kickinthehead

I think Jonathan Bro is Jonathan Blow's counterpart a la Donald and Charlie Kaufman from "Adaptation." So if Jonathan Bro had to finish "The Witness" the last half would consist of unlocking a "Red Faction" style weapon, bashing the shit out of all the panels, and hotwiring the connections on every puzzle. I wish I had the capability to create this, but instead it will live in my head making me smile.

It won't go live on PSN until sometime Feb 9th tomorrow. Apparently in order to make your game pre-orderable on PSN is a process that has to be done weeks in advance, and they couldn't do it in time.

Yup, you can! But when it's disabled it'll still show up when you pull out your map which I think is a nice design choice. You can also turn off the little blip on the map that tells you your current location if you want to be more hardcore.

Does anyone remember that there was a different version of the Crossfire commercial music? This one is the second one which even as a kid I didn't think was as exciting as the first. Also, a friend of mine had it and it was a pretty terrible game. We played it once or twice and then got bored

Thank you, they were lots of fun to make! The trowel one is my favorite. The ambience one was very last minute, but it's pretty darn easy to find shots in the game that are jaw droppingly gorgeous. When I have time I'll probably be going through every inch of the game backwards and forwards looking for shots

Chris said that they're going to release the soundtrack separately on Bandcamp, so it'll be available in lossless and all the other formats you can download from there.

The Takashi Miike Phoenix Wright movie is legit! Usually I'm wary of live action adaptations of Japanese anime or games because the budgets are generally very low, but I'm amazed at some of the creative decisions they made. For example, it takes place in a sort of not-too distant future so the way they show the game prompts are via these CG flat panel displays that announce what's about to happen. They clearly put a lot thought into it. Also, it plays the tone totally straight which really works well. I saw it at a screening at I think a museum or arthouse theater, and a lot of people were saying "Oh, that was based off of a video game?" Because it's very much structured like a courtroom procedural with great twists and turns. If you like Phoenix Wright I'd recommend tracking it down.

I've now played 19 hours and I've solved 291 puzzles, but I just got my first "+1"! I enjoy just hearing the mechanical sound effects when solving a puzzle, but the +1 was such a surprise. I'm going to be spending sooooo much time on this game. Also, this many hours in I can say my little makeshift crosshair I stuck on my TV has basically completely stopped any motion sickness I was having.

I've played a couple hours now and really loving it. I didn't realize there was a run button until I watched the Giant Bomb quicklook, but in retrospect I realize that's what that L-stick LT button prompt was trying to tell me. I started feeling motion sick before I left the first area, but I remembered reading an article about how the dot in Mirror's Edge was critical to prevent motion sickness. So I cut out a tiny bit of a post-it note and putting it on the center of my TV (I used another first person game to find the exact spot) and so far that's made it a lot better! The game is so gorgeous and I love the soundscape from the footsteps to the mechanical sounds of doors opening. I've definitely skipped some puzzles to come back to later, and tonight I'm gonna get myself some graph paper. There's one puzzle that I'm probably going to be trying to solve during work today when I have down time

I never played any MMOs or multiplayer games where I chatted with other people, but I like that the game depicts a relationship that isn't typically seen in games or a lot of popular fiction. So often it's a black and white situation where everyone loves each other and it's perfect, or a person did a bad thing or is a bad person and of course it ends because of that. Typically stories I see of young love are sunshine and rainbows a la Anakin and Padme rolling around in a grassy field (ugh). But seeing it as awkward, messy, and unsure feels much truer to life and closer to home. It reminds me of my first relationship when my girlfriend at the time said something to the effect of: "I wish I had met you a few years later than I did." Which at the time I didn't quite get, but in retrospect I totally understand.

From what I've read, episode 5 ran into time and production issues which is why one of the endings isn't as long as the other one. I'm guessing 5 was very ambitious but they ended up dialing a lot of it back in order to get it done. I think even with that in mind it took longer than the other episodes to come out. My thoughts on the ending: Overall I loved it! Despite its flaws it genuinely affected me, and I loved the characters. One of my favorite games of the year!

Oh man, free update coming November 4th includes checkpoints and power ups that are different depending on whether you're Super Mario!

Not mine, but today I found a level by user "Smashmario," and then spent the whole rest of my morning playing through more of his levels. This one called something like "Twomp Jungle" has a great theme, and also a nice boss battle! FE55-0000-00B1-9CA3.

I got to play a bit of this at IndieCade this weekend and the graphics do somewhat have a "filter" look to them, but when I pressed the button to revert to the pixel graphics it looked to me like it was much more work than a smoothing filter. I originally played DOTT on Mac which had a smoothing option and the remastered version looks much better. The animation for the characters is exactly the same in terms of number of frames etc. It looked a little jarring considering how much sharper the graphics looked. One thing that I noticed the most is how much better the music sounds! I didn't think about it much, but switching to the original made it clear that the new music and instrumentation was much higher quality and easier on the ears. I was playing the PS4 version and for the controls you could either use the old palette of verbs or press square on an object which gives you a radial menu of the verbs you could use on that particular object. I feel like there could've been maybe one fewer button presses to do what I wanted, but it worked for me. Also, the verbs were hidden by default so the game played in full screen.

I've only made it to 2-3 but man this game feels so great to play. I especially love the sound effects, they make everything super satisfying to do. Jumping on enemies is great and it's so much fun to try to chain jumps on enemies. I wish I could easily turn my TV vertical for when I'm playing it.

I had to reverse image search it from Sean's tweet since Twitter converts gifs to mp4s. But here it is!

Sad that Danielle won't be on the regular Thumbs cast, but super excited to have even MORE pods to cast into my ears each week! I'm also selfishly happy that I can live vicariously through someone else discovering the great things about living in NYC. I love sharing what makes NYC special to me with other people, and to see them enjoy it. Best of luck!

My current emblem. Though I got some new words that I want to try out, but so far this has been the funniest.

My mission 16 story

YES! I was going back and forth between various songs, but "The Final Countdown" especially has great timing. It kicks in exactly after you hear "This is Pequod, arriving soon at LZ!" Oh and I saw Jake retweeted it already, but it's worth reiterating that the "RED" Monument Valley levels were released for everyone for free! I think you just miss out on the red color palette. If you bought the "RED" version then there's an option to switch the colors around.

I've played about 40 hours now and all I can think about is playing more or watch other people play. I've been trying to mix up my tactics so that the missions don't get stale and the wealth of ways to take on a mission are just staggering. Right now my current favorite tactic is to put C4 on something and then explode it to make everyone turn in the other direction so that I can sneak in from behind and subdue them. I'll basically circle a base planting C4 and exploding as needed. I realized I'm not using the "knock" function enough, trying to use that more. Also D-Dog is definitely my favorite buddy. Senses the units and targets from really far away, and you can pet him! Haven't used the walker at all on any missions, but thinking of doing it soon. I'm still sticking to the default machine gun and then a sniper rifle for my primary. Also, fulton-ing vehicles is THE BEST. I love doing the "destroy armored vehicle" missions, fulton-ing the tank and then seeing the soldiers come back to its previous location completely oblivious.

Very good point! Bad on me for generalizing something not localized strictly to Japanese media. I'm sure it's easy to find several examples across modern stories where you can tell the author only sorta understood what they were inspired by. For example, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a game I love but its use of the Journey to the West story pretty much just takes the iconic images and very basic framework of the story.

The other anime-like thing Metal Gear has going for it (besides everything) is its use of Western literature in a way that feels like someone giving a book report without having read the book. I'm about 10 episodes into MGSV, but their Moby Dick references feel like they're on the same superficial level as Evangelion's use of religious imagery and terminology. I haven't studied much about religion but Evangelion feels to me like someone who got a book on religion, and went through cherry picking say "This looks cool, this looks cool, ooo and I'll put this in too!"

Loved all the MGSV discussion! While playing I was wondering if you guys were going to make a Far Cry 2 comparison. From what I understand of MGSV's systems I think that while you can get surprised a lot, the game actually has predictable patterns that you can plan around if you're thorough enough. For example, knowing a truck's route and stops allows you to find the perfect moment to plant some C4 on it to blow something up down the road. I hope you guys end up having some Far Cry 2-like stories to share on the show. I went to the panel for Lara Croft Go at PAX where the devs talk a bit about how Hitman Go came to be. It sounded like people at the top basically said "Hey, we should try making a mobile game with a small team." Then the game director Daniel Lutz and Lead Engineer Antoine Routon came up with the premise for Hitman Go and pitched it. They said they feel like an indie team that just happens to be owned by Square Enix with access to all the IP they own. They said they really liked the pace of turning a game around in one year rather than spending 3-4 years on a game. Also the art director for Lara Croft Go, Thierry Doizon had previously worked on a pre-reboot Tomb Raider game. He said it was funny that the Tomb Raider games he's worked on both ended up being low-poly even though they were separated by several years. Oh and also this was the free swag they gave away. It has shots of a levels from Lara Croft Go in 3D.

Ah yes, that's it!! Oh man I can smell and taste it just looking at photos. I have to find a good Chinese bakery in LA. When it's freshly baked it's sooooo good, but it's also good toasted if it's not fresh.