sclpls

Man, Chris's first effort at the temple was like way better than anything I've ever done.

I still want to see someone playing like Supreme Commander with this thing. That game was a really good case study in how awful controllers are for certain types of PC games.

So Sean just made an eloquent statement providing additional context and detail to that part of the discussion. I would simply like to add that the statement, "I played a video game, and that made me remember what a video game is like" is just really kind of funny.

Yeah, the clickers in the Last of Us were like "matured" cordyceps. That Arkham City fake ending thing would have made me so angry. So I never played Bladerunner because my parents didn't have a powerful enough PC to run it when the game was available, but from what I understand that game totally supported player choice in terms of being able to have an ending really early on in the game where a player might potentially be missing out on 3/4ths of the content or something like that, and I think it is totally rad that a game might be designed that way. I really hope that game shows up on GOG one of these days...

It's been pretty rad watching people progressively get better at this game.

Despite how lo-fi the graphics are, I appreciate the basic comprehensibility of the world here. In my mind, that makes it quite a bit better than something like Monaco which was kind of a pain in the ass to look at.

Yeah, when you have the capability to handle multiple angry shopkeepers... that's a really good feeling.

And to further back that up, the designer of the game, Derek Yu, said he can win the game about 1 out of 3 times even though he isn't a particularly amazing player or anything.

As someone that has played a lot of Spelunky I can say your intuitions are correct. Getting better at Spelunky is the same as with a traditional roguelike where your ability to excel at the game comes from understanding all the different systems and secrets of the game. The game tricks the player since it has that real-time platformer element, so it creates the impression that twitch reflexes will help get you out of tight spots, but situational awareness is much more important. When reflexes save the day that is more like dumb luck.

To be sure, just because there is a high degree of realism in the movie doesn't mean that it is a completely realistic movie. There are plenty of unrealistic elements in service of the narrative of the movie. They had physicists as consultants though, so they were at least aware of what rules they were breaking I'm sure. I think the balance struck is totally reasonable. But I guess if you are more of a space nerd than a film nerd some of that stuff might bug you. Film nerds will lose their shit over that opening 15 minutes shot though because that stuff is the best.

The Conversation has one of my all time favorite endings for a movie.

I hadn't seen that Buzz Aldrin review (thanks for the link!), but I've seen a lot of quotes from NASA people that were super impressed by the amount of realism in the movie.

Wow, Nick is just terrible. I guess he should go back to his baby games where he is a baby. That's probably what he should do.

The camera shots from the 1st person perspective in Gravity were so amazingly tense. This and Cave of Forgotten Dreams are the only 3D movies I've seen where I was glad I saw it in 3D. Amazing director. People that haven't seen Children of Men should absolutely see that too.

On the other hand, if you want a game that has the scope of something like Civilization, you generally need to fall back on the "spirit of the nation/historical forces/other kind of abstract concept", etc. Crusader Kings 2 gets to sidestep the issue because its about dynasty politics, but it's not always appropriate for games to introduce that level of detail to their systems. I'm okay with that level of abstraction, it allows me to focus more on appreciating the strategy of the game rather than getting caught up in trying to role play my character correctly or whatever.

The speckiest of specs.

So the CTM trademark for Half-Life 3 turns out to have been a hoax. Not even a little surprised.

Specs http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/10/04/steam-machine-prototype-specs/

Rad http://www.polygon.com/2013/10/4/4798442/pro-social-gta-v

People going back to Bioshock 2 are going to discover that the drill attack is just as horrifying as the skyline hook in Bioshock Infinite. The audio logs for Minerva's Den are way better writing than anything in Bioshock Infinite. It is so great that this opportunity for a 2nd pass is available now. Props for 2K for getting all of this right.

I already play games like CK2 or Civ 5 from my couch using a wireless mouse. Because there's no real time pressure these games work just fine that way, I just play them at a slightly slower pace than I would if I had hotkeys (the only downside is that text is not optimized for a TV screen obviously, which is not that big a deal for Civ 5 where there isn't much text I really need to look at, but is slightly more problematic for CK2). The strategy games that will really benefit from this will be RTS's and other games where being able to use hot keys is critical to your ability to play the game well. Playing something like DOTA 2 or Company of Heroes from the couch definitely sounds like fun. I also suspect the Steam controller will probably work better for FPS games than current controller setups allow.

Big Dog presents a Panicky Walking Dead/Mark of the Ninja crossover featuring dishonored ghosts.A Campo Santo joint.

Shut Up & Sit Down just did a review of sorts for Twilight Struggle that contains a couple of interesting points. http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/review-twilight-struggle/

Saw on Polygon that this cleared Steam Greenlight, so congrats to the developers. I haven't checked it out yet just because I haven't really been playing games lately, but I'm definitely excited about this one.

I use the Arc Touch when I'm playing games on my laptop, and I haven't had any issues with it. It took awhile to get used to the simulated scroll wheel for a game like L4D2 where you use that to switch items, but otherwise worked perfectly fine.