The latter.
These games pay minimal, token attention to the modern-day, arching story and are only worth playing for the historical stabbing.
Fortunately for me, historical stabbing is like 95% of the games and the reason I play so I'm still in.

Probably not. The trailer says 1868 and the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper happened in 1888.

Sure but the reason I referred to the name is because Zappa retained it for a while even after everybody that was the original Mothers of Invention (who invited HIM to join them in the first place) quit.

Sure it's flawed but I don't know if you one can underestimate the striking visual imagery of a woman of color serving as a military/science officer as equals among peers… in 19 freaking 66.

I agree the song is not a defense of segregation or anything and I've not found any "problematic" lyrics in Lynyrd Skynyrd's music (beyond the standard rock 'n' roll misogyny et al).

I have gone back and forth on Zappa a lot. Currently my opinion is that I like his music up until he dropped the "Mothers of Invention" name, at which point his lyrics got so extremely juvenile and hatefully offensive (and the music got less interesting I think because it was less of a true group dynamic) that it's…

I'm thinking this might finally be the year where the moral crisis of football finally turns me away for good. Of course it's easy to say that now and we'll see what happens once fall comes.

Rock 'n' roll and blues music is generally horrifically misogynistic but of course I love it.

Yes, exactly. That Monica is actually not the real Monica, as you say, but David doesn't know or care.
The implication therefore as that "love," itself, is pretty much a lie (or, to put it less cruelly, a compendium of superficial experiences). For 2 hours (or whatever) we're watching this character on this quest about…

I also never finished Red Dead Redemption and feel bad about it because I love movies in that Western setting and the 3rd person open worldish gameplay is my favorite style and it's such a highly regarded game that you'd think it would be perfect for me but I got SO bored. At some point I felt like I was just riding a…

Funny to see Skyrim mentioned so much here. I liked it ok but I don't think it's as great as many do, mostly because I think I'm just overwhelmed by RPGs and the combat got boring.
But yeah I "finished" it- the main Dragonborn story and the major guild quest lines. The world design and locations are what kept me in and…

I'm pretty much the same.
I'm actually a bit surprised that $60 games that take dozens of hours to beat are still popular.

Dishonored- I don't know why Patrick feels the need to decide whether to "commit to a slightly boring no-kills run, or start over and gleefully eviscerate whoever looks at me wrong." The game is pretty short, you can do both.
Dishonored is my 2nd favorite last-gen game, in large part because you can do both and it…

The Witcher 2. When I finally got around to building my PC I was so excited to play this well-regarded game but when I finally got a couple hours into it I was completely turned off by the clunky (to me, at least) controls, gameplay and dull combat.

Ok I'll be the Assassins Creed fanboy: the original is a sorely underrated game and one of my favorites of the series, because it- and Unity- are the only two of the series where I actually felt like an assassin. The rest of the games, while good-to-great, are more like "violent historical tourism" to me.

Entirely agree with your 2nd paragraph.
So if Linklater had cast a white person for that small role, I would still say it's a weak narrative choice to have a strange woman tell someone "you should be in school" and then he DOES.
The racial element now makes the same poor artistic choice either look racist or, what I…

There are so many straw-man arguments in this thread I'm surprised the web site hasn't burned down from the metaphorical fire-hazard.

Everything you're saying is not only true, but only highlights why that scene is so racist/problematic/whatever- the Latino character is used as a prop to provide insight into the white character.
It's patently ridiculous that someone would just change his life because a contract-hire said "you're smart you should go…

Sisko was the first person I thought when I saw the title of this article. Probably because I'm re-watching the series, but still

I loved this scene and the episode and was surprised and disappointed to read the review panning the pacing and suggesting a montage. This essay is like a correction and I agree with it completely.
I wasn't even planning on watching this show, I just checked out the first couple of episodes and it hooked me. Sure it's…