Professor Video Games

Have you considered the possibility that your hard drive is dying?

Note to self: Use Bing when searching for "how to stop an army of self aware robots that know everything about you"

I just rewatched Consipracy. The ending is surprisingly violent for Star Trek. A man's head explodes! I loved it.

Well, given the procedural nature of it, there really shouldn't be a theoretical limit to the number of planets that exist (assuming the galaxy they're setting this in is as big as I'm hoping it is ie really really big). The devs set the seed for the generation of the game world so anyone that goes to a given location sees the same thing, but worlds can be generated on the fly wherever you travel to based on the seed/coordinates. Obviously there'd be practical limits to that especially dependent on the multiplayer part of it and how much data they want to store server side but hopefully you won't have to worry about running out of birds.

Now I'm curious. What were the rest of his rules?

What was the TNG episode where a bunch of starfleet admirals got taken over by some little alien scorpion looking things? I just remember watching it as a kid and it freaking me the hell out when they crawled into one of the dudes mouths. Man, I probably haven't seen most of the episodes of TNG since when it was on the air. Reading through this thread is making me want to go back and check them out again...

I don't play multiplayer games often, but I did just get Spelunky and my daily challenge leaderboard is depressingly empty. So add me if you play that and want to feel better about yourself. Or if you just want to. http://steamcommunity.com/id/spork_armada

Reminds me a lot of Space Engine. Except they are also building out some sort of MMO on top of it or...something. It wasn't really clear if they themselves have figured all of that part out yet. Regardless, it's certainly ambitious for a team of four guys, so good luck to them...I'd certainly love for it to turn out well.

Finished Papers Please or at least got a handful of the 20 possible endings. It's really good. The pixel art matches well with the whole oppresive easter bloc setting and it does a great job combining all the different mechanics to make the game choices really difficult/interesting ie weighing the risk of taking bribes or the guilt of breaking up a couple with the need to feed your family and keep your job. Actually I'm a little concerned with how enthusiastically I was willing to detain people for even a tiny kickback. I'll probably go back and try for some more of the endings when I'm not feeling like quite so much of a terrible person anymore. Also it probably has the best title screen/music I've ever seen.

eXperience? I went to the wikipedia page for the awards in hopes of a real, even dumber, answer, but it just says Spike is calling it "The next generation of the VGAs". What I did find is that they have an AWARD for "most anticipated game." What a fucking joke.

It's the Mushroom Kingdom Year of Luigi...god only knows how long that is.

There have a lot of great smaller releases this year like Gunpoint, Gone Home, Papers Please, etc, but the one that is most memorable for me is probably Surgeon Simulator. It's so dumb and fun and I loved every minute of it. I think it was a good reminder to me of why I love video games so much.

I made it through with relatively minimal damage: Last of Us Rogue Legacy Papers Please Spelunky I was on the fence on Stanley Parable and Metro: Last Light but decided to wait until the next sale and see how much of a dent in my backlog I could make by then. Also I had to really fight off the urge to get a 3DS XL...even with the markdowns I couldn't justify spending that much money for the 1 or 2 games I want to play on it. I'll cave eventually of course. Edit: Forgot to mention I had a couple bucks in my Steam wallet from selling trading cards. So thanks to whoever it is out there that buys those things!

Geometry Wars 2 is great. And though I only played a little bit of it, Bionic Commando Rearmed is highly recommended by a lot of people. Did Mass Effect 1 (the best one) ever come out for PC?

The TI-83+ has a 64x96 black and white display. That's a lower resolution than the original Gameboy (160×144). I wouldn't be surprised if the CPU was less powerful as well. And it's $85. I get why the tech is frozen, but holy cow these things should be $20 at most. Way to take advantage of students TI. Stay classy. On a more related note, I remember playing the hell out of a shmup called Phoenix on my TI-89. Also some Zelda game that usually crashed 5 minutes in (but it was Zelda!).

Limbo should obviously be baby's first game. Kids love spiders right?

Spelunky is up as a flash sale right now...75% off puts it at $3.74. Finally time for me to jump down the rabbit hole that is the daily challenge

Oh are we adding the original DS to the mix? Then obviously the game of the generation is Elite Beat Agents. I loved this game so much. The gameplay is pretty straightforward in that it's a rhythm game where you tap/drag the stylus to the beat of various rock/pop songs. It's just extremely well executed and it's over these stories that are so stupid and fun (a washed up baseball player thwarting a giant stone golem attack, for example). The agents solve people's problems by showing up and dancing and it's amazing. I am still bummed a sequel never happened.

Also a crazy dangerous frame rate if I remember correctly.

This many years removed, the only part of sunshine I can still remember being frustrated with was a level where you had to use the flud to get a watermelon past those duckbilled things on some beach and the slightest impact would break it. It was way more interesting to use as a jetpack than to spray stuff.

Personally, I'd assume any "gaming" furniture is garbage. My recommendation is to go to some furniture stores and try things out. Also furniture is generally one of those things where you get what you pay for, so don't cheap out on it. Considering how many hours you'll spend on the thing it'll be worth it to get something good.

Ugh I'm in the same boat. While I'm not interested in a lot of the big 3DS games (sorry pokemon) there's probably enough for me to justify a purchase, but my backlog is already so long that I probably have enough games to last me another six months without me buying more in the next Steam sale (which I probably will anyway). But I want to play Mario and Zelda now! God I'm such a child....

Uncharted 3 - The setpieces were incredible and Naughty Dog does some really impressive stuff with the PS3, but man can Drake go somewhere and not have it burn down, sink, crash, or implode just once? Those things all looked really amazing and were fun to escape from, it got to be a bit ridiculous. The voice acting and cutscenes are really well done and the story works well in a popcorn movie sort of way. The shootouts have always been my least favorite part of these games and I got frustrated with some of them towards the end that had too many well armed/bullet spongey guys. More fun just navigating the environments. I hope they try some new things with Uncharted 4 whenever that comes out. Gunpoint - The mechanics in this are really fun and it just makes me wish the game were a bit longer. For the story's purposes it was the right length (which was really well written btw), but at the same time I wanted more scenarios to play with the mechanics ie I wanted to kick doors into more dudes. Also the music is perfect.

I actually liked Halo Reach the most. I remember really liking the level design in that one. I think the fact that I played through ODST (odious tea) in coop mode really hurt the atmosphere which seems to be one of its strongest aspects. One of my favorite smaller games that came out on XBLA was N+. Basically a predecessor to Super Meat Boy, it hooked me like SMB never did for some reason. Just navigate trap filled single screen rooms and get to the exit. I really liked the basic visuals and the controls/movement were very responsive (which they have to be in these sorts of games). I can feel my blood pressure rising just from thinking about that game, but I loved it.

I had some trouble hearing at points too. I listen on my commute so I there's road noise but it's not an issue with other podcasts I listen to. Anyway, like others said, this was a good interview. The NOLF games are some of my all time favorites, which made it depressing to hear how future sequels got focus tested out of existence. Also, like Craig mentioned, I felt bad when I killed guys after hearing them talk about things like their evil corporate employer's shitty benefits packages, but I loved it for making me feel bad and humanizing what were otherwise just basic fodder enemies.