Zeusthecat

Thanks for the recommendations Gormongous. I'll be sure to add those to my list. I've continued binge watching Steins;Gate and it finally just got really really good. Even after half a dozen episodes, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of interesting stuff going on but it was enjoyable enough for me to stick with it thanks to the goofy humor and interesting characters. Then last night I got to the part where I'm glad I stuck with this show and at this point I'll probably have it wrapped up in the next 2-3 days. The only minor complaint I have is that I am having a really hard time learning all the characters names because they all seem to be referred to by multiple names. I had to Google the various names as I wrote this post because I just can't seem to lock them down in my memory. Also, what's up with the weird cat girl who keeps saying 'meow'?

This was the best episode I've heard in a long time. Danielle is such a great addition to the cast and the chemistry between everyone in this episode was absolutely stellar. I also never would have thought that dog euthanasia was an acceptable topic to joke about but I have been proven wrong. That was some great stuff.

I will follow this advice. After Steins;Gate I'll check out Mushishi then Baccano.

Even with my limited experience watching anime, all of the stuff you mentioned is also stuff I've seen plenty of in Trigun and DragonballZ. I guess with me those ideas still more or less feel like novel concepts and I'm still at a point where I eat that shit up. Plus, the HD visuals and soundtrack really elevated the whole experience for me and were quite a step above the stuff I've watched before. I figure it's also worth mentioning that I have checked out a few other shows over the last few days as I've been searching for something else to get into. First, I watched the first episode of Full Metal Alchemist since that's a show that I've generally heard good things about for years now. It seems like a pretty cool concept and I definitely plan to watch more but it seems a little more lighthearted than what I am currently in the mood for so I'll probably come back to it later. I also managed to watch the first two episodes of Steins;Gate after seeing pretty much unanimous praise for that show and from what I saw it felt really underwhelming. I think I'm going to keep going though because I really like the concepts and it looks like it is ripe for some really cool stuff to eventually happen. I browsed through Hulu last night and saw that they have a pretty good selection of anime, including a lot of stuff that has been recommended here so I'll start from Twig's post at the top of this page and work my way down through the recommendations. Do you guys think I should put Steins;Gate on hold and just jump straight into Mushishi or should I continue on with that show before moving on?

Hey, thanks for the recommendations! I'll try to check out whichever of those I can find on Netflix or Hulu and I'll be sure to post back here after I've had a chance to watch some stuff. On another side note, something completely unexpected and amazing happened with AOT. My wife had gone out with some friends on Saturday night and when she came back I jokingly asked her to sit down and watch the first episode with me. Despite the fact that she has zero interest in anime, she said okay (after rolling her eyes) and laid down on the couch, expecting to fall asleep while I had my stupid show on. To my amazement though, especially considering we were watching the subbed version with no English dialog, she became completely hooked and has since watched the following 3 episodes with me. This is just the best and I never imagined it would even be remotely possible to get my wife into any of these types of shows. I've also been wondering what it is about anime that makes it so much more appealing to me than typical 'western' television and movies. I generally don't watch any TV and prefer to spend my time playing video games but whenever I have managed to get into a good anime series in the past (again, I've only seen a few shows), it tends to completely absorb me and I have a hard time tearing myself away from it to do anything else. There just always tends to be such a strong sense of style and emotion that is communicated through the art and voice work that makes a lot of other stuff look dull by comparison. That, and I feel like characters tend to be more honest and direct about things than I am used to seeing in other types of shows. I dunno, maybe I'm generalizing a bit too much. I'm just excited to be excited about watching some cool shit that I've more or less been ignoring over the last decade.

Let me preface this post by saying this: I do not have very discerning tastes when it comes to anime and the only series I have watched are DragonballZ, Trigun, Pokemon, and Tenchi Muyo, all of which I really enjoyed. With that out of the way, I just finished watching Attack on Titan and I found it absolutely fantastic. The theme and setting resonated very strongly with me and I'm kind of depressed knowing that I will have to wait forever for the next season. Naturally, I decided to search through this thread to see what the venerable Thumbs thought of the show and was happy to see that a lot of you guys thought it was just so-so and were much less impressed by it than I was. The reason this makes me happy is because it most likely means that many of you have been blown away by much better shows and that this show just doesn't stack up in comparison. I am honestly completely blind to the criticisms about the show that I read here and am such an anime noob that I pretty much ate up everything I saw and accepted it as pure awesomeness. This was also the first HD anime I've seen so the artwork and visuals were very impressive compared to the very limited stuff I've seen in the past. So please, lords of anime, recommend me something good. There is just so much stuff out there and I'm kind of lost. I would prefer something that has a tone similar to AOT, but I would be happy to watch pretty much anything that comes with a strong recommendation. Also, it would be ideal for it to be available on Netflix or Hulu since those are the only services I currently have and I'm not sure of any other easy way to watch anime on my TV without going and buying a bunch of DVDs or Blu Rays.

Ugh, this post sucks. I will now retreat to a dark place with my only true friend.

Yes. I've been playing it a lot lately and have literally had no issues. Just make sure to set the network frequency setting to high.

I want to know who this other asshole is on the internet that uses "Zeusthecat" as their username. I feel like at this point I should have seniority and they should be the ones being forced to put stupid X's around their name for all of their various user ID's. So far, Zeusthecat has been taken on Xbox Live, PSN, Origin, Uplay, Steam, and just about every other goddamn thing I have been forced to create an account for. At least I managed to snag it here.

Ah, someone probably did say something about the swamp being weird and mysterious and I just glossed over it. There is just so much dialog and it's hard to remember little details like that in a sea of random stuff being said. Maybe I'm being a bit unfair with my disdain for the swamp segment. My main complaint with that part was how random and out of the blue it felt. Maybe if I would have paid closer attention to what was said I would have known it was a time warp swamp and appreciated the puzzle more. Plus it didn't help that it came right after the super irritating prosthetics shop part which I really feel has been the worst offender in this game. I'm on the fence at this point regarding whether or not I should just continue using a walkthrough for the rest of the game. If the next segment is a little less open and more focused I might resume trying to get through things on my own.

I resorted to using a walkthrough and as a result, made another decent chunk of progress the other night. First, I learned that I needed to add some swamp water to my homemade perfume (I had already added the other necessary ingredients). Once I had done that, I used the homemade perfume on the prosthetics guy and he gave the name of a person that had the same scent. Then, thanks to the walkthrough, I was able to map the initials of the name that was given to me to various items on the monkey's code wheel thingy which netted me some "directions" to Pegnose Pete's place. While reading the walkthrough for this section, I also learned that I was supposed to have remembered the names that were listed on the manhole cover near the bank to get the prosthetic skin from the prosthetic dude. Luckily, I had previously gone through so many combinations of answers that I had already gotten the prosthetic skin on accident so that piece ended up being irrelevant. Finally, I learned that I needed to use the melody box with the prosthetics guy to make it so he couldn't hear me stealing a wooden prosthetic hand which I needed so I could obtain the termites from the bait shop. After leaving the prosthetics shop, I stopped by the bait shop to grab the termites before finally heading into the swamp. Continuing on with the walkthrough, I learned how to navigate through the swamp using the chess clock and the directions from the prosthetics shop and eventually reached a gate with a future version of Guybrush. Once that interaction was finished and he had given me a bunch of stuff and told me what number I was thinking of, I continued on until I wound up back at the gate (or maybe it was a different gate?) where the past version of Guybrush was waiting for me. I repeated the sequence of events as it had happened for me when I was my past self and once I was done, I was finally able to move on to Pegnose Pete's place. As I approached, I heard a conversation going on inside Pete's shack between him and Ozzie Mandrill. Once Ozzie finally took off, I threw some chicken grease on the welcome mat and then threw a duck into Pete's window, causing him to bolt out of his house and slip on the grease before falling into a crawdad trap. Once I had caught Pete, I found myself back at the jailhouse. Unfortunately, I couldn't produce any real evidence that I had been framed so I was forced to move on. From here, I checked the walkthrough again and learned that I needed to use the prosthetic skin on the open manhole so that I could launch myself back into the bank. Once inside, I grabbed some Scupperware that I had missed earlier and then picked up a nose after looking at a weird shadow. And this is about where I stopped. I have to say, this whole sequence of events was pretty much a load of bullshit. First, the riddle to get the prosthetic skin was kind of lame. With so much random stupid stuff being said all the time that has no bearing on any puzzles, I think it is ridiculous that I would have been expected to remember those few random names on the manhole cover. Second, why would I have been expected to know that mixing a bunch of random ingredients together would make a perfume that smells like Pegnose Pete. I have to assume I'm missing something here because I don't recall anything in the game indicating that he smelled like a combination of those items. Third, how the fuck is any human being supposed to solve that monkey wheel puzzle in the prosthetics shop without a guide? I really don't get how I would have been expected to logically deduce that the three initials given to me each mapped to a specific image on the monkey wheel. Fuck that puzzle, it sucked and I hated it so much. Fourth, why does playing a quiet ass music box make a blind man deaf? Fifth, why does a random chess clock magically change time in each area of the swamp. Did I miss the part where it was supposed to be a stupid voodoo swamp? And finally, WHY THE FUCK WAS THERE THAT STUPID SEGMENT WITH FUTURE AND PAST GUYBRUSH WITH THE SUPER LAME BILL AND TED REFERENCE? That was random and stupid in the worst way possible and I would really like to know what kind of illicit substance was consumed that would have caused a person to think that that was a funny reference or a good idea in any way. They could at least attempt to give some lame explanation for why that happened besides just throwing it in there to have an extra puzzle. This game is getting really lame really fast and if this continues, it might be one of those rare games that I just don't like.

Man these are some really great tunes! DKC soundtracks have always been some of my favorites and I love how well these capture the essence of the original games.

Oh my god, hearing the words 'sugar glider' brings back terrible memories of many sleepless nights when I was a teenager. I got one from a friend who bred them and made the mistake of keeping it in my room. That damn thing would just start barking loudly at random times throughout the night and made it impossible to sleep. Throwing a shoe at the cage was usually enough to make it stop just long enough for me to fall asleep, at which point it would start up again and the cycle would repeat. No offense to your sugar gliders (who I'm sure are wonderful pets and bring you much joy) but fuck those little devil creatures.

As I was watching TV last night, I saw what I thought was a cricket scuttle across the floor in front of me. So I went to grab something to crush the life out of it and when I turned the light on to try to see where it was, I saw a big 3 inch scorpion sitting on the floor a few inches away from where my foot was. Luckily, that bastard is somewhere in the Phoenix sewer system now but the damage has been done and I don't think I want to live in my house any more.

This last Sunday I hooked up the Super Nintendo and put in Super Mario All Stars to see if my 5 year old daughter would be interested in/capable of playing Super Mario Bros. Aside from some dumb Dora flash games and a few other random occasions where I let her mess around in a game I was playing, this was her very first experience picking up a controller and playing a game all on her own and it was absolutely amazing. She immediately fell in love with the game and I just sat there and watched her figure out things like how to jump higher, how to time her jumps to avoid getting hit by enemies, how to jump while moving, how the mushrooms and fire flowers work, etc. I tried to help a few times but she usually just insisted that she wanted to figure it all out on her own. Within 30 minutes, she managed to get through 1-1, and another hour or so after that, she was consistently making it to the middle of 1-2. Last night she asked to play some more and after about an hour she had managed to beat 1-2 a couple of times. This is seriously like the coolest shit ever and I love seeing her go through the same process learning this game that I did when I was around her age. And I'm not even really finding it that boring to watch because it is a rare opportunity to see a real-time example of how wonderfully perfect the design in this game is and how clearly the layouts of the levels teach you how to play without any instruction. Now I just need to try to teach her how she can hold down the run button and jump while running to get to harder to reach areas.

I'm considering just using a walkthrough for the rest of it. I'm finding it really hard to get any momentum going and this Lucre Island stuff just isn't doing it for me.

I played some more last night and made a tiny bit of progress. First, as I went about re-examining each area, I happened to talk to a lady standing near a fountain and saw that I had a new option to tell her that one of the guys playing chess had a crush on her which she seemed flattered by. Then, I went back down to the two guys playing chess and was able to heckle the one guy about the girl near the fountain liking him. That caused him to mess up one of his moves and set off a big tantrum between the two chess players where they just went back and forth throwing their chess pieces off the dock and into the water. After watching this for a bit, I discovered that I could finally steal their clock and once I did I continued on my way. After some more poking around, I wound up back in the prosthetic body part shop and talked to the dude again. I went through some dialog options and discovered that I could get different free prosthetic body parts based on how I answered the three questions he asked me. And then I spent the rest of the night working through various permutations to get a whole bunch of different parts which I tried to put together but failed every time I tried to put the skin on the finished result. So I assume I am either wasting my time doing something that has no bearing on whatever puzzle it is I'm trying to solve or I just have to continue going through each combination of responses until I get all the parts I need to make whatever monstrosity the game is encouraging me to make.

The one I just listened to was her second appearance at E3 2010 (her first being at E3 2009). In it, she did apologize for her previous behavior but then proceeded to repeat it all over again. Granted, she wasn't quite as bad in the 2010 episode but it was still enough to get under my skin. If alcohol was indeed a factor in both episodes then I guess I can give her the benefit of the doubt. Some people just can't handle their shit when they get intoxicated and that's fine. It's just too bad that her two appearances on the Bombcast are really the only exposure I've had to her because it's hard to form a positive opinion of someone when you have only seen them exhibiting that kind of behavior.

Can't...stop...staring...

I'd be fine if she was just a little interrupty but she takes it to a whole new level. Chris Remo is at least respectful to others and does a good job at catching himself whenever he goes a little overboard with the interrupting thing but Leigh is just overly loud, obnoxious, and rude to literally anyone who tries to start talking once she's started on one of her tirades. I don't know why but her know-it-all attitude just gets under my skin and is insanely irritating.

I'm continuing to go through the Giant Bombcast backlog and this podcast is so much better than I thought it would be based on my initial impressions. These guys really put together a fantastic show. Right now I am listening to one of the E3 2010 podcasts with Leigh Alexander as one of the guests and I have to say she is incredibly obnoxious. I thought she was a fairly well respected journalist but both times I have heard her on the podcast, she has been incredibly rude, loud, and overly opinionated to a point that I just can't bear to listen to the episode any more. I just can't help but cringe at the fact that everyone is trying to be polite to her despite the fact that she just rudely interrupts every single person who tries to say more than three words with shouting and crazy opinions. Are these just isolated incidents or is she really as obnoxious as she appears on these casts?

Thank you for the very informative post feelthedarkness. So I guess my next question would be: with the unnecessary increases in funding for the police force and all this crazy SWAT-type equipment they are getting, are there corresponding policy changes that explicitly give the police more freedom to use deadly force without repercussions or is the increase in aggression an unintended side effect of funding and equipment being beefed up? On a personal, somewhat unrelated note, I have always had a (not necessarily justified) deep distrust of the police force and I think it is disgusting how prevalent these incidents involving police brutality have become. From old ladies getting tased to countless incidents of police shooting first and asking questions later, my faith in the effectiveness and fairness of our police force is very low. There is no guarantee that people joining the police force are upstanding citizens with just intentions and I feel like they go to great lengths to protect the interests of their officers to the detriment of the general populace. Also, I live in the jurisdiction of Joe Arpaio so seeing police departments ruthlessly defend their officers when they are accused of abusing their powers in horrible ways is something that I see too much of. All that being said, I am still okay with this game being made and I don't have a problem separating it in my mind from the realities of the world we live in and I still just view it as a fun cops versus robbers game. I think it is perfectly fair for people to be offended by the themes in this game and I can't argue against how problematic they are but personally, the game being skinned this way doesn't bother me.

Can someone explain to me what it means for police to become militarized and examples of how that is happening in the US? I realize I am completely ignorant on this subject and I would like to understand it more so that I can have a more well informed opinion.

Yes! Thank you for saying what I was trying to get at in a much more concise and coherent way.

My problem with it is that they don't go anywhere with that fact beyond just mentioning it offhand (and iirc they never brought up the fact that they can place ads on their servers as another option to generate revenue). My beef here is that this is the second article from Polygon focusing squarely on how this negatively impacts the Minecraft community without any attempt to present the other perspective. There is just nothing of substance that convinces me that this is the problem people are making it out to be.