Bjorn

Yeah, it really felt like (given our current skill level) the first four or five items really defined how well the run was going to go. Good luck with the items, and we'd cruise to the third level (where we would flame out in a matter of seconds). Bad luck with items, and we usually wouldn't make it past stage 2. I don't think there's a way to resurrect someone in a stage, is there? It gets pretty brutal once it's just one person with the spawn rate of 2-player.

I played a few matches solo after the lady called it quits for the night. It's definitely balanced to be harder with more people. More enemies spawned faster with two of us than by myself. The first few matches I was hogging all the items, before we realized that most items aren't shared between both people (a few are, which had erroneously led us to think that they all were). Shame, it doesn't look like it supports local + online play, you have to do one or the other.

Looking for something new to play in co-op, the lady and I started this up last night. Its bunches of fun! But holy hell is it hard. We only made it to the fourth stage once, on easy. We are babies, and this is not a baby game. Any tips from those of you who played it on not sucking? Like how much time should you be spending per level? We tried rushing a few times, but felt really underpowered since we weren't getting as many items or experience.

Bowie was at least in Omikron, and (supposedly) contributed some to the story and world of it.

I felt really frustrated at what seemed like a lot of trial, error and guesswork in deciding what to do. Plus I just felt completely lost, and not in the good way that some games pull off. Just lost and directionless without an impetus to figure out what to do. I've tried it...I think three times now, and gave up less than an hour in each time, so I may not have given it a fair shake.

I also noticed the strong Starship Titanic influence! Which is not a bad thing at all, at least from a design standpoint. I don't remember much about the game, but I know I played through it years ago. I think I ended up using a walkthru for quite a bit though, as I wasn't in the mood for that kind of puzzle solving.

I really, really want to like The Last Express. Bought it the last time it was super cheap. And yet I bounce so hard off it.

Don't really have any other thread to put this, but it's near to topics we've had before. Someone attacked a Furry convention in Chicago with chlorine gas, hospitalizing 19 people. Who the fuck tries to gas a bunch of furries?

That is incredible looking!

OMG, early in that thread someone links to a AbledGamers Twitter discussion about jumping in CoD. Some of the gamergaters thought that they were mad BECAUSE PEOPLE COULD JUMP. And not because it was more difficulty to control and custom button mapping isn't supported. More disappointingly, there are several in the thread who think that AbleGamers should be punished for not saving the world with gamergate money. Who knows what form that punishment might take. ggers are replying that OBVIOUSLY it was a bunch of antis led by Randi Harper. Da fuq?

I'm not touching gamergate masturbating...wait, that came out wrong. Anyways, so Jaffe didn't appreciate this tweet today, you can see his replies here: In unrelated news, Jaffe apprently used the word fucktard today onstage during the Playstation Experience, and then had to issue an apology because he didn't know that it was an obvious derivation of retard. Maybe it was a half a brain kinda day. I mean, what kind of a ninny throws around words that end in -tard at one of the premier industry events in front of a massive global audience. Someone like that just kinda looks like a fool.

As far as I know, it doesn't work better than anything else. It's on par with just attempting to go sober on your own. AA, and all the other 12-step programs based on it, historically do not like to talk about their efficacy, because it is abysmal. At best it works for about 10 percent of people. Part of the reason some researchers are beginning to think it's no better than going solo is that it mixes messages and treatments which are both good and bad. And there's nothing that shows the people who made it with AA wouldn't have also have made it solo, that their slim success rate isn't just the normal rate of people who are able to stop an addiction on their own. It crosses over into cultist territory, to me, when you start considering how incredibly devoted to defending it that members are. They will accept no criticism of it. And there are bunch and bunches of stories like this, of sexual predators using meetings as hunting grounds, and it honestly looks like a blind eye is often turned to these kinds of stories from the organization itself. It probably depends a ton on each area on how cult like it is. There's a bunch of variance. And it is still better than paying to go to a 12-step rehab, which are fundamentally based on AA, but charge you thousands of dollars a day/week/month to go through them.

Not at all. The "anonymity" and the language around it also plays into the cult like nature of AA, where belief matters more than science. A lot of the tenets of AA are based purely on the belief the original authors had back in the 30s, and have next to no data supporting the structure of the program versus other treatment options (including people attempting to quit without the aid of 12-step program).

It's funny that for the second time the most exciting part of a "next gen" console press conference has been an old adventure game remake.

Whaaaaaaaaaaat???!!!!!!!

Your dream reads like a perfect metaphor for growing up.

Damn Arch, that's a shitty week.

It's just easier to blame women than, you know, look at facts and stuff. Like Turkey, who has decided that high suicide rates are because women want equality and don't just stay home and act as baby factories as god and state intended.

Sweet! I wonder if classic country is still going to have some influence on it. At one point, Steve said he'd been listening to a bunch of classic female country artists while brainstorming for the next game.

Play more Spelunky. Edited: Best new page post ever.

Happy birthday Zeus! 30 really isn't so bad, I've honestly enjoyed my 30s as much as my 20s, just in different ways.

That looks like a fascinating documentary, and one I need to watch at some point. Thanks! Some of the movies they highlighted even in that clip are ones that I watched in junior high or high school, and I super blind to anything that was even slightly subtle.

Exactly! Either of those would be great. But the Bleeding Kansas portion of Kansas/Missouri history is fascinating to me. Two states/proto-states in a war with each other before the rest of the country was willing to face that armed conflict had become inevitable. Whole towns burned down. John Brown was fucking made to go onto the cover of a Far Cry box.

I liked Ghostbusters a whole bunch. It's high on the pantheon of licensed movie games. I wrote a bunch of stuff about why the story/world impressed me for Transistor back when I finished it. It's a story that is open to a lot of interpretation, but that's the kind of thing that I love.