Patrick R

Eets Munchies, another game I wouldn't play through if it was on a Flash portal, but it was part of some bundle so now I own it. With the added bonus of it not even registering mouse clicks properly. The game requires you to drag objects around to solve puzzles, except that you have to click and drag an inch below the actual objects to move them. No thanks!

Finished F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate. Was definitely just more of the same and felt pretty tedious, especially the bullet sponge boss-type enemies.

On the topic of the phenomenon of personalized audio tracks, I just found out today that Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah, the artists behind the local Chicago classic rock smash song (if you live outside of Chicago you've probably never heard it, but it's a classic rock radio staple out here) offer personalized versions of the song for sixty bucks. It sounds like pretty much any three syllables will do, so maybe we should make them do an Idle Thumbs version.

I've come out to my sisters (one of whom is very religious but was also a theater kid so she had a lot of gay male friends), who didn't really care. I figure I'll never come out to my parents until I need to. Unless my sisters have already told them and we've all just silently agreed not to talk about it, the way we silently agreed never to discuss the fact that I'm an atheist. Irish-Catholics! So great at not talking! For someone raised in a fairly strict Catholic household I'm really lucky. My aunt is gay so I never heard any shitty homophobic talk growing up, and my parents are so afraid of sex they never mentioned it's existence, let alone instilled shame into me about it. I first realized I was attracted to men around the age of 14, but I never felt ashamed of it. I certainly wasn't open with it to anyone I wasn't close with, but even back then I always felt like that was more everyone else's problem then mine. I did come out to my parents as non-monogamous (back when I was) and they mostly seemed puzzled but not judgmental. My mom's response was "Yeah, I really don't get that" to which I replied "That's ok." End of conversation. I think maybe I'm such a fuck-up in every other aspect of my life that they've just decided my sex life is the last thing they need to worry about.

EDIT: Was beaten to it.

I think The Guest was less inspired by John Carpenter than the direct-to-video thriller/action/horror movies of the 80's. Especially the DTV Terminator rip-offs. It felt way more Cannon than anything else. I think it's just the pulsing electronic score throwing people off, because it really doesn't resemble any Carpenter movie. It's too low-rent for that.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... This would explain why our games kept ending right at the start of turn 4.

Me and my partner had a great time playing Twilight Struggle at our local game shop yesterday. Question to those who have played it: If events trigger whether or not a card is played as an event, why is there the option to play cards as events? What advantage would there ever be to not playing cards as operations? I feel like we're misunderstanding some fundamental rule of the game somewhere.

I have a problem with not saving in general. It's the console gamer I was raised to be. I remember back when me and a friend both had Deus Ex, I was mostly used to console games and he was mostly used to PC games, and we compared stats when we finished: he had saved somewhere around 800 times, I had saved 16 times. So I didn't connect it specifically to F.E.A.R. but I do suppose losing 15+ minutes of progress was more common in this game than most. I thought the horror aspect in general was really shoddy and tacked on. Granted, I played the game while listening to podcasts, so I wasn't exactly allowing myself to get sucked into the atmosphere. But it felt like horror was just not what the game was about. It's pretty easy to make me jump, but the only time it actually got me in either game was once at the start of Perseus Mandate.

Beat F.E.A.R. The combat was a lot of fun but the whole game only really took place in three environments, all with the same dreary industrial theme. I spent a lot of time going in circles, but I have that problem in general with FPS's. If it weren't for the perfect learning curve (I felt like my grasp of the combat rounded the corner of "unstoppable badass" right before the game ended) I don't think I'd have liked this much at all. Still gonna play through the Perseus Mandate DLC (or expansion? I'm not sure how this stuff worked when F.E.A.R. came out) because of the Gaynor factor.

There is actually a fair bit of good practical action work in Reloaded (a lot in that very sequence, in fact, just not in that specific fight) but they overstepped the limits of CGI so all the really bad digital stuntman and green screen work really grates.

I just watched Rebels of a Neon God. Utterly devastating portrait of loneliness. Even if that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, it's worth seeing just for all the 1992 location shooting in Taipei. Those loving shots of streets crowded with motor scooters, arcades packed with smoking teenagers, neon signs everywhere, a subplot involving stolen arcade cabinet motherboards, a 90's roller rink. It's a very specific sort of urban setting that's just catnip to me.

My partner has actually been recording a D&D podcast for a couple months now, but I can't link you to it because the DM has been too lazy to edit and upload any of them yet. But from what I've heard of it, it's very performance driven, with a de-emphasis on combat and systems. Maybe when it goes up I'll link to it here.

Yeah, I think I'd be fine with that. I rarely get lost in open world games. It really is the maze aspect of branching corridors that screws me up.

I feel like I'm the only one who really didn't like Ex Machina, for really basic reasons. I thought the movie did a bad job with basic storytelling stuff, like what information the characters know when.

I can't wait for you to play Doom 2. I think the level design is even better in that one, and the super shotgun is the most satisfying thing ever. But I've played through those games so many times. Once you play through the game it's worth downloading ZDaemon to play a few rounds of multiplayer Doom, if only for historical purposes. Zipping around and blowing people away with rocket launchers is still pretty fun for a brief diversion. No, I've always assumed my laptop couldn't handle such rigorous FPS simulations. Why, is it way easier to get lost in those games?

I would say temper your expectations a bit. It is a greater trailer than it is a film. Some incredible dog acting, though.

There is something I find unspeakably moving and powerful about the song "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora and it confuses the fuck out of me. Honestly all the connections I have to this song are gross homophobic YTMND memes and the ending of TMNT III. I don't know why I would possibly be so affected by it. Best I can figure is that it feels so irrepressibly triumphant, combined with the fact that the lead singer died of AIDS. Like, somehow my brain interprets this as this defiant shout of gay pride? It's fucking weird, but here I am choking up watching this totally ridiculous music video. Are there any pieces of low or cheesy pop culture that nonetheless fills you with intense emotions?

The only good music at this moment is TV Colours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwPXx79vZfE

Ok, here is my lo-fi rock song "Heater". Lyrics: (Woo!) Heyyyy Where'd ya go? Heyyyy Did ya know? You got me crawlin all across the floor You're giving me a fever but I need it more Tap the knob to check before I open the door I'm ablaze Cuz baby you're a heater and I'm just a pile of rags just smoldering here into ash but that's ok Cook me cook me cook me with a nice glaze I burn for you Heyyyy Where'd ya go? Heyyyy Did ya know? I feel the pain of everyone than I feel nothing I only wanna see you laughing in the Purple Rain I'm going off the rails on a crazy train Heat Me Up More I realized that I had already recorded a demo for a song called Radiator back in March, and I considered cannibalizing it but I figured that wouldn't be cool for the song jam, so instead I decided to write a new one. I figured "Heater" was a pretty rocking title, so I tried to do some simulation of something or would write. I settled on an escalating chord progression, since that suggested a rising temperature to me, and then worked out a rough melody. Then I banged on my legs and belly and coffee table and couch arms until I worked out some semblance of a beat. Doing this with a percussion backing track meant I had to use a click track, which I am terrible with. It's really really hard for me to keep good time so instead of trying I just recorded all of my music in pieces. Guitar bits, percussion, all chopped up into loops I could copy and paste. I copied and pasted them manually, since Audacity doesn't have any good beat matching tools. I figured my laptop mic was so bad that it would never sound good to begin with, so I just leaned into the weird rough edges, trying to make something that sounded junky and stitched together, like a Guided By Voices song. The lyrics were written last, right before recording the vocals (which I doubled up because I didn't want to sing too loud and annoy the neighbors), but I knew from the start that I would have a run of ripping off lyrics from other songs because it to the stitched . EDIT: I really like your song, Problem Machine. It reminds me of the end credits of a Game Gear game. Or, at least, it gives me the feeling I had when I was seven and up all night playing Echo: The Tides of Time on my Game Gear under my covers with headphones on and I beat it and the credits were just poignant and majestic as all of hell, and I looked at my clock and it was 2:30. Good interpretation of the theme, when those "heater" synths come in you know exactly what they are. Clyde, I know most of the stuff you make seem to be very short songs that are intended to be looped, but the answer to "Where am I supposed to go with this atmospheric piece?" is "Literally anywhere." Even if all you do is just stretch that sound file out to be about 1:45 in length, it's gonna sound really cool and eerie. But I would see just meandering with it, fading in and out different pads, trying different chords, even discordant chords.

Ok, I worked about 45 minutes on my song but then I had to pick my partner up from the airport, but now I'm back and I'll see how well I can record this song without making too much noise for the neighbors.

If it was just all 8-Bit distortions and Waka ad-libs it'd be the greatest thing ever.

I also think that stopping to explain every facet of anime culture as it comes up would get too tedious for it's own good. When I started listening to Idle Thumbs I didn't get a lot of the developers, games, big news stories, and other stuff that they would casually reference without explanation. Eventually I just caught up.

HEAT IT UP.

I think this was the most on-point podcast but also the one where I understood the least, maybe. Which is part of why I listen, so that's fine.