Anything that isn’t trying to be crispy does worlds better in the microwave.

Am I the only one who suspects that ESO consumed the ES series the same way GTAO means we’ll never get a GTA 6? I realize we are *finally* scheduled to get a new ES game at some point, but I wonder if they were pumping resources into their MMO hoping for a bigger payout.

True, but they already list the almost-never-used oven method on the package.  Speaking as a lazy former bachelor (i.e. the core Hot Pocket demographic), I think there's way more audience for a 7 minute substantially improved Hot Pocket than a 30 minute best possible Hot Pocket.

I will forever remember Butler taking heat from a bunch of Irish people reviewing Irish accents in movies - you’d think a *Scot* could do a decent Irish accent, but no. (Same crew was really impressed with Brad Pitt in “Snatch”, FWIW.)

Did you nuke these or bake them? Hot Pockets are never great, but there really is a world of difference between the results from a sad crisper sleeve versus dry heat. Then again, waiting over half an hour for a Hot Pocket defeats their entire purpose. I’ve discovered that the best approach is to nuke them in the…

The LSL games were a riff on text-to-action games, in that this one *let* you do all the perverted things that just got error messages in other games. Outside of that extremely narrow context, yeah, they’re pretty awful. Shamus Young wrote about this a few years ago:

I don’t know that The Room will ever be surpassed as the apex of “so bad it’s good”, because I don’t think anyone else will have the combination of wildly misplaced competence *and* significant resources that Wisseau did. Bad movies these days have way more Roger Cormans making films than Ed Woods, and on the rare occa…

Might want to check your instincts. I think Phantom Menace is borked at even the plot level - trade disputes, thrown-in podraces and a grade schooler blowing up a star ship are turds I don’t think anyone can shine up.

This. If somebody went back to early 2002 and leaked the plot outlines for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, people would have gushed about how awesome the movies sounded.

Well, nobody answering was initially on TLJ.  They weren’t saying “nobody can get here in time”, which is what I thought would happen with the First Order literally on their doorstep - they said “nobody is answering.”

Yeah. I love toaster ovens, I love convection ovens, but combining the two doesn’t magically make it something other than an oven.

Especially given that they sell the *exact same thing* at a fraction of the price without the gold.

RHPS was a moderately big deal and a definite bomb when it launched.  And as much as the community has supported it through the decades, the initial re-release as a midnight movie was started by Fox.

I saw Blair Witch Project on opening night in a theater with a few hundred college kids.  The movie still isn’t all that great, but that viewing experience was amazing.

God I hope not. SS is based on a dead simple formula that shoehorns in a lot of sponsor name-dropping and Double Dare-style physical competition.

OK, another pet peeve - I find endeavors that pride themselves on “defying expectations” to be chasing the pinnacle of critical cheap heat. Defying expectations is easy as hell if you have no regard for your audience or your medium - it’s how you get crap like duct -taped bananas getting called “art”. Defying…

Yeah, I like “interactive narrative” as a descriptor. And I don’t mean these things are bad. I’d much rather boot up Stanley Parable than, well, let’s go with Candy Crush again - even though the latter is unquestionably a game and the former isn’t.

Personally, I *can’t* see Fleck in the criminal mastermind role.  That’s the one attribute the Romero/Nicholson/Ledger/etc. Jokers, have in common, and it’s missing from the guy they told a standalone “Joker” movie about.  Fleck isn’t capable of managing himself, let alone a vast criminal enterprise.

This is an issue for me, because I’ve always questioned to what degree “Walking Simulators” are really games. This has been a pet peeve of mine since Myst, and I’m not convinced that something like The Stanley Parable has more in common with, I dunno, Candy Crush than it does a Choose your Own Adventure book.

Any time I listen to foreign language gridiron commentary, it’s always disorienting to have the odd bits of untranslated English drop in at random...