tegan
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Posts posted by tegan
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Life
in Idle Banter
There's a personal reason that I'd rather not discuss as to why I want to see one particular psych, but I can't get in without a doctor's recommendation. I'm going to a walk-in clinic today to see if they can help, and also to see if I can get a doctor's note excusing my absence from work, as well as maybe some kind of information about getting short-term disability leave.
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Is that a US offer only? The only specials I heard about in the EU region are the Pikachu edition and the upcoming Fire Emblem and Monster Hunter bundles. If there was a cool 3DS XL with Luigi and Mario in the same package for a reasonable price, I'd go for it.
It's a Club Nintendo thing, but I think it's just for North American Club Nintendo. I'm using it to get either Professor Layton or Art Academy, myself.
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Disney premiered the first of their new Mickey Mouse shorts the other day. I finally found a version that works internationally!
http://www.slashfilm.com/watch-disneys-new-mickey-mouse-short-film-croissant-de-triomphe/
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Life
in Idle Banter
I just can't take life anymore. I've skipped work for the past two weeks due to severe stress, I'm having the hardest time convincing myself to go outside, and I feel absolutely crushingly depressed. I'm trying to get recommended to a psychiatrist for some personal problems that I've been having for years, but I'm finding it extremely difficult to get anywhere.
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The last episode of Retronauts went up yesterday, and they were specific to say that it was the last episode that they would be doing for 1up, not that it was the last episode. I'm really curious as to what they have planned.
I really hope that they continue it, because they've still never done a Metroid episode for some reason.
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that text is hard to read
whoever recorded this really should have sprung for the Dreamcast VGA cable
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I'd like to know that, too. Obviously North Koreans are allowed to leave their country to work abroad (but usually provided they have a family back home that can be used as a bargaining chip if they refuse to return), but there's a lot of crazy news in that country. Did you know that Kim Jong-Il scored an unprecedented 11 holes-in-one during one round of golf? That makes him the best golfer who ever lived.
The best thing: when Kim Jong-Il died, fucking ESPN of all publishers was the only place where I saw an outright criticism of him by posting a "tribute to the greatest golfer who ever lived," describing this absurd score (for the only game of golf he ever played, incidentally) and then closed out with a brief "either that or he had his secret service make up an incredibly stupid lie." It was incredible.
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"Hmm, I should get a 3DS XL already. On the one hand I'm sure there will eventually be a special edition for Pokémon, but that won't be for a while and it probably won't even leave Japan, just like the Pikachu XL."
[2 weeks pass]
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What about SHMUPS? Those kind of shrug the idea that reading direction enforces directional scrolling. One would think JP SHMUPS would move downward but I can't think of a single vertically oriented SHMUP that is not presented with the craft "ascending" to the top of the screen. I don't know if I can rightfully recall playing any kind of SHMUP that scroll from R->L either....
I'm pretty sure this stems from the tradition of Space Invaders, which serves as the base template for the SHMUP genre despite actually being a vertical scene portrayed head-on rather than a horizontal scene portrayed top-down. The perspective thing is also present in early racing games, though, so maybe it's just that top being forward feels right.
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admittedly I would be photoshopping Nick's head onto shit every week if there were more than three photos of him on the internet.
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How is that a complete lie when it's obvious that all the intra-region stuff requires the server? Just because someone would like to turn those things off, or could live without them, they're still a part of the game. Demanding they redesign the game to make it playable offline is crazy.
Not true, all the calculations regarding sending resources, workers, and vehicles back and forth between areas in a region are being run on the server. That is some pretty major work being offloaded, even if a lot of people find those calculations uneccessary.
I should have clarified that I mean single-player functions.
From the Rock Paper Shotgun interview with a Maxis employee two days ago, linked in that article:
The servers are not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing. They are still acting as servers, doing some amount of computation to route messages of various types between both players and cities. As well, they’re doing cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they’re not doing anything. I have no idea why they’re claiming otherwise. It’s possible that Bradshaw misunderstood or was misinformed, but otherwise I’m clueless.
[...]
It wouldn’t take very much engineering to give you a limited single-player game without all the nifty region stuff.
The region stuff is fine, that's actual multiplayer. But from what I'm seeing here, EA has been saying that their servers do things besides handle save storage and region stuff, which is obviously false since it's already been modded to work offline. So basically there's no good reason for the single player component to be online besides DRM, but it's been consistently stated on EA's part that this isn't the case.
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I think it's worth pointing out that EA's public statement has been that the game uses the always-online functionality because some processes are handled by their servers rather than on the users' end, which is now demonstrably a complete lie. Between that and outright refusing to refund customers after promising they would, this is some serious Better Business Bureau shit.
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man, I wish you had photoshopped Nick's face onto indy's body.
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So Nintendo lost a lawsuit for the first time in what feels like a really long time. The 3DS infringes on a patent produced by a former Sony employee, so they've been ordered to pay him more than thirty million dollars.
At the risk of sounding defensive of Nintendo, I thought that the stereoscopic display tech was originally developed for the Gamecube. They've said before that Luigi's Mansion was supposed to be in 3D.
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This has been the best episode in a while, I think.
Crazy mannequin story is the best.
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I finally broke down and signed up for Netflix again.
On the one hand I'm now paying money for a service that I'll rarely use when I should have learned my lesson during the free trial. On the other hand, I now have instant access to every season of Kids in the Hall.
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North Korean documentary about life in America. I wish somebody could confirm whether the English translation is a joke or if the original is actually that insane.
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So Nintendo unveiled the first game to utilize the Wii U gamepad's NFC technology, Pokémon Rumble U.
You buy tiny adorable Pokémon figurines and place them on the gamepad to unlock them in-game. Like Skylanders, but with Pokémon. Wallets will be destroyed.
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So apparently you can make a 100% residential city without any drawbacks as long as the most basic of needs (like power) are provided.
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Is it confirmed that the podcasts will disappear?
I seem to remember Jeremy saying that he'd still like to do podcasts even if he has to do it separately from his new role at IGN. Hopefully that means more Retronauts. It's a real shame since it seems like Bob and Jose were just about to get Retronauts and Games Dammit back on their feet again.
You know, as long as we're talking about Retronauts, I feel that this is worth mentioning:
I've been listening to the old episodes, and in an early episode (would have been around November 2008, but I can't remember which one), and somebody briefly brought up Famicom horror RPG Sweet Home. They elaborated on the game's mechanic of carrying around planks and using them to cover gaps in the floor. The planks are a finite resource, break at random, and take up precious space in your exceedingly small inventory; so everyone who plays the game inevitably comes up with an elaborate and careful system of ensuring that you'll always have planks available.
What did they initially describe the game as?
They called it a boards management game.
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I was fortunate enough to watch that video before it was blocked in Canada, and I really wish I could see it again.
I seem to recall once hearing that American players had a much harder time starting the original Metroid than Japanese players did, and Nintendo's tips hotline got a lot of calls from players who hadn't found the morph ball yet. IIRC, the reason why the morph ball was put to the left in the first place was specifically as a way to teach players that they could go left.
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So I played Flower and the first several campaigns of flOw.
The first stages of Flower are absolutely perfect for relaxing. I actually found it kind of frustrating toward the end though, because I was trying to open every flower like it was Banjo-Kazooie or something. I know that it's entirely my own fault for approaching it in a very video gamey way when there's no reason to do so, but I really felt encouraged to engage in tedious activities. It makes me really appreciate the scaled-back design of Journey, where nothing exists unless it has to.
I played flOw back when it was still a flash game, before thatgamecompany signed on with Sony, and honestly I liked the flash version a whole lot more. This one is prettier, and I like how every organism has its own specialty that you have to learn on your own, but I really hate moving with the sixaxis. It's one of those situations where moving an object in 3D space as an analogy for moving an object in 2D space doesn't feel right no matter how much you do it.
Oh, also, I guess I also recently finished Pokémon Black 2. Actually, make that "finished," since the main story is finished but I never have any idea where to stop with those games. I got psyched into a huge Pokémon mood, bought the game, played it for two weeks solid, ploughed through the campaign and caught all the legendaries, and now I don't have much of an interest in continuing.
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how weird is it that my takeaway from the video was "oh man Double Dragon Neon I forgot I wanted to play that"
Actually, DDN is kind of a weird example to use since that game was specifically made to ruthlessly make fun of its source material for being so moronic.
Life
in Idle Banter
Posted
I walked an hour and a half or more to get to a clinic today, and they refused to even talk to me because I guess they don't treat depression or anxiety there. I even explained that I only want to see them because I want to speak with a psychiatrist who won't see me without first being recommended by a family doctor or a walk-in clinic. I don't have a family doctor and I'm having so much trouble with these walk-in clinics. I also contacted a psychologist directly who said I should see the same psychiatrist, but wasn't able to give me a recommendation and instead referred me to the clinic I just went to.
And now my foot's all bloodied up from walking, too.