TychoCelchuuu

We also got linked in Rock Paper Shotgun's free indie game column today. Fun times in Objective Game Reviews land!

I think a lot of shit they're getting for this relates directly to what you wrote in your first paragraph. You're excited because this seems to you like a developer that is "inspired by the new gen" and who is "experimenting" - it has "kindled a spark of hope and interest that [you were] fearing gone forever" because the systems are "more intriguing... then 3rd person shooter #1358310." But to lots of people, there's no experimentation here, nothing new or interesting, nothing unique or different. It's just Assassin's Creed in Lord of the Rings, and we've already had a bunch of Assassin's Creed games, including the pirate one that just came out. Some of those AssCreed games are, as far as many are concerned, perfect examples of how this gameplay can be rote and uninteresting. Certainly there's nothing here that's inspired by the new gen: we've had all this on the PC, XBOX 360, and PS3 for almost seven years now. So, there's nothing wrong with looking like AssCreed, but what to you is a new exciting foray into parts unknown is for a lot of gamers just the latest attempt to cash in on what at this point is turning into UbiSoft's own little open world stealth action genre that they've kind of created.

I think his name is Ico HD.

LET'S TURN THOSE FROWNS UPSIDE DOWN WELCOME TO THE POSITIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT ASSCREED: MORDOR THREAD PLEASE ONLY POST POSITIVE THOUGHTS IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT WHETHER YOUR THOUGHT IS POSITIVE, PLEASE SUBMIT IT TO THE MONOLITH PR DEPARTMENT, WHICH WILL SCAN YOUR THOUGHTS FOR SIGNS OF NEGATIVITY AND INFORM YOU AS TO THEIR ACCEPTABILITY THE FOLLOWING THOUGHTS ARE OUTLAWED: THOUGHTS ABOUT SHIELDS THOUGHTS ABOUT ORC DESIGNS BEING SUBPAR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE UNLIKELIHOOD OF A GAME AT THIS LEVEL OF FIDELITY BEING ABLE TO PROCEDURALLY GENERATE COMPELLING NARRATIVES FOR TRULY UNIQUE AND INTERESTING CHARACTERS ON THE FLY BASED ON THE PLAYER'S ACTIONS THOUGHTS ABOUT A RANGER WHO IS ABLE TO MIND CONTROL ORC ARMIES AND TELEPORT AROUND CHOPPING OFF HEADS FAILING TO FIT INTO THE LORD OF THE RINGS CANON IN A WAY THAT DOESN'T WRECK THE FEELING OF THE SETTING THOUGHTS ABOUT TOM BOMBADIL WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW GREAT IT IS THAT THIS GAME IS ABOUT A BADASS HEAD CHOPPER OFFER AND NOT THAT FUCKING HIPPIE WHO SITS AROUND IN THE FOREST SINGING SONGS THOUGHTS ABOUT ASSASSIN'S CREED AND ANY CODE THIS GAME MAY HAVE STOLEN FROM ASSASSIN'S CREED ALL OTHER THOUGHTS ARE POTENTIALLY ACCEPTABLE PLEASE POST RESPONSIBLY

That trailer has more jokes and in-jokes than a lot of full length games I've played, I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfgajectCs

YOU LEFT MY MASTER TO X YOU LEFT ME TO X YOU XED MY FACE I can't wait for the deep unique characterization this game is going to have. When I play it through seven times, like I do all of these kinds of games, I'm really going to appreciate that in place of bespoke dialog creating well fleshed-out characters for me to assassinate seven times, I'll instead have a randomly generated collection of one-note generic characters to assassinate once. That will really make this game fun. In all seriousness though I feel like the benefit of "THIS IS ALL UNIQUELY TAILORED TO YOU" really goes down when you're playing a massive game like this, which I would never play more than once or twice, rather than a roguelike or something similar where you repeat the game over and over. Especially when the fidelity of the graphics and sound are so high that they have to compromise on how unique things can get (Dwarf Fortress can describe all sorts of random stuff in excruciating detail - this game is going to be stuck with stuff like "YOU BURNED/SLICED/STABBED/ARROWED MY FACE/ARM/LEG/BOSS/SUBORDINATE" which is far less interesting).

Notice also that Steve's headset includes a tone control.

Nick got a job at Bethesda and moved across the country, killing the podcast. Rest in peace, Idle Thumbs. Congrats Nick.

The way I saw it was

Congrats Nick!

The ending was pretty straightforward, as far as I can remember.

The official Idle Thumb Gamse of the Year for 2013 have been posted at the illustrious goty.cx URL! So this is a topic to talk about those GOTYs, about your GOTYs, and about everyone else's GOTYs. I'll start off with some discussion of the Thumbs GOTYs: I haven't played very many of them! The Last of Us and Republique are out because I only play games on PC, I heard middling things about Eldritch, and I haven't gotten around to State of Decay or Candy Box or The Yawhg! So, that just leaves Spelunky. Which owns. That game is so good! But if you're anything like Jake and Sean (or maybe you are Jake or Sean, seeing as they read these forums...) you're probably fucking tired of Spelunky, and if you aren't, you probably watch Remo stream it a bunch and play it yourself. So, yes, you know the game is good and I don't know if there's much to talk about that hasn't been said a thousand times. One interesting question is to think about the daily challenge - as Lord Remo points out in his writeup, it really transforms the game into something special. That's neat because it's something that's in one sense extrinsic to the game - it's not like any of the mechanics change when you play a daily. It's just got a thin metagame attached to it in the form of the scoreboard and the one a day run. For me, I think the biggest thing this does is make Spelunky into a habit - I play it every day, no matter what. I don't know if this makes me like the game more or adds to it in some other way that makes me want to include it as a GOTY more than I would otherwise. It's a weird thing because I'm so used to thinking about games a self-contained things that don't reach out into other aspects of my life. It reminds me a bit of VESPER.5, a game made for a game jam with the theme "ritual." The game only lets you make one move a day. The goal is to make the game into a ritual in your life. Playing the game each day is an intrinsic part of the game design and the theme of the thing. There's no divorcing the mechanics from the role it plays in your life. Is Spelunky like that? Or is the daily challenge just icing on the cake, so to speak? I'd pontificate more but this is the GOTY thread, not the Spelunky thread. My GOTYs, in VERY APPROXIMATE order from most to least favorite but still amazing, also remember THE ORDER IS VERY APPROXIMATE. They have platforms listed because I've copied and pasted this from another place I posted my GOTYs. Kentucky Route Zero (PC) The Entertainment (PC) Spelunky (PC) Actual Sunlight (PC) Papers, Please (PC) Proteus (PC) Destroy Your Home (PC) The Swapper (PC) The Stanley Parable (PC) Battlefield 4 (360, PC, PS3, PS4, XB1) Gone Home (PC) Gunpoint (PC) HORSEMASTER The Game of Horse Mastery (PC) Room of 1000 Snakes (PC) Simian.interface (PC) Knock-knock (PC) Dota 2 (PC) Ultra Business Tycoon III (PC) Bubsy 3d: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective (PC) Monaco: What's Yours is Mine (360*, PC) You Will Select a Decision, No. 2: Cow Farming Activities on the Former West (PC) Even Cowgirls Bleed (PC) I have yet to play Surgeon Simulator 2013 which I suspect would've snuck in there somewhere.

My site just got a hit from someone who Googled "reviews are not objective." That feels pretty good.

Like this?

http://kotaku.com/reporter-apologizes-for-crude-sexual-comments-to-female-1505393796 As usual don't read the comments unless you want to feel a desire to commit suicide.

hmm

It's the power of being 1/3rd the price.

If I hadn't blown all of my "crazy Idle Thumbs forum projects" discretionary spending on hosting for my new website, I'd totally be chipping in to this amazing project.

Thank you elmuerte for giving me the idea to review The Stanley Parable Demo and give it an 8. That's not quite how I ended up doing it, but the review of the demo is up.

Yeah, the PHP that makes thumbnails out of things chokes on apostrophes, from what I can tell.

The shipping address is wrong, it should be going to Jake "Video Games" Rodkin. Otherwise a different Jake Rodkin might open the package.

I spent 20 minutes this morning trying to discover why media uploads to my website were broken and had narrowed it down to a changed PHP setting on my host's server (after having ruled out other things, a process which required disabling and enabling plugins, altering my .htaccess file, and uploading a smaller image to ensure that this worked) only to realize (about 30 seconds before I was about to send a support ticket I had written, which carefully documented the steps I took and the thing I believed was at issue, to my host) that the "Mirror's Edge" screenshot was the first image I had ever tried to upload with an apostrophe in the filename. I removed the apostrophe and Wordpress stopped freaking out. WEBSITES ARE FUN

I thought they moved Idle Thumbs to Campo Santo.

ahahahah oh man that's really good. Sometimes I want to quit my day job and do all these things.