Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Anti-Matter you don’t need to enjoy the sports to enjoy the game. It’s the PlayStation equivalent of Wii sports but more accurate.
I’m not a fan of tennis but loved it in Wii sports. Give it a try and you might just enjoy the game. There is shirtless boxers with customisation but it’s not that type of game, it’s a game for all ages.

@NintendoByNature @bimmy-lee @HobbitGamer Thanks for the explanation, guys. I had no idea. I also don't know that particular Christmas movie, well at least: not that I can remember. Either way: mystery solved...

@Zuljaras Yeah... I don't even know why I still bother, but a part of me really wants to try and understand what makes him tick, although I'm suspecting that's never going to happen, because it's all just too weird and WAY too much out of the ordinary...

@Anti-Matter As I said, you cannot always get everything from watching videos, and you actually don't have to shoot that much, that's all up to you, seeing as you control the character. You can also do the regular 3D platformer stuff, or let your companion character take care of some enemies.

And both Ratchet & Clank and Splatoon are SO kid friendly, that any and all excuses you come up with to not like them come across as completely weird and illogical, and they seem to have no validity, especially if we take into account the whole thing about you being perfectly fine with playing Final Fantasy games, which have all the realism and violence that you always say you hate so much.

And what you said about taste has nothing to do with being an Asian person: it isn't true at all that Asian people only like cute and kiddy games. They like plenty of other genres as well. Maybe not all Western type or realistic type games, but they most certainly like a couple of them, and they aren't as harshly against it in general, as you seem to believe. That's just you, and your highly specific, and extremely limited taste.

Oh, and I would replace "I sometimes criticize" with "I almost always criticize", because it's very rare, far as I've seen on here, that you actually agree with what people kindly recommend to you, so it's almost impossible to help you in that regard, which makes me wonder why you keep asking in the first place, because you already know that most if not all of us have a FAR broader taste and far more accepting nature, where games are concerned.

On a side note: the entire world knows that Asian people in general are often known to have far more violent and sadistic natures than Western people. You've only got to watch a couple of certain anime movies and/or series to see that specific kind of freaky stuff that could only have come from an Asian mind...

@ThanosReXXX
Oh, btw...
How did you know about Ratchet PS3 games as you don't play PlayStation machines ?

Edit: I have watched again Ratchet & Clank Trilogy PS3 (The HD remaster of PS2 version) and other Ratchet PS3 games from Youtube, try to engage with the gameplay and i thought at some point.... I was kinda curious again. I still need more time for my brain to digest the new things that might out of my comfort zone, so i need to rethink again Ratchet PS3 games. Sorry if i always freak out by trivial things. 😅

@Anti-Matter I know about the games, and I have played them, because friends of mine do own PlayStations.

As for all the video watching: again, I'd advise you to actually TRY a game out, instead of only watching videos. A video cannot give you the feeling and same impressions as when you're playing it yourself, so it's only ever going to be a partial impression, which should never be a deciding factor in buying or not buying a game.

Just go and find a game shop where they are able to let you try a game in the shop itself, so you can have some time to experience it for yourself, without risking the chance to buy it and then being stuck with a game that you don't like.

I also think you just need to let go of your strict beliefs a bit. Not everything is simply black or white, there's also a heck of a lot of colors of grey in between, so not all games with shooting in them are realistically violent, or too violent, and not even all realistic games are violent and/or not kid friendly.

And then there's also beautiful story telling games, with deep, meaningful game play, such as Life is Strange, which by the way, also happens to be published by Square-Enix.

@Anti-Matter - With all this PS3 talk, I’m starting to get nervous about Calendar Project 2020. Now I’m starting to feel the Home Alone rush.

@ThanosReXXX - I checked, and the movie came out in 83, so it’s possible you were already an expat. I was four (I turned 40 earlier this fall), and it’s certainly always been a part of my Christmas for as long as I can remember. The overall appeal is mid century Americana, so I totally understand that it might not all translate; but I’d still be curious to see what you think. I watch it every year, but I still haven’t shown it to my kids. Maybe my daughter this year. Five years she’s seen me drag that leg lamp out of storage for Christmas, and she’s never really questioned it.

@bimmy-lee Yeah me too! I just set up my tree and it's a bit smaller than I expected, but that's OK because it still looks cool.

@Sunsy Ah yeah I see. Go for it if you want to! Out of curiosity, I tried looking up Rosalina ornaments on Amazon and there's no such thing. Which is a bit surprising since she's a fairly popular character and she's associated with stars. That, and I would love to have one.

@bimmy-lee I'll see your possible and raise you with a definitely:
I came here when I was 9 (which was in '79)...

I had to smile at the leg of the lamp, though. It's just the hood ornament that screams "grandma's house" to me, because those are the types of lamp ornaments/hoods that a lot of old people have in their houses over here. Typical 70's - 80's style. (edit: or maybe even 60's) Like those velvet rug covers on those old land line dial phones:

Or maybe that was just a Dutch thing...

@ThanosReXXX I’ve certainly never seen that on a rotary phone, and my great gramma even had the old party line system in the valley.

@HobbitGamer Well, that can mean one of two things: either you haven't been in enough old people's homes, or it is indeed a thing that only Dutch old people do.

@ThanosReXXX You truly have never seen A Christmas Story?!? I don't care where you live, you can't pretend to be an American native anymore. That's it, Dutchman go home! That's the most quintessential of all Americana right there.

The design, FWIW, is 1920's, so that would be more "great-grandmas house" Though the movie plays loose with the eras. It's primarily a 1920's theme, but various 1940's "Art Modern" designs manage to appear in various ways as well. It's one of those low budget films that managed to get it right on every count and became a cult classic. Find it. Watch it. No excuses.

As for those phone covers, yeowch....no, that was never, ever a thing here.... Though that may have something to do with the fact that back then, nobody owned phones here, they were leased from Bell, and you were only allowed so many phones, as many as you paid for. People would sometimes acquire phones and add another in the house. Bell could send a fixed voltage ping out to homes to check the voltage drop from the bell ringers. If you were running one to many phones, you were going to get a very serious visit from some phone company officials. They had semi-law-enforcement credientials. Bell also had federal permission to basically enter and search a home for phones suspected via that ring test, unannounced. If it sounds like the Stasi....well....that's your call...... But that's how Ma Bell rolled. She ain't much different now, either, but without the search & seizure authorization and split into AT&T & Verizon rather than just AT&T.

My other thought when I saw those phone covers was "Wow it's not just today's kids that put tacky phone covers on their telephones!"

@NEStalgia Man, there's SO much "quintessential" Americana that I missed in the 40+ years that I've been away, that short of adding another lifetime, I would never be able to catch up to, so I simply don't bother. There's other classics over here. And the thing is of course also that if you don't have any connection or ties to something, then it doesn't mean anything to you.

Mind you, it could still be an entertaining movie in its own right, but it has zero sentimental value for me. Over here, we obviously have a far more European-oriented movie theme, such as a Christmas Carol and so on, specifically the first color version.

Although having said that, we do also have the inevitable/obligatory, yearly re-runs of the Home Alone movies, and any of the other 90's or early 2000's Christmas comedy's.

As for the phones: the situation was similar over here. The exact model that is shown in those pictures, is KPN's T65, which later also came with a button panel insert, replacing the rotary dial. And they were also rented, but that didn't mean that you couldn't add stuff to it, such as those covers.

But like I said, these covers were primarily found in old people's homes, because... well, because besides losing all kinds of senses and faculties, apparently old people also lose their taste in aesthetics...

I mean: (mini) carpets/rugs on TV's (thank God for flat panels, making putting a carpet on top of them impossible), plastic or carpet covers on furniture, hellishly bright lighting in the kitchen, fur coats/covers on toilet seat lids, lawns and gardens full of gnomes, knitted toilet roll covers, etcetera, etcetera.... (or maybe that last one is yet again a predominantly Dutch thing)

Now that I'm mentioning all this, I seem to have created a mental picture of the character portrayed as Fran Drescher's mom in the comedy series The Nanny...

@ThanosReXXX Haha, yeah, that's fair. At this point, it's probably not really at all accurate to consider yourself even "technically" American.... That long elsewhere you lose much of what else happend. When you were last here, fro's were normal.

Gah, skip the (dreadful) Home Alone and watch A Christmas Story.

Haha, some of that is just "stuff that was popular 50 years ago when most of those people learned the styles they enjoy". Knitted everything was big in the 60's & 70's. They were all in there 20's, 30's, 40's at the time and got used to certain aesthetic items as normal - the fashions got "outdated" but you like what you like and keep buying it. No doubt we have similar tastes the kids think we're old fashioned with.

OTOH, some of that "kitsch" is pretty dreadful no matter the decade. I remember the carpeted toilet seats (who ever thought that was a good idea) - I just saw a pile of those in a store....they can't give them away...

And I'm a fan of gnomes...watch it Something tells me @bimmy-lee is as well

The bright kitchen lighting seems new to me....or maybe that's just normal here. New fancy homes have that dim recessed lighting and stuff, but I always thought that was for people who show people their $50,000 kitchen, not people who use it. Commercial kitchens are bright for a reason. Knives and hot metal don't like darkness. At least not while fingers are watching.

The TV covers were definitely a 60's thing here though. LOL, yeah you're right about the Nanny...

Wait....you know The Nanny, and not A Christmas Story?!? @Eel bring out the banhammer, obvious troll is obvious.

@NEStalgia Dreadful? It's Dickens! Now THAT is a true classic, and quintessential, where Christmas is concerned...

EDIT: I actually still like the first two. It was back in the day, when McCauley was still looking like a cute kid instead of like a homeless drug addict with a food problem...

Gnomes are okay in and of themselves, but once your garden is so full of them that you risk tripping over them and getting hurt in weird places because of their pointy hats, then that's where I draw the line. Aesthetics, my friend. Aesthetics...

And no, people don't disagree with my taste at all. Most wouldn't even dare, and if older people do, I just ridicule them and point out their far more massive lack in taste, what with their faux-eclectic, hotch-potch of styles and shapes, and if younger people do, I just smack 'em across the face...

As for the kitchen lighting: I did say hellishly bright, not just regularly bright. If a light is so bright that it even makes people that aren't vampires recoil in shock, then that's REALLY bright. Modern kitchens just have good lighting, which is also strategically placed, but it's never overly bright.

In scenarios I've witnessed, we're talking tube lighting, industrial strength, hospital white bright...

And yeah, we know the Nanny over here. Fran Drescher is Jewish after all, and the Netherlands has incorporated a lot of their words, habits/customs and there's a whole lobby both in politics and in TV land, so programs with these origins are pretty common over here. And to be fair to the show: as far as comedy's go, it was pretty decent, so it grabbed enough of the audience over here to stay on prime time for quite a few seasons.

The Nanny was just an upscale Family Matters. 😂

And exactly when did Charles Dickens write Home Alone??

@HobbitGamer Doing a bit of selective reading, I see...
EDIT:
Aw, ffs... My bad...

@HobbitGamer On a side note: well, if The Nanny was an upscale, then it was most certainly a better show. And I absolutely detested Urkle. It's one of those characters/types that only stays funny for so long, if it ever even becomes funny in the first place. Personally, I think I'd rather watch reruns of Drake & Josh...

@ThanosReXXX Hehehe.
Nah, I did enjoy The Nanny for sure. It was a good follow on from things like Fresh Prince or Clarissa.
I really liked Fraiser, too.
I stay away from any Nickelodeon or Disney sitcom made since 2000. Though I did watch the Legends of the Hidden Temple movie a few months ago, it was okay.

I love The Nanny. Great show.

I still watch it every now and then on prime.

@HobbitGamer Well, I can understand that. A lot of the comedy is a bit too slickly made, but then again, so are most adult/normal/large network comedies. The days of Friends, Frazier, Seinfeld, How I Met Your Mother, Everybody Likes Raymond and Will & Grace are long gone now. Almost any and all comedies that appear nowadays, have stolen/copied/borrowed one or more elements of any of these older shows.

However, having said that, I have been kind of semi-affected (semi because I'm always up for comedy anyways, so people never need to push me THAT hard) by the Nickelodeon comedy bug by all the little and preteen tykes and tykettes in my family and circle of friends, because it was often their channel of choice when I was visiting there, so I got to know all the more popular comedy series, that frequently also produced the more famous or semi-famous people that have either now moved on to being pop artists or into more serious acting.

Another (not Nickelodeon-related) personal favorite of mine was That 70's Show, even though I could only ever partially relate to the source material, since I was actually born in '70, so I was a bit too young to appreciate all that this particular decade had to offer at the time. But I did come to appreciate both the 70's AND the 60's later in life, thanks in large part to my parents and my older sister.

@ThanosReXXX If Home Alone is Dickens, is Die Hard Hemingway?

Huh, well maybe the lighting is brighter over there. I figure mine is bright, and I've seen kitchens with 42" tube ballasts, though they were big kitchens (what you Europeans would consider "America sized" ) That does sound harsh, though, again, wouldn't you want a kitchen to be bright (I do use daylight bulbs, myself. Screw that dim yellow "warm white" garbage. It's not 1870, I don't need to light my kitchen like it's a candle-lit horse barn. )

I've never thought of Nedtherlands as a particularly Jewish place to the point that it pulls in pop culture from around the world just because it ties to it (beyond WWII associations and the like, of course.) But yeah, that was a great show. And a laugh even worse than Audrey's

RE: Urkle, it was one of those pop culture things that really was probably intended to work for a year, but somehow gained a life of it's own. What amazes me though is that White wasn't typecast for it forever and ever and actually became respected outside that role. Though for me, personally, he will always be typecast as Sonic...... I didn't like the idea of Sonic being Urkel at the time....but soon, it was the other way around...Urkel was Sonic.

In hindsight, he may have been better off just getting typecast as Urkel.....

Will & Grace was/is actually on again with a second series, you know! Though I found that show got grating after the first season or 2, and what little I've seen of the second series one reeked of "new wave writing" and being obnoxious more than funny. But yeah, I miss the good adult/normal comedies