Yes! Getting fheroes2 set up last year was a blast and a half. I think I went a week straight playing nothing but that, which is unusual for me.

I agree that I would prefer something which more closely matches the HoMM2 look, but I can understand why they’ve shied away from that. In their defense, at-a-glance readability wasn’t always the team’s priority. For instance, if you told me that Halon was A) a good guy and B) a wizard, I’d doubt you (to crib a critique from an old Sseth review).

However, man, I felt like those character designs lent so much personality to the game. Maybe this is patronizing, but it really felt like the artists were the same kids who spent hours on end playing DnD through the 80s and 90s, and they just upended their old TrapperKeepers full of sketches into the character pool.

I can understand folks that say the mechanics really came into their own in the following game, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the technicolor cartoon nature of HoMM2. For what it’s worth, in the other thread, someone said that they felt like the map in particular was inspired by HoMM3’s map, which they appreciated.

I wish I had a better head for the mechanics of this sort of game so I could make some concrete observations for folks that are less interested in the aesthetics of this entry and more concerned with how it plays, but I just keep coming back to, “idk, this is all just kind of working for me”.

Done. Thank you for the invitation.

I did a little write up about this game during the Winter Sale, as it was a pleasant discovery. To copy my earlier TL;DR: Art bad, game good, demo available. Worth checking it out if you have any nostalgia for the franchise.

I don’t disagree that it was a very quippy movie, but I’m not sure it’s a bad thing? I feel like tables which have a consistent, dramatic tone throughout a campaign are much more the exception than the rule (and often populated by professional creatives). In my experience, most campaigns wind up being occasional islands of drama surrounded by a nonstop stream of attempts (of varying quality) to make each other laugh. Sometimes, you can even hold the drama. Idk, like I said, I understand why it would annoy you, given the wider movie landscape, but I also feel like it was authentic to an “average” game of a 5e DnD, and therefore it didn’t bother me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the more earnest takes on epic fantasy that have been set in the Forgotten Realms / DnD, but I also get that coming out treating DnD as Very Serious Business ™ was going to be a pretty tough sell.

You’re under no obligation to continue the discussion, sure, but it seems disingenuous to me to open a thread saying “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a bad movie because it fails to follow it’s own internal logic”. Then, upon having that assertion challenged, you jump to, “I’m not gonna argue about this.” Like, why comment at all if you’re not interested in discussing, and yes, maybe even defending, your take? Regardless, if that’s not what you’re here to do, have a good day.

I admit that I saw Sky Captain once, many many years ago, so I’m not going to be able to back this up with too many specific citations, but you’ve also not said specifically what rule they set up and fail to follow, so we’re even.

It’s a pastiche of pulp fiction concepts from the 30s-50s. Giant robots, airships, Nazi scientists, Shangri-La, dinosaurs, android assassins, the works. The whole thing is like a loving homage to Doc Savage’s greatest hits. I don’t see how any of that “breaks rules”.

Like I said, I won’t dispute your overall finding of the film being, “meh”. I watched it once 20 years ago and haven’t gone back since, so I’m not exactly leaping up to defend it’s execution, but I also think “the rules kept changing” is an empty critique, as it stands currently.

Not saying you’re wrong, but praising the giant robot attack on New York before swerving into critiquing the latter half of the movie for being ridiculous is a funny juxtaposition.

Until this very moment, I assumed that Steve Zahn was reprising his character from the first film (somehow). Turns out, that was Eric Stoltz, and I’m reconsidering the degree to which I suffer face blindedness.

I agree, Event Horizon is the best Anderson movie I’ve seen, with the caveat that I haven’t seen his post-Resident Evil stuff, nor Soldier, and I’ve got a big soft spot for Kurt Russell. However, I am slightly more lukewarm on Event Horizon than a lot of folks. I haven’t watched it in some time, but I recall being underwhelmed. To some extent, I think it was over hyped to me, as my dad raved that it was terrifying when he saw it in the theater. I did not find that to be the case, but, in so far as haunted house movies go, it’s a decent one of those (IN SPAAAAAACE). My letterboxd says I gave it 3.5 stars and that still feels correct to me.

The thing that holds it back is that I think, in a different director’s hands, there is a legitimately terrifying movie to be made using most of the same ingredients. I’m by no means equivocating these movies, but an interesting point of comparison is the Solaris remake that Soderbergh and Clooney did in the early 00s. They share the conceit of “there is a mysterious entity in space which keeps showing one of the characters visions of his dead-by-suicide wife to disastrous effect” (insert weird-that-it-happened-twice.gif).

By all accounts, the Solaris remake is not an exceptional movie (in fact, EH is rated slightly higher with a 3.3 vs Solaris’ 3.2, for whatever that’s worth). Also, Solaris is very much a character drama first and foremost, but there are a few sequences which I found legitimately unsettling in ways that EH mostly failed to evoke, despite covering similar beats.

In fact, I think I’ve talked myself into doing this as a double feature. Solaris I saw on television probably close to 20 years ago, and Event Horizon I watched on a laptop in Afghanistan, so I could stand to revisit both of them. I’m curious if watching them together will enhance the experience in any way, or if it will just give me tonal whiplash lol

Admittedly I don’t remember a tremendous amount of it, but my recollection is mildly positive. If the 1995 movie is 2.5 stars outta 5 (in my personal rubric, that equates to ‘I like it, but acknowledge it’s not good’, and also happens to be where all of Paul W.S. Anderson’s films live), I’d give the 2021 version 3 stars.

It benefits from making use of the R rating, and having better fight choreography and stunt performances. I think those are much more important to get right than characterization or plot, at least in a Mortal Kombat movie.

For what it’s worth, idgaf about the lore of the franchise, so a fan of the games may take issue with that take, but my perspective is one of a fan of martial arts movies, not necessarily an MK fan.

Good News sounds interesting. I am curious at how well I’d be able to read the comedy in the performances. I’m no stranger to Asian cinema, but typically more of the straight action variety.

I assume your tongue is fairly firmly in your cheek, but I can’t think of a better example for “mediocre movie” than Mortal Kombat. Lots of stuff to like about it (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Robin Shou’s hair, Goro, several of the sets, etc), mixed in with mostly underwhelming martial arts and cinematography, with characters whose depth reflects their origins. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but I’m not crusading to convince people of Paul W.S. Anderson’s misunderstood genius lol

Y’know, I’m sure the intent of the comment is in the vein of, “I persist because fuck them”, but there’s a reading of this that implies you’ve a list, and you’re checking it twice…

You just helped a mildly infuriating puzzle piece finally slide into place for me. For years, I’ve internalized xbow as shorthand for crossbow, but couldn’t for the life of me remember where I’d have picked that up. I played a lot of AoE2 back in the day, though, so that seems the likely origin.

You could put Daniel Day-Lewis in that role and I think it would still be a terrible film. A good actor cannot rescue a story that inept. They might be able to wring some pathos from otherwise inept dialog, but it’s not going to change the fundamental structural issues with the movie, and, as you allude to, it might strip it of what makes it entertaining in the first place.

Wandering through to mention that your local library almost certainly has a collection of cookbooks spanning decades, and, depending on your area, might even have stuff tied specifically to your region. Take the book, photocopy the recipes you’re interested in, return it, get to cooking!

There’s a passage in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy about that, if I remember right. Some alien species is grievously offended by something Earth does (unknowingly). They marshall their proudest battle fleet and commence an invasion of the planet. However, “due to a small miscalculation in scale, the entire fleet was swallowed by a passing small dog.”

I’m sure you don’t mean anything by it, but by the third one I feel compelled to say something.

James GunN Michael ROOker Nathan FilliOn

Pete Davidson you nailed, though.

I heard they’re made in the same factory, they just change the letterhead.