Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I haven't watched an MCU movie in a while. I missed... let's see... Quantumania, Eternals, Marvels, and Falcon & Winter Soldier at least. I suppose I've just been a bit burned out on them or something. But, I decided to catch Thunderbolts*.  I worked pretty well. I wasn't taken out of it. I don't find anything that bothers me about it. I liked some of the characters and the interplay. But there wasn't anything that quite pushed it over to great either. The group had a sort of Guardians of the Galaxy vibe with anti-heroes coming together to support one another in a quasi-family. But they also kind of copied the "losers" speech from the original GotG movie, which feels a little cheap. The team being made up of a bunch of people who "shoot and punch things" is a little lackluster for a superhero movie. They're not terribly super or heroic. We have three peak-human supersoldiers, a hyper-trained assassin (and Yelena carries the movie and ...

 I cannot be the only one that finds things so predictable, can I? With the leaving of our captain character in Stars Without Number, the rest of us are much less decisive/proactive. Predictable if you've seen us in action. And the only one who really wants to be in charge claims to not - and, I'd say, isn't terribly qualified given the way they regularly don't think things through. Natural fallout and that's fine, I don't blame anyone in particular. But then we get a situation that, while I might not have explicitly predicted, was one I've seen before. Summarized: Other PC: "Well, I'm not taking charge..." My Character: "Okay, fine. Here are some directions. Get on the ship. PC2 do this. PC3 do that." Other PC a few poses later: *takes charge by repeating what my character just said.* If that were just IC, it wouldn't be a big deal - annoying on a character level, but no biggie. But, of course, it wasn't. I could even brush i...

I've been playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 . It's a recent darling among reviewers, and not without reason. The game is good to play. Mind you, I do struggle on and off with the QTE mechanics that are mixed in with the turn-based combat. It's engaging, though. There's a lot of heart and emotion in the story that is well-delivered. I have seen clips of DA: Veilguard scenes (but haven't played the whole game, so those are just snippets) that are embarrassingly stilted and clearly scripted. Clair Obscur's dialog has pretty much never hit me that way. Most of it feels so very natural, especially the shock and loss experienced in the first act of the game - and there's plenty of it given the sort of bleak premise of the game. I don't want to say anything to spoil it for someone who may play, but the wrap of Act 2 and beginning of Act 3 really takes a turn. There are so many reveals there that answer most of the lingering questions (and raise a few more) th...