Patrick R

These kinds of threads always devolve into "I have bad taste" threads*. Usually it takes more than two posts. *Of course I'm being glib, taste is subjective and you have every right to like or dislike whatever you want, but I think also there is something to be said about being objective enough to realize that some things just won't hit with you and that does not necessarily mean the emperor has no clothes.

Nearly a century of institutionalized stigmas about unions being bastions for the greedy and lazy as perpetrated by corporate interests and a history of red scare. It's like the way people say "I'm no feminist, but...", except much much more entrenched and protected. There is no escaping it. American capitalism will always be a race to the bottom.

This changes everything. If I had any money at all I'd do this.

I just think the wall jump and gem-high (which are both mechanics) are wildly different than Spelunky's hell runs (which is an alternate meta-game). I would compare wall-jumping to, well, running over 1 block gaps, I guess. But I guess I misremembered the tutorial process, which maybe just points to how unintrusive I found it, that it never felt forced on me or diminished my experience.

Again, I think the way Spelunky does this is great. Totally optional tutorial that covers the basics and a few idiosyncrasies of the movement system (like running over single block gaps) that you play through once and never think about again. Maybe if to the left there was another hole labelled "Tutorial" that you could jump into, that had basic info painted on the walls that you fall past.

The worst way ads affect my life is when I want to show my partner a video on YouTube and set it up like "This is the song that plays on loop in my head." and instead of the song I wanted playing I feel like once a month there is a YouTube ad that appears and torments me endlessly. but I had a whole day where all I saw before and I wanted to pull my eyes out. I think about the actors who had to be in that Tim & Eric Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercial and it's actually really upsetting. But yeah, don't ad block.

I would agree except they don't exist in a "you don't know anything about it" and "you know all about it" binary, and that leads to people thinking that the wall-jumping in the game is just fiddly or shitty because they know it exists but don't know how it works. And Gem-high is one of the few things it actually does message to you in the UI, so the fact that I still don't really know what it actually is makes me feel like I'm missing on some core mechanic and diminishes my experience. If it was just a slight change to your animation or sprite, that'd be easy to ignore, but the fact that there's text and an item dedicated to it makes me think it's something important that I should know about.

I made a long post that got lost. Shortened version: I don't think the game's total hands off approach to teaching the player jibes well with some of the less obvious mechanics, like wall-jumping or gem-high. It's not as if "flipping=wall-jumping" is an obvious logical leap, and due to the fast paced nature of the game it's easy to not notice the difference between different falling animations. I bet it's really hard, as a developer, to find a balance between the joy of discovery and frustrating and annoying your players. I think Spelunky is the only game of this type I've played that really nails that balance perfectly. At least Downwell isn't as bad as Binding of Isaac in this regard, a game I've put 21 hours into and still have no idea what half the items are supposed to do. "Should I choose between the Ace of Spades or the Skinny Mushroom? Well actually I've never perceived the effects of either, so whatever, I don't care."

Also I just learned from the latest episode of Idle Thumbs (the hot tips and cool tricks segment) that you need to have full ammo. I really question some of the decisions to not explain any part of the experience to players.

The trick to wall-jumping is that, unlike Super Metroid, you only get to do it once. It doesn't reset until you land or bounce off something. So it's easy to wall-jump once, fall a distance, and forget and try to do it again.

I imagine once more dynamic lighting options and larger multi-story environments became possible in 3D games the job of FPS level design got so much easier. I think about my time playing Deus Ex as a 13 year old and even with a more open-world approach I never felt as lost as I would in Dark Forces or later levels of Doom.

This is probably pretty basic shit for most of you, but I am very pleased that I finally found a good way to cook chicken breasts on the stove without drying them out or worrying about undercooking them.

If you make a game where a dog dies after eating a chocolate shoe I'm gonna be real mad.

I just got home from a 24 hour horror film festival. My message to you is this: Xtro is an insane, totally fucked up movie. But it is more insane and more fucked up if it is 6 AM, you have been awake for a day, and you are watching the only known 35mm print in existence.

It used to be my favorite due to it's spread (#ContraMemories) but I think actually the starting gun or the nobby might actually be the best because they're the guns with which it's easiest to throttle your fall speed, which is what I actually use the gun for the most, since I can't not go for insane combos every time.

We can all agree that gunpowder blocks are the best power-up, right? What does that balloon do?

https://www.youtube.com/user/patrickklepek Mario Maker Mornings Part 18 and 19 for the Dan Ryckert special.

I have no idea what a gem high does. Whenever I get it I end up having it until I die, so it's hard for me to see what's changed.

Idle Thumbs: We Give 262.6%!

You're not allowed in this thread, Ben.

Or barrels that sometimes explode when shot, but also sometimes just start leaking. Also sometimes a red barrel with a yellow warning symbol is old and has been emptied, so shooting it does nothing.

I just listened to Episode 144: Gimme Some More, and Rob Zachny was talking about the divide between people that like Ocarina of Time and people that like Majora's Mask, which lead to discussion of other dichotomies like Blue Album vs Pinkerton, Graceland vs. Rhythm of the Saints, and a debate about Yoshi's Island. Jake concluded that they should have a streaming series where they stream divisive games with two people who fall on opposite sides of the spectrum. If Jake and Nick streamed two hours of Mario 64 it'd be inncreeedibleee.

10/8 Oculus (2013) "Why are they running up the stairs where there's no escape? Why aren't they leaving a house that's clearly haunted? UGH, why can't anyone just be smart and think about self-preservation for two seconds?" Easy complaints to make about a lot of horror films. But the joy of Oculus, a haunted mirror movie from 2013, is that the characters take every logical precaution in the world against the evil antique and it still might not save them. How do you fight against a cursed object with the ability to cloud your mind & judgment and make you hallucinate? You pick up a bat to break it and before you even know what's happened you've put it down, deciding no, you probably shouldn't. The answer is timers, cameras, automated phone calls, reminders to eat and drink, outside parties keeping track of your actions. Rather than the traditional story of characters slowly realizing what's going on, Oculus plays like a battle of wits between a haunted mirror and two siblings whose lives were destroyed as children by it's power. You add in an achronological structure that jumps back and forth in time until the climax is edited like a horror version of Cloud Atlas and you have a really effective and fun little horror movie. How can I watch it? It's on Netflix Instant. Met State (2001) Met State is an experimental stop-motion animated film, half urban exploration and half macabre music video, that takes you on a tour of an abandoned mental hospital. It's basically a mix of a hundred kinds of catnip for me, and with Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre as the soundtrack, it's a perfectly spooky Halloween treat. How can I watch it? Vimeo.

I appreciate it though. I definitely grew up playing all the NES and SNES games at my friends houses, but my first home console was an N64 and I'm completely unable to be objective about Super Mario 64 in any way. It was the source of dozens of separate transcendent experiences for me, and the idea that someone can not just not be into it but think it's kinda shit is baffling. My first thought listening to the podcast was a dismissive "Well, Jake is Mr. Nice UI and Design Guy, so he's just being overly critical of it's ugly graphics and completely ignoring the game itself", so I appreciate the elaboration even if, on a subjective level, I can't actually ever agree with you. I think the lack of cohesion is actually one of the things I like about Super Mario 64. It felt like this box of toys where anything could happen at any time. I like MGS 2 for the same reason. Playing these games is as much about figuring out all the weird little secrets and easter eggs as it is completing objectives. There were hidden entrances in Super Mario World but it never felt like the same level of playfulness. The world around you kept changing in weird and wonderful ways. The moat has been drained! There's a rabbit in the basement! Looking up at this sunbeam takes you into a secret world! Also I never had a Gamecube, so maybe all this and more is improved in Sunshine.

Doesn't this describe every NES Mario game?