Professor Video Games

If this game were secretly a Call of Duty style FPS, it would be the greatest troll in the history of video games.

What does this mean for Yoda Stories 2?!

My thoughts exactly. MGS3 in particular won me over so completely I'll eagerly eat up anything else Kojima has to offer. It's all so serious and stupid and self-aware and I love it.

I was running on a treadmill this morning and commercial came on and all of a sudden there I was laughing like a damn idiot (also the reason I don't listen to this podcast while doing any sort of weight lifting). I guess I don't watch enough TV because I thought the episode title was just from you guys bullshitting. Good god...

What's going on with that center monitor? It apparently contains a second, smaller monitor inside it?

I assumed as much. Video games are reserved for Lametown. Edit: Ok so video games as one word is auto corrected to two words I guess? You know what I meant!

I got ya: http://t.co/egP2dP1hqX I love the idea of this super eco-friendly city that wastes incredible amounts of resources on over-engineered public works (clearly a desperate attempt to show up Cooltown...or is it Cool Town?)

I dunno, there's tons of media out there that plays fast and loose with historical facts (pretty much all of it). I think it probably is just a combination of what Tycho and Chris said...nerd writing plus easy justification for gameplay mechanics. Gah I just remembered those stupid feathers in that game. It's like Max Payne and his golden guns. A crazed OCD assassin roaming the landscape with a satchel stuffed to the brim with feathers he's found on rooftops.

With regards to the first Assassin's Creed, I could have sworn the whole sci-fi aspect of it was kept a secret until release. And looking back at ign.com's review they seem to confirm that as only IGN can, referring to it as a twist that "would likely blow the lid covering your brain." Which makes its inclusion even weirder. People were incredibly hyped for that game to begin with, and the futurey parts can't have been crammed in to make the game more broadly appealing, since they didn't tell anyone about it. Maybe it was to get the pitch approved by higher ups to begin with? Video games.

I thought Chris was right on the nose about the architecture that's used for "futuristic" cities. I guess in the future there was one shitty architect that got the contract of a lifetime after that super earthquake that leveled every city on the planet. It reminds me of how every sci-fi alien race is totally homogeneous and kind of monolithic..."warrior" species or "super smart but weak" species. It's just kind of lazy and thoughtless design.

I think this list is worth looking through: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_petshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pets Yeah Herbert Hoover had two crocodiles, but Calvin Coolidge had a god damned menagerie including, but not limited to, a wallaby, an antelope, a pygmy hippo (Billy), a black bear, and TWO lion cubs (Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau).

I just got around to playing Alan Wake's American Nightmare, and while I thought it kinda missed the mark on the whole Twilight Zone homage (except for an awesome Rod Serling-esque narrator), it did remind me how much I loved the atmosphere in the original Alan Wake. Really well detailed environments...like before it would get dark and baddies would pop up you would have a chance to explore the areas and I remember them all feeling very real/lived in. And once it got dark the sound design and lighting were really excellent.

Anybody read Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned? It's been a while but I remember it having an even more overtly negative portrayal (bordering on heavy handed) of the whole idle rich class of the time.

I'm pretty sure the conversation went like this: Designer 1: I dunno, she looks so banal. So cliche. Designer 2: Well, what if I gave her bigger boobs? Designer 1: No, that's not it. We need to push the female aesthetic boundaries. Really redefine how women are portrayed in the medium. Designer 2: Ok....what if I gave her super sick blade arms? Designer 1: Yes! Also go ahead and make her boobs bigger. And spread her legs more. Perfect.

I think that's why Red Faction: Guerilla was so fun. It's been a while but I think even the missions were all basically "go here, find a cool way to destroy everything and maybe go on some crazy chases around mars while you're at it (and keep destroying stuff on the way)." Knew exactly what it was good at and let you have at it. On the subject of mods, the only one in recent memory I remember being glad I got was one for New Vegas that removed the hacking/lockpicking minigames. Your skill is high enough? Open. That shit gets soooo tedious.

Then keep your 360 hooked up? SiN is right...it's a huge extra cost for very little return. Personally, I think both Sony and MS have waited too long. I've moved on to PC-only land, where I can play better looking versions of console games on my TV via long ass HDMI cable and the machine is in general way more flexible, not to mention not having to deal with the mess that the xbox dashboard is now. I won't be in a rush to get either of the next gen consoles.

Awesome.

"We didn't play it long enough to have a conversation about it" *Proceeds to talk about Far Cry 3 and how it doesn't measure up to 2 for the next 20 minutes* Also, requesting that picture you guys mentioned of Jake staring at Hideo Kojima.

Unlike Sean and Chris, I found that the events starting from Fos and Opal's death really did take me out of the flow of the novel. Like they mentioned on the cast, I couldn't believe Fos would take his own life and abandon Lightfoot, but then I also found a lot of events from that point on seemed too forced for the purpose of making a point (the stuff winknugget pointed out such as Ramona painting in fish hearts etc). It probably bothers me so much because the characters were so interesting and well realized up to that point, with their thoughts and actions expressed so beautifully and elegantly. Then we're left with Lightfoot, who's a little too innocent and naive with Flash, who's a little too wise and eager to dispense his wisdom. But I don't want to sound like I disliked the novel. The rest of the novel pretty much had me 100%. I was intrigued by the TVA setting and loved following the growth of Fos and especially Opal as characters over their lives and. The both of them coming to terms with their inability to have a child, Fos dealing with what he perceived as a personal betrayal by Flash...I could go on for a while. There's a short chapter called Paternity right after they find Lightfoot where Fos muses on his relationship with his own father that has one of my favorite bits: Good grief that's good stuff.

Just finished episode 5 and that shit was fantastic. I don't know if I've ever played something that's had me so emotionally invested. My one real episode 5 complaint: Anyway, Also my endgame choice summary screwed up. Somebody tell me what these mean: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=109452918

The way the gameplay, art, and music all work together in this game is really effective...especially at keeping me from being able to fall asleep if I play right before I go to bed.

Just finished this book. I'm just going to put some unstructured thoughts out there. Like Chris and Sean I went into this pretty much blind. I loved the changing narrative structure and how well realized all the characters were. I was totally bummed out by what I found to be relatively explicit reincarnation stuff though. It seemed so unnecessary. The themes that existed in each story, not to mention the various times when Mitchell basically spells it out, seemed like more than enough to tie the novel together. I generally didn't care for each character finding the previous stories (kinda corny), but I did love when Frobisher reads Andy Ewing's journal and immediately recognized how Goose was conning him...such a great insight into both Ewing and Frobisher's minds. Also the Sloosha Crossin section reminded me of a book I read recently, Ridley Walker, where the devolved post apocalypse language is even more extreme. Anyway, good book/cast. Oh, and is Infinite Jest the Far Cry 2 of the Book Cast?

Hi all. Been listening to the cast for a while now and signed up here when the kickstarter thing happened. Not generally much of a forum poster, but who knows. At the moment I have enough unplayed pc games staring me in the face that when I have time to play them I just freeze up (I did "play" space engine though...the countdown to tears is over) and read or watch a movie instead. How convenient there's a bookcast now too...