6
Sneak_King 6 points ago +6 / -0

I don't care about remakes, but thank you for making "I-er-ah...want a party platter!" leap to mind.

3
Sneak_King 3 points ago +3 / -0

Hard disagree. Unless you're talking Bruce Sterling, who I haven't read, Neuromancer obliterates other things that call themselves cyberpunk. By the 90s, cyberpunk had morphed to aesthetic and Snowcrash, the TTRPG, Shadowrun, etc. just don't compare. Snowcrash in particular is a downright miserable read.

3
Sneak_King 3 points ago +3 / -0

I don't know the details of the Champion and who qualifies. I don't know if Elric is part of that (Elric at least meet several versions of the Champion once, if he isn't a version himself). But the Elric books are fun and the Law/Chaos conflict is definitely a better alignment system for your D&D games than Good/Evil or the nine point grid.

3
Sneak_King 3 points ago +3 / -0

I loved AFUtD. Haven't read Deepness yet, but good to hear it doesn't drop the ball.

4
Sneak_King 4 points ago +4 / -0

Ditto with the official story that Anglo-sphere spent blood and the concept of empire itself to end the holocoaster, but the those same Anglos need to carry eternal guilt for it having supposedly happening in the first place.

8
Sneak_King 8 points ago +8 / -0

Player of Games, one of the Culture series, which was an attempt to write science fiction without involving a military or pseudo-military hierarchy. Does a great job of describing the stakes of the game without going into details or mechanics. Written by a Scottish socialist, I don't know how I'd feel about the sex change stuff and free love horseshit if I read it now. As a young college student, I could brush that off as hedonistic scifi.

Neuromancer is hands down my favorite fiction. It does everything right. People talk like cyberpunk is a genre, and it's really not. Only an extremely small set of fiction actually hits the surprisingly long list of features cyberpunk requires, everything else is cyberpunk as aesthetic. But Neuromancer has it all, and is a quick read to boot. Not to mention it states some very exaggerated positions that I'm increasingly coming around to, unironically: the hyper-wealthy are not human; corporations are a new form of sentient life, hostile to humanity and will neanderthal us if we aren't careful; learning to hate can be useful.

1
Sneak_King 1 point ago +1 / -0

That, too. And the MC's walk cycle looks weird in the sections where the camera isn't directly over the shoulder.

2
Sneak_King 2 points ago +2 / -0

There's a mod for Sins of a Solar Empire called Star Trek: Armada III that just finished development a year or so ago. I can recommend that, though Sins is one of my favorite games to begin with.

7
Sneak_King 7 points ago +7 / -0

I """played""" the whole thing. Overall, I don't recommend it and definitely don't pay money for it. Some thoughts:

• MC isn't really a MS, but everyone around her is a dipshit. The first two characters you meet, an extremely minor character and an extra, introduce themselves by explaining how the one doesn't like flying (in space) and how the other can't read an airport map.

• The only White, human men are the captain and Will Riker. Nearly the entire background cast is black, to the point of distraction.

• The "gameplay" is genuinely miserable.

• The first two acts are actually interesting stories. Act 1 sets up a low stakes diplomatic conflict, a logistics issue, and the supremely interesting idea that you are walking onto a ship where the captain and command staff have lost trust in each other. As first officer, you are the bridge between these two groups, so them not working together makes your job nearly impossible.

Act 2 is the terror of an unstoppable first contact from Best of Both Worlds mixed with the zombie invasion of a ship from the First Contact film. It's not literally the Borg, but very similar. It was fine, but the Borg have been reused to death since VOY. I would have preferred to see the diplomatic crisis be the whole game.

Act 3 saw you save the galaxy. Nearly every interesting character dies.

• The characters are awful and their responses to your choices are childish. At one point, you have to choose a second officer (because the chain of command doesn't exist, I guess) and whoever you don't choose will bitch you out, including the character who has been helpful and extremely by the book up to that point. The security chief chick acts like a mary sue, even though she can get blinded or killed by her actions and your responses to them. In my playthrough, she quit in a huff right before a big battle because I chose not to xenocide a species in suspended animation, as she had requested I do, then she strolled back onto the bridge during the battle, announced she had returned in my hour of need, and got mad when I told her "great, sit down."

I liked the captain, the grumpy science officer, the ops officer, and most of the aliens. The playable petty officer was ok. The rest of the cast were whiners. The captain gets taken out at the end of act 2 to make way for the player to be captain. While he doesn't directly get character assassinated (which I fully expected and was surprised he made it a far as he did), removing him sidesteps the crew's trust issue and means there are no human White men on the ship (apparently).

Neat username, Pilot.

7
Sneak_King 7 points ago +7 / -0

I was going to say that seeing the Boomer/Gen X "education at all costs" brainwashing at play outside the Anglosphere was weird. Then it occurred to me that it was probably commie propaganda to begin with, so not that weird.

1
Sneak_King 1 point ago +1 / -0

I have one, from Avengers: "I'm always angry."

It's one character's answer to the question "You have impressive control over your anger, how do you do it?" and it makes no sense. But because the question and the answer were an hour apart, everyone was fine with it, I guess. I only saw Iron Man(s) before Avengers, but that line was when I was sure every other Marvel film was going to be Content, not movies.

4
Sneak_King 4 points ago +6 / -2

Yes, and it's a sin indistinguishable from the true believers. The mechanism to prevent trend chasers from following this kind of shit is to punish both the same way.

10
Sneak_King 10 points ago +10 / -0

I'll keep reposting this as long as it's true:

Every person I know is a neoliberal. Obviously, my deep blue co-workers. But my republican parents: neolibs. My pastor with the marksmanship hobby: neolib. My homesteading friends: neolibs.

They all "know something is wrong" but can't even imagine considering that it could be the assumptions of equality, corporate-run government, non-violent society, and consumer lifestyle (let alone ethnic groups that are over-represented in pushing same).

It's exhausting.

2
Sneak_King 2 points ago +2 / -0

If you can't war crime online, that only leaves one other place to war crime...

4
Sneak_King 4 points ago +4 / -0

Just forcing app stores to not carry it will do the majority of the work. Trust me, most teenagers would be surprised to learn tiktok dot com was connected to TikTok.

10
Sneak_King 10 points ago +10 / -0

Nazis are well-known to like ovens, but never have an iron handy.

1
Sneak_King 1 point ago +1 / -0

The show itself was the same Kurtzman shit, they just put an intern in charge so the memberberries were on-model for a change.

A handful of vocally critical reviewers very clearly got paid off, either literally or with early access. Drinker and Robert Meyer Burnett were two of the more obvious ones, who released "reviews" before the season was out touting it as "a return to form" and "some of the best Trek ever."

4
Sneak_King 4 points ago +4 / -0

I haven't watched any nutrek, but got curious after a bunch of reviewers for bought off for S3. RLM's reviews, while wrong, go into enough detail that it's obvious Drinker and other early access reviewers straight up lied.

7
Sneak_King 7 points ago +7 / -0

I don't know how anyone can watch him after he cashed the check for Picard S3.

view more: ‹ Prev Next ›