Redline (2009)
⭐⭐⭐

Hella rad and fun and that's kinda it. Not quite hella rad and fun *enough* to be something I think everyone needs to see.

+ : Some real fun animation, aliens, and bits of silly worldbuilding
- : the plot's an excuse for the animation which, fair enough, but still pretty bland

My money's on "the end of Return of the Jedi."

Halo 4's the one I always forget. I vaguely remember it as bits and pieces of what must've happened to get to 5 and its cataclysmically stupid decision that Cortana's evil now.

4's multiplayer was also so desperately trying to be Call of Duty that I still don't think they've been forgiven for it.

Haha, that's also true.

But I don't have enough faith in people to say that continuing after the story was over was a as big of a deal as everything they wrote after just being fucking *awful,* though.

Halo 4 into 5 was just the stupidest story imaginable that they even skipped its conclusion.

They at least know *something* is wrong. Halo used to be the biggest thing and now it's not so the numbers are bad.

So they're throwing a Hail Mary and remaking Halo 1 and, if that fails, best case scenario they think "nothing we could've done, guess no one likes Halo anymore."

And I can't tell if they even know that they fumbled it, continue to fumble it, and exclusively plan to keep fumbling it well into the future.

They know it's a precious IP, or they'd kill it dead years ago, but seem confused that it isn't printing infinity dollars no matter what fad they chase.

Plus my group (collectively) moved past the Discovery/Exploration phase and... I know it's super reductive, but I can't see it as anything other than picking up trinkets to later find shinier trinkets until you get the shiniest trinkets and the only thing to do is reset and try it again.

I'd rather see us do more damage, taken out of the rez tax, because of the restrictions, sorta like the true melees, but that wasn't gonna happen.

Partially because it'd hurt Black Mage's feelings (jk, i love you guys) but also this solution is just 100x easier to design around consistently.

So, to all the people saying it's more fun to play around it and getting ranged melee attacks on Manafication is super lame, I agree with you!

But, also, we shouldn't be playing around that to do a barely more damage than a Summoner and the rest of the Phys Ranged classes.

So then it's all kind of hinging on the "PvE" players?

They have to find it fun to bring the expensive stuff needed to kill the big things while avoiding anyone without anything to lose killing them.

Avoiding death are some of my favorite EVE memories, but... I dunno.

PvP with "your stuff" on the line can be exciting! But then you learn to not PvP with stuff you care about losing.

And that's just PvPing without anything on the line with more steps.

I just don't quite grasp what's supposed to be fun about it.

Solo or with a friend (or two) I just do the thing and, like, I'm pretty sure the one friend's found me more blueprints that he's got dupes of than I've found on my own now.

There's nothing exciting to find and I don't find it.

I basically just do the missions because at least their *an* objective.

Everything else is just... I could get better loot to get better guns to get better loot to... upgrade those guns? And then some free loadout could kill me for them (actually for no reason, but they're a bonus) and just ???

There's nothing in it important enough that I feel the desire to shoot someone over it. If I wanted to shoot people for the hell of it, I'd play any of the other games where that's the thing you do.

Getting shot and killed, I just feel Nothing and go and so something else.

No, I don't particularly care if you think there's no way a turn-based RPG could do something well/new/interesting enough to be considered one of the best games of the year.

No, we don't need to establish a clear genre difference between "games with stories" and "stuff like Rocket League."

No, it doesn't mean everyone who likes the music doesn't *really* like it if they don't also listen to operas (for some reason).

No, a game who's "best parts" are its story/setting and music doesn't mean it's basically a movie.