Duckman

3 hours ago, Romans832 said:

Then please be so kind as to introduce me to good sake

Personal taste, but I like https://www.urbansake.com/sake/dassai-50-junmai-ginjo-nigori/

Nigori (or Nigori Sake or Nigorizake) is a coarse filter which leaves you a slightly sweet, milky sake.  This one comes from Asahi Shuzo which is one of the more popular breweries available for import.  This one in particular has a complex profile and serves well cold.  I personally like it with sushi and sashimi where I can pair it with wasabi and the salt from the soy.

The filtered version (https://www.urbansake.com/sake/dassai-50-junmai-daiginjo/) is easier to sip without accompaniment but is also a less complex profile (perhaps more appropriate as a starting point).

7 hours ago, Romans832 said:

They're not done... are they? IMDB says they got way more untitleds coming...

No, they are not done.  Further discussion would have to be flagged for spoilers.

4 hours ago, paxmiles said:

Endgame.

3/5.

Pax, I'd suggest pulling down a lot of that review and putting it in a spoiler thread.  I would not have wanted to know that and I specifically avoided that commentary in my review for that reason.  I'd love to discuss it more though.

Avengers: Endgame

I enjoyed this one, probably more than anything since the first Avengers movie.  I thought it was a well-done ensemble pic where I think everyone got their moments.  It's not perfect but it is a solid entry in the MCU.

Of note, no end-credits bonus scene in this one.  I didn't expect one but had not confirmed prior.  Once the end crawl starts no reason to stick around...

Warm sake, booo....

It's a gross oversimplification but the reason to warm sake is to mask cheap sake and make it palatable.

(Ok, maybe not entirely true, but close enough...  It masks some elements which is generally used to mask undesirables in cheaper sake...  High quality, unfiltered served cold for the win!)

Nominally, recycling is taking something that is not useful in its current form and altering it to make it useful in a new form.  That's the difference between reuse and recycle.

Regarding bits of pig, pigs are entirely useful...  No such thing as recycling (unless you are a USer who turns your nose up at things like pigs knuckles, blood sausage and pork rinds.

Nominally speaking there's just about nothing in an animal that is actually waste if it is used correctly...  That's especially true for pigs who are easily rendered and don't have true hooves.  American culture is not good about using an entire animal the way others (even EU cultures) are.

I am a product of that culture so I tend not to like thinking about what a sausage (or hotdog) casing is.  Similarly, Pork Rinds is an acquired taste in the US but chicharrones are widely used in recipes across Mexico and elsewhere in the world.  Same for pigs knuckles and all the other "trash" portions...

7 hours ago, WestRider said:

A remake of the first Alien film, except this time, Jonesy is a Flerkin :3

The acid indigestion I'd get after ingesting an alien...

21 hours ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

I have the same problem with Chris Gaines and that crappy country artist.

There's only one crappy country artist?

11 hours ago, Munkie said:

I've heard that, and absolutely understand that perspective. My counter-argument is and always will be that the story doesn't need to be told the same way twice. In fact, story began as a strictly spoken concept. The same story couldn't be told the same way twice. The teller's personality is understood to always affect the story.

As long as the teller is relatively true to who the character is, I'm fine with deviation. 

All that said, I've never read the book. Maybe it was a money-grubbing hatchet job defiling the book. I wouldn't know. I do know that I watched a movie I liked though, so mission accomplished. The ending was clumsy, but many (most?) are.

I understand and I don't have a problem with a movie maker deviating from the book.  The problem with this one in particular is that not only did it deviate from the book but Lawrence has confirmed that it had a different ending more reminiscent of the book and then they changed it and tacked on what you got (reference I saw did not explain why it was changed, whether Will wanted something less critical of the character or test audiences didn't like it).

The book itself is not terribly apropos for a modern film.  It was made into films twice before the 2007 version.  In '64 Vincent Price was "The Last Man on Earth" and in '71 Charlton Heston was "The Omega Man".  The most faithful of these was the Vincent Price version.  The Omega Man had a different message in mind and so it, also, had a modified ending.

In short, the main reason the ending didn't jive is because Lawrence changed it late in production.

On 4/6/2019 at 2:06 AM, Munkie said:

I like this one more than I ought to and have watched it many times. Not a huge fan of the synchronicity of the ending, but everything up til then is solid. 

You may say it has no rewatch value but the fight and aftermath of Sam vs the vampire doggies never fails to tug on the strings of my withered, black heart.

The reason the ending is not consistent is because it is not the ending.  _I Am Legend_ is a really old book and it has nothing to do with what was on screen.  Essentially this is as bad a rendition as his "I, Robot" film.  Read the book for a much better treatment of the idea with a totally different spin on what is going on.

On 3/29/2019 at 3:38 AM, WestRider said:

Captain Marvel: Excellent. It's not perfect, but most of my criticisms boil down to A) I'm kind of bored with Origin Stories, and B) They screwed up their timeline on at least one of the pop culture references. I really want to see Danvers and Thor go up against an absolute horde in Endgame, basically something like the opening scene from Ragnarok, but doubled.

I'm just curious.  Which pop culture reference did you find anachronistic?  I was not playing careful attention so I am curious.

3 hours ago, paxmiles said:

Dunno, seems like a rather large assumption . All we really know is that it doesn't look like they continue living when they reach that corpse state.

Even if you ignore the spiritual end, decomposing might be fun. Never know until you try, I suppose.

Life is a pretty strictly defined thing.  Doesn't include spiritual existence...  Doesn't include rotting in the ground or the myriad other organisms who live on as you decay...  In that send life is pretty well defined and finite.

The question of existence after death is a separate question and goes in lots of directions to lots of different lengths.

2 hours ago, WestRider said:

Depends on the definition of "life". If we consider any continuance of consciousness to be some other state, some form of after-life, then my statement holds.

On a totally different topic. Boot Rear: A Truly Kickass Root Beer. Popped into my head this morning while I was waking up, and now I want some, but it doesn't actually exist.

All you need to do is get to Xanth.  You can have some of that while I partake of Injure Jail.

9 hours ago, paxmiles said:

Could be that, I suppose. 

I'm thinking about starting them at max level and no gear, then as they quest, lowering their level. They'd still keep the gear and non-level related stat increases, so the questing would still have value. Game would just become progressively harder, the more you quested and killed things. Dunno, it's kinda like Fallout/skyrim/oblivion, where the enemies scale with your level, but in reverse (which would be easier to implement) where you just get worse the more you quest, making the same enemies harder the more you play. Which would mean that the longer you played, the more cunning you'd have to be.

Anyway, random thought. No going anywhere with this idea. 

Meh, numbers...

Done correctly, all roleplaying should become harder as you level up.  That's on the game designer.  At a simple level there is no difference between players doubling their numbers and monsters gaining a factor of four and the situation you describe where monsters stay 100% untouched and players' numbers are cut in half.  As I said, that is very simplified so the mathematical comparison is easy but the same logic applies regardless of the system and the bells and whistles applied.  (I think D&D is really about a 10-20% increase in power per level.)

What you are describing is easy enough to convey with flavor-text.  If you actually want to roll back numbers that might be easiest to see and demonstrate to players in a Fate system where the numbers are most visible.

One possible antonym is ascetic.

Basically the church frowns on hedonism so you can look at all the "restrained" or even "moderate" lifestyles as an antithetical approach.

One of the main reasons society frowns on hedonism is that it generally (not always) is antisocial.

I'd say that depends a lot on you and your play-style.

I played most of the demo solo but I also played with friends when they logged in later.  I was able to solo all the content.  The challenge with friends is more entertaining for me because it changes how the game flows and feels (more bad guys, different tactics, etc.).  This was true in the original as well.

The demo also offered some Dark Zone play but I didn't do much there.  In the original you didn't really want to play Dark Zone solo and there was stuff in the DZ that was not available in other places so you would be missing out on some content/specific items that way.

Finally, the demo offered an example of level 30 content.  They have "invaded" missions which we saw and raids which we did not.  Apparently there are 5 world tiers at 30 (the original had 4 I believe and they should function the same way).  Invaded missions should also be reminiscent of missions at level 30 in the original.  I was able to solo the invaded mission they gave us at the tier that they gave it to us but I don't know how that was really scaled.  (Again, I preferred playing it with others.)

The solo campaign is supposed to be ~40 hours.  Additional end-game available solo.  Some portions of end-game not available solo (specifically raids).

Moving internationally can be worse...

I will never, ever be able to get chorizo de oaxaca again...

33 minutes ago, paxmiles said:

I wonder if a post on a thread is enough for me to legally pull your plug....? lol

No, but it is clearly enough for him to yank your chain.  😉

14 minutes ago, Munkie said:

I would recommend not using it as a compliment if you're ever considering it.

The chances of it being received as a compliment are......slim.

I'd say the person suggesting it might be a compliment is really a troll looking to see how stupid men are.  (Not Pax but the one in the source he mentioned.)

The Division 2 is in open beta this weekend.  I played in the closed beta.  Limited access to the world but you get a glimpse of normal zones, the dark zone, the quest cycle for both areas, missions, and infiltrated missions.  This is very much derivative of the first game and does well taking the successful parts of that game to build on.  It changes some mechanics (the way you unlock tech and skills is different but the popular powers are still there) and it introduces "specialization" at level 30 which gives some new options as well.  Worth a look if you were a fan of the first.

4.5/5 for the looter-shooter genre.

4 hours ago, Munkie said:

His least annoying role.

I dunno...  He was in Leverage as well and if you look at that series, the whole dang thing is rife with STtNG nepotism.  I kinda thought that Chaos was right in line with the rest of the (over) acting in that series.  He played very well with Eliot, Parker and Hardison.

Pax, I didn't see any point in quoting the same passage twice so I didn't.  I told you how it reads.

Your extended passage is much better.  What you are highlighting is that the problem lies in how the game interacts with the lore, not that the game itself is bad but that in being true to the lore it is not really comparable to a modern shooter.  Unfortunately, your summary sentence in the original post really doesn't summarize *that* well.  Makes much more sense now.