Daniel

When I read the announcement, I was very afraid that Jake and Sean had relocated across the country to form the studio, leaving Idle Thumbs in shambles. Chris would try to continue the cast alone, but eventually his mental state would start to deteriorate, and each successive episode of Idle Thumbs would just be strange, indistinct mumbling about Zuma, untill one day there is only static. I'm glad the site's still here.

Actually, I think Cookie Clicker would be torture for Cookie Monster. You just can't eat millions of digital cookies.

Sam Fisher is in his fifties.

Which one? I've only seen Bogus Journey, and I don't remember that.

That would also be awesome in a mall.

It'd take a ridiculous amount of money, but it'd be great to go into a giant retail store and buy their entire stock. I'd have it all moved to a giant warehouse and then give it all away.

I really like the idea of the universe being stuck in a time-loop and exploding every 20 minutes. I'm interested to see if anything carries over with each loop, like in that Star Trek:TNG episode.

That looks like something from the Criterion Collection of Video Games, which would be awesome if it actually existed.

It has taken me since February, but early this morning I finally finished Assassin's Creed III. While I had several problems with the combat system and enemy AI, I really enjoyed being in the world. Some of the best moments were spent wandering in the frontier, which seemed much more unique than the towns. The hunting, homestead, crafting, and other systems seemed interesting enough, but I never felt like it had much impact on the campaign or my character. I only upgraded a few things and didn't dive that deeply into it, so it very well may have a larger impact than I perceived. There's also the weird disconnect between the main storyline and all the side content in a way that doesn't usually bother me that much. It felt like there was enough activities for a entirely seperate game about a entrepreneuring Native American who manages trade routes, runs a craftsmen's guild, and hangs out with Benjamin Franklin. I don't plan on going back to complete all that side content, but it seems like reasonable stuff for a semi-retired assassin to occupy himself with after the war, I suppose. During? Not so much. It was my first AC game, and while I was hoping for more stealth/assassin-y things and less action, I'd like to check out the previous games. I've watched a friend play parts of ACII, and I think that would be closer to what I expected. While firing cannons, steering ships, and other Revolutionary War activities are neat and all, I'd really like to just climb tall stuff and sneak up on some dudes.

I realized yesterday that I've experienced a strange amalgamation of two topics covered in this episode. Within the Netflix UI on the Xbox 360, movement between categories creates a hybrid whoosh/thud sound, followed by a higher-pitched pop/crack when the next title is selected. By slowly moving between categories you can create a whoosh, crack pattern with slightly longer or shorter time delays between the two. In effect, it's tennis (Tennnes?) on the Netflix UI.

I've never played a GTA title, so I suppose I was expecting something lengthier for a sandbox game. Granted, it went out of its way to make certain time sinks way easy. After you unlock the skill that displays all collectibles on your phone's map, collecting everything is as simple as jumping in a helicopter and flying to each one. Something that could take hours got boiled down to one or two. I also didn't mention that the 30 hours included all DLC. And that's not a bad thing, really. It seems that many games overstay their welcome rather than leave you wanting more. It fully succeeds in that regard.

Yeah, SR3 was the same way. I did almost everything in about 30 hours, and that included a fair bit of goofing around with whatever.

I've always thought the Witcher games looked like amazing experiences to be had, but I've yet to play them. A friend said they both took him 50ish hours each, and I'm not sure if I could fit 100+ hours in before this is released. Everything I've ever heard about them seems fantastic, though.

We should all just call video games what they really are. Awesome.

True, but it might hamper certain activities requiring speed and precision, such as the Presidential collecting of orbs.

The third game in the series is a decent third-person action-rpg as well. It was released twice under different names (first as Eco Draconis, then as The Dragon Knight Saga) owing to the number of bugs in the first release. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the world tremendously. The next game in the series is returning to the Diablo-like feel of the first two, I believe.

Apparently the 360 version suffers terrible framerate drops, so if you're able to run SR3 fairly well, you might be better off on PC anyway.

This is when computers were cool.

This is one of the myriad reasons I listen to Idle Thumbs. I play my fair share of mainstream titles, but I am far more interested in insightful or funny conversations about 90's space flight sims or whatever than a weekly rundown of current AAA gaming experiences. I rarely listen to podcasts from major video gaming websites for that reason. There's nothing inherently wrong with discussion being geared towards current news or games, of course. It just seems that the various avenues of conversation for video games might have the tendency to shy away from the richness of gaming's past in favor of the new thing, something that literature, film, and music may not suffer from as much. That's a broad and biased generalization, but there you go. Also, the threat of Bigger Dog succeeded in making me wary of all robots now.

That was my plan all along. Yeah, khakis used to be ok, but now they're just a symbol of the 9-to-5. I'll probably get rid of them once I have a better job.

Would wearing brightly colored pants make the average person happier? It seems bright yellow might be cheerier than dark denim.

I think that's a good assumption. A lot of news about Valve in recent years seems to focus on their experiments with digital distribution and the economy of Steam (TF2/DotA2, trading cards, etc). From what I remember, Gabe's talk at this year's DICE covered that stuff quite a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9D0j10YYpU I really appreciate the aesthetic ideas behind psychedelic music, but haven't really explored those genres as much as I'd like. Tame Impala seems like a really good starting place.

I'm going to wait a little longer for the PC version, but I'm sold on this. "So what is Brothers game you say?"