Unpopular Entertainment Opinions • Page 64

I watched it as I got the phone notification that Robin Williams killed himself, so that didn’t help

 

Oh noooooo!

 

No love for Die Hard 4? That is solid as well and out of the original trilogy I like it more then 2.

 

A PG-13 Die Hard is unacceptable from the start. It’s kind of fun, but it always felt dropped out of a completely different franchise to me.

 

I loved LFoDH when it came out. Wonder if it holds up....

 

Like 3 though, it felt different and fun for the series unlike the 2nd one which was a carbon copy of 1. I didnt really notice the rating except for the yippe ki ya at the end, theres still a crazy bodycount in 4.

 

I love a lot of Tom Cruise’s work from the past decade, but I’d really like to see him go back to the more experimental stuff of the late 90s and 00s.

 

They released an unrated version

 

I know!

 

Bonnie Bedelia was so good in Die Hard 2 that it’s very high on my list. It does blur together with the first though.

 

I caught one of the mission impossibles on tv once and became obsessed and wanted to watch the others but they're not on Netflix I don't think so meh

 

I recently just went through all of the MI films for the first time and they're so fun. The newest being the best was a nice change too.

 

Was that recent article about the coded gay villain tropes in one of those movies accurate? I’ve only seen the first one but that was a pretty crazy read.

 

1. Chrono Cross is better than Chrono Trigger.
2. Grand Theft Auto IV is better than V.
3. Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4 are the best ones.
4. Portal 2 has more inventive puzzles but Portal is the perfect length.
5. Branching choices in games almost always disappoint because writers and other creative people are always going to want to have control over a "definitive" narrative.

 

I dont agree that IV is better but it's much better than it gets credit for

 

I really get annoyed by all the jokes about Roman and bowling. He really doesn't call you all that much, and when he does, it is in service of the story. Niko is out there getting involved with criminal elements while his cousin is ignorant of and responsible for putting him in that position.

 

I like the characters and story of IV more. I like Franklin and Michael and aspects of Trevor but that game tried so hard it ended up being a lot of the bloated, obvious, loud stuff it was trying to parody.

A lot of Trevor’s dialogue is unbearably bad and some of the dialogue in scenes are Michael and Trevor screaming their lines at each other while I’m just trying to drive to some location or something

 

Re: games with branching narratives, I love Mass Effect and it’s ending. It lets you create your own unique experiences within the confines of a set narrative that never strays too far thematically from the story it’s telling. I know it was a huge controversy at the time, so much so that they released DLC to appease angry fans, but the original ending was perfect and a large number of video game fans are bad at reading media and stories

 

No matter what you do in Mass Effect (unless you screw up so bad in 2 that the entire crew dies), the humans end up beating the Reapers. How they beat them is slightly different, but it is fundamentally the same ending. In the earlier games, those choices end up not meaning too much. If you let Wrex die, he is just replaced by a different krogan. The choice between Kaidan and Ashley does carry over, but the survivor does little in 2 and is out of commission and can die halfway through 3. All of the playable characters from 2 are not playable in 3, with the exception of Garrus and Talia, who were from the original game. If you described the story of the trilogy to someone, a player who played as noble and accomplished the sidequests would tell you almost the exact same thing as someone who played ruthlessly and did not do the sidequests.

The Walking Dead games present bigger problems. The ends of the second and third game ultimately make the character choose between the lives of major characters, but the next game in the series just sweeps all of that away. Through four games, nothing you do in the game changes the ending, minus which secondary character was tortured and one may be dead or alive. Red Dead Redemption 2 was very touching and a high mark for video game storytelling, but my purely noble Arthur Morgan has essentially the same story as an evil and callous one.

I just finished Fallout: New Vegas, and it felt like it got this better. The slideshow endings are not terribly exciting, but choosing a faction and having missions appear or disappear felt like a real choice. It also helps that there are pros and cons to working for each group, whereas in Mass Effect there is definitely more optimal options to choose.

It feels like it is an issue where there is no answer that will please everyone. Games are so expensive and take so long that developers are limited to the options they can present a player, but fans want 1000 different endings based on minute choices.

 

I just re-read Extra Lives, Tom Bissell’s book on video games, for the first time since college. He has thoughtful writings on choice in video games and video game narratives intertwined with mechanics, and how unique a position the audience of a video game is in vs the audience of a film/novel, and the challenges for game developers to create for that medium satisfyingly. I get a lot out of his writing in that book. It has chapters on Fallout 3, Mass Effect 1, and GTA IV

 

I miss Mass Effect. 2 was one of my favorite gaming experiences ever.

 

Unpopular opinion: Mass Effect Andromeda wasn’t bad

 

I love this book and recommend it to literally everyone

 

It’s great. I re-read it after I ordered a copy for my brother.

 

See that’s what bugged me about all the hand wringing and pity parties that came out of the ending of ME3. There was no fucking way that storyline was going to end based on all the choices you made, but that didn’t stop people from acting like they were personally robbed by it and it was ridiculous to watch. Gamers are legit some of the most entitled crybabies in the fandom kingdom by a mile.