Badfinger

I still think Brinstar from the original Metroid is the best single piece of music in the series. Also as evidenced by my post, I didn't have a problem with Metroid Fusion and in fact think it's the most directly comparable to Super Metroid in terms of gameplay. I realize the story is a bit wonky, but other than the most major of story beats I'm not into Metroid, or frankly later-day Castlevania, for the plot details. The Other M stuff is off putting, to be sure.

I will appreciate Super Metroid with you. What an incredible, phenomenal game. For as much as I adore them, I've never actually played most of the Metroid games. I haven't owned a Nintendo system since the N64, so I missed out entirely on Prime. I did, however, beat Metroid Fusion close to half a dozen times and played Hunters on a borrowed DS. Fusion is as close to Super Metroid as they ever got again from a purely mechanical experience. It's awesome. It's also hilarious to see people experiencing Super Metroid for the first time and being really frustrated by what seems obvious through a nostalgic lens, but I don't think it's sad. Games of this type aren't build to be puzzles anymore. I hope those kids all work through it!

I thought that was a little weird! Talking about a guy that would 100% have to be dead and I'm thinking "No, he'd be in his 80s probably but..."

Chris you do a really good Obama impression. The cadence and inflection are perfect.

I'm not being defensive, man. You're being fantastically defensive. Relax! I'm also not saying DOTA is badly designed, I am saying that I believe it has some objectively bad design decisions. League of Legends also has those. It's just a plain fact. The difference between them is where they are, and how I personally was able to get past them with regard for one game, but was not able to for another. Possibly due to having played one game first. It's also quite weird that you're retracting an apology due to getting way overly defensive. I'm not League of Legends, and you're not DOTA, and I do not work or receive compensation for either game (which I would assume is the same for you). It's a fun hobby and I am trying to enjoy analyzing it. Right now you are a Yankees fan and I am a Red Sox fan (or vice versa if that's to your taste), and you're taking my criticism of the Yankees as a personal affront to your very being and Yankees-ness. I didn't say you said League was bad. I said (very directly) that I was taking an implication from your statements, with the caveat that I could have been misinterpreting, that you thought the additional mechanics made DOTA a deeper game. On the other hand, I think it makes it more up front lots-of-clicking-mechanically complicated without necessarily being deeper. For instance, I did not, at any point, suggest DOTA jungling was less complicated. I said LOL has replaced more camps, paths, and a straight up harder jungle with more buffs and objectives, which can make the map itself be more of a strategic presence in the game than the straight skill of being able to get through the jungle camps. Please don't take this personally, because it's not personal. I truly am attempting to have a discussion, not an argument. I was curious what you LOL lorded because I was interested in how you play, and what you see or saw in the game. Also I only have knowledge of about half a dozen DOTA lords, so asking what you enjoy playing in DOTA would be much less fruitful. You might consider having an actual conversation with your coworkers rather than dismissing them? I'm not suggesting Valve is blindly remaking the game without thought, just that by faithfully remaking the game that you get some of the raw edges that made DOTA the insane smash hit that it became, while also retaining the raw edges that make it potentially prohibitive to get into without that War3 background in the user-friendlier 2010s.

I wonder if we could fund a scientific study to find the precise moment when a father becomes "Dad". Those jokes are ingrained into Dad DNA. In some people, it exposes itself before actually becoming a parent. You could probably replicate Eugene Levy from frog DNA and mosquitoes from the 1950s.

Didn't the bobbleheads in fallout give you a permanent stat boost? There are game reasons to collect all of those.

:/ Well I apologize, making qualitative statements back and forth about two similar-yet-wildly-different games is what I'd hoped to avoid. The fundamental disagreement we are having, and will continue to have, is that we're having a qualitative disagreement about quantity. You are saying (or I am interpreting you are saying) that having literally more things to track makes the game deeper, and the difficulty and obfuscation is worth that, whereas I am saying that I find it makes it more complicated without necessarily making it deeper and I am willing to sacrifice a little bit of that potential depth for a design philosophy that's not a faithful remake of a decade ago. Out of curiosity, what role or champion did you mostly play in LoL? I find that jungling adds a good bit of complexity in the nature of having 4 buff spaces and two boss monsters to control over just rune spots and Roshan. Some of the difficulty lost from an easier time to kill the monsters is replaced with strategic objective control. I'm also not sure why you should have control over your creeps? They're supposed to be autonomous death minions who willingly throw themselves against each other until death. And denying is absolutely 100% objectively a bad design decision. You don't strategically take a double fault in tennis. You don't strategically swing without attempting to hit anything in baseball. The only thing that comes remotely close to acting against your team's interest for a gain is purposefully missing a free throw in basketball where 1 point isn't useful to you and you need to attempt to get 2 or 3.

Oh my god, if his callsign was Silky that would probably be the best thing ever involving David Garrard.

Oh man, you have now just tricked a bunch of non-football fans into thinking most of those guys are future Hall of Famers. David Garrard feels so out of place on that list while somehow Rodney Peete does not. E: just realized that at the beginning of the cast Jake was in the right channel, but ended in the left. WHAT DOES IT MEAN (besides the previous explanation of channel sliders being nudged)

Sure. I should probably load up the game so I can re-remember and not just spew things from bias or imaginary things. It's been months since I played, and it's possible tutorials have smoothed some things over. There are likely some things that are genre specific that I just icing over for other games, as well. But I think things like denies aren't good game design, which has been discussed on the cast. Last hits are probably bad game design, and they're universal. The courier system in itself is understandable, but I found its implementation to be completely nonsensical. I don't think in (some number of) hours of playing DOTA I was ever able to successfully call the courier and also not get it killed. I also don't just want to nitpick a game that I'm not fully comfortable with, although at the same time maybe if I didn't need to I'd be more comfortable? It's a bit of a double edged sword.

Stereo has appeared before, sure. This is the first time I remember a full episode. I noticed it driving in the car, and I think it was emphasized because Jake was way left, and Nick didn't talk at all this episode so the right channel was silent.

And he loves him some Biden. As one should. PS. THIS EPISODE IS IN STEREO. IS THIS NEW OR HAVE I NOT NOTICED BEFORE?!

It is though? I'm not saying you shouldn't like it or it has no merit, or those decisions make the rest of the game have no merit, but Valve has preserved basically all the weird broken details that arose from making a mod in 2005 from a game released in 2002 and codified them in 201X (whenever it's out of beta). It's not DOTA 2 in the same way that Relic made Dawn of War 2 following DoW. It's just DOTA, Again. I'm certainly not going to come into the DOTA thread and suggest someone's wrong for liking it. I also wouldn't suggest it's clear that someone should like League of Legends instead. That's silly. I understand completely why someone would like it, and like it more than the thing I like most. It's not even a new or interesting take on a topic. I just think there's some objectively bad game design in DOTA, and that hinders me from playing it. Valve certainly gets credit from me for making an attempt to tutorialize around those problems. But if they were making a sequel to DOTA in the normal Valve way, I can't help but be sure that many little design choices would change and wouldn't need to be explained around.

I lost it at "an apple core and a fly".

It's funny, I find DOTA boring. Everything just feels so obfuscated. Additionally, and I understand why this is, but most of the game design decisions feel old and bad. Every time I say to myself "I'm going to figure this out", or "I'm going to watch a match because I understand LoMas and I will get into what's going on", I just get turned off again and go play League of Legends, a game for babies where things are straightforward and make some sense. I just don't want to spend the time getting over the EXTRA difficulty hump that's just there for its own sake.

Candy Box is INSANE. PS. I need more candy. I am running low

So far this year it's averaged out to about once a month. There were 19 last year, so it'll probably even out to a similar place. They still do about twice-monthly balance updates, plus game modes, plus professional tournament stuff (which really isn't the realm of a multiplayer thread, fair enough). They just released a dedicated matchmaker for ARAM, which used to be custom only, and it's been incredible. It looks like the issue is that many of the active LoL players are on EU, and I'm NA.

Hey there, doing my semi-annual check in to see if there are active LoL players who want to play LoL in this multi-game thread totally not only about DOTA.

I'll check Metacritic for games where I've only had one source of information. When I listened to the 3MA podcast about March of the Eagles, I was intrigued and thought my dad might like it. I went to Metacritic and it has a 71, with the spread from an 80 to a 50. Most of the reviews echo some of the concerns that were voiced, namely that the single player was lackluster, and the multiplayer was phenomenal but required a dedicated group of people, likely a certain base knowledge from other paradox games, and the connection was iffy at the time of release. So I guess I use Metacritic as it was created? An aggregation service. I don' t know if you'd consider that buying based on the score or not. It's also interesting to see the peaks and valleys of Metacritic. The very, very highest highs, and lows.

Let's be fair, the accolades, fame and recognition aren't where satisfaction comes from. Being at a company that implicitly encourages the life-breaking experience of playing Neptune's Pride while at work? That's the life.

It's a funny thing, growing up. When I was little, the popular thing (oft referenced 'round these parts) was the relative who "worked at Nintendo" who could hook you up with non-broken copies of Battletoads. Then the thought that you would run a game company one day. Then perhaps that you'd get a job at a game company. Then maybe I'd just work at a regular company, but have contemporaries who I could hang out and game with. Now I live in a world where my reality is that it would be really nice if someone where I worked played games, at all. I don't even need to play with them, or have a massive company wide conspiracy game insanityfest. Just knowing they're there would be enough.

He's not being a troll, he's just making his point in a way that's a little juvenile (NOT A JOKE ABOUT BABIES). I wouldn't state it the same way, but I don't disagree with him. Nintendo is the game console for families. You, me, Wii, etc. Even those weird WiiU commercials had 7 year olds in them. It's supposed to be wholesome and family friendly, and the games Nintendo makes are by and large rated E or on some occasions T (Skyward Sword is PEGI 12+). I absolutely think Nintendo is trapped somewhere in between making fan service games and making games that aren't "Kids Games" but are for kids. I also agree that daddy's phone and mommy's tablet have way more entertainment hours available in them, for a less expensive price in a multi use device. Games are ubiquitous now. People who don't play games play games, they're everywhere.

I agree with you, but the takeaway message is "People are good at things because of the monstrous amount of time and effort you never see". It seems self evident, but there are plenty of people who seem to be good at something without apparent effort. People will sometimes describe certain athletes as "lazy", but to reach a professional level they are in the 99th percentile of skill (and opportunity) and were putting in 99th percentile level of effort at some point. One thing that will never translate onto the rebroadcast is Sean leaving, and then rejoining the chat getting home and being bewildered when he was talking and no one was replying to him. That was quite enjoyable.

Oh god, yes. I will catch myself saying Oh crap, I went the RIGHT way. The game I thought wasn't good but was better for having played it was Spec Ops. It wasn't outright bad, but the story was almost aided by the very mediocre gameplay. It was something I was playing to get to the end, not because of the mechanical joy of video gaming.