Bernbaum

Watching the second part now. So good. Haven't touched Day Z but love the level of detail and immersion. Hilarious watching Sean play it for the first time. Spoiler-

Somehow I felt this was always coming... Love the design for the robots. Fits the TF2 aesthetic damn well.

You really captured the Goldblum there. I never did research on dinosaurs, but I have assisted in the excavation of Cretaceous Dinosaurs in Australia. Fun times. It's not too different from the opening shot at the beginning of the scene where Hammond meets Grant and Sattler. Less shotgun blasts off course...

Excellent. So good to see iTunes update with a new Thumbs after getting home from work. Looking forward to the Diablo 3 talk. I haven't touched it, but I know how much Chris loves D2 and I'm aware of the lukewarm response from fans for D3.

Hooray for science! I was in Wales for the first time ever yesterday for the GB vs Korea match at Millennium Stadium. Didn't enjoy the 3 hour trek back to Berkshire in England afterwards! - I am Bernbaum, real name Josh. Been listening to Idle Thumbs since around the start of the 'second season' aka 'The Idle Thumbs Podcast' aka 'Congrats Nick Breckon, hello Steve'. Listened to every episode at least twice. Found out about the Thumbs from NeoGAF, which is an okay forum if somewhat too serious at times. Video games make me happy. I play almost exclusively on handheld systems and enjoy deep single-player adventure games and simple mindless puzzle games. Not going to list my favourite games, but it is very important that everyone knows that Meteos on the DS is a deeply loved game of mine. Also I'm a geologist. I was once a palaeontologist, inspired by a childhood love of Jurassic Park, but not anymore.

Despite the OP not specifying much, I recommend they give Canon's 1100D or Nikon's D3100 a look. Both are entry-level DSLR cameras and provide more functionality than most people need. The basics are simple to understand but take much longer to master and either of those cameras will make it easy to learn how to shoot better photos. Otherwise, after you've checked wikipedia for 'DSLR photography' a decent point-and-shoot should keep you happy if you don't think an SLR is for you.

Highly readable example of great first-person storytelling. Knew nothing about the book beforehand and was excited to see where the story went after the big jump in the second half.

They might be ancient by internet standards, but the 'How to Basic' cooking videos absolutely destroy me. Personal favourite, 'French Toast'-

One of the few games from this generation that I didn't have the patience to finish. A lot of individual components were exceptionally well executed but the overall game was pure tedium. Even when interviews went successfully, it just didn't satisfy. Although it was fun driving around 1940's-era LA and finding the street corner of the hotel I stayed in for E3! (I'm not from America).

Achievements kill the sense of exploration and those special moments when you find secrets in games There was neat arcade racer for PC in the 90's called Big Red Racing. The game featured tracks in vast expansive environments but racers were expected to stick to the track. With most racers, I'd usually fuck around a bit - go down the track the wrong way, go off course and explore. With BRR, there was this massive expansive field which was basically just a repeating grass green texture. It was fun to just go blitzing off into the wild and seeing how fast the racers could go when not limited to the racetrack. One time, I was blazing away through this (apparently infinite) field and then all of a sudden, a massive mountain appears on the horizon. I targeted my car towards it at a speed much faster than what was attainable on-track, rapidly climbed the mountain and then flew through the air for minutes. The game had a wild punkish aesthetic to it, and the physics (rudimentary by today's standards) in the game as my racer went flying through the air as the ground was left behind was unexpected and hilarious. It was amazing and exhilarating and obviously put there by a designer for that purpose. A great moment as I felt I was one of the few to discover it. The same thing in a game these days would be listed in the achievement list, most players would do it and do it once only, and no sense of awe or surprise would be experienced by anyone.

Agree completely with Chris and Sean on Achievements. When used properly, they're a great carrot-on-a-stick to continue playing. Perfect example: Geometry Wars RE2. Getting that rub against the walls achievement (finally) was so damn satisfying. As for story-driven games, where they're these intrusive little blips that pop up after major story beats, they're incredibly obxnoxious.