Problem Machine

Okeedokee then

I mean okay to be blunt it makes you sound like you're 12. That's all.

I think the aesthetic is still driven by the design, just in a more straightforwardly pragmatic way: 1: I want something like a new Souls game 2: Except I don't want shields or magic, nothing the player can use to make the combat easier and less scary 3: So what I want instead are powerful but slow weapons like guns the player can use tactically 4: But they can't be like modern guns, because then the player would rely on them exclusively, so they have to be pretty primitive So then you end up with a kind of victorian setting just because that's what makes sense with those gameplay constraints. Now, maybe that could have been executed a bit better, but the big steps to get there all make sense. Man I want to play Bloodborne

Yes this poopwater thread on this video game website sets the high poopwater mark for refined and mature discussion. poopwater.

Um why is the episode title not Double Extruded Snoop Dog?

It just all seems extremely arbitrary to me. Certainly there are dangerous drugs out there, but given its relative benignity and cheap and easy production I honestly consider pot to be closer to chocolate and coffee than it is to heroin, even more so than ethanol is. We ingest so much for so many different reasons, some of the divisions I see drawn between bad drugs and good drugs are pretty silly in my eyes -- and that's before even getting into the legit medicinal usage of 'recreational' drugs.

Like... recreational drug use, right? Is caffeine included in that?

I've been making musics off and on for like 15 years now, starting with general midi stuff and progressing to Reason. I'd like to explore more stuff with originally recorded samples/performances and lyrics sometime, but I haven't yet really figured out the correct combination of inspiration and pragmatic approach to actually integrate that into my workflow. Most of my more recent/presentable stuff is represented on that soundcloud page linked in the first post. I also spent a few months last year putting together an album, which I think is mostly pretty good, and is up at Bandcamp: Songs of the Uncanny Valley This year I'm trying to make a habit of writing at least one track a month, with the end result of having another album's worth of tracks by the end of the year. Here's what I've done so far: Please Don't Make Me Leave The Past is a Ghost and the Future is a Monster Where I Am Meant To Go Heh, reminds me a lot of this: Would definitely, as mentioned above, recommend trying to get away from the pre-baked instruments, since they often sound rather trite. I dunno what your particular program has in terms of parameters to tweak, but even just downloading free samples online can take you a long way towards developing a more distinct sound. I think this is something that one struggles with at all levels of skill. It's constantly a balance between trying to make something that the listener finds approachable and can understand and appreciate and making something that is interesting and avoids cliches, and it's never a trivial challenge. I'd say that any time you come up with an idea like that, for a challenge or experiment, follow that and see where it takes you. It's the best way to learn! Regarding music theory stuff, I've seen this site linked before and it may be a good starting point. I took classes for music theory back in city college, so I haven't felt the need to go through it myself yet, but my education wasn't super complete and I'm sure there's lots of stuff I've forgotten or didn't get a chance to learn, so I've been meaning to look at it myself. In the meanwhile, maybe some of y'all will find it useful (may want to add a link to it in the first post): Dave Conservatoire

Given how much recent discussion here has centered around it, do you reckon we oughta start a new thread for music creations?

Yeah, though I hope they do something that isn't Hotline Miami next. I've been a fan of Cactus's work since long before HLM, and would love to see him do something more like the really dreamlike stuff he used to at the scope of Hotline Miami.

It sounded like after they did that first DLC level which was basically just a bonus level with no story they started developing something like a side story with the pig butcher. I can see how that idea, of a copycat killer inspired by jacket, started to expand out into a bunch of different related ideas of people who were caused for one reason or another to go on their own rampages, and after a certain point that concept became bigger and more sprawling than the entirety of Hotline Miami so they decided to make it a sequel. I certainly can see why it would be too much to ask a dev to release that much content as free DLC (which was their original starting point), but I think that they should have considered the idea of a paid expansion a bit more carefully. Oh well!

I don't think the second game really does stand on its own, which I guess is a fair criticism. It's a bunch of mini-scenarios tied into the first game in various ways. TBH I still think that it might have been better served being something like the Half Life 2 episodes, selling each act as a little $2 expansion to HLM1 which builds on the story a bit more and provides some new challenging levels. I don't think it's a bad sequel, but I think it could have been the most amazing DLC ever.

Again, that's probably one of several outcomes, along with dying at the end of the war and getting killed by Biker. I don't think there's a single 'canon' chain of events. Whether it was dying or not, though, all of the levels pre-Trauma in HLM1 are unreliable narrator flashbacks, which becomes increasingly clear as they progress. edit: Also, frankly, I am so much less annoyed by ANY story told through text than by any but the very best told by lengthy full-voiced cutscenes that I honestly don't get being bothered by the talkiness. It's like a minute of reading. Whatever.

Well it becomes relevant when you recall that all of those were dying/coma hallucinations of Jacket, and that he's cast his old wartime buddy in each of these roles because of the conversations. Maybe you don't find that interesting - I do. Maybe there's not a big grand meaning of life behind it, but I think it's really cool taking this character who is defined by violence and seeing how that happened, and alternate ways it could have happened -- either the peaceful retirement of the convenience store owner, the patriotic fervor of snake mask, or the bloody death of the last squad member. Alternatives are also a recurring theme, with several of the plot threads reaching contradictory endings (biker and Jacket, Richter and Jacket and Mob Boss, Mob Boss and the fans). So, okay, whatever. You don't give a shit about the characters. I do. I like how each character expresses their personality through their particular form of violence, even in slight ways, as with Evan's reluctance to kill and Tony's unstoppable rage, and makes me feel a brief moment of synchronicity with them. These things matter, and change the qualitative experience of playing the game in slight but substantial ways. There may be plenty of room for improvement, I'm sure there could be snappier dialogue and that the ideas could be conveyed more quickly and effectively, but that's true of anything to various degrees -- I can get on board with that. However, claiming it's all filler, that it's all completely devoid of ideas, that it's all nonsense, or somehow self-contradictory? I completely disagree.

This month's piece is done! It's very different from the last two! Where I Am Meant To Go I also have a couple of runner-up pieces I may also try to finish for this month, but we'll see.

As I said, I think that there is a throughline to the story, which is showing how the chain of violence that starts in the military levels and set the foundation for Hotline Miami 1 eventually keeps echoing itself through different characters and eventually killing pretty much everybody. It's a different approach from that of the first game, which specifically puts you in the head of one -- well, two -- murderous maniacs, and how while they get roped into 50 Blessing's whole thing against their will they, and you as the player, enjoy the ride. Rather than focusing on that individually expressive experience of two characters, it pulls back and puts that in the greater context, showing both where Jacket came from and what the repercussions of his actions were. I thought that was pretty interesting! Oh, I'm not sure if you noticed, but those scenes where they were talking about what they were going to do after the war? Each of those was the setting of one of the down-time segments from Hotline Miami. I don't think this was written nearly as carelessly as you seem to think.

And I'd like to emphasize the supposed there. Because, honestly, it seems to me a lot of the criticism of Hotline Miami and its sequel centers around declaring that it's trying to do something and then lambasting it for doing it poorly, when I kind of don't think that's what it was ever trying to do at all. It feels like a lot of people are primed to expect only one possible message about violence in games, that we're bad people for enjoying it, so any game which is about violence but fails to convey that very specific message is perceived as a failure. I mean, what in the actual text of Hotline Miami even suggests that's the intent at all? There's a lot in there pointing out that humans have an innate drive towards violence, that that violence has causes and effects which usually source back to more violence, and that we'll use any justification we can find to find an outlet for it. What message is in there anywhere about how you're a bad person for enjoying video game violence? It's frustrating, to me, that when so few games address the violence that's omnipresent in their mechanics in any real way through the narrative, one of the few games that takes the relatively minimal step of acknowledging its own violence is considered pretentious for not moralizing enough about it.

a) it's cryptic? it tells us we're bad for playing it?

you have chosen... wisely.

In stories about dads playing one game, 15 years ago or something I borrowed a friend's N64 and copy of Zelda 64. My dad's always liked the Zelda games, and ended up beating Link to the Past before I could when I was away on Summer vacation, to my moderate disappointment. For whatever reason he got super into Zelda 64 though, to the point where he played it over and over again, as a hobby. At one point I was passing through and commented that it was weird that he played the same game over and over again, and a little while after that he stopped. He had a stroke 7 or 8 years ago and I don't think could really play games like that any more. I feel a bit of guilt or regret over that offhand comment now. Also for a few years my mom was super into Snood. I knew and told her that it was a knockoff, but a) it ran on her aging PowerMac G5, and unlike Puzzle Bobble, it didn't have any timer between moves, and she doesn't like time pressure because it stresses her out -- so I forgave her Snoodly trespasses.

Hm, the piano bit at the end feels a bit of a nonsequiter. Otherwise pretty good background music for exploring a swamp full of porn ghosts!

I also saw this cover for Gotham Central floating around as a point of comparison. Granted, not everyone can aspire to the supreme badassitude of Renee Montoya, but it's a much less diminishing take on the same style of cover.

Oracle is rad, but there are plenty of ways for that to happen without her getting objectified and victimized as she was. That said, there's some interesting ideas in The Killing Joke, it's just kinda shitty that she got thrown under the bus to make them happen.

Wow I saw the cover and the shitstorm around it without quite realizing it was supposed to be for the new, fun, teen-focused Batgirl. That takes it from kinda gross to really fucked up.

Fat dudes make Tony/Brass Knuckles SO SATISFYING though