Jarhead (2005).

The trailer pitches an action/adventure war movie. Think like “Saving Private Ryan” but more adventurous. What we get instead is a “kids go to war only to discover that war is boring, not fun and terrible” movie. Also it just wasn’t a good film.

In theory it’s genius marketing. As a movie goer I’m excited to go see a war movie. But then, like the movie itself, I discover war isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Except… I knew that already. Sometimes I just want to see a fun action movie.

Funny enough the film has three direct to video sequels (although sequels in name only) which are generic action war films.

Because they can release a game sooner and at a lower quality. In fact a day one patch is standard for nearly every game nowadays.

Before being patchable games were definitely still released with bugs, but it was rare for them to be truly game breaking.

They want the companies that make the games to release patches for any bugs that are discovered

Technically someone who buys a game just wants it to work. Many generations of games were released without the ability to patch them after release. Games had a higher quality to them before being released.

While I won’t disagree that there is a benefit of this feature for consumers, the larger benefit it to the company creating the game.

Just to be fair, the Nintendo Switch 2 does support “Game Key Card” games. Such that you still must download the game and use the card to authenticate your game.

However there are zero first party* Nintendo games that are “Game Key Card” games. If you buy Mario or Zelda you do get the game on the card.

I do expect that will change in the future and follow the trend Sony is taking to be 100% digital. So you’re right to be concerned that they are heading in the same direction.in fact with Sony already heading that direction it’s even more certain.

*(Pokemon, which feels like a first party and Nintendo owns a large portion of, is technically third party.)

I looked it up, since I wasn’t sure, it looks like online launched about two weeks after the single player game. But it also was console exclusive for two years. When it came out for PC is when it actually began to catch my attention, and it launched on PC as both GTA5 and Online.

So that’s probably where my confusion came from. I already hadn’t played GTA4 so it wasn’t high on my list to investigate further.

It’s funny I looked into GTA4 and GTA5 support on the Steam Deck. GTA4 says playable and online reviews say it works well. GTA5 says unsupported but online reviews say it also works great, but you can’t play it online. So both are options for me.

The stories and single player is definitely what interests me, so maybe someday.

No, but also I was never going to buy GTA6.

I loved GTA3, Vice City & San Andreas. Played for hundreds of hours. I played GTA4 for a few hours but it never really clicked the same. I also played Saints Row 2 and Saints Row 3, which I really enjoyed and scratched that same itch (those games eventually went a little over the top, but I still had fun.)

When GTA5 came out all I ever heard about it was it being “online” which turned me off of the series completely. I think I later understood that there is a single player component and an online component, but by then I didn’t really care.

If anything I’m likely to try revisiting GTA4 this year. Maybe.

Sometimes it’s best to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. They made a different dark plate later on that was different enough, they’ll do the same thing here. We’ll see “Friendly Cube” before the year is over.

Plus huge marketing win. They probably got a bunch of new users to visit their website and saw a huge uptick in overall sales.

Momoa is a great Lobo, which is fitting because that’s pretty much the character he always plays. The downside is that he isn’t in the film much.

But I expect Momoa will stick around for a while and he’ll get a lot more in future films.

A bottle garden can also be sealed.

I have a degree in Internet oddities if that counts. I know bottle gardens are a thing, where you have a sustaining ecosystem of plants inside a bottle. Could you make them small spheres instead? Maybe?

GTA5 on Steam says it requires 105GB. It’s not unreasonable to think that GTA6 would take more than 128GB.

Of course with compression (at the cost of longer load times) and/or lower quality textures, I would bet you could make it fit.

I also seem to recall some disk based games in the past containing a subset of the full game. Although at that point you don’t really “win” by having it on disk of isn’t the full game.

Or you could do multiple disks.

Minimal preshow trailers.

I know I’m preaching to the choir, but I want to highlight a huge reason I enjoy independent theatres.

Even if I’m going to an independent theater to see a big blockbuster film I watch maybe two film trailers and then the film starts. 7pm showtime? By 7:10pm the film is playing.

I saw Dune 2 at an AMC theater for IMAX and it was 30 minutes of trailers and commercials! Commercials are the worst. At least a film trailer might be interesting but a commercial for toothpaste?

Sources tell us that Timothée will be playing the lead role in what was described to us as a rom-com with a “higher brow”

I’m excited to see him play Wario.

Plus after the success of “Michael” I expect Madonna can play hardball. Madonna certainly has had a career on par with all the recent successful musician biopics. The success of “Michael” shows these films are still big money makers.

I like to read the names aloud with friends and talk about the made up things they did. Bob Smith? Best Boy? Yeah he is. Helped me move last weekend. Jane Johnson? Second unit director? First in my heart, the one that got away. Etc.

Ok, you’re the boss peanut butter. You tell me what to do.

Still waiting on Rome, Sweet Rome.

We don’t control the sheriff’s budget. We give him X number of dollars, he does with it what he wishes.

Ok then, I’d like to open discussion about the sheriff’s budget. Time to make some cuts.

That’s my hope too. Basically you can’t pretend to use real people if someone would reasonably think they are real people.

But I hope they’ve worded it well.

There are specific carve outs listed in the law to exempt ads for movies, television shows, streaming content, video games and other works that feature synthetic performers in the entire work.

That seems like a pretty big carve out.