ataridc

This is amazing. For years I've revisited old GFW radios because most of their discussions are more entertaining and (oddly) more relevant and enlightening than just about any other podcast since. Thumbs and GFW are how I made it through my old night shift job and hearing Shawn on here was pretty mind blowing for me. Also, he had more to say about video games than probably about 3 or 4 casts worth of idle thumbs and he doesn't even have a podcast about video games.

I have no idea why I loved Crackdown so much but it was basically the only open city game I played through to completion. I think the fact that it just dropped all pretense of being serious in any way helped. Reviews actually knocked it for the story, but I personally thought the story being so sparse was a plus.

Thanks for answering my question about not being able to get invested into a single game that much anymore. When I think about the games I really couldn't put down over the recent years(Bioshock, Dead Space, Dark Souls) they are all games that get you in quick and they all have very sound, very clearly defined game mechanics that are actually fun to learn and work with. Conversely, games that are just filled with nonstop, incoherent violence and nothing else like Max Payne 3 and basically all Call of Duty campaigns are just doing nothing for me now. I've also lost all patience for cut scenes or standing in place and having dialog spoken to me so Bioware and to a slightly lesser extent Bethesda games aren't really doing it for me anymore. I just basically want my narrative to just be in audio logs or otherwise entirely implied through setting and tone. Most recently, I was really impressed with FTL: Super short tutorial. Super easy to learn. And before the events start repeating over and over, the stories that come out of that game are actually pretty entertaining. Also, I basically agreed with everything Jake said.