Merus

Garth Nix wrote a tie-in novel to a browser game that looks like it never came out. Garth Nix knows how to write, but the book's premise is video gamey in a really distracting way. They all claim the book came first, but having read the book I find it a little hard to swallow.

This sounds positive: it sounds like a) they care about more than just the problem in front of them and you're a cultural fit. It probably won't go further with that position, but if they're keeping eyes out for good people, they might well take the next opportunity they get to bring you aboard. Doesn't help the money situation, but it's nice to know that the kind of people you want to be hired by are also the kind of people who'd hire you if they could.

I considered responding to Frenetic Pony but then remembered all the other times Frenetic Pony has had opinions, and decided to do something more productive with my day.

I think they were praising the writing as an action movie, obviously it's very very silly but all the stuff it needed to get right, like the pilots, it nailed.

You need to have done a great service to the Idle Thumbs community to be entrusted with the ability to say videogames. You must demonstrate your ability to use it only for good. Don't know why I have it, maybe something's broken.

Wait, are you saying that the President being a superhero who can kick terrorists off his plane isn't an expression of the expectations of the office of the President as Commander-in-Chief and The Most Powerful Man In The World? Because from an outsider's perspective that movie feels like a blatant expression of American cultural id.

Tycho set that up, someone had to pay it off in the third act.

Played through a bunch of the Wildstar beta as well, and found myself losing interest around level 13. How badly it chugged when loading areas didn't help. I liked how varied the interactions were, it's great to see, but I'm absolutely fucking done with having to fight other players for quest mobs, particularly with the 'challenge' system where in certain areas you have to kill as many creatures as possible in a limited time, and every kill someone else makes just makes it that much harder. It is one of those things that you didn't realise you hated until you see people do it better.

I solemnly swear that if I ever find myself presenting a game at E3, as part of the demo I'm going to make a VLC pop-up render.

I took The Stanley Parable as exploring a bunch of ideas around the tension between player and game creator, exemplified by the iconic choice between the door you're instructed to go through and the door you're not. I don't think it's really intended to be coherent between playthroughs, in large part because your participation in the story changes what this story is 'about'. It's a parable. Specifically, the 'canonical' playthrough is the parable, where by following the Narrator's instructions precisely, you demonstrate your ability to make your own meaningful choices, and deviation from the path is an elaboration on the ideas brought up by the parable. I also get the feeling it's not particularly malicious about the idea of telling stories in games, but that's meta-knowledge. On the other hand, the 'custom map' ending in the original mod makes a great point that the retail release doesn't really try - the closest is probably the corruption ending, where the player has full freedom but no meaningful interaction, but not making that point in the full release is a little odd. At the least, I can't really imagine a game where most of the fun is in finding new bits of dialogue really intending to say that this is a degenerate way of building games.

I think you're boiling it down a little too far: I interpreted it as saying that there's tension between the designer and the player that plays out in interesting ways, and that if either 'wins' the result is unsatisfying. But true consonance is too much to hope for.

I kind of want The Wire, set in Gotham. How did this city manage to break down so badly that dressing up as a bat and punching mobsters could do more good than harm? I want to see that story.

It's up to the narrator, but often what you can do is just fill in both sides of the conversation. Obviously in a murder-mystery you need to be able to interview witnesses and subjects.

I am in a game. It is a forum roleplaying system, basically, with some light mechanics that enforce players being unable to just invent an entirely new backstory for their character for each challenge. The card metaphor is pretty light.

Looking forward to using Netflix for free oh wait silly me the Xbox doesn't have media stuff in Australia other than Foxtel which is rubbish

Out of ten or one hundred? But wait, it's going up at 9... it's up from 9... Oh my god it's Frog Fractions 2

Okay straight talk for a second I also watched Haruhi s1 so I've heard about Endless Eight It was okay but then I discovered basically Haruhi never gets a clue and I lost interest.

Regarding MMO raids - players in WoW worked out by Wrath that you can tell the difference between a noob and a moron. You tell the noob how the fight works, they won't be a liability. If you catch them doing something they shouldn't, and let them know, they'll keep an eye on it. GW2 introduced a world boss (which is now permanently dead) a few months ago that tried to force the community to self-organise. It was on a platform above a series of gullies, and minions would stream into the gullies to try and power its megalaser. Every three minutes, one of the gully's teleporters would malfunction, and players would be able to go through it, to be randomly sorted into groups to fight one of five bosses. To do damage to the world boss, they had to kill all 5 bosses in one go, which meant that if there were enough players who were surprised by the encounter, everyone would lose.

Yes, yes we did. And it was great. (Nintendo stuff doesn't count, really, we get a bunch of Nintendo stuff before the US.) The trick with Madman is they don't do their own dubbing, so if FUNImation does the dub, and that's the only English dub, that's what Madman will license. But they're trustworthy, and they do a good job of making stuff available - I've been able to watch a bunch of Ghibli in cinemas (I missed Arrietty, but apparently they used the superior UK dub). I found out somehow they got the free-to-air kid's channel to play Madoka. Like, on the dark edge of primetime, but still. So question: I don't really know what's good in anime for the last... five years? I tried Gurren Lagann but it didn't take, and I like the idea of Spice and Wolf but haven't made the time. The last really good series I've watched was Stand Alone Complex. I did watch Kill la Kill, which really grabbed me for some reason even though it's got a fair amount of skeeviness. I imagine it's been lean pickings for anime fans as it seems like the industry is eating itself, but surely there's been some good stuff between SAC and now.

I find it very difficult to get into Western RPGs because I keep falling into decision paralysis. I've built my character! I've started the plot! Have I already made completing the game extremely unpleasant? Probably! >Quit This is probably a personal problem - I've got this weird habit where if I have several different options for things to do in an RPG, and there's one that's clearly a quick way to get XP and money to tackle the rest, I'll instead treat them all as equally legitimate, pick one, and then try and do that, instead of doing any kind of reconnaissance or strategising. I do the same thing in MMORPGs - I won't run a dungeon because I'm not 100% guaranteed to be ready for it. I can barely handle job systems in Japanese RPGs because they're probably going to want me to tailor my party to the encounter which means I have to deliberately give up seeing what this thing does. Which is the opposite problem! I love the idea of RPGs but apparently I can't handle them.

mmmmmmMMMMMMMMMM? I don't get a lot of opportunities to get cool shit the US can't get so whenever those opportunities come along, I pounce. I have still never played the English re-release of Flower, Sun and Rain but you can bet I grabbed it.

Especially because they counted towards 100% completion (and they weren't great, from what I remember).

Your wife is not the only one, Zeus: they have squarish faces but Willem Dafoe has a much longer face and a very different jaw.

I have a Hindu friend that's pretty unhappy about it because there's a pretty serious "white man riding roughshod over actual people's beliefs" undercurrent that the game is in no way equipped to handle appropriately. Basically when this game comes out there's going to be a racism furore, judging by all the other times games have had dodgy racial imagery in their pre-release materials.

Looking forward to playing Dishonored 2: Already Confirmed. It's set in the priesthood!