Henroid

So aside from episode 7, they're making another Star Wars film. But it's not going to be a part of the main episode chronology, it's going to be a side story. They just named the star of the film: Felicity Jones. And I know jack-all about her, aside from some recent film she was in being amazing (due to her acting ability). So! Can anyone weigh in? Positive move? Negative? Is she type cast? Is she capable of being a female Han Solo, or Luke Skywalker? Or is it more Princess Leia? Or, and I shudder to think this, more Padme?

Yeah, the primary platform focus really has an impact on this sorta thing. It makes me wonder how Blizzard handled Diablo 3. I don't know anyone personally that has tried it on the consoles, nor is it something I've gone fishing for random opinions on (since that could just be a disaster of "PC MASTER RACE"). But since I never heard a big huge hubub about how awful it is to play, maybe Blizzard actually handled it with the right amount of care, made it work out. Also reminds me of Mass Effect. I think it may have been mentioned on an old Idle Thumbs episode, but wasn't the PC version at first awful to play because everything was designed around the console version, but later it was patched to be optimized in both UI and controls for the PC?

Venture Bros. is pretty amazing with how much the creators build up dramatic moments, be it in a single episode or over the course of a season, and then they just drop the audience throw a trapdoor of bullshit. Those guys are so good at what they do, I adore them. It's too bad Colbert got too busy to continue doing Professor Impossible's voice beyond season 2.

Lately I get a weird anxiety whenever I check my Twitter after a long period of time, like when I get home from work, and there's more than a couple of notifications waiting. I immediately go into this hyper-active thought process of, "Oh shit, oh fuck, what did I say and who did I offend falsely or legitimately oh god." Then it turns out everything is okay because one of my friends that does "watch me play video games stuff" mentioned me and people forget to take my name out when replying to him. But not me. None of them like me.

I'm not sure if there's a better thread for this on ye olde Idle Thumbs forum, so for now I'll post about it here. After the Super Bowl, a former player in the league was busted by the cops when hiring a prostitute. Not even blinking an eye, the NFL Network (owned by the NFL itself) immediately fired him from his job there. And I am fired the fuck up about it. Mostly because of their reaction to this when lined up next to other incidents like Ray Rice. Who, by the way, had his indefinite suspension from the league overturned after only two months. I mean really, what the hell? A guy wants to get laid, and that's enough to fire him, but when a dude beats his wife on film, they do everything they can not to punish him (on top of the guy's team making the wife apologize)? Jesus jumped up Christ.

Man, tonight's patch is like a reinstall of the whole game. What gives! I'm a little confused about the progression now. My ship AI wanted me to investigate a warp gate, and I did so, finding that new hub town they added to the game. I was supposed to find some sort of resource, but found it in a liquid form rather than a solid, and my ship AI tells me nothing new. There's a jungle planet on Dewar's server that I dug a mine into, via one entrance east of the landing location. Don't know what materials are available beyond what's on the starting planet.

So everyone knows that The Colbert Report is no more right? They (Comedy Central) got Larry Wilmore to fill the slot with a new TV show. I was really skeptical of the idea, because any time he appeared on The Daily Show it wasn't really all that entertaining or enlightening. Luckily I was proven wrong about my skepticism because The Nightly Show is actually pretty decent. He's gone with a one-topic-a-night, roundtable format. If anyone is a fan of TDS / CR, TNS is a pretty good inclusion into all that kind of political talk. Just to point it out ahead of time, the roundtable isn't just a bunch of people agreeing with each other. So far, every episode I've seen, there's been at least one person among the group that differs in a big way from the general consensus / opinion.

My dumb input real quick as I listen: The opposite of belittle, to my guess, would be empower? I guess?

"I shot the sheriff but I didn't shoot the deputy."

Big news breaking on the net. Sony has sold Sony Online Entertainment to an independent firm (for how much isn't known yet), and effective immediately SOE is now known as their former name of "Daybreak Game Company." On top of that, they are going to develop games for multiple platforms, no longer locked-in to Sony products. The huge bonus to this is that all SOE made games / properties continue to be theirs. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/235560/Sold_by_Sony_SOE_becomes_a_multiplatform_indie_studio_Daybreak.php So yeah. SOE games on Xbox and mobile platforms is very much a possibility. In more solemn news, the animator for Red vs. Blue, Monty Oum, died due to an allergic reaction, which allegedly happened during a routine hospital checkup / accident.

I'm glad that it was an actual game and all for the Super Bowl, but Seattle gave the game away with that last play. Literally wtf. Also,

Played enough to get through the (new) tutorial. There's a couple of mine shafts that lead down into the planet core. The one I made didn't have much in the way of iron or copper; it's on the other side of the planet. I jumped to a jungle planet and planted a flag at the warp location. It's untouched though as I require real-world food.

Yeah, Spore Spawn is by-intended-design before Kraid, and the reward is Super Missiles. For beating Kraid you get the Varia Suit, which lets you go deeper into Norfair (before that point, you go to Norfair for the High Jump). Common speedrun tactic is to get the Super Missiles before Spore Spawn even, and if people really know what they're doing you can skip Spore Spawn entirely; even to get the SM pack it guards. It involves very excellent timing with a near-death recovery move. I can't always nail it so I end up wasting minutes on running up to Spore Spawn.

I think a server is pretty much what will cement me into playing this game a lot. What good is creating stuff if nobody is there to see it!

It's actually weird that Sega's pachinko machine business isn't doing so well for them, because it's been their thing for a while as far as constant revenue goes. But I don't know how the culture is like in Japan, when it comes to going out to do things.

Atlus' original parent company got nailed by investigation into its financial bullshit. Lotsa fraud and such. So Atlus got traded off or something to Sega. Forget if it was money paid or money already invested that just awarded them ownership.

Buzz just started kicking up on the net about Sega. Confirmed news that they're laying off 300 employees (calling it "voluntary retirement") and are changing their future plans to develop for the PC and mobile markets exclusively. Sega hasn't been a company that thrives in video games for a long time. They've kinda just been doing the whole survive thing. But their money troubles have never gone away and it looks like it's catching up to them. Edit - My first "know more than the average bear" concern in this is Atlus.

It feels like Blow is trying to be non-conformist feminist. Which is... weird. This isn't the arena for that sorta behavior.

I would argue his eyes indicate he is sleep-deprived, perhaps a result of extreme paranoia.

Jonathan Blow said something really peculiar. https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/560698934700408832 Which was in response to this question:

So a lot of years ago, I picked up Bioshock when it was $5 on Steam. At the time, my computer was dated so I was just getting the game for when I upgraded. Which didn't happen for a long, long time. But! I finally did finish a new computer just over a year ago and realized I hadn't played this yet, so I downloaded it while at work. Best game ever. Also worst game ever, because it crashes on startup and all solutions I've found don't work. Or rather, some do work, but I have no audio in the game. So I'm giving up. 1/10, not GOTY, etc. ... I'm sad.

Oh I almost forgot, another fun thing to do? No-engagement runs in stealth games. It's a step beyond no-kills. I mean don't even incapacitate guards. Leave them all active, and get through without being seen. I managed to pull it off on the hardest difficulty in Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex, and Deus Ex: Invisible War. I tried it for MGS2 but actually just got stuck on a boss so I never finished that run, and I tried it in DE:HR but got spotted during the first run through Shanghai in a very infuriating part of the game and gave up.

Something I like doing in the various Mega Man games is beating bosses without using the special weapons, just to test my handle on being able to dodge (no matter how easy or hard their pattern is). I couldn't say which games I've successfully beaten in this fashion. For the "Metroidvania" games I've played through each using stipulations on sticking to a particular weapon type through the entire game. In various jRPGs up until the last few years, I kinda unintentionally put myself through a challenge mode: no item use to recover health or status. I relied solely on my characters' abilities to heal / recover. And if I didn't have enough OH WELL. Most of them are still easy with that rule in place, but you spend more time grinding for levels. When I started using items (I forget which RPG just beat it into me as a must-do) revisiting these games, goddamn they were even easier and faster to play through. What was I thinking?

The Sebastian face is the worst thing.

From the wide world of Twitter, which is from the wide world of web,