Bjorn

I...really thought you were exaggerating. That's some video game ass video game writing, for sure. One thing I do greatly appreciate about games like Deus Ex, Dishonored and MGS is that they allow for non-lethal runs, which is such a rarity in games and gives a player agency over the narrative of their character in a way that most of AAA action games don't. No matter what kind of a cynical badass they might write him as, you can choose to play him as a man put into an impossible situation who still insists on protecting the sanctity of all human life even if it isn't in his best interest to do so. So, no matter how awful the in game treatment of certain topics is, they at least have this interesting component to them that so few games in the genre do.

Just saw the news that Starbound is launching into its beta tomorrow. This is probably the game I have been most excited about this year. The wife and I spent more time in Terraria than maybe any other game ever. I'm really conflicted about joining the beta or not though. Part of me wants to see it RIGHT NAO! But part of me also wants to be able to experience the finished game fresh as well.

Each challenge has a different set end point. They can be as short as going to Mom's Foot, or as long as going to the Cathedral/Sheol. I don't think there are any challenges that go all the way to the Chest/Dark Room.

I didn't know that! Neat, new challenges! I really think that Challenges are one of my favorite things about Isaac, I find it really interesting to be limited in that way without having to force myself to self limit.

I should use the right actual level names instead of just what I say in my head, so it's not confusing. On the devil side, after the Womb you go to Sheol (Satan is boss) and then you go to the Dark Room (accessible after beating Satan 5 times). On the god side, after the Womb you go to the Cathedral, and then you go to the Chest. Both the Dark Room and the Chest each have locked golden doors in them that lead to the final, final boss of Rebirth (both doors go to the same thing, it doesn't matter which you use). There's a couple of ways to unlock the doors, though I won't spoil that unless you want me to. Afterbirth adds a new secret final boss, which is another timed thing and is a legitimate pain in the ass, because it requires beating the Womb in less than 30 minutes, which I find very hard to do. I've only done it a couple of times and decided it was too hard to want to keep throwing myself against. If you're curious about the expansion at all, the favorite thing it added for me was Greed Mode, which is a horde/arena mode focused on fighting rather than exploration. I enjoyed it as a way to mix things up when I wasn't feeling like taking the time to try and make a full run all the way to the Dark Room or the Chest, as you can generally finish a Greed run quite a bit faster than a full regular run.

Yeah, you have to reach and beat Mom's Foot in 20 minutes. Tough, but not too bad once you get used to it. I generally prefer taking my time and exploring, but it is a nice change up on some runs to just haul ass and go for it. Obviously a few characters are much, much, much better for this than others. Also, did you beat Satan, or Mega-Satan? Because Mega-Satan is a thing as well now (behind the Golden Doors in heaven/hell). If you're feeling done with ReBirth, I don't want to encourage you to keep playing because you feel like you need to see everything. But if you're still digging it, there is just a ton of stuff left to do.

So I decided to give this another shot, and I think I was tired the first night I was playing it. I've finished two runs now, and I'm quite digging it. I do think that my initial impression that it lacks character or personality is correct, that hasn't changed. But the mechanics and skill level are really good. Once you've finished a run once, it unlocks a new feature. Shops now have shopkeepers, who when killed it changes the inventory of the shop. The new inventory are made up of items that can radically change playstyles, mostly by adding in heavy risk/reward stuff (like limiting health for more damage).

Do you also have the Afterbirth expansion? There is a secret new boss in it as well. Did you ever reach the Boss Rush, a special Boss mode/encounter? It's something that's worth getting to a time or two if you really dig Rebirth.

I spent the evening playing Starward Rogue last night, which I was pretty excited when it showed up in the Humble Monthly, and I imagine that will be the only time I play it. This is the kind of game I play, and think, "This is a great game for someone, just not me." It's a combination of rougelike with a bullet hell shooter. I usually find bullet hell games to be more stress than they are worth. This has multiple difficulties though, so it's fairly tailorable to the challenge level you want. The biggest downside, and I think the thing that will keep me from coming back, is that it just didn't feel like it had any personality. It opens with a cute, almost Portal-esque tutorial with a snarky AI walking you through a level. But from then on, there's just no personality, at all. It's mechanically really good and it seems like there's a good diversity to equipment and upgrades to customize builds around for different experiences. But it all feels very sterile. Oh, it's a grey room with lazers. Oh, it's a greyish red room with lazers and robots. The art direction is a bit more varied than that, but not by much. It's like the opposite problem that Our Darker Purpose had, which absolutely oozed personality and character and the world from every corner, but suffered from not being mechanically well tuned enough to keep playing. There's something else that bugged me too, which is it has the Devil Rooms from BoI, where you trade health for higher grade power ups...but it doesn't make any sense. Why is this here, who is making the trade, what are the doing with it? In the quasi-religious fever dream of BoI, a mechanic like that feels like it fits. But in a a sterile, sci-fi environment, it feels really out of place, just that Arcen really wanted that mechanic in there and didn't worry about finding a way to make it mechanically fit.

Y'all have actually made me interested in DR3. I had basically the same concerns as Dewar, I loved 1 (it's what got me to buy a 360 in the first place) and I liked 2 even though I thought it ultimately meandered a bit too much. Everything I saw about 3 made me think they were just giving up too much of what made the original special.

I watched some YouTube videos of beating the bosses, and then the secret real final level and secret real final boss, and I'm definitely not going to finish this game. The final level ramps up the difficulty even more with more jetpack spike navigation, shit falling from the ceiling and new enemy types that show up by the dozens and fire projectiles while you hit timed doors you have to wait to open while fighting off hordes of enemies, and then the final boss has not one, not two, not three, but four forms. I don't get why you would want to take the final act of this game and increase the difficulty by multiple times when the rest of the game wasn't that way, and didn't do anything to teach the player how to deal with these kinds of levels.

Even though I've really loved it, I think I might quit on Cave Story+. After having owned it for years, I finally gave it a go over the last few days and have found it to be charming, delightful, thoughtful and often elegantly designed. Aaaaand, then the final section arrives and it's just a whoooooole bunch of old school bullshit brickwalls. Navigating spike filled paths with finicky jet pack. Endless waves of enemies while trying to do platforming. Miniboss with no save after the bullshit spikey path. Insta-kill traps AFTER the miniboss. Finally hit a save, and lo and behold a boss, another boss, and then the second phase of that boss with no saves in between those. If I wanted to throw myself at those bosses for a few more hours, I could probably beat them, but I'm really just not all that sure I'm interested. Each shot I take at these bosses feels like it's ruining what has otherwise been an exceptionally good game.

Do it! Just explain how special and fabulous Lansbury is. Also, Sailor Moon day at the gay bar. I mean. How can you not go.

Ultima Online, at least in the initial couple of years, had you come back as a ghost and you had to travel to be resurrected. Which could mean some incredibly long corpse runs if you had to run back to town, and then back to your body with no equipment on you. I know eventually they added like insured equipment and stuff to help with the second part. But, there were some interesting parts to being a ghost. You could manifest by entering combat mode, and players could see you, but not understand you unless they had the right ability or skill. Since your default state was invisible, if you were PK'd by an asshole, you could track them invisible as a ghost, and then alert your friends as to where they ended up so you could coordinate your vengeance from beyond the grave. Being a ghost also let you get into and explore a few areas that would have been risky alive.

I know this is replying to a months and months old series of posts, but Erkki, your steadily shifting opinion on Mad Max might get me to stick with it. I started it up this week, and it was fine, but really after getting to my first fortress and seeing what the structure of the rest of the game was going to be, I was thinking about quitting. Not because it's bad, but just because it doesn't feel entertaining enough for what I like to keep playing for another 40 hours or whatever it will take to finish. But I might give it another night or two, since your opening post is almost exactly how I was feeling about it.

I assume everyone here is likely familiar with the classic philosophical question about a train being about to hit 5 people, but you can save them, but only by causing the death of a single person? I'm not sure that in my life I expected to ever encounter a situation as clearly reminiscent of that thought experiment as I consider this election to be. I assume that for every policy of Clinton's that I disagree with Trump will do the same or worse. Which means that I expect that for every death Clinton's presidency will cause, a Trump presidency is likely to cause 2-5.

I finished up Satellite Reign this evening. A pretty good game that ultimately falls short of being a great game. I think the opening half to two-thirds was much stronger than the end. The difficulty just doesn't scale well. You pass a point where you have enough guns, toys, skills and options that every mission is a cakewalk, whereas in the early game you have to put some thought and care into each mission based on the skills and gear available to your squad. I'd recommend it if it looks at all interesting to you though. It's the kind of game that really makes me curious what the team who made it can do next.

That sucks. It sounds like you are 100 percent done, there's no compromises or agreements that could improve the situation that you would consider really continuing to invest in the relationship. And in that case, you just have to stay strong and end it. I don't think you need to wait a week. And I'm not honestly sure you need to do it over the phone a second time if sending an email would be easier. I think it shows respect for a partner to do it by phone or in person, but when you've tried, and that person just refuses, I don't know that that obligation persists. You have an absolute right to end a relationship.

Penny follows in the political gonzo-journalism popularized and coined by Hunter S. Thompson and on display in his political coverage in the 70s. First person, obviously biased, experiential. Does it trend towards the echo chamber? Yeah, but I think there's still value in that view. It isn't, "here is a journalism article about this event." It's, "here are the experiences of a self described a radical queer feminist leftist in the company of the men who earn livings demonizing her very existence." There were dozens of journalists present at that event, there should be plenty of pieces about it that are more traditional journalism. I'm not sure that we need Penny, an ideological opposite of many of the people there, to pen one more. To me the reveal, and value of it, was two fold. That the alt-right and anti-feminism forces are now to a point of acceptability that they are throwing parties at the RNC. Secondly, it's that even for the true believers, their job is a game. It's a form of entertainment and sport, where points are earned and paychecks cashed. And, Penny's protests aside, she's part of the game. Which she denies in the story, but the existence of the story alone also places her within the game, whether she wants to play or not (I honestly can't decide if this is a wink and a nod or not, given her refusal to negotiate a beef with Roosh but contrasted with the obviously insulting comments she has to make about the people there, which is still kind of doing the beef thing). The game element of it is the thing that most people believe is going on, but it rarely gets spoken of as plainly and directly as that article does. And I'm honestly not sure how well a more traditionally written piece could actually talk about the game element of it. Their personalities and reputations (Penny included) are all parts of the game.

Less on the the DNC and what a garbage show they are, this is exactly the kind of thing that worries me over the next few months, that a series of scandals like this will continue to dog Clinton, just steadily chipping, chipping, chipping away at any faith people have in her or the DNC, making winning over the undecided nearly impossible allowing Trump to eek out a win.

From an optics angle, that's a fucking disaster. Jesus. But I think you can ask an interesting academic ethics question about whether or not the DNC should have been treating Sanders as anything other than a threat. Sanders is not, and never has been, a registered Democrat (Vermont does not have registered party affiliation at all, technically). While he's caucused with the Democrats since he joined the Senate, he's got a history of being actively antagonistic towards them within Vermont at times. Bernie is a bit of a coinflip historically as far as being a political ally to the DNC goes. With that as context, dDoes the DNC have any ethical obligation to treat all candidates for the Democratic nomination equally or fairly? I honestly think the answer is no. I think it's in their best interest to do so, but that's not the same as having an ethical obligation to do so. Edited to add: Unless of course the DNC bylaws establish an ethical framework that treating all candidates equally is in fact exactly what was expected, in which case throw my previous argument out. I realized after I typed that out that it might be in their internal rules, but I honestly don't know off the top of my head.

When was the last time you saw that scene? Prior to her demanding he leave, he looked in her bedroom against her wishes and asked if she lived alone, and answers simply "Good" when he learns that she does live alone. When she finally demands he leave, he starts to walk away, but turns around and comes back towards her, getting to within a foot or two of her, as she says, "No, No, No." She doesn't even know what he's about to say, but the character's kneejerk reaction is to just repeat no, over and over again, as he walks towards her without known intent, but clearly refusing to obey her demand that he leave her home. And she's not joking. She finally puts her hands on him, and physically pushes him across the room to the door. When she tries to slam the door, he wedges himself into it , preventing her from closing the door, in order to ask for a kiss. He, as a character, is jovial when doing it. But again, they've met no more than an hour ago. If a service person you hired to come into your home to perform work did this, the wisest course of action would be to both call the police and call the employer to demand they be fired. Edited to add: Let's add some more context to this scene. She hasn't been home in days, she's been staying at her mother's because she's terrified of her own home. Her apartment has ceased to be safe. Something, something dangerous may be in it, and she doesn't know what to do about that. She doesn't know if it's real, or if she's having a breakdown. And the help that she seeks further undermines her feeling of safety. He ignores her wishes. Refuses her demands. And forces her to physically remove him from her home.

I actually thought about mentioning that, but it's specifically thorazine, an anti-psychotic, which is believable that Dana could have been prescribed that after having had what most doctors would have considered a delusional vision in her apartment, and that Venkman just scrounged it up in the apartment. The line though is really weird, where he specifically says 300cc, which implies it was delivered by syringe (a prescription would have been pills), but it would have been like a hundred syringes full. Most likely a lazy script error that no one caught, but it pushes it towards the creepier interpretation. Ultimately I think that's a line that probably doesn't stand out at all in 1984, but in a post-Bill Cosby world, jumps out as, "da fuq?!"

I would disagree with choosing not to rape someone as being a form of redemption. Redemption implies going above and beyond the call to me, not living up to the most basic human standards. Plus it's just basic self preservation as well, fucking a person who's currently possessed by the agent of an ancient Sumerian god who is clearly on some sort of mission is probably a terrible idea. I'm not sure what the movie or the actor/director intent with Venkman was, but I actually don't think he was intended to be seen as a the level of creep he actually is, and that he was intended to be looked up to as the character who drives the team forward. He's the decider, he gets everyone else moving forward. He's obviously supposed to be seen as flawed, but not fatally so. I usually find Dr. Nerdlove to be a really smart and thoughtful writer about the intersection of sex and geeks, but I was curious if anyone had written about different ways to view Venkman, and came across Nerdlove not only defending, but arguing in favor of Venkman as role model. A "uniquely Venkman manner" is to refuse to leave and force a woman to physically drive him out of her home after it's been made clear he's not welcome and that she's uncomfortable. The comments in that Nerdlove article are clearly in opposition to the Doc's view on Venkman, but it can show how a combination of Venkman's behavior being normalized plus Murray's inherent charm combine to make some people actually think he is a character to look up to. I guess I'm coming at this from a perspective of having watched this every few years starting with in the theater at age 7 all the way to now at 39 (which, an idea formed at that age can take many years to re-evaluate in my experience because of how formative they are and how hard they stick). And I started off seeing Venkman as the cool fun guy, and that view has just steadily degraded as I've watched it and aged, to the point that my view of the character has reversed about as radically as possible.

On your spoiler: I'm a lot less interested in a Guybuster team after having seen this team in action. I'd much, much, much rather see the resources put into this group making another movie than making a sequel/spinoff without them. This was essentially an origin story, and I'd enjoy seeing these characters have a chance to grow and develop over another movie. On another topic, I went back and watched the original 1984 Ghostbusters last night, which I last rewatched probably 7-8 years ago. And ugggghhhhhhh, fuck have my views changed on it. It's a product of it's time, but that time is really fucking not good. The first scene with Peter going to Dana's apartment to inspect it is creepy and rapey as fuck, in a way that I hadn't really noted before. A friend of mine recently had a washing machine repairman to her home to fix her broken washer, and he was asking questions like, "Are you married?" "Oh, you're not, do you live here alone?" Which mirrors the questions that Peter was asking Dana. It spooked her really fucking bad. And watching Sigourney Weaver's face during that scene, that's exactly how she's reacting. Spooked as fuck. And then Peter starts professing his love, refusing to leave when she gets exasperated and demands he leaves, blocks her from closing the door on him. They literally just met like an hour ago. But then, the next time she sees Peter, she agrees to a date with him. It's wildly incongruous. And the thing of it is, Creepy Peter is wholly unnecessary to the film. Every scene works just fine, including Possessed Dana coming on to him, without Peter being creepily obsessed with her. In fact, the Possessed Dana scene might work better in the context of her and Peter having only had professional interactions up to that point. Even Louis, Dana's other stalker, feels extraneous to the story. And the movie isn't nearly as funny as I remember. Yeah, I've seen it multiple times in my life, so there's no surprising humor, but the jokes just aren't even there. Most of the jokes are "heh" vs "LOL". The back half of the movie is so, so, so much better than the front half. Which is why if a theoretical sequel decided to retread some of the actual ground of the first movie, I'd actually be totes okay with that. Because if you strip out Louis and the creepy romantic sublots, you gain about a tenth or more of the movie back that you can spend with other stuff. Gozer and its early minions could feature as more important elements to the story, rather than suddenly appearing and being explained predominantly in the final 15 minutes of the movie. I think I'll watch Ghostbusters 2 some time this week, and now I really want to go back and watch the new Ghostbusters again. I'm coming around to thinking that the new one is just flat better than the originals, in more or less every way.