10 “Old” games, why I think they are worth buying and something else in 2024

“End of the year extravaganza” seems to be a thing. So, this is mine for the year 2024. I am going to talk some about books, a little about movies by the end and ultimately video games. The rambling here might be more fitting as a blog, but I do need to distinguish things that got on a list and those that did not.

Introduction

Awards for things such as games and books are another form of marketing in the end. Even the award winners’ speech can be viewed in such cynical light, as if saying “Look at those adorable people who worked so hard on this piece of work! Buy it and keep them happy would you kindly?” Not to mention, such acceptance speech had been sold as part of products.

In the book pictured above, one essay has the following mouthful as its title: Speech during 2000’s ceremony of Chinese Science Fiction Galaxy Awards and Gathering for Sci-fi at Beijing Normal University. Trust me, it’s almost as long in original Chinese, composed of 4 numbers and 26 characters (Even with “Beijing Normal University” or “Bei Jing Shi Fan Da Xue” practically shortened to “BNU” or “Bei Shi Da”.). This title is so long that the editor decided to separate it into to 2 lines both on the contents and above the essay itself.

Anyway, Mr. Liu made the speech after he was awarded for Wandering Earth (Yes, the novelette that “inspired” the 2 nuttier than Roland Emmerich flicks disaster epics with a potential 2-part trilogy ender scheduled for 2027…) and you can bet your ass that the speech is all about setting up End of World scenario within the context of science fiction. And the book seemed to be commissioned only after Liu won a Hugo, as its initial publishing time says “December, 2015”. Oh, what did man have to do to get his own words out! Won award outside his country of origin apparently.

Speak of award being marketing, I bought every winner of Galaxy Award Best Novel (Only 6 volumes between 2013 and 2024.) this year. Heck! As the nominees for this year were announced a week ahead of ceremony back in September, I ordered them all “by mail”. One nominee being the final volume of a trilogy new to me, I ended up buying the whole trilogy (It did not win, but that trilogy is a lot of fun.). The books arrived at my doorstep just as Echoes of Wisdom launched. With even Tom Mark’s glowing review for IGN mentioning flaws like way too busy inventory and framerate drops, that game got an “Excuse me, Princess. I just a book or 5 to read.”

Awards can tell one why a product is worth buying. Along with reviews, it would have served as filter well for the wise who do not pre-order anything. Those are ways to advocate for consumerism after all. Still, the bullshit “Geoff Keighley’s” Game Awards had been on in the recent years if not for the last decade is on another channel. Selling time slots for people to show their bullshots does not help anyone other than Keighley’s accounting department by the end of day. And no, saying that Final Fantasy Seven Rebirth is being ported to PC during such speech is just more bullshit creeping in.

Anway, here are “not 2024 releases” for me in 2024. Most were played and reviewed. I do take a note from Yahtzee Crawshaw’s playbook of categorize them in terms of how did they make me feel. Well, as much as I could that is. There are those that I feel worth buying and there are those I do not. Let’s start with 3 I do.

Honorable mentions: Years Long Gone

The section is about things I played but did not review for one reason or another. Mostly because I haven’t seen credits roll in 2 of them. All 3 came out in the aughts, 2 on PS2. It’s bit nut to think how long ago that decade was.

HM 1 Persona 4 Golden

The year 2008 Common Era fills the motif “It’s the best of time, it’s the worst of times” well. The PS3/Xbox 360 generation came on its own this year in ways I doubt PS5/Xbox Series generation ever would. Both Gamespot and IGN gave GOTY to games made for those machines after all. The year also gave us a glimpse of dark “future” where brands mean everything. Iron Man kicked off the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe this year after all. In Japan that summer, an unassuming role-playing game titled Persona 4 came out on PS2. What would you know, the game got more staying power than Grand Theft Auto Four and Metal Gear Solid Four combined.

I played Golden up to beating some sense into Yukiko back in March, 2024. Then I got my attention paid to newer and shinier things and have not gone back yet. Sadly the “playing through Second Persona Trilogy” did not go well. Still, I did like what I’ve played and should go back soon enough.

HM 2 Okami

The year 2006 Common Era was when over-the-shoulder orthodoxy was fully formed with the original Gears of War. The shooter won many awards like Gamespot Game of the Year 2006. Epic itself even got Best Game Studio at the Keighley’s. But this cutting-edge piece of work did not win everything as IGN’s crew then preferred Okami on PS2.

As my Platinum Melt-off finished in May, I was ready to dive into some pre-Platinum Clover Studio joints. Viewtiful Joe would have been the one had Capcom re-released it on any “modern hardware” but alas. It just might be due to awards like IGN Game of the Year 2006 that Capcom kept porting Okami. The game was re-released almost as frequently the infamous Resident Evil 4 despite the original PS2 version being a commercial flop. And what you know they are going to make a sequel with Hideki Kamiya crawling back to direct.

I’ve seen credits roll once in Okami at the tail end of 2018 and it remains the only Zelda game I like on Switch. I got up to that spider flower boss back in May, 2024 and stopped because Hade 2 was out on Early Access. I think it’s a fitting distraction.

Both Hades games have Boons that would turn evasive moves into elemental attacks. Intentionally or not, this might be inspired by Okami. With late game upgrades, Amaterasu would be able whack her enemies with jumps and dodges. Not until Platinum’s Bayonetta can keep her offense up this constantly.

HM 3 Half-life 2 or Valve’s Gordon Freeman Collection Powered by Source Engine

The year 2004 Common Era is somewhat a mystified time. Multiplayer on home console had finally got many on the internet thanks to Halo 2 on Xbox Live. Playstation Portable and Nintendo Dual Screens ushered in the era of polygons for handhelds. And Half-life 2 would inspire stuff beyond its own genre.

To celebrate Half-Life 2’s 20th anniversary Valve of course upgraded the game through Steam. What made me go back were the patched in developers’ commentary nodes for 2004's Half-Life 2. Hearing what features almost got cut, what corners were cut and why, how did they manage to make the world feel bigger despite the whole thing is still a corridor shooter were all worth putting another 12 hours into a game I’ve gone through several times before. Guess with the episodes included in one package, I am just going to pretend that the game is actually titled “Half-Life Square”. I would just consider it as a standalone title with tragic ending and move on. The decade long “Half-Life Three confirmed” joke is getting old you all.

Almost forgot, it’s nice to hear the recently deceased Tony Todd playing good guys in Episode Two. Rarely to see the actor played Candyman more than once as good guys in things, and here one of Vots he played is basically the John Manson to Gordon Freeman’s Stanley Gordon in the Rock like chapters. Hope he finally got his “fucking money” wherever he went to, underworld, heaven, Elysium or Valhalla.

Dishonorable mentions: When Platinum had melted…

Now a detour into not worth buy depot. “This beloved game sucks actually” is a game yours truly as a critic wannabe love to play. I can be particularly baffled by how several studios got their acclaim in this industry. My target for 2024 was Platinum Games. I do feel sorry about how they got gutted by corporate overlords. But that feeling aside, some parts of their reputation just do not feel true.

Take their movement for example. After I saw the actual final credit roll on Phantom Pain back in 2015, I got curious enough about Platinum’s ridiculously subtitled Revengence and disappointment greeted me in the end. Being a game about Robot Ninjas, Raiden sure moves more like robot than ninja. I mean as the story of Phantom Pain being a big fuck all, at least that game makes players feel like agile and lethal spy commandos. Revengence just provide the robotic without the proper weight. But I dropped that game a couple of hours, while I spent hours to see the following through and my condemnation for them has 4-digits word count.

DM 1 Vanquish

(Word count to condemn this one: 1461)

Many claim that Platinum has an edge of better action that yours truly find to be ignorable at best. But the studio’s bad camera on the other hand, is either “getting in the way” or “getting in the way too much”. Well, it gets in my way too much in Vanquish, in part because the game is all too brief.

As I revisited 2005’s F.E.A.R almost a year ago, an idea of doing “bullet-time shooter” was hatched. But a revisit of Vanquish killed that idea dead. In a year when the cliffhanger ending of Warhammer 40K Space Marine got a continuation, one cannot help but think back on the first couple years of the last decade and how several developers had the balls to leave cliffhanging endings without making people care. Bulletstorm was also both guilty of that, but my first “That’s fucking it?” was given to Vanquish.

DM 2 Astral Chain

(Word count to condemn this one: 1311)

Another inherent vice of Platinum would be lousy story. Video game narrative is not exactly a high bar, but Platinum’s narrative team cannot even clear the threshold of “make people care” most of the time. Coupled that with the intention of single-player 2 character co-op, there is the 2019 flop Astral Chain. While developers like Atlus and Falcom are not exactly breaking new ground with their stories, at least they manage to make people care about the world and the resident in it. Platinum just could not. Not with Astral Chian anyway.

DM 3 NieR Automata and its animated adaption

(Word count to condemn this one: 1322)

Well, this is actually a case of “I am not angry, I am just disappointed”. I planned to do a retrospective with word count in the 5-digit on this one. I took more than 150 screenshots in preparation. Then the whole thing just felt like a bit empty by the end.

When Automata first came out in 2017, many were still in shock of the first time one certain Donald J Trump got elected as US president. In their sorrow, this empty yet seemingly deep and sad game got their hearts. Call me selfish, but I feel more dread regarding which game would people overrate this time around than Mr. Trump’s likely terrible policy would impact this world.

Then there is NieR Automata Ver. 1.1a, a faithful animated adaption that somehow fell into the parody hole by the end. I mean robot kids offed themselves after the “debate of century” between Pascal and Engles is nothing new, it’s just like anytime Hideo Kojima says “Fuck you! You didn’t save shit!” after boss fights in Metal Gear Solid games. But it’s still an effective “fuck you” in video games. The anime changing into fear turned to zombie virus and it’s just a kid eating others feeling nothing short of a comedic parody.

And the demise of written-for-tv character Lily is just so predictable and farcical. Oh, 2B’s added-for-tv final line “Nineth” as she wake up next to 9S, that just screams “YOKO TARO wishes his corporate overlord could charge for 7 years’ worth of porn parody, but he would settle for royalty from Shift Up doing Nikke and Stellar Blade crossover”.2010’s first NieR clearly is just one-hit wonder for Mr. YOKO since he only made people give a shit that one time.

Section One: Time on my side

Finally, those on the list. While Vanquish killed my intention to play more bullet-time action game, somehow I managed to play 3 in the first 5 months of this year. And the bottom one is in the bottom mostly because of its unsatisfying ending.

10 F.E.A.R

Revisiting Half-Life Square does make one realize how bad the ending of this 2005 shooter is, mechanically speaking. 1998’s Half-Life ended with a bullet spongey final boss, not the best but not unreasonable either. 2004’s ground breaking sequel ended with a victory lap, it would be a neat bow if G-man does not show up. 2006’s Episode One being a short bridging chapter with everyone on trains out of City 17 is not too bad either. 2007’s Episode Two’s final epic battle is as climatic ending as we would ever get with the series.

Compared to all that, F.E.A.R’s ghost corridor is just weak sauce. Maybe Alma finally got out is the highpoint Monolith aimed for? I would not know. But given how much people complained about Shadow of Mordor’s QTE filled final fight, I guess they just do not know how to end their games.

9 Bayonetta

Now this is a game with great ending. Long concerned final showdown, a victory lap of throw the boss into the sun and dance party during end credits. Bayonetta is a good game that holds up today with some rough edges. While camera in tight corners is not great. And here is a rest-in-peace to Bayonetta’s Japanese voice, Atsuko Tanaka, who also past in 2024. The lady does not fit my image of the character but she did an admirable job regardless. The network is vast, have nice swim, major.

8 Bayonetta 2

By the end of the day, Bayonetta 2 is a better and tighter sequel. I would not say it’s worth to buy some Nintendo hardware, since the first Bayonetta is just this, only beefier and rougher around some edges. Still, leaner and meaner sequel is something to advocate in these days when corporate greed always demands more.

Section Two: compare apples to pears

The following 2 were indie titles I planned to play and review back in the year 2022 when “prestige indies” took up most to all of my headspace. Then there was bigger fish to fry in that dreadful year…Anyway, here in the tail end of 2024, after I read more than I played, I found it interesting that 2 Chinese sci-fi novels resemble those 2 games rather uncannily.

7 Pyre

Often dubbed as “the Chinese Philip K Dick”, Han Song along with the aforementioned Liu Cixin served as getaway to Horror for a still teenaged yours truly. But unlike Liu’s more physical approach (fatally extreme environments and the receiving ends of asymmetrical warfare), Han prefers to keep the psychological dread up usually to a farcical degree in his longer works. More often than not, the man also prefers to gross his readers out. The title of Han’s Hugo nominated short story does sum up the man’s work nicely: Answerless Journey. While other sci-fi novelists would answer everything in the end by hook by crook, Han would just leave the readers hanging.

Published in English-speaking regions as 2066: Red Star Over America (Yep, the title is a deliberate homage to that book about a powerful but not that power Mao Zedong, in both English and original Chinese), Han’s 2000 novel is a bit different from his other works. For one thing the dread would end with the journey and someone in the book does know the answer, board stroke as it is.

The first person narrator Tang Long is a Go player from China born in the year 2050. On March, 2066, he is tasked with compete in Go games in America along with his peers. As the final taking place in New York city, a terrorist attack stopped the game prematurely and changed Long’s life forever. He is forced to survive in the wasteland of America until he can go home. From a Lord of Flies party boat to places populated by mutants, from a short detour into Loony Toon to a ground battleship housing the remnant of US military, Tang Long’s journey is destined to be harrowing.

At its core, 2066 is telling a coming-of-age story and unlike Han’s usual approach, the readers are told that the first person narrator would be safe, as he was writing the whole thing 60 years after the event. The story is set in a fascinating future, where the United States of America is in decline due to crop shortage in the 2030s and China (Despite how the flag is the same, the book refuses to call her PRC.) is gifted with Mirage Society. All point to the Mirage Society being a voluntary but not that voluntary mass jacked into a type of Matrix.

The book is somewhat notorious for predicting Nine Eleven, as Tang Long was playing Go on top of World Trade Center twin towers and the attack did collapse the building. But it’s not like landmarks are ever safe from radical empire haters who would harm non-combatants. And the radical empire haters who would harm non-combatants in this book are domestic to America. The method they use to flood the city with sea water (Well, nothing says lousy future louder than raised sea level and the dam against it.) instead of crashing hijacked airliner into it. Whoever ballsy enough to adapt the book into a film from right now can do with the current replacement anyway. And not to mention the disaster is 65 years late.

Anway, this one is surprisingly fun to read. Much like the USA about to lose the war in 1948 depicted in Peter Tierya’s United States of Japan, America in this book is hell on earth not exactly worth saving. And the story is never about saving the land, it’s about people trying to save themselves. Tang Long’s internal monologue shows him as spoiled brat at the beginning and matures as the book go on. The book is either an entry point to the harrowing insight Mr. Han has as a journalist, or the only book one can read written by this man.

How does the game compare to the book: not so favorably.

As one mild mannered video game would against a harrowing piece of gnerre literature. While both features an exile’s road trip in some wasteland, the telling is on polar opposites. Magical basketball is fun though.

9 OPUS: Echo of Starsong

The book pictured above can be jokingly described as “by the Li Brothers”, since those pen names are used by 2 men sharing the family name Li but no blood tie. Baoshu being Li Jun from Sichuan and A Que being Li Wei from Hubei. The two are dude bros through and through with a daring to reference pornography in their stories. Baoshu’s novelist career started with a piece fan fiction that he would apologize to his fellow author Liu Cixin and fellow Liu Cixin fans alike for, while A Que is more or less shaping up to be the Chinese George R R Martin.

Both men like to warn their readers of late capitalism sucking the joy of future but in very different ways. The older Baoshu’s more recent stories usually depict how highly-priced and overrated technology damages society, while the younger A Que just uses such society as the backdrop for his “individual David figure knocking one tooth off the corporate Goliath” plots. As they co-authoring their galactic empire setting, their dread regarding modern days just morphed into how the 7 states had their state interest hijacked by industry interest.

Phantom of Haojing and its potential sequels do sci-fi retelling of China’s Before Common Era Warring States, a time between the collapse of Braze Age and Imperial China as we know it. The war between Qin (The state in real history of such name did establish Imperial China as we know it) and Wei under this modeled after Star Wars space opera setting is quite like the clone troopers against battle droids action seen in Clone Wars. The two main dude bros argue how to escape an enemy ship feels like a direct criticism of Force Awakens. There is space adventure to be enjoyed here. But shortcomings are glowing as well.

With A Que comes jarring tune swing, one can never except if his chapter would be closer to Spaceballs or Snyder cut of Rebel Moons. Neither author is good at writing women, and they did not improve on that aspect in their cooperation. Then there is the promise of “Winter is coming”. Your truly did see enough authors that are sweet summer children themselves do not what kind of winter they promised.

How does the game compare to the book: very favorably

The 2021 indie title from Taiwan and this book do share one strength: they are both space opera going “To hell with Rome!” I mean good god how many times can English speakers put Rome in space. Asimov’s Foundation was modeled after Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, George Lucas went for the last years of republic in Star Wars, and Bioware practically let Citadel space being Romans conquering Italy in Mass Effect. So why shouldn’t Chinese speakers model our space opera after anything else?

Then there is what to do with them wars among the stars. While the “Li Brothers” were too eager to recreate things from Star Wars, developers behind Echo of Strasong deliberately went to interbellum years narratively and table-top speech checks mechanically. The result is a product more refreshing than a book over-appeal to its target readership.

Section Three: Saturday morning fever

The potential of animation is usually ignored by many. Even though Disney was built on animation, yet the current people in charge tend to stay in the photo real hell. It might be as baffling except that video game business as a whole is more hellbent on photo real. I mean the House of Mouse has theme park business, what’s this lousy industry’s excuse? Anyway here are 2 cartoony indie titles I quite enjoyed this summer.

5 Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

I am certainly not above buying a game just because it’s being adapted into something not interactive. The Sakuna anime came out in summer, so I bought and played during Steam Summer sale. Cannot say I regret it. And I am happy with the sequel announcement. The allegedly 2 people team certainly prefer to have a total new set of mechanics to be tired of in the new one. And it would pick up the “But, that is another story for another time” bit teased in the first game’s epilogue.

The anime is pretty good too. Nice of them to reflect the going back to beating a hard boss after a rice harvest routine I did several times in the game. While the game started with giving players both single-handed and two-handed weapon, the show presents two-handed plough as a upgrade is in the spirit of being a show based on video game.

4 Dust: An Elysian Tail

Ah, the one-man team made wonder that was originally envisioned as an animated feature. It does hold up 12 years later. Not much to add here, except that after playing Tokyo Xanadu, I did appreciate the Nihon Falcom feeling this game has.

I put about one hour or two into Castlevania Aria of Sorrow this year. While Dust is a Symphony of the Night like, its colors cannot be found anywhere in actual Castlevania. Then Falcom’s Ys was listed as inspiration for Dust. It’s just nice to see Falcom still kept it colorful cartoon root even after someone else kept the touch.

Section Four: Witnessing the long and agonizing death of E3 in person

In some way the following three all still have that “Saturday morning cartoon” vibe. But timing attached to them does remind me of a certain Electronic Entertainment Exhibition, a bullshot fest at least than Keighley’s selling the slots to the highest bidders. As big boy E3 2.0 slowly died over the years, the anime games below were over its shoulder, watching, waiting for the moment to, appear.

3 Tokyo Xanadu eX+

I played this one this year because I heard Dia Lucina mentioned it once on an Abnormal Mapping podcast behind paywall. While I disagree with her on the Order 1886 and I would never follow her footsteps down the Shemue path, she did inspire to use phrases such as “over-the-shoulder orthodoxy” and “AAA games look expensive (instead of “good”)”. Also she and me both on the “From Russia With Love over Goldfinger” side of Bond film history. So, when her early impression of the game is that it’s better than Persona 3, I got curious. I looked up the Japanese voice cast and there are enough usual suspects (Including the voice behind Persona 3’s horny dickhead playing the Anakin Skywalker motherfucker here.) in it, so I installed the game on my Steam Deck.

My guess on why Ms. Lucina prefer the game over Persona 3 is as follows. This game has 2 separate ensembles, the friends and the super natural teenage cops, in the beginning. Without the horny dickhead with the cops, the story can feel much better. The 2 groups would interact over the course of the game. Then there is the secret society formed around the Xanadu dungeon featuring its own economy and weapons that are not teenagers pulling sticks out of their asses. It’s just feels more tangible than most Persona games.

As credits roll, a question occurred to me: when exactly did I purchase the right to play this game on Steam? Turns out I made the purchae in June, 2018, probably during that year’s Steam Summer Sale and after they patched in the original Japanese text for the Steam release. Also, it’s after Sony Interactive Entertainment attended E3 for the last time. That year’s Sony conference is a weird constant moving affair on its own. And I guess with their “Prestige (few)” approach, they realized that the kind of dick measuring at E3 just ain’t worth it with Microsoft’s parade loaded with 3rd party stuff. So Tokyo Xanadu probably has nothing to do with E3, but yours truly bought it at a time when the end of E3 was set in motion. We just don’t know it yet.

2 Scarlet Nexus

Asami Seto is a Japanese voice actor also with a pretty face and a nice singing voice. She appeared in 2 early 2024 releases, as new girl Reina in Tekken 8 and player character Eve in Stellar Blade. Yours truly did want to hear Ms. Seto’s voice in video games but don’t want to pay. So, with Scarlet Nexus already installed on my Steam Deck since I got it on Christmas, 2022, I jumped back in.

Got to say, I don’t know what I was on when I thought this game has inferior action compared to Platinum joints. It’s tight and paced well. The story is very good all considered. Shame that Bandai Namco might have canceled that sequel already. Shame since I am very interested in knowing what the deal would be with the Moon. But with the sale reached just one million months after it launched on all the Xboxes, all the Playsations and PC, the greedy at BN might consider it a disappointment. That PS5 exclusive Stellar Blade reached one million within the first month after all. (I wonder how much the softcore porn discourse helped.)

Anyhow, Scarlet Nexus came out in June, 2021, weeks after a digital event called E3 2021 and about one whole month after the Nextlander exodus from this site. Big boy E3 drew its last breath that year already seemed like a coin toss back then if you ask me.

1 Persona 3 Reload

Those who clicked in already knew that the top spot is taken by some trolling. Yep, it’s a 2024 release. It’s also a remake of an 18 years old game. With its script being some refining of the old one, I decided that it belongs here. Not much to add, for a it had been more than 10 months since I loaded up a save file and b I wrote more than 10 thousand words about it. “What was I thinking?” provoking as it might be, I got no new insight here.

It's uncanny that this game dipped in the theme of death was released twice both shortly after E3 being killed. While the English version of the PS2 original did not come out until July, 2007, the game was out in Japan merely weeks after E3 2007 was announced as a scale down. Then this full scale remake came out weeks after E3 was er, postponed indefinitely. Makes one wonder whose death is the game talking about, heh?

Epilogue: Bye, Cinema(tic)

The film market being in bad shape truly hit home for me this year. Yours truly had seen 2 cinemas closed down, one had been in business near my home for the past 15 years and another under my workplace for the past 3. The last time I went to the former was to watch Tenet in 2020, the latter’s closure somehow cut a little closer, in terms of time.

The picture above was taken in the last week of November yet this joint was closed as early as September the Second. As you can see, the cardboard cutout to promote Alien Romulus is still there, as if H R Giger’s iconic dickhead monster is fending off anything approaching.

I had been patron to this joint for 7 times in the past 2 years and looking back at it does make me wonder why did I bother with most of those visits.

The first 2 were Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (The title still had those 2 words back then). Those 2 action movies were relatively critically acclaimed despite how much yours truly despise them. Both are the first of their own two-parters and with better-pacing they wouldn’t have been. Chad Stanhelski has a lot to answers for since he made everyone think they can meander through action movies rather than providing thrill and entertainment through good pacing.

Then there was Barbenheimer (Microsoft Word actually considers this marketing bullshit realer than the British spelling of some words, by the way.) with one month in between. Not much to say about Barbie other than I had seen better and cheaper toy commercials than it. Margot Robbie looks great and Ryan Gosling is funny I guess, pretty people make cinematic blockbuster after all. Oppenheimer cannot be more of an Oscar baiting biopic if it tried. But with better pacing and sense of suspense than aforementioned action flicks, Nolan’s latest is definitely peak cinema.

Finally, the first 8 months of 2024 brought in Dune Part 2, Furiosa and Alien Romulus. All just reminded me of better and older flicks I do not have to plan trips to the cinema for. Dune Part 2 is just a mixture of Lawrence of Arabia and the Matrix (As a science fiction reader, I also found Frank Herbert’s own sequels to Dune to be long-winded, condescending and masturbatory.). Furiosa did give me enjoyment with high-octane car chase on big screen, but Fury Road’s relentless pacing entertained me more. Romulus’ dumb kids being dumb p …[truncated]