I didn't like Ascension as much as I was hoping I would, but I still thought it was worth watching, especially compared to most of the stuff the scifi network has played over the last couple years. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that later there are some answers to the things that you are questioning.
Congratulations. I have put the game aside for awhile. I'm near the end of the 3rd dungeon, but after getting wiped out a couple of times in a row I didn't really feel like grinding anymore at the time, so I started up a couple of other games. I hope to go back to it soon because I was really enjoying it.
I’m curious about the Zelda show and I’m like you in that I’m sure I’ll end up watching it no matter what. I do wonder about that Game of Thrones comparison though. I have to think that they were just throwing out the name of a current and popular fantasy show and not trying to make any real comparison. Game of Thrones is all about political intrigue and character development. I love Zelda games and play them all, but the story and the characters are all extremely shallow. If they are really planning on fleshing out the world of Zelda and making the story and the characters more complex then I'm all for it, but they don’t have all that much to work with.
I love science fiction as well, and am also dissapointed that there really aren't any quality outer-space science fiction shows on at the moment.
I kind of liked the mini-series Ascension, which they talked about maybe making into a regular show. I've also been watching Defiance and think it's okay, but am really only watching it due to the lack of anything better. I have been liking the 12 Monkeys show, although not as much as I hoped I would. I did see they are making a tv version of Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which could potentially be good.
It's been a long time since I watched Stargate, but the basic premise as far as I remember was that the military finds a stargate (portal) that can transport people to other planets that also have stargates. The military forms teams that explores these other worlds. It is discovered that there are some bad-guy parasitic alien race that have been controlling other civilations for a really long time, including ancient earth cultures like Egypt, where the people also worshipped the aliens as gods. Alot of the series is the military team vs these aliens.
I love the Dune books. I have read the whole series multiple times, in addition to having made the mistake of reading the sequels that were co-written by Frank Herbert's son.
I agree with what Casey said, I don't care how they do it, I just want to be pulled into the game, and I can be equally be pulled in by either story or mechanics (or some combination of both).
I grew up playing graphic adventure games which were basically all about the story (classic Sierra and Lucasarts). Currently I am playing Telltale's Game of Thrones on PS4 and Danganronpa on the Vita, two games that rely very little on mechanics, and am loving both.
But I also grew up playing games like Jumpman on the C64, Donky Kong on the Atari, and Mega Man, Mario, and Castlevania on the NES. What little story existed in any of those games didn't really mean a thing to me, they were just fun to play due to the mechanics. I still love platformers, shooters, etc, even though I rarely ever care about the story, and often find the story even gets in they way.
I'm pretty excited about this. I have a little over 1,000 points, so I think I'm going to get the Wonderful 101 (I think it is 600 points) and then a couple virtual console games that I don't already own.
I know some people are disappointed because they like the physical stuff more than free games, but I'm the opposite. I only signed up for Club Nintendo several months ago when I realized that they were giving away free digital games. Luckily I'm the type of person that saves console boxes and such, so I was able to go back and register most of my nintendo stuff.
I'm a huge fan of Dark Souls, and while I like the first one more, I still had a great time with Dark Souls 2.
I was concerned after first reading about the depleting health, but in actual practice I didn't find it that bad. In fact, I think it made me better at the game. If I was on a boss that I was having difficulty with, I'd keep practicing until I could almost beat it with half health, then I would just use an effigy and destroy them. Also, I was already kind of used to the health thing with Demon Souls. I also ended the game with plenty of leftover effigies, but I admit that was because I was so conservative, which did cause me some stress throughout the game.
I can understand the concern with the disappearing enemies, but I actually used that to my advantage too. Sometimes I would purposely go to areas with large numbers of enemies, kill them all, run back to the bonfire, then repeat. This would both help me with leveling up and then make my progress easier once they disappeared.
I do completely agree that the world was nowhere near as good as it was in the first one. I loved how the world was so interconnected in DS1. DS2 did just seem like a collection of levels with a hubworld. I guess in that way it was also similar to Demon Souls, it just tried to hide it a little more.
I'm about 25 hours in and have also been enjoying it (I'm halfway through the 3rd dungeon), but a couple days ago I decided to put it aside for awhile so I didn't burn myself out on it. It is a little too grindy for me and to be honest if I didn't love the Persona characters so much, this would probably be the point that I stopped playing for good (which is what I did when I got around the 20 hour mark in both Etrian Odyssey games that I have played).
I am a little dissapointed that the characters are less developed and rely more on their one-note quirks than they do in the main games (for example it seems like chie talks about meat even more often than she did in P4 and Akihiko obsesses with protein too much), but I am still enjoying seeing the characters again and am interested in seeing the story play out.
I'll probably pick it up again once I beat Danganropa on the Vita. I'm also currently playing the story mode in P4 Arena Ultimax because I really can't get enough of the Persona charcters. Overall though, playing these Persona spin-offs are just making me look forward to playing Persona 5 more and more.
On my list are Persona Q for the 3DS, Guardians of the Galaxy blu ray, the Morning Glories Compedium (comic book), full season sets up Community, Hyrule Warriors, and...I can't really remember right now. I did just buy a PS4 two days ago (along with Wolfenstein and Infamous Second Son), so maybe something for that.
That's the way I typically am with music too. If I really like something on first listen then it's usually not something I listen to for long before losing interest. Most of my favorite bands are ones where I wasn't sure how I felt about them after the first (and probably second) listen.
