Quick Look: Stranger Things 3: The Game

Stanger Things

stanger things

Stranger Things 3 is too relationshippy now when it's not serious, and when it is, it's gone from something dark into pure Resident Evil sewer territory with its big, dumb, goopy, biomass monster.

I must be sick or something cuz I still enjoy Stanger Things.
I even enjoyed the Neverending Story part. Weird, I know.

This game however seems kinda boring but I appreciate how it made me think of Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

Viny, Alex: Keep watching. S3 is probably one of the best Stranger Things seasons.

Keep watching, it's very much worth it. There's some real gold in there, and the ambiance is better than ever.

Stanger Things is still good, but not s1 good.

Stranger Things 3 gets better after the first 2 hours. Overall It's S01>>>S03>>>S02

Season 3 is the weakest by a huge margin.

It doesn't get better from the beginning, the whole thing feels like a parody.

The first two episodes are bad and they do make the characters oddly unlikeable. It gets dramatically better around ep 3.

I should probably finish season 1 one of these days...

I liked season 3 quite a lot. On par with season 2 for me. It builds in ways I didn't expect after the first couple of episodes.

I thought ST3 was pretty good. Overall ST is one of my fav shows.

Er, are the developers non-native-English speakers? The dialogue is *really* stilted in a "we aren't sure how contractions work" ("We-will-go-get-the-thing" instead of "We'll get the thing"), and they seem to be unsure on how past/present participles should be written ("I DUMP YOUR ASS" instead of "I'm dumping your ass").

EDIT: Nope, BonusXP is based in Texas. Maybe it's just a case of "writing natural-sounding dialogue is actually pretty hard to do". Or maybe I'm just being picky. :b

Eleven says it that way in the show, she still has stilted conversations at times because of her lack of communication with people early in life.

@doncabesa: That's fair -- maybe it's just something that's something I notice way more in text than in spoken dialogue.

Makes sense, with her delivery/cadence it makes sense but in text without those you either know she speaks like that or you don't.

Steve and Dustin's continue to be some of my favorite stranger things stuff. I really like the new character of Robin as well!

I remember these things.

Can't agree with Vinny and Alex on this one. I thought season 3 was the best season yet.

@warmonked: Mike kind of remains unlikable throughout the show. Hopper, Steve, Dustin, Nancy, and Robin were the best.

[Edit] Also, Vinny, that was beautiful. I had to rewind it once to make sure I heard what I heard.

I got about 5 episodes into Season 3 and had to stop. I really dislike Hopper's further-flanderized character, and nothing about Mike and Eleven is playing well to me. And anytime Johnathan and Nancy are together on screen, I remember that HE WAS A PEEPING TOM SICKO WHO TRIED TAKING NUDE PICTURES OF HER THROUGH AWINDOWbut I guess that's okay now because Steve symbolically forgave him in the first season? Also the gore is too much, it's just not at all the tone that I'm looking for from the show.

Just don't understand why they didn't call this season Stranger Three-ngs.

Also, I should probably actually watch this show.

For a show that hasn't had a great season since 1 there sure is a lot of merch for it. Suppose it's not surprising.

"I dump your ass" is directly from the show...

Anyway, I thought Season 3's biggest fault was a lack of monster variety. I kept waiting for something other than "goo monster of varying size" and they never had anything else. They didn't need demigorgons, specifically, but something else would have been nice.

I really appreciate just how bonkers and fun season 3 has gotten. I thought season 1 still had it beat, but going back and watching it it's 3 by a wide margin. There's so much bad shit in season 1 that they just either gutted or completely reworked going forward and everyone forgot about. Every teen character was the worst, the bullies were the worst, Joyce's ex was the worst.

How can you say season 3 is gory it's so tame it could be pg rated. It really feels like a goosebumps style caper this season with no mystery or fun like the first 2 seasons where we always wondered what happens next. It feels like a joke movie of the show and never felt believable like the hospital thing it cuts to the next day and no one knew what happened? It's just so dumb but I will watch it anyways because maybe it will get better in season 4.

Hopper is a dick and never stops being one and they just forgot to have any mystery surrounding anything it's by the numbers and you're never ever surprised. Season 1 and 2 were such better story telling.

So it's the Resident Evil 5 of Stranger Things seasons?

The general consensus (that I also agree with) is that Season three starts off kinda not great but really picks up by episode three or four. Urethra Hawke’s (yeah, that’s what I’m calling them and I’m not sure why the celeb mags never picked it up) daughter is pretty great, and by the end of the season the only character I didn’t genuinely like was the sassy little sister.

The people who keep saying “I don’t get the whole Russian thing” and thought it was tacked on nonsense should consider themselves lucky to have not lived through the 70’s and 80’s and have no context for “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Everyone thought (and was obviously correct) that Russians were the source of all of society’s ills and everyone knew they had secret underground bases everywhere. Then River Phoenix found a Russian sub, realized his parents were sleeper spies, and long story short, he’s not alive anymore, is he?

Two and two, people. Two and two.

Glad Vinny brought up Zombies Ate My Neighbors, as I think about the whys and wherefores of that game never getting a proper sequel or remake more often than I should (besides being a Lucasarts game).

The original's not a GREAT game, it's NEEDLESSLY, brutally difficult but it's such a great CONCEPT and I hate that it never caught on.

Just don't pick Joyce to be a leader on the suicide mission. I know the game says she has experience but she's used to being solo.

Oh good, more slide-whistle breathing animation.

glad i'm not the only one who really didn't like the kids in S3. dustin, steven and Robin were the only characters I enjoyed. Just could not get into the mike and eleven relationship stuff and felt Mike's character was just being over the top terrible/annoying.

S3 was definitely the worst of them. So much of the plot was dumb as rocks. But I still kind of loved it.

I went back and watched S1 again and - wow. One of the my all-time favorite things on TV. Very tense, not so campy. I wonder if the best writers have left by now.

I mean, yes, the Cold War was a thing in the 80's. But in the context of the story, it made no sense. There was no foreshadowing in previous seasons at all that there was a giant Russian base being built under Hawkins. The Russians would have to be diabolical masterminds to pull such a feat off and keep it quiet - but it turns out they are idiots that are immediately outwitted and outgunned by just one local cop and his friend. It seemed like they were pulling randomly from bad action/spy movies from the 80's instead of going deeper into the intriguing mythology from S1 and S2. Hawkins Lab is integral to the story and characters, but the Russians just feel like they were tacked on because the writers couldn't figure out what to do after the original bad guys were finished.

The thing is, I don't have any nostalgia for the 80's. I just love the world of the story on its own merits, which happens to take place in that decade. It seems like the writers just want to throw more movie references in your face, regardless of whether they make any sense. Terminator? Really?

@the_nubster: So like George McFly in Back to the Future?

Hopper is such a dick. He should have tossed the kids a bottle of lube and some condoms, told them to go nuts and then left the house.

@topcyclist: I more meant the endlessly repeating creature/bosses that are just sliming, swirling mass of leech creatures...but that's some trenchant analysis!

Man, I really liked season 3. I was so much better paced than season 2, and despite Hopper's characterization it was much funnier and more easygoing than any of the others. It was a good Last Crusade to the first season's Raiders, I thought, and there's mercifully nothing quite so boring as Eleven's runaway stint from last season.

Plus it looks *great*.

According to the lore Hawkins has 30,000 people. Which sounds about right. They built a big, dumb mall in 1989 in a town next to where I lived that had a population of just under 20,000. The idea being that it brings people in from all over. Yes, it's closed now.

@undeadpool: Hey now, don't you talk about Wesker like that!

I went directly from S2 to S3 and it was weird. Managed to stick with it past the first two episodes and am on episode 7 now I think.

The visuals, tone and atmosphere is so different. Earlier seasons had this foggy, looming thriller atmosphere and tension. S3 is much more colorful, hyper, exaggerated, cartoonish, almost sitcom or kids' show like.

The 80s sucked, can we move on as a species.

Season 1 was fantastic, now it has just become an equally enjoyable and forgettable popcorn flick turned into a TV show.

Based on everything I've heard I'm really glad I stopped after season 1. Did this with quite a few shows over the years and it seems like a lot of shows are better off being a one and done affair.

Man I can just not agree with Vinny and Alex about this season and Hopper. Loved the whole thing. Seems like they've only seen two episodes?

I have a mall right near me that is, surprisingly, still thriving, so I decided to make a small video about it after finishing season 3.