Zeusthecat

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Yeah, I talked to her but it did take a bit for me to figure out the whole "pulling the middle finger" thing. And I guess the additional verb would be another thing that I'm still struggling to get used to. In Grim Fandango, I used the numpad and all of the verbs were right there within reach ("Ins" for inventory, "Enter" for use/talk, "+" for pick up, and "5" for look at). It looks like in this game they broke out "Use" onto the "U" key so now I keep my left hand on the keyboard and have to keep reminding myself to press "U" with various items since "Enter", "+", and "5" don't cover every possible interaction any more.

So I started the game Sunday evening and managed to make a couple hours of progress. Upon starting, I found Guybrush tied to the mast of the "Honeymoon" ship from the end of Curse. The ship had been boarded by pirates and Elaine was fighting them off as Guybrush mused about recent events in his life. After gaining control, I found that I could shimmy around the mast that I was tied to and interact with a number of nearby items. Before long, I was able thwart the pirates by knocking over a brazier and kicking one of the hot coals towards the cannon on our ship which lit the fuse on the cannon, causing it to fire and sink the enemy ship. We then continued on our journey, and before long we arrived at Melee Island. Immediately after landing and seeing that there was no fanfare for her return, Elaine became suspicious that something was amiss on Melee Island. This was further confirmed when we approached Elaine's mansion and found some douchebag using a catapult to hurl boulders at the mansion. After talking to the guy, we discovered that Elaine had been declared dead and he was just carrying out orders from the new (likely) governor-to-be to destroy the mansion. Elaine then took off to take care of some business or something and I was tasked with stopping the destruction of the mansion and then sailing to Lucre Island to talk to some lawyers about the situation. From here, I spent a good amount of time venturing around the various Melee Island locations and having a bunch of lengthy conversations with a number of characters. As I went around shooting the shit with people, a few puzzles started to reveal themselves. First, after running into Carla and Otis (who were both quite hilariously traumatized from the shit I put them through in the first game), I learned that they would be willing to join my crew if I could land them a cushy government job. Then, while investigating the Scumm Bar and talking to the various patrons, I got into a conversation with the owner of the bar (I think his name was Ignacious Cheese or something like that) and was able to convince him to join my crew after beating him in a game of insult arm wrestling. Next, I tried to grab some pretzels from a passed out drunk guy but was thwarted by his sudden drunken movements each time I tried. However, after another brief conversation with some dudes who were playing darts at the front of the bar, I was able to convince one of them to throw a dart at the drunk guy's birthday balloon which caused it to pop and startled the drunk guy, somehow making him completely catatonic in the process. I was then able to steal his pretzels and continued on my way. After I had conversed with everyone in the main town, I made my way down to the docks where I found a stern talking government lady who was adamant about not letting me leave with a boat until I could prove that I had authority to do so. While I was down there I picked up a deflated inner tube and based on my conversation with the catapult guy from earlier and some of the observations Guybrush had made while I was in the mansion area, I had a suspicion that I knew what I needed to do to stop him. From there, I headed back to the mansion area and gave a pretzel to the catapult guy. He then walked away for a couple minutes to eat his pretzel, leaving me an opportunity to mess with his catapult. Once he saw what I was doing, he came back and shooed me away before re-calibrating the catapult to aim at the weird two-pronged cactus near the mansion. After I saw how this sequence played out, I ran over to the cactus, put the inner tube around it to turn it into a makeshift slingshot, and repeated the process with the pretzels. This time, after he re-calibrated, the boulder he launched landed right in the 'slingshot' and bounced back, knocking the catapult over the cliff. With the catapult guy finally gone, Elaine headed into the mansion and I followed suit. There wasn't a whole lot for me to do inside the mansion but I did manage to obtain a government employment contract and a cushy government contract, both of which I gave to Elaine to have her sign. After I finished poking around there, I headed back to Otis and Carla and convinced them to join my crew by giving showing them the cushy government contract. And this is about as far as I was able to get. At this point, it seems like I have all the crew members I need and I just need to obtain a boat. I've tried giving the other employment contract to most of the other characters I've ran across and so far I haven't had any luck. I haven't spent too much time on this yet though so I think my next course of action will be to run through each area again and see if there are any objects I missed or any characters I haven't tried giving the contract to yet. My initial thoughts on this game are pretty positive. The music and voicework both seem as solid as ever and I've already gotten a few chuckles out of some of the dialog I've heard. The controls aren't bothering me much at all and actually seem somewhat improved over Grim Fandango. I guess my only minor gripes at this point are that some of the dialog is a little on the lengthy side and it is sometimes hard to get in the exact position and angle necessary to detect items in some of the areas. But overall, I like what I've experienced and I look forward to seeing where the story goes from here.

Wow, and less than 2 weeks old. How the hell did I miss that?

I'll put together a post tomorrow on my first couple hours with the game. So far though I am really liking it and the characters have some pretty well written and funny dialog.

I haven't played a proper golf video game since Jack Nicklaus Golf for the Super Nintendo back in 1993 but lately I have had a strong desire to pick up a super realistic next gen golf game even though one doesn't exist yet (at least not that I'm aware of). I don't even really care for golf. Oh god, I said golf too many times and it just started sounding really weird. I feel like "Golf" would be a really good name for some kind of fictional giant mutant monster.

I think that video just gave me epilepsy.

Sorry, I didn't mean for what I said to come across that way. I'm really just trying to say that I think maintaining a positive outlook on life will yield better results than maintaining a negative outlook on life. Not that it's the end all solution for all problems. Of course Twig has every right to be negative as hell at this point and I don't think he's wrong for feeling that way. Just trying to offer some dumb advice.

I think it's one thing to be positive and enthusiastic in an interview and another thing entirely to actually adopt a positive mentality as part of the way you live life. I am generally a pretty optimistic and positive person and I feel like those qualities are directly responsible for the level of confidence I have in myself and my abilities. As someone who used to have pretty low self esteem and very little confidence, I have found that my "success" rate in life has improved dramatically as I've learned to stay optimistic and think positively.

I look at every failure as a success because they usually succeed in preventing me from making the same mistakes in the future.

I just realized next Monday is Memorial Day so I decided I'm taking Thursday and Friday off this week to give myself a 5 day weekend. Hopefully that provides ample time to get a few good sessions going and knock out a good chunk of the game. And I'm right there with you on the whole cat thing. I have a strong preference for wired accessories over wireless so I've just gotten into the habit of always wrapping up my controllers and microphone after each session and putting them on my gaming shelf where the cats can't get to it.

It looks like you are actually three hours ahead right now. This time of year we are basically the same as PST. I can usually get on by around 9 PM but I imagine that might be a bit late for you. If that time on weeknights doesn't work, I should have some time throughout the weekend where we can try to set up a session. And I'm in the same boat as you with Gears 2 as well. I still need to go through all of the higher difficulty levels in the campaign and have barely touched horde mode or multiplayer so there are quite a few achievements I am missing there. I've actually fully cleared my 360 backlog at this point so my main motivation for jumping back in to a lot of these games is to get some of those sweet cheevos.

Let me know once you figure those details out and we'll try to set something up (I'm available most evenings Arizona time). I too am missing quite a few achievements in that game (and Reach for that matter) and have been meaning to knock a bunch of them out for awhile now.

And finally, I just started Escape From Monkey Island I'm playing in fullscreen mode with the default resolution and so far everything looks pretty good.

I got everything installed and set up. Using the updated launcher, which resolution do you recommend if my native resolution is 1920X1080? Would 1280X1024 be the best bet or should I just stick with the default?

I just got my copy of Escape From Monkey Island (for PC) in the mail and to my surprise, even though it was marked as 'used' on Amazon, the one I got was a brand new shrink wrapped copy of the game with all inserts in the case and completely immaculate discs. As someone who has spent years scouring pawn shops and building up my video game collection, I am super stoked that I managed to get a copy of a 14 year old game that is still in mint condition for such a cheap price ($9 total with shipping and handling). Assuming the links Udvarnoky provided give me everything I need to get this game running, I plan to start either today or tomorrow.

How about Ken Levine vs Charlie Day? Any takers on that one?

I honestly have no idea what this #LOLO thing is. I'm the ultimate dad.

Maybe I'm missing something but the Grand Theft Auto 5 I played didn't quite come across as racist as you so adamantly claim. I mean, sure there are some of those elements present but I don't agree with your claim that "Grand Theft Auto V seemed about as intentionally racist as any piece of pop culture in the last decade." You may not have liked the game but I think your claim is quite an exaggeration.

Well thanks for crushing what little shred of dignity I had left. One thing you can't take from me is that this guy and this guy still agree with me.

Well I can at least take comfort in the fact that part of the internet agrees with me... according to google at least.

The fact that that image looks so fucking stupid is reason enough to question its authenticity. Similar to Nachimir, my first gut reaction was that it was a joke.

No idea where this should go but while reading this article on Kotaku, it highlighted for me how truly unique and respectful the Idle Thumbs forum community is. I'm not sure if it's just the size of our community that has fostered such a positive environment with no tolerance for disrespectful behavior or if this community just gives off vibes that tend to attract more intelligent and level-headed people but it is pretty sweet that things are the way they are around here.

Sega returns to the console business and announces the Sega Saturn 2! And it is available to buy now.