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The new art is fantastic and apparently there’s plenty of fan service from the earlier games (note how the screenshot is a mixture of the two), but it didn’t do much differently enough to hold my attention any longer than the originals today. IIRC even the third installment had an adventure-like stage where you could backtrack, and who knows, maybe this one does, too, but we didn’t get that far.

I was thinking, why not use the advances in technology since, that surely have more to offer than the leap in character animation Street Fighter made in the 90’s, to take the side-scroller in another direction? Computing power must be there to split the screen like above and allow players to venture off on different paths, into buildings and up stairs (where enemies could be thrown out windows into the fray below) or into sewers, then converge at a boss. Or zoom out a bit and increase the playfield to “brawler” size, have teams face off against each other like gangs, and winners progress to subsequent maps, each of which represents a city block and might very well be roguelike procedurally generated.

Watching with disbelief as the local Pokémon Go chapter still met up in the height of the pandemic to add pictures to their phones, I thought they were a due a good razzing but beats me why I expected it from the Simpsons of all places. Last laugh out of this dead horse came, what, 17 years ago and then it was an episode from ten seasons before that. Besides, I always felt that timely fad parody was something better suited for late night television or South Park and they handled so much more deftly in their heyday anachronistically (or at least only on Halloween). Just look at this and tell me that isn’t the appropriate reaction.

I don’t blame the Biden campaign for reaching out to the gaming generation, but seeing as how Bernie would’ve done it with Medicare for All instead, yeah, not too thrilled. In fact, fuck them. I’d rather have had AOC visit when the game was fresher, just what we needed to get away and didn’t turn into a daily chore of checking turnip prices, gathering fruit and fossils and grinding rocks.

Seems it’s been five years since I last revisited this staple of my youth (and I find myself more curious about my circumstances when I did than what I left of them; hence the new tag); maybe by measuring the intervals I can determine the rate of my regression, though in this case the catalyst was the Shout! Factory channel on Twitch, which airs two episodes of the program weekday afternoons to all of a dozen viewers. It’s hard to stay focused on a traditional broadcast, complete with commercial breaks for their catalogue, when the Animal Farm that’s America is being addressed by other streamers, and there’s not even anyone in the chat. Wanting to see Sarah Douglas naked again, I opened Season 2 and found a story I couldn’t remember but seemed pieced together from various Star Treks. Title coincides with the final season of the satisfying Dark series on Netflix, who’s sure to remake it themselves. Small talk from Maya while resisting the urge to mate with Koenig on her study of “Comparative Universal Theology” is reminiscent of Serling or Seuss: “An interesting thing, we [Psychons] managed to find our God, creator of this universe, to find that He had a God, who created a bigger one.”

Just when I’d had enough of the game, blew my hoarded gold and mats on not one but two legendaries, does RNG finally yield a “toilet” reward:

There’s really nothing left for me here, though, other than playing dress-up with my alts (I was thinking of making my greatsword-wielding Necromancer/Reaper into a Suicide Squad-based Katana), but I will cherish these experiences of participating in the best examples of the large-scale open-world adventure, especially after missing it so badly in poorly-programmed DCUO; in FFXI it was just a pipe dream. Though ultimately, GW2 might’ve squeezed a few more months out of an obsessive-compulsive like myself with an NM drop or two.

I didn’t notice it as a kid, but boy, is that shift in tone for the second season ever so noticeable. The gloominess of their predicament is gone, and they seem to all but forget about the day’s events after that last commercial break before the end credits—to bring myself up to current events (because of that IP issue at home), like DC movies “v” Marvel’s. That refreshed theme reminds me a lot of recent music from the BBC, and make no mistake about it, the Alphans aren’t pussies anymore, even if their weapons work on aliens only 5% of the time.

(She did play one of the “Amazons.”) Wasn’t quite the blast from the past it was hyped as; I maintain that the Road Warrior is just about the perfect film. An economy of characters without names, and a story that truly didn’t need subtitles (it’d be helluva lot easier to novelize as a Little Golden Book than recent Disney features) nor, unlike both its 1985 sequel and this one, depend on all that world-building to tell it. And really, “over-the-top” doesn’t mean a thing anymore after Kung Fury. Still, it’s inspiring to see even a septuagenarian not tire from just imagining such on-screen energy, much less have to slow-mo every significant action sequence like Joss Whedon generously does for us mouth-breathers.

Once again, threat contained with less casualties than jokes (and maybe spending more time evacuating civilians than either was appeasing critics still whimpering over the 9/11-scale destruction in DC’s over-the-top follow-up to the first Avengers), so I’m not sure why they had to go with a reminder of the abominable mini-series in book form. If you ask me, they also missed a great opportunity to do the team vs. a giant-sized Ultron-7:

Incidentally, I had this idea for a Man of Steel sequel, which I understand was planned before all this Batman v. Superman nonsense (or still is, after it), that introduces the Martian Manhunter, so unfairly left off the Justice League roster for Robocop throwback Cyborg—methinks Geoff Johns is downplaying Bruce Timm’s contribution to the pantheon in favor of what, the shitty Super Powers Galactic Guardians Superfriends cartoon—to parallel Kal El’s own alien origin and coming to terms as mankind’s benefactor: McConaughey, who’s said to being courted by both studios, is my pick for his John Jones disguise. Morrison’s first JLA arc serves as the basis, where Martians appear on the scene as beautiful superheroes, easily dispatching said skyscraping robot and inept extraterrestrial invaders, never missing a one-liner, and earning the adoration of the public. Clark is skeptical; members of the Justice League could cameo, Flash revealing their fast person isn’t connected to the Speed Force because he lapped him without being noticed, and Batman figures out their aversion to fire, but Superman insists on going at it without their help, telling them he’s found another ally, someone else on Earth with the same shield to his scan, who turns out to be J’onn. He could be immersed in ordinary surroundings, trying to hide in our culture and learn, or be a captive of the government, like in New Frontier. We’ve already seen Kryptonian predestination, so the whole White vs. Green Martian schism might be retreading, but needless to say, the two of them bond and beat the bad guys together.

…Is truly the exit there, as I remarked as we wearily made that final trek to the tram for the parking lot on both Saturday and Monday (which turned out to be nearly as crowded as the weekend, maybe because we caught new high school graduates partaking in some Southern California ritual that is apparently meant to teach them the dangers of overpopulation and overeating), and the best time likewise the longest before ever wanting to return.

“Fastpasses” only put you in another line you’re lucky if is half as long, Star Tours left me nostalgic for the more immersive Las Vegas Experience, and our favorite ride was the same Tomorrowland Autopia that’s been there since we were kids.

I don’t care if this idea for a superhero was received without so much as a “meh” from Will & Dayz; I like it, and continue to hone it on my runs, usually before I even reach Shoemaker. A low-brow small-time crook gets the jump on a scientist in his lab, and shoots him in his haste to make off. But before succumbing to the attack, the man unleashes a swarm of nanobots, which take up residence in his killer. There, they begin making improvements, upgrades like in that episode of The Outer Limits, bestowing superhuman strength, durability, healing, the works—catch is, they also make his brain work more efficiently, he grows smarter, and in turn, he understands the nature of his crime, becomes guilt-ridden with remorse, and assumes the mantle of do-gooder to atone. A little reminiscent of 악마를 보았다, too. But is it this the true course of the better person, or is it only the ghost in the machines that’s motivating him? There’s some conflict for ya. Will he use his now-photographic memory and advanced intelligence to recreate the incident and discover that his victim originally intended to inject himself with his inventions, and immediately benefit from them? Almost with minds of their own, they chose the host with more potential. (Or will he instead learn, as in Morrison’s Doom Patrol, that the whole thing was engineered all along, and he was deliberately chosen for the project? Meh.)