davidh219

I tried getting into GTA, but never could until IV. That was the first one I stuck with, and I count it among my favorite games. I loved how much more subdued and serious it was compared to what I saw of previous games. It had a commitment to realism about it that really drew me in, and I liked that it was about an immigrant ex war vet that was motivated by conflicting goals of starting over in america and getting revenge on the man who had betrayed him and his fellow soldiers. That shit is way more interesting than stories about american career criminals who are kind of hard to sympathize with since all of their problems are self-made. From what I remember about Vice City, the protagonist had just gotten out of a long prison sentence for murdering lots of people and he goes right back into mobster life and people talk about cocaine for the next few hours. Yawn.

GTA V seems to be getting back to what people liked about the previous games more. It's more absurd, more action-packed, and consequently I lost interest about halfway through the story. It's an incredibly, incredibly funny game. The writing is sharp as a razor when it comes to satire, but there's just nothing compelling about the characters. I don't give a shit about any of them and I have no interest in seeing how their lives turn out. They're all shitty, shallow, boring people. Also I just find New York to be a far more interesting city than Los Angeles. Maybe I'll go back to it someday.

@the_tribunal: If that's the case, why has it taken him this long to get his revenge, with all his money? Why did he have to wait for Gawker to literally refuse a court order in the most unethical, indefensible case before he could do anything against them? Why isn't this kind of thing happening all the time? There's a lot of billionaires around now. As someone earlier pointed out, it's crazy Hogan even had to get financial help to stay in the game, since he was clearly in the right and is a rich celebrity. If anything this shows how unreasonably hard it can be to get justice against a company that has more money than you and how it's even harder when that company hides behind a shield of psuedo-journalism to protect it's illegal and immoral practices. Gawker brought themselves down, Thiel had nothing to do with it. He just paid for the lawyers.

Posting footage of someone having sex without their consent should be illegal, period, and I'm happy with the outcome. It's about time we cleared up where the public's "right to know" ends. This simply isn't comparable to, say, outing a politician as a racist or w/e. It does nothing to further the public good, there's no need for it. People saying this opens the doors for Trump to sue any press outlet that disparages him are being either disingenuous or completely illogical.

I mostly have positive feelings for Telltale. I've liked everything I've played by them, which is only Monkey Island, Back to the Future, and Wolf Among Us. All three of those were pretty good. I'm weirdly looking forward to this Batman game. Tell you what though, they have got to learn how to optimize their games. A glorified point and click with not very technically impressive graphics should not chug on a PS3. Drives me nuts.

@sikboy1029: Agreed. I've had more fun just getting 3 stars on all the dashes than I've had with a game since The Witness came out, no question it's worth $60. But if the idea of banging your head against a time trial for 40 minutes to 3 star it sounds terrible to you, this game kinda isn't for you, and definitely not at full price. Does the fact that probably 90% of the people who pick this game up will not engage with dashes and user time trials even a quarter as much as I have make the game a 3/5? Even more than the campaign, that is the meat and point of the game, and where it really shines. I still don't understand the shit this game is getting, it honestly seems like it's coming from people who want something other than a freerunning and speedrunning game.

@zombievac: Yeah...not so much. I mean, he reads articles on the internet in the way literally everyone does. When I bring up politics he always knows what's going on at the moment even if he doesn't have a ton of background knowledge about politics in general. But he definitely doesn't watch a ton of documentaries or read for work. I don't know what games are out there that could be a substitute for books? Even games that have a lot of text to read, like old rpgs without voice acting, don't have as much as books, and it's not nearly of the same quality. And he doesn't play those anyway. He likes Destiny, The Division, Dark Souls, Terraria, Transistor, Volgarr, Dragon's Dogma, Monster Hunter, etc. Stuff with gameplay that feels good to him, especially things that are both well designed and hard as balls, story kind of doesn't matter. I never said he was worldly, he's definitely not, but he is smart. IQ and innate ability count for a hell of a lot in a culture like ours. Just having gone through high school and college, watching movies and TV, and surfing the web like the addict we all are, will teach a smart person a lot of stuff to start building opinions off of.

And intelligence shows itself in many ways. For instance, he was over here one day when my girlfriend was trying to make a pie. She was following the directions, bought heavy cream and didn't realize it was to whisk into whipped cream. So she's whisking this cream for like ten minutes straight with no change and eventually she has to give up because she had a thing planned and expected to be done with the pie already. So my friend offers to whisk it for her, does it the way she was doing it for about two seconds, and then sets the measuring cup on the kitchen table and rubs the whisk in between his hands like he's starting a fire. It turned to whipped cream in like 20 seconds, and he did another batch for another pie later and it took like two minutes. He'd never seen that done before, just thought of it. My girlfriend wouldn't shut up about it. When I feel most reassured of my own intelligence it's not from knowing tons of shit from books, it's from moments like that, flashes of out of the box thinking and on your feet problem solving, and we both have that trait in spades. If I want to talk Shakespeare, I turn to my girlfriend, but there's nobody I'd want around to help solve a difficult problem more than my bud.

@kingbonesaw: V for Vendetta is an enjoyable, likable movie, but it's a poor adaptation that misses the entire point of the source material and is instead a juvenile anarchist fuck the system power fantasy, not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily. That can be fun when done well and it does it well, I still like the movie, but it is pretty damn trite and anybody who read the graphic novel has every right to be pissed off. It's like if they took Watchmen and just turned it into The Avengers, you're literally taking the themes of the source material and doing the complete opposite.

This is absolutely the right answer. Better than any of the Nolan films, imo.

@takayamasama: If you're only going to read one book series, The Dresden Files is a hell of a good pick. I've yet to read an urban fantasy that matches it. Jim Butcher has that entire subgenre on lock.

@pezen: That's basically how I am with games. I feel your pain. Seems like almost nobody is making the very specific kind of games I want, so I dip my toes into this or that for an hour or two, never finish anything, and maybe once or twice a year land on something I love like The Witness.

@abetorias: Some people have far more money than they have time, first of all. Second, most people I know don't only see new movies in the theater, they watch older ones on Netflix or borrow blurays from friends, so the cost argument is bullshit. Games absolutely cost more. As far as time, a movie takes two hours, zero focus, and you can watch it with a friend or significant other. I recently got around to watching Deadpool with my girlfriend, her brother and his girlfriend, and a couple other people, for instance. Socializing is a lot more valuable to some people than fictional stories. In contrast, a typical 400-ish page adult novel takes 13 hours for someone that reads at the average adult reading rate of 300 words per minute, or 6-ish hours for me. Way more commitment than a movie.

You have some very weird ways of thinking about the world and other people. Here's a shocking revelation. Some people work a lot, and have families. Maybe when they do get a moment to themselves they like to go to a concert or a bar. Maybe they never read, never play games, and only see a small handful of movies a year. In case you hadn't guessed, I'm describing an actual person I know. You need to get over yourself. People are under no obligation to consume entertainment just because you think it's "important" or whatever.

@cale: Actually I think that's a brilliant comparison. Perfectly describes my girlfriend. She would play more games if she didn't struggle with the controls, and she only struggles because she didn't learn the language we all did when we were young and impressionable because she had a younger brother that hoarded all the games from her. It took her months to beat Twilight Princess, and she can't play shooters at all. I tried to get her to play Dark Souls and the concept of lock-on management was too much for her to grasp. Give her something 2D though and she'll kick your ass because that's a language she knows.