Zeusthecat

Not entirely sure if this fits with what you are asking but I would say Batman Arkham Asylum and City both have incremental ability unlocks. Arkham City provided an excellent playground to mess around with all of your gadgets and I found that to be a good longer term game along the lines of what I think you're asking.

So last June I decided to try going vegan. I cut out all animal products and processed foods and switched to only eating whole plant based foods. After a couple weeks I noticed huge improvements in how I generally felt, both mentally and physically. I continued on and by October I had lost 40 pounds and had hit what is supposedly my ideal BMI, despite the fact that I was eating a ton, was constantly full, and did zero exercise. The changes were so positive for me that I decided to make the change permanent and it has definitely had a profound impact on my life. I used to have a negative view on the whole 'eating healthy' thing but after trying it myself I can vouch that eating really healthy does produce tangible benefits. And please internet people, don't judge me too harshly. I actually have to keep this a secret from most people I know because for some reason people get really offended when you tell them you don't eat animal products. I actually had someone harass me for how ridiculous he thought it was that I stopped eating junk food. Re: drinking. I do like to enjoy a few Coronas every couple weeks but after my early 20s I got tired of the whole waking up feeling like shit thing so I cut back on that quite a bit. My one guilty pleasure besides video games: weed.

"This game will impregnate your male dog with ferrets." -IGN.com "This game will spay and neuter your new litter of dog ferrets." -IGN.com "This game will make the state you live in reconsider it's laws against owning dog ferrets." -IGN.com "This game will give all of your dog ferrets massive boners." -IGN.com Sorry I'm really late to this party...

Yes to this! This is one of the primary reasons I love Harvest Moon so much. Granted they do it in a simplistic way but the subtle way the lines of dialog change as you get to know each villager better was so alluring to me. Getting to know the shy and reserved people and eventually getting them to open up to you over a long period of time was a great experience. I feel like most games involve me talking to an npc for 5 minutes, hearing everything they have to say, and never talking to them again.

I think everybody is going to have a slightly different opinion on what makes a game violent. In the interest of not turning this into a philosophical discussion on what exactly constitutes violence (although that sounds like it would make a great topic of discussion in another thread) I think it is okay for people to include whatever they feel is not inherently violent. I'm just interested in hearing about games people have played that they didn't feel were violent.

Fair enough. I guess I'm referring to games that don't involve you harming other people as the primary mechanic. I think every game you mentioned qualifies as non-violent. I really only think of a game as violent if the primary purpose of the game is for you to kill or hurt other people (and maybe puppies and kitties too ).

I loved my N64 and Gamecube and I think a big part of that was due to the fact that they were at least at the same relative level as their competition at the time. I never really felt that what I played on the Gamecube was that noticeably inferior to PS2 or Xbox games, at least nowhere near as noticeable as the gap between Wii and PS3/Xbox360. I think their "withered technology" philosophy is good in concept but my opinion is that they are losing track of just how fast technology is moving. The reason I originally mentioned Moore's Law was to illustrate how much further ahead today's technology is from the technology they are using and that that gap will continue to grow. I agree with Tegan that Nintendo has a smart strategy with what they are doing but I feel that isn't the case as much outside their ecosystem. When I consider the power that even lower end pc's have now compared to the WiiU and the fact that everyone has a smart phone that supports at least 720p with multi-touch (WiiU screen lacks both) capabilities, I find it very hard to get excited about this system. Especially when coupled with my diminished excitement over more iterations of the same Nintendo franchises. It will be interesting to see if this console pulls people in like the Wii did. Since the Wii originally came out the general population has become much more tech savvy in big part due to the advent of smart phones and tablets so I wonder if people view the WiiU as innovative as they did with the Wii. Don't get me wrong, I actually think Nintendo will end up doing fine in the long run but I think it will solely be Nintendo's franchises that will carry it through, and that just isn't enough for me right now.

Tiesto. Specifically In Search of Sunrise 6 and In Search of Sunrise 7. If you like Techno/Trance this is the best of the best imo. The Ride remix on Sunrise 7 also introduced me to Cary Brothers who is also awesome. And Ride is such an awesome song.

Rainbow Six Vegas. Terrorist hunt on the hardest settings is so much fun with a friend.

I really want to like the WiiU. I am a lifelong Nintendo fan and have bought all of their systems including the Virtual Boy but in the last few years my interest in what they are putting out has dropped off substantially. The WiiU is their first system I have not purchased and there are 2 main reasons why: Moore's Law: The WiiU has pretty outdated specs, I mean, it probably could have been released 4 years ago. Technology advances very rapidly and it simply won't be capable of doing what developers need it to do for a lot of next gen games once the other new consoles come out. I sometimes feel like Nintendo is pulling a fast one on me by trying to sell old hardware with a fresh coat of paint. Games: I'm probably missing some here but the last new major IP I can recall from Nintendo was Pikmin on the Gamecube. Every other major release since then seems like it has been yet another iteration on one of their main franchises that have been around for over 20 years. I think it was around the time Mario Galaxy 2 came out that I just completely stopped being excited about a new Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc... I mean seriously, Miyamoto needs to start doing mushrooms again so he can spawn a few more brilliant ideas while hallucinating and sipping tea in his garden. I hope I'm wrong and if the WiiU starts kicking ass I'll shut up and buy one. Also, just kidding about Miyamoto, drugs are bad. Except when they cause moments of pure artistic brilliance.

Just finished Secret of Monkey Island Yesterday. It was the first point and click adventure game I've ever played and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was determined to make it through the game without looking up any hints but ended up getting completely stuck and gave in when I couldn't find the sword master. Luckily I was able to get through the rest of the game without any further help so I feel I did pretty good overall. I have to say I was really surprised at how funny this game was and how much it made me actually laugh. Of all other games I've played, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Portal were probably the only other games that have ever elicited any laughter out of me. Either most video game writers really suck at being funny or the video game medium itself does not lend itself well to comedy, but I must say the writing in Monkey Island just hit me as some of the best I've ever seen. One of my favorite moments was when I first met the shopkeeper. I went through the initial segment of dialog and said some pretty sarcastic shit to him and then finally asked him about the sword master of Melee Island. I don't know why but the way he just up and left me in the store and said he'd be right back made me chuckle. I wasn't sure what to do then or if he would come back so I decided to ring the bell on the counter, at which time he immediately opens the front door, makes a sarcastic comment, and comes back to the counter. I laughed a little more. I then repeated this process about five more times and by the end of it I could not stop laughing at the shit he had said to me each time I sent him out. The fact that he actually recognized how many times I had sent him out and the way each response was unique and built on the one before blew me away (ign.com). I then tried to steal something from his store, laughed some more when he referred to me as a little shoplifter thereafter, and went on my way. Overall great game, I highly recommend it. Now on to Monkey Island 2...

The review system is definitely broken, like everyone is treating it like a logarithmic scale or something. It seems like anything lower than a 7 is really just a measure of how terrible a game is. So 7 is okay, 6 is bad, 5 is really bad, 4 is so bad its unplayable, 3 is dog shit, 2 is AIDS, and 1 is an inverted penis. That leaves 8, 9, and 10 as the only scores that actually measure how good a game is. On a scale that small, a game that gets a 10 could only be marginally better than an 8 or 9. So we use decimals at that level to make that scale feel bigger, giving games 9.25 or 9.75 because there aren't enough fucking numbers to truly capture all those little nuances that contribute to a game's quality. My question is, if a game gets a 2.5, what the fuck does that mean? Is it like not quite as bad as AIDS but worse than dog shit?

So for some reason I've had the Home Alone orchestral theme stuck in my head all morning from the moment I woke up. I drove to work, still running the song through my head, and once I got to my desk I saw I had a new episode of Idle Thumbs on my phone. I started listening to the episode as I continued bobbing my head to John Wiliams' theme when suddenly, I here Jake make a reference to Michael Jordan on a fucking toy train. What the fuck have you guys done to me? Have I been inceptioned? And I'm pretty sure all of the other props were mannequins, including the one on the record player.

I'm trying to maintain objectivity in regards to the NextBox but I can't help feeling a little pessimistic. I guess they have figured out how obsessive some people (admittedly myself for some games, damn you Bethesda) get over trying to get all of the achievements in a game. So if every game has at least one cross-title achievement and you are the type of person that tries to get every achievement in every game this could be one crazy ass fucked up rabbit hole. A rabbit hole I will take a dump in.

I hear that. I had the same problem whenever I tried to watch MadTV in the late 90s and early 2000s. I got used to Saturday Night Live's humor and felt like MadTV was the retarded middle school version of sketch comedy.

After making it through all of the Idle Thumbs episodes I decided to give Giant Bombcast a try since it seems to be recommended by a lot of people and so far I have been fairly disappointed. I started from the first episode and have made it through about 6 episodes so far but something about this show just doesn't resonate with me the same way Idle Thumbs has. I think the problem is that the humor falls really flat for me and feels kind of forced. I appreciate what these guys have to say about games and I can tell they know what they are talking about but something about the cast just comes off as super cheesy. I assume it gets better once they hit their stride so I will keep listening for now but man, Idle Thumbs is the tits!

My gamertag is xXZeusthecatXx. I guess there is another cat lord of lightning on Xbox live already, hence the unnecessary x's. I am on almost every evening if I'm not going through another minecraft binge. I'm currently running borderlands 2 with a friend but I have a ton of other games that I'd love to play with cool people. Plz mention idle thumbs on any invites so I don't mistake you for some douchy 8 year old.

Just finished Borderlands on Xbox 360 last week. Overall I really enjoyed it and really liked the Diablo style leveling and loot system. It seemed a little unpolished at times but with a good group of people this game can be fucking magical.Unfortunately that rarely happened for me because I couldn't convince any of my friends to pick it up. One thing I have to say is that this game has somehow attracted some of the biggest assholes of all time on Xbox Live. I generally left my game open for anyone to join since not too many people still play and I wanted to play multiplayer, but almost every person that joined was using overpowered or modded weapons that killed any enemy in one hit. At one point, I reached the first giant monster boss dude with another guy that was a lower level than me and I see this cool cutscene and I'm all prepared for a long, difficult battle and then... I hear a single shotgun blast and loot explodes out of the boss and I see achievement unlocked. A single tear went down my cheek. At one point, I tried joining someone else's game and was greeted with some aggressive prepubescent profanity. This horrible person then proceeded to fire some crazy rockets from a level 69 weapon at me repeatedly which caused the game to slow down so bad that I couldn't even pause and exit. Fuck Xbox live and I wish I had a way to play with adults only. On the bright side, I just started Borderlands 2 with a friend and it is quite the opposite experience. We are going through the whole game together and I am very impressed with the level of quality and awesome gameplay potential. I am quite surprised at how much of an improvement it is over the first one. I can definitely see myself playing this game for awhile as long as I have decent people to play it with.

Tegan, I was reading through your posts and I am appalled (although sadly not surprised) that we still live in a world where you have to deal with the bullshit you have experienced. Unfortunately, I was raised as a hardcore Seventh Day Adventist and had the same bigoted views that many people still hold today regarding race and LGBT issues. As I got older and escaped the grasp of my sheltered childhood I left God, religion, and all that other bullshit behind and was able to get a much clearer perspective on what is right, wrong, good, and bad. As I went through this process of shedding my religious beliefs and preconceived notions, I was fortunate enough to become good friends with several people that identify as LGBT and they were some of the highest quality human beings I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. What I came to realize is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone being who they are, but there is something majorly wrong with anyone who thinks they are wise enough to pass judgment on other people for being who they are. I know I am a complete stranger to you but I have no doubt that you are a better person than those that have treated you unfairly. Always remember, there is nothing wrong with you but there is something wrong with those that look down on you. Those assholes are just too fucking retarded to have figured it out yet.

I do like the idea of collaborating with fellow hobbyists and sharing concepts but I guess I'm a little self conscious about my ideas. While they sound awesome and great in my head I have that juvenile fear that everyone else will think it's stupid and ridicule me. However, this (Idle Thumbs) community seems super supportive and I don't get the sense that that would be an issue here. Are you aware of any threads on the forums here where this type of discussion is or was going on? If so I'd happily jump over and join in. Now that sounds freaking awesome! Is this the type of thing where you volunteer to help out with some of the existing game projects that those indie devs and companies are working on or is the idea that you would bring your own game projects to work on in a community space alongside others?

Haha! Buried somewhere deep down inside below my logic filter I have this same fantasy. As great as it has been to start undertaking these tasks myself for my own enjoyment, I still crave the idea of having a career that involves going to work everyday and immersing myself in video games and sharing that experience with other people who share the same passion as I do. I can't imagine a more fulfilling way to live out my life. Since I am in a position where I cannot afford to take any big career risk I will have to wait and see how the state of the video game industry changes and hopefully find that company that is capable of striking a good work-life balance with good job security (and then hope for enough good fortune for there to be a job opening and come out ahead of all the candidates and land the job). In the meantime, I'll just keep learning and making my own stuff in my spare time and experiencing awesome games made by people who had the good fortune and determination to do what I dream of.

Since I was a little kid I dreamed of working in the video game industry like so many others in my generation that grew up playing video games. It has been a major driving force that has influenced many decisions I've made in my life. In fact, one of the reasons I pursued a degree in electrical engineering with a minor in computer engineering was so that door would always be open even if it was still very unlikely. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately in the context of this forum topic) I graduated in 2009 and could not afford to take my time trying to find my dream job. My wife and I had just had our first baby and I was lucky enough to be offered a job at a great engineering firm where I eventually moved over to their software development group so I could continue to cultivate the skills that were most relevant to what I am passionate about. When I see articles about the crazy working conditions across a large portion of the gaming industry it makes me very sad, and I have seen quite a few of them over the last several years. I have realized at this point that it is quite unlikely that I will ever actively pursue a job in the game industry and that is primarily because I need to be there for my wife and kid and need a healthy work-life balance, something that appears to be rare in the game industry. This is further exacerbated by the fact that so many studios seem to have a short life-span and are unlikely to provide any kind of long term career which is what is important to me. I know I am talking in broad strokes and that there are some game companies out there that buck this trend but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. If I ever find that opportunity to work for a game company that allows for a good work-life balance and is likely to be around for awhile I would take it in a heartbeat but at this point I'm not too optimistic about that happening. The good news is, rather than bitching and moaning about it, I decided to take advantage of the tools that are available to hobbyists and everyday people and have started teaching myself how to make basic games to satiate my desire to take part in this process in some meager way. I downloaded Visual Studio Express, the Allegro game library, and Paint.net and just started making my own games from scratch in C++ and drawing all of my own bitmaps to stitch into the game. It has been such an awesome experience learning to translate my ideas into a game, even if it is something only I will ever see or play. I still hold out hope that one day I will come across that perfect opportunity and be able to do this type of thing for a living but I am grateful that there are tools out there to allow me to experience the process for myself. Sorry for the long post, this topic struck a chord with me.

Thanks Colourful Stuff, that sounds like one that hits most of the notes I'm talking about. I'll have to check it out.

Loved RSV and it also had a lot of unique mechanics but it did do the whole regenerating health thing which is one of the bugaboos I mentioned. I realize I'm being incredibly picky, specific, and unrealistic but when you put all of the elements together (realistic bullet lethality, no concept of player 'health', and a more real life experience of how a gun battle might take place between a highly trained person and a bunch of less experienced henchmen) I'm not sure that any game makes a true attempt to achieve this. I guess I'm thinking of the dynamic similar to how a James Bond movie works. He is a badass that is in a ton of gunfights throughout the whole movie and kills countless people and maybe gets shot once in the arm through the whole movie. If that dynamic could be represented in a game where the player to AI skill ratio is similar to the James Bond to henchmen skill ratio that would be an entirely unique FPS experience compared to what I've had exposure to.

Yeah but those games also have none of the elements I mentioned earlier. I guess I'm sort of describing a mix of MGS, Splinter Cell, and light gun arcade games but with enemies that don't have lightning fast reaction times where they spot you one instant and the next you've been shot.