The Gaming Den

Posted: **Tue Apr 16, 2019 7:19 am**

The encounter with the trolls was well done. But as soon as the fighting started in Goblin Town, we entered Playstation Land, and never left again. It jarred me right out of the trilogy, and none of the action scenes after that managed even a hint of stakes, with the sole exception of Smaug's attack on Lake Town.

Posted: **Tue Apr 16, 2019 2:32 pm**

The Iron Duke would have been a decent book, except that the Iron Duke is by far the worst abusive "love interest" in any book I've ever read ever. And it's still supposed to be romantic.

Posted: **Tue Apr 16, 2019 4:00 pm**

The Legend of Galactic Heroes novels lost me quite early, when the beginning of the first book showed how one of the character was a master tactician by having him simply follow the basic principles of war against supposedly seasoned veterans who acted the worst way possible.

But I kept reading anyway, and it doesn't get any better.

There are three kinds of characters:
- Geniuses: They are noble and always right
- Support characters: They are good people but they'll never be as good as the geniuses. They're here to express how awesome the geniuses are.
- Idiots: They're morally corrupt and always take bad decisions.

The writing is extremely anime. The way it describes people, their actions and reactions, you can picture the anime. It turns out it does have anime adaptations. I haven't watched them but the pictures I saw were exactly what I had in mind.
It's also as sexist as can be expected from a 80s Japanese novel.

At least the pacing is ok and it manages to be a decent page-turner.

Posted: **Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:01 pm**

S8E3 of Game of Thrones. The entire 80 minutes of the thing was the battle, which felt a bit long, but the big thing I hated was the lack of light. The TV we have in our unit does not handle low light/contrast very well, and there's lots of ghosting. I'd just assumed I was suffering because of the TV as I was trying to figure out who was still alive, and just what was happening in general. Looking at all the memes the next day, it wasn't just me.

The episode itself was fine in terms of what happened. I just wish they'd decided that Winterfell could have used some more torches, or something.

Posted: **Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:26 pm**

The episode as a whole lost me when it became bog-standard heroic fantasy fare with none of the signature GoT subversion. There were a lot of good moments, but they were all contained in something so morbidly predictable.

Posted: **Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:59 pm**

angelfromanotherpin wrote:The episode as a whole lost me when it became bog-standard heroic fantasy fare with none of the signature GoT subversion. There were a lot of good moments, but they were all contained in something so morbidly predictable.

It did feel somewhat like The Two Towers. I'm assuming the last half of the season will get back to more political drama and backstabbing now that they have to deal with the South. There's also plenty of room for infighting with the North, with their common enemy defeated.

Posted: **Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:18 pm**

I understand they had to

rap this shit up so they could go back to Cersi or whatever,

but 1) the entire battle was literally a series of colossally stupid moments one after another presented as cool. Dothraki charge: stupid. Trench shit: Stupid. Getting over the Trench: Stupid. Everything involving any Dragon: Stupid. 2) The entire battle was filmed like shit especially the lighting, but just mechanically all of it, where they cut to and when was seemingly designed to fuck with the audience's ability to even comprehend events. 3) You could keep the main element of the conclusion but do it in about 70000 better ways, they seemed to pick the least interesting possible way to have that character do that.

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2019 6:19 pm**

Yeah, that was offensively stupid. If it was just the Dothraki being dumbasses, that would be okay. But that was just... Ugh. Is Jon secretly working for the Night King?

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2019 7:31 pm**

RobbyPants wrote:S8E3 of Game of Thrones. The entire 80 minutes of the thing was the battle, which felt a bit long, but the big thing I hated was the lack of light. The TV we have in our unit does not handle low light/contrast very well, and there's lots of ghosting. I'd just assumed I was suffering because of the TV as I was trying to figure out who was still alive, and just what was happening in general. Looking at all the memes the next day, it wasn't just me.

The episode itself was fine in terms of what happened. I just wish they'd decided that Winterfell could have used some more torches, or something.

Apparently, it's because you're watching TV wrong. You're expected to watch it in 8K, whatever the fuck that means. It sounds a lot like Apple's explanation that you're holding your phone wrong.

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2019 8:30 pm**

I don't watch GoT, but Wagner sounds like a total douche. Anyone whose defense of their shittiness is "you are the one doing something wrong" is automatically a massive fuckhead.

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2019 9:33 pm**

Thoughts on GoTs episode

Jon Snow pinned by the undead dragon behind a wall. Solution is apparently to stand up and fucking yell at it instead of say trying to stab it with your undead killing magical sword.

Lyanna Mormont running at the giant screaming basically drawing attention to herself fucking stupidity.

Trying to kill the night king with Dragonfire, soon as she told the dragon to breathe on him, I was like "anime style guy still standing in the fallout of the blast unharmed" trope incoming.

Theon at least gets a pass for the yelling while charging dumbassery because 1: There is no one else around and the Night King is staring right at him. 2: He already knows hes fucked.

Arya at least has the goddamn sense to not let out a war cry while trying her Assassin's Creed wannabe bullshit until the last second. Although after shanking the Night King who then explodes into a massive pile of frozen shrapnel, her and Bran should be shredded.

Jamie surviving is rather bullshit since he is nowhere near the fighter he was.

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2019 9:45 pm**

Pariah Dog wrote:

Jamie surviving is rather bullshit since he is nowhere near the fighter he was.

Has the show decided how good Jaime is as a swordsman now? In the books, it's made pretty clear that he's basically useless, but the show had him doing a training montage with Bronn, and then he does okay for himself while fighting the sand snakes I think.

Posted: **Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:17 pm**

Jamie was barely able to keep himself from getting murdered until Bronn saved his ass in Dorne. Also the books have him montage training with Ilyn Payne as well as using the illiterate mute as a confessional.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2019 4:56 am**

The dumbass tactics on both sides of the fight bugged me.

Hey, we have a force of mixed armies, let's send both our commanders out on dragons where they cannot communicate. And then let's lock everyone else with the rank and brains to co-ordinate the defense in the crypt where they cannot communicate with anyone else.

Hey, we know that the army of the dead is coming real soon now, howzabout we don't have any scouts, signal fires, or artillery spotters more than 50ft from the walls.

Hey's let's send our light cavalry out without support against a massively larger force. They can ride their horses really fast over uneven ground in the dark. Not like there might be any gaps in our defenses later where having a high-mobility force might be useful.

Hey's let's send the cavalry out *before* we use any of our catapults.

Oh wow, our flaming trench is delaying them, it would be a really good idea to just stand and watch them instead of I dunno shooting arrows, or firing catapults at the immobile horde.

Uh-oh, they are climbing the walls, let's just yell at troops to defend the walls, because they wouldn't think to do that on their own, and there's like nothing we could set on fire and drop over the sides of the walls to make it harder for them to climb.

Uh-oh, they are digging into the crypt, let's all just cower instead of having anyone try to do literally anything about it.

But all these blunders were trumped by the Night King failing to wait another 20 minutes for his army to finish winning before waltzing in.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2019 2:34 pm**

Blade wrote:The Legend of Galactic Heroes novels lost me quite early, when the beginning of the first book showed how one of the character was a master tactician by having him simply follow the basic principles of war against supposedly seasoned veterans who acted the worst way possible.

But I kept reading anyway, and it doesn't get any better.

There are three kinds of characters:
- Geniuses: They are noble and always right
- Support characters: They are good people but they'll never be as good as the geniuses. They're here to express how awesome the geniuses are.
- Idiots: They're morally corrupt and always take bad decisions.

The writing is extremely anime. The way it describes people, their actions and reactions, you can picture the anime. It turns out it does have anime adaptations. I haven't watched them but the pictures I saw were exactly what I had in mind.
It's also as sexist as can be expected from a 80s Japanese novel.

At least the pacing is ok and it manages to be a decent page-turner.

Everything you wrote is basically true, except that are four kinds of characters. Eventually you'll meet find the fourth one: Oberstein

As for the writing being extremely anime, I have this feeling that the Light Novel medium is basically people who grew up watching anime writing the book adaptation of series that exist on their heads.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2019 3:46 pm**

Iduno wrote: Apparently, it's because you're watching TV wrong. You're expected to watch it in 8K, whatever the fuck that means. It sounds a lot like Apple's explanation that you're holding your phone wrong.

The unit we're in was furnished, so it came with a TV. I'm not shelling out money on a TV so I can "correctly" watch the show they filmed incorrectly.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Hey's let's send our light cavalry out without support against a massively larger force. They can ride their horses really fast over uneven ground in the dark. Not like there might be any gaps in our defenses later where having a high-mobility force might be useful.

This reminds me of a D&D game where we had a melee cleric, druid, mage, and a... monk. In addition to being useless because of his character sheet, the player massively overestimated his PC's abilities. They had a fight against two ogres at quite a range. I figured the PCs would soften them up with ranged attacks. The monk used his superior speed to clear the distance and get there (all by himself!) in one round, and got KOed by the ogres the next round. All his superior speed got him was a longer wait for the competent PCs to actually get to the fight.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Uh-oh, they are digging into the crypt, let's all just cower instead of having anyone try to do literally anything about it.

Technically,

the bodies in the crypt started animating when the Night King raised the dead on the battlefield

, but your point totally stands.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2019 6:39 pm**

I was half-convinced that the show was going to turn the defense of Winterfell into a microcosm for the abysmal Westerosi response to an existential threat: the aristos spend two episodes working through their drama and dominance plays instead of doing the practical and necessary work to integrate their forces and modify their tactics.

It would explain why the Dothraki do what they've always done, despite light cav having no particular role against an enemy that will not break. It would explain why the nested defense has positions outside the walls. People are nattering on about bloodlines and sovereignty and bullshit, and the actual plan of battle is on autopilot.

Also, having the designated heroes cold lose and become a ragged handful of refugees who have to beg queen evil and her cartoon pirate for sanctuary would be pretty solid television.

Posted: **Wed May 01, 2019 6:51 pm**

RobbyPants wrote:
Iduno wrote: Apparently, it's because you're watching TV wrong. You're expected to watch it in 8K, whatever the fuck that means. It sounds a lot like Apple's explanation that you're holding your phone wrong.
The unit we're in was furnished, so it came with a TV. I'm not shelling out money on a TV so I can "correctly" watch the show they filmed incorrectly.

Also, a quick check of the TV prices is 1-3 months' salary, before taxes. To uh...watch a guy get killed good (have done for free, not worth the entry price)? Have enough resolution to determine if they're really twins?

Posted: **Thu May 02, 2019 6:42 pm**

Game of Thrones lost me when they promised titties and only hired flatchested actresses. I know my personal minimum of DDD is unreasonable but you can't tell me they didn't have actresses with SOME boobage audition.

Don't promise me titties and not deliver. That's like offering to get pizza then bringing bagel bites.

Posted: **Thu May 02, 2019 8:23 pm**

Not that the promise of a live action sonic movie ever really "had" me but can we talk about how absolutely god awful that CGI hedgehog is?

Why is he proportioned like a small adult human? Why is his head so tiny? Why teeth? Why are the large stylized quills covered in small realistic quills? Why glove colored hand fur?

I can't believe the character designer didn't know this was terrible. I can't believe anyone at any point in this process looked at Sonic's weird Dr. Seuss nose and went 'Yes this looks correct.'

Posted: **Thu May 02, 2019 8:48 pm**

I mean, it's not a good reason, but it's the best explanation I've seen.

Posted: **Fri May 03, 2019 12:42 am**

shinimasu wrote:Not that the promise of a live action sonic movie ever really "had" me but can we talk about how absolutely god awful that CGI hedgehog is?

Why is he proportioned like a small adult human? Why is his head so tiny? Why teeth? Why are the large stylized quills covered in small realistic quills? Why glove colored hand fur?

I can't believe the character designer didn't know this was terrible. I can't believe anyone at any point in this process looked at Sonic's weird Dr. Seuss nose and went 'Yes this looks correct.'

Because this movie is being made by the same studio that inflicted Fate of the Furryous on us and God is a cruel, evil manifestation of hate that wants us all to die and CGI Sonic is His misbegotten Son sent to end our insignificant, puny lives

Posted: **Fri May 03, 2019 7:32 am**

It looks like a fucking train wreck, and I unironically want to see it.

Posted: **Fri May 03, 2019 8:04 am**

Look like they might fix the design:

https://twitter.com/fowltown/status/1124056098925944832

Posted: **Fri May 03, 2019 10:14 am**

I wonder if it really matters at this point. The design has already made the very concept of the movie a joke at this point. The fact that rando fans on the interwebs figured out what would look better than the highly paid professionals aside this whole thing has to be deeply embarrassing for the studio. I can't imagine the actual plot will be any better. I'm already assuming DBZ Evolution levels of bad story telling on this one.

The Gaming Den

Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.