The X-Box 360 takes it for me as an overall winner. It had a great and expansive library of games, and aside the red ring of death (I never got one) it just worked.

I’d almost put the N64 as a second place contender because it has so many great games, but that controller has never been good. It might be visually iconic but it’s so clunky. 3rd part controllers exist now that are more shaped for human hands and I am baffled why Nintendo didn’t do that from the start.

XB360 had a great controller, great library, and graphics that still hold up. What more do you need?

I found the first one was hampered by so many forced racing and card games as bottlenecks to progressing. Those would have been fine as optional side activities, but making them so mandatory really killed the pacing when it came to doing some shooting.

The bosses were super underwhelming. You had one giant boss where you were trapped in a small building and shooting up at him. Very uninteresting. The final sequence of the game felt like there was going to be a boss. Narratively the enemy headquarters are built up as being heavily defended, the bad guys are built up to be doing crazy genetic engineering, and the game gives you a last minute BFG. Then you get inside and it’s a bunch of reskinned low level enemies. Felt like the devs ran out of time or something.

In the shooting, the game did give tons of gadgets and options, though I rarely found myself using most of them.

I wish the sequel had built on the promises of the first game, but it basically turned into a generic shooter that cribbed the aesthetic from Borderlands.

You can still see the remnants of trying to address the “realism” issue with things like Riker existing at all. Writing in an XO was supposed to divide responsibilities; keep the captain on the ship to make choices and put the XO on away missions to karate chop Klingons. However if that had been stuck to rigidly, Picard would never be written into many exciting situations.

MACOs on ENT should have logically made Malcolm redundant, but the show kept finding things for him to do.

No fault of the design. It was meant for a particular role. It is being brought out and borderline misused in a different role. I can get behind loling at Russia, but this is like laughing at an M4 Sherman for not having ECM built in. I’d laugh at the people who rolled it into a modern conventional fight, but the design seems competent for the time and role.

The article’s premise is that this is a vehicle designed for a very particular role, which is now being brought out and used outside that role, illustrating how deep into reserves Russia is scraping for vehicles.

The article’s premise is that it is a very particular vehicle, the use of which points to scraping deep into the reserves.

Sir, this is a Quark’s Bar.

I am viewing from intention as written, when written for the films. It seems plausible that “Darth Jar Jar” or something similar could have been an original, but abandoned intention.

Is there some secret internet community of Willie haters?

Cool story, now get in the fucking robot.

I know this a joke theory (mostly), but given how much Star Wars rips from classic scifi works, I think looking at the Foundation books makes a good case for this being viable as more than a joke.

Lovecraft’s stuff has that reputation, but on a listen through his works, he had a tendency to actually be properly descriptive when it was appropriate. I think it’s a case of later, lesser writers gloming onto to making things indescribable as a lazy crutch that made the reputation of the mythos like that.

I think only ‘The Unnamable’ by Lovecraft really goes incredibly vague at a point where it should be describing the creature, but that story feels like a joke about this exact topic.

Michael Shea’s mythos stuff is pretty good I think. ‘Demiurge’ is a book collecting all his stories. He updates them to the then contemporary 1980s, keeping the elements of cosmic horror but putting them in more modern and relatable situations rather than attempting to make them period pieces.

Tom Clancy has entered the chat and has started describing a submarine engine. Please help.

It’s very heavily inspired by the original Fallout game designs. Very heavy on having lots of types of character builds and options to complete quests. I’m probably going to restart soon because my first character wasn’t a great build.