tberton

Before finishing this episode, I thought the title referred to another imaginary animal pun game where you play as mice with secret identities.

Yeah, that makes sense. I was just a bit disappointed. For me, at this point, the series is much more about the impact of Laura's death than the search for her killer, so I would have liked more funeral time.

Re: Left 4 Dead 2. I understand not liking the tonal shift, but man, the gameplay of 2 is so much better. There's way more variety in the level design, the weapons, the objectives and especially the Infected. Because I approached L4D as mainly a multiplayer game, that was exactly what I wanted from a sequel. For me, the more apt comparison for Partal 2 is Pikmin 2. Portal 1 and Pikmin 1 are both small games from big name developers that have a unique premise and completely nail it. Tonally, mechanically and structurally, they are both extremely focused. Both games got kncoked for being too short. Both sequels were much longer, had much more plotting (this is more the case for Portal than for Pikmin) and both doubled down on the sillier aspects of their worlds. I still think both sequels are great games, but for me, they both missed the mark of what made the originals so charming. Interestingly, they also both had amazing multiplayer modes that are likely more worth revisiting than the main games.

Finalllyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Something that confused me about this episode: why was there only a burial service for Laura and not a larger funeral? Every funeral I've ever been to has a funeral service inside a church, synagogue or funeral home, and then a smaller burial service at the gravesite. Is that not a standard thing? Relatedly, you guys mentioned the weirdness of Shelly being at the funeral. During the rock experiment in Episode 3, they mention that Shelly was friends with Laura.

Yeah, that grated on me a bit too. I mean, yes, the discussion was focused on him and it was fantastic, but a bit of humility would be nice. I'm sure there were dozens of other people who had an equally huge impact on those games.

I was surprised that Chris didn't notice the whistle arc. It was one of my favourite little stories.

I like that you guys mentioned the the coffee warm-up gag. To me, that felt like an add for some kid's snack food. Like, there's a bunch of kids at a sleepover and Mom comes down and gives them Gushers or something.

I can answer your first question. The game is Tammany Hall and they talk about it in episode 106: Imagine the Man.

No Warioware? You're missing out.

If you want to get into Etrian Odyssey, IV is far and away the best entry point. I haven't played Millenium Girl, but it's a remake of the original and as such I imagine it lacks a lot of the more fleshed out systems of IV. As it stands, EOIV executes on the concept of Etrian Odyssey if not perfectly, then at least thoroughly.

So, I didn't end up buying this, because I got Enemy Within last week and I'm obsessed, but I just wanted to comment that it's really interesting to see the disappointment in this thread, because in the other forum I hang out in, people are loving this game. That's not meant to be a comment on people's feeling here; I think it just goes to show that Civ has an incredibly diverse audience, so much so that what's a terrible experience for one person is great for another.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to try it out.

Good points. Without having more specific knowledge of the rules, I can't really say how you would mod it. The comment was mainly to point out that colonial situations rarely have a monolithic "colonizer", but rather individuals and groups that benefit from colonial systems to a greater or lesser extent. But perhaps that sort of nuance would be detrimental to the larger point of the game.

FYI, Shattered Memories is a Silent Hill game.

Yeah, although I imagine with a game like Broken Age, which needs to animate and record all that dialogue, having it take longer creates a much bigger bottleneck.

Yeah, one they say "Tim needs to finish the writing" I'm pretty sure they mean specific lines of dialogue, not general story stuff.

Yeah, I think I'm going to pick up the physical version as well and play it with some of my grad school friends. I wonder how easy it would be to modify though. Just from my impressions of the review and the website, the biggest issue I have with the game is that there's only one Colonizer, making it seem monolithic. It seems like having two Colonizers would be more interesting and true to life, since they could possibly have competing interests and be played off of each other.

Thanks for all the added "shit" words, folks. Can't believe I forgot apeshit and chickenshit (although I think chickenshit has more of a cowardly connotation). And yeah, Chris, you're right, I forgot the verb use of "bullshit" which "horseshit" interestingly doesn't share. I am way too into this.

I would be into that.

The only types of games I can think of that fit what you're looking for are multiplayer games, and mostly tabletop. In video games, Neptune's Pride is what you want. For board games, there are alliance-building wargames like Diplomacy and A Game of Thrones, trading and negotiation games like Bohnanza, Genoa and I'm the Boss! and hidden role/traitor games like The Resistance, One Night Ultimate Werewolf and Battlestart Galactica.

Yeah, according to that email, because of the way the game's structured, they've been able to get Shay's segment to beta, even though Tim only recently finished the writing on the rest of the game. The time estimates still seem optimistic, but I don't really have any idea how these things work, so what do I know.

Has anybody seen Shut Up & Sit Down's review of Dog Eat Dog, the RPG-lite about colonialism? It's a really worthwhile read and I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts, especially if anybody's played the game or is expecting to play it soon. I'm doing my Master's in Public History and my research is probably going to be about history in tabletop games, so this is really relevant. Also, I'm TAing a course about empire and colonization, which means my scholar-sense is tingling twice as hard.

Man, this episode was great. I love the Fiver. Also, when talking about video games branded by snacks, you forgot to mention the skittles game that game out for Gamecube.

Danielle describing The Evil Within as "batshit" made me want to catalogue the meanings we assign to different types of shit in English. Batshit: (adv.) ridiculously "Batshit insane" (adj.) unbelievable, in a ridiculous or entertaining way "This game is batshit." Dogshit: (n.) something of very poor quality "This game is dogshit." Bullshit: (n.) lies, often completely disassociated from the truth. "This essay was bullshit" (n.) something that's unfair "This level is bullshit" (adj.) unfair "I hate this bullshit level" Horseshit: (n.) lies, often completely disassociated from the truth. "This essay was horseshit" (n.) something that's unfair "This level is horseshit" (n.) something of very poor quality "This game is horseshit." Anybody got any others?