What's a piece of Media that is so underrated you must mention it?
4mon 3d ago by fedioasis.cc/u/Cantaloupe in asklemmy from fedioasis.cc
Have you ever loved something, only to realize it’s a commercial flop or just obscure? What’s something that deserves more light than it got?
I think The Good Place is one of the best things to ever happen to tv. I know it's not some secret piece of tv that nobody knows about, but it hit the right notes in my soul that I don't think people are singing its praises loud enough, even a decade on from its release.
CreamyJalapenoSauce figured it out? CreamyJalapenoSauce? This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts.
I just suddenly had this calm feeling, like the air inside my lungs was the same as the air outside my body. It was peaceful. You know the feeling when you think a jalapeño popper is gonna be too hot, but you bite into it anyway and it's actually the perfect temperature?
This hit the right notes in my soul 😁💙
Totally agreed. My favourite get-to-know-you question is this: "if you had the very specific super power that meant you could make everybody into the world love a piece of media in exactly the way you do, for exactly the reasons you do, what piece of media would you pick and why?"
My answer is The Good Place, with a bullet. It's about trying to be better every day and treat people well, and it's hilarious and good natured.
The able to make the entire world feel the same empathetic message of togetherness would be way too OP of a super power.
My wife and I go to watch it, open Prime, put it on. Watch for a bit, things seem odd, but I don't question it. We're having a tough time following exactly, but I've heard good things about the show so I'm letting it breathe.
We get like 20m in and I say okay what the fuck. I pause, it's the season finale of season 1, prime just felt, when we start a new show, that it was best to start off on the most recent episode, despite not having seen the rest of them. Frustrating, to say the least.
Holy shit that must have been frustrating. I knew something was off but the main reveal was good the first watch.
It ended up happening one other time, on Hulu I want to say, but I caught it earlier, because fool me once and all that. And I'm the kind of person who likes to go into things blind, I enjoy watching the story unfold, so it really gets my goat.
Believe it or not, never happens on the things I host locally.
I found that Ted Danson's new show, man on the inside, is also pretty good.
It's warm and hilarious.
I went into the show blind and it was definitely outside of the typical stuff that I watch, but I enjoyed it a lot!
There is a theory about the meaning of life in this show that I found profound.
You can't say that and let us curious, which one in particular? I just started watching it and I got hooked. Looking forward to reading theories once I finish my binge watch
It's closer to the end. It's very explicit. Michael is litearaly, like "I don't know what the meaning of life is, but for me...". You won't miss it. And than you can let me know what episode exactly was it because I was meaning to revisit it and its hard to find :P
S04E12 :)
For the curious:
spoiler
Every human is a little bit sad all the time because they know they will die, but that knowledge is what gives life meaning
No, that's not it. Keep going.
That's a great show. At first I didn't watch it because I thought it was gonna be some corny heaven show but it was really good. It ended on a very satisfying note and I hadn't cried during shows for a while before that. Well besides Bojack horseman.
One of the rare "10/10, no notes" series from start to finish. Amazing finale too. Fantastic rewatch value.
I also greatly enjoyed this one and think it's a really well-made show with great actors. It was also one of the few shows I could watch with my wife with us both really liking it (we have unfortunately very different taste regarding TV shows). We often laughed at very different moments that the other one didn't find super funny but that didn't matter at all. Definitely recommend!
It's okay I thought, it belabors a lot of points. I mostly just liked the episodes where the plot moved fast
Agreed. One of the greatest shows of all time
Look I'm not saying that it isn't well rated, but too many people dismiss "Avatar: The Last Airbender" as a cartoon or a childrens show when it is in fact a masterpiece.
Idk, everyone I speak to about it agrees that it's incredible. Doesn't seem underrated. I've been wanting to rewatch it.
Right you're talking about the people who HAVE seen it. It isn't rated lowly, it is dismissed by too many people. Like I said originally...
Ah ok, well you might be right
You and the people you know are all in a similar silo of streaming and tech adoption. Ask the mail carrier or barber if they heard of Avatar the cartoon, not the blue people movie.
Korra is better in my opinion.
Existed for the third show, btw! Avatar - Seven Havens.
Korra was a bunch of nepo baby elites going around policing the world without the consent of anyone else, whilst discovering who they were.
Aang and his crew actually took time to go village to village to help out the local people, whilst training to take on an army.
These two shows are not the same.
The great thing about that, though, and the reason Korra is indeed a great show, is that the show itself explores whether they are a bunch of nepobabies, and whether they should even be doing what they're doing. I loved that. It was a worthy successor.
I do admit the last season does a great effort in deconstructing itself
They lost me when it turned out they made the jocks the good guys and spent a whole episode playing sports ball.
I was like, "I'm not watching a whole series of this." click.
So you got like 3 episodes in and bailed?
That's not even close to what the show is about lmao
I tried but like most children's shows I just can't deal with (at least the early seasons') pacing. It's excruciatingly slow, full of obvious filler content, and doesn't seem to be trying to get anywhere.
Typically those children shows' pacing tends to get a lot better in the latter seasons as the audience ages out and the showrunners are trusted with bolder story arcs, but that doesn't change the fact that there are tens of hours of slop to get through before that point is reached.
Sounds like an attention span issue on your part.
Or it's the opposite. I refuse to watch shows without giving them my undivided attention, but that kind of pacing begs to be background noise while you do something else.
Sometimes there is nothing significantly plot-relevant happening for entire episodes at a time, both for bad reasons (the incentive structure for children's show rewards empty filler slop with zero plot value because it's easy to re-run) and less bad reasons (children like repetition). Both of which are painfully evident throughout the whole experience.
Good for you if that's your jam, if you find it comforting or like it as background noise or like it because it leads to better paced seasons down the line or whatever, but I refuse to accept that it's an issue for me to dislike objectively horrendous pacing.
When other people enjoy it and consider it good and you're like "No, trash, horrendous!" I think the issue is on your side. Also it's okay if you don't like it, but if that is what you're citing as the reason then you clearly do have a short attention span, and struggle to focus on things. That's also okay, but don't expect people to listen to your denials while you rip on other things and blame those things. Enjoy what you want. But I disagree that the show has "horrendous pacing".
i simply do not hear enough people talking about Outer Wilds, i know it released in the same year as the AA game by Obsidian - Outer Worlds, the title of which is different by whole two letters, which provided a very good distraction but
AAAAA
Outer Wilds is a lighting in a bottle video game that the majority of those who have played it wish they could experience for the first time again. it's a stunning piece of art that makes you cry and you're not even sure what exactly just happened. but there's always a point where it all just hits you - and all you can do is cry
it doesn't handhold you, in fact it doesn't give you any objectives at all, you're lead through the entire game by sheer curiosity alone - and oh boy will that curiosity make you zoom across the space back and forth until you get to the bottom of it. when you utter your first "oh what's that? i'm going to check it out" it'll have you, you might not realise it yet but you're now primed for adventure
this is the only game i'm not afraid to overhype. i watched that game sit in my library, for over a year, and in that time i hyped it up in my head to unreachable levels, to the point where eventually i was close to afraid of playing it because how could it possibly meet that standard i've envisioned? and you know what? it was better than i've ever imagined. it waited for me to be ready to sit down and play it, and then it delivered and experience that i'll forever treasure
maybe it won't hit that exact sweet spot for you as it did for me, but bloody hell can i assure you you'll never forget it - even though you'll wish you did, to play it for the first time again
oh and if any of my vague praise made you interested - rule #1 of Outer Wilds Club: don't talk about Outer Wilds. don't look up anything about it, you want to experience it as blind as you possibly can, some people even go as far as buying their friends a copy so they never have to look at the steam page screenshots
I enjoyed this game but I didn't love it as much as I see people gushing about it do. It makes me wonder if I might have enjoyed it more not having heard it hyped up all the time. I did manage to completely avoid spoilers so it wasn't that
fair enough, for me it struck all the right chords inside, but not everyone has the same chords
I want to like this game, but the twist that's the whole point of the story gives me anxiety.
If I could just roast marshmallows, crash the model ship, listen to the music of the planets and explore without pressure, it would be one of my favorite games of all time.
there is a way around that friend!
(light spoilers for the core mechanic ahead, first half an hour or so of playing):
spoiler
it's all about perspective. i also highly dislike timers in game, but don't think about it like a timer, because it's not really? yeah sure sometimes you get cut off in the middle of reading in a difficult to get to location, but thanks to the loop you are also just... immortal. all the knowledge is saved even when you fly yourself into the sun by accident. there is no real time pressure, you can roast those marshmallows, nobody can stop you - you have infinite time, you just need to hike to your desired campfire every now and then
not every loop has to be a race, wander around, get lost, as fast or slow as you like. yeah sometimes you need to sprint to get to a time sensitive place but even then you have the infinity to keep trying. and as you have the time when you wait for something to happen for the second time (because you forgot to put on your suit the first time) listen to music, take in the sights :)
i bounced off this game 2 times before it got me, but there's no rush, it'll wait for you
I heard amazing things about Outer Wilds, was under the impression it was an adventure game but "make sure to go in blind!" was the universal advice so I didn't look up more, downloaded it, started to play, and really struggled with the controls. I wasn't raised with video games as a kid and I don't play platformers and such so my coordination is shit. When I went to the net to find a solution (because a lot of games have at least mods you can download to make things easier) but all I got was "get gud." I asked a friend who was like "oh yeah, I watched a stream of someone playing and it seems like a technically difficult game." So that's a pretty important warning to include with any Outer Wilds recommendation.
i wouldn't worry about it too much, we all struggle with the ship at first :) even the best of us! piloting it becomes second nature after some time though, just gotta learn through practice
I feel like I gave it enough of a try to know that this isn't an "at first" issue, and as a grown-ass adult I'm not going to throw an unknown number of hours at practicing something I don't know if I'll ever get the hang of enough to properly play the game.
This is an accessibility issue; many games include "cheat" modes so as to allow a much larger audience that may otherwise be physically or otherwise incapable of playing the standard mode to still enjoy it. As far as I know, this game has provided nothing of the sort. Given that OW is marketed as an adventure/exploration game rather than a technical game, I don't know why they refused to provide this, but regardless this is a gate-kept game, which is fine, not every game has to be easy or accessible, but please don't pretend otherwise.
idk what to say man, the game literally has an autopilot, all you need to learn is how to take off, and land. but you can't relay on the autopilot to do the exploring for you - being able to control your ship when needed is necessary
what other accesability options can you think of adding to a space exploration game that needs 360° of movement?
"There are so many games out there that feature space travel and yet none of them really get it. The horror of an endless dark vacuum so intent on killing you that just 90 seconds in its inanimate presence is more than enough to freeze, suffocate, and explode you inside out. Space is literally the worst place in the universe.
People always think of space as above us, but it's not really; you don't have to look up to see space, you have to look away from safety to see space. Then, when you're out there in the nothing, there are jewels; un-process-ibly large balls of fire and light held together by our own fucking anger, rocks that can range between husks of nothing or everything some life ever knows, and an endless amount of phenomena that would take our scientific knowledge and fuck it from arsehole to breakfast.
But video games just don't get it. They just don't get space. Video games set in space are either just men with big swinging dicks firing at bug-eyed monsters or fucking truck driving simulators. If exploration does happen to be the focus, you'll find out that the main difference between the endless majesty that is life in this universe is the colour of the fucking grass. Yeah, you're in space but it feels inaccessible like a fingerprint wouldn't take on it; like it's behind glass.
The Outer Wilds - fucking hell - the Outer Wilds gets space. It doesn't care about scale or scientific accuracy, it gets the feel right. Yeah, your ship's made from wood and the majority of planets are the size of of a badly stocked IKEA, but watching all the stars in the sky go out one by one like far off fireworks and knowing that each one could be destroying an entire history and having to do that fucking every 22 minutes -- nothing. Nothing has made me feel like that before. No game, no book, no movie. It's beyond extraordinary.
Its planets - fuck - its planets; each one a bizarre impossible place riddled with life and death and decay and nonsense. Each one dense in history and vandalised by time. Each one nightmarish and so, so beautiful and in 22 minutes, they're gone
because the Outer Wilds isn't even really about space, it's about the question, the most important and terrifying and unanswerable question anyone ever asks: Why? Why bother? Why bother with any of this? People die, stars burn out, the universe will go quiet and dark and cold and in the longest run, nothing - absolutely nothing matters. Everything dies, the universe included. So why sit around the fire, playing music into a void that doesn't care? Why huddle around the light? Why play?
Because, well - look at it. It's mad, all of it. Life is a big stupid blob of meaningless nothing. Yet from that, we find meaning. People, things, animals, art, sofas, cereal, Rubik's cubes, silly little games about space, whatever. None of it matters in the grand scheme but fuck the grand scheme! There's no logical reason for life and nobody's gonna mourn it when it's gone, but that's what makes it fantastic. Life is a little song that we hum to ourselves and, I wouldn't want it other way.
The Outer Wilds is an optimistic game about nihilism. It's a game with no invisible walls, you can complete it in ten minutes if you know what to do - which you won't for hours - and the only limit is knowledge. It's a game literally like no other. The universe is big and long and impossible and daft and you, you happen to be experiencing it at the exact same point that you can play the Outer Wilds as well. Embrace that coincidence. Come on, what are you waiting for? The sun could explode tomorrow."
- Daniel "NerdCubed" Hardcastle - 2019 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkA5a8ov8Dw&t=1655s
Which is my candidate for the most underrated youtuber, yeah he has 2.4 million subscribers but the videos bring in like 50k views, so it's obviously wrong.
really well said! :) i know of Nerd³, i learnt about him through an even more underrated youtuber - ManyATrueNerd, they play together sometimes. if you like goofy british men who suffer from flashes of both extreme intelligence and deep stupidity, often in the same sentence, check him out lol
An absolute masterpiece.
I like outer wilds, but I just don't have enough time to play games unfortunately
Tour de Pharmacy
It's a mockumentary about the Tour de France, but everyone's been kicked out for doping.
There are only 5 competitors left, Andy Sandberg, John Cena, Daveed Diggs, Orlando Bloom, and Freddie Highmore.
They've got the actual Lance Armstrong doing a "hidden informant" bit.
Each of the racers has a wacky backstory. Hijinks ensue. It's a great time.
Not the best movie ever, but I had an absolute blast with it.
"People dope... yeah.... You know this is a sport with literally hundreds of dollars on the line and dozens of fans... STAKES ARE MEDIUM!"
Seeing John Cena keep up with comedy heavy weights convinced me that he's a pretty good actor.
Peacemaker was pretty fun. I had basically no familiarity with Cena other than the meme and the Make a Wish status. His acting was sufficiently entertaining to convince me to continue the show.
The way he really sold the emotional scenes in that show convinced me he’s got some serious acting skills.
I have to watch this, thank you!
Better off Ted. I dont think it is underrated, but it definitely seems to be not well known and only got a couple of seasons. It's the first time I got mad at Netflix canceling a show I loved.
It's an excellent show.
But don't be mad at Netflix. It aired on ABC, and they cancelled it (presumably because it had lower ratings than the network's other comedies). Netflix just picked up streaming rights after the fact.
I've never met someone IRL that has seen this show. I work in the biotech industry so I recommend it to all my coworkers.
Great show, but the Veridian Dynamics commercials are my favorite part.
For me, it's when the octochicken comes down from its web.
Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Some of best science-fiction literature ever penned.
However, the author, while a superb writer, is an asshole.
A lot of the classic scifi authors were assholes one way or another it seems. Frank Herbert was homophobic.
Herbert was homophobic, Assimov was sexist, Orson Scott Card is homophobic, it's such a shame.
Orson is so frustrating. Speaker for the Dead is a wonderful book about not judging other cultures, their practices or desires. Things that may seem shocking to you personally, are normal and celebrated by others.
And it's written by a bigot. Like dude, have you even read your own book?
It works because it is everything he doesn't believe in that the readers coalesce into a coherent ideology. He was just writing about a world he doesn't believe can exist because his world was shaped so strongly by LDS/Mormonism.
I couldn't agree more. Dude writes a book about how the greatest human achievement is empathy and how it can redeem us for the evils we commit in ignorance, and then says that all queer people secretly wish they were "normal". Just a reminder we all need to examine ourselves for bias I guess.
The Shrike will impale all those who do not read Hyperion on their own tree of thorns!
It rightly won the Hugo award, Hyperion did.
Loved Hyperion, but I bounced off the sequel. The first book was just such a perfect story, told perfectly... Then it just seems to kind of transform into just another space sci-fi affair with book 2. Like the entire structure of the first book was thrown out, and now we're just telling a space story.
I'm sure it's good, people have told me it's good. It just didn't seem like it fit together as a sequel to such a perfect novel (that maybe never needed a sequel).
It's a bit wonky in some parts but the ending ties the whole thing together. Definitely give it a read.
Movie wise:
- Logan Lucky - "Trying to reverse a family curse, brothers Jimmy and Clyde Logan set out to execute an elaborate robbery during the legendary Coca-Cola 600 race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway."
I really found myself loving this movie, which was a surprised to me. But I believe that I found myself loving the characters and how they were shown on screen. I also loved the pacing of the movie. I never felt like there was a moment that had over stayed it's stay. The story it's self was interesting enough for me to keep wanting to watch as well. And no, it's not a film, it's a fun movie. It's not trying to be the next Heat or The Sting.
- Kubo and the Two Strings - "Kubo mesmerizes the people in his village with his magical gift for spinning wild tales with origami. When he accidentally summons an evil spirit seeking vengeance, Kubo is forced to go on a quest to solve the mystery of his fallen samurai father and his mystical weaponry, as well as discover his own magical powers."
It's a powerful film IMO. There was a lot to love from the experience and it's one of my all-time favorite stop motion films ever.
Kubo was really good. Only reason it isn't better known is because it wasn't a major studio. If they slapped a Pixar logo on it, it would've been huge.
I think it won an Oscar. The truth is the themes and cinematography are too dark. Its also very artsy. It doesnt have the punch of a typical Pixar but, to me, thats why its so great. I love Disney but there can be other things. Just dont expect them to become household staples.
yes! Kubo was such an amazing movie. And while on the topic of amazing stop-motion I'll add Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio.
"Cauliflower"
Adam Driver in LL was great
Bryan Fuller's TV opus, primarily Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies, although the first two seasons of Hannibal are really excellent writing and storytelling. All his work deals with death, but each has something slightly different to say about it.
Not so much underrated as it was rated well, but mostly because it didn’t really do well in theaters. Annihilation (2018) which is based on the novel of the same name is often overlooked when talking about great scifi movies. The book is great too.
I kinda bounced off the books. I read all three, but I felt like they were just trying a little too hard to be vague. The second in particular is an absolute slog. I thought the movie was much better than the books, and I'm 99% of the time the other way-round.
His next book: Borne was amazing. Probably my favorite of his.
Avenue 5
Armando Ianucci is a genius
I remember wanting to watch this at some point, but I think I got it confused with The Orville. I should check it out again.
Loved that show! Wife and I laughed so hard at it.
That show is weirdly accurate to my experiences working in the tech industry.
Cloud Atlas is my usual mention.
Favourite movie and it's usually a fairly even split between people like myself who love it and people who think it's garbage.
Not much middle ground
Rewatched it with my wife recently
Sat on the edge of my seat as the stories came together... Wife was completely non-plussed
Couldn't stop thinking about that film for weeks after watching it.
I went into it blind, and immediately had to go read the book.
This isn't alone as a movie steering me towards a book. But nothing else has spurred a drop everything else response like that.
Foundation on Apple TV is a visually beautiful show and follows the books generally well with a few caveats.
I haven't read the books, so I can't comment on that, but wow, Lee Pace kills it as Day.
And shout out to Jared Harris for being in this and The Expanse
Agree Lee Pace killed it, and Harris was also excellent in Chernobyl
As a fan of the books, I was initially pretty upset with some of the changes, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The show is it's own thing that goes to some fascinating places.
I'll have to give it another shot. Love the books but couldn't make it through the first season of the show.
This show keeps popping on my radar and I mean to snag it, and then, as with many things in my life, it disappears into the void.
Absolutely check it out.
have you read the books? because the show does not follow them at all.
That said, the show is pretty interesting and incredibly beautiful.
Better Off Ted I feel is reasonably well known and did manage to get an unexpected second season. I feel like a chunk of its potential audience had already left Television for streaming even back when it first aired.
Norsemen was a great series but I understand why people didn’t get into it or even tried it. The humor is very special and maybe takes a little time to settle. It all feels like the cast didn’t know what’s going on and was making it up on the go, which is part of the fun.
Another one: Minesweeper. I feel like most people never understood how this game even works and just clicked randomly until something exploded. It’s actually purely logical! In the classic Windows version there is unfortunately always a high chance to encounter fields that can’t be solved by logic. This is what Mineswifter solves. If you want something more complex, there is the Hexcells series. Get the last one, Infinite, as it has a puzzle generator integrated.
It’s actually purely logical!
What's the logic that can guarantee your first move won't be a mine?
Edit to add: Norsemen was great, loved it.
I think some versions such as Antimine will generate the field once you pick a starting tile.
True, the first one you have to guess. Windows Minesweeper is far from perfect.
It was coded to never allow the first pick to be a mine.
I recently played a roguelike minesweeper that was really interesting https://store.steampowered.com/app/3719980/BroomSweeper_Demo/
I had a friend that was amazing at minesweeper. Watching him play the hardest levels and clearing them in under 30 seconds was incredible.
I was never into speedrunning anything. My father is crazy fast with Hexcells though. He bought a new mouse just for this game!
That's wild lol. I love when someone is absolute pro at the most random things like hexcell or minesweeper.
Tametsi is my favorite Minesweeper clone. Every level is crafted - not randomly generated - and is completely solvable by logic. Some of the later puzzles are insanely difficult. It's so satisfying to take one down.
Thanks for the tip!
Tetris beats minesweeper every day. People pack their vacation cars/suvs and refer to tetris-ing them. No one every says, "I minesweepered that."
I find myself saying "its like fucking minesweeper" usually because something is as tedious as it is terrifying.
I also never heard anyone say „I marioed that“ or „I minecrafted that“. It’s also a completely different game. So not sure where you’re going with this comparison.
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, it was made by alumni of Interplay. The developers also made Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which probably is why it gets overshadowed.
Anyways gameplay is effected by build, equipment, and even race because of course it is this is a game made by Fallout 2 devs. If that sounds interesting but not convincing go watch Mandaloregaming, Warlockracy, or Ssethtzeentach for better reasons, though if you aren't familiar with any or all of the YouTubers I mentioned I ordered it by least to most batshit.
Also if any Eastern Europeans try to say "Oh this was a big game when I was in school" yes I'm aware I know about how your bootleggers charged by the disk resulting in everyone having Fallout 1, 2, and Arcanum. Sadly the game didnt do nearly as well here in the US in my experience.
The Shadow (1994) is delightful. It's fun, atmospheric, and does a great job of capturing the quaint charm of old timey pulp storytelling in a more modern action movie. It's just a treat, and I honestly can't believe it bombed, and as far as I know, never even got a cult following.
The Adventures of Brisco County Jr only got one season and has mostly passed into obscurity. Which is a shame because it's fun and can be a great little time capsule from the days when people thought the future might actually be something to be optimistic about.
Cabin Boy is not what you'd call... good. BUT it is still weirdly enjoyable. It's an experience. One other people should have. Whether they want it or not.
Advent Rising was so unsuccessful it helped kill the publisher, and it got terrible reviews. And yeah, the game feels like there are glaring omissions due to it being rushed out. But I absolutely love it. The powers are cool, the story is simple but works, and it definitely left me wanting more.
Also, Babylon 5 will always be underrated because it's not possible to rate it highly enough.
I had forgotten all about The Shadow.
What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows...
I had a dog named Shadow and would frequently quote this at him. Never seen the movie but had tapes of the radio show.
Duuuuuude. Brisco County Jr. Is a name I haven't heard in a LONG time. I liked it a lot as a kid.
Cabin Boy is fucking weird and wonderful. Very weird tho. But wonderful too, while being super duper weird.
I love that weird wonderful movie.
These pipes.. are cleeeaaaan!
Haha! I remember loving the shit out of Cabin Boy when I first saw it years and years ago. I tried to give it another watch a little while back and gave up. It's awful!
What if we took a British-style police procedural and made it not just a comedy, but a full-blown parody/spoof. And also it was created by Charlie Brooker, of Black Mirror fame.
Packed with wall-to-wall sight gags, terrible puns, and blink-and-you'll-miss-it jokes.
There are three seasons, each two 45-minute episodes.
Links (for those outside the US or EU): Season 1, Season 2, Season 3.
Relevant Mitchell&Webb
the bodies keep washing up cloth!
Not to mention, the titles a poop joke.
They were mentioned in a post on Lemmy. Decided to take a listen and they are amazing!
They have a story spanning three albums: The Protomen, Act II: The Father of Death, and Act III: The City Made Us.
Found them browsing for new music and fell in love. The albums are all stories and wonderfully done.
Hey, a fellow Ayreonaut in the wild!
Yeah, how could I forget about him. Anyone who's into science fiction and prog rock should check it out, and his other projects like Star One too.
I've got new music to listen to! Thank you!
The Protomen are my favorite band and it's not even close.
Don't sleep on "The Cover Up" by The Protomen, their 80s cover album.
The movie Big Trouble.
God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the Earth is filled with violence because of them. You are to bring into the Ark two of all living creatures to keep them alive with you." [eats a Frito]
There’s just no beating these when they’re fresh!
I dunno' I rematched that one not long ago and thought that it didn't age very well
One of my favorite super hero movies to this day is the original kick ass. Beats the pants off any marvel movie by miles. Not exactly a flop but criminally underrated.
It's not that obscure, but Perfect Blue (1997) has not left my mind since I first watched it.
Pretty much everything "Weird Al" Yankovic and his band have ever done.
They've gained more recognition in recent years, but most people don't realize that his catalogue goes back to the mid-1970s. A lot of people are sleeping on his work, even today, because he's categorized as a "novelty artist".
The early stuff is rough, but from the mid-1980s on up is worth a listen even if you're not a fan.
The Quest For Glory series from Sierra. They ended up making 5 and you could import your character from the previous game with some save disks. You could pick between a fighter, a thief, or a magic user and grow from there. In the later games you could grow and be a paladin, a sorcerer (with a staff), or the lead to a thieves guild depending on your choices. In the last game you got to become a king and pick a love interest that you met from previous games. The 4th game had a hot vampire babe, so normally tried to marry her.
Don't Trust The B in Apt 23
certainly not an obscure videogame, but Prey (2017) is amazing, and for some reason it flopped. Also the DLC might be the best I’ve played, it’s a completely new kind of game
if you check the free epic games sometimes you might have it in your collection
Freddy Got Fingered.
It's a practical joke disguised as a movie.
Though it has found a cult following since release, I don't think it's appreciated enough for how hilarious it is.
Hypernormalisation — documentary about political theatre
Yeeees, and/or any of his other documentaries.
Joe Pera Talks With You
It's a treasure and it's hard to get people to watch it. I've watched the series all the way through at least four times, by now. It's sadly short, so not too hard to do.
Being from the UP and having lived many years in Marquette, that yooper accent is so far off I can hardly watch it. I like the humor tho, and i've watched a fair chunk of the show.
It took me awhile to get used to it, too, because I was pretty sure he was doing shtick. And I'm sure he's laying it on a little thick for the character, but eh...I think he's kinda just like that?
Fuckin great show
His weird grandfather appeal totally worked for me. A man operating at a quieter/calmer frequency than the chaotic world around him, completely at peace with his lot in life.
I think I like what he represents, more than who he is
My favorite band of all time is Guided by Voices. Started out in the 80s recording on four track cassettes and pressing 500 copies of the record playing local dive bars. In the early 90s front man Robert Pollard was done after 7 albums and no success outside their hometown so he wrote their final album Propeller.
Of course that made a bit of splash and got them shows in NYC where they kind of took off (at least in 90s indie rock circles). After that success Pollard kept on going until 2004 with a rotating cast of characters when he disbanded GBV for good. I unfortunately only heard about them around this time and missed out on seeing them live.
Well when I say for good it only lasted until 2010 when the "classic lineup" reunited. They toured playing all the old hits for a yrar or two, then started releasing new music and haven't stopped.
Bob is utterly prolific and has over 100 albums to his name across various solo and side projects. I don't click as well with most of the newer stuff but I appreciate it non the less.
Pick any of the albums from 1990-96 for some lofi rock masterpieces, or 1997-2004 for some higher fidelity power pop. The lyrics and song titles are all fairly obsurd on any of them. Bee Thousand is their classic album but I'd recommend Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. Its a bit more polished than the cassette hiss of earlier stuff but still not a full studio sound.
Anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Galavant. Two seasons on ABC in the mid 2010s.
A bawdy, over the top musical medieval themed fantasy series about a knight trying to get his wife back after she's kidnaped and forced to marry an evil king.
Fantastic main cast and Weird Al in a recurring role as as the abott of an order of singing monks.
I don't generally like musicals, but it's so damned catchy and fun.
Terriers - excellent 2010 caper-style dramedy series starring Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, created by the screenwriter behind "Oceans Eleven". Relatable & endearing characters, compelling arcs, razor-sharp writing, wrapped in a noire detective plot set in sunny San Diego. Aired for just 13 eps on FX back in the day, only a couple of years before streaming platforms really hit big (and where it likely would have found its audience) and I've mourned "what could have been" ever since. Can't recommend it enough, despite the final ep having a bit of a "lady or the tiger" ending. I urge you to seek it out.
Goodnight Punpun
It's a manga so if you are in the west it's already going to be obscure. It's also pretty messed up so it might not be for everyone, but if you are able to stomach it and read it, man is it amazing. It has very little anime bs that a lot of anime/manga suffer from; it's not a shonen, it's aimed at an older audience. It is very well written. The art is amazing. I could go on, but I think it's best enjoyed blind.
It's 13 volumes, but you can binge it in a day (not recommended). It has a lot of dialog so a lot more reading than most manga.
If you are not sure about the manga, read the first chapter. I think it sets the tone well for the rest of the series.
Like a lot of great things, I wish I could read the manga again for the first time.
If you're post edu and wanting more solid structured yet casual learning, The Great Courses offer a fantastic selection of in-depth overviews. I've spent many hours in their world history, science, humanities and music courses.
The Raid and The Raid 2 are, without a doubt, the most nailbiting action movies I've ever watched. I consistently overhype this movie to friends as the best action movie ever made, which is replied to with an eyeroll or something - until the first fight scene, where they look at me with a "what the fuck is THIS?!" face. By the end of the movie they are completely convinced...
And then I tell them the second movie is just as good and their heads explode.
I love the Raid movies. The kitchen fight scene in The Raid 2 is a masterpiece.
Everybody looks at me crazy when I say Running Scared with Paul Walker was a pretty great movie. I also think Paul Walker could have vied for any role Marky Mark got had he not died.
Motherfucking
Centaurworld
Got massively slept on.
Breathe in a bag!
Somewhat off topic...
I think it was like last year or so I had a huge discussion irl about the word centaur and how it should be pronounced. Sen-tower is wrong, right out; sen-tarr is how I used to pronounce it; but it came to my and the other people's attention that I was discussing this with that the correct way to pronounce it is sen-torr, like Ford Taurus or a taurus demon. Like, "I tore that ugly poster off my wall".
Some people pronounce "Taurus" like torus, others like tarr-us
Off topic, again... Did you know that the Ford Taurus has a racing pedigree?
No, that's interesting
One of my earliest Lemmy posts (on another account) was about exactly this.
It was really good. Maybe people in general gave it a miss bc it seemed like MLP? But I can't see much of the appeal in that and I thought Centaurworld was great.
Fantastic show, can recommend!
Tell me. Are you. Comfor-table?
Loved that show. So much fantastic unabashed silliness. There are not enough silly shows.
The first season was pretty good, a bit too goofy at times (clearly aimed at a somewhat younger audience), but it had potential. The second season definitely dropped the ball.
hard disagree.
It looks like a cutesy Zelda clone, but it's so much more than that. It's dark with extremely atmospheric music. It is a "knowledge-based" game, with metroidvania/Zelda aspects.
The puzzles are phenomenal, and I don't think it can ever be replicated.
I just finished up Deaths Door and watching that video really reminded me of it. Looks fun, thanks for sharing.
I liked Death's Door. TUNIC is far better, IMO.
I just started playing tunic a few weeks ago. Its brilliant. Need to go finish it.
Story time:
I had just beat Hollow Knight and was messing with Elden Ring, and the oppressive souls-like atmosphere was getting a little stale, so I went browsing the steam store looking for something more upbeat. Oh what's this? A cute little Zelda clone? Sounds like just what the doctor ordered.
No. No it wasn't.
Not only was it another souls-like, deciphering that writing system absolutely consumed me, to the point I had to uninstall the game for a while because I was losing sleep over it.
spoiler
I'm 99% sure Trunic is based on the Shavian alphabet. Both scripts are phonemic writing systems for English. Both use rotated letters to contrast voiced and unvoiced consonants, but the real clue for me is that both Trunic and Shavian use single letters for rhotic vowels.
Oh, but the music is great. And I really one other devs to go further with the "manual as gameplay" concept.
To me, the soulsy-ness of it is mostly skin deep. Yes, the combat can be challenging (mainly the bosses), but there are accessibility options to make it a lot easier.
This was a great game. I will admit I had to turn on the no kill cheat in order to beat the last boss. I was just glad they offered that as an option.
I used infinite stamina for the last boss. I think I could have beaten it without that, but I probably would've gotten too frustrated and it would've taken forever.
So far I've loved every tv show Taika Waititi has been involved with, and many of them I've only found out when checking "ok, what else has he done" on wikipedia. Most recently, Reservation Dogs and Our Flag Means Death.
Also, I think there are many canadian tv shows that are really good and deserve a wider global audience: like Heated Rivalry, 19-2 (the original one in French) and Happily Married (C'est comme ça que je t'aime).
Our Flag means Death was so good! It is a tragedy that it was canceled. Taika had one more season planned and it was very popular. Seems like the higher ups didn’t like that it was too woke.
I'm still bitter about it. What a weird and fantastic show!
Have you seen Wellington Paranormal? That's a fun one. Hunt for the wilder people is a good movie too.
Wellington Paranormal is hilarious. Didn't know about this movie though, will add to my watchlist, thank you!
I got a recommendation for the Canadian show North of North here on Lemmy, and while not the best show ever, it was quite enjoyable, and IMO a great example of the importance of DEI (sounds like a lot of support went into making the show happen at all, but precisely because it wasn't the typical concept/setting to get greenlit it felt really fresh).
I've watched the first episode, yeah doesn't look like it's gonna be the Inuit version of Reservation Dogs as I would've hoped, but still probably a show I'll enjoy watching.
You're gonna think I'm weird, but star vs the forces of evil. It's a trip. It's so creative and different. Watched it with my youngest and my grandson.
I don't think you're weird. At least not for that reason.
I liked how they explored the monster angle
Yeah, same! The monsters weren't one dimensional, or typical bad guys, they had depth and character, backstories and character growth, they weren't blunt instruments who were that typical or usual representation of being just bad. Some monsters were redeemable, some weren't. In a magical dimension where anything can and does exist. It touches on inclusivity. I hugely enjoyed the concepts and life dilemmas they broached. And the way they gave deep concepts a light hearted view, but still explored it fully. Gave the character growth so much depth. You see so much character growth throughout the seasons. I could go on. Brilliant show, even though it is mostly kid aimed, kinda.
Yeah, Star's initial impression was mostly "empty air-headed princess living her life abroad", but watching her wise up to the actions of her kingdom, develop a sense of justice, and mature with it really was a level of growth I wasn't quite expecting fomr a kids show
The TV adaptation of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. The voice acting is incredible and it has the best soundtrack from any media in the last 10 years. It's a solid show that had virtually no money so they made the most with abstract backgrounds and amazing writing. The show was always under threat of being cancelled and wrapped up so fucking well at the end of season 2 that it was clear the people behind the show knew Disney was stringing them along.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a reboot of TMNT that removes the bioscience and introduces Yokai/Yaogwai and magic. It's the best writing TMNT has ever had across any iteration and is on-par with Futurama with delivering a poignant moment in a cartoon full of solid jokes. The turtles learn about their dads and what family means - it's got family moments as strong as Stephen Universe. I cannot say enough good stuff about Rise.
Hm. There is a pair of Star Trek adventure games, called 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites. They are essentially an extra season of TOS, and are quite good.
Bone comic book series by Jeff smith.
It is the perfect balance between Tolkien and Disney, had a influence in making comic books more popular in the 90s-00s.
Its mainly aimed at kids but its very enjoyable to adults as well, it has the topic of metaphysics front and center.
https://kids.scholastic.com/content/kids64/en/books/bone/books.html
Hyper Light Drifter for gaming.
Extol (Norway) for music, specifically the album "Burial".
I'm not sure HLD is "underrated". Looking at the rest of the studio's catalog, I don't think they managed to match HLD since.
I never hear anyone talk about it ever and it's one of my favorite games. I think it's a work of art, really. To me it's underrated.
Extol
Bruh... I didn't know anyone else had ever heard of this band lol.
👋
They are so underrated. It's crazy.
Haven't listened to them in years. I think "Synergy" was the last album of theirs that I listened to. I remember it being more thrashy than their previous stuff, but really good.
Oh wow, that album is over 20 years old. Ugh.
I actually really love the average to panned 2001 romcom Kate and Leopold. It's about a average woman working in advertising and a hunky duke(?) from centuries before who fell forward in time. Hugh Jackman and Meg Ryan, I think they have reasonable chemistry and there's a lot of good lines that are delivered well. It's a fun movie, and even if it's not good per se it's a good experience with fun vibes.
I just remember this movie talking about the Mac G5 before it was announced. As an early early Apple employee that geeked me right out.
It's a very fun movie. Definitely need to rewatch.
Also, my first exposure to the utterly hilarious Kristen Schaal.
Heh...my only real memory of the film from viewing it back in the day is Liev Schreiber's time-traveling character snickering at the word "erection". Clearly I should rewatch it!
I had forgotten what film that scene was in!
- Big Fan, a movie about an obsessive football fan, starring Patton Oswalt. I only saw it once, when it first came out (2009), but remember thinking that it was really good. A very prescient, dark comedy about a certain type of guy that is very relevant today. It made $230,000 in theaters according to Wikipedia.
- Unreal 2, and specifically just the multiplayer. Unreal 2 was a pretty disappointing sequel, and it didn't even have multiplayer when it came out. A year after its launch, they released a multiplayer addon and it was amazing. Completely overshadowed by Unreal Tournament 2004, never really had a chance of becoming popular, but it had a dedicated fan base for a while. You can get it for free now; I want to get a group together at some point.
I watched Big Fan around the time it came out and I remember liking it a lot.
Delta Dawn what's that flower you have on, could it be a faded rose from days gone baaaaaahhhhh
I forgot that song was in it. Ok, now I have to watch it again.
Not a single piece of media, but I want to make an apologia on behalf of amateur sci fi writing. No the prose isn't going to wow you, but I love seeing other people's unfiltered imagination at work.
I'm very much into worldbuilding, and I'll devour fan wikis without even consuming the source material. My knowledge of Warhammer 40K and D&D is almost exclusively from various wikis. Seeing regular people build their own little paracosms, with or without accompanying art or fiction, I find very engrossing.
As for actual media, judging by how little representation the series gets in the US, I'd say Custom Robo. I thoroughly enjoyed the single entry on GameCube that Nintendo localized here.
I read book #1 (Revelation Space) and am one chapter into #2 but the RS world building is dramatic and has stuck with me. I haven't read Dune and can't compare (and doubt it's comparable), but I I'd say it's comparable to the ~2021 movie where there's desolate landscapes that aren't irrelevant, technologies that are demonatrated, not explained, and converging story arcs between multiple characters and times. I find it enjoyable because for the most part, it's grounded in known physics. Near-light speeds and no wormholes. Interstellar voyages, but they're still so slow they rely on refrigerated sleep.
The books have reviews that get more mixed as the progress but yet, people keep reading through. I'm mentioning it because there is a wiki that seems pretty detailed, though I have done much to keep it unspoiled. There's the original 00s trilogy plus a 2021 4th main book, a separate trilogy, a support book, and over a dozen smaller works from as far back as 1990 with half being short stories and half being novellas, where the author was finding his footing and filling arcs.
Generally, the problem readers have is that the author introduces promising story arcs and dilemma solutions, only to abandon them and never mention them again. Then the endings feel rushed and anti climactic. But I'm someone who thoroughly enjoys playing Elite Dangerous, a space sim that's "a puddle a mile wide but an inch deep" because I simply love the immersion and use my imagination. Elite is to sound design what Reynolds is to world building.
I've never seen any of the Dune movies (save for a few minutes of the David Lynch movie while at a friend's house one time) but I read the first few books back in 2015 (11 years ago 😮) I enjoyed the first book very much but got less and less interested with each subsequent book.
Language is an aspect of worldbuilding I love. Sci fi rarely dwells on the language barriers between sapient species, but for me it's the main event.
Star Wars actually gets it right with Chewbacca. An alien is very unlikely to be able to have a vocal tract capable of approximating human speech, so the best you can hope for is a bilingual conversation where both parties speak their own languages. And of course there's nothing that says a language has to be based on sounds. Rikchick (sp?) is a sign language that uses tentacles.
The semantic space of an alien language is likely to be very different as well. Aliens with different senses will have a different Umwelt (subjective perception of their environment), and will have different words to describe their experiences. It's common (though recently challenged) linguistic wisdom that humans are incapable of describing odors independently of analogies with the source of those odors (earthy, floral etc), or emotional reactions to odors (stinky, fragrant), or comparisons with taste (sweet, sour). Visual sensations (colors) have words that are completely divorced from any source that exhibits those colors. Green describes an instance of subjective experience independent of any green thing, but (most) well-studied languages have no such facility for smells. There are no "odor colors".
Now if dogs could talk, they might have such odor colors, since dogs live in a very smelly world.
I got carried away there, but I wrote it, so now you have to read it.
And read it, I did. I've never thought about how we can't independently describe smells. I do feel like the descriptions based on taste would count as independent, though. It less that they're dependent on taste and more that taste is very related to smell. There's certainly a lack of useful smell descriptors, still.
But what do I know. There's a class of smells that I call "round". They're the opposite of sharp or pungent, I suppose
Chinese Lore Podcast, not a singular piece but worth a mention.
The translations aren't bad, it's incredible value for free audiobook/translations.
I had tons of fun with Battleborn! It was a FPS hero shooter/MOBA hybrid with co-op modes and Borderlands style load-outs, skill tree and gear. Unfortunately never became very popular and they shut it down after desperately trying to revive it by changing its model. The only MOBA that ever clicked for me.
God yes. I miss it dearly.
Deadlock is scratching the itch for me.
Also Battleborn Reborn has made the campaign, and bot matches possible again.
Work has gone into making online matches work, and there are some videos of test games on youtube.
Work has stalled for now, as the main dev is busy with other stuff.
There's this indie game called The Gap. It's about a man who is trying to find the cure to Huntington's disease to save his family. He discovers that déjà vu is one's own memories from a parallel universe. He uses this knowledge to search other realities to find the cure. It's a slow burn but it's so good.
This is actually one of my favorite games and it has the third place spot after Silent Hill 2 and SOMA. This isn't a horror game just to be clear. I haven't seen anyone talk about this game which is a real shame. I highly recommend it!
Added to my wishlist!
I love SOMA as well and the first two Silent Hill games. SOMA was one of the better "philosophy in play" games I've ever played.
Tom Goes to the Mayor is a delightful series that really captures the feeling of living in forgotten small-town America and being crushingly poor.
I don't know if that's what the creators were going for but it resonated with me on that level.
Knowing Tim Heidecker, that's probably exactly what they were going for.
Flower (video game): https://youtu.be/0IS9sGGuvYo
Cable Guy . Jim Carey is very scary and the end monologué about thé internet future was spot on.
Mr. Robot is one of my all-time favorites and my most recent favorite was Mr. Corman.
Thank you for saying Mr Robot!!! I was scrolling the comments hoping someone would mention it, not enough people talk about it, it's so beautiful in every aspect acting, images, music, the story, the story, so so beautiful, I re-watch it once a year and never get enough. A+++
Games: Epistory and Nanotale. Both typing games from Fishing Cactus. Absolutely beautiful games that have interesting stories and you get to practice with your typing skills. I love both of these games so much.
Tv: Sliders. It was fairly popular when it was running and got kind of weird at the end, but I love that show. It was one that my family got together to watch every episode each week when they were on broadcast. I was also part of an early online petition to save the show and move it to the SciFi channel. I was also part of the early online petition to save MST3K, back when online petitions actually worked.
Movie: Ghostbusters Answer the Call. People will disagree with me but I unapologetically DGAF. That movie is hilarious and I love putting it on when I work out. It’s a far better Ghostbusters movie than the last two garbage ones that were put out. It has everything from the original: dark adult horror comedy about scientists who save the world. The last two were not true GB movies, they are family friend teen coming of age movies with a plot that depended so heavily on nostalgia that they felt like a crappy cash grab. ATC is my second favorite GB movie behind only the original. Holtzman is my hero!
Movie: Ghostbusters Answer the Call.
If anyone's giving it a chance for the first time, I do recommend the extended edition. For some reason the theatrical cut out the low point of the relationship arc between the two main characters.
I don't think all the humour lands, but enough of it does, and the movie has a good heart. At the very least it remembered that Ghostbusters is a comedy. The new movies have the same flavour as every Marvel superhero outing.
It's a great Ghostbusters movie. No argument here.
Akira Kurosawa's lesser known works. He's most famous for films like Seven Samurai or Yojimbo, but his other films like The Bad Sleep Well are super amazing too. It's a film noir movie with a strong anti-corporation message I bet would resonate with a lot of people here.
The Jesse Owens Story (1984). Really good made for TV biopic. Won a primetime emmy. But has barely 300 total ratings on IMDB and so few on Letterboxd that it doesn't have an average score. Several cast members from the Roots miniseries.
Meet the Raisins (1988). The original 30 minute made for TV claymation special. Here on YouTube (lots of music missing) It was a spinoff of a highly successful marketing campaign (a 30 second commercial where raisins sing 'heard it through the grapevine').
The music was the best part. Sadly rights to the music purchased/available only when it aired I suspect. Daria was later but has had a fan restoration project trying to let folks know what music went with the episodes originally.
Man, people can't help but post stuff they like and is popular, not stuff that's almost never talked about. Anyway...
The Irresponsible Captain Tyler is an old school anime most people slept on. It's the sci-fi genera of "aliens are elves with big shoulder pads", and Tyler is a bum, he decides he wants to join the military because it's got free food and chicks dig guys in uniform, and then he accidentally starts an interstellar war with the aliens, accidentally becomes captain of a ship, and accidentally starts beating the crap out of the aliens without meaning to. The aliens think he's a strategic genius, his bosses think he's an idiot and are trying to get rid of him, and his crew can't tell if he's one or the other. The whole show has a lot of love put into it, each background character has it's own name and voice actor, and the show is hilarious right off the bat till the end.
I also feel that Thief the Dark Project doesn't get enough credit and attention. It was the first first person sneaker, has better stealth mechanics than even some modern games, and a great story and world building. I think maybe some sequels that weren't as popular as the second one kinda made people drop the series but it was fantastic.
Very obscure 45-minute 1991 anime movie: Christmas in January. Rated extremely low (5.46 / 10) on MAL, it's absolutely one of my favorite movies. It's whimsical and melancholic and so so interesting. Reminds me a lot of the Ghibli movie Ocean Waves, which is also an underrated gem (and, while I'm at it, the Kimagure Orange Road masterpiece sequel movie from the same director as Ocean Waves).
I really love stories that are just miraculous/odd/interesting excerpts of people's lives that are otherwise inconsequential. There was nothing grand or life-changing about the events in the story, but I will never forget the delicate social interplay in the shoe store, or the only scene that actually takes place in January at the very end: just a moment of reflection.
Triangle is an independent movie made in 2009 - so good. First found it on YouTube for free, I believe i recently saw it on peacock
akin to Momento, Triangle requires at least a couple viewings.
I enjoyed this flick. Went through a phase of movies dealing with the concept that is at the core of this one, I enjoy them.
I am the KWING of this genre. There was a phenomenal show on PAX yes the Canadian local station called "Young Blades". It was SO good. About the three musketeers then a girl disguises herself as a boy to join them. I wish I could find it on the internet somewhere.
A tale in the desert was kind of Minecraft before Minecraft. Such a great game.
Nexus Tk kingdom of the winds was also great until they changed the system for leveling.
Tons of books or book series like Darren Shan saga and tales of ambrose. This great series by Christopher pike about vampires
My entire life has been spent in this genre 😆
Henry Kuttner's short-ish story ‘Year Day’ from 1953 predicted how advertising will be in the future that we're on track to hit. The story was published in the collection appropriately named ‘Ahead of Time’.
Which Zelda game could possibly be your example of underrated?
I just thought he was finding a hidden treasure...
Oracle of Seasons/Ages is almost never mentioned in discussions about Zelda. The shitty CD-i games get more attention!
Oracle games are my favorite. Minish Cap is also good and often passed over.
Oracle of Seasons was my first Zelda game and I adored it!
Yknow I've been trying to decide what GB/A era game to replay and Oracles might be it. VERY fond memories of those games; I had Ages, my brother had Seasons. The animal companions are silly and cute and the level and puzzle design was superb.
I've played modern LoZ and had fun with the open world style, but majorly prefer the more linear, curated style of the earlier games.
I am still kinda pissed that someone stole my flip phone GBA (er... What was that one called again? I'm drawing a blank for some reason, even tho it was objectively the best one) along with Season of Ages (it was currently in the gameboy), which I just started.
Gameboy Advance SP. First Gameboy with built in backlight. RIP to yours.
Skyward Sword?
Skyward Sword ain't great though
I didn't play it until the Switch remaster. Basically went in blind, and I had a blast. Loved it.
That's the prevailing opinion certainly, but there's a pretty diehard contingent who love it. That it just gets a bad rep because it gets compared to the masterpiece that was Twilight Princess.
Can't say myself, as I've never played it, but I've got a few friends who are huge proponents of it and would say it's underrated.
And, to be fair, something doesn't have to be good to be underrated. People hate Skyward Sword, and I assume it's not actually terrible. Just on the low end of Zelda games.
2?
The 10th Kingdom (2000). Great miniseries that mashes up fairy tales some modern twists. I really enjoyed all the characters, and the kind-of multiverse was cool.
Tremulous (2006). A first person shooter with first person builder elements. The human team depends on electricity for their various guns and turrets, the alien team can build anywhere and walk on the walls and ceilings, but are more limited to their claw's melee range. There was no matchmaking so you just went to the same server all the time and made friends with the people there. It was cool.
Salmon, holy crap. I saw them at the Cattle Club in sac around 30 years ago. Still have my Paco, Drop the Chicken CD somewhere.
I lost both my Salmon cds! I can't find an online copy of the other one, I think it was '00 EP.
I saw them at the Cactus Club in SJ long ago. Its such a unique sound. I hear they even managed to pick up fans out on the East coast.
M.U.L.E. - old Commodore 64 and Atari game
Planet of the Apes - the French book that spawned all the films an shows.
God, rainworld is not a flop per se, but i feel like it had so much more potential. It's just a masterpiece of game design, soundtrack, art, leveldesign, lore etc
I feel like Rainworld is the definition of "cult classic". I couldn't get into it, but judging by how much I see it on YouTube, I guess it struck a chord with someone.
Lots of people seemed to hate it and not play very far which is a shame. One of only a few games where I got emotional and cried at the ending.
How to with John Wilson is one of the best shows that has a very simple premise. He basically just finds odd things happening around NYC and gives commentary, advice, and self-reflection, and is very funny.
Metalocalypse. If you like metal music, animated shows and a bit of dark humor then this is the show for you.
Runner up: Aqua Team Hunger Force - if you like short stupid storylines and crude jokes.
And bonus: Squidbillies - if you like Aqua Teen Hunger Force but you want things the get even stupider.
2 80s movies I just love:
- Head Office. Mocks corporate culture and holds up in current corporate culture. Really good cast, and plenty of good jokes and storylines.
- Robot Jox. So damn stupid, but I just can’t quit it. Cool premise, not great special effects, but good enough to still be fun.
Netherbeast Incorporated is a weird but charming vampire office comedy from 2007, featuring Darrel Hammond, Dave Foley, and Steve from Blues Clues. And a small appearance by Robert Wagner as President James Garfield.
It's kind of dumb, but I love it. I have never met another person in real life who's seen it.
Headbangers: Rhythm Royale. I really want to see the alternate universe where this game took off, it's a really fun rhythm based battle royale.
However when you can't find players to play with gameplay against bots feel give 0 challange, you don't really get the satisfaction out of winning.
Ahh I see theres no local multiplayer. Games like this need that.
Man...tons but I'll just pick a few. (OK a few turned into a lot anyways)
Music:
Driveways (lots of heavy Blink 182 influence)
Shiny Toy Guns (Especially the first album)
Lauren Babic (Started with YouTube but my favorite female vocalist)
Dream State (Before CJ Gilpin left, new singer is meh for me)
Tash Sultana (Flow state was fantastic)
Like roses (Splenetic is my favorite song feel like they just need a big break to get big)
Savlonic (Started as a joke band, became really solid)
Movie/Show:
Blood Machines (Music by Carpenter Brut, whole short film is in the same style as his music videos)
Tomo-Chan is a Girl! (Cute anime romance about a tomboy girl wanting to be recognized by her boy bff)
Mushi-Shi (Very chill and intriguing stories about mysterious Mushi creatures)
The Air I Breathe (Left a lasting impression on me, has Brendan Fraser pre-hiatus and Sarah Michelle Gellar among other great cast)
H (South Korean Thriller about a psychopath and a detective, really excellent. Was hard to find a copy in the us)
Taking Chance (Excellent Kevin Bacon movie, should really hit hard on any military family)
Role Models (Not sure if it's underated but never see anyone mention it. Hilarious movie with Paul Rudd and probably Seann William Scott's best comedy work imo)
Better Off Dead (John Cusack comedy about a teen break up and eventually recovery. May have been better known at the time but hilarious movie)
Game:
Xenogears (Seems more well know now, but absolutely was a pivotal game on my youth and no one knew of it for years)
Katana Zero, Mirror's Edge, Ghostrunner, System Shock Remake, Prey, Stalker(I know I know but it always needs more fans imo lol)- (All games with mixed audience levels but still ones I feel don't have enough recognition.)
Hidden Cats, 100 Cats, X full of Cats, and Find All - (Really cute and cozy hidden object games. Most are either very cheap or free and I think more people should grab them and enjoy them.)
Books:
William Arand/Randi Darren books. There is a whole huge universe involved. They look like just harem smut on the surface, and his Randi Darren books do have a lot of smut to them, but there is an overall linking story through all of the books that is very enjoyable and intriguing. One of those "plot" books that has an even better actual plot imo. (First few books are rough on the edges but still good.)
Legends & Lattes (I'm sure it's well regarded in the "Cozy Adventure" groups, but it needs more recognition outside of that.)
The Big O.
The animators in Japan that did a lot of work on Batman TAS were inspired to make this weird show that's kinda like Batman, but instead of dressing up as a bat, the dude secretly has a giant robot... because Japan. Everyone in the city was mind wiped so there's philosophical questions the value of memories. It had a film noir vibe about the underlining mystery of why everyone was mind wiped. But also giant robot fights in every episode.
It aired on Cartoon Network, but wasn't picked up for a third season.
Within a Deep Forest Freeware, came out in 2006, by Nifflas. You're a ball.
Love the soundtrack, love the controls, love the design. It's perfect.
PK. A Bollywood movie that really resonated with me.
Well I don't know if underrated is valid here, but a few movies by Anders Thomas Jensen like Adam's Apples and Riders of Justice.
Common ground is it's morbid humour.
band The Suborbitals. It has 130 monthly listeners on spotify and it's one the best bands I've ever heard. I specially recommend Aquanaut (the Blackout rolling version), Devil's dance card, Let's forget ir for a while, 405 and Little things.
Honestly I recommend most songs, but these are the best :D
A web comic: Stand still, stay silent
An old game called Whiplash! Where you and 15 other NPCs, one of them a team mate, battle it out on track-mania style tracks.
Or if you have a ipx/spx network, or tcp/ip, you and 7 friends can battle it out at your next LAN party.
In terms of current games, I have to say Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Uses the Far Cry formula as a jumping off point for a very immersive experience that's about the beauty of Pandora. It's one of the most beautiful games I've ever played and really deepens the Avatar franchise. It's also the rare action game that is also cool to just hang out in and walk around, explore, forage for materials. It offers a kind of escape that games like Animal Crossing do in that regard (even though you're not building anything; it's just such a rich immersive world that you feel like you're actually in Pandora).
Tv series: MR ROBOT; Person of Interest.
Manwha: The Boxer
Book: not really obscure, but for me not enough known is the Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins series
Day of the Triffids
I'll raise you The Midwich Cuckoos.
John Wyndham also wrote The Kraken Wakes in which aliens try and wipe out humanity via environmental collapse. It's kinda eerily prescient, only we're doing it to ourselves instead of aliens. Great author!
Love John Wyndham
On the surface, Cross Ange is just another fanservice mech anime. The first few episodes will filter out a lot of people before of the gore.
If you stick with it, you get one of the more aggressively feminist anime out there. And I do mean aggressive. Every character arc is a metaphor for something women either have to deal with primarily or exclusively in society. The show actively punishes the female characters who can't recognize themselves as victims and rewards the ones who do and work to fix their situations. The final villain is an incel power fantasy. I've seen next to no discussion on Cross Ange in this context online.
Steambot Chronicles for the PS2. It's my favorite game by a wide margin. I almost never replay games, but I've played that one all the way through over a dozen times. It's just chock-full of so many choices of what to do and how to do it, and the graphics and music come together to make the perfect atmosphere.
Stella Glow!
I played it on the 3DS. The story is pretty good, the music is gorgeous, some of it is voice-acted, and I loved the JRPG and dating sim elements.
Apart from my spouse, I cannot find anyone else who has heard of, let alone played, the game so I can geek out with them over it. 😭
Dilberts Desktop Games was a cooky arrangement of several different mini games that were fun for kids whilst satirical enough for adults to enjoy.
It came out as a demo on PC Shopper, back when Adams' politics was tame. The game absolutely bombed on reviews, but the music and the elevator game live rent free in my head
I still have my original CD-ROM! Techno Raiders was great fun.
"if i keep walking the halls, everyone will think I'm really busy"
Gomi, an early $5 iOS game that involved eating successively larger objects until an objective was reached, utilizing the tilt feature. It had so much potential to be a game with a medium to large speedrun/highscore community.
https://mezzacotta.net/and all the weird little experiments in webcomics they do
My personal favourite is Comments on a Postcard, which is they uploaded (intentionally) broken image links to a "webcomic", and then assign a caption for it from a set of user submitted captions. It gives the feeling of exploring old websites that are half broken and trying piece together what they were about
My two all-time favourite videogames, one of them kinda obscure and the other very obscure: What Remains of Edith Finch and Kentucky Route Zero respectively.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a ~2 hour story where you explore your family home as Edith Finch. The Finch family has had a lot of bad luck, and most of its members do not get old. As Edith, you explore the house room by room to see the respective person's last moments. It's not a horror game, though I should put a trigger warning for child and infant mortality for the game. Play it in a single sitting, treat it as an interactive movie. I cannot recommend it enough.
The other one, Kentucky Route Zero, is a bit harder to recommend to a general audience. The synopsis is as follows: Conway drives deliveries for an antiques shop, the last one he will ever do as the shop is closing down. On his way to his destination, he asks for directions, and is told he needs to take Kentucky highway 0, an underground highway with a hidden entrance. As the game goes on, we explore the mysterious underground world of Kentucky, with its strange inhabitants and culture, and expand our cast of characters along the way. I honestly cannot give a more accurate description of it without giving stuff away. This game has no puzzles or interesting game mechanics. You cannot alter the story much either. What it offers, though, is a glimpse into a surreal world filled with hope, longing, loss, regret, and, most of all, mystery. The game will not answer all your questions. There is no grand reveal before the curtain closes. You can puzzle things together from your exploration only.
I think that, for many people, it will be quite boring. But it pushes buttons for me that no other media I have encountered does. It is best played at night if you're tired, as the whole game kind of feels like a weird dream that you struggle to recall as you wake up. If that sounds up your alley, well, here you go.
I think the actual issue I had at release with edith finch was that it was 20 bucks for a 3 hour non replayable experience
Thankfully it's much cheaper whenever a sale is on these days :)
I think Disco Elysium players could get into KRZ pretty well
He Who Fights With Monsters litRPG adventure. Amazing book disguised as simple fun.
PeopleWatching. Im acctively mad that it doesn't get a fraction of the attention it deserves.
Little King's Story presents as a cutesy Pikmin-like on Wii and Steam (I played it on Wii. Not sure about the port.) but it's got deep, challenging gameplay and the story absolutely pushes boundaries of video game narrative. I only played it the once years-and-years ago, but it really worked its way into my psyche. It deserves a place in the conversation about video-games-as-art alongside standouts like Shadow of the Colossus and Journey.
Zero Effect (1998 film). Charming, smart, funny Holmes update with great performances.
H-E-R-O by Will Pfeifer (DC Comics)
“Love Me, I’m a Liberal” by Phil Ochs.
Not4Sale: TV Sheriff and the Trailbuddies.
Nobody had seen it, it’s in insane audio/visual dreamscape/nightmare. It’s very difficult to find, but it’s worth it… especially going into it on acid without knowing anything about it. My friend did that to me, put it on, said nothing once we were trippin balls, and by the end I had cried laughing more than I have for any other piece of media I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen introduced many friends to it the same way.
Shadow of the Colossus comes to mind.
You mean the cult classic, multiple released/remastered game from the famed ICO studio? You think it's underrated?
Something can be well regarded and some people can still find that insufficient if it's important enough to them. Or they haven't the anecdotal experience of others enjoying it to their level.