Professor Video Games

I forgot to start recording today, and I really wish I had because I got to 4-2 with the headjet and the scepter (and have never gotten to the city of gold), only to have one of those crocodile dudes telefrag me literally the instant I stepped away from the entrance. LAME. Edit: Found a video of it from someones run on 1/18...he manages to avoid it by standing still a second longer than I did. (not totally sure if the timestamp link will work...it's at 53m 17s) Edit 2: Even better, the same thing happened to Chris Remo last night. A more entertaining watch than the dude I linked before anyway: http://www.twitch.tv/chrisremo/b/501905407

Jake, have you actually gotten further in Link Between Worlds? Has your opinion changed on it? That conversation got insanely sidetracked by the whole Spelunky->Majoras Mask->Graceland tangent and I was curious.

Yeah I read it and really liked it. Mieville's prose is a little more restrained in this one, which I appreciated, and the dual city conceit was fun to try and wrap my head around. Plus, though it's important to the story, it never gets too wrapped up in the lore/origins of the cities, which I really liked. I'd also recommend Embassytown because it's similarly got some cool underlying ideas (on language in its case), though I think the story gets a little ridiculous towards the end.

After an insanely lucky break in the Jungle, I proceeded to die a minute later because I apparently still haven't mastered the ability to jump on things.

Blambo, that's perfect. Today's seed is a dupe of 1/16, which is kinda lame, though I did get farther in this time at least. When they issue this update, are they going to do something so this doesn't happen? It seems like it would be easy to fix.

I'm noticing a more important question coming to light in this thread. F2P or FTP?

I was about to make a "definition of insanity" joke here, but then realized Crytek didn't develop Far Cry 3 so that doesn't really work

I think F2P mechanics run a much higher risk of corrupting the gameplay of single player games than multiplayer. In singleplayer experiences, they seem to always involve artificially gating progress or limiting player abilities in ways that are very noticeable and extremely frustrating. In multiplayer, you can have cosmetic upgrades a la DOTA2 or even those dumb xp doublers that some FPS's have, that shouldn't really inhibit anyone from playing the game and having fun (assuming they're well integrated of course...obviously something like being able to pay to overpower yourself would be bad)

The most Spelunky series of posts there is: Anyway, aside from a stupidly close call in the Black Market, I did ok, but I've noticed the farther I get the less I try and collect money, which I should probably correct if I want a decent score, especially compared to the ghosting machine that is hammerpants.

Binary Domain starts with some fun Blade Runner-eque ideas about people masquerading as machines, but it didn't really go anywhere interesting with it. The characters are mostly cliches that are weirdly endearing but they don't make up for the by the numbers gears of war clone gameplay. I always attributed bad writing in games to the fact that, historically at least, they're often written by people who came up in the industry as game designers/programmers, not writers. Or a professional writer is brought in who doesn't really understand how to write for games. I think the industry is still working out the best ways to integrate story and mechanics for various genres. And let's be honest, for many big productions, writing takes a back seat to having big set pieces that get blown up for some reason.

All I ever see parents giving their kids these days is iPads and it's insane how effective they are at placating them. I usually see them play movies and not games, but regardless of what's on the screen, as soon as the kids have them in their hands they get lost in the things. It's actually kinda creepy (I'm talking about toddlers here, not older kids). I think there's still a space for dedicated mobile game machines as long as phones and tables don't allow for more complex input than touch but that may not last forever. It would be a dangerous gamble to for Nintendo to depend too heavily on that market. Regarding the WiiU, the only thing I have to say on that is that I think it was a mistake to not push the graphical power of the system further. It's going to limit third party support for the system, especially in the long term, and it also gives the console the stigma of being underpowered, which is enough to make a lot of people out there look elsewhere. They knew the PS4 and Xbox One were coming, right?

Climbing gloves, argh!

This seed was as generous with altars as it was stingy with bombs. Even still, I thought I was doing pretty well right up until those god damned climbing gloves stuck me to a wall next to a thwomp. I made sure to let the game know how I felt by yelling at it loud enough to blow out my mic.

A Bloody Mary?

An incredibly talented actor. This is lame.

I completely mishandled that orange frog at the start of the Black Market. Oh well...

This reminds me of what is probably one of my favorite Onion videos http://www.theonion.com/video/romneys-terrifying-google-search-history-leaked,29971/

The drone successfully flies 95% of casualties to the nearest medical facility. The other 5% vanish mysteriously. The military considers this an acceptable tradeoff.

After a week off, things went about as well as I expected...

If it weren't for the increased logistics and cost I would suggest spacing out the deliveries to like one a week or something (except Kotick/Allard which should obviously be together). Did I mention before that these are all amazing? They are all amazing.

I still find it hilarious that TV companies thought people would upgrade their HDTVs every few years. 3D! 4k! Barf. I'm still rocking a DLP TV I got in 2008 with hopefully no end in sight (LED lighting so no bulb burnout).

Love?

The original TMNT NES game did it. Too bad that game was the worst *cue flashback to dying in that dam level*

My theory is the better the warmup, the worse the actual run. I think if I do well I get into my own head too much. I've just given up on them altogether.

From Wikipedia: The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended copyright terms in the United States. Since the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier.[1] Copyright protection for works published prior to January 1, 1978, was increased by 20 years to a total of 95 years from their publication date. This is an insanely long time. Not to mention the irony that the same entities that so aggressively advocate for long copyright periods extensively abuse the public domain (I, Frankenstein, that shittty Hercules movie that came out last month, just for some recent examples).