sclpls

Ehh... I'm waiting to hear what more people have to say about the mid game. Even Rowan, who was the most critical of the game, said the early game was really great.

Pretty solid discussion about what makes TF2 easy to grasp (if someone just points out what you need to pay attention to) vs how incomprehensible DOTA is. The problem with DOTA is there aren't a couple of basic things you need to know, there's tons of small things you need to understand. Honestly the only saving grace for the game is how out of this world good Valve's sound design is, and that's the part that makes the game super "readable", but that's also the part that is hardest for new players to pick up on.

It is kind of mind bending how many good games have already been released this year, and we still have things to look forward to like new Dishonored and new Deus Ex!

In Sapienza there are a lot of really satisfying explosive solutions.

Oh yeah, saw the latest Herzog film that was playing at the SF film festival not too long ago. It's about the internet, and it is the funniest movie he has made in awhile. In some ways it feels very phoned in, but whatever, even phoned in Herzog is pretty enjoyable to watch.

This makes me upset now that the slacker cook dude wasn't playing some "Saltatore Bros" video game. Amazing missed opportunity instead used for shameless plug of previous, much less well received Hitman game.

There are some stealth games where I feel like savescumming is detrimental to the experience because you miss out on a lot of fun chaos. But I don't think Hitman is one of those games. The fun of the game, for me at least, is coming up with increasingly complex or convoluted ways to assassinate your targets. As such I reload pretty liberally because otherwise it would take too long to line up everything perfectly.

Last night while wandering through the Italian sewers I accidentally murdered a "red plumber" hahaha.

He's still really good in the laning stage even with the nerf. When you deny the range creep you are denying like 40% of the XP of the wave to the enemy team. If the cooldown of sacrifice is such that you can only deny every other range creep that's 20% XP. In other words, not ridiculous, but still strong.

This game with Vegetable Esports Club (a casual team of casters that tries their hand at the open qualifiers) was fun to watch. Also, the quickest match of DOTA I've ever watched. https://www.twitch.tv/purgegamers/v/63962539?t=3h8m

Yeah I've only really interacted with the multiplayer in Dark Souls to get help with bosses. The rest felt kind of pointless to me because I will always eventually parse out levels, but there are always 2 or 3 bosses in these games that I don't want to take the time on my own to figure out. I did do a fair amount of PvP in Demon's Souls, but I dunno, it didn't feel particularly satisfying to me because the objective of kill this other person somewhere in the level never felt that interesting.

I know a guy

XD

Yeah, same. I was definitely a whiny baby about them when I played the initial EA release. When I checked the game out a month ago I thought the difference was night & day. I'm glad Soren ignored the calls from the likes of Tom Chick and others to just release the game because I think even if the game ideas were all there all that extra polish should really help make the game more approachable for people that don't immediately grasp how to play the game (or have someone show them how to play the game).

So I am finally listening to this episode, and Nick made a comment about how it must be awful to watch someone terrible at the Dark Souls games. However I'm 100% certain that even if chat is whining about horrible decisions being made, they are enjoying the experience on some level. Jeff Green has streamed every Dark Souls game (and Bloodborne), and he is completely awful at the game, and has a dedicated audience watching him go through this ordeal. He eventually prevails because unless you lack a rudimentary sense of timing just about every human being has the capacity to get through these games if they put in the time and effort, which is why these games have such a dedicated audience. There is the version of the game where people are total lords and able to just own everything without getting hit while playing the game with a rock band guitar controller or whatever, and then there is also the version of the game that feels like Sisyphus pushing up the rock, only eventually you actually complete the task instead of being doomed to repeat it for eternity, and that's also a triumphant feeling. And I think there is always going to be an audience for people playing video games badly. I watched my wife play Hitman recently, and she wasn't getting along with the controls for that game, so I watched her accidentally stab a guy in the neck with a screwdriver, and then panic and scramble to safety with security swarming her and I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. There's a DOTA personality named Purge who used to do a youtube series where he would cast games of DOTA 2 as played by super low skilled players with lots of sublimely hilarious moments for anyone with a basic familiarity with the game. Hyper competence is certainly impressive to watch, but there's also something special about bumbling your way through a thing. I think the thing that actually kills the entertainment value of watching someone play a game is just kind of basic competence, something that there's low risk of achieving on your first playthrough of a Souls game.

I just remembered that I need to give a shout out to Chris Remo. He responded to some question I had in chat about tiki drinks, and he pronounced my user name correctly. Since it's just a bunch of consonants it has always been amusing for me to listen to people puzzle it out and give their best shot at pronouncing my name, but Chris correctly surmised it was scalpels without the vowels. Well played!

The UI makes very little sense to me in this game, so I would wager that I am the one incorrect about this. :-)

Gonna be really interesting watching the qualifiers with teams having to figure out a brand new patch. Must be stressful I imagine!

Unless there's something I'm missing, it doesn't appear so. However the starting item set is different (for example, you start with the sniper rifle as an item you can have at a designated location which is something you had to unlock in the Paris level).

Wow, the new level is gorgeous! Took me forever to get through it because I spent most of my time just exploring rather than pursuing objectives. Definitely gonna be playing this one a ton to try and find all the little secrets it has to offer.

It's a lot of fun to play right now. It's doing what a new patch should do where people seem to be picking just about any hero, and seeing how things go. Kinda hard to figure out what are good items to pick up on people right now, I like it. :-) Probably the most obvious big deal is Axe feels ridiculously strong, and most of the XP of a wave of creeps is in the ranged creep now, so having Lich in a lane with you is kind of a big deal. But there's a lot of stupid fun things you can do right now like the aghs upgrade for Earthshaker, and a hurricane pike (new item that basically forcestaffs you and an enemy opponent in opposite directions) on just about anyone.

New patch has made the game kind of hilarious.

I'll just chime in and say I too share Rob's wish for a digital version of the COIN games. I haven't played much Twilight Struggle because my friend that has a copy has played the game many more times than me, and so I always get stomped. I suppose I should get this PC copy just so I can finally learn how to play the game properly.

Huh that is a bummer! I remember Castile was the first country I played, and I rolled over Spain, and didn't face that issue, but that was back when the game was first released so I suppose they must have patched out that possibility since then. Yeah, Paradox is sometimes weirdly heavy handed about certain outcomes. One reason I am looking forward to Stellaris is the sci-fi setting means there won't be awkwardly forcing certain events to happen.