Cleinhun

I finally played this game recently, and it really is as wonderful as people say it is. It's charming as hell and it's sense of humor resonates with me really well. I find myself thinking about it a lot, both because of what it did well, but also because the more I think about it the more I realize how many problems it actually has. That article about Alphys makes some interesting points about her narrative arc, but I think that even from a pure entertainment perspective she's the least interesting major character to interact with. Every time she's on screen it feels like the same joke repeated, and it wears thin pretty quickly. I think it's telling that the my favorite part of her character was her relationship with Undyne, since that's mostly due to how cool Undyne is (seriously, Undyne is the radest). But the thing that I think is the game's biggest flaw is something that I haven't really seen mentioned. Isn't the fact that a game that is so much about funny dialog and making friends with wacky characters, has a (mostly) silent protagonist really fucking weird? The game, at 3 different times, drops you into a minigame about making friends with a character, but said minigame mostly involves being present while the character talks at you until they eventually decide they want to be your friend. This isn't even an issue of it being barely interactive (although I don't think that helps), but the PC hardly even has any scripted dialog to speak of. I played the game twice and I still have basically no idea what sort of person Frisk is supposed to be. Does she think Sans's jokes are actually funny like Toriel does, or does she roll her eyes like Papyrus? Does she actually think Papyrus is as cool as he thinks he is or does she just appreciate his enthusiasm? Why does everyone want to be your friend despite you barely saying 3 words the whole game? How did she end up underground anyway? Does she have a family or friends on the surface? The game doesn't seem to care to answer these. Anyway, there are a couple of other mechanical things that didn't work for me but this is already kind of rant-y so I'm gonna leave it for now. And I do think the good outweighs the bad pretty heavily so whatever.

This was a good podcast! I'm a big fan of Burch, and I'm excited to hear about more of the LA game scene. The LA game culture is something that's been on the periphery of my awareness for a while (I've heard of glitch city but couldn't tell you much about who else is involved, the Arcane Kids maybe?) so it'll be fun to hear more specifics about it. Plus, hearing a first-hand account of the launch of a high profile kickstarter game should be interesting.

I've avoided posting here until now because it's not really my business how other people operate their podcasts, but I do agree with this. The ~6 month period where every episode had different hosts was I think the strongest ~6 months of the podcast. If it's an issue of scheduling, then yeah, fair enough. Scheduling is hard and you're not even getting paid for this. But if you are genuinely worried that the quality of the podcast suffered due to the number of hosts, I wanted to say that I, at least, enjoyed it. Anyway, cast is great, do whatever.

That's pretty in line with what I would expect from blizzard humor. "Here's a thing from the real world, but an orc said it so it's funny"

It feels weird saying that this is my favorite Telltale game since the Telltale "your choices matter" thing has way less weight in an action comedy than it does in their more dramatic games. When the game gives me the option of making fun of the bad guy's stupid mustache I'm not worried about what will happen as a result of that choice, I'm just doing it because that's the funnier option. I guess that's fine? I mean, it made me laugh. Also, this game made me realize that a Telltale Venture Bros game is what I never realized I always wanted.

Some of my favorite moments of MBMBaM are when Travis goes off on some crazy fantasy tangent, like the mangoes thing or the alternate cut of Night in the Museum he thinks he saw, but that sort of thing doesn't work as well if he's leading a show. Also, nobody has yet mentioned the Polygon video where Justin pets every animal in Far Cry Primal and I felt I needed to correct that.

You are not alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu_pu_platter Still not a great joke, but it does at least function properly as a pun.

Re: hl2 guns I might be misremembering but I though I ended up using the pistol and smg throughout most of the game. They aren't as strong as the other weapons but not so much so that I ever found it annoying. They're pe entry much the only weapons that have plentiful ammo so I usually tried to save my good guns for the hard fights. Plus you always have the gravity gun. I feel like I need to play it again to see if my memory matches reality at all.

That's a hard one to hint at without giving away, but you should try looking around.

AI for 4X games is designed to be fun to play against. I have a hard time believing that if a team with the goal of making an unbeatable 4X AI couldn't do so as easily as chess, and the main reason no one has done so is a lack of incentive and a lack of budget. I also have a hard time believing that a computer would be somehow worse at dealing with randomness than a human would.

I've been calling it the flower tower, and I will probably continue to do so even if it has an official name.

Important update: I told my friend about this thread and he upped the ante to $30, with another $20 if I get a picture and Chris posts it to twitter. Hairquest 2016 has officially begun.

This reminds me of the time I was at the Molyjam and my friend offered me $10 to touch Chirs Remo's hair. I turned it down but he has made it clear that the offer still stands if I happen to find myself, for example, behind him on a bus.

I highly recommend that Errant Signal video as well.

Twin peaks rewatch made that joke months ago

Oh, jeez, yeah. I couldn't figure out what that sentence was supposed to mean. I saw "skeleton" and "games reporters" in the same sentence and my brain wouldn't let it go.

Wait, this comes out Friday? For some reason I thought it was still a ways off. Awesome!

The goal has been met, so unless a bunch of people cancel their pledges in the next four days Psychonauts 2 is actually going to happen. Can't wait to see where it goes.

The talk about The Walking Dead made me realize that there is now an idle thumbs show that might actually talk about Firewatch.

The best Christmas movie is clearly Scrooged, I don't know what y'all are talking about.

You should play it because it's good, not because you feel compelled to. I also would not recommend playing more that one episode in a sitting, as I think the game greatly benefits from some breathing room.

That looks incredibly silly when it moves.