Does believing women and in so doing instilling a climate of believing them help them more than instilling policies that help them?

This is the question I'm left with in the aftermath of this debate.

Bernie seems to be accused of having said something which he denies to have said, yet as progressives we're told to believe women when faced with a he-said she-said type of situation and a woman is making a claim. I personally deem this as a malicious jyu jitsu where you make a claim that no matter what Bernie does he comes off looking bad. Either he denies it strongly which makes him "just another Kavanaugh" or he has to admit he did something which he may not have done and apologize for it which does nothing for him other than solidify him as a sinner.

So, I'll just sidestep this whole issue and focus on what I'm actually confused more people aren't boiling this down to. Do you think an "accused sexist" president with policies that help women as much as Bernie's would is "worse for women" somehow than Warren despite her policies being less grand in scope and ambition? Why do we even care about whether or not Bernie said something bad when his policies are so good for so many women? Is it that he'd also help men too with these policies that's the issue?

At this point I'm left to believe that this is thoroughly disingenuous, that people who just like Warren more due to being more centrist are using this argument in complete bad faith, and I have no joy in coming to this conclusion since I actually liked her a lot too.

With Google Stadia failing in a spectacular way, I thought it would be fun to talk about all the failed gaming hardwares of 2010s. This can be anything from a failed gaming console to complimentary piece of hardware that failed as well.

Playstation Move
Remember how Nintendo Wii introducted motion controls with its controls? No one saw anything like this, and I remember everything gravitating towards its concept. Sony and Microsoft thought "Why don't we cash in on this?" And tried their take on motion controls. While Microsoft at least tried to stay original, Sony copied almost 1:1 with Playstation Move. When it first came out, it was known for being more precise than wii, and had high potential.

And that's where we see the big fail with Move; untapped potential. Other than Wii sports-like minigames, Move did not have enough games that supported it. Any game that could be played with Move was much better on dualshock 3.

I guess you could argue that from the ashes of Move rose PSVR, which is the only good thing that came out of it.

Kinect

On yes, we all know about this piece of shit. The idea was noble; no controllers needed, just use your voice command and body motions. But the kinect-required games were mostly for kids, and the games that were made for adults made you look like an jackass. IT first came out for xbox 360, but it was forced on xbox one. "Xbox one won't without kinect!" said certain ex-head of xbox. Kinect on XB1 was supposed to be more precise and powerful than the 360 version, but I don't know if that ever held truth.

Ouya

Some lady thought that the people were moving away from TV gaming (this was near the ned of ps3/xbox360 era, just before xb1/ps4), and made an android-base console. It was also supposed to feature 200 free to try games. That concept went up in smoke, and people found out that the games on ouya were cheap knock offs of mobile games. They project also had various other problems, such as Kickstarter backers not getting priority of getting the console, the controller having the price that of half of the console, and buttons routinely sticking.

Soulja boy console

No words. Just... WTF?

Dear Escapist friends,

I've been meaning to post my impressions of the new Star Wars movie into the Last Movie You Watched thread but then I realized there wasn't a thread on the conclusion of the new Star Wars trilogy yet and I thought I'm gonna get more attention this way.

Anyway, I just saw Episode 9 and I want to make clear that I went into it with pretty low expectations. And I take no pleasure in saying that, unlike many people I've so far been relatively positive on the new Star Wars movies and felt that Episode 8, flawed and awkward as it surely was in a number of places, was a subtle indication of the series finally finding a new voice in something that's not simply a repetition of the old Star Wars movies. Rise of Skywalker served as a grim reminder that, despite the best efforts of individual creators like Rian Johnson, the series is now owned by people who have great interest in adding to Star Wars as a brand but are neither interested, nor for the most part capable, of adding to it as a story and any good movie that's gonna come out of it needs to be regarded as an accident.

While I need to think it over for a bit, Rise of Skywalker as of now has a decent chance of dethroning Attack of the Clones as my least favourite Star Wars movie. And that's no small feat, let me tell you.

When it was announced that Colin Trevorrow, originally considered to direct Episode 9, was let go over creative differences and JJ. Abrams, director of Episode 7, was brought back in to direct Episode 9 most of my excitement for it went away. Episode 7, coincidentally, sits comfortably as my second least favourite movie in the series. And it had Phantom Menace to compete with. Of all the directors who had been directing Star Wars movies so far I don't think any one deserved another chance less than Abrams and yes, that includes George Lucas. Still, I make it a point of approaching every movie I watch with all the good will in the world so while I didn't expect Rise of Skywalker to be very good I surely wanted it to be. The reviews, of course, did very little to raise my confidence but then, critics have been wrong before.

The movie was an absolute trainwreck, though. And I'm not putting this lightly. I hated almost every single thing about its story, starting with the opening crawl and this is not an exaggeration. I'm gonna spoil the movie here. If you don't want to be spoiled on it, feel free to stop reading but if you want my semi professional opinion as a semi professional film critic, life's too short to watch Rise of Skywalker.

One of the first thing establishes is the fact that Emperor Palpatine is still alive, which is one of numerous absurd asspulls the movie employs to justify its own existence. If you wonder how he survived, then rest assured that so do I because the movie never explains it. He's around because the movie needed a villain who's not Kylo Ren, though talking about him, one of the movies few redeeming qualities is Adam Drivers visible disgust at the material he's been given. Either way, Palpatine is still alive and had a fleet of dormant Star Destroyers equipped with planet destroying weapons... just lying around, I guess, which he offers to the First Order. Rey and her friends in the Resistance, meanwhile, go on a number of pointless fetchquests to destroy them.

The first half of the movie is an absolutely baffling affair in both structure and pacing. It's a rushed, hectic mess that feels like it's skipping entire scenes in a desperate attempt to get to the equally incoherent action sequences quicker. There is a chase scene in a desert relatively early on that, I think, was trying to remind me of Mad Max Fury Road yet serves as an example of doing wrong everything Fury Road did right in framing a vehicle based chase through a desert in a way that the viewer can actually tell what's going on. The plot settles into a steady rythm of disjointed filler, mostly defined by small nuggets of bad taste like the lifeless corpse of Carrie Fisher being puppeted around Weekend at Bernies style to serve as a supporting character.

Eventually the movie reveals to us, and I'm not making this up, that Rey is the grand daughter of Emperor Palpatine. The daughter of his son, that he had, apparently, and that some poor soul writing Expanded Universe novels has to come up with a backstory for. This was the point where I was all but ready leave the theater, if I weren't a professional, of course. Last Jedi establishing that Rey was, indeed, not related to anyone important served as an important step for the series away from its rigid focus on exceptional bloodlines to a more grounded and more humanist view of importance not as something inherited but as something acquired. Rey being a normal girl with no special background was Last Jedi's best idea and Abrams, bitter and hateful little man that he is, couldn't just leave it. You can almost feel his frustration about not being able to make a movie remotely as good as Johnson's, even on his second attempt.

Rise of Skywalker is a movie about tearing down everything that was accomplished since the ending of the original trilogy. Literally, in a sense. The Empire is back, the Emperor is back, the Original Trilogy and the triumph on which it ended might as well not have happened at all. But even narratively all Star Wars has done to evolve, even under Disney, has been discarded in favour of... well, what exactly? My first impulse was to call it fanservice but that's not exactly right.

Rise of Skywalker is a cynical attempt to pander to a deeply reactionary portion of the Star Wars fanbase, the very same portion that threw a fit over Last Jedi's more playful attitude towards the series narrative conventions. A portion of the fanbase who's ideal Science-Fiction movie is Starship Troopers, but unironically, and who, most likely, are gonna dismiss Rise of Sywalker anyway, simply for being directed by a Jew. You think that's a cynical view of the movie and its target audience? So did I, until a specific plotthread involving Finn.

Finn, you see, was built up as love interest for Rey in the first movie. So far so good. The second movie gave him a new love interest in an Asian character called Rose, who this movie mostly ignores. The cynic in me already assumed at that point that this was a studio mandated decision because the suits felt that pairing a black man with a white woman was somehow too risky so they felt the need to hook him up with an appropriately ethnic love interest in the sequel. Rise of Skywalker feels the need to give him yet another love interest, a black character named Jannah played by gorgeous Naomi Ackie. And this was where the movie genuinely started to gross me out. Well, you know, that and the Carrie Fisher thing. This felt like a downright capitulation to complaints about big Hollywood studios promoting miscegenation or "racemixing" and an apology for ever pairing a black man up with a woman of a different ethnicity. So now Finn finally has a black love interest and me and my fellow Caucasians can sleep easy, knowing that white genocide has once again been averted. Great fucking job, Mickey.

And that's the movie in a nutshell. It's this weird, nonsensical, kinda gross thing that I hope I'll never have to see again. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It gets somewhat better in its second half and there are aspects of the climax that I might have actually appreciated, had the pacing not been as rushed as it was. Some of the visuals around Palpatine were unusually dark and sinister for the series standards, which would have actually been cool, in a better movie but in this one it just stands as somewhat neat iconography that lacks any greater context. Kylo gets an entirely unearned redemption, Rey is being tempted by the Dark Side at a point where everyone knew that of course she wasn't gonna give into it, Hux gets... not quite a redemption, because even Abrams knew that making the fanatical space nazi sympathetic would be a step too far but a weird plotline that reveals he was feeding information to the Resistance, not because he had a change of heart but out of spite towards Kylo.

Basically, it's some stupid ass shit. I don't know what the future of the Star Wars series is gonna be but god knows I hope it's not more of... this. There's been a back and forth about wether Rian Johnson will actually get to direct his own trilogy and I hope it's actually gonna work out for him because Rise of Skywalker makes Last Jedi look like a masterpiece. There have also been rumors about Marvel Studios Kevin Feige working on Star Wars and while I dread to see him force the Marvel Cinematic Universes weird conservative subtext into Star Wars Disney has proven that they don't need Feige to do so, so how much worse can it be?

I don't know. This whole rant was probably mighty tiresome and excessively neckbeardy but venting about it afterwards is the only catharsis I'm gonna get out of Rise of Skywalker. So, in summary: Fuck J.J. Abrams, fuck Disney and fuck capitalism. Good night.

All of The Nominees have been revealed

https://thegameawards.com/nominees

GOTY Nominees:
-The Outer Worlds
-Super Smash Bros Ultimate
-Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
-Resident Evil 2 Remake
-Death Stranding
-Control

Smash for GOTY!
Also i love that even Tetris 99 got nominated for something with it being nominated for Best Multiplayer game lol

Or "realistic peace plan", as he describes it.

This is the brainfart of his son in law, delayed since 2017. It has been arranged with no negotiation with the Palestinians. This appears to be evident in its proposals:

1) It seems to fudge the Jerusalem to some degree, it says the Palestinians will have their capital in "part" of East Jerusalem, although it seems all of EJ that really means anything goes to Israel.
2) The entirety of the Jordan Valley (including, obviously, the vital water access and rights) goes to Israel, as well as various other chunks of land here and there leaving the Palestinian territories to look like a map someone's attacked with a pair of scissors.
3) All Israeli settlements to remain
4) A map seems to suggest Palestinians are apparently being granted in return areas of Negev desert near the Egyptian border optimistically described as a high tech manufacturing zone and an agricultural / residential (!!) zone. (This is obvious wishful thinking.)
5) The Palestinians don't even appear to be guaranteed statehood. They get statehood on apparently meeting certain conditions which are poorly described. This of course leads to the suspicion they could be almost indefinitely denied statehood anyway depending on these terms.

6) I think Trump was going sweeten the deal with $50 billion investment plan. Except that's a regional plan, the Palestinians are only getting about half. And it seems suspiciously vague who's paying for it: there is no clear commitment from the USA.

Needless to say, this is a shitshow that the Palestinians have already bounced. Potentially it's just a cynical scheme to boost each other's electoral chances.

To all the performance Resisters in this site who kept pushing for impeachment, who kept singing to the media's tune and throwing an unplanned shitfit at every little "Drumpf is finished" newspiece that kept coming along, I have just this to say, since despite being offline from these forums for a while I've been saying this as many times as possible:

I fucking told you so

Trump's approval ratings at this time of the year is higher than Obama was, inflated by his lucky strikes with the economy and more likely than not the absolute pathetic sham that these impeachment trials have been, which anyone with half a critical mind could figure out would just be a theatre to cleanse Trump of any wrongdoings in the eyes of the system that was perfectly ok with thousands of dead civilians overseas by incessant drone strikes, the sabotage of South American nations who swerve slightly to the left and the turning of a blind eye to the tyranny that unfolded later because of it. What a surprise.

Trump would never be defeated by activating the tools of the broken system that even allowed to become president. A grassroots movement is the best solution to deal with this, and the lack of strategic planning and proper organization has played right on Trump's hands.

If you actually give a single iota of a shit about defeating Trump, pay attention to what's happening on Iowa. The ratfucking that the DNC is attempting to do cannot go unheard, nor unpunished, because that's more manifestations of the broken system that will only protect Trump.

The people NEED to organize and protest this. Even if it turns out nothing illegal or immoral happened, the sheer incompetence and bureocratic rot that this Iowa displayed shows that the system needs an overhaul, but until then the people need to be completely on top of every caucus, every election. The fact that the malfunctioning and crashing app that was supposed to count this election was financed by Pete Buttigieg's campaign, who curiously enough declared himself a winner before any oficial reports could have been had, shows that the powers-that-be are beginning to stop giving a fuck about being subtle. Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and until we the people realize this the broken system will continue to spin meatgrinding the folks caught in its wheels.

Trump has a high approval rate not because Republicans are organized (even though they are) but because Democrats have been acting like the tools of the establishment they are. These four years should have been spent looking inwards demanding change, and yet they've been spent gazing at the freakshow. If you want to beat Trump, we need to look upon the people that are trying to beat him and demand more of them.

This...could get messy. Trump ordered an air strike that killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Qasem Soleimani, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhanis, the head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces. The latter is of concern due to the PMF being recognized in 2016 as an independent military force that answers directly to the prime minister.

The real concern, however, is that this air strike was ordered by President Trump, without the approval of Congress. Given the potential ramifications of this action, such as the risk of sparking off a war, that could become a major issue. I hope this doesn't lead to a war, but if it does...well, people who have been speaking out against Trump said that he would lead us into another war, so they'll have vindication, at least.

Source: CNN

OMG OMG this looks like natural evolution of Doom franchise plus

PC Gamer - "Fast, brutal, and metal as hell, this is the most gleefully manic FPS since 2011's Bulletstorm."
Gamespot - "Doom Eternal's Combat Is Absolute Chaos, And It's Awesome"
IGN - "A ballet performed with bullets, blood, and blasted body parts."
Time - "the Most Pure Form of Doom Ever Made"
CNN-"Blood, guts, gore and fun"

most of previews are insanely positive.

As expected Doom 2016 was best game of last decade. this one will be best game of this decade. what a great start.

Well, to this I say...good luck?

Stadia is underwhelming at best, and just trying to stream HD quality movies smoothly over Amazon Prime on a 75Mb connection still proves to be a crapshoot.

It?s no secret there are various hurdles not just technically but ethically when it comes to cloud gaming, and Microsoft has already lost to Amazon and Google on other fronts. Maybe they?ll have a leg up here, but it remains to be seen.

It?s tough to say how this will affect the gaming industry in the upcoming generation, but from the sounds of it it will be anything but ordinary.

So I've always liked trophies and achievements in principle, the idea for getting a badge because you did something cool in a game was an idea I've always liked for a long time. Though because of my work schedule, I've never had much of a desire or the time to really push to get every achievement in a game. I would of course get whatever trophies that naturally occured during normal gameplay and maybe a few ones that just happen along the way by accident, but never getting all of them on Xbox or the Platinum on Playstation.

However about a month and a half ago I decide to revisit Bloodborne, at first it was just another playthrough. I felt like replaying the game so I went back to it. However once I was back into the grove of beating the shit out of the game I realized that I was only like five trophies from the platinum. So I decided to go for it.

Those five trophies turns out to require almost two more FULL playthroughs of the game, but I was determined and set now. So over the course of about two and a half weeks I pushed through and got the Platinum. And when that final 100% completion badge popped, damn it felt really good.

So then I got Dragonball Z Kakarot, a game you guys know didn't thrill me much. However when I beat the game, again I only had a few easy trophies to grab for the platinum. So I went ahead and got the Platinum for that too.

Now I'm in full Platinum hunting mode. Something about it has grabbed me. Now I'm playing Disblo 3 because it's another game that I only need a little grinding to actually get the platinum for.

Which leads me to my point of discussion. I might be addicted to trophies now. How do the rest of you guys feel about achievements? Do you hunt them down? Or do you not care about them? Have you ever based your purchase of a game (or you desire to continue to play a game) based on the achievements?

So, in a recent episode of his podcast Joe made a comment about voting for Bernie in passing and Bernie's people publicized it further as a means of advertising and people are mad. These are not people who you'd think would be against Bernie. No, you see, they're mad cause Joe is "alt right" apparently (despite his desire to vote for the most left candidate).

Apparently people don't like that Bernie's folks are touting the endorsement because Joe is a sinner, with the heavy sin of racism and transphobia and who knows what else.

Thoughts?

About all I can come up with that Joe said about trans people is the thing pertaining to not letting men who feel like they're women fight in the women's tournaments. I mean, think about it, how many women who feel like they're men have won in men's tournaments? Is there even a single one of them? I think it's pretty obvious that there's an advantage if you're born male and Joe is a pro fighter and fight analyst so he won't take BS on that stuff and for good reason. People shouldn't let politics cloud their basic reasoning skills.

As the topic says, what are some cover versions of songs that are better than the original song.

I'll start wtih the Robyn Adele Anderson version of numb

Then lets do some Within Temptation doing a over of Radioactive

And finish with a RichaardEB metal cover of Bad Apple!!

The Rumour started by Gamexplain over the weekend was real

last night Platinum Games has officially launched a kickstarter for The Wonderful 101, a previous Wii U exclusive to be remastered.

the initial goal was about $74,264 (Australian dollars. not sure how much that is murican money soz)
that goal was fully reached withing 20 minutes and now less than 24 hours later all of the Kickstarter tiers have been reached and the game is now sitting at a total of $1,573,000.00 (Australian) dollars pledged and counting

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/platinumgames/the-wonderful-101-remastered?ref=section-homepage-projectcollection-1-staff-picks-newest

the most surprising news from all of this is that The Wonderful 101 IP is co-owned by Platinum Games and Nintendo, and Nintendo has allowed Platinum to release the Remastered version on other platforms

The Wonderful 101 is now officially coming to the Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Steam because it reach all of its kickstarter stretch goals

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/interviews/wonderful-101-remastered/

the game is set to release in April.

thoughts?

TFS has decided to end it. While sad, it's understandable. Thank you for 11 years of entertainment guys and gals. Good luck and best wishes to your new interests and other projects. I hate Buu saga anyway, so them ending it at the Cell saga feels like a complete ending. Besides, if I ever need more Dragonball stories and what ifs, there is always MasakoX's channel.

Democrats introduce two articles of impeachment against Trump

Democratic leaders announced Tuesday they will bring two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress to set in motion the third impeachment of a US president in history.

The announcement marks the culmination of an intense, fast-moving investigation into the President's dealings with Ukraine and represents a historic choice for lawmakers with less than a year before the next election.

The six House Democratic chairs who have led the investigations against the President this year formally unveiled the impeachment articles on Tuesday morning with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"Today, in service to our duty to the Constitution and to our country, the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment, charging the President of the United States Donald J. Trump with committing high crimes and misdemeanors," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said.

Democrats charge that Trump abused his office by pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rivals ahead of the 2020 election while withholding a White House meeting and $400 million in US security aid from Kiev. And they say that Trump then obstructed the investigation into his misconduct with a blanket blockade of subpoenas and refusing to allow key senior officials to testify before Congress.

Tuesday's announcement sets the stage for a dramatic impeachment vote on the House floor next week, after the House Judiciary Committee debates and approves the articles beginning on Thursday.
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said the evidence against Trump was "overwhelming and uncontested," and argued Democrats cannot wait for the judicial branch to rule on the witnesses and documents the Trump administration is blocking from Congress.

"The argument why don't you just wait amounts to this: why don't you just let him cheat in one more election?" said Schiff, a Democrat from California. "Despite everything we have uncovered, the President's misconduct continues to this day, unapologetically and right now."

My thoughts. I think it was smart not to include Mueller. Politically, it looks like sour grapes to just tack it on at the end as a little bit of a gotcha.

But I think it will play out like we all think. It will pass the House, the Senate will vote it down.

I don't think I live in a land of Law and Order any more. That bad people are bad and that should be the end of it. We live in a land where bad people can be beneficial and if the bad people aren't protected, all of this goes away.

I believe people try to abuse the word 'Partisan' when democrats take even a step out of their bed, but I've seldom seen Republicans break from Trump's party line since the get-go. This is the same Republican lead Senate who voted in another Federal Judge that was deemed not Qualified by the ABA because Trump wanted her in.

There is nothing more Partisan, more tribal than the Republican Politicians of late. This will be a sound-byte, and a depressing reminder that justice is only a myth, and guilt or innocence actually depends on how many Friends in High Places that you have set up.

Or at least the voting stage.

Tonight on February 3, 2020, the Iowa Caucuses begin, marking the first actual binding contest for the Democratic Presidential Nominee. 20/21 candidates have been narrowed to 11 with the following remaining in the race (in order of RCP aggregate poll data dated January 29, 2020):

Joe Biden

Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren

Michael Bloomberg

Pete Buttigieg

Andrew Yang

Amy Klobuchar

Tom Steyer

Tulsi Gabbard

Michael Bennet

Deval Patrick

Let the Primary Commence!

Voting Dates/Results:

February 3

Some Post-Primary dates to remember

July 13-16: The Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

August 24-27: the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina

September 29: the First Presidential Debate in South Bend, Indiana

October 7: the Vice Presidential Debate in Salt Lake City, Utah

October 15: the Second Presidential Debate in Ann Arbor, Michigan

October 22: the Third Presidential Debate in Nashville, Tennessee

November 3rd, 2020: The 2020 US General Election

Remember to Register to Vote

Bioware has released a new update on Anthem:
https://blog.bioware.com/2020/02/10/anthem-update-february-10/

TL;DR
"...So we recognize that there?s still more fundamental work to be done to bring out the full potential of the experience, and it will require a more substantial reinvention than an update or expansion"

Now, if this is another case of "A Realm Reborn", I'd be more than glad to give the game a shot. But then again, this is also EA and skeleton Bioware we're talking about, so my expectations are kinda low.

Thoughts?

Well, after all is said and done, tonight was the ceremony for the Oscars. With that, there were some wins.

My thoughts on the winners:

It was a pretty big surprise to see Parasite walk out with the most wins, including being the first completely non-English movie to win the big award. It was also nice to see Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix win their first Oscars. The only winners I've seen are Joker and Rocketman, so I can't really comment much beyond that. Overall, though, the general feeling I get is that no one was really robbed, other than maybe in the Best Supporting Actor category, which was a really packed category to pick a winner from.

We often criticize games that blatantly play off nostalgia, usually in negative ways. With so many remakes and remasters of games coming out over the past few years, it is easy to hate on the game's industry (and the movie industry as they are following the same trends) about how creatively bankrupt major studios must be. Yet at the same time we forget how business works, and the fundamental human flaw the majority of us have.

We like things we already know we like. Why are sequels so popular when they are almost never as good as the original? Why are we buying up remasters and remakes like crazy?

Because we like things we already like. Remasters serve as a good excuse to replay a game we liked and still justify it as a new playthrough because of the upgrades the remasters (should) usually have. Remakes even further justify this as they often completely overhaul the game while still providing much the same experience we had with the original. At least ideally.

We've seen the huge popularity with these. Final Fantasy VIII, X, X-2, XII, Onimusha, WoW Classic, and countless more remasterings have been successful rereleases. While Resident Evil 2 serves as only the latest remake that showed how you can fully overhaul an old story to bring it into the new age.

While these things have had their detracters, I think people truly underestimate the value of replaying or rewatching something old recreated in a new way. Let me explain why I've brought this up.

Last week, TeamFourStar made the announcement that they are officially done with Dragonball Z Abridged. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a parody re-telling of the Dragonball Z anime completely rewritten in a humorous but ultimately extremely respectful way. This retelling is a perfect example of how remasters and remakes can put life into an experience you have already seen even multiple times. I have been watching Dragonball since I was in junior high, even before it was release in english I would go online and get the sub version of the show so I could watch beyond what Tunami was showing at the time.

I had the story memorized, and had seen it so many times that the traditional format of the show now kind of bores me. Which is why I didn't care for Dragonball Z Kakarot very much. However the retelling of the show done by TeamFourStar, is something i rewatched over the weekend and I found myself shocked by how hard I was hit by the key moments that watching the normal show dont do for me anymore. Things like Goku going Super Sayien for the first time, Gohan's SS2 tranformation, the extra backstory and references fill into the show to make minor characters more flushed out, DBZA is a remastering of the DBZ saga that gives a show that was burnt out for me entire new life.

That is what nostalgia does. DBZA doesn't change the story, it is at the core the same shit DBZ has always been but I loved that show at one point and DBZA provides enough to tell the same exact story in a slightly new way that it became the thing I loved and seen a million times into something completely new yet not new.

To me that is what nostalgia does for people, and why remakes and remasters are so successful.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is coming out in another few weeks. And that is another game and story that I've torn apart in every possibly way to enjoy and consume all I could. Every backstory secret, hidden meaning, story beat, I know it all. Yet this Remake has proven that I will once again be given a world and characters that I've already come to know and love, and give that experience a whole new life. Not just through gameplay, but through further expansion of the story.

For some people it may not hit as hard for them as it will for me, everyone likes things to different degrees, everyone attaches to things in different ways. Some people never return to things they've already done or seen, and that's fine. But i don't think Remasters and Remakes are bad things, I think they are great potential outlets to not only reexperience things you used to love, but also provide new chances for people who've never gotten to see the original work to see what makes them so loved.

And frankly, I think the Remakes also serve as great ideas for developers and publishers. It gives companies a chance to see what they've lost. It's no secret that companies like Blizzard used to be Kings in the video game space. WoW, Diablo 2, Starcraft, they had these games and properties that were hugely successful, even with Overwatch it seemed like they could do no wrong. Blizzard couldn't make a bad game......until they did.

Wow expansions have been terrible for years, Starcraft is a dead series, Diablo is stuck in a weird limbo where they keep doing seasons but thought the next best idea was to make a mobile game. And Warcraft reforged.....well...I think we've seen the shitstorm that has been.

But then again there is a little ray of hope in the success of Wow Classic. Blizzard was shocked by the raw surge in resubcriptions and demand for Wow Classic. And I hope that they use that resurgence to realize what made them so great in the first place.

In the same fashion Capcom was a giant fuck up for a while. Yet they saw the light and saw what was going wrong in just about every series. Street Fighter, Marvel V Capcom, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Monster hunter. In the last three years, Capcom has seen each and every series make a return to form (except Marvel V Capcom). Resident Evil was brought back to life with RE7 and RE2make, Monster hunter came back from the of niche obscurity with Monster Hunter World, Street Fighter V was a disaster on launch but has since come back to a fairly decent degree, and DMC 5 returned that series into a much better place from the travesty that was DMC:Devil May Cry.

Clearly I'm just ranting. But I wanted to rant about this because I've seen a lot of hate online when it comes to remasters and remakes and i don't think they deserve it. At least for the most part. There are a few clear exceptions in which the remastered was handled in the worse way possible. Fucking Blizzard.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-02-09-report-system-shock-3-development-team-is-no-longer-employed

After the game's writer, director, design director, and lead programmer left OtherSide Entertainment in recent months, an anonymous source has said that the entire development team has been let go. This is possibly as a result of the publisher StarBreeze getting into financial difficulties and selling the rights back to OtherSide, which may have then caused further financial issues on their end. According to the anonymous source, the game wasn't even half finished.