Henroid

Oh man, Don't Starve. I have so much to say about this game, especially since I watched it evolve over beta and what Klei's design philosophy appears to be. And the philosophy is actually important to figuring out what the goal of playing the game over a long period of time is. Basically they try to stamp out any sort of automation / low-investment to survival. Even as you gain conveniences like refrigeration to prolong food freshness the game continues to ramp up in difficulty in other ways. Two of the biggest things for Don't Starve is surviving the winter season and surviving wild dog attacks. I should probably explain the latter first because it was the first aspects to be employed. Every few days, wild dogs just spawn around you (off screen) and attack. The further along you are in the game, the less warning you have (the warning being audio of dogs barking in the distance, also your character makes a remark about hearing something) and also the more dogs come running at you. That's a pretty straight forward approach, and if you're in your camp you can actually have traps set up to make it a non-issue. It's primarily meant to be a danger if you're busy foraging for more food or other supplies. But even in your camp they came up with something new - fire dogs. When they die, they drop fire all over the place, which can burn down shit you've built or things you have laying around on the ground. Winter I actually haven't played through yet, I keep coming back to the game as content is added but get distracted. But I at least play enough to know the context. Winter adds needing to stay warm. At night this is pretty easy, you just need your fire going. During the day though, you need to have particular pieces of clothing on or else you'll freeze to death. And you can't wear your grass / log / marble suits (armor that reduces damage) at the same time, so you are particularly screwed if danger comes around. Especially if the hunter walrus character finds you. Yes, a walrus person. Mass-storing of items is a pretty hard thing to orchestrate. You can't just spend ten days straight gathering wood in massive amounts. You need to feed yourself, tend to your farm, gather silk from goddamn spiders that may kill you - you really have to work at things and I really appreciate Klei's attempts at stamping out, "WHATEVER MAN THIS GAME SUCKS, JUST DO X, Y, Z AND YOU WIN FOREVER." I got into an argument with someone about this game a couple of days ago. A mutual friend was asking if Don't Starve was a game worth getting. I said yes, the guy said no. I asked him why he was saying no, and he described the game as "you just click the same thing 100 times and then you die." It took some prodding to get answers but I finally got him to describe how he plays the game - all he does in it, ever, is build simple traps to capture rabbits in and gathers enough wood to have camp fires at night, and that's it (and he's supposedly played it for hours and hours). He purposely avoids diving any deeper into the game and plays it in the most monotonous way ever, which is a really bad thing to build an opinion of an interactive thing on. There is a sort of story / campaign mode to the game though, if you feel you've mastered the sandbox survival. There's a few stages where you enter different worlds, and each one has traits to it that make it harder to survive while looking for the next gate. The good news about dying in the campaign levels is that you just get thrown back to your sandbox world and can try again (dying in the sandbox world is permadeath).

Oh my gosh Danielle's description of Saints Row and what it parodies. That sounds amazing. I've gotta stop posting while listening to the podcast in progress.

Turns out there's some clarification. He didn't leave id Software, but his work for them is definitely taking a back seat in priority.

It's funny how one man leaving one company for another can have such profound implications. Damn this is cool news (in more than one sense).

But it's a good choice from a business angle too. It means less overhead and was going to save A/B from that funding drain that Vivendi was looking to push, which would've bankrupted them. The stockmarket is so short-sighted when it comes to the video game industry, it drives me up the wall.

A shareholder in Activision / Blizzard stock is suing the company and Vivendi over the purchase to allow A/B to be independent. I haven't seen any concrete reasoning behind it, just that the shareholders and board of directors were owed... something... as a responsibility of Activision. The suit is meant to prevent the buyout. I dunno what the guy stands to gain from this, because Vivendi was wanting to gouge Activision/Blizzard into a dry husk, financially. Maybe we can tinfoil hat that there's some corporate sabotage going on; it's an EA employee who invested in their competitor for moments like this! Or not. Edit - What this probably is is someone who recognized a chance to squeeze some settlement money out of the companies to have the lawsuit dropped so the purchase can go through.

Has anyone mentioned Metal Gear Solid 2's, "But I! I live on, through this arm!"

So the news about Atlus' parent company means that the company is selling off assets to pay money it owes. Which includes Atlus. Among the 20 companies bidding for Atlus is Sega. And that scares the hell out of me. Sega has a reputation for financial troubles, and they're currently operating on a big-brand only approach to video game development and publishing. If they hold the reigns on financing Atlus' work, they could very much kill off a part of what makes Atlus who they are - supporters and developers of awesome niche titles. In other news Activision's financial call noted that CoD: Ghosts has a lower pre-order count than CODBLOPS2 did last year. They're attributing it to the PS4 and XB1 not yet being released (people aren't going to pre-order a game if they don't know what console to get it for). And that makes sense to be honest. There's a lot of people too eager to say that CoD is suddenly on its way to dying or whatever. The time to determine that is when the next game after Ghosts is on its way. The console transition is gonna make things weird and not everyone is gonna adopt the hardware right away.

You should play part 3, it's my favorite in the series and recommend it at every chance I get. One of my favorite things about part 3 is the reviews it got when it originally launched - it was referred to as a "more of the same" JRPG. And it's like, how is it more of the same when you turn into a freaking dragon? No shit, right? Capcom is on some weird war path totally embracing the "sell out" method of video game business. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to staple my mouth shut for saying "sell out" unironically.

For a second there I was like "Why are you guys posting random movie shit" and then I remembered the hand conversation from this episode. Lack of sleep is screwing with my memory. Also I really appreciated that Dyson reference. His death scene is really dramatic and I haven't really seen it replicated by any other TV show or film. It's a totally different kind of desperate-to-not-die (but probably more common IRL).

Breath of Fire 6 is on its way! ... to PC, tablet, and smart phone. ... as an online RPG. "Service starts 2014." Fuck this goddamn industry.

I'm glad that appeal was struck down. If EA wants they can keep filing appeals with higher courts I guess, but man. I don't like the idea of EA having a monopoly on official, real sports.

Oh man if you guys are serious about attempting to play Dwarf Fortress, let me push this excellent idea along by dropping some helpful links. First, don't just download the game, get the Lazy Newb Pack. It comes with the game, a couple graphic tilesets, and useful utilities (mostly in the way of managing what dwarves are enabled to do what tasks). http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.0 Then there's the ever useful Wiki. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page Things you want to learn how to do immediately is digging, building workshops, designating rooms, and growing / fishing for food while also brewing. Those are your constant tasks throughout the game (except for workshops, those are generally one-time but important things to do). Training an army is a pretty difficult thing, and so is establishing any industry for trade (like textiles for example). Learn to live in a dwarf fort before advancing to trade and war. Big thing to worry about when playing this game over a stream is people forcing their strategies or bad ideas on you; a lot of advance players like to tell new players the stupidest shit that doesn't help to learn the game at all. If people tell you to embark to a location that is evil, terrifying, or haunted, they're not trying to help you learn the game. They're setting you up to game over immediately. Don't get me wrong, that's funny, but it just makes people dismissive of the game more than anything.

Oh man Ragnar was almost the countdown to tears fulfilled. Edit - Wow I missed a lot when I had to leave that night from watching the stream of CK2.

Oh crap, good point.

It could've also just been a "hey that logo was cool, since we didn't get to use it then how about now?"

Jon left Game Grumps for non-specific reasons so now it's Arin (egoraptor) and this guy named Danny. I like Danny. Though that Mickey Mousecapade episode, Arin is the star of the show.

Please tell me the video tegan linked was meant to be ironic when it was made. Because what the hell. Also props to that Game Grumps video, that was one of their best episodes ever.

But how else do you enjoy things, be they books or forms of media, without buying them? I guess software pirates are the only true people free to identify with anything.

Nobody wants to play as rogues or Rebels I guess. Jedi Knight 3 having a very specific title indicates to me that they had something concrete going there. I should look that up and see what it was all supposed to be about. "Attack Squadrons" sounds like it's going to be a mobile app.

I'm glad that there's people coming around to, or stepping up in defense of, Phil Fish. Not entirely excusing his behavior, but not kicking him while he's down and recognizing a lot of what happens isn't fair. I thought I was a crazy person when this all first went down.

Via Game Informer via Joystiq; Michael Biehn, the guy who played Corporal Hicks in Aliens, describes working on Colonial Marines as not being fun and lacking passion. http://www.joystiq.com/2013/07/26/michael-biehn-working-on-colonial-marines-wasnt-fun-at-all/ It's a pretty good combination of honesty and insight on the industry. He touches up on a topic that came up on Idle Thumbs a long time ago, about how the industry doesn't necessarily need better acting talent and needs better (or just the outright presence of) directors for that talent. He gives Dean Evans, the director for Far Cry 3's DLC, credit in this fashion.

Like I wrote in my first post here, people say shit they don't mean in the heat of the moment. Some do it more than others but that doesn't invalidate it happening.

Actually it was Cliffy B.