Zeusthecat

I think it is actually already starting to happen. Considering atheism is growing faster than any religion and the internet is becoming widely available for people around the world (heightening people's awareness of what goes on outside of their own little communities) it is getting increasingly unpopular to share the views that a lot of religious organizations have. I think taking a look at how women's rights have evolved over the last couple centuries provides a good window into how the church will have to react to current events if they want to continue to exist in the mainstream. A big part of why women were treated so unfairly in the past had to do with religious teachings. The Bible is riddled with shit that clearly states that women are worth less than men and that they should be subservient to men and society reflected that for a long time. However, technology advanced, people became more aware, and shit changed because that way of thinking just didn't make any sense. In this case the church was forced to change despite the fact that the Bible still says all that horrible stuff. There may still be some fringe religions that hold on to that but most of society at this point probably looks at those religions as pretty loony. (And I literally just saw Argobot's post come in backing this up. YESSS!!!) I think we are going through the same thing now with gay rights. From a legal standpoint it is clear we are headed in the right direction with the repeal of DADT and the more recent events but there is also positive progress already being made on the religious front especially with the decision by the Boy Scouts to drop their discriminatory practices. Religion will change or it will become a fringe hate group. And ironically in the process I think it will eventually lead to the decline of religion (a very good thing in my book) as people begin to realize that the book they have been following is not at all consistent with a society full of compassionate people.

Fair point. I'm sure a lot of it comes down to the pedigree of the developer and whether or not the publisher feels they will get a return on their investment. It is kind of hard to draw an analog here since there isn't really a precedent for this type of thing, but I do empathize with the problems they are facing. Software development can still be pretty unpredictable and even with the tightest, most well defined scope, unexpected things can happen.

I say no harm no foul. It is fairly common for us to go over budget when we develop new features for our software despite the fact that our group has been continuously developing new features for over 15 years now. In those cases we make up for it through licensing fees, maintenance contracts, and other features that have surplus budget. It all usually works out in the end because our clients are happy with the quality of product they are getting and we are able to recoup the costs through other means. Not too unlike what is happening here. Also, is this not all that different than a AAA game being delayed multiple times until the developer feels that it is of a high enough quality to be released to the masses? Maybe a company like Blizzard has the money to fund the additional development themselves but I imagine a lot of companies that go through a publisher end up asking for more money than they originally anticipated so that they can afford to keep polishing the game until it is ready for release.

In all seriousness though, who is Twiglet? At first I thought maybe it was Twig but then I saw them both on at the same time and my head exploded. Is it really possible that someone joined and entered that name not knowing papa Twig was already here?

There was a church not too long ago that refused to marry an inter-racial couple because the congregation threw a fit. So maybe not as bad of an analogy as you thought.

I played a little more Zak Mckracken last night. Picking up where I left off in Cairo, I went inside the pyramid where I found it was another dark area. I made it into a second room where I was able to light a torch but after looking around for awhile I couldn't find anything to interact with. I messed around in there for a little while longer and eventually had a cutscene pop up showing me some girl (I can't remember her name even though she's in my party now) back in San Francisco opening the door with the dropbox and talking about expecting something. So I immediately reloaded a save I had back in Miami and flew back to San Francisco. After dropping the crystal in the dropbox I was treated to another cutscene that explained a few more things and once I had control of Zak again I found that I could switch to the two girls on Mars and the other girl in San Francisco. I quickly got the CashCard for the main girl and then switched back to Zak to go back to the airport where I took a flight to Lima, Peru. As soon as I left the airport in Lima I found myself in a jungle maze. I started taking random paths until I came to a clearing with a bird feeder and a sign telling me to put bread crumbs down. Unfortunately I still had the full loaf of stale bread and couldn't figure out how to turn it into crumbs so I resorted again to the Universal Hint System and saw that I needed to use my garbage disposal to grind up the bread (I was kind of bummed I didn't figure that out because I had even taken out the pipe earlier and tested the garbage disposal, it just never occurred to me to try the bread there). Once I reloaded an earlier save (again) and got the bread crumbs I went back to Lima and put them on the feeder so the bird would come down. And that is where I stopped. At this point I am seriously considering just going through the rest of the game with a guide. I do really like the story and characters and I think it is a big step up from the Maniac Mansion story but I am getting kind of frustrated with the way the areas are so separate from each other and just how unclear the path forward can be. I have a number of destinations I can go to at any time but I have no idea which one I should go to first or if that even matters. Now that I have multiple characters it's even more complicated because I don't know yet how the different characters work and where I will need to use specific ones to make progress. Unlike the other LucasArts games I've played so far I feel that this one can't be solved purely through being smart and doing smart things. Instead it feels like there is a fair amount of luck and trial and error.

I searched and found a few threads somewhat similar to this but figured I would create a new one since they are all from several years ago. So for this one simply post your favorite game of all time and provide an explanation for why it is your favorite. Guidelines are as follows: You must pick one favorite and provide an explanation. At the end of your post, you may list up to three runner up games if you desire. No detailed explanations allowed for your honorable mentions but a brief sentence is okay. Within the last week I have decided that my all-time favorite game is Minecraft. My friend and I have been running our own server on Survival Hard mode for a little over a year now and we have never touched creative mode, never lowered the difficulty, and we are still playing in our original world. We periodically get a little burnt out after playing every day and take a few months off but we just keep coming back and getting sucked right back in. This last week we both started playing again and it hit me that no game I've played has ever managed to stay so interesting and engaging for this long. A few things crystallized for me coming back to the game this time: Our world has history. Going back to areas that we explored long ago (literally over a year ago now) and discovering our old shelters that we built as we traveled and finding our old torch trails is fucking awesome. I love finding old maps and random shit that we put into some chests in these shelters and ended up forgetting about. Everything you do has purpose and feeds into something else. Through all of our projects and contraptions, we have found that we need everything, even dirt, all the time. For instance, we might need gold to build powered rails. So we go on a mining expedition, discover amazing new things, fend off enemies, gather a bunch of other materials which we incidentally need for other projects, reach our gold goal, then make our way back to the surface having had an amazing experience. Then we might go back to our cities and tend our gardens for other materials, tend the livestock, build a few more things, harvest the tree farm, go hunting enemies for their drops, craft new armor with enchants for a nether expedition... and it just goes on and on. I literally have half a dozen projects I'm working on and it just never gets dull. Some people say they don't find this game interesting because there is no explicit goal. In my mind there is. It is the same goal we all have as human beings: survive, accumulate shit, build better shelters and cities, re-shape the land as we see fit, and just use our creativity to make works of art or cool contraptions. Patches are very significant in this game and keep things fresh for me. Since we are still on our original world we also find that a new patch motivates us to put everything we are doing on hold and venture out to explore distant lands where new chunks will generate with whatever new stuff was added. We have traveled to many distant lands and it is always exciting. I fucking love this game. I have so much more to say about why this is my favorite but this post is long enough. Long live Minecraft! Honorable Mentions: Chrono Trigger Ocarina of Time Harvest Moon Magical Melody (Gamecube version)

I think that means it's awesome.

I'll take Binding of Isaac if no one else has claimed it.

I look at it similar to the way baptism works. Religious organizations all have their own interpretation of how baptism should work and there are many arbitrary (having grown up religious, arbitrary is definitely a good word here) reasons why a church may or may not baptize someone. It can literally completely come down to the whims of the pastor or priest. Under that context I don't think the government has any business forcing a church to perform their version of a 'marriage' ceremony for people that don't meet the church's stupid criteria. That could easily be construed as a violation of religious freedom. The problem here is that baptism doesn't have any non-religious analog like marriage does and if 'marriage' is the all-encompassing term that the law and religion both use, then there could be a good case that religious organizations that refuse to marry people for whatever reason are guilty of discrimination. Sort of like how it is against the law for a restaurant to refuse service to someone because of their race. So, I think churches should have the right to conduct their little ceremonies in whatever way aligns with their set of beliefs. However, if they want to actively discriminate against people and have it fall under the protection of religious freedom, they really should have to come up with their own term (religarriage?) for what they want it to be and it should not in any way be recognized by the law. So basically, I'm on-board with making a distinction between the religious version and the legal version but I think 'marriage' should be recognized and defined by law and then the churches can come up with their own hokey thing if they want to impose their own restrictions that go beyond what the law has in place. On another note, I am more and more bothered by the concept of religious freedom with each passing day. It is too often used as a shield to say and commit despicable acts.

Is Twiglet Twig's long lost child?

I can totally respect that. I bet I know where you're stuck as I was very recently stuck for a little while at that point in the game. Best of luck to you on your journey. I hope to hear more.

Steve Gaynor speaking Simlish is one of my favorite things. I miss Steve.

I honestly didn't try. I'll have to give it a shot on my next flight. Where are you stuck right now? (This is really cool being on the other side of the fence now)

Oh I plan to as long as it is just me playing through. I've put most of my other games on hold so I can focus on these. I am also really excited for Fate of Atlantis especially with all the good stuff that was said about it on the podcast.

Does it have a big impact later in the game if you have to go back to previous areas again to get items you missed? I was a little worried about how much money I would be spending on airfare and was perhaps overly cautious. I definitely agree about this game being a lot of fun so far. I think it is a cool little story and I really like it, I'm just paranoid about missing stuff early on that would cause me to restart later. And so far the puzzles have been pretty reasonable assuming you didn't miss any of those items.

I agree and that is the side of me that thinks it's stupid. Them making those claims on the monument about what atheism is about makes it sound like all atheists hold those beliefs when it is really the lack of belief that defines atheism (from my point of view at least). That being said I do think it is a good message.

Yeah, that was a really good story.

Nice! Glad to hear someone else is playing through some of these games too. Let me know if you end up playing any of the other games I'll be going through and I'd be happy to slow down so you can catch up. So last night I got stuck in the cave in Seattle because I didn't have anything to light the fire. With limited money and no idea whether I would be able to go back to previous areas, I resorted to using the Universal Hint system. I am so glad I did because I missed a number of things and realized this game truly would be next to impossible to beat on your own without spending a shitload of time trial and error-ing your way through. After looking at the hints for San Fransisco and Seattle I found that I had missed the bobby pin sign, I had never filled out the application and I put it in the dropbox instead of my mailbox, I never bent and sold the butter knife. and I missed the lighter on the plane. So I reloaded a save from before I left San Fransisco and got all that shit. Then I hopped on the plane and distracted the flight attendant to get the lighter under the seat. From there I stopped using hints again and figured out that I could use the crayon on the wall (pretty obvious with the random dots) and the remote control on the sensor below the crystal. After doing that I hopped on the plane to Miami and found out I could get whiskey from the bum by giving him that book from the preacher guy. There didn't seem to be any way to get out of the airport from there so I took a plane to Cairo, which is about where I stopped playing. Seeing how easy it is to fuck up and lose in this game, I am going to play this a little differently than Maniac Mansion. I am basically going to keep 5 saves going at all times and once I finish doing everything in an area I will refer to the Universal Hint System for that area to make sure I didn't miss anything. I figure this will let me solve some of the puzzles on my own but will also guarantee that I can keep moving forward without having to restart the game. You guys weren't kidding when you talked about how difficult this game is to figure out on your own. One last thing, is there any fucking way to speed up the airplane segments? I sat in my seat forever when I flew to Cairo and ended up just tabbing out to do other shit because it took so long.

That's kind of stupid but with all the religious propaganda that gets put up all over the place it is nice to have some contrast. I do wish atheism had more of a voice in this country. I still don't understand why so many people accept that it is okay for groups to plaster pictures of aborted fetuses all over college campuses and publicly preach about how gay people are going to hell and then freak out when an atheist group posts a little sign that says god doesn't exist.

I just killed a squirrel with a monkey wrench in the dark and Zak said he felt bad. Oops.

I would add that religious organizations don't have any particular claim on the term 'marriage'. I know this idea just comes down to picking two different terms for how it is recognized and going with it but I imagine a lot of people would be upset by letting religious groups claim 'marriage' as theirs. At some level I think that would still deal a psychological blow to gay rights since that is more or less the term that has been used for thousands of years. Let them come up with their own word for what they think marriage should be since they are the ones so adamant about having it strictly defined to fit with their specific beliefs. I feel silly arguing who should get which word but in this case I think there is actually a little bit of significance behind it.

I recently got a pair of used shorts at a Goodwill store. After bringing them home and washing them my wife found The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass in one of the pockets. I thought for sure it would have been ruined after washing the shorts but I tried it out last night and it still fucking works! Buying used clothes kicks ass!

The one on Gamecube you played could have been the crappy one (A Wonderful Life I think it was?). They had another one on Gamecube called Magical Melody that was absolutely fantastic; I even have it as one of my top games on the favorite games thread. My top 3 Harvest Moon games are Magical Melody>Harvest Moon 64>Harvest Moon (SNES). Unfortunately there have been some pretty crappy Harvest Moon games and it sounds like those are the ones you got stuck playing. The bad ones can be pretty boring but the good ones are usually really good.

When you say the second one do you mean the one on Game Boy or Harvest Moon 64? (Harvest Moon 64 was so good, Game Boy one not so much) I have always found it hard to trust reviews of Harvest Moon games. I still remember Nintendo Power only giving Harvest Moon for the SNES a 7/10 back in the late 90's. I bought it anyways and easily dumped over 100 hours into it across multiple playthroughs. That being said, 8/10 from a review site would probably translate to 10/10 for me.