Merus

I think probably "laddish"? "Lad" used to mean boy but now pretty much exclusively refers to immature badly-behaving young men. UK bikini mags are called "lad's mags" these days. Probably because of the rhyme, to be honest.

The first one is the most objectionable. Especially because the woman in American Gothic's the farmer's daughter, not his wife. The raspberry one is delightful, which is a sentence that is basically always true

Part of it is that the two episodes are being released a month apart, as 'full' games. People have a very weird relationship to 'full' games that is mostly bullshit - see also how antsy people get about the existence of DLC for a game, even if it's not something that the developers expect every player to buy, and in particular how antsy they get when the content for the DLC is on the disk.

I wrote a thing about this a few years ago because expression in games is the only reason I'd ever want to get into the game industry, given how generally awful it is, particularly around these parts. Wow, this does read like something I wrote a while ago.

I see that and think it's bullying, and then my mind goes, 'let's reevaluate' and I pretend they're giving him advice in a tough Pokemon battle.

No-one told me there was a new You Look Nice Today.

On the other hand, I haven't seen an actual link to goatse in nearly a decade so my instincts are pretty blunt. I very nearly followed that link because, hey, elegant and finely-crafted link. The logo of the local ISP Westnet has even stopped being funny.

Yeah, at the time I thought the 7th Guest was interesting (though too much for my weak, unburdened mind) but going back to it now, it has real problems. It's infamous in the interactive fiction community for its lazy puzzle justification - to this day, a puzzle that's clearly put in the game to give the player something to do, because no villain anywhere would actually build something like it, is called a Soup Cans puzzle. I don't know if there's anything inherently salvageable from the concept, especially when you still have terrible actors. For all its faults, at least Myst, at its highs, had the concept of building a world and having the puzzles be a test of your understanding of that world. (And at least Cyan decided to do something new - they didn't set the world on fire but their Kickstarter's on track to be funded.)

Yeah it's alright, but I really liked the documentary video today.

I have heard that there's a certain amount of transphobia in the third case. I'm not surprised, after all it is the third case of an Ace Attorney game and it is Japan, but it's been a dealbreaker for some of my Twitter friends.

I actually use my PS3 as a media server, at least for files I couldn't be arsed copying to the network drive to be played by the Raspberry Pi, but honestly I think if you're serious about having a media server you could do a lot better than the PS3.

You can't both have 'an environment you navigate' and 'convenient'.

I think they put it in fine print on the back of the first box, but it was never referenced in-game.

You should get to work on that

Well, you can get it as a poster?

Although it is possible to outrun the abominable snow monsters; if you do, the distance counter wraps around to -2000 and you eventually ski back to the start.

You know, everyone says 'Congrats Nick' but I don't think he's actually getting a lot of offers.

Excellent. So long as Smoke on the Water is available, that's what's important. (I was not joking, that is literally the reason I would learn to play guitar. It was one of the early songs in Guitar Hero 1 for a reason. I would be all 'I got this video game that teaches me how to play guitar' and the first thing several people I know would ask to hear is Smoke on the Water.)

The Most Important Question: does it have Smoke on the Water? Because I see no reason to learn how to play guitar if it does not involve playing that sweet, sweet riff.

I am detecting a tiny mote of panic that you're running out of time to do something valuable. This might be helpful.

God I hated Bananaman. This is the irrational hatred of a child, I understand, but goddamn. The 'related videos' suggested Danger Mouse and SuperTed, and nostalgia strongly suggested I watch the SuperTed intro. I did not realise how much that intro resembled a 4-year-old's story, I was expecting Axe Cop to turn up at some point.

It seems like Let's Plays only hurt narrative games if the narrative games do not change whatsoever from playthrough to playthrough and don't have particularly unique mechanics. I imagine an LP of something like DmC would probably help the game - it's nowhere near as terrible as DMC fans tried to paint it as, and being able to jump in on the middle helps with some of the accessibility problems games have. If your drawcard is the storyline then you really should be ensuring your storyline is state-of-the-art - and that involves at least a little bit of responding to the player's actions. I still do not get PewDiePie, because it looks like all he does is play creepy games and scream at them. How is this guy the most popular guy on YouTube? Like, all power to him but I do not get it.

Yeah, the original Spelunky. But there have been plenty of others: it's flexible enough to handle what you throw at it (in terms of 2D) while being simple enough that you can pick it up without a graphics background.

Or you could do a real degree! Not to knock people who have Games Development degrees, but okay that's a lie I totally am. They're not taken especially seriously outside of the games industry compared to a more general IT degree, and the games industry is noted for not treating newcomers particularly respectfully. You are disposable. The strongest way to get into the games industry is to have a great body of work, and you can work on that while being paid what you deserve, outside of gaming. It's hard work, but you'll be able to work on something you love instead of a crappy mobile licensed game. (Although for some fields, like voice acting and composing, the situation is reversed: you'll be better respected as a newcomer and more likely to be paid what you deserve in the games industry than elsewhere.) Also Game Maker counts as a legit platform to make games on, Spelunky and Hotline Miami were made in Game Maker.