Ask Lemmy

I've shown the video game Antichamber to about a half dozen people and watched them bounce right off it.

You know how sometimes snobs of any particular thing tend to start liking things a general audience hates? Like, I've seen movie buffs express a love of stuff like Street Trash, or whiskey snobs really like whiskey that tastes like smoke, leather and iodine. I think you've got to be like that with video games to like Antichamber.

Antichamber is a non-euclidean 3D first person puzzle platformer. It's set in an abstract series of stark black and white corridors that in many cases don't make sense. It's a strange place that doesn't behave like the real world, it is internally consistent, but you'll encounter all kinds of weird shit like falling a long distance only to wind up above where you started, multiple paths leading through the same doorway, things appearing and disappearing, mazes that aren't physically possible...and somehow it makes all the bizarre little puzzles you find yourself in parables for living a human life.

I can't fault anyone for not getting it. It's arthouse bullshit. I've shaken my head mouthing "what the fuck are you doing" to modern artists, I recognize this as arthouse bullshit, but it's arthouse bullshit that I at least partially understand.

I really like the 90s Romeo and Juliet, set in present day with the lines unchanged (mostly). I'm alone in this, I think.

Big Bang Theory. I don't think I would enjoy it on a rewatch but watching that show became a ritual for me and my family.

David Lynch's Dune. I understood the hate it got. It is a horribly difficult book to put on film. I thought the style and feel of it was great and so over the top at times. I read the book so I knew what was going on but I understood the criticisms. Sting in a speedo though, wtf? lol

Edit: Almost forgot, a great lineup of actors too.

(2002) Time Machine with Guy Pierce and Jeremy Irons

Wasn't a big hit when it came out and it'll never be as iconic as the George Pal Time Machine from the 60's. But the 2003 adaptation has the coolest looking time machine to come around in a while (at the time it was the most expensive prop ever built, might still be but I'm not sure.)

Critics shit on it for not having the cataclysmic event that destroys humanity be global warming. While I'm all for talking about global warming I can kind of understand why they didn't use that and why they didn't reuse the 60's disaster of nuclear war.

But to be fair to the writers their choice to destroying humanity was original, kind of a tongue-in-cheek joke about the elderly crisis we're currently entering into and the plan is in fact an idea that has been discussed before.

Aside from that the film is pretty solid. In the book by HG Wells and the 60's film the Time Traveller (doesn't even have a name) has zero motivation aside from achieving a new scientific advancement. Thats cool and all but modern audiences, having had several successful time travel stories since Wells time, do need a better eureka moment than that. The 2002 film provides a good and believable motivation.

The film also features a believable super-distant future where the human species splits, just like in the original stories. Samantha Mumba is a member of the tribe of humans that live above ground and are technologically ignorant, thought not exactly like the child-like race we see in the 60's version. They do maintain that there are no old people and why that is.

Samantha Mumba did a great job in her role and while I don't normally discuss a persons race the fact her father was Zambian and her mother Irish did kind of lean into what a future race of people could look like. She has a distinct look which played to the role.

Orlando Jones makes a couple appearances as a sort of AI librarian. It's nice to see him in the odd movie role.

Jeremy Irons is the head morlock, the race of humans that stayed underground, and doesn't disappoint, although his character is more of a cameo.

The film also had a good soundtrack and special effects that features the classic "years passing in seconds" stuff that was iconic from the 60's film.

But ultimately the film is mostly forgotten to audiences.

Mando and Grogu, and for that matter Skeleton Crew. Just mindless fun. Dude, it's Star Wars, not fuggin' Shakespeare.

Sucker Punch

The internet has been shitting on it for years. I don't even remember why. Maybe something along the lines of sexualizing female hero figures. I think a lot of people don't like Zack Snyder. I don't care. It's stylish as hell, looks awesome, has fantastic action sequences, and a killer soundtrack. And it has a whole inception vibe. I love watching it.

Can't think of anything on top of my head, so instead I'll ask: What makes you say that Resident Evil 4 is a "masterpiece"? For me it completely ruined the series. It went from survival horror to action shooter when RE4 was released, and every game since has been an iteration of that.

To me that's not Resident Evil. The fun of these games comes from the horror of not knowing what's lurking behind the next corner, and the fact that even one zombie can ruin your night. RE4 removed all of that by placing the camera behind the player, and then turning zombies into cannon fodder that swarm you by the masses. That's not Resident Evil for me, and for that reason I consider RE:0 to be the last good game in the series. (Not including the remakes of course; I'm only counting new entries.)

The thing is, your opinion is the majority. I'm the odd one out here, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. One theory I've been told is that for a lot of people, RE4 was their first Resident Evil game, in which case I can understand liking it if you never knew how good the old games were. I also understand that the tank controls can be off-putting, but that can be bypassed by mapping forward to a button other than up, that way you can move and turn at the same time (also the remakes give you an option to turn off the tank controls). So I really can't think of any other reasons why one might prefer RE4 to past titles.