Lamp, broken circa 1988
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Posts posted by Lamp, broken circa 1988
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- "Fetch The Bolt Cutters" by Fiona Apple
- "Forever Black" by Cirith Ungol
Ok so obviously I know Fiona Apple. On top of that, I really liked Idler Wheel a whole lot when that came out. At the same time, my instincts as a former music critic and my general age meant that when Pitchfork gave the new record a 10, I was going to hold off on listening to it for as long as possible, because I had no interest in engaging with any kind of discussion with the zeitgeist of "OH MY GOD A 10" music listeners. I listened to it two months ago and found it fine but overblown. Now I will listen to it with my full attention.
SpoilerI assume we've talked about the piano thing in the past? In case I have, here's the short version: I find the instrument largely silly since it's one of few musical instruments that has no natural counterpart. I also find that 90% of piano players have fuckin brain worms. Fiona Apple is excepted from this latter group because of the heat in her lyrics and singing voice, and that covers the distance of how silly I find the piano. This is a good intro, is what I'm saying.
Now If I remember right, this record has a lot of showtunes vibes in the songwriting and this is refreshing me of that memory. The benefit is that Fiona's delivery helps make that feel less bad than that sounds on paper. The lyricism also works really well, even if it accidentally reminds me of a really sad time in my life that is such an impossible dart that it's not worth getting into.
This song is really neat! A lot of times when you make a title track it seems like the expectation is that it's the biggest point of the entire record. I've been guilty of that on most of my records. To take the key statement and slow it down and focus on it is a really interesting approach and I really enjoyed this song. That's why this is written in a past tense, because it wasn't until the outro that I thought to write anything at all.
This song is less interesting structurally to me. I can't put my finger on it. It might be the repition, that it feels like the most verse-chorus thing on here so far even though each record has had choruses so far. Maybe I see the work too much to disconnect? I spent the duration of the song trying to figure that out lol
This is a really good and powerful digression from the sound of the last track, where it disconnects almost wholly from pop structure and just builds towards the verses with a droning rhythm. It sounds like storming down a stair case and then stopping to turn around to yell, which the lyrics fit this image to a tee. All the instrument choice is really interesting too. This'll probably end up being my favorite song on here.
And we're back to the showtunes stuff. The performance on all this stuff is great, and the production of all of is outstanding. This just isn't a style that works for me.
When the songs go this direction I'm a lot more into them. It just feels more furious and disconnected from traditional song structures and that's in general my thing. I feel the lyrics really hard through my history of relationship abuse and that's about the most I want to say about that.
This is probably the best of the showtune-y songs on here, or at least the best to this point. The last time I listened to this it shook me for some reason that I don't remember and I really disliked it. That was then, and here in this listen I'm enjoying it. Probably same genre of "oops my abuse history" reaction formations. It didn't happen this time so I can't speak to it.
The pacing of this record is really helping. No song transition has felt jarring (the transition between the first two tracks was maybe a bit too cute?) and has moved nicely. At the same time I had to start this song like three times to really sink into it. The shifting structure despite it being very verse centric helps it feel unpredictable and surprising whenever something develops sonically. The tonality of this also fits the theme, where the rhythm section is POUNDING while all the melodic work is distant and wiggling, as though suspended in the air by a string. I'm smrart.
Sez here this was written for a soundtrack and I definitely feel that. It's the most pop sounding thing on here, which has it's place and I'm confident how it'll be followed. I really like the "Start it off" section because it subverts the soar, using the general principles of that development but making it a darker set of chords to make it more anxious and fearful than it usually sounds.
Yeah see this is what I mean by the followup. Couldn't get further away from the pop song than this. It feels frantic like recollection, which is somewhat what she's talking about in this song so that works out. I feel like I should leave talking about this song here because of how it stands on its own.
This is another one of the more fun pop songs on here. It has an R&B lilt to it in the swing of the rhythm section and the backing vocals. This is really immaculate songwriting here, and probably the song I'll return to most from this record.
And we're leaving on the tonal shift, and most importantly not an ending ballad! Which, for the record, Idler Wheel didn't end that way either, so Fiona Apple's on my side on this campaign of mine against the ending of ballad. There are so many more interesting feelings to leave someone with than deflating. And this leaves the record with real, palpable tension, an old car with a flat tire wheeling away from a setup.
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A good time! Not the songwriting revolution critics ran to call it, but, hey. A good time. Now in one sense, this is an alarmingly hard choice between these two records so far. They have a lot of the same strengths- pacing, development, unorthodoxy amidst incredible technical performance, and ideal production. However, this is my ranking system, and in this process we've made clear how I feel about Rock Lyrics, so Fiona Apple gets the edge pretty much on that alone. It's otherwise a much tougher conversation to have than I ever would've expected.-
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@Casey EPs are totally in play.
As you may expect, I know basically nothing about this band! A google reveals to me that they're from southern California, and they've been around since the 70s. It also invokes "power metal" in the descriptor on wikipedia and if I'm going to be honest it's one of my least favorite kinds of metal (blame my ex's blind guardian/iced earth collection), but the thread isn't "I judge whether or not I want to listen to your album of the year" so here we go!
SpoilerThere's a small part of me that's disappointed that guitars started after that noise at the start, because I was like "oh man let me get an all brass power metal album" for a second.
Alright! I'm into it! The jogging on roots sound still works for me sometimes and this is one of those times. I was expecting more traditional power metal vocals, but this stands right along the edge of black metal vocals to me? Like, I know he's not shrieking or whatever but there's an atonality to it that makes it sound like all that stuff and hey, grab me however you can. I don't mind. Also we've done this for enough time by now that I'm pretty sure I dont have to say this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have anything to say about the lyrics for this record. This is really stable songcraft. Can't complain.
This intro guitar line is more the kind of stuff I'm expecting out of a power metal record. Oh man, if the vocals are like this the whole way through I'm probably gonna have a decent time. This is full on hypocritical but the chorale to provoke crowd response doesn't bother me here. The groove under the solo is good enough, and the solos so far are working for me because of one thing: Restraint. Like, we (the band and I) both understand this is a metal record. So these first solos have been middle-ish in pitch and sort of slow. I'm assuming by the end we're going to have at least one full on top of the neck hellstorm shred thing, but it will have earned it.
This is the single, isn't it? Anyways this singer is still great and it's carrying songs I'd find kind of dull otherwise I think. I don't have a lot to say about this one structurally. It's got simple goals and accomplishes them. I wonder if this being a genuine article Old Metal Band helps?
Ok the next song started and it's a ballad so while it takes it's time to be interesting I'm going to keep going on that last point. So on a discord I run, I've also been running a Best Of The 2010s thing for music and WOAH OK GET LOUD. Thank god it's not just gonna be quiet for the duration, and that the howling is back because the clean vocals weren't doing anything from me. Anyways during the Best of 2010s thing someone put up a Greta Van Fleet record and I fucking hated it, and I wonder if I'd find it as easy to loathe if they were like 40 somethings instead of 20 somethings? Is youth an audible quality in rock? Anyways this song got good so that's nice of them. See, this solo is higher in pitch than the others, because they're building to something! Man, albums can be such a cool art form because they allow for the development of ideas along several pieces, and SO FEW bands actually take advantage of that. It's so simple, too.
This intro is the first time I've noticed the bass playing, so I'm assuming this is the start of Side B on the vinyl release. We're going lower with the solo (admittedly, high licks through wah pedals is treacherous ground) because we're building back up. I'm having a good time with this record so far! Maybe the trick to making rock lyrics not make me want to hit something is to make the vocals double ostentatious to cover the ground left behind in anything being reasonable. Okay, third lick starts high and then retreats, and the song transitions into a more bridge-like version of the verse. This band is professionals, following formulas without wearing out the welcome of anything. This solo is one of the things this record's been building too, as it feels like the guitar is much more active all of a sudden, and it works really well. The only knock I'd have on this is that the broken glass noise at the end is maybe a little quiet? It's definitely meant to eat the accent there, but instead it feels like something breaking across the house from the song instead of glass getting smashed.
This is some music video-core metal right here. I can like visualize the haircuts shaking in the half fps twisting camera shots. This is not a negative, because man that's the environment this shit came up in. That's ideal to this sound. It's maybe the simplest song on here, but it does break the pace up from how fast the last song was. So of course, this is when they keep accelerating the range of the soloing, on the song I've found the least interesting. Fading out on the outro is an option I guess?
This has a similar speed to the last track, but it starts WAY more interestingly, first with a high pitched lick and then the vocals pushed further forward than they were last time- or at least further forward than I noticed last time. I just figured out why these vocals are working for me, outside of the black metal thing. My favorite metal album of all time (everyone get ready to get mad at me) is "Willpower" by Today Is The Day. The shrieking reminds me a lot of that record, and I'll honestly probably put it on after this. This is an ok song. I like it better than the last one.
YAY NO ENDING BALLAD! One day I'm afraid people are going to figure out how to game my rating system and just nominate their favorite record of the year that doesn't have an ending ballad. Regardless! I'm excited for this thing to explode at the end. The marching rhythm is working for me during the verses. The bass fills sneaking in during the bridges and choruses is a fun little twist on their sound. This first solo is good, but I feel pretty confident that it's a fake out and there's a bigger one coming. If you're reading this and knowing there's not, I bet that feels terrible, but we've not had a single moment of a guitar solo going while the vocalist screams. And then the song speeds up and I'm like bracing. The lick is building up aaaand we're off. Perfect. It's maybe done sooner than I'd like it to be, but they get credit for not fading out either, just letting the gong play them off.
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That was a good time! Usually I'm against rote genre stuff but it feels different here. Maybe it's because they're the genuine article. Maybe it's because in the process of that Best of the 2010s thing I was talking about I listened to some real stinkers and so a record with any amount of long term vision throughout the duration is manna from heaven. Either way, a good time, and I could see how this would be the album of someone's year.-
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Hey! Thank y'all for the kind words! Here's an update!
The immediate news is that the next time I post in here, it'll be to review a record. As a result of how long this took, I'm gonna play a little fast and loose with how late I'll accept submissions, probably until some point in January.
As for my sister, she's one of the people with that Long Haul shit going on. It's not a terrible surprise to any of us, really. If bodies are machines, hers is a lemon. Of course this is how this would go. So, she's not better, but it's stopped getting worse.
Also to update my original post: while I think the new Avalanches record is delightful in a brand new way than they've ever been, I still say "What's Tonight To Eternity" is my #1. So there's that.
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FYI Cyberpunk seems to be really harsh on epileptics. A Game Informer staffer reported suffering a grand mal seizure while playing, and wrote about the things that provoked her own epilepsy in this article here:
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i mean to be fair hudson also steered anthem so who knows maybe this is a good thing
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Here’s my Steam Autumn Sale Haul!
NAMCO MUSEUM ARCHIVES VOL. 1 [4]
Purchased after the release of the Action Button Review of Pac-Man, after I learned it included an NES demake of Pac-Man Championship Edition (the original is not available on PC in any way). Had to. It’s glorious action. Maybe playing it after a 3 hour dissertation on Pac-Man heightened the experience for me, but, still.The rest of the games in it are of middling quality- they’re all NES ports of arcade games, with the exception of one really interesting game called Dragon Spirit: The New Legend. It’s a shootemup that is exactly as fair as “NES shmup” sounds like it’ll be, but it’s not a straight arcade port. Rather, it expands on the original in ways that are super ambitious for the time. It starts with the last bossfight of the arcade cabinet, and depending on how the player does it will change the story and difficulty of the game ahead. A death means Gold Dragon (easy) mode, which has a different setup and a different level order (mainly a shorter one). Success puts you in Blue Dragon (normal) mode. From there it’s a hard shootemup on a remake compilation that includes rewinds and save states, but for an NES game it tries a lot of very ambitious things. So I’m glad I saw that and tried it out.
SUPER MEGA BASEBALL 3 [4]
A very good baseball game, but I dont know how much I have to actually say about it. I’ve got friends to play it with. I recommend that. The music is bad. If you like baseball but don’t plan on buying any more playstations, This’ll Do.UMURANGI GENERATION [4]
One of the best games of the year.I’m starting there because the next part is that I beat it in about 3 hours. It does however have a DLC addon for $10 that I’ll be getting in a week or two for sure.
It’s a genuine delight because it’s the kind of game I’ve been hoping to see someday in some form or another. The player character is not a hero, only an observer of Interesting Times. A photographer trying to make ends meet. The gameplay loop is a bit like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, where you’re dropped into a level with tasks to accomplish- get two boomboxes in the same shot, find a union jack somewhere and snap a picture of it, things like this. The aesthetic is a bit like Jet Set Radio, of a highly stylized cyberpunk future.
They take these two identifiable things, and mix in the boldest realization of Environmental Storytelling I’ve ever seen. Where big developers have turned that into “pick up chunks of radio play during the down periods,” that storytelling is all the storytelling you get in this game. For the people around you, it’s fundamental truths of the world so there’s no reason for exposition. It’s all around you in graffiti, in terse signs, in strewn newspapers and dance parties. The way they use the environment in the game to tell the story is just genius. Simple words on everyday items set my mind on fire drawing connections, and the game demands this in order to complete your tasks, to witness this world pivoting and make a memorable record of it.
An absolute delight, and without question one of the best games of the year. Shit, it might be my #1. If you're prone to gloom and doom this won't help. If you have a PC, I can think of no other reason to miss this.
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the optics of "we're no longer giving away free games"
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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.
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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 thingsYAKUZA: 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. -
planned uggsolescence
ok go ahead
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Kakuryu (back injury) and Hakuho (knee surgery recovery) are both out for November.
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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
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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.
SpoilerOur top 17
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Mad Max Fury Road
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Sorry to Bother You
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Annihilation
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Under the Skin
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The Lighthouse
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John Wick
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Parasite
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Beyond the Black Rainbow
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Nightcrawler
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Spiderman Into the Spiderverse
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Inherent Vice
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Dredd
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Get Out
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The Rover
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Knives Out
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Bad Times at the El Royale
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Thor Ragnarok
My Top 17
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Annihilation
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Sorry to Bother You
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Nightcrawler
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The Lighthouse
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Inherent Vice
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OJ Made in America
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Hold the Dark
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Under the Skin
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Exit Through The Gift Shop
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The Favourite
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Good Time
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The Act of Killing
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Beyond the Black Rainbow
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Mad Max Fury Road
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The Rover
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Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
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A Field In England (after watching it again recently this is my #9)
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.
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Once the ballot dumping ground post is available, I will explain why that happened and more.
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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.
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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?
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oh lmao sorry been a stressful week
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so excited to explain my ballot once everything is posted
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I AM SCREAM LAUGHING
GOOD JOB ROB MANFRED, YOU DIDN'T GET SEVEN MINUTES OF OFF-SEASON BEFORE SIDESHOW BOBBING YOURSELF-
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spiderverse and thor ragnarok haven't showed up yet, so there's that
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Bumping this back up to say I'm going to get started on this after November 2nd.
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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.-
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RIP MF DOOM
in MUSIC
Posted
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJefkDalNYo/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading
RIP, I'll have to more to say when I'm less in shock