Upthrust

So does Campo Santo go below the giant underground hats-and-gun-skins factory, or are they part of the above-ground operation?

I just burned through Supergiant's latest, and I'm still really impressed by whatever they're putting out. It has all the aesthetics merits of Bastion or Transistor, plus some excellent, surprisingly-deep quasi-basketball gameplay. I was particularly impressed by how it seemed like the AI actually knew how to exploit the rules the way a player might. For example: players have auras that, if you run into an opposing player, that player gets taken out of the game for a few seconds. The character holding the ball, however, doesn't have an aura, which encourages you to sometimes toss the ball at an opposing player and immediately bum-rush them, banishing them. It's a simple but somewhat-unintuitive consequence of the rules (the game introduces tossing the ball as a way to score goals, passing to your teammates is another button), and I was floored when the AI pulled it on me before I figured the strategy out for myself. Beyond that, the story has some really great hooks, mostly playing out in Banner Saga-style interactions as your team travels from match to match. The second-act turn when you discover The story even accounts for you losing matches, to the point that I'm pretty sure you could lose literally every match in the game and still finish. So, uh, anybody else playing it?

Oops, you're right! I fixed it to link to this tweet: I'm really not sure how it would have fit in to the apparently-abandoned piece he was working on, but there's something about that video that works really well. As for the Run Button podcast, I'm glad you linked it because I missed it, and I do like the critique Austin outlines there. Even if I still overall like the themes that The Witness is presenting, it's hard to argue that it isn't trying to apply them as a worldview when a bunch of the audios and videos are explicitly about solving the problems of the world, and that worldview does have definite flaws (even if I'm partial to it).

I'm quoting this so people can minimize it if they want. I really didn't mean for this to get this long, but the Danielle/Waypoint view on the Witness has been rolling around in my head for a while.

I definitely do primarily judge bosses on mechanics. Obviously aesthetic plays some role, but I enjoyed my fight with the Dragonslayer Armour than against Yhorm, even though I think putting an Ornstein clone in every sequel has been kind of lame while the story of the giant-king who accidentally incinerates his people in the very act of trying to save them is cool as hell. My favorites generally end up being whatever bosses I had the hardest time fighting, along the same lines of Nick's explanation of the value of Dark Souls being in falling into the pit and climbing your way out.

Funny of you to mention that: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/FriendlyDogSwiftRage

Sounds alright to me! I think I'll miss Omar Sharif most of all, but I'm sure we'll carry on the tradition in-chat.

DS1 https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/AlertSquidSmoocherZ - Nick mocks Dusk, to Janel's horror https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/AmusedHerdBlargNaut - Social Eating https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/PowerfulSardineSmoocherZ - Nick ruminates on his experiences, gets meta https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/BreakableOpossumPicoMause - Nick walking off the branch on the Bed of Chaos https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/LuckyElephantMikeHogu - Janel leaves, Nick is free https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/HelplessDuckCoolCat - Nick likes the ending DS2 https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/EnthusiasticPoultryOSsloth - Nick narrowly avoids defeat against the Dragonrider, immediately dies https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ExcitedOpossumAsianGlow - Nick getting killed by a mob at the primal bonfire after Freja https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/DifferentOryxSoonerLater - Nick likes the Covetous Demon https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/AlertGooseNoNoSpot - Nick falls off the cool bridge https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/MuddyFoxFunRun - Nick kills the Smelter Demon https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/HilariousBadgerRaccAttack - Nick's great escape from an invader in the Gutter https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/GleamingSalamanderOhMyDog - Nick meets Aldia https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/PerfectJaguarPazPazowitz - Nick's future girlfriend https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ProudSnailAsianGlow - "Are you a spooky bad man?" https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/LovelyFoxDatSheffy - Nick picks up a Schwarzenegger soundboard https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ProudOstrichHeyGuys - "Free to play the game the way it was intended" https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/StupidCockroachFuzzyOtterOO - "Sometimes you gotta use your words" https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/GentleSalmonGingerPower - Nick politely asks Sinh to die https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ProudLeopardBrokeBack - Nick responds to Kyir's concerns re: a horse https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/JollyNarwhalBlargNaut - Cheatin' Hitman World Champ https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/TalentedEchidnaWinWaker - Nick beats Alonne https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/SmilingCamelOSkomodo - Nick is let down by a chair https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/LuckyScorpionSoonerLater - Vendrick kills Nick without even trying https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/RichSquidDendiFace - The ending, Nick is thoroughly satisfied by a chair

Nick uses his words: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/StupidCockroachFuzzyOtterOO Nick learns the importance of asking politely: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/GentleSalmonGingerPower Nick has a message for the haters ("the haters" = Kyir): https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ProudLeopardBrokeBack Nick becomes the cheatin' hitman world champ: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/JollyNarwhalBlargNaut Another recommendation here for the madness. The Nick and the chat begin to go pumped-up insane around here: https://www.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/v/109006811?t=8h17m

"Are you a spooky bad man?" Nick asks: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/ProudSnailAsianGlow (Nick said Chris should see this)

Nick was talking about invaders hiding as enemies, so here's a video about a guy who dresses up as an enemy to hide from invaders. Pretty much the same thing, right?

Yeah, the only reason I managed to get through both of those areas was by deliberately killing the mobs until they de-spawned, and even then the run to the latter boss fight took about 3 mintues. After I got close enough to winning solo that I felt like I "solved" it, I just summoned an NPC and beat it so I could get on with my life. Felt especially disjointed after I went on to beat the main boss for that segment in one go. I did make pretty decent progress through the audiobook I was listening to, though.

I just finished my first run of DS2 this week, and finished DS1 earlier this year (haven't made it to DS3 yet). I think DS2 was harder on the whole, but it also felt smoother. The couple of times I got tripped up in Dark Souls (Taurus Demon, Ornstein and Smough, Tomb of the Giants), it meant several multi-hour sessions to figure out what I was doing wrong and how to correct. For Dark Souls 2, I only had to walk away and come back later for one boss, but it also had more bosses that took more than one hour. So from my experience, you'll probably find the early parts of Dark Souls 2 fairly easy, but it'll ramp up to a comfortable challenge. I'll also add that Dark Souls 2 has a couple areas in the DLC that I think are worth skipping for being too hard in ways that aren't really fun (specifically ), but the DLC in general has had some of my favorite fights of the series so far.

Nick had a really nice social eating stream today: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/AmusedHerdBlargNaut It was very good. https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/AlertSquidSmoocherZ

I actually got in to the Giant Bombcast through Idle Thumbs as well. The full genealogy of my gaming-related pod-listening goes as follows: The Kingdom of Loathing Podcast > Video Games Hot Dog > Idle Thumbs > the Giant Bombcast > the Giant Beastcast > "VICE Gaming's" New Podcast*, with a couple branches off Idle Thumbs for Three Moves Ahead and Idle Weekend, a branch off the Beastcast for Friends at the Table, and a totally separate tree for Cool Games Inc and The Adventure Zone, by way of MBMBAM and Judge John Hodgman. It actually seems pretty insane when I lay it out like that, and even more insane that gaming podcasts are less than half of my overall podcast listening. *For full effect, read the ">" arrow as "begat".