I put aside Persona 5 for a bit—past the third palace, but I tend to overplan my off time. It's just how I play and I do it every time—and have been mainlining Horizon Zero Dawn instead for a while now. Damned if that isn't a charming game. Maybe I overleveled, but the non-bird machines are less difficult now than I…

Amelie's a stalker right? That can't have worked out either.

Scott Pilgrim should walk away alone. More likely, everyone should walk away from Scott Pilgrim. Not permanent like, but probably for half a decade.

He is a good screenwriter, but this movie was thin on character. The weakest part is Spacey's turn to help Baby—"I too have loved" or whatever that was. Here, let's go out in a blaze. Mind you, I think Wright knows this and was only building just enough plot to move things along—and Jon Hamm did the best with the thin…

For what it's worth, despite the fact that Season 2 is where the tv show's and comic's sensibilities are bleeding in and taking over (I find the two overly nihilist, even in a zombie apocalypse) the storytelling grew so much that it maintained my interest. The finale was super wrenching, and it in hindsight the things…

He thinks Hudson Hawk is underappreciated.

I was mildly disappointed because people have been generally gushing, and I've enjoyed his previous outings, but came away the same as you. Calling them "archetypes" is a little more generous than I think the movie managed, and it was just a bit emptier than I expected, though fun.

I'm of the firm mind that dialogue trees are best when used to affect line readings and the characterization that the player wants. There was focus for a while (Bioware-wise) where results had more plot oriented effects, but I think a mix of the two, with a preference for characterization gets the best storytelling.…

Do you or people play with the captioning that Telltale offers? The "Clementine will remember this" things. I need it on for them to feel like games, or the games feel like bad movies to me. Of course, I know that those decisions don't have to matter, they just have to tell me that they do.

Haven't played Oxenfree, and I liked Firewatch, but yeah the latter didn't have much agency for it. I has more in common with Gone Home I think, where the story unfurls is a specific, narratively satisfying order that you are funneled into.

I just picked up season 3 on sale and have played episode one so far and you are absolutely right. I could almost cope with the not-actually-necessary deck clearing that they do between seasons, when they kill every non-POV character, but I played Clementine a certain way because I wanted her to turn out a certain…

I thought they hit a good sweet spot in the second season of the Walking Dead, but the third one which I just got seems like they inched forward another step toward naturalism…which doesn't look like it's working for me.

Puberty.

I'm more or less with you, maybe be a touch less enthused. I guess I fell for the hype so I'm a little more down out of disappointment—Baby Driver felt like an emptier piece than I expected. A friend who I saw it with (and loved it) compared it favorably to Drive (which he hated) as another style over substance piece…

Hey, if Johnny To can wander off to make a musical (which Chow Yun-Fat sadly doesn't sing in) or Let the Bullets Fly can exist—maybe they're not action movies but I can see the lines there—who knows what else can come out. And that's just other Chinese movies.

I think the Bourne movies are well enthroned—I mean, it is the entry for the year. The series's success created a lot of bad imitators though.

At least for me, it specifically obscures a thing I look out for in actions movies, which is choreography. I'm pretty lenient about the frequently limited, shall we say, actual "acting skills" if I can see an athletic, skillful sequence.

Maybe because Kung Fu Hustle is also such a loving homage to old films, it's influence is getting lost, but I don't actually see it's influence that much. At least in American movie-making, Bourne and Greengrass's success casts a longer shadow.

I think the problem is that female actors to Hong Kong are an afterthought. The troupe of male actors that everyone uses gets enough work to get good even if they don't start good, but the women usually have tiny thankless roles with crap material.

Why though, if the money is spent and there would have to be more money spent? My understanding is that Netflix deals are very large upfront because their products don't air elsewhere, syndication or otherwise, so the money they spend on development is for full ownership. If the product is only accessed from Netflix,…