Also, this movie had an even greater sin than the last movie… Tron. He is a program. The titular character. He does not exist in this film whatsoever. Legacy had Tron for a tiny bit. This movie couldn’t even bother to mention the name. Ares vs Tron in Encom’s server grid coulda been nice to see.

Saw someone I respect say how much better Ares is than Legacy in terms of story, soundtrack, visuals, and I just totally disagree. It expects that you have full knowledge of the first two movies and I appreciate that, but the story it dropped from those movies just felt way too important to ignore.

NIN was good, but feels so similar to 2010s NIN that it’s almost unremarkable. Been a fan of NIN for decades and it just feels like more from the most uninteresting era of the band. When it comes to Legacy, I would consider that to be Daft Punk’s best work. Really hard to compete with that.

I don’t even remember the name of that podcast. I vaguely remember it had Teanah and Sam on it. I kinda want to look it up and see if I can find it.

For context on that tax situation, the raise was me making partial commission while earning a wage, and the gov’t was more than happy to get a piece.

Slow text, slow systems (map, inventory, box management), slow connection to network services, unskippable animations, design choices that slow combat and capturing, etc. It’s very rare that a game makes me wish a 2x speed boost was permanently on, but Scarlet / Violet could really use it.

Up next looks to be Lower Decks, the first show in this new era of Star Trek that I am actually excited to watch (talking myself into watching Discovery and Picard took a few years, but Lower Decks was a show I wanted to jump into right away.) I am looking forward to this!

Last thing to mention is that this show really screwed up with its original characters. Written poorly then thrown away instead of being properly developed. That’s more of a season 2 slam than anything, but this season got rid of Laris as soon as possible, and basically omitted Elnor completely.

Also, the end of the last episode had the return of Q, which should feel cheap considering he “died” at the end of season 2, but as far as I’m concerned that season was so bad that this feels more like a slam on that season’s ideas than a glaring plot hole introduced after the fact.

If a starship can move like that, getting hit by torpedos should be impossible. Yeah I know it’s Data doing all the work, but you’re telling me starships can’t automate similar movement? Please. A minor thing for sure, but after watching that scene this came to mind and ruined it a bit for me.

Lowlights are the Changelings, which evolved to be harder to detect but extremely weak and stupid versions of themselves. Masked changeling henchmen is a stupid idea. Worf felt a little dopey. Also, the RotJ-style assault run inadvertently shows that all other starship pilots are all really bad.

Highlights for me are the reunion of the TNG cast (obviously), most of the cameos, and the fact that they gave the Enterprise-D a ‘Return of the Jedi’-style Death Star II assault run was pretty fun on first watch. I like the banter between everyone as well, which just speaks to actor chemistry.