TychoCelchuuu

What is a "good" ladder? Deus Ex: Human Revolution handled ladders fairly well, I think, as did the Splinter Cell games and lots of other games where you're not always moving at 80 MPH.

If something is a "game" on Steam then it's in the running for GOTY of the Year and I forgot that FTL also came out, but I think FTL probably isn't in the running the way TFoL, NS2, and Dishonored are. I've always thought "best of" things should be segmented at least into multiplayer and single player - that at least leaves Natural Selection 2 as my clear multiplayer winner.

This is an impossible choice. I haven't even played The Walking Dead, Mark of the Ninja, XCOM, or Hotline Miami, and even if I had, I could never choose between those and Natural Selection 2, Thirty Flights of Loving, and Dishonored.

There are a few ladders in the games but they're just "doors" that lead to a loading screen and then bring you up or down a level. Some towers in Oblivion and some sewers in Fallout have them for instance.

You could give Halo 4 a 1 out of 10 review and watch the hits pour in.

Well seeing as how Valve was all about modding back when Half-Life was their hot commodity, and how they went so far as to hire mod teams and turn mods into retail games, you would've thought that modding Source would be the easiest thing in the world, but no, it's a fucking pain in the ass because you need a text editor to get your 3d models into the game and pretty much every other part of the pipeline for content creation contains similarly arcane and unintuitive steps. Plus, look how well Valve's doing with user created content right now, when it's a pain in the ass! Maybe they wouldn't care about making things easy because it works out well for them no matter how hard it is.

I've only ever enjoyed two unboxing videos, but I can't remember the first one I liked so here is the second one:

I don't think humor can get blacker than that! It's tapping straight into the raw pain, anguish, and despair that causes people to torment other people and make their lives a living hell. If that's not black humor, then what is?

ahaha oh man that's great. Comedy is best when it's at its blackest and you don't get much darker than perpetual self-reinforcing cycles of despair. On a lighter note:

Italian Spiderman? The whole thing is only ~40 minutes and I'd say it's worth it, but Danger 5 is a refinement of that formula so if you want to just skip to that and come back to Spiderman if you want more then that would work too. Italian Spiderman: First Danger 5 webisode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK0OQk_vShg

"Some of the weapons feel worthless" is a thing a lot of people say about Bastion, but then you ask them what their favorite weapons are or which are the best weapons and everyone has different answers, all of which eventually encompass all the weapons. I think one thing Bastion does really well is to make you feel like your way of playing is the right way or the best way, even though your way is much different from everyone else's way. It feels carefully tailored to you, even though it also turns out to be carefully tailored to everyone else. The whole "I felt like I was finishing the tutorial as the game ended" is another really interesting aspect. Some people think it's important for games, even small, short games (or especially small, short games?) to keep introducing things to keep it fresh - a new mechanic or a new weapon or a new gimmick every level so that it never gets old. Other people just prefer to get most things on the table early on and then just play around with what the game has to offer, with maybe a few variations along the way. I'm not sure where I fall on the issue or whether people actually fall one one side or the other or instead just have different feelings about different games, but Bastion is a perfect example of this kind of thing. Personally I felt like it would have been nice to get more time with the weapons introduced later, because I never quite got to figure out if I liked them or not, but I dunno.

I think much of the minute to minute enjoyment of Buckaroo Banzai has to come from the performances (great actors doing crazy things!), trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and just marveling at the weirdness of the aliens and the science fiction gadgets. It's also sometimes an action movie, so if you can enjoy an action film as an action film, there's that. But the sense of humor suffused through the whole thing is pretty crucial and if it doesn't click with you it will probably be pretty tedious a lot of the time. If Jeff Goldblum as neurosurgeon showing up in a cowboy getup or the exploits of the Blue Blaze Irregulars or the fact that the test vehicle Banzai drives is a Ford pickup truck don't make you laugh then it'll be hard to wring joy from the film.

I dunno, it makes a lot of sense for them to keep the Rome 2 specs at or even below the Shogun 2 specs. Because consoles haven't bumped up a generation in a while, you have lots of people on older PC harware who haven't been forced to upgrade by any console ports they can't run, because they can still run all the console ports, so getting them to upgrade just to play Rome 2 would be a losing proposition. If CA instead spends their time tweaking the engine they had when they finished Shogun 2 to make it run better, their potential install base will widen rather than shrink.

I once wrote a recommendation of it so I'll just copy + paste that and edit it a bit because I can't help but tinker with things: There are so many things to like about Buckaroo Banzai. It's a fun '80s comedy/science fiction movie that gets half of its laughs from crazy performances and one-liners and the other half from sheer ridiculousness played straight, but part of its brilliance is in just how straight it plays things. Rather than simply spoof the craziness of science fiction, it goes one step further and riffs on the mythology of the overstuffed universes that science fiction loves to build for itself. From the very first scene, all the way to the end of the film, which promises that Buckaroo Banzai will return in "Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League," the movie assumes a familiarity with a sci-fi universe that doesn't exist. The disparity between the characters in the film, who have all heard of the famous Buckaroo Banzai, and the viewer, who can't even figure out what he does, starts out massive and keeps growing, and it serves as a wonderful launchpad for the over-the-top performances from John Lithgow and Christopher Lloyd, while simultaneously making (for example) Jeff Goldbum's comparatively understated performance as a fellow neurosurgeon who spends the movie wearing a bright red cowboy outfit into a fun running joke that is funnier because the characters think they're in on it. But they can't be in on it: they've bought in to the movie's central premise (or, really, the movie's many central premises) because in their universe it all somehow has to fit together, but for us it's simply a smörgåsbord of absurdity. What's amazing about the movie is how sustained it all is, so no example or set of examples will ever suffice, nor could I pick a favorite, but: And of course he doesn't tell him later. The movie's full of action, Rastafarian aliens, a love story that makes no sense, ridiculous gadgets, and a stupendously fun end credits sequence, but it is above all a beautiful exercise in perfectly walking the fine tightrope between ridiculous parody and simple ridiculousness. Buckaroo Banzai is one of the rare class of cult movies that tried very hard to be the sort of movie that gains a cult following, and succeeded in spades. And you can't tell me the ending credits didn't make you feel amazing.

If you enjoy Italian Spiderman, the creators went on to make Danger 5, a web series + TV show, which is even better.

Italian Spiderman.

Man, ending the podcast with "no way this is going in the podcast, could you imagine if we just put in *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*" is evil. Our curiosity will never be sated!

'Figuring out the cause of a pile of dead bodies' sounds like a 'dynamic mission' that's going to pop up a lot, but I feel like it might have a pretty trivial solution. "Where did all these dead bodies come from?!" "It was me. The player. I killed them." MISSION COMPLETE

Another tidbit related to the topic. Everyone has been talking about the more important ethical questions like "is this exploiting people" but here's a tiny but still relevant ethical question - if you did this shit to XCOM, would you be evil? I think you'd be pretty evil. We're talking at least Darth Vader evil. Ruining a game seems pretty bad.

Fun fact: The Orange Box isn't on that list because I have always assumed that everyone owns it. Thanks for pointing out the omission! I've added it to my master list and all future recommendation posts will include it + Half-Life. Although somehow I had Portal on the list?

1000 Amps AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome Aquaria Alpha Protocol Amnesia: The Dark Descent Analogue: A Hate Story Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and Assassin's Creed 3 Atom Zombie Smasher Audiosurf Bastion Batman: Arkham Asylum Ben There, Dan That / Time Gentlemen, Please! Beyond Good and Evil BioShock, BioShock 2, and Minerva's Den Borderlands 2 Braid Brogue Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Earned in Blood, and Hell's Highway Bulletstorm Call of Duty, Call of Duty: United Offensive, Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4 Cave Story Costume Quest Crimson Skies Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, and Crysis 2 Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Dawn of War II: Retribution Dead Space and Dead Space 2 Dear Esther DEFCON, Darwinia, Uplink Defense Grid: The Awakening Deus Ex 2, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution DIRT 3 Dishonored Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Dungeons of Dredmor Endless Space English Country Tune Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout: New Vegas Far Cry 2 Flotilla Freedom Fighters Freedom Force and Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich Frozen Synapse Galactic Civilizations II Gemini Rue Grand Theft Auto IV GRID Grim Fandango Hitman: Something or other Homeworld and Homeworld 2 Hotline Miami IL2 Sturmovik: 1946 Jade Empire Jamestown Just Cause 2 Killing Floor King's Bounty: The Legend Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 Left 4 Dead 2 Legend of Grimrock Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy LIMBO Lone Survivior Mafia and Mafia II Mark of the Ninja Max Payne and Max Payne 2 Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries Men of War: Assault Squad Metro 2033 Mirror's Edge Monkey Island Mount and Blade Warband Natural Selection 2 Nexus: The Jupiter Incident No One Lives Forever and No One Lives Forever 2 Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath HD Orcs Must Die! 2 Overlord and Overlord 2 Painkiller Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1, 2, and 3 Portal and Portal 2 Proun Psychonauts RAGE Recettear Renegade Ops Resonance Rock of Ages S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat S.W.A.T 4 Sam and Max: Season 1 and 2 Sequence Sid Meier's Pirates! Sim City 4 Sins of a Solar Empire Skyrim Space Marine SpaceChem Space Pirates and Zombies Spec Ops: The Line Spelunky Splinter Cell and all its sequels Star Wars Dark Forces, Star Wars Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, Star Wars Dark Forces 3: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, and Star Wars Dark Forces 4: Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Outcast 2: Jedi Academy Super Meat Boy Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP Sword of the Stars System Shock 2 The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena The Longest Journey The Ur-Quan Masters / Star Control 2 The Witcher and The Witcher 2 The Void Thief, Thief 2, Thief III Thirty Flights of Loving To The Moon Tomb Raider: the newer ones Total War: SHOGUN 2 Trackmania United Nations Trine and Trine 2 Tropico 4 Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines VVVVVV Wargame: European Escalation World in Conflict World of Goo Worms: Armageddon X-COM: UFO Defense, Terror from the Deep, Apocalypse, and Enemy Unknown X3: Terran Conflict Zeno Clash

Gamespot had a review of this up that was kind of dumb - the reviewer didn't seem to have played the game for more than a few hours at most. It also had a bit of a low score. I was kind of sad because this sort of thing can hurt small indie games like this but now Gamespot has pulled the review and will post a new one, so that's pretty cool.

A joystick isn't a high barrier of entry! It's $20! Super Meat Boy has a higher barrier of entry, at least if you trust the game's "play this with a 360 controller or you're stupid" screen when it loads.