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Mand'alor Dash

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Posts posted by Mand'alor Dash

  1. Quibble might be my favorite guest character in the show. This episode was absolutely hilarious, and definitely knows what it's talking about. I've been a Star Wars fan since I was a baby, and controversially, I actually like Phantom Menace. I have had this very same argument on that subject that Rainbow Dash had with Quibble.

     

    I loved Patton Oswalt's performance, the dialogue, and all the little quips and touches that really make this a great parody not only of Indiana Jones, but fan arguments in general. I think it's my new favorite episode.

    • Brohoof 3
  2. As promised, a full review:

     

     

     

    You know what? I think I could write the script for the next Ghostbusters. When I was a kid, it was heresy to say something like that, but in just the past week, the bar has fallen so low that I’m confident I could plop it out overnight.

     

    Here, let’s get started. Melissa McCarthy walks in front of an iconic piece of original Ghostbusters memorabilia while eating a bowl of soup. It’s funny because her character loves soup. She and Kate McKinnon exchange technobabble and work in a couple PG-13 quips about female anatomy while they’re at it. Now I just have to dig up a commonly used metaphor that people never think about, and pick it to death for about 45 seconds, and I’ll have the first scene in the bag.

     

    Man, writing comedy sure is hard. That’s why these formulas are so helpful. Just make sure you have some quirky characters and a minimal amount of cultural awareness, and you’re sure to get a passing grade from some critics.

     

    But even this still requires skill. Characters in comedy are incredibly difficult to write, since you need to not only give them funny personalities, but also make them play off each other and create an ensemble greater than the sum of its parts. That’s what the original Ghostbusters did, and it’s been a staple of comedic writing in everything from Abbott and Costello to extremely recent films like The Nice Guys.

     

    But of course, everything has a workaround. You’d be surprised how many comedic actors just bank on one personality for their entire career. Just hire a few of those, hand them a script full of jokes they would have told anyways, and you’re golden.

     

    It doesn’t matter if Melissa McCarthy literally has more chemistry with the Chinese delivery boy than she does with any of her co-stars. Just write it off as a “quirky” comedy and take that extra beach day. You deserve it.

     

    In case you haven’t guessed by now, I wasn’t exactly impressed by the new Ghostbusters. Bankrolled by infamous studio executive Tom Rothman, who was known for meddling with and sabotaging promising films during his tenure at FOX, Ghostbusters shows all the signs of a lazy, uninspired remake that leeches off the original like a mosquito.

     

    While it certainly isn’t going to make my list of the year’s worst movies, Ghostbusters 2016 is about as lazy as comedic writing gets. It felt like they left the script half-finished, with the story and action sequences all written out, but the comedy left pitifully underdeveloped.

     

    Sometimes several minutes go by without any jokes to speak of, only to pay off with a single unfunny gag that’s either an age-old cliche, or based on an existing character stereotype. There are jokes with ages of buildup and no climax, jokes that go on for half a minute with no buildup, jokes whose punchline you can see coming from Mars, and even one joke that only actually pays off in the film’s credits. Either way, the film’s comedic timing is botched, and manages to suck the humor out of any moment with potential.

     

    Even the callbacks to the 1984 original are weak, since Ghostbusters 2016 either explains and ruins the joke, or fails to see what made the original funny in the first place.  While it isn’t as ceaselessly annoying as Neighbors 2 or The Boss, it’s a strange sort of mediocrity that leads to a whole lot of awkward coughing and mumbling in the theater.

     

    The cinematography in Ghostbusters 2016 is just as bland as the writing, but at least it’s functional. There aren’t any “wow” shots or scenes where the camera is used creatively. Admittedly, there are a few cool ghost designs, like the 1920s parade balloons that attack at one point, but the film’s “paranormal” elements quickly lose their luster after the tenth paragraph of technobabble and the third predictable jumpscare.

     

    If you want to sum up Ghostbusters 2016 in a nutshell, no need, the movie does it for you after the first scene. You get your first glimpse of a big ‘ol slimy ghost, the classic Ray Parker music starts playing just like you remember it, and then, right when the chorus is about to yell “GHOSTBUSTERS,” it fades out awkwardly and leaves you with silence. Not because it was replaced by anything else, the writers just couldn’t be dragged out of bed long enough to think of anything better.

     

    Dan Aykroyd inexplicably liked this movie. I didn’t. You probably have a DVD of the original sitting around your house. Just watch it again.

     

     

     

    • Brohoof 2
  3. Even though there are other princesses, I believe it's safe to say that Celestia holds more power than all others. Luna was an exiled traitor who only recently returned after 1000 years imprisonment, Cadence is more of a governor focusing exclusively on the Crystal Empire, and Twilight just... does shit.

     

    We have been given no indication of Equestria having a congress, or parliament, or any other legislative body besides the monarch. Voting probably comes into play on the local level (hence why Ponyville has a mayor), but being Supreme Princess is clearly an appointment for life.

     

    Economically, Equestria clearly has the spirit of commerce and enterprise about it. Burgeoning capitalists like Rarity and Applejack are always looking to expand their businesses and rise above the competition. I have yet to see any regulations come into play, so I'm at least going to presume it's a mostly free market. There's also a probable lack of an extensive welfare state, since Flutter's brother essentially had to go live in the woods when he proved too insufferable to live with.

     

    But what's most interesting is the tech disparity. Manehattan is clearly a modern, 20th century metropolis, while Ponyville still looks stuck in the 12th century. This leads me to believe that technology doesn't travel too far in Equestria, likely due to a weird system of inter-county tariffs on industrial goods, or simply the fact that trains are only used to carry passengers for some bizarre reason. Either way, the difference between industrial and agricultural communities in Equestria is even more pronounced than it was in the United States before the civil war, and that doesn't look like it's going away any time soon.

    • Brohoof 3
  4. Because they needed some plot device animals to fit into the whole unnecessarily complex feeding routine.  And because pigs say oink.

     

    OH WAIT....I just figured it out.  Because Applejack has a contract to supply meat to the human world.  She has a portal under the floorboards of the barn.

     

    All of the bacon in the human world comes from Equestria.

     

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    You think Twilight has it bad? Just imagine Spike's rude awakening when he finds out what was in his dog food.

    • Brohoof 1
  5. I can get why you'd dislike an episode (although I'm well past the point of having strong feelings about FiM episodes), but we unfortunately live in a world where people get offended by My Little Pony cartoons. And repeatedly, at that.

     

    Perhaps it's best if we just drop the bomb and end civilization. I know we've had our moments as a species, like all those times we've gone to the moon and back, but our age is clearly over. I bet the dinosaurs are glad they went extinct before they sank this low. Just leave a badass memorial for aliens to find in a thousand years, and gracefully fall on our sword. Nobody has to know that the dominant species of planet Earth was once offended by My Little Pony.

    • Brohoof 2
  6. The world would be a better place if every game had a story mode. That said, Overwatch's arena shooter design kinda makes me wonder how such a thing might work. How would the support or defensive characters be fun to play in PVE? Would there be co-op compatibility to offset this? What about a party of characters like you see in RPGs? Is it even cost effective to develop such a mode?

     

    I'm already considering getting Overwatch, even though I'm not normally into multiplayer games. A story mode would cinch it, but I'm not holding out any hope.

    • Brohoof 1
  7. Most crossovers in general are a terrible idea, unless you already have a shared continuity in place. MLP and Sonic already have distinctly and unavoidably separate universes.

     

    In Equestria, candy-colored ponies and other talking quadrupeds live in a high-fantasy, technologically confused adventure land. In whateverthefuckthesonicuniverseiscalled land: humans, robots, and edgelord furries repeatedly gather and misplace the same seven rubies in their quest to appease their one-dimensional character goals.

     

    This would only piss off both fanbases.

     

     

     

    Whereas Sonic 06 has fairly low scores across the board, and did not sell well.

     

    Terrible as it was, it actually sold its way into becoming a "platinum hit" on Xbox.

  8.  

     

    It's issue #1 of a new arc. A setup not a payoff. And for the record it did make sense. The whole issue kept flashing back to Steve's mom meeting Sinclair and him basically being raised in the Hydra Youth. (Which anypony who's actually READ IT and not just had the ending spelled out to them has no right to act in the dark about.)

     

    So, does that mean this is some sort of side-verse Cap (cause comics do that ALOT), or is this part of central Marvel continuity?

     

    Like I said, I don't really follow comics, so this is something I'm confused about.

  9. Just some midnight musings on philosophy. I've long considered myself an amoral man, now I'm starting to believe that 99% of what we call morality should be thrown someplace deep and dark. Go back to basics (thou shalt not kill/steal), and redo the rest from scratch. Too often, conventional morality seems to fly directly in the face of logic and reality.

    • Brohoof 1
  10. It's rather simple, really. Assuming that the Alicorn gene is recessive, then Alicorn transformation is really more like genetic modification. Think of it as every cell in your body being simultaneously forced to accept an unnatural mutant strand of DNA, as a pair of wings (or a horn) thrust their way out of your fully-developed skeleton and through your skin. Possibly even involving feather growth!

     

    Anyway, while Shining Armor being an alicorn is a rather daft proposition, he could very well carry a recessive Alicorn gene somewhere in his body, which means he and Cadence would basically have a 50/50 chance or conceiving an Alicorn.

     

    If the gene is dominant, then Shining Armor definitely doesn't have the gene, but we've still got the same 50/50 chance of Alicorn conception.

     

    And if it's recessive, but Shining doesn't have it, then maybe Cadence should learn a thing or two about honesty, because something else is clearly going on here.

     

     

  11. G5. When they turned Rarity into a Werewolf, that just tasered my nipples. That's the straw that drank the last Pepsi in the fridge. You might say I should have seen it coming when Twilight dyed her mane red, but foolishly I held out hope; only to be left sitting in the smelly shadow of the broken toilet bowl that was once bronydom.

     

    Oh, how the mighty... won't get mighty again.

    • Brohoof 3
  12.  

     

    The point is it is not a skill gap with a learning curve. Becoming good at a Call of Duty game is effectively as much as playing the game for longer. Skill is a grind in that game, nothing more (at least from my experience)

     

    This doesn't make any sense. Are you saying it's a bad thing that you get better as you play? That's not even entirely true, since there are certain gamers who are just naturally better at the game than others.

     

     

     

    If the argument that "because it's PvP" means there is a skill gap, you could say any game has one which just isn't true.

     

    I'm saying it's there because the evidence can be seen in every scoreboard in every match ever played in every game. When one team dominates the other, that's a skill gap. When a player has 2.0 K/D, that's skill gap. When a commentator runs around the map and turns the match inside out, that's a skill gap.

     

    A skill gap is visible any time where some players reliably do far better than others.

  13. I love how that commentator bitches about the lack of a skill gap, while demonstrating its existence in the gameplay.

     

    For "lack of a skill gap" to be a thing, everybody's K/D should perpetually hover around 1.0, and going much higher than that should be near herculean, if not downright impossible. We wouldn't see people reliably jetting around the map and taking out dozens of enemy players if it was all a "slot machine." This isn't a botmatch. There are real people behind each of those characters you are killing. That is the precise definition of the "skill gap" you claim is missing.

     

    I don't even play CoD anymore, and I'm sick of stupid arguments like these. CoD gets dull after a while. I completely get why it's a problem that other shooters are changing themselves to fit into this amoeba that is Call of Duty. I'm not happy with that, just like I'm not happy with Fallout 4 being dumbed down to be more like Skyrim, or SWTOR being turned into a linear World of Warcraft facsimile. It's fine to want a more diverse gaming market, but this is primarily the fault of developers and their stupid focus groups.

     

    He mentions Tripwire, the Red Orchestra devs, and how their focus group repeatedly just told them to turn it into Call of Duty. Well, of course it did. If you've played or even watched Red Orchestra, the word "niche" will instantly come to mind. Red Orchestra doesn't compete with Call of Duty because it isn't a damn thing like it. Red Orchestra is a game where you need to adjust the angle of your iron sights whenever you take a shot at any hefty range. That's obviously more detail and grit than most players would care to dive into. Instead of building a focus group full of just about anybody, they should have made a focus group out of people who already know a thing or two about realistic, tactical shooters. Perhaps they should have invited fans of Red Orchestra 1 to participate. I can guarantee that they wouldn't bitch about how it "wasn't CoD."

     

    I'm all for variety. I love it. But you can't expect niche titles to do well with the mass audience. And it's not the gamer's fault if your game isn't their cup of tea. By all means, find your audience, expand the market. Just don't bitch and moan when people don't choose your game over another one.


     

     

    COD grew in popularity because it has massive depth (tons of unlocks, maps, game modes, weapons, perks, etc)
     

     

    Popping in real quick to say that's not "depth," it's breadth.

     

    I define the difference like this: if your game has one level, depth is the level of player agency present in that level, and all the different ways that each player can approach it. Regardless of content quantity, depth is what the player can do with that content.

     

    Breadth is the number of levels; the amount of content present, regardless of depth.

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