Ravenlock

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Everything posted by Ravenlock

  1. Catching up on episodes, and this downloaded in Pocket Casts as an episode of Important if True. I'll listen on SoundCloud instead, but just an FYI.
  2. Sweet! Happy to have helped.
  3. Re: the lost Metroidvania freeware, Initially I thought they were talking about Iji, which I have played and like a whole lot (http://www.remar.se/daniel/iji.php), but that one is maybe too combat oriented to be what they're talking about. More "escape from captors" than "figure out what happened". Based on the "girl wakes up from stasis and tries to figure out what's going on" description, I tracked down a Youtube playthrough of Holdover ( ), which seems to match that pretty well.
  4. IDLE THUMBS 200

    I am only 5 minutes into this episode but I need to tell you that after Steve said "I don't usually talk to people about how to break into things", I made the "houses" joke at the exact same time you did and it made me really happy. And maybe means 200 episodes of Idle Thumbs has done something to my brain. But whatever. Bring it. My brain is better this way.
  5. It's astonishing to me that a person in his position does this sort of thing.
  6. Right, and nobody thinks that behavior indicates "really well meaning artists who just can't quite hit the stars they're reaching for", with sports games. They think it's a crass attempt to re-package and sell more snake oil. 'Cause that's what it usually is.
  7. Mayyyyybe, but that's a little harder to square when your public statements right before a game's release - after you're done making it but while preorders are still happening - all say "this is my best work ever, we are so proud of this game, I cannot wait for you to play it", and 9 months later it's all "yeah that was a trainwreck and it really didn't come together, but the NEXT one, oh man, get excited because we're gonna kill it." Every time.
  8. Like Bjorn said, people call him out on "biting off more than he can chew" or "dreaming too big" or whatever, but no, I don't think until now I've seen anybody call him out on "shitting all over the last thing you promised would be amazing, in the service of promoting the next thing you're promising will be amazing," and doing that every time with absolutely no apparent self-awareness of his own history. It is the patter of a snake oil salesman, not an overly ambitious designer. "No no no, don't look back at that, look over HERE! Well, not over here, there's nothing here yet, but look at what it WILL be. With your mind's eye."
  9. Yeah, I was surprised by the consistency. I knew I had seen it before, but I hadn't realized he's been doing it every time. Again, less like a cute, funny dreamer, more like a con man. Which is an upsetting thing to realize after more than a decade of consistent behavior nobody's called out until now.
  10. I disliked a lot of the tone of the Molyneux RPS interview, and that opening question was pretty out there. But I also think that John asked a lot of very pointed and specific questions about things that nobody ever really pushes Molyneux on, and while I was grimacing my way through it I was also kind of saying "Jesus, thank you someone for saying this." The treatment of the Curiosity "winner" has been indefensibly poor, but that's the latest in over a decade - going on two decades, now, if we count Black & White as part of the trend - of "lovable dreamer" Molyneux promising the world, delivering mediocrity, and running off to the next snake oil pitch while throwing his last effort under the bus as he collects new money. There are people getting through college now who weren't even born when he started this dance, and this is the first interview I've seen where somebody was harsher with him than a shrug and a "you'll get 'em next time." And in the interview he makes a categorical statement about the tenure of his game's new lead developer (who himself is a disgruntled crowdfunder who probably didn't back Godus thinking he would eventually have to try to save it, nor did the other backers think that Peter would run off to a new game before finishing this one, but I digress) and that statement is immediately shown to be false. In the interview where Molyneux's addiction to saying untrue things is the topic! That's... amazing. And not in the good way of being amazed. I don't think Molyneux is a deliberate liar, at least probably not usually. But I think he says whatever he wants to be true, in public, as a promise, every time, without any regard at all for whether it is true. And it's long past time for people to call him out on that instead of just laughing and saying "Oh, Peter." I go back and forth on how I feel about Jim Sterling, but I thought did a pretty fair job of showing the pattern of hype and disavowal that Molyneux's been following for so long. It doesn't feel like an idealistic dreamer anymore. It feels like a bit of a con. It's reasonable for that to get people upset, even in an industry where hype is so prevalent.
  11. Having listened to all existing Idle Thumbs episodes, I believe this to be the best episode intro done yet. Bravo. Wonderful. The transition to the theme song was exquisite. I'll actually listen to the episode now. Just had to get that out.
  12. I can't decide whether I'm really disappointed or relieved that Robot News has gotten to the point where the acquisition of indoor climate control only merits a "we'll get to that", and then you don't actually get to that. I guess maybe there's just nothing more to say.
  13. I had a weird thing happen with Super Hexagon where I was super into it for about two weeks and hit the skill wall Chris is talking about hard - I beat the lowest difficulty (where "beat" just means surviving 60 seconds) but absolutely could not get a rhythm in the next one up. Topped out at maybe 20 or 25 seconds on most runs. I walked away from it for about six months, and then just picked it up again for the hell of it and suddenly I was able to beat the next difficulty, and get 45 seconds into the one after that. And I didn't put in nearly as much time in the 2nd, far-more-successful obsession with it as I had the first time around. There really is something to that whole "walk away from a thing and your subconscious will process how to do it better when you come back" idea.
  14. So I love Saints Row 3 and talking about why it's good (because it's really shockingly good), but I'm also curious about the Pikmin 2 fake college course thing that they said they were gonna link in the show notes and then (unless I missed it) didn't. Anybody know where to read that? It sounds awesome.
  15. Late to this thread, obviously. But I loved the part of this episode where you talked about trying to play Super Hexagon while inebriated, as a demonstration of alcohol's effect on our motor functions even when we feel like we're not seriously impacted. I decided to try it out. Now, to be clear, I'm not very good at Super Hexagon to begin with. My high score is 63 seconds, and that's on "Hard", the lowest difficulty. But that is the best I've been able to do so far, stone sober. Having had a manhattan (2 shots of bourbon and some vermouth), I'm definitely feeling the alcohol at least a little, though I'm certainly able to hold a conversation and consider myself pretty much fully functional. The best I'm able to do so far under this condition is 61 seconds. So, only 2 seconds off my high score. It may be that I suck at Super Hexagon to begin with - I mean, I already accepted that as true - but the alcohol isn't making me feel much worse at it than I already was. I don't think I have alcohol-resistant superpowers, but I'm definitely not seeing the dramatic results you experienced, having gone in eager to be made a fool of by the game. Maybe "Hard" isn't punishing enough to demonstrate the disparity. EDIT: I bumped it up to Harder, and now I'm capping out at about 30 seconds (28). I'll have to come back when sober and see if I do noticeably better.
  16. I don't know where No One Lives Forever fits, exactly, but you guys brought up Monolith so it deserves to be mentioned. I thought it did a pretty great job of sending up both form and content while still being a very well made game.