I’ll also say that BJ saying “Come And Get Me You White Ass Pig Nazis” like he was reading a TelePrompTer he couldn’t clearly see was by far the best moment that games will provide use this year

#3 on the Steam charts for the week, for whatever that’s worth. By contrast, the dishwater dull Assassin’s Creed: Origins occupies three different slots, including pre-order and deluxe editions

You keep your arsenal between levels

One of the best parts of The New Order was how the game slyly undercut BJ’s ultra-sombre inner monologue, and I’m getting the same vibe from the sequel. I always intensely love when developers thumb their nose at ludonarrative dissonance nerds, so I loved it here.

Sort of a distillation of how I’m not jibing with AVC’s approach to Stranger Things this season:

This episode was Stranger Things forgetting what it was (that is, a constellation of referents and echoes of referents). Not only did it put itself in a position to neglect the Goonies power chords that make the show ingratiating, it assumed that Eleven’s plot detour could sustain a whole episode, which it could not.…

I was, honest to God, hoping I’d be wrong

That’s what I call “connecting with your audience”

So they’re Showtime, is what you’re saying

Also am I crazy or did it used to be for YOUR consideration? That kind of changes the whole angle on how to think about these takes

It’s reasonable to assume that Stranger Things 2 would eventually run dry of Considerable content but it’s a little bit gauche to come to Netflix, hat in hand, in such an open fashion. Chin up guys, here’s some ideas just straight off the dome you can run with:

I’m rolling the dice on a C+ at worst. AVC’s been sort of overstating the depth and ambition of this season in general so I wouldn’t put it past them to make one of their Klostermanesque stands for why it’s Actually Good.

That was a John Hughes reference

Thank God, I was running pretty thin there, regarding Strangers Things content

The show’s great flaw is that it keeps its ensemble apart for so long. None of the plot threads, aside from maybe Nancy / Bob (which is a really minor thread), is quite enough to hold my attention - it all seems like a rehash. This season reached a point of no return after this episode, when Hopper and El, whose fates…

Maybe I’ve outgrown the ol AVC poptimism because I can’t get on board with the idea of Stranger Things as anything other than a Disney fairy tale. It has *themes* of trauma, it exists in the setting and the characters suffer from it, but it is not *about* trauma, it is far too ensconced in its sugary referents (enter…

Wow whoever commented a few days ago w/ “what’s the daily Stranger Things post quota” or w/e was not fuckin kidding. AVC as it aged became more and more lashed to the wheel of the zeitgeist but there was still a bit of time into Event Television before it devolved into this. We have at least three For Our…

They can and they will but it will be something more definably about teendom.

I hated it, and I hate how Max is used as an all-purpose conflict generator between all the boys and I would really not rather she be a love interest at all but she’s clearly going to be for somebody

It’s kind of impressive how a season 1 made me want to see more of Dustin and season 2 has made me want to see so much less of him