LunarKnight

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  1. Anxiously awaiting the end of the work day. I ordered a bunch of expansions for Last Night on Earth that should arrive today, and I'm looking forward to some new ways to survive the zombie apocalypse.
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by White Hot Flash View Post
    Anyone else think this looks more like Nathan Fillion in Captain America gear? Or possibly a brunette Daniel Craig? If I didn't know Evans was the lead, I wouldn't have guessed it from the picture at all.
    He kind of looks like Bucky-Cap.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by BafflingBeerMan View Post
    Yeah, I don't know if I hated that episode or loved it.

    Glee should definitely stop doing themed episodes for a while. They can't properly write a story around a theme.
    Yeah, I agree. While never a huge fan of the series, the old episodes do a better job of telling a story, then picking music that fits the moment. The theme episodes really struggle because the story gets constrained trying to contort itself around a narrow setlist and loses that surprise factor where you can just feel exactly what they're setting up for.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
    Caprica basically fell into the same trap many Hollywood shows like this fall into: It should have never been designed as an open-ended series to begin with. The story Caprica was trying to tell would have been much better served as a 10 or 12 episode mini-series with a predesigned beginning, middle and ending. It was never going to be an episodic soap opera that could last for multiple seasons.

    I blame the Hollywood system which tries to force everything on American TV to last for a long as possible regardless of the story behind it. The quest for money and ratings forces them to grind everything down into the dirt until most shows "jump the shark" and get yanked off the air before they're allowed to create good conclusions to their plotlines. These shows have lost sight of the fact that sometimes "less is more" and that they would be better, tighter productions if they didn't just try to last forever.

    I liked Caprica, but sadly it's probably going to end up being "lost in the weeds" because the producers were too motivated to try to keep grinding out increasing disconnected episodes instead of concentrating on a focused story with a solid meaningful conclusion.
    This is why I generally don't watch any TV at all.
  5. This whole thread has just made me sad.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Veritech View Post
    *shrug* editorial meddling. it's one of the reasons he eventually left the book. those kids were originally supposed to be Pete and Gwen's, but Joephisto thought Peter having sex, with his girlfriend... during the 1960s.... was unpossible, and thought it made much more sense that Gwen boned Norman instead... not one of the better moments, but im not blaming JMS.

    also, i guess im one of like ten fans who thought the totem concept was probably one of the more original ideas to go through the comic in some time. But that's me.
    In general, when it comes to JMS I rarely find his original ideas any better than the editorial mandated changes we get stuck with. I enjoy his writing a lot, but he really doesn't seem to have the knack for writing established characters. He thrives with the total creative control that only comes from writing your own universe, free from the meddling of other authors. I really wish he'd get more into creator owned properties for a lot of his ideas, because he just doesn't seem to have the reverence for the source material to play well with other people's toys.
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rabid_Metroid View Post
    Is that... a red, LEATHER hoodie?

    Where would you even FIND something like that?
    Hot Topic
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang View Post
    I thought Marvel already ripped off Blackest Night with all that vampire garbage? o.O
    Not the vampire garbage; you're thinking of Necrosha, where Selene used the techno virus to resurrect a bunch of dead X-Men characters and attack their former friends. The vampires showed up later.

    Personally, I'm loving Marvel's "reverse Blackest Night" in the cosmic realm. The universe is currently being invaded by a parallel one where Death was killed and nothing else can die.
  9. A 5th movie? No, but maybe a 6th. They need at least one more movie to establish the character and effectively pass the torch.
  10. Meh, variant covers; we've seen a lot of those lately, like the vampire covers, the Iron Man covers and all that. They have nothing to do with the story; none of these characters are going into the system; its just a promo deal.

    I will note that that IS Spiderman's new costume though.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Defenestrator View Post
    An ORB device that, as it turns out, did nothing. Oh, the tangled web this show weaves.
    Which was really a shame. I really felt the show seemed to lose a lot of momentum there. I'm really curious to rewatch season 4 without the break in the middle to see if I'd feel the same way without the delay between that episode (which seemed to throw out everything without adding anything) and the later building of the Revenge Society in the newest episodes.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by CrazyJerseyan View Post
    I think the whole mullet deal is a play on the biblical Sampson, but meh. Good stuff sir
    The episode about Hank's summer had a whole joke about that. "You know, that guy who was like, super strong until he lost his hair?"
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Agonus View Post
    I'm still on the fence about mini's though. Lost interest in Heroclix though I still have a lot. Sitting on a sizable 40K army I acquired in the last year, but only half of it is together. Started Monsterpocalypse, but I didn't want to spend a lot on it. But of course, even after my friend and I sunk about $100 into boosters and starters, we never got a single Cthul monster, which was the main !@##$$%&%^$@#@% faction I wanted to play.

    So! Back to the tabletop RPGs for me.
    Heroclix has always been a bad game propped up by a great license. I can't do unpainted minis, because by the time they're ready for play, most people have lost the excitement of learning the game.

    Heroscape is an absolutely fantastic game for getting into minis. It has EVERYTHING you could want (storyline is fluff/excuse for the concept): Ninjas, Robots, Zombies, Revolutionary Soldiers, Spartans, Elves, Orcs, Vampires, etc, etc etc. It's also wonderfully not blind purchase and they regularly reprint old packs, so you just have to find what you want and buy it. Terrain is made of these amazing interlocking/stacking 3D hex tiles, making setting up the map something like legos. Unfortunately, it was recently moved to WotC, who have rebranded it with reused DnD minis of far lesser quality, so the new stuff isn't quite up to the standards of the old; there's so much old stuff though that by the time you NEED the DnD stuff you've probably already got more than you need.

    If you want to give Monsterpocalypse another try, they just recently released (or will in the next month) a new 2 player starter that comes with 2 monsters and 15 units per monster of that monster's faction. It's a nice "army in a box" system that probably works out a lot better for most people. I will say its a TERRIBLE game to buy 1 booster at a time. You're much, much better off buying singles online if you want a specific monster, or buying a sealed case if you want the whole batch. The random monster boosters just aren't worth it at all.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Veritech View Post
    (and as an aside, Gwen Stacy is once again sucking air in the USM comics. i forget the reason, but i didn't actually have a problem with it)
    It's not... quite Gwen. It's actually Carnage. Carnage in the ultimate universe was an unstable artificial life form based on the symbiote suit that needed to feed on others to stabilize its DNA. After it ate Gwen it assumed most of her personality and memories and became this clone of Gwen that didn't realize it was really a monster anymore. Then Venom came after her and absorbed the symbiote portion of her in order to stabilize himself and get rid of the constant need to feed. With that gone, she lost the morphing abilities and was pretty much nothing more than a genetic clone of Gwen, so SHIELD let her go.

    And Gwen will be alive again by 2020. JMS was going to do it in OMD and ever since they've been working hard to reestablish her place in the Spidey mythos so people will welcome her return. Make her popular in the new movie and Joe Q will green light it within a year.
  15. I've been drifting farther away from videogames lately and more back to the table. Currently I play a lot of Heroscape, Magic, Monsterpocalypse, and WoW minis and stuff like Caylus, Puerto Rico, Carcassone, etc with bigger groups. I'd kind of like to find a game like Descent that's purely co-op and generally a shorter runtime.
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hazmatter View Post
    Considering we had at least two fake-outs regarding Hush's real identity when he first appeared, I wouldn't be surprised if the recent "revelation" wasn't some kind of red herring.
    As irksome as that is, it's only the loud screamy stupid of that issue. The bigger problems are the depiction of Bruce as:

    1) an incompetent partner
    2) an incompetent inventor
    3) a completely hateful father figure
    and
    4) willing to murder bystanders to cover up 2)

    The last page is just stupid because it doesn't make an ounce of sense. "Hush" was apparently in two places at once the night before and when he reveals himself he looks NOTHING like the character he reveals himself as. I wasn't so much bothered by the revelation than just utterly baffled by the words that went along with it.
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Amy_Amp View Post
    Marvel should have gone down to $2.98 just to spite them.
    $2.88 aka: the Wal-Mart advantage.
  18. I'd be far more excited had issue 4 not been so hands down terrible. I want a return to Batman Beyond, but not if they're going to just butcher it like that.
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay View Post
    No, but do you have it?

    See, Mod 12? I hit "Reply" instead of report this time!
    Not where I can transfer it right now, sorry. Just do a search for Local H - Toxic; it was originally distributed on the bands webpage for free, so its an mp3 that's pretty easy to find just about anywhere.

    I was pretty bored with the episode itself, sadly. The slavish reproductions of the original music videos were extremely well done, but they didn't really add anything new to the point of feeling like filler. It was also sort of weird to hear Lea Michele try to sing "...One More Time"; just because her voice is way too good for it.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay View Post
    I just heard the iTunes preview of Toxic. Absolutely hilarious. Incidentally, that's one of the only Britney Spears songs I like, and I absolutely adore it. Great to see what they did with it.
    Have you heard that Local H cover?
  21. This seems like as good a place as any to post this:

    Something occurred to me recently. I've sort of fallen out of love with videogames. There's a bunch of reasons for this; fewer friends interested in them to share the experience with, being banned from discussing them on one of my favorite social boards, a decline in Japan's industry that was what I originally loved, a lack of exciting original mechanics, and a shift from the exotic fantastic towards modern realistic simulations are among the many factors.

    One game recently, who's subtitle is an anagram for Mother made me realize part of what's really killing games for me: aiming. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good shooter and aiming properly is a fun game mechanic, but part of me realized every game is essentially a variation on lining up cross-hairs with the right stick and pulling the trigger. The Mother game has some notable flaws, but there's a moment early in the game where I'm running down a hallway firing shots that automatically go where they need to where I realize that a game can be fun and challenging without manual aim from a behind the back/first person perspective.

    I really think that's what's drained my love of gaming. It's not the sequels; its that every game, not just those within the same franchise or even genre have exploited a single mechanic to the point where nearly every game has started to feel like a rehash to some degree.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Veritech View Post
    as has already been pointed out, yes, both series are indeed worth reading through. 52 especially since if you're not fond of one particular plot thread, there's a few others that should keep you entertained. the only recommendation i have in regards to Infinite Crisis is that there were a few tie-in miniseries beforehand, and i at least recommend Villains United and Day of Vengeance. Omac Project was alright and ties in with Batman a bit, and Rann Thanagar was alright, but not great.

    if you havent read the other Crisis book beforehand, i would definitely say grab Crisis on Infinite Earths. Zero Hour you can take it or leave it, but i've always liked it. It was supposed to clean up the holes after the Crisis... supposed to.

    Identity Crisis is crap. It's a terrible mystery played more for shock value than anything else and took an older concept and turned an entire group of Justice Leaguers into *******. Poor setup, worse execution, about the only thing i can say that it does have going for it is that it DOES have decent artwork. But that's about it.

    and when you get up to it, Countdown and Final Crisis are even worse.
    All of this. The biggest problem with Infinite Crisis is that it drops you right into the middle of the aftermath of a bunch of major events and just runs assuming you know everything that's going on. OMAC, Identity Crisis, and Max Lord's death are the big ones, but the series assumes you're a little too familiar with the current DC continuity. It's still a great read and one of my favorites for a few reasons, but I didn't really appreciate it until I went back and read a lot of the leading tie ins.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Durakken View Post
    So I should read IC and 52 then...ok...

    Now the next part can anyone tell me the issues that I should stop reading the regular titles at and switch to the Crisis before continuing on? i know for 52 is may 06, but for IC, is it right before then? or a little further back or what?
    The nice thing about IC is that after it, every book jumps ahead a year, so its REALLY obvious where the jump happens.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by ProcessedMeatMan View Post
    I would avoid AT&T, especially the new Samsung Captivate (AT&T's version of the Galaxy S). It's a whole lotta style and not too much in substance. Plus you have to deal with AT&T and their lackluster service. I just returned mine and am considering switching to Sprint.
    Fwiw, I did just the opposite. Sprint's coverage was too spotty for me and their customer service was terrible. I had to call about 7 consecutive bills (including 2 times I was billed over $200 erroneously) before I told them to forget it. I've been pretty happy with AT&T overall, particularly since they switched to the limited data plans.

    Also, fwiw, for the most part it doesn't matter nearly as much as people want you to think. It's a lot like any other console war. There's probably one better than the others and you might be paying a little too much, but for the most part they all do the same thing (outside of the real "bargains" of course). Just pick one and use it.
  24. LunarKnight

    Perfect Endings

    The last 15 minutes of Trigun rank among my favorite 15 minutes of anything ever. There are problems in the story with how we get to that point, but the finale itself is flawless.

    Inception, as mentioned, is one of the few ambiguous endings I really like, simply because its the entire point of the entire movie. Nolan also hit it out of the park with Momento and the Dark Knight.

    Final Fantasy VI has its epic hour long finale. I don't think any game has ever gone so far to wrap up all of its loose ends. Terra's desperate flight to save everyone keeps it from ever feeling as long as it really is.

    Likewise, FFIV puts all of its characters exactly where they should be when its finished. It's probably my all time favorite ending to a "classic" story.

    The end of FLCL gets clearer and better every time I watch it.

    The end of the Sinestro Corps War is absolutely flawless, giving us a very personal theological battle between Hal/Kyle and Sinestro while still ending the war with the scale and drama it needed by letting Guy drop a planet grenade on the Anti-Monitor.

    Ocarina of Time has one of the best endings in gaming history. Only slightly marred later with the whole split timeline confusion.

    Another from N64 era; Starfox 64's true ending is pretty flawless.

    Braid.

    Voices of a Distant Star has a pretty perfect ending.

    Plenty of others.
  25. Quote:
    Thus far, Marvel has done a fantastic job with its Halo products... Marvel's Halo track record has been great , so we're looking forward to another successful addition to Bungie's extensive universe.
    Errr... what?