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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
This hit the right notes in my soul 😁💙
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?
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.
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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.
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.
There is a theory about the meaning of life in this show that I found profound.
One of the rare “10/10, no notes” series from start to finish. Amazing finale too. Fantastic rewatch value.
I went into the show blind and it was definitely outside of the typical stuff that I watch, but I enjoyed it a lot!
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
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.
Came here to talk about his show Wonder Falls. It only aired 3 episodes on Fox, but the whole season was released on DVD later. I think I’m one of thr few people who watched the live broadcast, because I was recovering from 2 surgeries for like a month, and had nothing to do. Led me to discover the whole Fullerverse.
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.
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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”.
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.
Great show, but the Veridian Dynamics commercials are my favorite part.
For me, it’s when the octochicken comes down from its web.
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.
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.
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.
Cable Guy . Jim Carey is very scary and the end monologué about thé internet future was spot on.
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
"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
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?
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 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
An absolute masterpiece.
I like outer wilds, but I just don’t have enough time to play games unfortunately
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.
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.
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.
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.
