DougCL

im pretty excited for this stream tonight. i caught the end of the team tourney last night and its fun seeing mike win once and a while.

so ive only gotten to play maybe 2 hours of this beta but my main question is: is there not a character select screen in online? ive never once seen that screen outside of practice mode. whats the deal?

@ripelivejam: All of the pre-90s Gundam shows are pretty watchable. Just finished 0080: War in the Pocket the other day and liked it. 08th MS Team is good too.

Just give some of the old jams a shot. All the newer stuff is pretty corny.

Threw this pre-painted Poe Dameron X-Wing to get some building practice in since its been about a year since i built anything.

Soon I'm gonna crack into one of these two:

its really hard to say. even as a huge fan of the series, i can admit that the game feels pretty outdated. In a lot of ways it still feels like a ps2 game. if that stuff doesnt turn you off, Yakuza games have a ton to offer.

this latest one has added just a ton of new minigame and side mission content. I'm still only on the first character, but he has this whole taxi-driving side game where you work for a cab company but also battle a street racing gang. that part alone has like, and upgradable car, three different mission types, and a hours of unique content if you want to see it, but you can also just totally skip it as well which is cool.

the games are also super funny. there's a lot of that uniquely Japanese quirk and humor that has been increasingly hard to find lately as the Japanese game market has started shifting toward mobile free-to-play stuff. If you're looking for something set in japan that will remind you of the time you spent there, the yakuza games will definitely deliver. I've never been to japan, but my friend who lived there for a few years was impressed that in past games, he could walk to arcades and convenience stores from memory in the game.

Yakuza 5 takes place in multiple cities across japan, so if you really want to relive your time in Tokyo, maybe check out Yakuza 4? its a little cheaper on PSN and the whole thing pretty much takes place in Kabukicho, Shinjuku.

really loving it so far. its fun to have new minigames, because i felt like they didnt really add any great ones between 3 and 4.

yeah. i feel you on this. very annoying, but i cant think of a good solution.

very excited for this as well. cant wait to finally play it.

i was also shocked at the Zero announcement. I had downloaded the demo off of Japanese PSN and i thought that was all i was ever gonna get to play of it. very happy to be wrong.

The Man from U.N.C.LE. 2/5.

very boring. not a lot happened. there wasnt even any fun spycraft really.

I did all six Star Wars films on sunday. here we go.

A Phantom Menace:3/5

Like honestly? this movie works super well as a so-bad-its-good movie. The humor is super awkward and the child acting is satisfyingly crappy, which are both positives for a fun bad movie. This film also has a lot of new star wars jargon that just completely falls flat, but often in a pretty funny way. midichlorians are the famous one, but im a particular fan of the "chance cube", which is just a colored die. overall, this one is super watchable with friends. it has less of the CG hallway walking melodrama that the later two got bogged down in, and the pod race is still pretty fun.

Attack of the Clones: 1/5

This is the worst one, and its not even close. Everyone cites Jar-Jar as the worst thing about the prequels, but I can say with confidence that Hayden Christensen is worse. He just bumbles through his dialogue with little charisma and even less likability. His performance really makes you wonder why Obi-Wan considers him such a great friend when all he does is disobey orders, and get mad all the time. Natalie Portman is also very bad movie, so it makes a little more sense that her character falls in love with Anakin, since she also just sucks the life out of every scene she's in. Even with all that, I don't think theres any way she shouldve been so supportive when her boyfriend admits to just committing a gruesome spree killing of some Tusken Raiders. Is Padme really dumb, or really racist? Because it's one of the two. This is the movie which has the scene where Boba Fett hires an assassin, who sends a droid to assassinate the Padme, and that droid covertly cuts a hole in the glass of the room she's staying in, and instead of just shooting her with a gun, it poops some centipedes in there to poison her i guess? thats very stupid. also, Obi-Wan goes to a 50's diner in this movie to ask a short order cook about some high tech dart he found. this scene only exists because George Lucas wanted to see what it would be like if there was a 50's diner in Star Wars. It sucks, George. This whole thing sucks.

Revenge of the Sith: 2/5

This is the movie where I really felt bad for Ewan McGregor. In better movies, he could've made young Obi-Wan a really great character, but he is given so little to really work with in these. This one is just boring. It suffers the most from prequelitis, where nothing in the movie has any tension because you already know what has to happen in the last ten minutes. I think the prequel-style lightsaber fights are extremely boring to watch because everyone fights in the exact same style, making everything feel more like a Wushu demonstration than a fight so for me ending the trilogy with a super long one of those was really anti-climactic.

A New Hope: 5/5

This movie is kinda perfect. It works exceptionally well as a standalone movie, but its also so rich in suggestion and worldbuilding that you can really see why it captured the worlds imagination and launched the biggest entertainment franchise ever. This movie is just overflowing with great performances and characters. It had been so long since I last saw this, so a lot of the incidental dialogue came as almost a suprise to me. Han Solo is such an icon that what he represents (the bastard with a heart of gold, aloof cool guy, etc etc) kind of overshadows just how great Harrison Ford is in this movie. He throws himself completely into every scene. I can't think of any part of this one that dragged or anything. just great. That being said, most of the CG added in the Special Edition still sucks. To me, the huge majority of it feels like when your watching a good movie on like TBS or something and randomly Bazinga from the Big Bang Theory walks across your screen and like falls over or whatever to tell you whats coming up next. there's literally a part (i think it was in this one, maybe not) where Lucas dropped a CGI alien farting in another alien's face. Like, was that really necessary? how much money and time did that take to make George? All that garbage doesnt manage to really diminish the film thankfully, but i will still be glad when and if the unaltered versions make it out on blu-ray.

The Empire Strikes Back: 5/5

What is there to say? It's Empire. The Dark Middle Chapter. Where it all goes wrong. The consensus seems to be that this is the best one, but for me it's tied with the first one. both are excellent. This has Hoth, which is the only great cinematic land battle between the rebels and the empire, i think. I dont really count the battle on the forest moon of Endor, because that was mostly Ewoks v Empire. Yoda is so full of life in this movie. He has an actual personality, as opposed to in the prequels where him and mace windu are completely interchangable at all times. Its also great to see in this movie what Jedi training kind of looks like with luke and yoda, because in the prequels we go from baby Anakin right up to teen Anakin who can already basically do everything Obi-Wan can do. I loved the mayhem at Cloud City, the reveal of Vader sitting at a dinner table was pretty fun, the Han/Leia moment as Han is getting frozen is one of the all time great moments. The saber fight between Luke and Vader is a masterpiece. Its visually iconic and manages to tell something about the characters with the choreography. Front to back this is just as good as the first.

Return of the Jedi: 3/5

This one starts super strong and then just kind of falls apart. I absolutely love the Jabba's palace sequence, and the fight on the barge. Seeing all the different weird aliens is one of the best parts of Star Wars. It was radical to see full blown Jedi Luke do his thing, but after that, it just sort of slows way down. Yoda's death scene takes forever. Threepio talks to the Ewoks for what feels like a hundred years, and generally not that much happens. the final lightsaber battle is cool, and seeing Vader redeemed is still a great moment. i dunno. maybe its because i was so close to finishing a 13 hour movie marathon, but by the end i was just happy it was over.