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Lamp, broken circa 1988

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Everything posted by Lamp, broken circa 1988

  1. Hey, so, here's an update: on halloween my sister got Covid. It's been fucking terrifying and hard to focus on, uh, anything critical thinking-wise. So I do intend to do this, but there's a little while before I'll be ready to do anything. It seems like things are on the mend but it's hard to tell with this fuckin thing. I'll keep you posted.
  2. DESTINY 2: BEYOND LIGHT [3] I know there's a destiny thread that would benefit from this review more than this thread would, but all my reviews go here, so. I have some misgivings about how Bungie does things these days, and I will not let those go unmentioned. In brief: I hate their dedication to undermining everything I placed value in, mostly tossed away because they give up. I liked Future War Cult, so factions are gone. I liked collecting the guns and armor I acquired over time and storing them in the vault so I could pull out anything I needed for any reason, so now all gear has expiration dates. I liked doing crucible and gambit, so now the matchmaking doesn't sort by skill and there's rampant hacking. It's not going great! All that being said, Destiny 2: Beyond Light: The New Authored Levels And Story is I would say the #3 Destiny expansion so far (behind Taken King and Rise of Iron). A big part of that is personal: Variks is my favorite character and he's been blamed for the death of my least favorite, so being able to save Variks life in the first fifteen minutes and then being able to hang out with my clicky buddy has been great. While Europa is a very eye-strain kind of locale, the actual encounter design in all the new areas is actually pretty fun. The Strike on Europa is my favorite Destiny 2 strike by far. Speaking of Strikes, they remade the last encounter of the cosmodrome strike so it doesn't feel like being bled dry anymore. Bungie the Live Service Developer is pretty bad, but Bungie the Game Developer still has it where it counts. tl;dr: it's good but if you're put out by how they've been doing things, they didn't fix those things YAKUZA: LIKE A DRAGON [4] Ten hours in and I adore this game. It'd be hard to talk about without spoiling things but the short version is this: Ichiban is a fantastic protagonist. I hate using D&D terms to describe this stuff but I'm tired and it's the best analogy I've got right now: where Kiryu was Lawful Neutral veering on Good, Ichiban is Chaotic Good to a degree that makes the game feel like a departure. It would be easy to write another Hyper-competent Good-Hearted Gangster. They tilt the opposite way and put the player in control of this Kismet Bull In a Kismet China Shop, who's thickskulled eagerness pushes him through any god damned thing. The justification for the way he acts is almost pure: "I just do what I think a hero would do." They also go a long way to make societal punching bags the entire core of the story, showing dimensions to sex workers and the homeless that most open world games would trample en route to cheap jokes. and then outside all of that it's a Yakuza game, so it has all the sharp writing and all the absurdity and everything else you've come to expect, just wholly freshened up in a way that major game franchises just aren't anymore. A pure delight. I intend to 100% it, and that includes learning Shogi.
  3. Kakuryu (back injury) and Hakuho (knee surgery recovery) are both out for November.
  4. yeah the GOTY candidates right now seem like Hades, Genshin Impact, and Animal Crossing. Among Us blew up HUGE this year but it came out two years ago, so, there's that. A lot of the big budget games this year have either whiffed or been super divisive. The best big budget game I can think of is Ghost of Tsushima and while it's well made I struggle to look at it and think "Yeah, that's the game of the year". Granted there's like 13 new games out next week but somehow I think it's still going to come down between those three. for the record i do not like genshin impact but talking about games that blew tf up this year, that's one of them
  5. So. I don't really like movies that much. That's why I never post in this subforum at all. But when the pandemic started a lot of my friends were scared and needed something to do, and so to give us something to focus on and talk about that wasn't the horror of the world, we did a mock version of this whole process. We watched movies, submitted ballots, I put some math on it, and we submitted our top 50 under my name. Nine ballots were submitted to our thing, including mine (because I watched enough movies in the process to have opinions). The first place movies on our ballots were Annihilation (Mine), The Lighthouse, Under The Skin, Spiderman Into The Spiderverse, OJ Made In America, Get Out, Your Name, Doctor Strange, and Cemetery of Splendor. Now, the last two didn't make it onto our top 50, but they were first place votes, so, that's why they got honorable mentions. Sorry Octopus. We did make one other adjustment to our list. In our balloting process, our winner was Mad Max Fury Road. But the margin between Mad Max and Sorry To Bother You was six points. So when we submitted the ballot, we agreed to move Sorry To Bother You up to 1st place, because we were worried it wouldn't get enough support to make it to the top half of the ballot without that vote. So, mission accomplished there. Watch Sorry To Bother You. Another fun result of this list comes from that whole thing posted about "the highest ranked movie that didn't make the list." Mine is, allegedly, Bad Times At The El Royale. I HATED THAT MOVIE SO MUCH. IT'S A COSTUME DEPARTMENT THAT WISHED UPON A STAR AND WAS GRANTED LIFE BY A FAIRY GOD-CD COLLECTION. so of course that's the movie tied to my name there. Seeing that made me regret this whole process, but it's not like eight accounts joining with no posts to all contribute to this and then disappearing would have looked better. I wont post the full ballot, but after remembering Jae being unhappy about Thor Ragnarok's high placement and how I'm allegedly the high vote on that, I thought I'd share my top 17 along with the group's top 17, to prove that at least I didn't want it to go down like that either. EDIT: btw @RIPPA could I get a copy of the spreadsheet you used? I'd like to see if I could make a version of this combining y'alls ballots and ours to see if anything interesting happens. No worries if you'd rather not.
  6. Once the ballot dumping ground post is available, I will explain why that happened and more.
  7. An uncommon run of positivity today! Among Us [3] It's not bad but I have trust issues and the thought of trying to deceive someone gave me a legit panic attack. A reminder that my 3 is "i don't regret this", which is true. It's interesting and if there was a version where I could Never Be The Impostor, that'd be a game I would like. Or if that Hide And Seek mode became a full fledged mode that you don't have to yell at a settings menu to make work. Jackbox Party Pack 7 [4] It's the best Jackbox they've ever put out. It's not close. Like two of the games aren't the biggest hits in my circle- Blather Round and The Devils And The Details (which is bad but ambitious)- but Quiplash 3 fixes the bad final phase of Quiplash, and the other two new games are GENIUS. The second best is Champ'd Up, where you have to draw and name the champion of a certain concept (I got the concept of Murder and drew "Literal Dynamite"). Then, that drawing is sent to another player with the name, but not the subject (so they drew "2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee"). Then, everyone else votes on what the winner is (I lost). The idea is amazing, and it's improved by how much better the drawing tool is. But let me go ahead and bust out a seperate rating for the best game in Jackbox history. Talking Points [4] Ted talks are now for cornballs. I think we can all openly admit this. So Jackbox made a Tedtalk game. Step 1: write three prompts. Step 2: pick a prompt. Step 3: give a presentation. The catch is, another player is picking the slides while the presentation is going, so the presenter is getting surprised by the pictures and must incorporate them as they talk. Fortunately they also get to add captions and draw on the slides to make impromptu diagrams. It's... it's perfect. Oh, and after the game, you can make up your own award and give it to whoever for whatever reason. Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution [4] Okay. so. I'm waiting for the Tekken patch because I'm currently too mad at Armor King to play Tekken. So I dig out my copy of VF4 Evo and hey guess what: this is still one of my favorite fighting games ever. The tutorial is ridiculous in its depth. The gameplay is so clean and perfected that I forgot how much I prefer VF to every other fighting game. I live in fear of whatever this new Virtua Fighter sega is making, but I'll always have 4 EVO. I Replayed Return Of The Obra Dinn [4] ...and I'm pretty sure it's the best of the indie puzzle games for one reason: since it's hard to remember the names and faces of 60 people you don't actually know, the amount of time that passes before you've forgotten all the solutions is so short that you can actually play it again sooner than every other game in this genre. For example, I'm probably another decade out on being able to play Fez a second time, because I have to wait until I forget about two specific puzzles. With Obra Dinn it's been like two years? And it was like I didn't play it at all the first time. as for the november game rush, I am the person that has ignored everything else coming out in favor of Yakuza: Like A Dragon, so stay tuned for my review of that.
  8. Out of curiosity and something I'll explain once it's the right time to publish ballots, could I get a copy of the spreadsheet you used to make this?
  9. I AM SCREAM LAUGHING GOOD JOB ROB MANFRED, YOU DIDN'T GET SEVEN MINUTES OF OFF-SEASON BEFORE SIDESHOW BOBBING YOURSELF
  10. spiderverse and thor ragnarok haven't showed up yet, so there's that
  11. Bumping this back up to say I'm going to get started on this after November 2nd.
  12. somewhat astounded and disappointed I'm the only #1 on Sorry To Bother You, but so it goes short: for all the movies about The World Today :*( , Sorry To Bother You actually proposes solutions instead of just saying what the bad things are. On top of that, it's fucking hilarious and everyone in that movie is fantastic in it.
  13. the fact that The Nice Guys is #68 is a near miss of cosmic proportions.
  14. A fun story about Annihilation: One of my least favorite things movies do is use cancer as a plot point. I've lost five family members to cancer, and I find most screenwriters just use it as a generic bogeyman and have no actual experience with it. Plus, it reminds me of all that good good trauma. So after this huge breakthrough with anxiety and depression, I go to the theater with a bunch of friends for the first time in what must be seven years. We sit at the very back of the theater. OF COURSE the first line in that movie is Natalie Portman saying "Cancer." I let out a single loud "HAH." we are not the only people in the theater. my friends are very good sports for putting up with me in times like this. as for the movie, it's excellent and seeing it so low makes me genuinely concerned for the placement of my #1. EDIT: Oh speaking of my friends being good sports, since I was the highvote on Beyond The Black Rainbow I should share that story too: we watched it on halloween last year (they were all big into Mandy and so after they saw that we checked that out) and swear to god I was pumping my fists like I was at a concert during the ending of that movie, screaming and hooting and hollering. I liked the rest of it too, the whole aesthetic of the VHS Science Video Compound falling into limbo over one horrible experiment, but I sure felt like a freak for how I responded to the ending. I just love a good anticlimax.
  15. See, this is why I loved Cosmopolis. The clunky dialog totally fits in line with the nature of tech bro adulthood, where every gesture towards maturity and deep thought feels more like two kids stacked up in a trench coat trying to get into an R rated movie. There's ideas inside what they're saying that grasp at reality but it's so far gone and disconnected and disrupted that it can't work. It's philosophy as a broad puddle, vast and shallow, unable to support any weight. I feel Pattinson's degradation during the course of the movie is the result of the character trying to dive into this puddle and just stomping all over it. totally understand why it's not for everyone tho
  16. Ok here's list #3. I went back to 1969, though still with one album per year. Also did some minor reordering. The next move is to put the list on RYM so I can share a link instead of a several hundred entry list every time.
  17. lol there's a little button for it in the top bar between the emotes and the bulleted list buttons. It's a big creepy eyeball. EDIT: I'm gonna take advantage of this post to hype up one of the best discoveries of my life. At one point I got curious about the existence of Chinese Punk Rock, and indeed found some, and eventually found my way to one of the best rock albums I've ever heard, "White Paper" by PK14. Try this, and if you like it, hit the playlist button. It's worth it. The ending is an earth shattering jam.
  18. I think the way I'll participate in this thread for now until enough people take part for there to be some kind of official structure is like an ongoing analysis of my own list. So, to start with, I took that first list I posted and ordered those. The next step is going to go backwards for a few years from 1988 to about 1969 and pick one album a year on the way. Lamp List Vol. 2!
  19. lol holy crap I misread what you were asking. I thought that was like a decade thing. it'll take me a bit longer to put together an All Time list. In the meantime I do have this list I've been keeping of the best albums I've found from every year I've been alive. Worth nothing that some of the 90s choices are more about me not listening to enough albums from a year to know for sure. 88: Talk Talk, "Spirit of Eden" 89: Boredoms, "Soul Discharge" 90: Fugazi, "Repeater" 91: Slint, "Spiderland" 92: Tom Waits, "Bone Machine" 93: Wu-Tang Clan, "Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers of Death)" 94: Acid Bath, "When The Kite String Pops" 95: Today Is The Day, "Willpower" 96: Rage Against The Machine, "Evil Empire" 97: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "f#a#(infinitysymbol)" 98: Boredoms, "Super æ" 99: Neurosis, "Times of Grace" 00: At The Drive In, "Relationship of Command" 01: The Constantines, self-titled LP 02: The Constantines, "Modern Sinner/Nervous Man" EP 03: The Constantines, "Shine A Light" 04: Madvillain, "Madvillainy" 05: PK14, "White Paper" 06: Liars, "Drum's Not Dead" 07: Ungdomskulen, "Cry-baby" 08: Women, self-titled LP 09: Cloud Nothings, "Turning On" 10: Women, "Public Strain" 11: Jenny Hval, "Viscera" 12: B L A C K I E All Caps With Spaces, "Gen" 13: Faux Fur, self-titled 14: milo, "A Toothpaste Suburb" 15: Earl Sweatshirt, "I Don't Like Shit I Don't Go Outside" 16: Thee Oh Sees, "A Weird Exits" 17: King Krule, "The Ooz" 18: US Girls, "In A Poem Unlimited" 19: Quelle Chris, "Guns"
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