Post your searing hot takes

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
Not sure if I’ve talked about this take on this thread in particular yet, but I simply do not care for newer generation Pokémon that look and feel too similar to Pokémon from previous generations. Whether or not the original versions or the newer versions are better is definitely a case-by-case scenario, but generally speaking I view this in a similar manner to how multiplayer games view clone characters- but in this case, with the PokéDex and which Pokémon are present in a game’s selection.

A hot take inside of this hot take: I get that Pokémon Black & White’s first games were designed to only have Unova Pokémon in the main story or whatever, but so, so many of them feeling like clones of existing Pokémon single-handedly makes me consider Unova an overrated region these days.
 

cityscapes

Take care of yourself.
is a Tiering Contributoris a Community Contributor Alumnus
I miss when smogon was about dumbasses saying stupid problematic shit that wasnt even funny. At least I coudl complain about that. No one can complain about what it'sbecome today
 

bdt2002

Pokémon Ranger: Guardian Signs superfan
is a Pre-Contributor
Time for some more hot takes because I don't want to be productive and do anything else tonight :)

  • Multiplayer games of any genre with one dominant meta pick are by nature more balanced games because if everyone is using the same meta pick, the skill cap solely comes down to who can use that meta pick the best. A great example of this is Funky Kong Flame Runner in Mario Kart Wii- if an entire lobby is spamming fast characters and his inside drifting bikes, than generally speaking the better players within that meta should come out on top almost every time.

  • Umbreon has a significantly overrated Shiny version that doesn't change much from the original and is carried by the fact that it's already colored black, given most black Shiny Pokémon look at least decent by default. The light blue features are done better by other Shiny Pokémon who change more than Umbreon itself. If anything the changed eyes leave more of an impact on me.

  • All of the colored characters in The Rings of Power should have been white because there are no explicitly stated colored characters throughout The Lord of the Rings canon, meaning a race cleansing would have had to have taken place at some point in the middle. Good characters? For sure, but this isn't necessarily a racism issue so much as it's a continuity issue with J.R.R. Tolkien's races of characters (elves, dwarves, hobbits, et cetera).

  • Whether or not they're better movies than the previous films is up for debate, but everyone throwing hate at the Star Wars sequel trilogy these days is going to look like a massive, massive idiot when another trilogy of movies ever ends up happening. We've seen this with both of the previous trilogies- when the prequels came out, people hated them and loved the originals, but when the sequels came out, people hated the sequels and loved the prequels all of a sudden.
 

Adeleine

after committing a dangerous crime
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All of the colored characters in The Rings of Power should have been white because there are no explicitly stated colored characters throughout The Lord of the Rings canon, meaning a race cleansing would have had to have taken place at some point in the middle. Good characters? For sure, but this isn't necessarily a racism issue so much as it's a continuity issue with J.R.R. Tolkien's races of characters (elves, dwarves, hobbits, et cetera).
here's the thing though. as a tolkienverse fan, i think full continuity is impossible. i don't expect every character and sideplot can make it into a film/television adaptation, largely because film is just a different medium than text, one where relatively simpler stories are often more successful and impactful. i wasn't upset when tom bombadil didn't make it in the peter jackson movies, and i think it'd be pretty silly if thranduil was only called "elvenking" in his hobbit movies.

if a fan (not saying this is you, just "some fan") knows full continuity is impossible, yet they specifically object to race discontinuity, and not anything else, what does that tell us? likely either they have some kind of hangup about race, and/or the story / our societal understanding of it are structured such that making someone non-white jumps out as "strange", in a tale where the volcanic dark lord binds part of his soul into jewelry. which feels a bit odd at first blush.

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another way to think about this general topic is what i call "the viking question." which of these images has more continuity from real vikings–the spotless guy on the left with the widely-debunked horned helmet, perfectly shiny double-bladed axe, framed by the sun just so... or this guy on the right with signs of injury and grime, a simpler axe with more wear, a mail shirt, and some furs, who also happens to be black? i'm not saying the guy on the right is a flawless depiction of historical vikings, he's not, but to me, he has considerably more continuity than the guy on the left. if someone reading this thinks the guy on the left is more realistic, i do not mean to say you're a racist. just that you, like everyone including myself, should remember that perceptions of "having continuity" / "authentic" / "realistic" are sometimes not grounded in the facts.

Whether or not they're better movies than the previous films is up for debate, but everyone throwing hate at the Star Wars sequel trilogy these days is going to look like a massive, massive idiot when another trilogy of movies ever ends up happening. We've seen this with both of the previous trilogies- when the prequels came out, people hated them and loved the originals, but when the sequels came out, people hated the sequels and loved the prequels all of a sudden.
This is more a partial disagree than a full disagree, but my view is like... people throwing hate at the prequels don't look like idiots, even though another trilogy came out after the prequels. Because the prequels are bad. (That doesn't mean they lack all merit and likability though, of course.) I think some of the people throwing hate at the New Trilogy look foolish because they only condemn the New Trilogy, e.g. inflating the prequels on a lofty pedestal they really don't deserve, but I think a fair portion of legitimate criticism and hostility will be well-vindicated by history.
 

Samtendo09

Ability: Light Power
is a Pre-Contributor
Not sure if I’ve talked about this take on this thread in particular yet, but I simply do not care for newer generation Pokémon that look and feel too similar to Pokémon from previous generations. Whether or not the original versions or the newer versions are better is definitely a case-by-case scenario, but generally speaking I view this in a similar manner to how multiplayer games view clone characters- but in this case, with the PokéDex and which Pokémon are present in a game’s selection.

A hot take inside of this hot take: I get that Pokémon Black & White’s first games were designed to only have Unova Pokémon in the main story or whatever, but so, so many of them feeling like clones of existing Pokémon single-handedly makes me consider Unova an overrated region these days.
BW’s roster would work better if the expies aren’t so blatantly deliberate.

As for me, my scorching hot take is that there’s no point directly comparing the SNES‘ Sony-made Sampler and the Sega’s Yamaha-made FM Synthetizer. The two are apples and oranges; so distinct that saying one is strictly superior to the other is just isn’t fair, as each have significant strengths and weaknesses. In fact, both are revolutionary in their own right.

The SNES’ sampler soundboard allows it to just do that; sampling from existing instrument and even make it’s own soundbits. It results the instruments sounding muffled without the echo effect, and the sampler itself proved difficult to master. Once mastered, however, it can make fanstastic music of a variety of genres, and in some cases, unique even in these days. Even the worst songs are simply grating at worst, compared to the potential ear-bleeding music the FM synthetizer can cause if used in the wrong hands. That said, the bass and drumsets tend to be muffled the most, which means you may need to digitally improve them without sacrificing the catridge’s RAM memory.

The Genesis’ Yamaha FM synthetizer allows for old-school arcade-like music and hardcore themes reminiscent of rock / metal. Synthetizer in general tend to be rigid compared to samplers, as the FM synthetizer can’t do an orchestra-themed music as successfully as the SNES sampler can. You also run the risk of making the FM synthetizer ear-bleeding far more than with SNES sampler; the latter can only result from awful instruments and hitting notes too high, which are easier to solve than getting the instruments fine-tuned with the FM synthetizer. The bass and drums are among it’s greatest strengths, and it helps that the FM synthetizer is part of the console iirc.

At the end of the day, the two soundchips are revolutionary in their own right, and it all comes down to how to use them well. I do wish inspirations from the two consoles music-wise appears more often in indie games. SNES-styled sample-driven (but with or without limitations) musics are especially a rarity in official games in general, likely due to the SNES soundchip itself feeling “aged” compared to Sony’s next soundchip to their own first console, the Playstation.

tl;dr SNES and Genesis soundchips are unique to the point that saying one is strictly superior to the other isn’t fair.
 
CinemaSins is awful and we all know it, but an issue with his videos that is often neglected is the fact that the format of these videos is impossible to combine with the length that they have since 7-8 years

Naming movie issues is entertaining in a video that's 7 minutes or less, but going through the movie and naming everything wrong with it for 15-30 minutes is incredibly boring and makes the videos impossible to watch and enjoy simply due to them being stretched too much. It just gets extremely repetitive

In general, movie reviews that don't really analyze and simply serve as guides to the quality of a movie simply shouldn't be long. You can't tell me that you need 15+ minutes to say whether a movie is good or not, even when you describe in detail what the movie does good and what it doesn't and even when you give a synopsis on it. If you go all in and analyze it, fine, that can be hours long, but some formats aren't meant to be long. It would be like making a comedy that's 3 hours long. Stretching it out so far is either shitty writing on the reviewers part, an attempt at getting it longer so you can put more ads on it or both
 

Adeleine

after committing a dangerous crime
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After searching longer than I expected, I found the referenced quotes.

Screen Shot 2023-02-20 at 10.15.56 PM.png
Screen Shot 2023-02-20 at 10.16.31 PM.png


SPM was a big part of my childhood in a way that New Paper Mario never could have been. I'm annoyed with New Paper Mario, have no interest in it, and think it is significantly worse overall. But when I see "he HAD to know how bad this would look," I expect, like, racism or homophobia or FE: Fates-tier inappropriate bad stuff.

Does that mean I think this quote is a good or neutral choice? Nah. Besides being a kinda silly villain motivation, it's plausible enough to be petty and mean-spirited in a totally unnecessary way. But when I think of mean-spirited stuff in gaming, what comes to mind for me is, like, HP: Legacy's plot being to quash the rebellion of big-nosed banker second-class citizens who purportedly steal blood from people (antisemitism off the charts), GamerGate, and death threats going out after Dexit. Assuming this quote is mean-spirited, it's probably the softest thing I've seen in the gaming world that I would call mean-spirited.

When I think about gaming mean-spiritedness that is often ignored and defended, what comes to mind is excessive gamer-backlash, like the last two examples in my list. In that vein, -in what is not a justification of the quote but a justification for finding it to not be immensely significant - I'm sure New-Paper-Mario-Haters have put much worse bile out there.

From the tweet thread:

And I know people are gonna try and bring up Francis from SPM. However, gaming nerds are a more general concept, so most of his lines are a parodic reflection.
Olly’s Toad potshot line, OTOH, is REALLY meanspirited, overspecific, and...
This is a pretty weak argument I think. Both Francis and Olly are parodic - they're both making fun of a demographic, and they're laughing at them instead of with them (we assume). As a SPM lover, I think Francis is considerably more mean-spirited than Olly's quote: "These otaku* have every responsibility done for them, reduce women to sex objects (or literal objects in timpani's case), have zero self awareness, and form relationships with forum people and fictional characters, everyone point and laugh at these pathetic impotent creepy losers!!" The forum/fictional relationships thing honestly feels particularly barbed, the dude clearly has extreme social troubles, good on him for finding some kinds of relationships anyway, no need to push him to isolate even more.

*he's visibly an otaku and not some kind of general "gamer nerd", he's less "likes nerdy crap and he games hardcore" and more "gross shut-in who does no work and fawns over anime women", i think that's plenty specific

My hot take: BIS is "okay"
bad story, three (unless i forgot someone? it's been a while) interesting (i mean "funny", not "complex") characters, weak music, weak environments, derivative-if-still-good combat/items/etc., vacuum mechanic being a soft accessibility problem

it being the only M&L game i've played gives me a pretty pessimsitic outlook on the ranchise as a whole, though eg PiT definitely seems to thrive more in the first four
 
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Samtendo09

Ability: Light Power
is a Pre-Contributor
After searching longer than I expected, I found the referenced quotes.

View attachment 493828View attachment 493829

SPM was a big part of my childhood in a way that New Paper Mario never could have been. I'm annoyed with New Paper Mario, have no interest in it, and think it is significantly worse overall. But when I see "he HAD to know how bad this would look," I expect, like, racism or homophobia or FE: Fates-tier inappropriate bad stuff.

Does that mean I think this quote is a good or neutral choice? Nah. Besides being a kinda silly villain motivation, it's plausible enough to be petty and mean-spirited in a totally unnecessary way. But when I think of mean-spirited stuff in gaming, what comes to mind for me is, like, HP: Legacy's plot being to quash the rebellion of big-nosed banker second-class citizens who purportedly steal blood from people (antisemitism off the charts), GamerGate, and death threats going out after Dexit. Assuming this quote is mean-spirited, it's probably the softest thing I've seen in the gaming world that I would call mean-spirited.

When I think about gaming mean-spiritedness that is often ignored and defended, what comes to mind is excessive gamer-backlash, like the last two examples in my list. In that vein, -in what is not a justification of the quote but a justification for finding it to not be immensely significant - I'm sure New-Paper-Mario-Haters have put much worse bile out there.

From the tweet thread:



This is a pretty weak argument I think. Both Francis and Olly are parodic - they're both making fun of a demographic, and they're laughing at them instead of with them (we assume). As a SPM lover, I think Francis is considerably more mean-spirited than Olly's quote: "These otaku* have every responsibility done for them, reduce women to sex objects (or literal objects in timpani's case), have zero self awareness, and form relationships with forum people and fictional characters, everyone point and laugh at these pathetic impotent creepy losers!!" The forum/fictional relationships thing honestly feels particularly barbed, the dude clearly has extreme social troubles, good on him for finding some kinds of relationships anyway, no need to push him to isolate even more.

*he's visibly an otaku and not some kind of general "gamer nerd", he's less "likes nerdy crap and he games hardcore" and more "gross shut-in who does no work and fawns over anime women", i think that's plenty specific

My hot take: BIS is "okay"
bad story, three (unless i forgot someone? it's been a while) interesting (i mean "funny", not "complex") characters, weak music, weak environments, derivative-if-still-good combat/items/etc., vacuum mechanic being a soft accessibility problem

it being the only M&L game i've played gives me a pretty pessimsitic outlook on the ranchise as a whole, though eg PiT definitely seems to thrive more in the first four
Okay, that’s certainly overdramatic on their part now I took another look, but going for a parodic villain isn’t gonna work that well when you see that the Toads are barely more diverse than usual among New Paper Mario. It’s not necessarily the message itself that is the problem; it is how the game made an attempt too minimal to diversify the Toads when you consider the fact that PM64-SPM have better Toad diversity in comparison. As such, it still comes off as mean-spirited, but not to the point it derserves to be called a controversy.

Kinda shocked to hear about BiS being called “meh”, but for M&L > PM, I can see why. The latter’s inconsistency and the slow pace of the first two games’ own battle system (even if successful) hurted it a lot more than either fanbase realzies at first.
 

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