allenibrahim

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Posts posted by allenibrahim

  1. Posted

    I'm glad you guys talked about Downwell, I apprecaite hearing the Spelunky fanatic angle. I never got into Spelunky but I love Nuclear Throne, and this game feels a lot like that(obviously from a visual standpoint) but also from the the way I gravitate towards specific weapons and perks, rather than feeling like I have to grasp everything. There's also some Luftrausers in the use of wacky 3 colour schemes (Pastel and Vivid are particularly great! Grandma a close 3rd).

     

    The combo stuff is really cool, but I'm not sure how I feel about how it's presented. I wonder how many people play a little bit and bounce off before they figure out the fun of chaining a bunch of bounces, or before they get to try Levitate which really makes combos a lot easier to do. The Levitate perk only changing the physics of your character without changing any other balance makes me wonder if high level players would stop using it. World 3 does introduce a time-based mechanic, but I haven't gotten there enough to know if dropping faster would make that easier or tougher.

    As a weird aside, I play most of my 2d games on an arcade stick, as long as I can get the buttons to work out. It feels particularly great with Downwell, since it's uses 3 digital inputs. It also has a very arcade style presentation with a very narrow vertical field of play, reminiscent of a lot of early arcade vertical shooters. I might try that vertical monitor trick if I can figure out how to do it later.

    I didn't even consider the combo chaining stuff until Chris mentioned it on the podcast. I spent my early runs just trying to use every upgrade and get a feel for the controls. Soon as I got Levitate and heard about combos, the game became all about that. I no longer care if I even get to World 2, I just need that constant combo sensation.

     

    As for the World 3 question, I got there once and felt super jazzed. For the few seconds that I survived, I figured out that you get more air by killing enemies, so a combo run there with Levitate would probably be fine. 

     

    My kneejerk reaction to Chris/a lot of people online swearing by PC over iOS was "Come on! You can progress completely fine with the iOS controls" but as soon as you start doing combo runs, you realize that you really do need that finesse to juke back and forth quickly.

  2. Posted

    Wow, I didn't even think that the theme could be interpreted as anything other than a suicide, considering everything that surrounded Lane/the show's obsession with death/passing over to other sides. But I really, really like Sarah's idea that the theme visuals represent characters going through this colossal shift, and landing right back where they started. That's the show in a nutshell, imo. Breaking Bad was about people changing, and Mad Men, to me, is about people trying and failing to change.

    Peggy and Joan slid back into gender and workplace discussions, Don has gone through so much that he's pretty much a parody of what he is seen as by so much of the real world (boozy, womanizing douche), and Ken is holding onto dreams of being a writer, but letting them go to work again.

    If anything, I want to see where this theory takes Betty before the end of the show. I know she gets a lot of flak, but I find her so fascinating.

  3. Posted

    Mad Men is certainly not the worst example of the Internet overanalyzing a TV show, but it still frequently happens.

    http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/who-is-mad-mens-bob-benson.html

    http://www.hitfix.com/the-fien-print/mad-men-boss-weighs-in-on-sharon-tate-db-cooper-theories

    The Sharon Tate/Megan comparisons got so bad that Weiner had to directly address them. It's kind of a distressing result of a post-Lost (maybe even post-Twin Peaks) world where audiences are convinced that there's meaning in everything and completely misinterpret very obvious narrative ques in favor of outrageous speculation. It's why I can't stand the conversation around the identity of the jumping man in Mad Men's opening credits. What show are you watching where you think that is in any way relevant to what's happening on screen?

    So I really didn't expect such a weirdly harsh negative response to my first post on this forum :( I also don't follow Mad Men's online community very well, but I more used the theme suicide scene to prompt discussion about the show as a whole's direction. Of course Don isn't going to actually jump off a roof, but isn't it entertaining to hear why people think that will happen?

    I thought the episode was quietly powerful, and the podcast was excellent as well. My email that they read at the end explains what I was trying to say in this forum much better, even if I did mix up the end of S7 part 1 and the end of S6.

  4. Posted

    Oh man, can't wait for this podcast to get rolling! A lot of talk has come out over the last few years RE: how Mad Men will end. Do any of you believe the "Don will jump out a window like in the theme" theory? I don't, but I'd like to hear where people think all the major characters are going as the 1960s come to an end.

  5. Posted

    The most fascinating thing about this game to me is how we're all filling in the blanks of what it will actually be. Even after seeing the devs on Giant Bomb's E3 show, I still feel like I only have a vague grasp of it, but I'm weirdly dying to play it. I think it's just refreshing to not know exactly what a game is from trailers for once. If it can really recreate that sense of exploration from games like Skyrim without being repetitive, I'm already sold.

  6. Posted

    I've played most of the way through the demo with all of the classes, and I still can't decide which one to play when I get the full game. Loving the Outlander's DPS options and speed, but the Engineer's robot control and spells seem like they could be really cool over time...

  7. Posted

    Like most people, the very first mission in Deus Ex kind of scared me away, and nothing else I saw of it made it look more appealing. Also, that twist was spoiled for me. However, I really want to play this new one, but I'd prefer it on the PC. Problem is that I've had an extremely low-end PC for the last four years or so. So, hopefully, if and when I do upgrade, I'll give the new game a shot. Really weird how not a lot of reviews are out yet since it comes out Tuesday...

  8. Posted

    Hey everyone. I'm Allen from Massachusetts. I just turned 17, and I started listening to Idle Thumbs about a year and a half ago. Went through every single episode, and then there were only about 3 more before the finale. It was easily in my top 5 favorite podcasts. I was wondering if people still use the Idle Forums, so I thought I'd make an account and poke around to read old threads or to see who is still active.