Topic: Hot Takes Thread (Gaming and Non-gaming)

@Ravix I only played the demo, but I did spend some time with COD: World at War, I think it was called. And the demo had you running through a Pacific jungle fighting off the Japanese troops. I don’t engage with COD but I think I’ve read that they do have the option to play as either side in a conflict, maybe? With as international as gaming is now, it’s more and more difficult to only tell stories through a limited unilateral lens. I think in Rise of the Ronin you fight Matthew Perry (the 1800’s version not the Friends version) and I’m sure other “blue eyed devils” as well. There’s definitely some value in seeing historical figures from the perspective of the conquered and not always as the invader. Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to set aside prejudices to try and experience something differently.

@Th3solution Ghost of Tsushima fully makes up so much. Jin is essentially a time traveller, using armour and weapons that were more commonly used in the 1600s when firearms were around. They changed the leader of the Mongol invasion of Tsushima to be a made up Khan when it should really be a Korean general. To be blunt, I’m pretty sure that they changed this due to the optics of having a Korean bad guy in a Japanese game, due to both the widespread abuses of the Japanese army towards the Koreans during WW2 and the subsequent denial of wrongdoing that the current government are deeply entrenched in. In all honesty, Ghost of Tsushima is probably much much more inaccurate than Assassin’s Creed Shadows will ever be, as it gets the very biggest of points wrong. But there was no backlash because of very obvious reasons.

@Ralizah "The Last Jedi is the best mainline SW film outside of the OT. It derailed the trilogy, but JJ Abrams "vision" was embarrassingly bad and deserved to be trashed."

My first time in this thread. This is my take as well! It was good and then followed up by ROS. Or, as I call it, Star Wars: Written by reddit.

@AhmadSumadi RoS's only redeeming quality is that, in retrospect, it makes you realize how much worse TFA could've been.

@nessisonett I had read about the armor and weapon anachronism with the era, but I didn’t know that info about the invading commander. I did look up Khotun Khan character when I was playing GoT and realized there was no such person, but I didn’t look much further into it. I was honestly a little worried about an American developer making a Japanese historical game because it did have potential to be disrespectful or offensive.

@Th3solution The reason GoT didn’t have an outcry despite the historical inaccuracies and being made by Westerners is because it ties into Japanese nationalism by using one of their most famous military successes as a basis for the game, constantly making reference to Japan’s resilience against the invading ‘savages’. The game’s themes of the ends justifying the means also aligns with modern Japanese fascism. Of course, that’s a basic reading of the game but it’s a very… American game and I’m fairly certain it was accidental that they aligned themselves with those people. It’s funny really that Yakuza of all series has vastly more liberal leanings than a western series given how much the chuds point to Japan as the last bastion of anti-woke, 6 in particular addresses the push for rearmament from certain quarters of Japan and 3 addresses American military interests on Okinawa.

I did like how Ghost did address how incredibly awful the samurai were though, basically state police with zero oversight who treated the populace like their property as they were local gentry given jurisdiction! And yet the game has you run around robbing supplies from houses to upgrade your own equipment 😂

My man looks like a plastic action figure in the Remastered screenshot!

This year, Geoff Keighly should host the gaming razzies instead of the game awards.

@Ravix truuuuuu

@Ralizah late response, sorry! I am pretty underweight so I can handle the large amounts of food buffets offer, but I don’t go to buffets a ton so I am pretty neutral on them. But now thinking about the sanitary aspects of them, I think I don’t really want to go to one for a while. Never gotten sick from one, but there is no way I want to eat food left in the public that someone could have touched with their unclean hands.

@Yousef- I love Panda Express, but I only really have it every now and then. The orange chicken combined with chow mein or fried rice is probably my favorite, but it’s a bit greasy and oily, and pretty unhealthy. When I used to worry about eating healthy at fast food restaurants, I always got beef and broccoli with brown rice at Panda, since the beef is listed as being “wok smart,” meaning it has less calories and are healthier than their other food choices, and brown rice is way more nutritious and healthier than fried rice or white rice, but I always hated how much rice they gave me. While I do think Panda Express has a bit of an issue with grease in some of their food (like the chow mein) and that some of the food tastes better if it’s cooked at home, it’s honestly better than another Chinese food restaurant me and my family had once. The food started to taste gross later from all the grease and food we got and we got sick of it compared to how happy we were with it initially. There is this thing with unhealthy food, where I get really excited to eat it, but all the junk and all the stuff in it gets to me the more I eat it, and my excitement wears off and I get sick of it. I do feel the same way when I eat sugar sometimes.

@Ravix Oh, I wonder how the Game Awards are going to go down later this year. I think this is probably going to be the first time I don’t watch it at all. I am expecting the Player’s Choice category to be a big mess.

@Pastellioli pacing yourself and spending at least two days eating minimally can also help you tackle buffets prettt well from my experience, and getting decent sleep

@Yousef- Interesting, I don’t eat fast when I am at buffets, I think I took a bit of a slow time eating at the buffet I went to with my family the last time, but I got a bit too crazy and got too much food, I didn’t feel sick at all luckily, but I got a combination of food that maybe could have hurt my stomach real bad if I got more; it was noodles with peas, shrimp, fish, and then some small cakes and fruit, I think I should have felt sick after that but I luckily didn’t. I am pretty bad with choosing foods that mix well and it hurts afterward, and the same kind of happens when I am at a buffet since you are free to get whatever of anything. If I did eat at an ordinary restaurant, I would have better portion control with the food.

@Pastellioli I’m more perceptible to motion sickness these days due to my dairy product addiction, lack of sleep and constantly driving so I try to chill out when I can. Thankfully I eat a lot of homemade food (I make it)

@Yousef- I can handle bad food, but some just makes me feel a bit sick. A full cup of ice cream makes me sometimes feel terrible, but probably because I don’t have a lot of ordinary dairy products like milk a lot. I haven’t been eating homemade food a lot, but I want to change that, luckily, I made slightly spicy lentils and rice with chorizo and vegetables in them a few days ago, alongside some green beans and carrots with sesame seeds and coconut amino flavoring with some help from my mom it’s super nutritious and I can handle eating more of that than something at a fast food restaurant. I haven’t been eating a lot of vegetables lately, but I am glad to go back to it now. I want to incorporate more vegetables into my diet, I forgot how good they taste with rice and beans!

@Pastellioli eating homemade will start out as something you willingly go out of your way to do, then it’ll slowly become second nature and will feel incidental and not something you think about

@Yousef- Yeah, I really want to cook more, I am getting tired of eating junk food and sugary drinks a lot recently, plus some of it has been disappointing, I remember buying a peach oolong tea drink with popping boba recently, only bought it cuz I was thirsty and made the poor decision to not bring a water bottle with me. I really didn’t like that because the boba would break the second it got into contact with my teeth, and the drink was ok, but very disappointing and something I won’t buy again. I have still been drinking tea and water, so it significantly outdoes the sugary drinks though. I need to get some ideas of what to make next with what I have here once those tasty rice and lentils go out.

@Pastellioli start slow and build up. Eggs and chicken are my go-to. After that maybe some stir fry noodles. Jacket potatoes are a great too. Spice it up by using sweet potatoes (unless they’re not your thing).
If you can somehow get your hands on a falafel mix that you can cook, make it with some fried potatoes and eggplants to make maoon mushakal, a popular Kuwaiti dish.

@Yousef- Sweet potatoes ARE my thing haha. They taste so good and are a great substitute to desserts and artificial sugars. Those sound like great recommendations, I probably will try to do those! I will probably look around and see if any of the stores here sell eggplants. Thank you for the recommendations again!

@Malaise I haven’t played days gone, so if it’s fine I’d like a brief rundown over deacon’s character (and what you dislike about it)

Aloy I can kinda guess what you hate about her but could you point out one negative trait you don’t like? Just to narrow it down a bit for me.

Kratos… I love kratos. Old kratos, that is. Do you dislike both old and new kratos? I can kinda guess why you dislike the former, but not the latter.