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The last three episodes of The Clone Wars were epic and intense. Filoni allowed the team to experiment with some more ambient music. That music experimentation has followed through to the Bad Batch, making each episode very intense and moody. Along with the amazingly detailed animation and relatable characters, this show is pure win.

This does not feel like a "kid's show" at all. The writing and overall tone is more akin to Andor's heavy-handed view of The Empire than the rest of the Star Wars franchise.

My spoils!
I also got three games for the Switch,
Sonic Mania
Star Trek: Prodigy Supernova
Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth complete edition

In the photo three NES games and two for the Famicom.
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Happy birthday, nice haul!

I watched it a few days ago. I did not pay much mind to the Ms. Marvel series as I felt it was aimed toward a much younger audience. I may have gotten more out of the movie had I watched the series first. Kamela (Ms. Marvel) is pretty much an annoying fangirl; the actress plays the part well, but the character's place in the movie does not appeal to me much.

The action scenes were solid, the acting was somewhat good overall, the writing and directing had scenes jumping from one to another too quickly for the characters (or audiences) to digest what happened in the scene prior.

I didn't hate the movie. I didn't love it either. I think that it could have been better with some more careful directing.

Rebels was great. What'd you think of it BV?

Deep Space Nine was one of the more difficult Star Trek shows for me. The political drama and stationary setting for many of the episodes did not intrigue me as much as Voyager, Enterprise, Next Generation, or Brave New Worlds.

Fact check--I won the 2nd game with Stars! At the last round, I picked up my 6th star, while MM had 4. He did get one of the bonus stars, but that still left me with 6 and him with 5.

 

It was a pleasant, but short game. I think that I pretty much beat it in three sittings over a weekend. There are only 10 achievements to acquire. Overall, it is a decent story; I definitely found myself wondering what was going to happen next.

Firewatch is 90% off on Steam for $1.99 (plus tax).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/

I played a good chunk of the game yesterday. It makes for a great narrative-driven game. Graphics sound, and voice acting are all great. The play controls can be a little bit finnicky when trying to find a rope attachment point to climb down a ledge.

Overall, definitely worth $2.

It is a great binge series.

Like you said, Echo (Maya) is introduced in Hawkeye, so revisiting Hawkeye prior to watching is a good idea.

I really like how the hearing aid issues introduced in Hawkeye are taken further with Maya's deafness. The mythos from the Choctaw nation added some more depth to the story as well. As is par for Marvel series, the action sequences are excellent and each character gets a fair amount of backstory. I'd recommend the series for a binge watch.

Spartan (koalaEvolved), MasterMario (Iceman), and I played some Diablo IV tonight. Some things in partying up are not really clearly explained, like the tier system of veteran vs beginner not matching up questlines. Loot is handled way differently than Diablo II.

I really don't remember much of Diablo III. I have it and did play it, but just found it wasn't as memorable or as addictive as Diablo II was back twenty years ago.

So, Diablo discussion is in order; go!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all!

During November 2023, Half-Life is available for free on Steam for a limited time.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/70/HalfLife/

Thursday nights, what are ya'll playing?

MasterMario and I got a little victory in Overwatch 2 before moving from PC to Switch. We invited Creepin to play, but he declined to come out of his retirement from online games.

MasterMario, SpartanEvolved, and yours truly (Grindspine) played some Mario Party Superstars with Spartan Emo taking the lead at the end. Mega almost joined us, but couldn't find his game cartridge!

We all won an hour long game of Nexus Wars in the Starcraft 2 arcade--it was epic.

MasterMario and I died horrible deaths in a game of Mafia, also in the Starcraft 2 arcade.

Yggdrasil... cool! 

Nope, I didn't just have a stroke. That was a huge reference to Norse mythology.

If I am already on Disney Plus or Netflix and rewatch a move, I may stream it. However, if the movie is on Hulu, I'd rather ditch the commercials and watch a physical DVD.

Physical games have resale value, downloads absolutely do not.

I have a mix of old CD-roms, cartridge games, and various (Playstation, PS2, PS3, Xbox, 360) game discs along with a few downloaded console games and a pretty large Steam library.

I will say, since we use the Switch mostly in TV mode, fidgeting with the little door to put in a new game cart is more of a pain than on older systems. I have considered sticking with download games with that system. But I will also be selling Breath of the Wild since I have that on hard copy.

The Loki series is delivering. I wasn't too impressed with Secret Invasion. It wasn't terrible, but didn't have the same intrigue as Loki does so far.

Man, @BLUEVOODU, you've got to stop putting D+ in post titles. It makes me think that you are rating all these shows as barely watchable!

I will check the other thread to see if you finished Ahsoka.

I am just hoping that at some point, Sabine, Bo-Katan, Boba Fett, and Din Jarin get to be on screen together. We have already seen that these stories are happening around the same time period. Sabine has worked with Bo-Katan before; they had some long history with the Dark Saber.

Nah, I moved onto other things a while back. The game looks cool, but when I have limited time to game, cheap gotcha deaths wear thin pretty fast.

Spoiler: ShowHide

You can tell that Hayden Christensen reviewed all of the Clone Wars and really gave his all to give fans the Anakin they saw transitioning from Jedi Knight and General of the Grand Republic into Dearth Vader. This was the version of Anakin we have all wanted to see since the prequels!

The above spoiler scene is the best Ahsoka content thus far.

I am a huge fan of the Rebels series. The dialog does seem quite a bit stiff from the live action actors.

Spoiler: ShowHide

The Sabine from Rebels would never leave her Mandolorian helmet behind though.

SpartanEvo and I gaming on Steam, Battle.net, and on Discord right now!

Thank you! I was able to see Bluevoodu for a bit over the weekend and was able to play some Starcraft with MasterMario last week too!

I really need someone to make me a Portal cake!!

I might see it if it drops on Disney Plus.

I still haven't even opened Majora's Mask on the 3DSXL. That is another that I really need to go back and play!

I bought this as one of the few Switch games for the library when Renee bought the Switch OLED Fall of '22. I was trying to play through Breath of the Wild first, taking that as more of a serious game and this more of a port from the old GameBoy version.

It turns out that Link's Awakening feels a lot more like a Legend of Zelda game to me. It is a lot closer to the vein of the original Legend of Zelda (NES) or Zelda III: A Link to the Past (SNES). It certainly has shinier graphics (very nice 3d effect trees and water) than the old-school games, but still suffers from momentary slowdown on some map boards.

Two of the boss fights were obnoxiously challenging (the Armos knight and the final Nightmare bosses), but overall the game was only moderately challenging in terms of difficulty. A few of the dungeons had some great puzzle-solving too.

Although this game didn't hold quite the epic adventure feeling of the original LoZ or A Link to the Past, and wasn't exactly a trip to Hyrule, I would still way it was a fun Zelda game jaunt.

Overall 8/10 for gameplay experience. It's worth getting if you're a fan of Zelda style adventure games.

I would be remiss without mentioning the last game I played in this genre, Hob. Hob is a pretty great adventure game available on Steam, which has a pretty similar feeling of adventure and exploration, though clearly not a Zelda game.

I really enjoyed that live-action Bo Katan (Katee Sackhoff) was the same voice actor from Clone Wars and Rebels. She killed it playing that part! I liked how the story went back to so much of the actual Mandalore storyline, but I saw that some bad reviews started coming out as soon as Grogu (aka baby Yoda) wasn't the focus.

The series really did try to have some stuff to please all fans. I get the impression that long-time fans of the animated series were more impressed with the Mandalore storyline.

[ant]

The Carmike off Diebold closed? sucky... I liked that theater. I went to the one at Jefferson & the Regal on Washington a lot too though.

Did you ever notice that it is Quantumania?

You'll notice, if you rewatch the action scenes that:

Spoiler: ShowHide

both the praetorian guards and any Mandolorian kill shots were aimed at weak points in the armor; the neck & shoulder joints

I have been really disappointed with Breath of the Wild. It was touted as being a cross between a Legend of Zelda game and having the open world of Skyrim. To some extent, I can see where it has elements of both.

I really found the combat unenjoyable enough to not want to continue with the game though.

I did start on Zelda: Link's Awakening again on the Switch. I think that I got about five hours in on that game tonight. It has the adventure style where you have to wonder a bit before you find the item or path that will carry you to the next phase of the game. I miss adventure games like Metroid 3, Castlevania: SotN, and Zelda III: A Link to the Past where adventure always had a sense of searching and discovery.

Dude... Bo Katan is awesome.

If anyone hasn't seen the last few episodes of The Clone Wars animated series or missed Rebels, you've missed a massive backstory. Bo Katan and her family are central to the story of Mandalore. I am so glad that they were able to get Katie Sackhoff to play the live action Bo Katan after she did the voice acting for both The Clone Wars and Rebels.

In the most recent episode, did anyone catch a certain Lasan character who may have been a crew member of the Ghost?