Sorry for the late reply. .hack//SIGN has not aged well. I first watched it in Japanese with fan subs, and I had nothing to base my expectations on. It was bad, but I didn’t know any better. Years later I watched the English dub, and it was borderline unwatchable, so I tried going back to the Japanese version, and it wasn’t any better. I don’t think it was meant to be good (in that way) and I don’t think it can be saved.

The second season of .hack (Legend of the Twilight; also called Legend of the Twilight Bracelet in fansub) went full chibi. This actually started, I believe, with an OVA to SIGN (the first season) called .hack//GIFT, which ended with the boys spying on the girls in the bath. The whole thing was a farce, but the chibi element dominated the second season. .hack tried to take itself way more seriously with the third season, but I couldn’t get into it. I think I got 8 episodes in before throwing in the towel?

.hack is not good, IMO. Maybe there’s a point to be made. SAO, on the other hand, works very hard to make you think it’s cool. And it is cool. As an old guy who grew up with Star Wars, I think it’s a great modern media franchise. Certainly better than any of the last three mainline Star Wars films, and arguably SAO is also better than Phantom Menace, and a case could be made for the other two. It does borrow quite a bit from .hack (or maybe they both just borrow MMO tropes; I never played MMOs), but it expands on those ideas greatly. For example, .hack//Another Story. Another OVA where one of the main girls is telling one of the guys about her first friend in the game, this unbeatable girl warrior and the sacrifice she made. So when the last third or so of SAO season 2 came out, and here comes a similar purple-haired female duelist, I said “oh I bet she’s logged in 24/7.” And I’m not going to spoil it, but while SAO took the story in the same direction, it went way deeper, and was so much more satisfying. I knew how the story was going to end because I’d seen the original. But SAO did it way, way better. Honestly, if the Mother’s Rosary (name of the book it’s based on) section of SAO were a standalone anime, it would probably be my favorite anime of all time.

Sorry for the late reply… just saw this. IIRC one of the “Legendary Edition” fixes for 2 was speeding up the scanner. There’s a button you hold and the scanner moves more quickly. However, the zones are quite sensitive.

Andromeda has the same feature, but worse. When you’re in the Mako (or whatever they called it, I already forgot), you can scan for minerals, but only if the mining computer is open (RB/R1), and the screen is way too big. I’ve never seen a mineral register over half. Crafting sucked in Andromeda (and honestly in all of ME) in general; once you’d researched a thing, you could just buy it, or more likely find 0-2 copies a day out in the field, and you just sell what you don’t need. Once I realized that, I stopped hunting for minerals, and I only researched, never crafted (outside of like 2 missions that required it).

Interesting… I don’t love oatmeal which makes me wonder if I won’t love oat milk, but again, I’m certainly willing to try it!

When I think of grains, I think of oat in terms of oatmeal, wheat in terms of wheat farina (e.g. Cream of Wheat), and corn in terms of corn meal (or corn bread — no offense to vegans, I’m not sure you can make that without milk and/or egg, but you can probably use vegan substitutes… I like honey in mine, so that might offset any “weird” taste of a vegan cornbread). So my first thought is “what about wheat ‘milk’?”. Because cream of wheat kicks the crap out of oatmeal. IMO. But I’m not sure you can make a cream suitable for coffee with wheat farina.

Yes, that’s the one. I love the look of both games, but I recognize that Cuphead is beyond my play ability. Gorgeous game though!

I can run Steam Deck verified games on my Mac? How? (I don’t think I can, I think you just missed that I have a Mac, not a Steam Deck.)

I didn’t look for Steam Deck verification, I just looked at the OS flags above the price. They have them for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Love Tom’s work ethic. He makes fun movies and does his own stunts. He’s also batshit crazy, which works out for us… and part of a dangerous cult, which is not so good.

The second Top Gun movie only exists because Tom Cruise wanted to be Luke Skywalker. It’s a shameless ripoff of Star Wars. It’s also a really fun movie that is worth watching despite all the legit marks against it.

Until we know better, can we so start calling the new one Top Gun and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Because when I think flying, Potter on his broom was the first thought I had… and Tom Cruise certainly can’t do worse than that AI slop looking trailer HBO put out.

Everything James Bond has is tailored to him; why wouldn’t his suits be the same? Same with his mundane gadgets having all kinds of secret features? Same with his suit. I just assume it’s a bespoke suit that is cut very well and has secret features like everything else he uses.

Or: he can make video calls on a watch in the 1960s and mobility in a suit is where you draw the line??

How do you milk oats?

I’m not trying to troll the vegans here, though I do feel a sense of sarcasm here. But it’s not because I consume animal products; it’s because I enjoy coffee and I’m wondering what… whatever “oat milk” is …adds to coffee.

For the record, straight up milk is nasty in coffee and I don’t understand why people do it. Creamer mixes milk and cream. Hot coffee does something to milk that just makes the whole cup gross. I think the thicker, heartier cream holds its own against the coffee.

So in my head I’m thinking you juice the oats somehow, but I’m not sure how you get cream without any cow’s milk. Soy?

I go to a local coffee shop and they do oat milk. I’m not vegan but I’m not opposed to vegan solutions. So I am curious about the oat milk. Can anyone explain without getting political, strictly on culinary basis, what oat milk brings to coffee?

Art style looks cool.

Requires Windows. My computer can’t run that (by choice, also by design — it’s a Mac). So that’s a red flag I can’t ignore.

Anyway, it feels like this game has been coming for years. It doesn’t help that it looks somewhat similar to that other retro cartoon bullet hell game I can’t recall the name of right now. That game doesn’t interest me though; this one tentatively does if it has an easy mode or the difficulty is fair.

Not exactly what you asked, but I think it’s important to note how old protest songs are still so relevant. I listen to a lot of 1980s music (in fact, presently playing my 80s playlist, just went from Tiffany to Belinda Carlisle) and older music.

Listen to the 1971 song Won’t Get Fooled Again by British band The Who. I’m sure most of you have heard it. Listen to what he said 55 years ago and imagine it was written this year, and see how relevant it is.

Wild guess: aggregated score card with individual reviewers having a score card. Let users vote up a reviewer to make their vote count more (or down for less) or ignore/block a reviewer to make theirs not count. That way, the user’s own views weigh the score card.

Mass Effect. I didn’t get far in the original. Played the Legendary Edition trilogy all the way through. Went back to the original. It’s the tank (Mako). It dies in like 2-3 hits and you get less XP for kills in it. It’s just not fun and they never fixed it in the original. Legendary fixes it. At the very least, it’s balanced to the game’s difficulty setting. Where in the original it’s stuck on the hardest setting, but only for the Mako missions.

Original came out in like 2007, Legendary came out in like 2016. Might be off by a year or two with one or both.

I don’t much remember the music from Human Revolution, and I quite liked Human Revolution… then again, I also liked Invisible War, for context.

Human Revolution originally had a yellow tint to everything and it was weird, fortunately the directors cut let you disable that “feature”. So I can’t say their direction was always correct.

I do remember the music from the first one. It was almost as iconic as the game itself. But I have to agree it would not be a good fit for Human Revolution. The composer would have had to turn in work that did not sound like it belonged on the first game’s soundtrack, which is probably possible? Going with a whole other composer sounds petty, unless that composer only has one style or sound.

Mars family is pretty private, not much is known about them. The people behind M&Ms, Dove, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, Snickers, and a few others. I think they make the best mass marketed chocolate in the US. They’re owned by the Mars family (it’s actually their name) but very little is known about them.

Bought for me: the NES deluxe kit with console, controllers, light gun, and Mario/Duck Hunt.

I first bought Super Mario Bros 3 as in, with my own money.

Depends. I listen to music I have positive emotional reactions to. I don’t think anything really gives me negative emotional reactions the same way — I would avoid it if it did.

A friend told me about Bad Omens (metal) and I’ve been listening to them. I don’t usually like heavy music these days, but sometimes it can be cool and they have some clever lyrics.

First anime was .hack//SIGN.

First impression of anime was, giant robots, fights that took several episodes, and girls way too young to show that much skin. I asked my anime obsessed cousins to show me something intelligent that didn’t have any of those three things, and they delivered — see first answer.

Favorite series is Sword Art Online, but I prefer one season and done miniseries like Erased end Your Lie in April. Also The Promised Neverland and Tokyo Ghoul — we don’t talk about their seasons beyond the first. Favorite movies are your name. and Wolf Children.

Only one bad experience with anime I can think of. My cousins who got me into anime were watching one when a child goes into a changing room and it shows everything. That was creepy AF. We were all teenagers so it wasn’t like “I should report this to the police” but more like “let me catch you looking at that again and I will kick both your asses.” I don’t remember what they were watching, if they told me.

I feel like they’re missing opportunities and leaving money on the table with this franchise. The fake band should be putting out music outside of the movies.

The game is what wasn’t ready. They shipped without a map for about a year. They ignored game breaking bugs posted to their community Discord (the official one they moderate). One notable one that was still unpatched after a year of being notified was how in random ship encounters, the leader of the enemies would be aligned to Constellation, meaning if you or anyone in your group killed them, all your allies turn against you. That should have been an easy fix. They just did not care.