In Defense of...

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Thad
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In Defense of...

Postby Thad » Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:47 pm

A thread for saying that things that everybody says are bad are actually good.

I am going to start with Ghostbusters 2.

No, it is not as good as the first Ghostbusters. You know what other movies are not as good as the first Ghostbusters? Most of them.

And, y'know, it does have some notable problems. Here are some of them.

- Eh. Babies.

- Mood slime.

- Even in a movie where Winston is already a Ghostbuster at the beginning of the movie, Ernie Hudson still gets short shrift. He is the fifth-billed actor. After Rick Moranis.

- Corporate interference: making Ernie Hudson shave his mustache and Annie Potts change her hairdo so they would look more like the cartoon versions.

- If I were to play armchair editor, I'd cut the scene of Peter and Dana at dinner, and either restore the scene where Ray is possessed (adding a clearer throughline from his hypnosis by the painting to Vigo inhabiting him at the end of the movie) or just not add anything in its place because the movie is already too long.

- Third Act Problems: the slime dome around the Met and the Statue of Liberty are pretty clearly pale imitations of the beam of light over 55 Central Park West and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

- The soundtrack is mostly pants.

BUT, there are also many good things about the movie:

+ Higher and Higher is a good song.

+ Everything out of Rick Moranis's mouth is fucking perfect.

+ And you know, pairing up Janine and Louis is a good idea too.

+ In fact, the whole original cast is good. They all still feel like the same people, and they've all got their moments to shine. Even if Winston could use more of them.

+ The exposition is mostly handled pretty well, and I can totally buy the status quo at the beginning of the movie as a believable "five years later" following the events of the first movie.

+ You know who else is good? Peter MacNicol. Maybe I'm just a sucker for hilarious fictional eastern European accents, like Latka Gravas or Tommy Wiseau, but I put Janosz under a similar "everything out of his mouth is perfect" rating to Louis.

+ You know who else is good? Kurt Fuller.

+ Vigo is a better villain than Gozer. I will stand by that.

In conclusion: Ghostbusters 2 is not as bad as everybody says. It is a perfectly decent movie. It's just not as good as the first one.

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Mongrel
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:46 am

I have no objections to that.

I always liked the plot point of them being sued to oblivion by just about everyone.
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Büge
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Büge » Mon Oct 22, 2018 12:49 am

They didn't just change Janine's hairstyle to align with the cartoon; they changed her whole character. She went from a smart, acerbic brunette to a ditzy, man-hungry redhead.
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Friday
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Friday » Mon Oct 22, 2018 4:25 am

I already did this in the unpopular opinion thread, but Star Wars Battlefront isn't Satan like everyone claims it is. Was. I realize nobody cares anymore.

I was really fucking pissed when they put loot boxes into Battlefront 2 though, because I wanted to play it and specifically did not buy it because of that awful shit which I refuse in any way to support.

I will also defend a few really poorly regarded early JRPGs if you really want me to, like 7th Saga. Which I admit is shitty but also think it's kind of good and does interesting, unique stuff as long as you can get past the shitty parts.
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Thad » Mon Oct 22, 2018 10:28 am

Friday wrote:I already did this in the unpopular opinion thread

That was Sora's thread, right? I decided it would be best to start a new thread rather than necro that one.

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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Friday » Mon Oct 22, 2018 5:52 pm

I think he wanted it to be more about saying things like "actually I think being a terrible person is fine" and less about defending bad videogames, but yeah.

I'm not sure, Sora had a few small inklings of a decent person buried somewhere in there under all the fucking horrible videos he watched as a teenager that influenced him to be a typical internet "free speech means i can say awful shit and you can't tell me it's stupid" troll.
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Friday » Mon Oct 22, 2018 6:06 pm

ANYWAY

7th Saga:

- Game's fuckin' hard even by my standards

- Which means it turns into a grindfest

- You can only have two characters in your party, I really feel like it should have been three, which would solve a lot of the difficulty problems

- The dungeons are boring and look shitty and flat

- It uses an oldstyle A/B only DQ menu system despite having access to the SNES buttons, why

- You can walk outside of town and die to the very first monster, what the fuck how the fuck was this not caught in playtesting

- The characters have basically no personality AS the main character, becoming a typical mute JRPG protag once you pick them

- You can destroy my entire defense by saying "yeah but Friday the game is bad" and I just have to nod as a single tear slides down my cheek

+ Music is good

+ Graphics are pretty good for their time

+ The 7 different characters are all pretty well designed and play differently

+ Having to potentially fight against the ones you didn't pick is a neat idea, I feel this could have been expanded on a lot more though

+ The encounter system is really well designed and is in my opinion the best encounter system I have ever seen in a JRPG, period

+ Different characters having slightly different paths through the game is neat, but again, this could have been expanded a lot more

Anyway I feel like if 7th Saga was made today with today's sensibilities and a dev that wanted to take the time to flesh out 7 different characters and 7 significantly different paths through the main game, it would be a really good game! But yeah don't bother yourself over the actual game we have, it's not really worth your time
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby mharr » Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:01 pm

'Seed of a real person struggling to be born' types kinda make me wish for a malfunctioning Trek transporter and a clean killswitch.

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Thad
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Thad » Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:53 pm

Friday wrote:I think he wanted it to be more about saying things like "actually I think being a terrible person is fine" and less about defending bad videogames, but yeah.

I'm not sure, Sora had a few small inklings of a decent person buried somewhere in there under all the fucking horrible videos he watched as a teenager that influenced him to be a typical internet "free speech means i can say awful shit and you can't tell me it's stupid" troll.

...did you just write an In Defense of...SoraCross?

Shit just got meta.

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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Grath » Tue Oct 23, 2018 12:10 am

Friday wrote:ANYWAY

7th Saga:

- Game's fuckin' hard even by my standards

- Which means it turns into a grindfest

Plus since they nerfed the stat gain for the main character (and just the main character), if you grind too much the other character you have to fight becomes impossible to defeat because their stats grow with the original formula.

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IGNORE ME
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby IGNORE ME » Tue Oct 23, 2018 12:17 am

Thad wrote:...did you just write an In Defense of...SoraCross?

Shit just got meta.


In defense of Defense.

...

...

Yo Blizzard there's a huge difference in the intended role of all these guys you just threw into the same huge DPS pool come on

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Re: In Defense of...

Postby Niku » Tue Oct 23, 2018 7:39 am

yo the last third of death note is just as good or as bad as the first two thirds. sorry your spooky diabetic boyfriend couldn't be there for it but them's the facts.
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Re: In Defense of...

Postby WingSounds » Tue Oct 23, 2018 7:56 am

OoOOooOOo 7th Saga! I had a lot of fun with that one, even if the difficulty reminded me tantalisingly of my first jaunt through M&M1, by which I mean it was opaque as hell.

The battle intro hook gets me pumped every time.
But while we're here...

Dark Souls II:

- Some of the graphic and area design feels incomplete. I wouldn't call any of it bad, just - there are patches where a graphical glitch or odd design stands out; this persists in the remaster.

- As always, the non-ingame community is full of charming and lovable human beings who I would love nothing to more than cannibalise for their delicious meat blossoms...

- Compare to the beautiful melancholy of the first game or the apocalyptic millenarianism of the third, the tone is more 'lost fantasy' than dark fantasy. This actually isn't a minus for me, but for some people it is. I'm gonna hesitantly call it a minus.

- like every single game in the series and demons and bloodborne these are not hard games i do not understand how they even acquired these reputations lord of light. ds II is probably the second-easiest, which might bother some i guess.

- Not being able to talk to your friends in a semi-online game really bothers people, so much they have an option for mic. I would never, not even once. But to some, the default silence is a minus.

- The Motoi Sakuraba tracks are really phoning it in, compared to his work for I and III.

- Getting lost because what were you doing again is probably easier in this one than in any other soulsy game.

- Rat. Covenant. (... but i like them..........)

+ The characters are actually some of my favourite in the series. I love Lucatiel and Benhart like crazy, and a lot of the 'nameless dialogueless' phantasms have an incredible amount of personality for where you find them, and when. Continuing that...

+ There are a lot of environmental queues which go unnoticed, and I feel this is one of the reasons it got such a poor original reception compared to DS I. There is so much love that the B-team put into their original take, and gamers, being useless, just dashed on through.

+ I think the control scheme, netplay, and all of that are the best in any soulsborne. And the community, when reduced to being voiceless, is charming as hell. There are also plenty of decent artists and things, but... Just don't go anywhere people have their tongues, I guess.

+ The locations remain beautiful to this day. I remember just loitering around the Shrine of Amana for who knows how long. The only other place I've loitered so long by choice is Blighttown. I have very weird taste, okay? I like swamps.

+ Unlike III, which I felt pretended to do new things but in many ways ran off nostalgia, II was unafraid to explore new characters and places. Your taste may vary on whether they were good, but the DLC alone is probably my favourite selection of places in a Soulsborne game.

+ Yuka Kitamura went all out with her tracks, which is probably why she's boss sound lady in DS III (my favourite part of that game, coincidentally).

+ Honestly, I can't put to mind just /one/ reason it's so charming for me. I love the environment and slightly desolate sensibility, which is more reminiscent of King's Field, or an abandoned and forgotten 'normal' RPG - after the hero and their party has lost, and many years have passed. I love the game's take on the Giants, and far more than Firelink, Majula felt like a safe and tragic home. Is that blasphemy, I wonder...

The game is less hated now than on launch/post Scholar of the First Sin, but (as ever) visceral shitheads tore into it because new is frightening and new thing will never be as good as old thing. That being said, I love all the games. I just find it's interesting how hyperbolic all things must be; always it's either hate/love, not like/wasn't interested in.

Ah. But I do love DS II, so... Perhaps I'm the problem..?!

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