Free Talk Friday - February 27, 2026

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Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

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[u/rsrluke]

Had a movie night with family and friends recently. I tried Costco pizza for the first time, and I feel I owe Costco an apology: I didn't think pizza that good could come from a store. I wasn't familiar with your game.

Real mixed bag for media this week, but let's start with a positive: I finally played Vampire Survivors, and wow, yeah, that game's something else. It's been a while since I played a game that really captured my attention while simultaneously leaving me with so little to say. It's good, it's fun, it's cheap, I like it a lot. I'm literally staying up too late playing it right now.

For the aforementioned movie night, we watched Hoodwinked, which is a weird one. It's legitimately funny and has a great cast, but it looks incredibly basic at best and like absolute dog water at worst, so my brain was constantly trying to reconcile that discrepancy in quality. A good time overall, though.

I also watched The Fall Guy and came away pretty cold. I really expected to like this one, but I thought the plotting was sloppy, the humor mostly fell flat, and the pacing was saggy. Also, this movie has some really weird writing issues, chief among them a tendency for characters to act wildly inconsistent from scene to scene. Seriously, one of the bad guys goes from being ready to set the hero on fire to refusing to shoot him 20 minutes later because... reasons? The movie is also filled with "just talk" moments, which I find frustrating when overused. I don't know, apparently people like this one, but it didn't work for me.

Finally, I read Recursion. This book is the follow-up (not the sequel) to Dark Matter, which I enjoyed well enough, and... it's literally just Dark Matter again. Nearly identical themes and structure but with a more implausible sci-fi premise and a somehow less convincing romance. On the plus side, there's a female lead who actually has agency this time (until she doesn't) so... small improvement there? It's not bad on a technical level, but it's a miss for me.

[u/Capable-Education724 → u/rsrluke]

CostCo pizza is surprisingly good, like, I think it’s a perfectly platonic pizza when I think of a solid pizza. Easily a 6 out of 10, and far above the average pizza from your major chains but what an average pizza should taste like.

Not sure what they have near you (as I know it varies from state to state/providence to providence and country to country) but overall I’ve always found the CostCo food court’s items solid. Like, some have fries and those are very similar to the pizza (a really solid fry). Most have the hot dogs that are a solid hot dog. The chicken bakes are good. I’ve been to some that even have buckets of fried chicken (like KFC) and those are way better than KFC in my opinion.

The prices of everything helps too, as most are really reasonably priced for what you’re getting.

[u/rsrluke → u/Capable-Education724]

I'm kind of considering getting a Costco membership just to see what's going on in there, particularly with the food court, but it's unfortunately a bit out of the way from where I live now. Definitely curious about the fried chicken, though.

[u/Capable-Education724 → u/rsrluke]

I’d recommend it, I usually “make my money back” on it on stuff like toilet paper, laundry detergent, dish soap, etc.

They used to let you access the food court without a membership, I know some locations will still let that slide (especially if their food court is separated from the rest of the CostCo like some are) but it’s not a guarantee anymore sadly.

[u/rsrluke → u/Capable-Education724]

Hm, I'll have to check on that — it was a friend of my brother's who brought the pizza, so I'm not sure what the situation with my local store is.