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#review thing i guess

cats2019forthenintendoswitch · 10 months

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Idk the whole situation with Quinton (though so far it does look like he's the victim and he was, at worst, negligent) but if you say some shit like "oh that guy always gave me a bad vibe" I am killing you. You're literally no different than a stereotypical high school mean girl. What the fuck is that "vibe"? You literally judge him on him being fat, socially awkward, and not conventionally attractive. That's it. That's what a vibe is, judging based on looks. "Oh but the DMs" there's a reason his face and name were blacked out: there was nothing to actually call out. At worst he was overreaching his parasocial relationship with bigger creators but like, that's it. Like even if he did turn out to be a terrible abusive creep and the worst person ever or whaever there's still no reason to have ever suspected that. The DMs are just awkward, and I don't know exactly what in his videos would tell you that other than, again, his appearace. Also miss me with that stupid fucking "oh if someone is avoided in the industry there's usually a reason why" wow yeah so true such good commentary people are only ever avoided for being a creep or a bad boss or whatever. No one in the history of humanity has ever been ostracized for any other reason than being objectively a terrible person. The fuck

#my own posts #quinton reviews #also before anyone adds stupid shit yes she did know about the situation she literally retweeted the video #she deleted both those tweets now so i guess its fine but like. that was a stupid thing to put into the world #like im tired i dont even wanna make the situation about these people cus its not

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blicketdabest33 · 5 months

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The worst thing about writing smut is that you can't ask someone to peer review it. Like, I'm not gonna ask my friend (who's not even in the mcyt fandom) to read over my Majorwood smut-shot where Scott is in heat I'd honestly rather kill myself than do that

#mcyt #blicket talks to the hatchlings #scott smajor #inthelittlewood #life series #traffic life series #trafficblr #trafficshipping #fanfiction #fanfic #smut is somehow easy and hard to write at the same time #I HAVE TO REVIEW THE ENTIRE THING BY MYSELF #I can't send it to a mutual #that's just weird #i mean i guess i'll get to add the “No Beta We Die Like Men” tag #it'll probably be something like “No beta We die like Scott in E1”

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varilien · 8 months

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Not a horror movie, but SOMA is a really good game that could work for a heartbreaking Trigun AU. For an actual movie rec, Dark Water (2002) is a good one.

okay forgive me because i've seen the remake of dark water from 2005 n while i imagine there are some significant differences between iterations, i'm gonna say i get the gist of it, but.

so i realize i've never actually spoken at length about my own trigun college au over here and since the fic is in my drafts indefinitely this is WILDLY out of context but like. i never actually landed on a backstory for vash and knives, i figure that true to canon vash has a lot of holes in his memory and knives won't fill those in for him so this sort of thing wouldn't really come up in the story, and as far as vash is aware life might as well have started when rem adopted them

it's nicer than knowing, anyways

#ask to tag?#also i will not be elaborating on this thought because i Can't lmao i still haven't pinned major details for this au down #trigun #trigun anime #trigun fanart #vash #vash the stampede #knives millions #millions knives #hills and halls and meteors au #asks #anonymous #movie night with v #i've heard a lil about soma maybe one day i'll watch gameplay for it or smn....#DARK WATER (2005) REVIEW: i love Evil Ceiling Spots as a harbinger for bad things to come it's just like real life dhfgkhkj #this doodle doesn't really read well so i guess i'll just say: knives was Very committed to keeping vash safe when they were kids #and there was a point in time when that was very needed. things were Not Good and all they had was each other

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fuckyeahgoodomensfanfic · 3 months

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the concept of a fanfic review blog is outdated and gross. These are free works, they’re not meant to be critiqued as if they are published works.

I think if you take a look at any of my posts I'm not being critical of any of the stories I've posted about, and have said before that I think of my posts as long form rec posts more than reviews. I may point out parts that didn't work for me but it's never done with malice?

Frankly, I think this is a tiktok take that's getting a little away from itself. Yes, I don't think people should be talking negatively about fanfics, but I personally don't think all discussions/reviews are inherently negative.

I don't know I guess. If anyone else has any other takes/advice I'm willing to hear them. I'm sorry you feel this way about this blog. As I say in my info post, if any author is uncomfortable with their story being here I will immediately remove it

#asks #I've also said before our johnlock blog handled things the wrong way #I wish we hadn't done ratings nor allowed any critical reviews which we did have from mods and guests #I'd like to think I've learned from that experience?#I want to think I'm doing this the right way this time #but idk i guess if enough people disagree maybe it would change my mind on this blog

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supercantaloupe · 1 year

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The Rent Post™

aka, a lengthy screed on how rent the musical goes about adapting la boheme, where it fails, and what can be done about it

so i’m admittedly a reformed Theater Kid™. and tbh i still very much am a Theater Person, even a Musical Theater Person, i’m just in my 20s now and my taste has shifted away from what’s mainstream on broadway right now and closer to the world of opera. but there absolutely was a time in my early teens when i was Really Into Rent, as many Theater Kids™ were…and there was also a time in my later teens when i thought about it and realized that rent was not only just not my thing, but that there were some significant Problems with it, as its own work and as an adaptation. now, having finally seen boheme for myself, i feel like i’m really in a place to piece together how the two works compare to one another, and why/how i think rent falls short of success (as a piece of theater anyway. obviously rent is not lacking in commercial and popular audience success, for better or worse).

i knew years ago that rent is a direct adaptation of la boheme, but wow, only after seeing the opera did i come to realize just how closely rent follows boheme: in plot beats, in character names, even borrowing a couple of lyrics and musical motifs here and there.

but it also changes things from the original opera -- namely, it adds things -- and i think this is the first place where rent runs into trouble. now i am by no means such a purist that i think no work should ever be adapted unchanged (more on this later...what’s the point of adaptation if not to change things to make the work resonate with a new audience anyway?). however, any and every change made to an existing work in adaptation should be thoughtfully made and motivated, because every single change has an effect on the whole product in some way, and many small changes can add up to create a rather different final product than a creator might realize.

(and this goes both ways, i think -- both in a work where a more flawed source material is adapted into something new and better, and when a superior original work is adapted into a worse new creation.)

definitely some of the changes made in rent while adapting la boheme are due to the change in medium. opera and musicals are both theater, sure, and more similar in many ways to each other than either is to straight play or film perhaps, but it’s still like a spanish speaker and an italian speaker trying to have a conversation with one another. the languages are similar and there might even be a bit of crossover in mutual intelligibility but they are still ultimately two different languages with different grammars and vocabulary. opera in general tends to have slower pacing than book musicals, fewer plot threads of equal importance. that rent is specifically a musical adaptation of la boheme, rather than a true rock opera, demonstrates this well. the mimi/rodolfo relationship is still front and center (americanized of course as mimi and roger), with marcello and musetta close behind (though expanded in rent as more of a love triangle among mark, maureen, and joanne, the latter being an invented character for the musical who i think embodies the original marcello as much as mark does). but rent adds a lot of stage time and focus to a new couple, collins and angel, who are directly lifted from colline and schaunard, who are essentially secondary comic relief characters, whereas collins/angel are arguably as important plot wise to mimi/roger and mark/maureen/joanne.

(and i’m not gonna get into the level of #problematic there is to the depiction of maureen as an overly promiscuous bisexual or discuss why colline and schaunard can’t have been a gay couple the whole time or whatever because. wow i do not care. there are more important things to complain about here c’mon)

first big addition to rent that wasn’t original to boheme is that increased stage presence/focus for collins and angel. it's not inherently a bad addition, and for its time the open depiction of multiple queer romances onstage was still kind of groundbreaking. and yes, rent having a longer runtime than boheme should give it the opportunity to flesh this relationship out more as well as the other two to make sure they all have an equal chance to develop and end in a satisfying way. hell, they don’t even all have to be equal in stage presence/focus/importance to be a positive addition to the show (and how can it be when angel dies halfway through act ii? then again, the character dying doesn’t exactly mean the relationship loses its importance in the plot…) but despite the extra runtime and faster storytelling pace, rent doesn’t actually develop angel and collins all that much, especially not before angel dies. this isn’t an issue with colline and schaunard, of course, cause it’s obvious they’re not important characters in boheme. but collins and angel are arguably more important in rent than even mark/maureen/joanne. and angel dies halfway through act ii…meanwhile, mimi survives the end of rent, when she very pointedly does not in boheme.

and…oh, mimi. she is probably the biggest and most problematic adaptational change in rent as compared to la boheme. on the surface she (and roger/rodolfo) seems the least changed of all the opera’s characters, her name not even undergoing the same americanization treatment as the others. but there are just so many small details that add up and up until she’s a fundamentally different character in rent. i don’t even begrudge the change in occupation: her becoming a stripper/exotic dancer/possible sex worker(?) rather than a seamstress does bring with it some cultural baggage, but i am not personally interested in reading any morality into her choice of occupation, and i choose not to read her line of work as having any implications for her “innocence” or moral value as a character. nor will i read her addiction or disease as being moral qualities either. however: there is a big difference between tuberculosis in the 1840s and both AIDS and drug addiction in the 1980s. neither boheme’s mimi nor rent’s are morally responsible for their illnesses. but there is absolutely nothing mimi could do about her tuberculosis in boheme except die, because it was france in the 1840s and nobody knew what an antibiotic was. in new york in 1989, there were rehab clinics and there were medications for HIV. these things were expensive and hard to access, yes, but rent really goes out of its way to show us that mimi had the resources to access these things -- she is able to afford AZT in act i on her own (and the fact that she’s on AZT is used as shorthand for her HIV+ status, as opposed to other characters about whom we are told outright)...

… and her relationship with benny (the much-expanded counterpart to boheme’s benoit the landlord character) in act ii, who verbally offers to pay for her admittance to a rehab program.

yet the next time we see or hear anything of her, her loving mother is calling to ask where she is as she’s presumably gone missing…

…and then discover she has been living on the street, dying from exposure/disease/addiction.

did she do this willingly? did benny refuse to continue supporting her? we don’t really get an answer to any of this; rent isn’t really concerned with why mimi is in the position she’s in, but is rather entirely preoccupied with staying true to boheme -- up until mimi’s death, anyway. because mimi doesn’t die in rent, she is saved, and says that angel told her to keep on living (as though it were a choice). why? we can only speculate. really, if any character embodies the same “dying tragically in a world too cruel for them to survive” theme as mimi in boheme does, it’s angel. and her death is honestly used as a tool throughout the rest of the show: a purpose for kindness, community, life.

is this a bad “bury your gays” kind of thing? i don’t really know, i’m inclined to believe not. but i do think angel’s death is more thematically akin to mimi’s death in boheme than the actual (near-)death of mimi in rent.

and this is the biggest difference between rent and boheme: boheme is not about hope. boheme is a tragic romance about how important relationships are among people in disadvantaged communities/situations, but it does not say that love will transcend or materially improve those conditions. rent, by contrast, does. rent suggests that the love of partners and community (even if filled with complications and tensions) is lifesaving.

(and i know rent’s stated thesis is “no day but today,” i.e. live and enjoy every day as though it could be your last, but i think thematically all the characters and their interactions overall suggest a theme of community just as if not more strongly, whereas “no day but today” is more limited to the HIV+ characters and has little to do with the mark/maureen/joanne subplot. mimi's outlook on "no day but today" changes when she chooses to stay alive on the urging of angel from the other side.)

now i don’t think this is altogether a bad moral to have in your theater piece. especially in one of the first major pieces of theater centered on marginalized queer characters. i will not deny how important and cathartic it can be, both now and especially thirty years ago when rent premiered, to end on a hopeful note rather than a tragic one. but i have a couple of issues with how rent goes about making this its central theme. for one thing, mimi has frankly too many Things affecting her health in the end for her survival to be realistic, and absolutely nothing up to this point in the show has suggested a setting of magical realism or pseudofantasy; everything has been as grounded in real life as possible, until finale b, when mimi suddenly and near-inexplicably survives. it feels like it comes out of nowhere tonally and thus isn’t very satisfying an ending when put to scrutiny. for another, angel has already died, and angel is, compared to mimi, a much more beloved and uncomplicatedly positive force in their community and relationships. angel’s entire stage presence (while she’s alive and when her character is invoked or referenced after her death) is a positive one: caring for collins when he’s injured, providing food and funds to the group, placating arguments, etc.

and the fact that angel has no concerned parents leaving her voicemails, unlike mark, roger, and mimi, underscores that she has no one else to lean on for support except her community of bohemians. and we’re not given a reason to believe one way or the other about her home life or financial stability outside of today 4 u when she got a sudden windfall for killing a dog (whatever; schaunard did the same thing to the parrot in boheme). in contrast to mimi, roger, and especially mark, who are clearly shown to have family who care about them and want to support them, yet they choose to live in romanticized poverty anyway. mark even gets a good job in filming and still finds a way to complain about it.

really, except for angel (and arguably collins, too), it’s difficult to totally sympathize with the characters in rent and care fully about their plight because they’re just…not depicted as particularly likable people. maureen is an unfaithful and kind of manipulative partner, and her approach to “protest” is really just bad self-absorbed performance art. roger just kind of sucks at songwriting (how is your eyes the song that he’s spent the whole show writing? it’s the worst number in the musical lol), and he’s quick to anger…his decision to leave mimi makes even less sense here than rodolfo’s decision to leave her in boheme, where at least he did so out of genuine concern for her health (also why does he leave mark? rodolfo embraces marcello as a friend still after mimi leaves in boheme...act iii of boheme is the least closely adapted in rent by far.). wheras in rent roger seems to be both genuinely jealous of mimi interacting with other men and upset by her continued drug use. although this last one i don’t begrudge him for, since it’s made clear he’s a recovering addict himself…although it does make mimi’s relationship with him all the worse, considering that mimi’s take on the whole “no day but today” theme is to throw caution to the wind with her actions and not worry about the future at all, and her interacting with roger is directly tempting him back into addiction which he clearly does not want. (and roger’s rejection of her in another day is framed as him being in the wrong with mimi being backed up by the life support chorus…)

while mimi as we’ve seen is reckless and throws her life away even when people try to help her (very very different from boheme’s mimi, who makes no particularly reckless choices, and accepts help when it's offered). and mark is entitled and uses his film as an excuse to disengage with the real world, even exploit it (see: the way he films the life support meeting without permission, or the homeless woman, which is never really confronted elsewhere in the show…)

the inclusion of a homelessness subplot in rent is particularly strange to me. it shows up a lot, especially in act i: the threat of homelessness for the main characters should they not pay their rent or come to some kind of agreement with their landlord; the vague future threat of benny’s “cyberarts studio” getting built which is implied would evict those living in tents on the lot; mimi being found living on the street in the finale; and the chorus/ensemble who show up periodically, as above. homelessness is an ever present element of set dressing/conflict in rent but it’s never really addressed, no points are ever made about it, which is in my opinion kind of wild and very unsatisfying. the above scene especially, considering how direct of a callout it is towards the show’s own characters and writing, yet it is never addressed afterwards, and this conflict is never really resolved.

one could take similar issue with the choice to swap tuberculosis in boheme with AIDS in rent. though in my opinion i think addiction is as much as if not more rent’s analogue to boheme’s TB, since that is a much more acutely seen disease for mimi and only mimi while there are multiple characters (main and chorus) living with HIV…then again, angel is the character who gets the real tragic death analogous to mimi’s in boheme, and angel dies of complications from AIDS, so i suppose it’s open to debate. regardless, there’s a significant contextual difference between TB in the 1840s and HIV and addiction in the 1980s: there was no system, political, social, or medical, that could truly heal someone of tuberculosis in boheme’s setting. but there very much was a medical and social system in place to help people with HIV and addiction in the 1980s; systems which were aggressively denied to those who were suffering by the political system. and for as much as the characters in rent like to sing about revolution, protest, and activism, not a single one actually challenges the powers that be or call out by name those responsible for the systematic denial of healthcare to the marginalized. activism and artistic revolution is hollow and meaningless in rent, they never name a real enemy, just a vague sense of “the man.” but it’s a story set in a real and still recent historical time period, the effects of which we still deal with today (and i’m sure even more acutely so back in 1996); it just feels disrespectful to me to use those crises as such important set dressing for your musical which positions itself as a “fuck the man” revolutionary kind of piece of theater and yet do or say absolutely nothing about the real world issues it is appropriating. for more information i highly recommend checking out lindsay ellis’ video on the topic.

so is all this to say i think rent is an irredeemable, fundamentally broken work? actually, no; i think it has a decent foundation and some solid music. i understand the reasoning behind and appeal of updating an old work to a new time period/setting for a new audience, and i think trading 1840s paris for 1980s nyc is an interesting and workable substitution. but when i look at rent as it is now, i just do not see a finished product.

and i think this is the most frustrating and disappointing thing about rent to me: rent is, quite literally, an unfinished show. its composer and librettist, jonathan larson, died suddenly the day of its first preview performance. and for so many developing (off-)broadway shows, previews are when the actual finished product is crafted, as the show is revised based on audience reactions. of course audience and critical reception to rent from the very beginning was positive, but i can’t help but speculate how much of that is influenced by the mere fact of its creator’s untimely death. and i wonder what changes larson would have made to his show if he had lived, and been able to hear the audience’s reactions, and revise the show accordingly. i wonder if he would have thought it worked. i wonder if he would have seen the same cracks that i see in it. i don’t think rent is inherently unsalvageable, but it is so far unsalvaged.

and frankly i don’t know that it ever will be salvaged; not for many years, at least. not until copyright and licensing in musical theater changes, and not until broadway audiences get more comfortable with the idea of altering beloved and familiar classics (the 2019 revival of oklahoma! was, in my opinion, a work of genius, but i’m well aware my opinion is not universal, and especially during its national tour the show’s entire concept has been extremely controversial). do to rent what bartlett sher and aaron sorkin are doing to camelot right now: keep the heart and soul of the piece intact, but rewrite what doesn’t work. or do something even more drastic, cut subplots and change character traits, i don’t know. maybe mimi should die; maybe it really is important that she survive! maybe rent shouldn’t have been based on boheme at all; hell, what would rent look like if it was based on la traviata instead? (well the answer to this one is “a different show entirely,” most likely, but if you want to write a poignant and tragic love story based on a romantic opera and set in 1980s nyc featuring queer and/or HIV+ characters, well…it could work and i’ll leave it there.) maybe that’s going too far, i don’t know, but the point is, i want to see directors and writers have the freedom to try that stuff out. because i don’t think rent is unsalvageable; i think it’s unfinished.

but rent is far too popular and beloved for anyone to dare touch its libretto with new ink. the memory of jonathan larson is held far too preciously for anyone to allow such debasement of his work. when searching online for libretti to reference when writing this essay, i found one transcribed script with this at its heading:

and i think that about sums it up for me. “may he be friggen worshiped!” him and all his creations, holy and untouchable. it’d be tantamount to theater sacrilege at this point to try and change it. how dare you sully larson’s good name by thinking you could “fix” his masterpiece…the masterpiece no one wants to admit he never got to actually finish. well, i don’t know, maybe it’s me being jewish and sentimental here, but if i have enough respect for a piece of work i want to be able to engage with it and question it and interpret it as i think it best ought to be. (jonathan larson was also jewish. would he agree with me? i don’t know. but i think he’d want to see the best of his work, just like i do.) live theater is inherently participatory and dialectical. and it ought to be alive, not carved into stone. neither immovable nor under threat of utter annihilation should someone come too close with a chisel. rent has potential. la boheme is still as affecting today as it was a hundred thirty years ago (did you know rent premiered almost exactly a hundred years after la boheme?). rent could be the same. and it does have emotionality behind it as it is now, credit where credit’s due. but it could be more than just that. if we could just let someone finish the thing already, even if larson himself couldn’t.

#sasha reviews #rent #<- afraid of putting this in the tag. rent fans please be cool. just scroll past this if you don't wanna see me being critical ;;#la boheme #this took so long to write. please enjoy #tldr; rent isn't irredeemable or unworkable but it is unfinished #i think it ought to either just let itself be closer to boheme (the 'keep it simple stupid' approach)#or let itself stray from that source material more and give each of its subplots the full attention it deserves (and needs)#(and maybe cut one or two of them...)#and be more of its own thing already #i don't know. who knows what would work best? no one does. cause no one's tried it yet. that's the bottom line i guess

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jokersenpai-thenavigator · 13 days

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Oxenfree

*Spoilers for an 8yo game!*

Oxenfree’s story isn’t terribly complex. It takes maybe 4 - 6 hours to beat, depending on how much of the collectable content you’re aiming to grab. Game play primarily consists of walking around the island, talking to your friends, and fiddling around with your pocket radio.

But DAMN does Oxenfree do well in its execution.

The aforementioned radio, as your primary means of interacting with the island, is an amazingly implemented mechanic. You can go through the entire game, only using it for its intended purpose, and it is entirely valid.

But.

If you take the time to scroll through the radio stations in different locations - even outside of the “anomaly” areas - you’ll get little pieces of information and world building.

Music stations exist, though they only play music from the 1940’s.

Certain stations in certain places will broadcast messages in Morse code, which, coupled with the opening call signs from the anomaly stations and the freaking beats in the game’s main music track, led to an ARG back in 2016 when the game was released.

Sometimes, you’ll get clips from old interviews.

And sometimes…you’ll hear yourself. Having conversations that haven’t happened.

And that’s just the radio mechanic.

Another main gimmick of the game are time loops. You’ll occasionally get stuck in a loop, only able to escape once an old magnetic tape player appears, allowing you to break through the frequency of the loop. The time loop will visually appear on the screen as almost VHS quality static, like the world around you is physically being paused and rewound each time you make it to the edge of the loop.

The screen distorts with static, gets flipped upside down and your dialogue choices reversed, still images of nautical blueprints and old photographs flash for a brief second. In the background, seemingly innocent trees and stones will twist and distort into towering monsters, eyes glowing bright against the darkness of the island, there for only a second, leaving you to wonder if you actually saw something, or if it was just your imagination.

There are moments in the game where Alex’s reflection will speak to her, giving her advice. At the moment, the information seems…strange. Nonsensical. You tell yourself to let Jonas speak to his mom - who is dead. You tell yourself to let Michael know to stay with Clarissa - despite Michael having died years ago.

The information doesn’t make sense…until you approach the end of the game. And then you have to decide whether or not to believe your reflection, and make your choices, until at the very end of everything…after everything that you’ve experienced in your play through, everything you’ve learned…you have to tell your past self what to do. The entire time, it was you.

The game ends, your futures are set…and then, as Alex is narrating her closing statements…the audio distorts. Alex says that she has to pick up Jonas for Ren’s trip to the island. The screen gets staticky, and goes black.

And then fades in on Ren, describing the history of Edward Island.

You are on a boat.

At the beginning of the game.

And you are aware that you’ve been here before.

**Link to information on the ARG, because HOLY SHIT I WISH I COULD HAVE BEEN THERE FOR THIS!!! https://wiki.gamedetectives.net/index.php?title=Oxenfree#:~:text=The%20Morse%20code%20in%20the,to%20go%20to%20Edwards%20Island.

#video games #oxenfree #review i guess #or not so much a review but me squeeing about it to myself #spoilers on an 8yo game #srsly tho #i do wish i could've gotten in on the arg #this game is so good #i also had a thing about whether or not the dog images were a dr who reference #bad wolf and all that #time travel and whatnot to stop your past selves and all #but i haven't seen anyone else go there so

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endless-nightshift · 2 months

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I lost all hope or trust for the 2024 live action ATLA when I heard talk of things happening in like episode 2 that originally took place in like ep 5 of the og show.

Any and all plot and character changes aside. The og atla, although having the old 20 ep season standard, is a decently fast-paced show. They literally go from the south poll to the North poll + detours in those 20 episodes.

I can't find it in me to believe that anyone could do any sort of justice to a story previously comprised of 20 distinct episodes in only 8 episodes.

I don't care that those episodes are, for some reason, the length of an overachieving short film (52mins)

I lose faith in something as soon as you start compressing storylines just for the sake of compressing things.

#i havent watched the life actions atla except for reviews and breakdowns #both positive and negative #no part of me ever been excited for a live actions ATLA #and despite the fact that the bar was in hell #i still manageable to be tepidly disappointed #i really i wish people would stop trying to live action things that were never meant to be live actioned #just like...#give animation the respect it deserves #and make new stories that have elements that would only shine in live action #instead of bastardizing classics in the name of live action #im sure the actors did a fine job of acting #but everything clip i see of the live action GangTM feels like the showrunner sold the soul of the show for some hyperrealistic cgi bending #Dallas Liu is doing a bang up job as zuko though #hats off to him #rant over i guess #atla #avatar the last airbender #avatar #atla netflix #netflix atla

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dappercritter · 2 months

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Armored Core 6 1st Impressions

Hook it into my veins. HOOK IT IN TO MY VE--

I've been on the fence about Armored Core ever since Bloodborne got me into Fromsoftware's catalogue and I started playing mature games with higher difficulties for bigger gammer kids

Normally I don't care for any mecha media that strays into darkness and the horrors of war--yes, I was a bit of a dumb kid--but after some maturing, I gave it another shot. Soon enough I was hooked, but I when I got into AC I never thought I would be playing a new entry soon or enjoying it this much!

Perhaps it was Bloodborne's high difficulty and risk/reward gameplay loop or Devil May Cry 3's cathartic combination of challenge and style, but when I finally got to AC6 it clicked.

I've always liked games with heavy robots that combined fast movement with tense combat since I played Transformers War for Cybertron & Fall of Cybertron way back in the day (my first big T for Teen boy games, too!), so it does make sense.

Even better, one of the big draws for AC6 for me was how much it's landscapes reminded me of High Moon Studios' car-robot shooters--a vast expanse of machinery, constructs far beyond any human scale, and the backdrop of a dying but beautiful world. But AC6 surpasses that in so many ways thanks to both a unique setting with more organic touches, as well as Fromsoft's iconic attention to detail in regards to environments. I think it says something that Fires of Rubicon's titular planet is the first environment in a mission based game where I wanted to just wander around the planet forever.

I'm still getting a hold of the combat. It's much faster but also much less forgiving than even Bloodborne's was. Yet despite that sharp learning curve, the controls are adaptable and easy to memorize, movement starts to come naturally, combat is tight with gratifying SFX to boot, and a breadth of customization options to rival even (oooooh) Elden Ring's variety.

The best part about all that is how more than perhaps Kid Icarus Uprising or DMC3, AC6 is a game where i'm as eager as possible to replay old missions with new unlockables. The missions have straight forward objectives but how quickly and efficiently you can solve them is the challenge, and while this is no Phantom Pain (altho it does have a more palatable, if withdrawn take on "war is hell" but that's my squeamish take), the game rewards for your maximum efficiency in completing those objectives through its credit system. The less damage you take, the less ammo you use, or the more enemies you take out, the better your pay + mission rank. I'm already addicted to it.

Anyways you can thank @iamthekaijuking for giving me the last push I needed to make the impulse buy off ebay

I have nothing else intelligent to say so here's my first build