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yeah maybe if we get out of this multiverse phase things will start to work out. Its only seemed to have worked out for No way Home, the rest of the multiverse stuff fell flat.

It's deep in the back log at this point.

@BLUEVOODU being generally decent human beings, I think we tend to overcompensate for the haters sometimes. Age was meh. I didn't hate it but it didn't hit as hard as its predecessors.

Scared!

Marvel's first family has never been done well. 1986 movie was low budget and no one watched, second iteration of fantastic four was better but never caught and the second movie BARELY used the Silver Surfer, and the last iteration was completely forgettable.

Once again a new FF is coming out later this year, and its success will likely have a big impact on next year's avengers flick. I refuse to watch or read anything about these movies outside of the trailers. Lets face facts, the last few Marvel movies haven't been great and the net nerds are in full blown Disney hate mode. I just don't want any bias heading in because I'm already scared its not going to be good.

I got into comics in the copper age and bought what silver age stuff I could. My favorites were Xmen and Fantastic Four. I'm way more critical of those two and may join the net nerds in Disney hate if they get ruined.

It seems to be getting more and more difficult to find new stuff to binge, Streamers are moving back to the drip feed model and amping up the commercials... wonder where they got the idea?!

With that being said, I've been looking for some deep cuts I've missed. HBO Max has come through so far with Last Ship and Banshee. I finished Banshee and it was pretty great and has Homelander in it! I'm on the last season of Last Ship. also great. Its pacing isn't perfect but there's four seasons and pulling your content from a book or books makes that difficult, but in this case very forgivable.

Prodigal Son is also on Max but harder to recommend. Fantastic show despite following the same formula for the majority of the show. Once it broke that formula and got going it wasn't renewed for another season, leaving on a cliffhanger with no hope of conclusion.

I loved it for what it was. There were flaws but it told an entertaining story. Die-hards will / did hate it. Without spoiling anything, there's a back story that was rushed and had liberties taken. Even the showrunner addressed it, basically admitting it was shoehorned in.

I didn't appreciate the earlier series until later in life and have not been through all of it yet. They were more soap than action, so I wrote them off and have only recently started watching the legacy stuff. The Next Generation movies were great and cut the fluffy stuff to seemingly attract a wider movie-going audience and was more my thing. I think that's why I liked Picard. It took a little more of the action route and had some ties to the Star Trek materials I most enjoyed.

I get the hate, when Marvel or DC takes too much liberty with some of the comic story lines I read as a kid, I took it as a put-off. Sometimes big changes work, other times they don't. People are always going to find issue when others take liberties with source material. I'm less resistant to it than some, I just ask for quality, which in general does seem to be fading.

Next time I'm in the mood for a little masochism, I'll try to power through

Clerks 2, Randalls analysis of the LOTRs trilogy...

I keep trying. I really want to like it but it's not even vanilla, its more butter pecan.

dang, now I want ice-cream!

I'd still use Gamestop if they would either stock their stores or make their website where it stops showing unavailable stuff, or at least make it where the sort would actually work. Redeeming points doesn't do always work either. It's such a sham now.

Pretty late to the conversation but this was fantastic. Serial DC hasn't kept my attention since Gotham. This one did, completely worth watching. The season finale went hard, can't wait to see how the second season starts after that.

Best Buy will soon be another Amazon murder, possibly the next. They've significantly cut staff, getting something delivered or repaired takes forever, and they've cut SKUs, significantly. The video game section hasn't been cut square footage wise but when it comes to buyable stuff it's just not there. For each system there's maybe a 4' section of games and the remainder of shelving is filled with displays. I've gone in a few times in 2024 and once in 2025 because I wanted something right away. More often than not they didn't have what I wanted and had to wait for Amazon.

I don't know what it is but it seems like connecting to the car sound system only works when its apple, and I don't have apple. Amazon and Google seem to fight each other on mine and I just wind up listening to xm. I'm sure I could take a few minutes to figure it out but I just haven't cared that much yet.

 I hit the vinyl pretty hard until the prices started going crazy. It's cool having all these special edition vinyls but music should be played, and it hurts a little to pay so much for a record and then not spin it. I found myself buying albums on amazon that includes a digital copy of the music. It seems like they're not doing that as frequently now.

There's always some old movie that I get the urge to watch and it's not streaming anywhere, unless you buy a digital copy, and even then, if the rights are tied up (think Dogma or Beavis and Butthead with the music videos) you'll never stream it (legally). Pretty soon we won't own anything. I already can't leave my steam library to my kids. Ugh, this is turning into a boomer / back in my day rant, and I'm really an elder millennial that identifies as gen x!

The quest for profits seems to always turn into an Icarus scenario. Something good becomes better and better as interest is generated, little guys make a name for themselves and turn into big guys, marketing explodes, big guys start buying up little guys, big guys start paying more for little guys, big guys get too big, margins become miniscule, ceo's and board of directors go from people within the industry to some flavor of investment banker, min max hits harder, creativity, innovation (in the sense of taking risks / trying something new) becomes too costly and we get Madden 75, Call of Duty 400, and a whole lot of vanilla flavored games, all be it on fantastic hardware with pretty graphics.

Not chasing bleeding edge technology affords Nintendo some liberties, but they still play it pretty safe with their games. They stick close to the Zelda, Mario, Pokemon staples (peppering in some pikmin, kirby, and DK) and haven't had a new IP of note since Ring Fit in 2019 and Splatoon before that in 2015. They took lumps with the Wii U, N64, GCN, and the Virtual Boy but have persevered and always put out great games.

I think Nintendo's business model will keep them in the console space while Sony and Microsoft are destined to dissolve off into the PC space. I've already decided to not buy a new Xbox or Playstation, despite having chased after each previous iteration. I just hope Nintendo continues to innovate, take risks on peripherals as well as games, and put out another Kid Icarus, Earthbound, 1080, wave race, excite bike, or better yet, the next unforgettable IP that'll be able to stand with the Mario, Zelda Pokemon tentpoles.

I found it difficult to make it through the first season and gave up on the series. Hearing the second season was better gives me hope. Outside of the "purists" that can't stand anything pop culture not made 40+ years ago, the only real complaint I've heard was about the pacing. I can deal with that now that all the episodes are out. I'll have to spin this one back up.

Its February and I'm still trying to start working on mine!

yeah, I've got a few of those...

how was it

Nope!

Its a late reply I know, I blame Helene (and some lazyness) but mostly Helene!

ugh, back to 40 as well

shoulda been paying more attention, it's back to 40 now

It was watchable but I did fall asleep at least 6 times trying to make it through the first season. The plot didn't add much to the mythos and the whole thing seemed really insignificant to the time lime. There was a semi expected tease at the end that I'd love to see fleshed out but I'm betting there wasn't enough love for this series to merit a second offering.

As of this writing its 80% critics score vs 17% audience on rottentomatoes. People don't seem impressed.

I did buy the set with all the swag but have so far left it sealed. I've been tempted to open it up and play but its not hit me yet. I may buy a used copy or get a digital copy and leave the deluxe set sealed. I'm also a little concerned at the Wario approach. I like mini games when there's a bigger game to it (mario party for instance) but when it's just small quick games I've not enjoyed. 

I think the steam sale really fell off when they stopped offering the limited time deals during the sale. I get it though, they ran some loss leaders or stuff at near loss to sway the public to their format, now that digital has a bigger portion of the market share and steam is a household name in the gaming space, they can afford to be greedier.

Despite all that I usually find something during these sales.

The price of entry is too steep for me on the older Pokemon stuff. I wasn't interested in it when it first came out and really never jumped in until X and Y. I've been collecting them when I can find them and they're not a fortune (so far only found Pokemon Emerald and the Colosseum bonus disk). I've played most since xy and really enjoyed Arceus the most so far.

Simple... Games like Faxanadu can be completed with a simple map, Metroid gets pretty insane. You've either got a great memory and sense of direction or you really put in some time, either way very admirable.

Still haven't finished it, I actually forgot to go back to it. I got wrapped up in a big change at work.

the new expansion looks like it may drag me back in

Games we've seen at every other steam sale are on sale once again yet somehow, I managed to spend money...

There is a featured Deep Discount where you can get some bangers for 2 to 4 dollars, but the vast majority will likely be stuff you've already purchased. I didn't have civ 6, Shadow of War, total war shogun 2, or disco elysium so I picked them up for a few bucks each. I also found a few more retro inspired games as well that I picked up. Below are some of the bigger ones I could remember. Games like battlefield and Ghost Recon had a few tittles and I couldn't remember which specific games were available, so I listed several more generic.

Frost Punk
Battlefield
Ghost Recon
Boarderlands
Witcher 3
Jurassica Park
CIV 6
Celeste
Batman
Assetto Corsa
Disco Elysium
Total War Shogun 2
Shadow of War
and a few more

Acolyte... lots of hate out there for this one but I've found it watchable. Bottom tier Star Wars certainly, but watchable. If Disney was going to do a show from the High Republic Era, they should have gone Yoda.