Gormongous

I kinda enjoyed how sincerely they debated it, as if it weren't some glib come-on.

My professional life's not going bad, but I'm at that lovely place where I've realized I should break up with my current girlfriend and should start figuring out the particulars. We're pretty compatible and I care about her a lot, but ever since she moved to Boston for her Ph.D a year or so back, we've gotten too busy for each other and fight more often than not. Under normal circumstances, I'd just try to make a quick clean split, except she's got a long history of depression and self-harm, so I'd prefer some delicacy, which is hardest to find in the midst of a break-up. I'm thinking of doing it when I visit for Christmas, as gross as that feels to contemplate. Ugh. Anyway...

I'm really uncertain how I feel about the straightjacketing that these design choices confer, honestly. The way panic grows pretty much demands that you bootstrap your way through the (admittedly underwhelming) storyline, regardless of your tech level. It adds a very strong directional element to the gameplay experience, but I don't really like how the systems are designed to make me play it before I feel I've prepared.

Well, the stuff that isn't Thrawn, Joruus C'Baoth, and Mara Jade is mostly just a retread of the original trilogy, with the movie characters getting into similar situations despite being at much different places in their lives. Still, I reread it a few years ago, during my year off after college, and they held up surprisingly well. It's solid B-rank sci-fi with a few interesting ideas that a team of smart scriptwriters could turn into a very good movie. At the least, the kernel of a genius from an oppressed minority using the chaos of an empire's fall to prove his utility to the old order would make for great cinema. But I seriously doubt we'll get to see that. Lucas was always dismissive of the Expanded Universe's importance to his canon, I don't see why Disney would be any different.

Oh wow, Lucas has preempted all snide comments about him forevermore. He's donating the four billion from the sale to educational programs.

I'm almost certain Tom was thinking of Scrapped Princess, the gold standard for post-apocalyptic fantasy anime, when he brought up the title confusion. I know Tom's all about the anime.

Yeah, I'm so glad you guys are playing it. At least one of you has to push through the "dirty t-shirt" phase to experience the pure game beyond it. Preferably the other two will have quit out of disgust so they can revile you at that point.

The post so nice, you made it twice.

Lucas is still hanging around as a creative consultant, sadly. That was enough to torpedo the latest Indiana Jones. It was actually pretty funny reading this when it popped up on my newsfeed. My brain was doing somersaults to find where the punchline was. Edit: That's a good point, brkl. Disney's been good about restoring and releasing the original cuts of the Miyazaki films they butchered back in the nineties, there's no reason they wouldn't see the fan demand for the original cuts of the trilogy as a potential cash cow, now that they're freed of Lucas' revisionist vanity.

I love the bumbling, inattentive Corvo that repeatedly emerges in stories about Dishonored. He's just got a lot on his mind right now, okay?

You know, whatever they can do to keep the consumer from accurately gauging the value of their purchase.

You know, I see the stats saying that tens of thousands of people would rather buy than unlock in-game items, but I've never met a single person who actually sees that as a viable option. It makes me wonder who they all are. I love the dollars to points to different points, too. It seems like a great money-laundering scheme.

Having worked for several companies under kind, talented, and well-adjusted people who just happened to border on psychopathy when it came to their management style, I'm having a lot more trouble retaining my skepticism.

That's a great write-up of the game, TurboPubx. I can see Hotline Miami taking a place beside Far Cry 2 as a game where I boot up whenever just to kill a few dudes and some time. Also, I finally found all the masks, thanks to people on the internet. Amazingly, this has done nothing to sap my enthusiasm for playing, which is unusual in and of itself. Edit: I just tried the controller hack you suggested, sammorris12. The controls themselves work fine (although I'm sad to see that the middle-mouse lock-on button doesn't have an analogue), but they break the keyboard controls if you try to switch back without deleting the "xbox2" file. "Enter" and "Esc" randomly don't work and general keypress detection is off. I'm assuming that's why the fix isn't official yet.

I had to run that about a dozen times through (not counting individual death restarts) to get an A+. I finally managed to edge over 46,000 points barely by wearing the frog mask (Zack) that gives you longer combo windows, switching weapons every couple kills, and clearing both floors with one long combo chain each. Even after I figured that out, it took me three more runs before the point fairy decided I deserved the thousand-odd points keeping me from an A+. When you start trying to maximize points, the truly eccentric aspects of this game come to light. You get more points for constantly moving while attracting guards to your presence. You get more points for melee weapons. You get more points for knocking guys out and taking the time to kill them later. It rewards a style of play pretty alien for anyone otherwise habituated to "empty a space of all life with just one guy" games.

I feel you guys. I have been more on edge the past few days than for a long time. This game is a direct threat to my personal goal of inner peace but I just can't stop playing it. This game is doing so many interesting things with ultra-violence and the lo-fi 80s motif, but I'm at a loss to explain it to my friends, except to have them play, which makes me part of the problem.

That's an awesome ending. I wish the real one was like that. Is anyone going to unlock more masks? Like I said, I've got three left and I have no idea how to go about getting them. Edit: Also, holy shit the Cheetah/Tiger mask lets you punch dogs. Instantly my favorite. I can feel my fear of those silent killers dying off as I type.

You played online games before voicechat became ubiquitous, didn't you?

God bless Tom Chick for pointing this out:

Just beat the game. Strangely enough, I really liked The freedom of being able to grab whatever weapon and purpose it towards your task is just too compelling. I got almost all the masks, too. I have no clue where to look, I've scrubbed all the levels pretty well.

I heard the opening greetings to this podcast and all I could think was, "Hello, John." Skip to 0:31 to see what I'm talking about.

Twenty-eight users reading this topic, we have a winner!

What counts as not being seen? What level did you do it on? I've found all the puzzle pieces up to level thirteen myself. They aren't hard once you know what to look for.

I think I react most strongly to the implication that subtlety is the province of a single market segment that can be safely avoided under many circumstances. Unless they're just rewriting Tolkien, fantasy authors, like any other genre authors, have to employ a bit of genre savvy, which is quite subtle to the uninitiated. Subtlety you've been habituated to is still subtlety, I think.

Well, they promise that this'll drop "seamlessly" into your existing campaign, so not challenges, per se. I agree that one-off missions would be much less of a missed opportunity.