish years, until the last few years when “roguelike” has really started to mean “procedural content+permadeath”
comparatively few people played rogue, when compared to Nethack/angband, but all 3 had a lot of similarities (including graphically)
Really been meaning to watch The Wire. As a Canadian I don’t get a sense of some of the US dynamics except through some of the news and I feel like that show would really be enlightening – not for history sake – but for understanding some of the societal mentalities of the US.
I would highly recommend The Wire, the writing in the show is so tight and well done. I love the series as an examination of institutions, and how they perpetuate cycles.
Instead of a list I’m going to start by hyping 1 thing:
Monster Sanctuary is the best monster training game I’ve ever played. I love Turn-Based RPGs, I love monster taming/collecting games. I’ve played a lot of them. Monster sanctuary gets everything right about the combat system. It’s deep and interesting. Easy to pick up, but with great rewards if you really pay attention. Outside of combat the game is a 2d metroidvania that uses monster skills to traverse the map in a way that is *so* much more satisfying than HMs, and without having to slave a member of your team to do it. The world building is great, the story is interesting, the puzzles are fun and varried, the combat is absolutely fantastic (I found it a little easy, but I’ll take that over Pokemon where I’ve been bored and unchallenged since high-school)
Absolutely my favorite new game of 2020.
Also playing:
FF7 Remake (still working through it, as I don’t get a lot of TV time)
Mount and Blade 2
Verdant Skies
Terraria (5 player co-op)
My wife is up to like 800 hours of animal crossing, so I feel like I’ve played it by proxy
cute/dumb little romance visual novels. My favorite has been “escape the princess”
I’m ~400 hrs into Red Dead Redemption 2. I’ve gotten 100% and there is still a metric ton of content I’ve missed. Anytime I feel like curling up into a fetal position and crying (about every 15-20 minutes), I’ll take a horsey ride across New Austin at sunset. Oohhh yea, that’s the stuff!
Rewatching Pushing Daisies. Criminally underrated show, it holds up better than ever 10 years later.
Coincidentally, I also started watching The Expanse a few days ago. I’m a huge Syd Mead fan, and having spent a gazillion hours playing Mass Effect, some friends told me to check it out. So far so good!
I discovered the original cast album of The Theory of Relativity, which may be my new favorite musical. It is just a brilliant song cycle: clever, witty, emotional, intelligent, and poignant. So good.
I also finally read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, since I took a trip to Savannah. Highly recommend.
I have more masks than you. My fake fear makes me a better person. We need the economy to fail to help a coffee can of dust get elected.
waaaaaah I hate people who express fear of a virus that has literally killed almost twice as many people as Vietnam and I choose to ignore the virus because I haven’t had it yet waaaaaaah we need more people to die for the economy that leaves most of us behind anyway so we can re-elect a man who tells people that drinking bleach will help
oh noes the “economies” might “fails”
This economy was effed up before the virus. Get it right.
Dude. Get fucked–preferably by something pointy and barbed.
I’ve got 2 friends that are nurses; there’s been stretches where they lose 2-3 patients *per shift*.
Yeah it’s not like the bubonic plague but it’s not trivial.
As a frontline healthcare worker I haven’t had the free time, but my off hours are spent at home. I watched Veep, which is a hilarious show. I’ve also been hooked on LoZ: BotW. Such an amazing game.
Oh shit how’s everything been? Worse than is reported? Better? Thanks for what you do
Death of Stalin is by the Veep guy and it’s hilarious, even as it plays fast and loose with the facts (which are crazy enough)
I work in soft drink distribution so no extra time off. I did watch Rocketman recently. It’s a better-than-ok rock n roll biopic. Worth it just to listen to Elton John’s music and they guy they got to play Elton is incredible. Been playing Outer Worlds on PS4. Good but lacking. Hope they go all out on a sequel.
A friend has been trying to get me to play Horizon Zero Dawn for actual years and I held off until this downtime before I finally ordered it on amazon (10$!). Not super far into it, but I’m mad I waited so long to get it.
Horizon Zero Dawn is my second favorite game of this generation after Bloodborne. Absolute classic and I get hyped whenever someone discovers it.
I think HZD is always gonna be one of those pieces of media where I have trouble separating my personal appreciation for the quality of from *when* I played it. I picked up the complete edition for like $15 during one of the early “panic stock-ups” for covid. I had been transitioned to full time work from home and got so absolutely absorbed in the game that I would wake up way early just to have more time to play it before work. The game itself is fantastic, and having such a beautiful world to explore as I was stuck in my apartment boosted the experience for sure. Looking forward to the sequel.
In the few months since the lockdowns started, I have gotten better at identifying local birds, including chipping sparrows, European starlings, and mourning doves.
nice! good for you! i hadn’t really thought about it, but i have too! saw me some red-winged blackbirds, blue herons, egrets, cranes, red-tailed hawks, turkey vultures, turkeys, various finches, and bald eagles recently. not all of which i could have positively identified until recently. also i finally can (mostly) tell the diff between ravens and crows. ravens are way bigger and croakier. i saw one snatch up a bunny last week!
Looked through my old games and found Mario Kart Wii and both Mario Galaxies. Was lots of fun to replay those. Also ATLA 4 life
I just wanna say, I love you so much for wathcing Avatar. That series is so good on so many levels. Thank you. And thank you. And thank you.
I’m not involved in its production in any way, but I love it so much. Thank you.
Watching:
• Narrative Telephone – the Critical Role guys okay a round of Telephone, using stories they’ve written based on their own Vox Machina/Mighty Nein characters. Ashley’s was adorable.
• QI – Series R has launched early this year.
Playing:
• Core Grafx Mini – what you know as the TurboGrafx 16, and everyone wise apart from France called the PC Engine. The home of PC Kid, Bomberman and so many other classics.
• Untitled Goose Game – or Richie Incognito Discovers Reincarnation
• Waku Waku 7 – silliest beat’em-up I’ve ever played, complete with Not-Totoro as one of the characters
• Twinkle Star Sprites – if Michael Bay was tasked with creating a competitive shooter using only pastel colours, it’d look like this
• Katamari Damacy Reroll – 17 years on from its initial release, it’s still the most original and surreal game I’ve ever played.
• Mario Kart 8 DX – still as good as Mario Kart has ever been.
(Sidebar: I’m amazed how few football games are on the Switch. Football Frenzy from the Neo•Geo, Tecmo Bowl, Mutant League Football and Football Heroes Turbo. Needs something like a High Impact remake or at least a new NFL Blitz/Street.)
Listening:
• Per Gessle: Mazarin / En Händig Man / Son of a Plumber / the Tennessee Sessions / En Vacker Kväll / Small Town Talk. Massive Roxette fan, and Per’s non-Rox work cane way to the fore with Marie’s illness’, retirement and sadly her paying in December. Still has the energy he did back in the 90s – you wouldn’t think he’s turned 60 – but there is a new melancholy there in the new stuff.
• Lightning Seeds: Dizzy Heights. Coming up on 24 years old, and some of it still sounds like the ink hasn’t dried in on the page. Sugar Coated Iceberg is one of my Desert Island Discs.
• Roxette: their entire 30 years of output. All of it. Pearls of Passion to Good Karma. They ARE the Soundtrack of my life. Saw them four times live, plus another twice without Marie (2009, 2018). It won’t be the same without her, but I hope Per keeps things going with the otherwise same lineup. I like what Helena brings to the mix.
• Critical Role in podcast form. Whack on some coffee and set it to d double speed, and you can blast through most episodes inside two hours.
I wasn’t expecting the little robot when I clicked on draw play but I liked it a lot once I stopped trying to figure out the punch line 🙂
my province is now 10 days without a new covid case reported, so there are signs of complacency, but I’m sure as hell glad no one made mask wearing an identity issue here. There will be new outbreaks, especially living next door to an incubator nation, and basic hygiene will be needed to keep them contained.
I got done 100% Xenoblade Definitive Edition the other day, it’s such a good game, such a good good game
Another essential worker without a lot of downtime, but I did revisit (and finally beat) Subnautica. Had a great time really building up my base and exploring.
Seeing the Forbidden West trailers makes me really want to replay Horizon Zero Dawn, but I have so many other games (like Automata) to play…
Playing a lot of Civilzation VI and Animal Crossing New Horizons.
I love civ games but I spend entire campaigns trying to maintain peace with India just so I can troll Ghandi into declaring war.
im having a bitch of a time with civ vi and its new districts mechanism, so much so that im getting my ass kicked because i dont advance my tech tree as fast as literally anyone else
Dave isn’t playing on PC. Huge disappointment. Pretty much changes how much power the president has.
Everyone should try Android Netrunner on Jinteki with a friend!
If we’re all going to share game recommendations you should totally try Realm of the Mad God, so long ass you’re not afraid of getting hooked. The basic premise is that they took an MMO and a Gradius/R-Type style shooter and merged the two. You’ve got gaining levels, getting loot and team play combined with fast paced bullet hell shooter gameplay.
I know nothing about that game but that picture really makes me feel things. Melancholy, ennui-like things. Like a sad little robot just watched its makers destroy themselves…I think it’s my new phone background. I dig it