Whereas in a long-running serial, some level of familiarity and repetition is desirable. You read Spider-Man or watch Star Trek every week because you want a mix of the expected and the unexpected.

It's the same reason that Marvel stopped doing anthology comic books as soon as super-heroes came back into style in the early 60s: trying to come up with multiple brand new concepts with brand new characters every month, you inevitably start to repeat yourself.

They're nowhere near as ubiquitous as they were 20+ years ago, if that makes you feel better.

Yeah. I found that there are some buildings where you can stealth your way in and out, but most of them have at least one unavoidable firefight.

When you eat too many prehistoric beans.

I remember "Hey Ladies" was really ubiquitous in 1989.

My instinct is to say that any bundled release of music (and that isn't a single or EP) counts as an album. But I do think that most compilations are "bad albums", because they generally lack the cohesion and novelty of a "fresh" album.

Mush!

Macho Man did some of his best work in the 90s!

Charles Barkley?

I always rationalized it as "I endure a dozen disappointments, because it makes the big cathartic victory all the sweeter." Then I saw a better way.

Yeah. To make it in Canada in the 80s and 90s, you really needed a distribution deal with a Canadian label. ("Love Spreads" and "Second Coming" were distributed by BMG, which is why they were modest hits over here).

It's a sign of how ridiculously popular that Looney Tunes were in the 1990s that WB found it perfectly reasonable to use a one-off character as their mascot.

It would be like modern NBC having Larry Thomas say "No soup for you! Just quality programming!" five times per hour.

Yeah. This is one reason why films and sports stadiums found it so easy to keep using "Rock and Roll Pt. 2"; it's basically an instrumental. But any of his vocal songs (especially "Do You Want to Touch") are harder to dissociate from the evil.

One thing I love is that you can start to see the impact of your early choices in the mid-game. People you help early on will help you down the road, for example.

Your decisions will impact more than just a slideshow at the end.

The skill system is a lot more rigid. Because you only get two skill points per level, you really have to focus on 2-3 skills at the expense of all others.

Combat is harder, but overall better. No weapon degradation this time.

The tone is more serious.

It's an enjoyable game but it doesn't break any new ground.