Frenetic Pony

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    893

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Frenetic Pony

  1. Posted

    Dude... Chris. Play Perfect Dark Zero if you haven't. Co-op. It's an old school shooter, and the best thing I remember from it is on one mission, sitting next to my brother, we carefully took out two lookouts in two different towers at the exact same time. And not because the game required it, or even suggested it. It's because they'd notice if the other was dead and hit the alarm, and then there was too many enemies. So we just totally set up the dual lookout snipe simultaneously because it was the thing to do.

  2. Posted

    Long time Thumbs listener and forum lurker but first time posting.

    I'm graduating from school in Los Angeles and moving to San Francisco this summer for a job in the Financial District. I want to be walking distance from work which leaves only Nob Hill/Russian Hill/North Beach as my choices. I'm from Northern California originally and know the area pretty well, but had no idea it was this difficult to find housing in the city. Anyone local have any advice besides just craigslist? 

     

    Run and hide. Curl up in a ball and pretend everything is good, because you're going to spend a long fucking time looking for a place.

  4. Posted

    There wasn't a thread about... VR Games. And I'm figuring there probably isn't going to be separate VR game threads until there's enough units out in general. So here's a catch all for any VR only game, which is probably some little indie experimental thing.

     

    To get things started:

     

     

    Normally, watching this sort of gameplay would be utter nonsense if it were a typical gamepad/screen game. But just making it VR with those controllers suddenly makes the whole thing way more hilarious. "Gah smash everything, fuck this record! Fuck this glass! Fuck everything on this shelf!" Like Surgeon Simulator but you don't even need the surgery context. Which is a reason I think VR and these kind of controllers can take off.

  5. Posted

    The difference is Pacific Rim has characters and Godzilla has piles of slightly different shades of grey goo.

     

    See that's what I'm saying. Pacific Rim DOESN'T have characters. I found the two leads about as totally worthless as Godzilla's vaguely human shaped goo. I wanted them to shut the hell up so the giant robots punching stuff could come back, just like I wanted the "humans" (Heisenberg aside...) in Godzilla to shut the hell up so the giant monsters wrecking stuff could come back.

  6. Posted

    Pacific Rim and Godzilla are incomparable as movies beyond the fact that they both feature giant monsters. Comparing them favorably is the greatest sin any one person could commit.

     

    Independence Day is okay. But also not really the same kind of movie so I don't understand the comparison.

     

    The plot is kind of the same, and so are the reasons people watch these movies. "Boffin yells about giant alien/monster/thing that will destroy the earth." then "giant monster/alien/whatever" comes and destroys the earth, then "generic handsome dude goes to try and stop giant monster from destroying the earth" with the real thing people are actually watching it all for is "Ultra gratuitous destruction porn from some crazy sci-fantasy monster thing" and hopefully some stupid one liners (really the kind of main thing Godzilla was lacking here). So I personally consider them pretty much the same genre, along with Michael Bay's Transformers (which is missing the boffin but what do you expect from Michael Bay).

     

    Point is "sci-fantasy montster thing wrecks world, it looks cool and gets defeated" is the entire plot of all these movies, and people seem to love them. I grant you it's a "loose" genre, but I'd still say it's more specific than just "action movie" or something. Besides, I'd take another look at ID4. It's basically a better Pacific Rim because unlike Pacific Rim it has Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum with enough cheesy charm for two movies put together, let alone one. While PR is just the blond dude looking stupid while his would be girlfriend also fails at acting.

  7. Posted

    Nah I distinctly remember people praising it as like a super great example of storytelling. Not here, maybe, but definitely somewhere.

     

    Were those people in a looney bin, and also drunk?  ^_^

     

    Regardless, see I found Pacific Rim just as dumb as Godzilla, but thought the ending was just a stupid wash while Godzilla at least had a right and proper finale type ending. Ohwell, regardless of opinion it is a fact that none of these really dumb disaster/monster/thing movies will ever stand up to the king of the genre :Independence Day, winner in terms of awesomeness!

  9. Posted

    Things on my wishlist (some of which are probably not your cup of tea) that have come out recently or will be out soon:

    Transistor

    Dynasty Warriors 8: 3 subtitles edition

    Everquest Landmark

    Hack n Slash

    Warthunder Tanks Expansion

    Jagged Alliance: Flashback

     

    Edit: I just realized how much of this list is early access. i guess I'm falling for the pre-order trap hook, line, and sinker.

     

    Hey that's right, Hack n Slash should be available soon.

  10. Posted

    I read the Stanley Parables message as something like "there's no optimal way to do this* so just enjoy what's happening in front of you and don't fret about what could/should have been happening instead."

    * "this" being "make a video game/play a video game/tell a story/experience a story" for starters.

    I think it's easy to have a cynical read on the Stanley Parable, but for that you have to ignore it clearly reveling in its own fun and delight around every turn.

    (Merus your read might be closer to the intended one, if there is an intended read.)

     

    I've now found "intended reads" annoying in creative works. Made the mistake that what the author "really" intended matters early in college, but now I've found its more fun to, if you even have one as a creator or not, just let people make up their own minds about it. And even argue about it among themselves. So maybe the arguing is more fun than getting to a definitive conclusion.

     

    As for myself, I just sort of looked at The Stanley Parable, said "oh I see what you did there" then kind of went through it a few times because heck, I already had it.

     

    Speaking of completed games, someone tell me if Watching Dogs is good next week. I'll pick up the latest iteration of "Shoot Dem Nazis" at some point later on in a steam sale, just to shoot dem Nazis, but right now I don't have a Wii-U (and am not getting one) so Mario Kart 8 isn't being played, and nothing else seems to be on the horizon till October. (Transistor is nigh out I know, but Bastion and etc. just aren't my type of game.)

  11. Posted

    I just saw Godzilla.

     

    Yo that movie fuckin' sucks!

     

    Oh c'mon. Ok the humans are stupid as crap. But I bet the audience cheered when

     

    Godzilla.... Wins, FATALITY 

     

    It definitely wasn't the movie I wanted based on the trailers, but it can still be fun if you just accept it as being stupid. Like, cheesy bad but the movie kinda knows it stupid.

  12. Posted

    An example of the behavior I hate in this game:

     

    We're losing the match. As the buildings around the ancient crumble down we call the gg to be good sports and step aside to let the match get ended...

     

    Then the enemy team surrounds our spawn point. Because they want those cool-guy points for ganking us over and over I guess. When a gg is called, that seems very unsportsman-like. The only time I see that being acceptable is if the match could spin on a dime unless you keep the enemy pinned back absolutely and brutally (which is not a frequent situation).

     

    Even with one guy disconnected we just busted out of our spawn point hard and destroyed the entire enemy team. It was poetic.

     

    This is actually a big part of the reason I quit Dota 2, it felt like I just had to deal with assholes every other game in one way or another.

     

    In Heroes of the Storm, which I'm playing like 2 matches a day, there's basically no assholery whatsoever! There's basically not match quitting, almost no AFK's, no raging or anything. It's also a game that I don't feel really bad when losing in, it's a really really refreshing experience to just have fun with one of these things instead of everything driving towards getting super competitive.

  13. Posted

    Nintendo will not be year of anything. It will be a millennia, the millennia of Waluigi. Tausendjährigen Reich von Waluigi, Heil Heil Heil!

     

    Oh and you guys are totally right! Sony will have this huge indie thing where indie devs get to be onstage for like 1 minute and say "my game is coming to the PS4!" Games that are "coming to the PS4!" Firewatch, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Divinity: Original Sin, The Forest, A Story About My Uncle.

     

    Other triple A games showing up: Shadow of Mordor, Arkham Knight (World Exlusive!!! Pew pew pew). Oddly enough exactly no games besides Nintendo's will actually be announced E3, as they will all have been announced before but next to nothing shown or talked about until E3/

  16. Posted

    Got a date tonight! I'm excited but nervous because I don't want come off as a fool. The woman in going out on a date is some I've come to like a good amount and I hope it all goes well.

     

    I hope it goes better than that sentence did  :P

  17. Posted

    Godzilla

     

    So this was a lot cheesier than the trailers would lead you to believe. It's an actual Godzilla movie! And that honestly made it kind of hit and miss until the finale. Ken Watanabe spend the entire movie with a stupid, befuddled look on his face, and all of the humans are pretty worthless. But it had been a while since I've seen people actually cheer in the middle of a movie, and that big ending did definitely put a smile on my face.

     

    Fun for what it is, a big screen event kind of thing and an amusing way to spend 2 hours, if rather disappointing in terms of both the anticipation from the trailers and the sheer amount of effort director Gareth Edwards obviously put into it. I'd really like to see him take on a better script than this one at some point in the future.

  18. Posted

    Really who cares what color his skin is or if he's "white" or whatever? That really shouldn't matter, "wait the obvious bad guy can't also be a racist too!" wat?

     

    What's odd is the guy is in an obvious "Warlord" kind of position. Yet he looks like some hip bro douche from a night club rather than a Warlord. If he was just a more traditional warlord, then sure some could call "racist" or whatever if he looked "white" as well, but there would still be the possibility of it making sense in the context of the story (could be "The Man who Would be King or something). But with the dress sensibility, there's just the automatic reaction of "that's just too weird" "wtf!" "that's got to be racist right?" which may be mistargeted.

  19. Posted

    Microsoft: 

     

    Phil Spencer enters stage left, sweaty and doing his best Ballmer impression Exclusives exclusives exclusives exclusives! Exclusives exclusives exclusives exclusives! EXCLUSIVES EXCLUSIVES EXCLUSIVES EXCLUSIVES! C'MOOOOON!

     

    Forza Horizons 2, Fable Legends, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive, Kinectimals 2, and Halo 5 are all shown. Kinect parts are really, really awkward.

     

    Sony:

     

    Kaz Hirai: Video Games! Huge optimistic smile.

     

    Mostly third party games are shown. There will be a huge onstage Destiny live demo. Then, finally, we will see The Last Guardian... again. There will be a stage demo of their VR thing, with a projector showing the "players" 3d view. It will be super, super awkward. At the end of the conference there will be a teaser for Uncharted 4 with an at most vague release date.

     

    Nintendo:

     

    We released Mario Kart. Isn't that cool? It's Mario Kart People! Look, Super Smash Bros. LOOK AT THE SMASH BROS!!! *Bows

     

    Other stuff: Lots more "OMG WORLD EXCLUSIVE!" shit than were used to in the past years, will feel like a decade ago when E3 was actually big.

     

    Far Cry 4: Definitely. Assassin's Creed Unity: Definitely. Dishonored 2: Already confirmed. Sims 4: Will actually get to learn what the game is like. Dragon Age Inquistion: First actually public demo of gameplay. Mass Effect (lets not call it a sequel): Probably not. Rockstar: Does not do E3. Fallout 4: Outside possibility. Doom (4?): Definitely possible. Beast (Souls thingy): Definitely possible. Resident Evil 7: Possible. New and disappointing Silent Hill: Possible. Assassin's Creed, Last Gen: Possible.

  20. Posted

    I've no opinion, because I don't know shit about this game other than "Tibet and shit" and there's some of the weird vibe of 3 carried over. Does that mean it's the same writer? Probably not after the PR stuff last time. So I'll reserve judgement, but I do have the feeling this is going to be another Ubisoft Open Worldtm game. Meaning another setting that acknowledges far too much that it's a video game instead of an actual place, another million worhtless collection missions, another "and the kitchen sink" approach to "Features". Which makes me none too optimistic, I like losing myself in video game worlds, not completing a worthless set of never ending tickboxes.

  21. Posted

    It’s Judgment Day for Killer Robots at the United Nations

     

     

    There is a coalition of NGOs called the “Campaign to Stop Killer Robots”.  I feel that the Thumbs need to join this umbrella organization. 

     

    Other things I learned from that article are that South Korea and Israel are already experimenting with systems that could easily be made completely autonomous.  It sounds like human control is an optional part of these systems.

     

    Class Human { int HumanDNA; bool organism = true } bool optional = true

     

    Ok Maybe C++ pseudo code is just too geeky

  22. Posted

    I mean look at this shit, stop just rooting for Nintendo and read this: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-05-13-nintendo-two-years-away-from-redefining-video-game-platform-iwata

     

    Really? Ok, yeah, you're going to save the Wii-U by just magically popping out the next Pokemon. Right. "We have plans" it reminds me of George R.R. Martin the South Park Black Friday stuff. "We have great plans. They're coming, oh don't worry they're coming. No seriously, stop asking more questions, big things are coming, I promise."

     

    Maybe if the fans, aka most people on this thread, were as logical and honest with Nintendo as Microsoft's fans were, they might be inclined to listen. I don't want Nintendo to die. I like competition. But "believing" in Nintendo isn't going to magically wipe away half a billion dollars in losses with no defined plan to turn it around other than optimism.

  23. Posted

    Posting that (yes people use it for productivity, ok it was just too specific of an example!)

     

    Regardless, posting that made me realize something. People, just... everyone seems too much of a fan of Nintendo. Far too enamored to ever believe Nintendo screwed up. No one has had trouble calling out Microsoft on it's bullshit, and the One has probably been saved from a Wii-U or worse fate by it.

     

    But no one suggests giving up the damned stupid tablet controller for Nintendo, no one. People triumphantly announce that Kinect shouldn't forced on people, but no one thinks of this for Nintendo.... it's useless! It's a useless, expensive, unnecessary thing. They could ditch it and drop the Wii-U price by $75 and probably salvage the whole thing.

     

    And this, really, is why I predict Nintendo is just going to keep sliding. There are just, absolute blinders on everyone, up to Saturo Iwata, that Nintendo is somehow "different". That they somehow don't compete against Sony and Microsoft. That somehow smartphones haven't eaten into their handheld market. Every time you say that all people can say is "Nuh uh! That's not true, people still buy 3DS's." Newsflash: It will sell less than the DS when the world is richer than it was a decade ago and the video game market has grown substantially, meaning it should have sold more. So yes, smartphones have eaten away at it.

     

    But it's all "Nuh uh, Nintendo will be around forever. Nuh uh Nintendo didn't make a stupid controller even though no one can think of use for it. Nuh uh, Nintendo's investors are all so invested in the company that they will bankrupt themselves just to keep Nintendo alive! I know it, I believe it." Even Iwata seems to believe it. And until that's gone, until Nintendo's magical fanboy distortion field is gone, and they can make rational decisions like sporting a good online infrastructure, and ditching losing prospects like their tablet controller, and etc. then I'm going to say they are going to just slide down the hole.

     

    This is why I say they need a new CEO. Someone that can act rationally,  someone that can actually think of these things. But right now their big plan is to bring out another Mario Kart, another game that will inevitably be called "not as good as Mario Kart 64" a game that today would be launched on mobile for $3, but they'll charge $60 for the sequel, and no one will question them, because they're Nintendo and even as they post continual losses they can't actually make a mistake.

  24. Posted

    Also people totally don't sit there playing their games consoles with laptops, phones and/or tablets open next to them.  Cause that totally doesn't happen.  Finding interesting ways to use second screens would be a waste of time since only programmers use them.

     

    For concentrating man! Geeze you just hate thinking Nintendo is wrong.

     

    Humans can only concentrate on one thing at a time, very few people can actually "multitask". For primary use, programmers are the primary people that actually use two screens, and that's just to display more information on one task, and that's side by side. Unless a game is so unengaging you can just look away without bothering to another screen then it's not happening. And if it did happen that wouldn't be a very good game right?

     

    They've had 18 months+ lead development time to come up with something. Microsoft dropped the Kinect after 7 but you're still clinging to the Wii-U's second screen after all this time?

  25. Posted

    Or done something interesting with their second screen thing.

     

    Second screens are used, primarily by programmers. Really if it was such a good idea why wouldn't we have done it before on the PC right? It's not like having 2 screens available for a game hasn't been around for a while.

     

    On a side note, just for the hell of it, I'm also predicting Sony's picture division will be spun off. Or rather should be spun off. I mean, Amazing Spiderman 2 may well... or rather will lose money after the like 200 million dollar marketing is taken into account. And "Angry Birds" the movie, Popeye... I mean wtf? You don't have to be Amazing (cough) to do well in Hollywood these days (Cough, Michael Bay, Bob Orci, Cough). Just give people the stupid crap they want, which is apparently a movie where sci-fi gobbledy goop gets talked about and then something blows up in CG. Not an outdated, sexist comic strip.

     

    Though admittedly, the "sci-fi nonsense + explosions" may burn itself out this year between Spiderman, Godzilla, X-men, Tom Cruise lives forever by sucking the souls out of people that watch his sci-fi movies, Transformers: Michael Bay's mountain of coke needs to be bigger, Jupiter "Who keeps giving these siblings money" Ascending, Guardians of the "Marvel itself will burn out eventually, all these movies are starting to blur together" Galaxy, Earth to "we stole the plot to ET" Echo, Dawn of the "This movie might suck cause they've not given it any advertising budget" Planet of the Apes, "WTF is this movie even" aka Lucy, The (totally not riffing off the success of Hunger Games) Maze Runner, and let's not forget Ninja "So much cocaaaaaaine for Michael Bay!" Turtles.

     

    I'll even do you one and remove the "for kids" and "for dumbass angsty teens" one to keep this "OMG Avengers made all the money!" genre pure. That's still 11 movies, almost 1 a month, and far more than 1 a month for the summer where most of these are.