coaxmetal

Oh man. This is clearly neither a new, nor recently active thread, But thanks Silent for resurrecting it. I like this game (the 2 acts that are out so ar) a whole lot. There isn't really anything to the gameplay, but it is an experience, and I think it's a great one. Super weird in a very compelling surrealistic (or, magical realistic, as the game is indending to evoke) way. And it works really well, for me at least. I thuoght botch acts so far are fantastic, and I'm really looking forward to what act 3 brings.

to me they all fit the stereotypes they are tryign to evoke. As the op mentioned, stallone and Mr. T. Now, if you want to say those stereotypes themselves are racist, I wouldn't disagree. I don't think the game is going out of its way beyond evoking that to be racist though. Not trying to give it a pass or anything, I just don't think there was any overt or intentional racism. Perhaps unintentional/casual, which is maybe worse, or perhaps just tyring to evoke a style and theme that has racist elements. e: that said, I have not played then game and am only going off what was in the OP, so there may be plenty I am missing

I am not picking up any intented racism from what's in the OP. Tasteless, yes, but the imagery is portraying a stereotype, one certainly influenced by race, but not out of place among the other stereotypes presented, and I really don't see the similarities to the old racist art.

Yeah, I certainly agree with this. I looked in all the rooms and only a few had surprises. I think if the other levels were as dense as the first one the game would have been better, but overall I enjoyed it. The brand of humor and absurdity (because some of it is just strange and not actually funny) is certainly not somethign that appeals to everyone, but I definitely enjoyed it. I did actually laugh a few times too, which I find doesn't happen often when playing a game. At some point though, it wasn't a comedy game so much as just a weird absurd experience, and some of the stuff in there was funny, but I didn't need the jokes to work for the game to work.

Yeah I heard there were more storms. I'm in sf, but we are working with a hopsital in north carolina, and I was going to have to get up really early to help run some testing with our software and theirs, but they canceled due to the weather, I guess nobody could get to work.

Yup that's the one. I found it browsing crunchyroll (which I signed up for mostly to watch kill la kill). I've watched the first like 8 or so episodes and I'm enjoying it.

I recently started watching an anime called From The New World, apparently based on a novel. Sort of a speculative fiction but also kids with psychic powers. One of those stories that takes place far in the future, but looks like it takes place in the past. Seems pretty good so far though. It looks like the novel hasn't been translated, which is a shame, because It might be interesting to read that story in that format.

Also it was great to have Zach (jick) on. I used to play a ton of KoL. Even went to KoLcon once.

also in my dropbox though, just in case

I haven't seen the game yet, but Chris's description of Delver remineded me a lot of Daggerfall. Randomly generated, first person, 3D but the monsters are sprites.

wow it totally does. Makoto is pretty cool. Also i'm again ruining the preview image by posting. Anyway, I think at 0:26:45, they start talking about the endings of games that aren't the last of us. Choosing the end of a potential spoilery thing is hard, because there is good discussion there. Also there was a weird balance of talking about the last of us explicitly enough to refer to and spoil things, but no really explicit story callbacks. They said enough though that, having finished it, I wouldn't want to have spoiled I think.Anyway im not like super confident about that as the ending but that seems reasonable to me without cutting out tooo much discussion

This is the "don't worry guys, you aren't doing anything wrong" thread I guess. Nothing wrong with repetion of stories -- if its been long enough that you can't remember if you told the story on the cast, it's probably been long enough that we will be interested to hear it retold. Certainly true of this episode. Also, re: chris worrying about coming off as overly negative about AAA games, I can certainly see some of that. But most often I get the impression that, if you are saying mostly negative things about a game, it is because those are common problems in a games and the rest is probably good, but isn't an interesting conversation. I don't always agree with the criticisms of some AAA games, but hearing them is always interesting and makes me think about it.

I like the episode title, but I was hoping for "A Segue to Nowhere". I like the sound of that. Also, I hope Sean sticks with The Witcher 2, the combat is definitely off-putting at first but I ended up really enjoying it after finding the rhythm. I also found using the mouse/keyboard felt better, especially for ui nagivation, but also for combat.

I didn't realize Dear Mom did other gaming stuff besides Barcraft. I missed evo entirely this weekend, didn't even realize it was going on and was kinda dissapointed. I would totally have watched it at Dear Mom. Also, I think I disagree with the sentiment expressed about The Last of Us. I don't disagree with any specific criticisms, as those are accurate, I think that stuff just doesn't matter to me or detract from my enjoyment of the game. I guess that lines up with how Sean was indicating that Tom Bissell felt (though I have not read his review yet myself).

oh yeah more ryan davis chat if nobody say it. GB Just posted a great vid of some classic ryan (and as far as I can' tell, video that was not otherwise posted before) http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/video-thing-that-s-so-ryan/2300-7682/ Hey, that guy was funny. A great guy.

I just caught up with the cast again. I took a break for a few days because the bombcast came out. Short (only 2 hours!) but a great, yet saddening, reflection about ryan. Anyway, that aside, I think it would surprise nobody to say that the benefits of a small team are far from exclusive to the games industry. I work in sf as a programmer at a startup doing medical software, currently 12 people strong (4 of us are programmers), and working in a close knit small team is fantastic, games or not. Of course, there are projects that are too big for everyone to be involved, or even know about all of it, but working at a small company, or on a small team, where everyone knows the general idea of all of it and is working together is fantastic. I'm lucky enough to be able to pick and choose where I work, and that there are enough places in my industry that I can just continue to work on small teams. It really is great though.

I was thinking of this as I listened to the cast, its a great video. I'll need to watch the archive of the thumbs playing it now. Listening to you guys talk about ryan made me sad all over again, but also happy because he was such a great dude. I never met him personally, but I listened to him on a podcast weekly since 2008, so when I heard he died all of a sudden it was like a punch in the gut. He was such a staple of my media consumption, as weird a thing as that is to say, and I always liked him. I almost met him once, I was walking down 2nd street, past the CBSI offices, but I was on the other side of the street. Saw him out on the patio there working, so I tweeted at him asking if he was editing a podcast, he said he was! That made me pretty happy, its like I talked to a celebrity almost. Anyway I find it weird that I'm so struck by the death of someone I have never met in person, but I am, and hearing you guys talk about it was sad but also comforting.

yessss Also let us not forget that Citizen Kane was a person, too:

Has there been a licensed citizen kane game yet? If not that seems like a great opportunity. Nobody would argue with that being the citizen kane of games.

cool, thanks. That sounds like its roughly where I am too. Also the writeup for the cast is fantastic.

before I listen to this, whats the state of story discussion about the last of us in this cast? Should I finish the game first?

Man, I loved this episode. Thanks guys. Great emails too. Wrt the email about stealth vs cinematic experience, I felt that The Last of Us (which I haven't finished yet, but ive played several hours) didn't really have that issue. For me, the mark of the ninja style stealth systems, the ones that provide additional information, sort of simulate the stealth acumen of, say, a ninja. Also that game (and others with similar mechanics) are very stealth focused -- breaking stealth can be a failure state or have point/achievement/gameplay consequences for the rest of the level. Anyway, in The Last of Us, Joel isn't a magic stealth expert and the game doesn't (at least thusfar) ever require stealth. The process of stealthily taking out a few people, then getting noticed and having to use firearms to clear the rest of the people/zombies feels natural; it fits with the world and character. And as far as I can tell there are no consequences to breaking stealth aside from using ammo. Also it's pretty cool that I could digitally purchase and download that game. I do it all the time on steam but it feels novel on a console. e: also, before listened to this episode, I read the title as though someone was cruisin' along, trying to find a word that rhymes with cruisin'.

also I played this one too, I think. It was great.

its like how in the new tomb raider she gets dual pistols at the end of the game. The whole symbolic accessory coming of age trope.

The discussion about naming things at the end of the cast reminded me of the old programmer joke: "There are 2 hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors" Naming something when programming is certainly a very differnt kind of problem than naming a creative work, but it is still kinda hard. The name of a function/type/object/class/variable is obviously descriptive -- it refers to what the thing is, but it is also often prescriptive since a name is one of the first things you write down when making a new file/class/etc. Anyway I think about naming things a lot. Also one of my favorite names for a thing is "Roadside Picnic", the book by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky that the STALKER games take inspiration from. Also that's just a really good book.