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Comments
^^ I... don't think I know what any iDOLM@STER music sounds like except the two OPs to the anime.
Which is weird, since I think I've listened to a lot of other songs before.
I know some IDOLM@STER songs from Nico Nico medleys. Of course, that means I only know like 10 seconds of each song
Regarding Tolkien, I feel compelled to chime in and agree that the endless, endless descriptions of stuff are exaggerations made by the misinformed and the stubborn who picked the book up when they were young, hated it, put it down, and hated it ever since.
I know I would have hated things like Gilgamesh if I read it when I was sixteen, but now, as a twenty-year-old, I like it quite a bit.
For what it's worth, around here, at least, the only time overdescription was mentioned was by Alex. I just thought Tolkien wrote Fellowship very boringly. On one hand, though, it's been a good two years since I read it. On the other hand, I have an even tougher time reading things through nowadays, so I'd probably find the flaws of the book (whatever they might have been) even more grating.
. . . Actually, Fellowship might have been the toughest thing for me to read through that year, and I read through around thirty books.
EDIT: Oh gosh, Something Awful has a Brook emoticon. My day is made.
I think watching 10 anime series simultaneously this week might actually be too much for me...
Hurm, watching the just realesed J-drama of Mirai Nikki. It's a completely different cast aside from Yuno and I don't know how to feel about that.
I figured Yuno wasn't going to have pink hair for obvious reasons, but I thought it would be longer. The power hair cut doesn't really make sense from a design standpoint for her.
Going into the third episode of Element Hunters, it seems the series has a surprisingly large amount of drama for what is supposed to be a kids' show.
Oh, fuck me.
The latest Game OverThinker is just beyond insufferable.
what's it about
The Mass Effect 3 ending, again.
Moviebob has to realise that pointing out one's own hyperbole and exaggeration does not mean they're not using those strategies. He's also dishonest in the way he presents arguments he doesn't agree with. If he wants to argue against the alterations to Mass Effect 3's ending, that's all fine and dandy, but he should be responding to proper arguments and back up his claims rather than swinging for low-hanging fruit.
Lemme guess, criticizing Mass Effect fans for objecting to the ending, even if Bob never played a single ME game at all.
Well, I must have developed foresight. Either that, or this shit is getting very predictable.
There's also the fact that he makes a comparison to classic films which would be ruined if their unusual endings were altered, but those are, well, classic films. Mass Effect's ending has no actual discussion, reflection or meaningful impact on the audience. Whereas unusual endings to well-remembered films, books and so on generally remember to carry some kind of closing statement about the work itself, Mass Effect's ending is full of nothing. It's not really comparable at all, and defending ME3's ending on the basis that some historically disliked endings have been very meaningful doesn't really hold any ground.
There's also the fact that, as usual, Bob doesn't want to give publishers any lip. He's really big on criticising game consumers for what they've done to the industry while ignoring the bullshit publishers pull off. Bob's often insightful and by all means an intelligent guy, but I'm losing more and more patience with him.
>Caring about what a film critic says about video games.
A film critic can still make some excellent points about the narrative flow and structure of a game which uses a traditional story layout to tell its' tale, and the audio-visual aspect of the game and how it supports the overall experience of the game.
I wouldn't trust a film critic to tell me anything about the gameplay, including how it relates to the experience of the game as a whole, but a film critic certainly can have things to say about a game that are worth listening to.
He also apparently saw the endings on YouTube, calling them okay at best. Frankly, he forgets that the endings are much more irritating if the entire point of the series was the choices you made throughout all three games affecting the outcome of the story, when the endings of the very last game makes those decisions pointless and leaves nothing resolved at all. Context seems to be key, and Bob completely forgets that.
I don't understand how being a film critic does necessarily mean such a person's opinion on games is invalid or less worthwhile, and I'm personally offended by the notion.
Bob has made some great points about games before, even if he's not up there with Extra Credits. I consider him a better source than Yahtzee, who, while making some good points of his own, seems contradictory in what he wants to find in a game. Great for humour, mind, but doing something about complaining about the lack of diversity in fantasy games and then bitching out JRPGs, The Witcher, Demon's Souls and so on and so forth isn't really a constructive perspective and it gets grating.
I assume it is because of the same reason people would consider most people's opinions on a game invalid or less worthwhile. A film critic can talk about films all day long and people will listen because it's assumed that a film critic knows about films, but unless a film critic is also a game critic, people will question whether the critic actually knows what they're talking about when they talk about games.
Game criticism is another field entirely to film criticism, after all. There are many aspects of a game that you won't find in a film, and I'd want to know that the person at least knows what they're talking about first.
The thing about Yahtzee is that he basically notes whether he liked a game or not, then makes jokes about it. Fun to watch, but not (generally) much in the way of substance.
Indeed; I think it's more relevant that he hasn't bothered to play Mass Effect.
I was making a joke.
To be fair, his argument is about the precedent it sets and the concept of democratised development. But this is something that has to be discussed in context of the industry and he really doesn't do that. Like I said, he doesn't mention the publisher's place in all this and how high-sales artful entertainment (like films and games) are already creatively compromised by publishers. Between the evils of allowing publishers creative influence and allowing audiences creative influence, I think the latter is definitely the lesser one.
Thing about game criticism is that it's a nonexistent field at best. I mean, there's game design and the use of the understanding of it in order to provide insight on the quality of a game, but otherwise, it's not a field which you can study and write a thesis about, for example. Either way, game design is mostly irrelevant to Mass Effect's ending and whatever consequences its change may have upon the industry, really.
On the contrary, game design is highly relevant to the ending of Mass Effect 3 exactly because of its near-complete absence. And just because game criticism is currently pretty awful doesn't mean film criticism can stand in for it in the mean time, and while there's some crossover between the mediums I think a different perspective is required for games. A game like Mario that has almost no film-worthy elements is still a great piece of entertainment and art in context of the video game medium, for instance.
I'm not saying that game criticism shouldn't be a thing, but the fact is that there are very few critics that approach game criticism from a non-business-based perspective. There're no theories or studies surrounding game criticism as it is. There's just game design, the application of it as a study of what games do or do not do right and the application of the analysis fields regarding different artistic disciplines according to how relevant they are to games as they are today.
Or, to make it simpler, game criticism is a field that might or might not exist, depending on your criteria of what a field even is. If it exists, it's basically applied game design + film/art/literature analysis.
I read an analysis of MGS2 once that IMO showed a peek of what game criticism as an actual field ought to be. I'll see if I can find it sometime.
Isn't there a video game thread for this? :P
That there is.
Oh yeah, there it is. Where are my manners?
*waves at vidya thread*
So apparently someone decided to do some expert analysis of the NFL Draft in the form of animated gifs. I think that link is worth looking at if only for stuff like this.