2022 lookback thread

[takenoko]

We hit our 20th year. More Covid. Made some choices last year that I feel led to a better work/life balance

My top shows of the year as well as top games:

[HowlingSnail]

I think I've only played 3 games that released this year. Horizon Forbidden West, LEGO Star Wars, A Plague Tale Requiem. Horizon and Plague Tale were great. LEGO Star Wars was meh. TV shows other than toku (In fact I never finished Revice) has basically been limited to this year's 3 Doctor Who episodes and the Star Wars shows. Power of the Doctor was good, Legend of the Sea Devils was not, the Dalek episode I've forgotten the name of was fine except the Thasmin stuff.

Andor started slow but ended up great. It's funny that people 20 years ago complained about too much politics in Star Wars, and now it's the best bit. Kenobi was fine.

Oh, and I just watched The Santa Clauses, the Disney Plus sequel to The Santa Clause trilogy. I enjoyed 5/6 of the episodes, but episode 5 reminded me too much of the Timeless Child from Doctor Who: A pointless retcon that achieves nothing, and ends up creating loads of plotholes.

I've been replaying the Assassin's Creed games, I've now replayed all of the first 11 over the past year or 2. Liked Origins more this time around now I knew what to expect. Started playing Immortals Fenix Rising, not gone back to that in a while now.

Personal life, nothing much has happened. Continued on in my job and done well, my boss tells me she wants to promote me as soon as she can find an excuse to. Went to Germany in June, first time out the country since I came back from living in Italy in 2018. It was fucking boiling.

[takenoko]

I've been sitting on Forbidden West because when I played the DLC for the first game, I had lost all my skills and had a rough go at it. So I'm just going to wait till the DLC is out and play all of it as one thing. I started LEGO Star Wars but if I'm going to be honest with myself, never really liked the play of those games

>Andor started slow but ended up great. It's funny that people 20 years ago complained about too much politics in Star Wars, and now it's the best bit. Kenobi was fine.

I mean, it's good because the writing is good. There's politics in the Clone Wars too, but sometimes that can be really good, and sometimes it's "Oh, we're a kid show, so we totally lost the point. Here's Jar Jar!"

>Oh, and I just watched The Santa Clauses, the Disney Plus sequel to The Santa Claus trilogy. I enjoyed 5/6 of the episodes, but episode 5 reminded me too much of the Timeless Child from Doctor Who: A pointless retcon that achieves nothing, and ends up creating loads of plotholes.

Oh man, I was actually joking the other day asking who that was for. So you liked that series?

>Personal life, nothing much has happened. Continued on in my job and done well, my boss tells me she wants to promote me as soon as she can find an excuse to. Went to Germany in June, first time out the country since I came back from living in Italy in 2018. It was fucking boiling.

I watched the first episode of Travel Man and got incensed when Ayoade and his partner were talking about how easy it was to go to Spain. If I took the train for a few hours, I'd just be in California still

[megamanultra]

(opens the portal into the forum world)

Been one of those odd years. Nothing fascinating nor amazing here. But I did get a few projects worked in.

Chinatown has been started in the setup. Did an expansion of the setup, and added 2 new sections. Chinatown (or Ninjago if you prefer) will be the first area. Still have a temple to build, a 3rd tower complex, a junk, and details to add in.



As a side project, added a start to the Turtle lair to the subway system. Perfect timing to, as they are releasing a pizza shop on Jan 1st. ^_^



Also been picking up the Shout Factory US offical rider releases. Have Zero One and Kuuga, and placed an order in for Ryuki which is coming in Feb. And picked up a steam deck this year and have really been testing it over, with everything from a Windows setup to a full emulator configuration.

Lots of things to work on, just not much free time this last year to get them done. And always have more ideas than time. I have about 5 large buildings to work on, not including the new one next month, 2 more big rides to add in somehow to the park (including a looping coaster), and one huge ATAT that I have started collecting the parts to build a Hoth diorama with. But I did get the ultimate collector Millenium Falcon done at least. ^_^

[decade368990]

Not much for me in 2022 except my grandpa was admitted to hospital in April.

Back in 2019, I sold my Beyblade toy (https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/beybl ... 0314175721 ) to my friend at $200 HKD. Months later, I sold all my Digimon cards to him at $3000 HKD. Six card books in total, including two empty boxes and eight battle maps. It was a good idea for me to empty my home in order to pursue something different. But, last week he requested me to take all of them back because the old generation of Digimon is not popular in Canada at all. I lost all my feelings and excitement for Digimon, so I kept turning him down while he's been bugging me in the Instagram message for hours.

Oh yeah, two months ago I paid $40 HKD to buy the Medal of Honor Allied Assault War Chest from GOG.com. I can play the game, it's fun and memorable so far. Unfortunately, I can't play the expansion "Breakthrough" and "Spearhead" due to the weak hardware on the PC I own.

[HowlingSnail]

>Oh, and I just watched The Santa Clauses, the Disney Plus sequel to The Santa Claus trilogy. I enjoyed 5/6 of the episodes, but episode 5 reminded me too much of the Timeless Child from Doctor Who: A pointless retcon that achieves nothing, and ends up creating loads of plotholes.

Oh man, I was actually joking the other day asking who that was for. So you liked that series?

I liked the writing, it had some good humour. And I really love the movies, so I was always gonna watch it. I wasn't a fan of what they did in Episode 5 though. Spoiler tags in case anyone cares.

Spoiler

Okay, so basically the whole premise of the movies is that Santa Claus is a title that's passed on, when one Santa dies, someone puts on his coat and takes on the job. In the first movie, Scott surprises Santa, causing him to fall off his roof and die, so Scott puts the coat on and becomes Santa.

Episode 5 of the series reveals that this was all planned. All the previous Santas weren't human, they were magical beings, and Scott was the first human Santa. They invented all the supposedly ancient clauses so that they could force Scott to be Santa, as an experiment to see if a human could re-invigorate the magic of Christmas.

Leaving aside the weird plot holes this creates, like the entire 3rd film now not really making any sense, it basically kills the messaging of the movies. Scott was a grumpy old man who, by chance, stumbled into this amazing thing which changed his life, and it taught him to be a better person in general, and to help others, and not be such a dick. But now he's the specialest little chosen one destined to save the world.

I'm reminded of the Timeless Child, for any Doctor Who fans. Retcons for the sake of retcons, altering the character's backstory for no discernable reason.

Thought the cast were good though. The girl playing Betty was great. Also, that's Tim Allen's actual daughter playing his daughter.

I watched the first episode of Travel Man and got incensed when Ayoade and his partner were talking about how easy it was to go to Spain. If I took the train for a few hours, I'd just be in California still

If it helps, thanks to Brexit, it's now harder for us too! Also UK trains are expensive as fuck, so it'd probably be cheaper to fly to Spain than for me to get a train to London. When I lived in Austria, I paid something like 30€ to get half price train tickets for a year.

[takenoko]

Love how big your LEGO work space is. I think it's cool that you can even build a sewer system for the Turtles. I bought a couple kits this year, only built a TIE Fighter and a Cup Noodle model kit. My stack of shame of kits has only increased

Tim Allen has a daughter? That's wild to think about

You still live next door neighbors to most of Europe!

Anyway, here's my lists for my top books and movies this year. Movies list is a lot shorter, since I spend most of my time either watching sudoku, gaming, or doing stuff for the group.

Edited movie list to include pinnochio:

Top Movies of 2022:


Top Books of 2022:

[decade368990]

Anyway, here's my lists for my top books and movies this year. Movies list is a lot shorter, since I spend most of my time either watching sudoku, gaming, or doing stuff for the group.

Oh, The Batman, Thor Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Avatar 2 movies are not on your list???

[Go-On Macaroni]

Poking back in because the topic seems fun. Not that my 2022 was all that vibrant since I was in and out of the hospital and then was stuck home recovering during parts of it, but still.

I think I've only really played two games during this past year, Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Scarlet. The former I've beaten (aside from that "The Master Trials" DLC and some side quests but those I feel I can wait on), the latter I'm almost done with and currently, I just need to beat the Elite Four before getting to the final story bits.

In terms of watching media, I haven't had much on my weekly plate besides Delicious Party PreCure, Ultraman Decker and the 2022 reboot of Urusei Yatsura. I think I've spent more time getting to shows I hadn't seen yet such as Little Witch Academia and Ultraman Orb; and more recently, re-watching shows like Kuuga and Carranger. Oh, I also found time to go to the movie theater last summer for the Revue Starlight movie. It was quite fun, well worth the time spent.

[takenoko]

Anyway, here's my lists for my top books and movies this year. Movies list is a lot shorter, since I spend most of my time either watching sudoku, gaming, or doing stuff for the group.

Oh, The Batman, Thor Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Avatar 2 movies are not on your list???

I was pretty disappointed by Love and Thunder if I'm going to be honest. I enjoyed Wakanda Forever, but have mixed feelings about it. I think it hit a bunch of emotional beats while having a messy story and ending. Might check The Batman out if it crosses my path

Hey Mac, haven't heard from you in a while. You okay?

I really enjoyed the Breath of the Wild dlc. Some of it was challenging for sure though

[decade368990]

I was pretty disappointed by Love and Thunder if I'm going to be honest. I enjoyed Wakanda Forever, but have mixed feelings about it. I think it hit a bunch of emotional beats while having a messy story and ending. Might check The Batman out if it crosses my path

What about Top toys of 2022??

[HowlingSnail]

Okay, talking of games we've played this year, I've just finished playing The Forgotten City. Play it. Seriously, I can't recommend it enough. It's a first person investigation game, but saying any more would honestly ruin the experience for you. It's on every platform imaginable, and it's been all I've done the past 2 days. It's not too long, but the experience is worth it.

[takenoko]

Oh yeah, I hear good stuff about that game. Apparently the story behind its development is crazy good too. Like the main developer was a full time lawyer who quit his job to work on this game.

I'm going to need to redo my movie list. I watched Guillermo Del Toro's Pinnochio and thought it was fantastic. I didn't even realize the whole thing was stop motion which made it even more impressive. What a visionary that man is

[Go-On Macaroni]

Hey Mac, haven't heard from you in a while. You okay?

I really enjoyed the Breath of the Wild dlc. Some of it was challenging for sure though

Oh, I am. To clarify my last statement, I just broke a bone in my hip last March coming home from a convenience store and falling on the sidewalk. Then last October, I had literally the same thing happen to my elbow. It was like some spiteful entity up there went and reused a script on me.

But aside from now being the scourge of metal detectors everywhere, my life's been okay. I moved late last year and I'm trying to set more long-term goals for myself now and see where that takes me.

[Aeikozz]

The only thing i reallly got to say about Life is strange was i thought it was great till the mines section. I wish they would have spent more time in there expanding it and doing more with it. It was great much better the two colors.