TychoCelchuuu

Grand Theft Auto's been doing the scantily clad lady thing for so long they can release a 3 pack of their games with just the women on the cover: Normally I get pretty angry about this stuff, but I have a hard time working up anger at Rockstar because the pictures are always so pretty and because they're so obviously pandering to the male gaze. Like, the difference between this: and this: Is that the Grand Theft Auto series is basically all about "we indulge the absolute worst in you: senseless over the top violence, brazen unconcealed pandering to your libido, wanton celebration and glorification of crime." Whereas the Hitman game tries to pretend that these stripper nuns have an actual reason for dressing up as stripper nuns and if you suggest that the whole "47 kills the Saints" stuff is torture porn the developers would object strenuously. If you accuse Grand Theft Auto of being basically the most awful video game in the world, they'd probably say "pretty much." Grand Theft Auto is what Postal would be if Postal were more fun, more mature about its immaturity, and simply better made. The discussion in the latest (?) Idle Thumbs episode about how Rockstar nails things like the lighting or how it feels to be in California are just dead on. The craftsmanship on the GTA games is beyond compare, and that applies even to the objectification of women - as someone born and raised in California I can say that the picture of the woman taking a picture of herself with her Rockstar parody of an iPhone is our state in a nutshell as much as anything is. Obviously Grand Theft Auto doesn't get a pass for any of the stuff it does, and in the current video game climate Rockstar would probably be better off just making great games that don't just happen to feature scantily clad women as an important part of setting the scene, but I'm much, much happier with the art in this thread than I am with Cortana turning into a naked purple stripper or 47 fighting stripper nuns or Borderlands 2 making sure all its women show off cleavage or [insert your favorite video game here that isn't at its heart a pastiche of American culture in a way that basically necessitates oversexualized depictions of women].

Peter Serafinowicz directs the weirdest videos, really.

Finished it just now. Great game. And of course the soundtrack. And the aesthetics. You're right, Vegas: it takes courage to make a game that looks like this, a game that will certainly turn people off for looking like it does. But its vision is uncompromised and it's all the stronger for it. One of my favorite games this year. I found myself about halfway through the game switching from "try to plan stuff" mode into a "just be a fucking nutter" mode. I still ended up thinking tactically in some parts, especially when I could end up catching my breath, but just flipping the "go for it" switch in my brain added some real fluidity into how I approached situations. And then I was reading online and I saw someone say you can fling the pots of boiling water on stoves onto enemies to scald them. I wonder what else I'm missing.

Age of Chivalry was lots of fun but I don't usually buy multiplayer only games like this unless I can be assured of a dedicated community sticking around in all but the most dire of situations. So, Red Orchestra 2 and Natural Selection 2 got purchased because those will never die (well, they actually fucked RO2 up so badly that it might actually die) but something like Lead & Gold, War of the Roses, Chivalry, The Ship (unfortunately), Bloody Good Time (also unfortunately), Sanctum (which I guess also has single player) and so on sits in the "only if I'm rich" pile. And I'm not rich.

Given that it's the Crysis engine and that they've already got "walk around in ships" working... I'd say they aren't exactly promising the moon. Just add the Crysis guns to the walk around in ships part and you're good to go.

It happens in Opera for me. I just use the tags for italics and bolding rather than the hotkeys.

Lork might've hit the "when you leave the house you entered the game crashes" bug which invalidates all your progress because your game ends at that point.

I suspect a multiplayer game where players are stuck on rails and thus extremely easy to shoot would perhaps not be the ideal multiplayer game.

Obvious solution: whenever you feed someone to rats, look in the other direction, preferably while humming loudly to yourself.

Purchased Hotline: Miami but I think that's it for me for this sale. Looking forward to seeing what all the hubbub is about.

My guess would be that if a character dies you can revive them like in L4D or Gears or War or something.

Mark of the Ninja is also on sale.

There are "sub-optimal" builds for your character's stats in Alpha Protocol (although why that would make you distrust the narrative is beyond me) but even the worst character build can make it through any part of the game, especially if you're playing on one of the lower difficulty levels. SMGs are probably the worst guns but I made it through the game my first time using them because I didn't know better.

They had planned to have stretch goals but they hadn't decided on them at the time of starting the Kickstarter - they earned much more money more quickly than they had anticipated so it was a matter of making up stretch goals on the fly based on what they had vaguely planned in advance.

There are also perks you get for being inconsistent in your behavior too. Being consistent is not the right way to play Alpha Protocol! There is no right conversation choice any time during the game.

Alpha Protocol does not have an optimal way to play, though. It's not about the "right" path and the "wrong" path. All of your choices are the right choices because they are your choices. If everything is on the critical path then you're telling a story where the player has no input into how the story plays out. Games can do so much more than that. Alpha Protocol can do so much more than that.

There are so many amazing games on sale that I can't really make recommendations without putting in the effort to track down all the good stuff and that's too much effort for me. So I'll just point out that Zeno Clash is $0.99 and if you don't own it I can't imagine why you would be in that situation.

The RPS interview just really is fantastic. I mean, stuff like this: I just love how his main failing here was the opposite of what everyone dings him for - it's a complete lack of hubris that makes him think his stupid cube thing won't be popular, but instead everyone on Earth downloads it twice and melts the servers.

Awesome episode. I'd talk about the Cortana shit but I'm worn out from that after having spent a while on another forum in another thread arguing with people who think she's totally fine because she just chooses to look like that and it fits with her character and jesus christ kill me now. Anyways, random thoughts: Chris making the XBOX "shwoomp" sound was amazing. That was a really good recreation of that sound. Chris revealing that BioShock Infinite is just a Halo clone will give quite a bit of succor to the 14 year old Halo fans who are going to post denigrating stuff on BioShock Infinite YouTube videos. I'm so glad someone (Sean?) brought up The Phantom Menace as the start of all the Latin/Sanskrit chanting. I was saying in my head "I think it was probably Duel of the Fates" and then Sean said it! One of the many reasons I love Idle Thumbs is that between all of you, there's almost never anything I want to add to the conversation that isn't added by someone. I'm also glad Flotilla and Brendon Chung in general got some props for the amazing music choices he makes. On the subject of awesome game music and using one violin instead of 8 string sections, Arcanum's entire soundtrack is written for a string quartet and it's beautiful:

Ingame microtransactions obviously.

Whoa, spoilers!

Space sims often do escort missions pretty well. Freespace and Freespace 2 had some stupendous escort missions.

Deus Ex can't be your GOTY! It wasn't this year. Which saves me from having to figure out whether I like it or Dishonored more, thankfully.

The book is relevant now for the same reason it was relevant when it was written. It's a stupendous work of art with poignant messages to teach and amazing images.