tberton
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Everything posted by tberton
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The game throws a lot of enemies at you that are difficult to avoid though. Men, Fetches and Young Ladies are all pretty tough to get away from. You really do have to have a plan for avoiding them. Sclpls, I actually think your opinion is the more common one. Probably no game makes me feel crazier than Transistor, because it seems like everything that worked for me about it didn't work for other people. It makes me feel like we played different games.
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I don't disagree about the substantive part of your argument here, except what you see a "design failure" I see a successfully executed design.
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The very first scene of Parks & Rec Season 2 is funnier than the entirety of Season 1 put together.
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Clyde, here's an example of what I'm talking about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/14/where-the-poor-and-rich-spend-really-spend-their-money/. And another: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/04/07/3423590/poor-budgets-spending/
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Research doesn't bear this out. I don't have links on hand, but everything I've ever seen suggests that given money to the desperately poor is an incredibly good investment. They don't spend it on bullshit, they spend it on things that help them survive and stop being poor. EDIT: As for the social programs thing, while I definitely agree that a minimum income wouldn't replace everything - for instance, I would still advocate for publicly-funded education and health - the benefit over say, food stamps, is that a minimum income is fungible. If I'm on food stamps and decide that I'd like to be frugal for a few months in order to save up for school or a move or something, I can't do that - food stamps are food stamps and that's that. But if I'm instead receiving a cash transfer and spent a portion of that money on food, I can decide to spend less of that money on food in order to save up for something that I think will give me more benefit in the long run.
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This is not true at all. Communism implies nationalization of industries and no free market. A guaranteed income implies nothing of the sort - in fact, it's an extremely capitalist solution to the problem. It's Social Security under a a different name, not communism.
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Idle Weekend February 26, 2016 - Hack the Planet
tberton replied to Jake's topic in Idle Weekend Episodes
Chris said it better than I could. -
Idle Weekend February 26, 2016 - Hack the Planet
tberton replied to Jake's topic in Idle Weekend Episodes
How is this not an argument that 5/10 is a low score? If a site is only reviewing things that they expect to be good, then the average score should trend upward. So even if a game hit the "platonic" average of 5/10, that would end up being lower that what you would expect if the site were self-selecting for "good" games. -
Yesterday I devoured the archive of Tuner, a podcast about pop music. Each week, the hosts take a pop song and break down the music theory behind what it's doing. They do a really great job of explaining stuff in laymen's terms and also staying aware of the fact that all the meaning behind any piece of music is ultimately contingent on culture, social status and history. It's a really fantastic show.
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Idle Weekend February 26, 2016 - Hack the Planet
tberton replied to Jake's topic in Idle Weekend Episodes
True, but in a world where, at least from my perspective, there are literally dozens of games I'd love to be playing right now (many of which I already own), "nothing spectacular" may as well be "poor". Now, sometimes 5/10 means "does something really interesting very poorly" or "does a lot of things really well but has a huge glaring flaw", in which case, it's often worthwhile, because maybe a weird flawed experience hits better for one person than another, or that a glaring flaw simply isn't an issue for certain players. And that's why numbered scores are often dumb. But I can completely understand why somebody would look at a 5/10 and think that's a low score indicative of a game that's not worth their time. -
Idle Weekend February 26, 2016 - Hack the Planet
tberton replied to Jake's topic in Idle Weekend Episodes
I understand this sentiment, but really, in any situation, "just barely passable" is a low score. Not terribly low, but still low. If you got a D- on a test, you'd say that was a low score. -
Idle Weekend February 26, 2016 - Hack the Planet
tberton replied to Jake's topic in Idle Weekend Episodes
Great show folks! One comment about what Austin mentioned as his weekend project: Californium actually is an element on the periodic table. It's number 98. It's also one of two elements to be named after UC Berkeley, where both were discovered (the other is, naturally, Berkelium, number 97.) -
Ah, see, I'm way more interested in the process of the GM, the players and the game conspiring to create a story that none of them could have predicted at the outset.
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If people are looking for another roleplaying podcast, which is less humour-focused than TAZ (but still funny), I can't recommend Friends at the Table enough. The GM is Austin Walker of Giant Bomb and he's fantastic. In the first season they played Dungeon World, exploring a post-post-apocalyptic fantasy setting. Now they're playing The Sprawl (having transitioned from TechNoir) and essentially procedurally creating a really rad cyberpunk mecha anime. There are giant robots who are gods, evil corporations, goofy hackers and a pop star turned mercenary. It's fucking great. I haven't listened to TAZ, but Austin is the exact opposite of the type of GM Gormongous seems to be describing. He's extremely good at letting his players lead the way in the storytelling while giving them a framework and obstacles to keep things interesting. To illustrate with an example, half of the Dungeon World game sprouted from an offhanded comment by one of the players that the pirate attacking them should be an undead pirate, given that one of them had previously killed a pirate king. Austin ran with it and the group ended up exploring an undead town instead of doing whatever he had originally planned.
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I can kind of see what you're saying in terms of the circularity of the plots, but I felt that the character relationships, especially Jimmy's relationship with Kim and with Chuck, lent enough texture to keep that stuff interesting. I also think that knowing the "ending" helps: because we know that Jimmy eventually turns into Saul, every tiny moment, which might seem inconsequential in another show, gets an implicit layer of gravitas since it can be read as one step on the path. Waiting for the shoe to drop makes tense scenes that otherwise might be dull. On a meta level, I also really like the parallel between Jimmy in this show and Walt in Breaking Bad: whereas Walt was a bad person who was convinced he was good and doing everything for the right reasons, Jimmy knows he's a crook and want's desperately to change but can't. One is the story of somebody falling headfirst into an addiction and loving it even as he denies it every step of the way; the other is the story of an addict trying to recover but who ultimately can't. I like that a lot.
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I started watching Better Call Saul last week and am now caught up to last night's episode. God, this show is so good. It might even be better than Breaking Bad, which is ridiculous, given how nuts it sounded to make a spinoff of a show like Breaking Bad. But it works so well. The cast is killing it, especially Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks, the writing is great and the directing is gorgeous. It feels much more subdued and less seat-of-the-pants in its pacing and plotting than Breaking Bad did.
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Chris' The Name of the Rose: The Board Game story was great. I've never played the game, but I was aware of it. Loved that Eco refused to sign it. Also, for anyone who cares about these things, it was designed by Stefan Feld, a very well-respected designer. His stuff is very hit-or-miss for me, but when he hits he hits hard, so The Name of the Rose is probably at least worth checking out.
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A Dedicated Thread For Talking About Star Trek Episodes
tberton replied to BigJKO's topic in Movies & Television
It's been a while since I've watched Enterprise, but I recall it being much better than people gave it credit for. -
I bought a friend's old 3DS when she upgraded to an XL so that I could play Etrian Odyssey IV. Totally worth it.
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Oh man, I just thought of another one: Transistor. Is Transistor cyberpunk?
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Great episode! I always love it when Austin is on. Surprised there was no mention of Deus Ex in the "cyberpunk action game" discussion. I've only played Human Revolution, but I thought it captured the aesthetic pretty well, along with having a least a touch of the politics. Also, Austin didn't mention it, but if anybody wants more of his cyberpunk credentials, you should listen to the tabletop RPG podcast he hosts: Friends at the Table. They're current game is a cyberpunk-anime-mech story that features a smuggler that used to be a pop star, a parking robot that gained sentience, a pseudo-Greek exiled prince and a hacker who accidentally convinced a piece of ICE that it was him and now has a computer program living in his head. It's great.
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Official Giant Bomb Thread Mostly for Complaining About Dan
tberton replied to tegan's topic in Idle Banter
This week's Project BEAST was just too much. I can't take these levels of stress! -
I want this game, but it's $80 Canadian right now, so I'm going to have to wait.
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Official Giant Bomb Thread Mostly for Complaining About Dan
tberton replied to tegan's topic in Idle Banter
Late response to this, but there's no comment box for me at the end of that article. Even when I'm logged in. Do you need to be Premium to comment? -
The inevitable happened: AI can now play Go
tberton replied to riadsala's topic in Strategy Game Discussion
I don't see why this means that strategy games will have better AI. The issue with AI in games like Civ isn't a technology one - the problem is time, money and labour. Deep Blue was 20 years ago and I don't think any modern games have AI that compares to that.