sclpls

some stuff about vr

This was an issue with Company of Heroes 2 where there was a deluge of DLC on the first day, and it just kind of caused your brain to shut down and not really want to play the game because who wants to sift through all that junk to see if there is anything you actually want in there?

Yeah... there is some major goalpost shifting happening here.

This game is great! I've been trying to get my group of friends to play DOTA or LoL but they are pretty partisan about one or the other so it can be difficult to get a team together, but it is easy to get everyone together to play 3v3 for this!

I would want to see them give me a bunch of money so I would never have to work again. Then I would thank them, and tell them to get back to work.

Yeah, the names are good. I always look forward to seeing what a new configuration is called.

Nintendo pursuing the BRIC-type market seems like... a totally reasonable business strategy? Obviously there are some unique challenges, and it is possible they won't succeed, but it isn't clear to me how this is a priori a horrible decision.

Hmm... so when I tried just the straight URL in Feedly the other day it did nothing, but it seems to have worked now so I guess maybe Feedly was just weird that day. Anyway, glad it is working now!

I was initially down on the side objectives, but I came around on them because when you're having a bad streak with trying to get a high score you can shift gears and focus on something else.

Congratulations to Bruce on the new website, and another great interview. Bruce, if you see this, is there a RSS for the site?

I'm not joking around; I am calling up the Thought Police right now!

Yeah, I think normal difficulty is a good idea. The expansion makes the game slightly more challenging I think!

I picked it up this weekend because of the 40% discount. I put probably 2 or 3 hours into it, and haven't encountered any technical problems. It really is another example of Vlambeer being the best at designing twitchy arcade feeling games. What are everyone's favorite ship configurations? Some of my best scores have been with the laser weapon, armor body, and hover engine.

Interestingly enough, I've heard a number of people say that Dark Souls 2 is divided up into very manageable chunks of time, and so they treat it similarly to how Chris treats Spelunky, something they play for about half an hour a day for basically the next year.

I think you're glossing over that he became a father? Seems significant, no?

I think he means J Allard's idea.

Alternative ending to the Walking Dead season 1: "How are you holding up?" "...... okay."

The DLC goes from a Disneyland version of Paris to a classic noir story, and film noir as a genre was born out of Parisian film critics misreading a certain strain of American film from the 30s and 40s. So there's a clever nod to that interplay going on here. It's fair to criticize the DLC as nothing more than sort of an exercise in genre certainly, but it answers some of the questions you have about why certain things happen the way they happen.

Okay okay, sorry to go back to Mad Men, but it just occurred to me that Sean's approval of the last episode's ending means Sean's favorite way for a piece of fiction to end is

CLWheeljack - haha yes, that is exactly the part I was referring to!

Wow, extended 80's mix of the theme music at the end of this episode! Must have been tough talking to Ken about all this stuff because I could easily see you doing an individual episode on any one of Irrational's games! I really liked your question about the shift from Irrational as a scrappy PC developer to making games with just this incredible level of polish in terms of art direction, as well as the question about the tension between making a more mainstream Shock game despite the fact that these games are incredibly weird. I don't know if Ken gave a satisfactory answer, but then again I'm not sure that there is one. That's part of what makes Bioshock special. In so many ways it's as improbable as the failed utopias it depicts.

Yeah, depending on how the season plays out this could be a totally meaningless observation on my point, it is definitely too soon to judge. It's just my initial impression.

I should probably clarify when I say their roles I'm talking about their structural roles within the narrative of the show, not their fictional roles within the power structure of the firm, that might be a little confusing. Like, undoubtedly, the women in the show are advancing in the work force currently with a lot of the men who hold traditional power in recess. What is a weird disconnect for me is that as that rise to power happens their dramatic voice kind of recedes. I thought the story line last season where Joan deftly maneuvers her way into accounts was really strong, and provided lots of opportunities to showcase who she was. Since her promotion though she has felt fairly muted as a character and I don't really have a strong sense of what's going on with her (admittedly it's early on in the season so that could change). As for Peggy, as far as I can tell the only time she is on screen this season she is just grumpy. Betty has been really interesting lately though for sure. The show is really good at expressing ideas in an understated manner, so as the season progresses it's possible this stuff will make more sense to me, but at the moment I just find many of the directorial and narrative choices odd.

Good Mad Men discussion. I mostly like this season, but I'm having difficulty with the way the show keeps making signals about how women's lib is a thing that is happening at that time with the way most of the female characters seem to have receded to the background relative to their roles in previous seasons. I'm glad the show is wrapping up, there are about 5 or 6 plausible endings I can imagine for the show, and only two of them are any good. Here's hoping.

Yeah, I never finished this game. I hit a point where there were so many different possibilities I could think of that I might need to do without being sure of what exactly it was, and each failure being a time consuming process to get back to where I was that I just ended up giving up. Thoroughly enjoyed my time up to that point though, so I still have no problems recommending the game.