TychoCelchuuu

Just listened to this today. I found it really interesting that Tom's thinking about making his game use procedurally generated levels that incorporate the narrative so that people can play it through again and pick different dialog options and still have fun in the levels because they're brand new. With Ken Levine saying he wants to start working on games with narratives that you can play through multiple times, this seemed like a timely sort of idea.

Jesus Christ. This is like... I have no words.

I know, right? Really dumb! Just like that time in Star Wars where Han and Luke are shooting TIE Fighters in the Falcon and Han turns around to yell "don't get cocky!" at Luke even though they have headsets on! Titanfall and Star Wars are stupid.

Typically what "privilege" means in this context is not "your life is the best thing in the entire world, hooray for you, nothing is wrong," but rather "the person with privilege is able to ignore certain things that other people have to deal with." In this case, you have the privilege to ignore the politics of games that you just want to play for fun because pretty much any game you want to have fun with, you can sit down, play, and have fun with, without being reminded that much of the games industry doesn't give a shit about women or minorities or whatever. What you choose to do with that privilege is up to you: in your case, you've come onto a video game forum about a podcast and posted that you'd rather other people not call out this privilege, because you'd rather just have fun without being reminded that certain things about video games make other people feel excluded or sad or oppressed. This to me seems like a pretty odd reaction. Surely whatever bad stuff happened to you as a result of hearing Danielle speak about sexism for literally four seconds on a podcast can't be nearly as bad as the effect of the sexism on her and all the other players who aren't immune to this stuff because they aren't in a privileged position where they can just ignore it. If you think it's bad to hear Danielle say "the game has some sexist stuff," imagine how much it must suck to play video games for a living and be constantly confronted with stuff that seems sexist to you! Privilege, in this case, is not having to deal with that. You can ignore messages that games send (like "creeping on women is funny" or "women should be scantily clad at all times") because those don't speak to you. One area in which you're not privileged is in terms of what you have to put up with when you listen to, for instance, Idle Thumbs. Sometimes this podcast calls out sexist stuff. You'd prefer not to hear it, but that's not something that you can get. So, do you have a legitimate complaint? You tell me! Is your desire to not hear about sexism, because you'd rather video games be about fun, the same as Danielle's desire not to experience sexism when playing video games? Or is there a difference between these two desires (which might perhaps lie in whether sexism is objectionable and whether calling out sexism is objectionable)?

I have some weird pictures of people making awkward faces/with their eyes closed/etc from Mass Effect 3. I won't post them all at once. Here are some: http://i5.minus.com/i21NETZvG5HNP.png

Bunch of weird close calls and situations:

[Amazon dot com voice] Forum-goers who liked this article also liked: INDIECADE EAST TEXT TALK: RISE UP – supporting our community and erasing toxicity instead of identity [/Amazon dot com voice]

I've sort of zoned out in the last few posts but if we're looking for proof that Ken Levine is a shitty dude to work for, JP "Friend of the Show" "The Breton" LeBreton gives us some proof: (He worked on BioShock and BioShock 2)

JRPGs - grinding, random battles, the huge time investment, and their general limitaiton to consoles mean I've never played any Final Fantasy games or anything like them.

If Ben dies I can do it.

I don't think the best way to "address racism" is to make a game where the black people take over and kill innocent men, women, and children and turn on their former ally while dressed up in stereotypical "savage" costumes. If that's what "addressing racism" looks like I'd rather Ken Levine go back to addressing Objectivism.

I could probably have managed to make it less racist, at least. I feel like I could handle that.

Just be a generally boring person such that nobody would ever direct any comments your way.

This thread has a list the stuff in the full game.

See, I don't think that's absurd at all. That's why I mentioned XCOM in my post as one of the games that might work. There is zero time pressure in that game, the player doesn't have to navigate 3d space, it has a good tutorial, and it very quickly gets you into stuff that only games can provide: strategic decisions, resource management, emergent narratives based on randomly generated outcomes, and so on.

This is like asking for movies for new movie watchers and books for new readers. There's no one correct answer: it depends entirely on the person. For some people, Kentucky Route Zero or Broken Age will be the perfect first game. For others, Portal or Gone Home will be great. For others, it will be Civilization or XCOM. For others, Threes or Words With Friends. For others, World of Goo or Microsoft Flight Simulator X. For others, SpaceChem or Sim City. And so on and so forth. I think in general first person games are very bad for people over the age of twenty-something and strategy games are bad for teenagers who aren't already nerds. Threes will probably work on anyone, as will Words with Friends, whereas something like Kentucky Route Zero is perfect for someone dubious of the idea that games can be something other than a waste of time (Papers, Please or Cart Life are other good options there). The ones that always work are Twine games, but even then there's no one right Twine game to start someone off with: Howling Dogs is perfect for one person, a Kiss is perfect for another person.

Cara Ellison wants a review of Earth Defense Force 2025 but I own no console. Can anyone oblige her? I could try to get you a review copy.

Now all the people there who thought Irrational games were good because of their narrative can make more racist stuff with Levine while the people who joined Irrational to make immersive systems-driven games can go work at Arkane and other places that will appreciate them.

That's not hacking, that's called "rodeoing." You don't hack a computer by ripping off the side panel and shooting inside of it.

Objective Game Review Objective Progress Report and General Update: So the transition into "stage 2" of Objective Game Review's life, which is "start reviewing new games too," is going pretty well. I've reviewed stuff like Insurgency, Strike Vector, Probably Archery, The Floor is Jelly, and Jazzpunk. Everyone I've asked for a review code has given me a review code (Double Fine eventually came through with a Broken Age code - they're pretty busy over there I guess since it took them a little while, but they were there for me!) except Square Enix when I asked for a Thief code - they said I'm "on the request grid." I think that means one of three things: 1) I might get a review copy. 2) I won't get a review copy. 3) I need to ride my lightcycle on the request grid and vanquish my opponents. If I am the last left standing I will receive a review copy. So that's exciting. I have another batch of new games to review lined up, including Cube & Star: An Arbitrary Love, Journal (by one of the Kairo developers), and Paragon (technically a remake of an old game I've never heard of). It's pretty cool to be able to play all these indies games when they come out, and it also feels good to be able to advertise for them in a slightly more effective way than my usual thing, which is just to make forum threads on forums all over the Internet (which is not to say that this isn't also effective, but I think getting a review up for something like The Floor is Jelly, which doesn't have a lot of reviews out there, helps a fair amount too). I'm also slowly working my way through the backlog of not-new games I got review keys for. One downside of reviewing indie games is that it's less easy to be snarky and sarcastic, or more accurately even if I can, I feel worse about it. For AAA games I don't feel bad making jokes at their expense but I don't really want to rip in to a cute indie game. I jokingly gave a low-ish score to Flappy Bird and I'm already feeling sort of bad about even that. As I speak, I have one visitor on the website from Marion, Ohio, who found the site by Googling "what is objective of flappy bird." So that's cool. The site is up to 326 twitter followers which is funny. I'm installing Dark Souls even though I don't really have time to get into it because it's one of the most commonly searched games on the site that doesn't already have a review. The Last of Us is also up there, which is actually making me think I want to borrow or buy a PS3 just to review it. I think I'm going crazy!

I would play them right now - you'll miss some stuff playing through the first time, and the episodes are short enough to play through again when the next episode comes out.

"No way to win" is missing the point. Obviously you can't win ever single scenario. The goal is just to save as many people as you can, or in the "kill zombies" scenarios, kill as many zombies as you can. As osmosich points out, you're trying to win the campaign, not every battle. It's like X-COM in that respect.

Whatever order you play them in ends up working - playing everything multiple times is probably the best.

There are two interludes, assuming you're talking about Limits & Demonstrations and The Entertainment. They are both amazing.

It's a roguelike-like strategy game, you definitely need to accept that sometimes things won't go quite as well.