Patrick R

For sure, but I didn't find that ending as evocative as most of the rest of the game. I didn't really get "a little girl enjoying a real child's life" from that ending. I didn't get much of anything from that ending. It was definitely worth my money, though. And the puzzles I was able to figure out without using a walkthrough (about the first half of the game) were a lot of fun. Also the first moment with the spider's legs unfolding was amazing and then when it jumps at you on that cliff and- yeah, lot of amazing moments.

I have no real theories about the end of the game, but

Um, apparently I quit the game before I saw the actual end? I am embarrassed.

Apparently all I needed was a little encouragement, as I finished the game shortly after youmeyou suggested I power through it (I was only 10 minutes from the end!). I will say that I don't see where people are coming from saying that this game is about a little boy looking for his little sister. There's really not enough in the actual text of the game to add that much to the narrative. Is that something that comes from Playdead's marketing materials or whatever, or am I missing some major moments in the game? EDIT: Also I fear that there is some Dash Rendaring going on and that if I collected all those little glowing orbs the ending would have been different.

The experience of the first hour or so totally delighted me, but once you leave the forest I felt the atmosphere kind of drained out, leaving a puzzle platformer. A fine puzzle platformer, I'm sure, but I'm so bad at puzzles that it drives me nuts. Maybe one day I'll finish it. I do wonder how close to the end I am.

http://www.futilitycloset.com/ has taken me out of more than one depression. It's an endless source of wonder and enrichment for me.

I co-host a film podcast where we tackle a different director every episode. We cut a wide swath, from Buster Keaton to Park Chan Wook to Tyler Perry. Also we write a lot of parody songs because we secretly want to be FM radio, I guess. Our last episode was on John Cassavetes and I think it went pretty well.

That sort of detail is probably better expressed in text than video anyway. Pretty much every Michael Moore film is much more guilty of those kinds of subjective moments of telling and not showing than this video. He is constantly editorializing in his films, to a much larger degree than Anita does here.

As amazing as Idle Thumbs' precognition is, Tarantino had some help in that department.

Michael Moore might not be your best example, but I understand where you're coming from. I guess I didn't view this as academic as you did. For me, the tone is conversational. Even-handed and calm, but still conversational. Though compared to the tone of your average YouTube series about video games (which is all hyperbole, sarcasm, and mock rage), it's practically an MIT lecture. I'm not saying it didn't stick out a little bit (though clearly less for me than you), just that it didn't bother me at all, because A) it's true, and it was only at the worst and most unbelievable example. Damsels in distress are such a normalized part of all fiction that it can be understandable how a developer can not even think about those images being harmful. Sexualizing a beaten woman in 2012 is kind of on another level. In (briefly and mildly) expressing her anger at that, it is a way of making that point. At any rate, it was still a brief part of a long video that you said you loved. When you say you worry about future episodes "slowly degenerating into that", I got the impression that you assume that those sorts of expressions of anger taking over the series was a distinct possibility, which I don't really agree with. EDIT: Sunglasses guy is trolling me.

Thanks! If I was a stronger man I'd just, you know, actually ignore their posts. But I can't help myself from reading and then I get mad and it just isn't worth it.

Calling regressive crap "regressive crap" doesn't strike me as petulant. It's maybe slightly inconsistent, tonally, but it's also maybe three seconds out of about twenty-three minutes of talking. I appreciate that the professional and even tone is what makes this video so effective, but I don't think it's out of line to show a little emotion during the worst and least defensible of examples. It's certainly not enough to make the assumption that the whole thing will unravel into emotional outbursts.

I feel like this has been addressed elsewhere but I can't quite find it, so I apologize. Is there an option to set certain users to "ignore"?

Did this ever go anywhere? How many extra keys do the Thumbs still have? How many gift copies does everyone have? Did any of you guys end up playing?

lolololololololololol

Posted this in the YouTube thread. Truly excellent.

Not comical, but (and the general damsel in distress trope) is pretty great. It's an easy point to make, so the thoroughness and quality film-making on hand really impressed me.

I hope this whole episode is about how bullshit that IG-88 level in Shadows of the Empire was because man that level was bullshit.

Yeah, but I was pissed when this movie wasn't about King Dedede. In other news, I just learned that the name of the final boss in Kirby isn't spelled "Deedee". EDITED TO ADD: "Due to an ambiguous description of the geography of Pop Star, it is never made entirely clear how much of the planet King Dedede assumes leadership of, though he seems to have castles and fortresses all across the planet. Even so, he seems to perform no administrative functions, and for the most part, the planet seems to ignore any edicts that are issued by him."

I somehow never remembered this, but reading that Metafilter thread reminded me that I used to say "guardian" instead of "boss". In fact, I used to roll my eyes at kids who called them "bosses", like they were dumb or something. The final boss was referred to as "the guardian of the game" and mini-bosses were "guards". Which makes even less sense than "boss", really. I think I picked it up from my friend down the street, as I never had gaming systems of my own until later. I wonder if this was a southern thing (I lived in Houston, Texas at the time).

If the tree from Kirby's Dreamland was my boss, I imagine I could get away with a lot of goofing off, on account of him not being able to move his head in any way.