Voroxpete
@Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Netflix’s Sci-Fi Series '3 Body Problem' to Film Seasons 2 & 3 Back-To-Back 5 days ago:
I guess that depends why you liked the books.
For my part, I had issues with both the show and the books, but very different issues.
Cixin Liu, in my opinion, exhibits all the best and worst elements of Isaac Asimov. His books are big on themes and complex scientific and philosophical ideas, but lack even the most basic elements of character and story structure. These are elements that lend themselves well to short form fiction and poorly to longer narratives, which is why I love the robot stories, but really don’t care for Foundation all that much.
The series swings too hard in the other direction, IMO, downplaying the big ideas in favour of much more focus on characters and structure. In doing so it often demands that we spend a lot of time focusing on ordinary human drama when - in my experience - we really want to be focusing on the really cool scifi shit that’s going on. Granted, this wouldn’t be a problem if the characters were more interesting, but I found most of them fairly dull and unlikeable, even if they are at least more fleshed out than in the original books. The structural changes are also a mixed bag, with a lot of elements being presented in a more chronological order, with the unfortunate result that it becomes quite unclear what the point of a lot of this stuff is actually meant to be. Liu’s narrative is less constrained by a need for strict chronology and this gives him more ability to put events together in context.
- Comment on What TV show were you highly excited for, but ended up quickly disappointing you? 6 days ago:
Oof. Yeah, that one really hits. Great start, then creative differences collapsed the whole endeavour and it just went to shit.
And it’s not like I can even recommend the book anymore given, well… y’know.
Just a fucking mountain of disappointments on disappointments.
- Comment on What TV show were you highly excited for, but ended up quickly disappointing you? 6 days ago:
Picard lost me the moment they had a scene where a bunch of down on their luck blue collar workers were complaining about shitty rations and being forced to work on a holiday.
WHAT PART OF POST-SCARCITY LUXURY GAY SPACE COMMUNIST UTOPIA DID YOU INBRED FUCKING DOGSHIT FOR BRAINS MORONS NOT GRASP?
Seriously, Picard is a Star Trek show written by people who have apparently never watched a single episode of Star Trek in their entire lives. Unbelievably poor grasp of the basic concepts of the setting, and of Roddenberry’s core thesis. And it’s not like you can’t make Star Trek grimy if you want to. Deep Space Nine did it frequently, playing with concepts of liberty vs security and so on. But the writers of Picard were just too lazy to engage with the core ideas of the setting and instead just wrote a bunch of generic, broadly science fiction filler and then slapped the Star Trek logo on it.
Discovery I feel more kindly towards, even though it was also terrible. It at least makes some kind of an effort to be Star Trek, which automatically puts it above Picard, but god that is such a low bar. It still has the same basic problem of being written by people who seem to be deeply embarassed about the idea of writing Star Trek. They had to go in and try to retcon in a bunch of crazy tech, rewrite huge parts of the setting, throw out everything about the Klingons and start from scratch, all out of some kind of weird hatred for the universe in which they were telling stories. Also, dear god it was just incredibly slow and dull. Some of the worse pacing I’ve ever seen.
Thank the lord almighty for Strange New Worlds. If you’re soured on all the new Trek and skipped it because you were worried about it being more of the same, holy fucking shit go watch it now! Strange New Worlds is perfect. It’s a Star Trek show written by people who absolutely adore Star Trek. It’s a love letter - a love anthem - to the original series. And it manages to somehow find an unearthly balance between being one of the most campy and fun takes on Star Trek, and one of the darkest and scariest. There’s a musical episode, and there’s an episode that’s basically “What if the plot of Aliens happened on the Enterprise?” and somehow both of them fit in the same show perfectly. Also, THE KLINGONS ARE FUN AGAIN! They’re loud and boisterous and drink blood wine and yell Qapla while they headbutt each other and it’s fucking great.
- Comment on Nick Frost Comments on Potential Hagrid Casting 1 week ago:
Gonna be deeply disappointed in any actor that takes a role in this.
- Comment on What are some of your unpopular opinions, hot takes about shows, streamers, the wider industry etc? 1 week ago:
I definitely want more shows that have a clear ending in sight and a plan to get there, but the problem with Netflix is they don’t set out to make a two season show, they set out to make a five or six season show, then kill it at two with loads of dangling threads.
- Comment on Lazarus | Opening Sequence feat. "Vortex" by Kamasi Washington 2 weeks ago:
It’s a new show from the creator of Cowboy Bebop, with fight choreography from the guy who did the John Wick movies, and Kamasi apparently doing a lot of the soundtrack.
- Comment on What TV shows have aged the best, and what TV shows have aged the worst? 2 weeks ago:
Babylon 5 is a show that’s good if you watch a curated list of episodes, not every single one (at last for seasons 1 & 2).
Once it gets out of the episodic stuff and into a more serialized format it holds up shockingly well, and feels painfully relevant today. Honestly, a lot of people owe Straczynski apologies after they accused him of being too heavy handed with his politics. If anything, the dude was being too subtle as it turns out.
- Comment on Was a TV show you like ever ruined by the addition of a particular character to the point that you had to quit, or nearly quit? 3 weeks ago:
I’m not going to say “Ruined”, but Farscape was significantly degraded by the introduction of Grazer.
Scorpius is one of the greatest antagonists ever written for a TV show. I don’t think what they chose to do with him was a terrible idea, it’s good to shake things up. But as a replacement as the primary antagonist, Grazer absolutely sucks. The fact that they literally gave her mind control sex pheromones that she spreads from her boobs genuinely sounds like the sort of thing that belongs in a bad porn parody. Like, that is “Horny fourteen year old” levels of bad writing.
Thankfully the one season she’s a big deal for is still perfectly enjoyable, and the show sticks the landing pretty decently with Peacekeeper Wars, so don’t let this deter anyone from giving it a look. Like all nineties and noughties TV, it’s got a lot of ups and downs, but all in all its a really fun show.
- Comment on One-handed games? 3 weeks ago:
For the record, I use a mouse with my non-dominant hand and I can play even fast paced FPS games like Titanfall competently enough. I actually used to dominate on Splitgate for a while. It’s a skill that can be learned. I have the advantage of having done it my whole life and I fully acknowledge that’s hard to replicate, but I think that with some practice anyone should be able to get to the point where they can play slower, primarily mouse driven games like turn based RPGs. Real time with pause might also be doable if you bind the pause button to the mouse (a mouse with some extra bindable keys would really help here). Anyway, just a thought.
If those options don’t work, maybe look into games like Vampire Survivor, or Realm of The Mad God (though I think the latter does need some rapid mouse inputs when looting, so maybe not so good).
- Comment on Anon needs help to solve the mystery 5 weeks ago:
Because being suddenly reminded that it’s there is the point.
It’s the unexpected sensations that are the most powerful.
- Comment on From the trailer of Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, killing Nazis is always good. And very cathartic.
- Comment on After Years of Struggling To Be Noticed, My Indie Game Was Covered By VICE 1 month ago:
I definitely want to see this version of self promotion encouraged. I think it’s good and healthy for this community to be a place where creators can discuss cool projects, engage with their fans and solicit feedback, as long as they’re doing so in a way that respects the health of the community. I think the accommodations you’ve chosen to make / demand here are very reasonable.
- Comment on After Years of Struggling To Be Noticed, My Indie Game Was Covered By VICE 1 month ago:
Congratulations, I can only imagine how good this feels. Nice to have some payoff for all your hard work.
- Comment on After Years of Struggling To Be Noticed, My Indie Game Was Covered By VICE 1 month ago:
And so they bloody well should be! How the fuck else are we going to find out about cool, unique indie projects instead of mass produced corporate slop?
Independent creators should absolutely be encouraged to self promote in communities like this, or else what the fuck are we doing here? Just shilling for Activision?
- Comment on Valve ban advertising-based business models on Steam, no forced adverts like in mobile games 2 months ago:
They won’t, because loot boxes are their main source of income.
And this is exactly why “good companies” like Valve cannot save us. Good companies will never be a substitute for good regulations.
- Comment on this time it'll be different 2 months ago:
There’s low effort, and then there’s “Couldn’t even be bothered to photoshop in a stock image of a crab.”
I’ve put more work into memes for my family group chat.
- Comment on spidey senses 2 months ago:
I think maybe a spider wrote this.
- Comment on Marvel Snap is banned, just like TikTok 2 months ago:
IIRC the reason for this is that China requires that games published there be published by entities that are at least some arbitrary percentage Chinese owned. So basically if you want access to that huge market - that loves video games - you have to cut a deal with Tencent or someone else like them.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Hell Let Loose, Squad, Insurgency, The Finals, Titanfall 2 (yes, it’s back), Space Marine 2 if you can live with third person.
- Comment on Of course Atari’s new handheld includes a trackball, spinner, and numpad 2 months ago:
There’s a bar in my town whose gimmick is all their original arcade and pinball machines. Including Missile Command. God that game is stressful.
- Comment on Feelin' Festive 3 months ago:
Meanwhile in the UK, we figured this silly little guy was a perfect antagonist for a children’s cartoon.
- Comment on Skew-T Log-P (xkcd) 3 months ago:
I mean, it wasn’t deleted before you posted the link, because I clicked the link and saw it, but I do see that it’s been updated now.
- Comment on Skew-T Log-P (xkcd) 3 months ago:
When posting links to helpful websites rather than answering the question yourself, it’s a good idea to actually read the answer on the helpful website first.
You know, in case there’s a big banner across the top saying “This answer is a useless pile of trash generated by an LLM, please ignore it” (mildly paraphrasing).
- Comment on Day 163 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots 3 months ago:
If you enjoyed Control, I highly recommend Signalis. Similarly creepy, unsettling vibes from everything, lots of exploration and really tense combat, and a story that holds enough back to keep you wondering.
- Comment on Control is free to claim for 24 hours on Epic 3 months ago:
Before. The after version is SCP: 5K, and it’s very, very good.
- Comment on The best game music of 2024, as chosen by composers | VGC 3 months ago:
Nothing released this year will even come close to touching the Warframe 1999 soundtrack. Absolute bangers from start to finish, and in particular Party of Your Lifetime is the most addictive bop you will have heard all year.
Warframe invented a fictional nineties boyband, and accidentally made them unbelievably awesome.
- Comment on Day 154 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots 3 months ago:
Zomboid is really, really tough.
First off, I want you to know that you can customize the game rules, and I’d honestly suggest doing so. I often describe Zomboid as a toolkit for building your own zombie movie. You can change how long it’s been since the “event”, how the infection spreads, how it works, whether survivors have immunity, how long it is before power and water shut off, the spawn chance of different item categories. It’s extremely flexible. Don’t be afraid to treat it as a toolkit. Make the game that’s fun for you.
In terms of actually playing Zomboid, it’s a stealth game first and foremost. You must evade zombies wherever possible. Stay low, avoid noise, avoid lights. Close curtains to about being seen from outside. If there aren’t curtains, make them from bed sheets. Don’t break windows unless you have to (and if you have to, remember to clear off the shards of glass in the frame or you’ll cut yourself climbing through).
If you have to fight, keep moving. You want to string the zombies out then hit a few, then string them out again. But extended fights will kill you as fatigue and panic set in. Remember that if you play by the default rules any scratch from a zombie has a 25% chance to zombify you, any bite is 100%. Zombie virus under default rules is a death sentence. Personally, I turned that off, went with the “Any survivor by now is probably immune” logic.
Your immediate goals are always a good backpack (backpacks reduce the weight of their contents, but that reduction depends on their quality), a good melee weapon, food and bandages. You can make bandages from torn up clothing, and with a pot of water you can boil them to sterilize them. This helps avoid infection.
Longer term, a big goal is to get your skills up. You want books for the big multipliers they give, and watching the right TV shows will give certain skills a huge boost. There are also certain things that you simply cannot do if you haven’t either read about them or started with the right character, like maintaining cars or hooking up generators.
The golden rule of Zomboid is that whenever you find yourself thinking “Surely they didn’t bother putting that in the game,” well, they did. You have to really start thinking about what you would actually do in these situations if it was real life. If you could do something in real life, you can probably do it in the game. If something would be dangerous in real life, it’s probably dangerous in the game. Don’t drink stagnant water without boiling it. Don’t eat food without cooking it. Etc, etc. (Yes, that includes the time my wife tried to make a can of WD40 and a lighter into a flamethrower and immediately exploded). It’s less of a zombie game and more of a survival sim with zombies (seriously, once you get the hang of this game you will spend way too much time thinking about the value of potatoes).
- Comment on Onimusha Way of the Sword - Announcement Trailer 3 months ago:
Fucking shot out of my chair when I saw this. A series that truly deserves to be brought back.
- Comment on Employees at FromSoftware owner Kadokawa reportedly "thrilled" about possible Sony takeover 3 months ago:
Oh, yeah, it’s use in the crypto space is absolutely part of cult conditioning. Any reality check, any sensible question, any appeal to reason, it’s all FUD. Only blind unquestioning faith in the rapture… I mean TO THE MOON… is acceptable.
- Comment on Employees at FromSoftware owner Kadokawa reportedly "thrilled" about possible Sony takeover 3 months ago:
FUD means “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.” I’m not following how you think that’s what’s happening here? I mean, I think you’re accusing the Kodokawa execs of bullshitting, but what they’re expressing is the opposite of FUD.