The Lego games consistently and reliably produce some of if not the actual best videogame adaptations of popular franchises, from this to Lord of the Rings to Avengers—and it always makes me really wish that there could be stuff this good but not just as children’s toy products.

I remember playing Lego LotR with my…

https://www.reddit.com/r/place/comments/twk1rb/rplace_2022_complete_timelapse/

Same here—I really would have just rocked a whole suite of Jakobs guns but that would have been redundant, so it made more sense to have a primary weapon (pistol or rifle) that I liked the feel of for a majority of engagements, then the other three slots were both elemental and different styles meant for specific…

Well now I’m just wracking my brain imagining every Jim I can think of. Or Jameses. Or Jimothies.

Isn’t Grand Canyon University a somewhat famously Christian school?

It’s a double-edged sword. I know what I like and I’m usually quick to decide if I’m going to like a thing, and why (and, so, will give it up if I don’t)—and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

I mean, to be fair, a lot of people who nope out of these games early or form an opinion without playing (or at least without finishing) get told they can’t have opinions since they didn’t finish, so there’s incentive to finish just to see if the game’s hiding something in the back end, or if you’ll have that “I hated…

I hope I wasn’t implying that I think they suck or it should be abandoned. But I think that because it was *so* divisive, it makes it stand out as a design that could be improved upon. Like, if I were a designer on that game, I’d look at the discourse surrounding this mechanic and I’d very much feel like I should look…

Well. I mean, Rock said “shit” first, by a good ten seconds. So the article, and the order of events, is: Rock’s joke didn’t land, Smith gets up to come on stage, Smith *slaps* Rock (and the producers are still thinking—HOPING— this is some planned thing they worked out, or just a performance), then Chris says…

Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard as well (I’ve read some long articles and watched some longer videos trying to grok it myself!), but the fact that we had to go looking online to learn about that intent suggests maybe it didn’t land for a lot of people, for some reason.

Right? Like, you don’t need a sony brand TV to watch spider-man, but you DO need a sony-brand home game console to PLAY spider-man, which is... weird. Or annoying, at least, in this modern age. It just feels like they’re still adhering to an old relic model of a past era.

I’m pretty excited to see what they iterate on with this game. I found the raw combat and some of the UX (with menus and stuff) to be a little clunky which was kind of a turn off, and never could end up finishing, but the setting and style and interactions between game systems were all great. I always thought if you…

It probably wasn’t the biggest factor, but I imagine having them both competing for GOTY was *a* factor. A small one, sure, and it’s not like GOTY is some universal, official thing, or really means a *lot*, but the thought had to have been in some minds, you know?

The covid thing is not nothin’, honestly. It feels like almost every game released since this pandemic began has been notably, tangibly less polished than you’d otherwise expect, even the really big, famous, moneyed ones, and some have been shockingly messed up.

You know, I thought that as well, and that’s kinda what I was getting at—Microsoft’s gotta keep pushing stuff to the service for it to be worth it to them; at some point their burning money won’t pay off the way it used to when the retention or new accounts start slowing down.

So like, they can offer this clearly best…

I definitely hear that. I imagine a future where Microsoft is first (and biggest, most successful, and ostensibly only) one to turn home console gaming into the way we treat TV’s—they all hook up and play the games, and the games themselves are just a service, while your rig, your hardware, is up to you. Basically all…

Yeah, I could definitely do with some UX improvements—that was the only real sticking point with the game for me, just using your inventory and some of the controls were kinda clunky and unfriendly, in a game where I loved everything else about the art and setting and even most of the mechanics.

So it seems *kinda* eh, as far as directly competing with gamepass is concerned—not having those day 1 new games is a blow, where gamepass keeps getting lauded for that.

“Yarrr, me matey, you have heard of me, Johnny Depp!” That’s probably the line.

I just don’t buy that as a valid explanation, mate—because if you *did* want to make spell and item management frustrating, sure, that’s a good way to make it very frustrating indeed, but it’s not elegant, and it doesn’t come off as intentional or balanced. It just comes off as clunky, outdated, and annoying—which is…