sclpls

Hahahaha "ghostride the panic'd whip" is such a good phrase. Should any GTA game ever be set in the Bay Area, that should be the subtitle.

My impression of Double Fine is that it is a fairly heterogeneous studio in terms of tastes in games.

Roguelikes aren't for everyone, so I won't argue too strongly on their behalf, but when you die in a good roguelike it is not the case that you will have nothing to show for it. Most of the time you will have learned about some new features, systems, or aspects of the game that will improve your chances of reaching the game's victory condition. I really like in NetHack how it will end a game with a pithy summary of how your character died, and you can review your score list with all these summaries. It provides a nice opportunity to reflect back on all the different experiences you had playing the game.

Danielle was a great guest, and I hope she does end up making some future appearances. My favorite episodes of Idle Thumbs have guests on the show, and I think that is because the cast of Idle Thumbs is so in sync with each other that guests provide some really useful contrast that generate more varied discussions. I'm kind of surprised by how many people are enjoying Rymdkapsel. I really like iOS gaming just because you can just buy a game like once a week for a few bucks, and if you don't end up enjoying it it is no big deal, it is such a low investment of time and money. However Rymdkapsel was a really sour experience for me, and I felt annoyed that I spent $4 on it. I was trying to think why that is, because I've paid for other games on iOS that I didn't end up enjoying, but also didn't annoy me the way this game did. I think my problem with the game is just that it feels more like a rough draft of a game rather than a fully realized vision.

Totally medicinal streams...

My reaction to the latest stream is that lately Idle Thumbs must have been frequenting the smoke shops on Mission St.

I strongly agree with that. Expectations over what video game protagonists in AAA games should be like have changed since HL2 and its subsequent episodes came out. Having a mute protagonist that simply acts as a conduit for player actions rather than a believable, expressive character doesn't cut it these days. If I worked at Valve, I'd be looking at the critical commentary that surrounded Bioshock Infinite, considering how the HL series has to deal with similar technical challenges, think about how the expectations for HL3 are going to be even greater than the incredibly high expectations that existed for BS:I, and decide that trying to satisfy those expectations would just be a fool's errand.

What so many people are objecting to is trying to define "male" and "female" games in this sort of essentialist way, as if gender is imbued with these innate, immutable characteristics.

Yeah, as Kordanor said, adjusting the game speed does result in some odd results as far as how the game balance gets recalibrated, so I usually play at the normal setting, but enjoy the occasional quick speed game.

I would suggest bumping the difficulty up to Prince, and see how that goes.

I dig the krautrock soundtrack for Rymdkapsel, but I was hoping for something with a little more strategic depth than what you get in the game. I think the design decision to take away some command agency from the player, and only allow you to control the type of actions your workers can perform was probably the right idea for an iOS game, but in practice it is frustrating when you see your workers make some extremely inefficient pathfinding decisions.

Not only was there a Terminator 4, they nuked San Francisco!

Press x to ignore sexism.

Not to minimize how poorly a lot of dudes react to charges of sexism, but it is always weird to me how bent out of shape people get over scores, insisting that they should be "objective". It's like, if they are objective, what's the unit of measurement being used?

The soundtrack for Hotline Miami definitely shaped my opinion about the game. I was on the fence about it from hearing other people talk about the game, but when the title screen popped up with a song from a record that I have in my collection, it definitely switched me over to giving the game the benefit of the doubt. Although there are a lot of games with excellent soundtracks, that's the only one I can think of where the actual selection of music impacted how I reacted to the game, rather than the soundtrack being an aspect of how I relate to it.

I played a bit of this last night, and it reminded me that I actually enjoyed the combat in Infinite. There's a real nice flow to it, almost like a FPS version of Hotline Miami (but more forgiving) the way you quickly go in and out of these sequences trying to execute a plan efficiently. I don't expect anyone's mind to be changed about how they feel about the DLC, but I was pleasantly surprised by it.

I also haven't read/watched any GoT stuff, even though I enjoy CK2 & the GoT board game. For me, the sort of literature, movies, and and tv shows I most appreciate are the ones where I feel like it removes me from the culture I exist in, and puts me into some other kind of experience. For something as popular as GoT where there are these constant conversations that I see on my facebook page, twitter, etc. it just has turned into this cultural zeitgeist thing that is sort of at odds with what it is that I like about consuming books.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, they are awesome!

If you just purchase BNW you get all the systems that were included in G&K. The only thing you don't get are the civs & scenarios. I think purchasing just BNW makes perfect sense.

I agree with this. There's an interesting article up at Polygon that features a discussion with the level designer, and reading his thoughts about the sort of trade-offs that took place in designing combat in the game was really interesting. That's why I love Bioshock Infinite despite whatever flaws exist in the game - they tried out a lot of new ideas, and I appreciate that sort of experimentation. Of course the problem with experimentation is not everything ends up working out. http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/30/4570112/bioshock-infinite-clash-in-the-clouds-DLC

This made me laugh so hard. I never played beyond the original C&C, and Red Alert games and I was looking at the recent games in those series because they were on sale on Steam, and I was like "huh,, I guess they still have those goofy FMVs".

Sounds like this dude could use a break from the internet for sure.

I'm also terrible at this game apparently. I hit a wall about an hour in where I find myself dying before I make enough money to get anymore upgrades. I love the concept of this game, but in practice I'm not getting the same joy out of this as I have with similar roguelike-likes like Spleunky (and yes, awful triple use of like deliberate).

Thematically Arkham Horror is delightful, but Gormongous is right - the gameplay is rote. Good for impressing your friends that don't normally play board games though.

I was drinking some Racer 5 while watching the stream, so I'd say it wasn't drinking alone.