Bjorn

Because it is? It's not terribly exciting, nor is it very difficult, but it was kind of exactly the kind of fun and charming little palette cleanser kind of game I like to fire up when I'm not in the mood for anything too serious. Speaking of serious games, I had clearly mentally blocked just how awful the controls in RE4 are. Took about 2 hours before I really settled into being comfortable with them.

I don't know if there is an official Rayman: Legend thread, so I'm just going to gush about it here. The post boss levels for each world are delightful. Like I don't remember the last time a game put a massive ear-to-ear grin on my face like two of those did tonight (the first two). Spoilering details for anyone who might want to walk into them blind.

Happy belated birthdays Toblix and Subbes!

As long as we're terrifying each other with Oculus possibilities:

So we are to the Encore. I've added RE4, Transistor and One Way Heroics (a whopping $0.87 for a game I thought might be neat) to my haul. Now I'll have to debate on buying State of Decay, Walking Dead S2 and Metro: LL, which are the only ones I thought about and didn't buy during daily/flash sales during the sale. Also, you will all be remembered. Never forget.

I've barely touched the game, so I can't say much about what the fail states are like in it. But thematically, it would seem to match the themes of the story. It's one of my favorite short stories ever though.

I felt exactly the same way about the Murfy runs the first couple, but as I got used to them, I think they're better than my original impression. With the damsels thing, the first one at least (maybe all of them?), at least the princess rescues herself at the end rather than you rescuing her. Which is a slight improvement. Ultimately you don't do anything besides chase the bad guy. And you can play them as characters, another improvement. Overall it's moving in a good direction compared to Origins. I do miss the chest runs in Origins. I loved the pure flow state you could get into with those of not having to worry about any pickups or anything, and just focus on the run. They didn't have checkpoints either, so you had to make the whole run perfectly, which made them feel more rewarding when you got through one.

Watching vids of stuff like that straight up gives me anxiety.

I played through that as well after picking it up from the Flash sale it was in. Great game, very charming, nails the "feel" it was going for. I don't think it's really a Metroidvania game though, as there are only a couple of times you need to backtrack, and it's not really backtracking even, given how quickly each area can be reached. The sense of progression is great, each new power feels like a solid upgrade and there's no wasted filler abilities. And it's a great length, probably 3-7 hours depending on how compulsive you get about searching out ore. I hoarded my orbs and only bought 3 teleporters the entire game. In the end, I easily could have bought 6 or 7 and still got all the other upgrades, which would have sped it up a lot and eliminated a bunch of needless time returning to town by a longer path.

So technically only kinda on topic, since it's the PC version, but the wife and I started playing Rayman Legends last night. It's glorious, and a worthy addition to whatever platform you want to play it on. I can see myself getting into the daily/weekly runs for awhile.

Out of curiosity, have you ever read the short story its based on?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Wyl72Re5110

So far I have bought: SteamWorld Dig Rayman Legends Risk of Rain BattleBlock Theater The Wolf Among Us Shadowrun Returns Which is a couple of more games than I intended on buying, but I feel like they're all games that are super high on my list of things I want to plus, plus 2 local co-op games, which I can never have enough of. I'm not sure if I'll buy anything else or not. There are a couple of temptations, like buying RE4 HD or State of Decay, but neither are something I need to buy right now.

To be fair though, it doesn't feel like people are buying as much this sale, nor does it feel like people are gaming a ton this week anyways (not a lot of activity in the gaming threads in general). But it's easy to talk about the weirdness of this promotion, because we're all at least checking Steam everyday. I haven't played anything I've bought on sale yet. The only games I've played this week are Capsule (fucking great!) and Rock of Ages (wish it would have been better).

A regular podcast just talking about gaming and the industry is pretty much the top thing I want from Polygon. I don't think it's just hearing it, just seeing your old work can do that. I wrote professionally for the latter half of my 20s, and I've been pretty horrified when I've run across some of that work. I don't even remember writing some pieces, but I see my byline, so I'm pretty sure it was me that hammered out that drivel somehow.

Oh Zooly, you nut. C'mon now, I want to talk to Rayman. Ray-Man.

I had never heard of sugar gliders. OH MY GOD THEY ARE ADORABLE!

And so now I'm super impressed with the level of thought the devs put into making Shovel Knight. That Gamasutra article explains where SK is completely authentic to its NES roots, and where they broke the "rules" because it didn't make sense to limit themselves entirely to what an NES would have been capable of (like getting rid of flickering sprites and having music cut out when there are too many sound effects). I also learned some things about NES design that I never knew, like why some bosses were on black backgrounds. It's because the boss was the background. The top layer couldn't actually support large sprites without crazy flickering, so designers made the boss the background to avoid that, and made everything else black to obscure what they were doing.

Thanks! I did not know this existed. I might have to use it to dump some unsellable emoticons and backgrounds that just continue to bug me for cluttering up my inventory.

The old Joystiq podcast with Justin, Ludwig and Chris is what got me into listening to gaming podcasts, and I remember them as being some of my favorite podcasts ever. Of course that was years ago, and trying to listen to them now might feel radically different. At the time they were new, they didn't stand out to me as being terrible though. That said, I had to stop listening to The Besties from Polygon because of how obnoxious I ended up thinking one of the hosts was. It might be that 6 years ago I would have thought that schtick was hilarious, and a little bit older me just doesn't have the tolerance for it.

I always think about the Washington Redskins selling expired peanuts that they bought off a bankrupt airline a few years ago. That is an unrad thing to do with airline peanuts.

@synthetic Yeah, if I had those experiences, I wouldn't go to that theater either. But mine has been completely the opposite (once in Austin and a bunch of times in Kansas City). The food isn't spectacular, but we spend a comparable amount to buying snacks as we do at the AMC, and it's better than anything at the AMC. I haven't bought tickets in person at a cinema in years. Even if we just decide to go, I buy online or on my phone just to have it done. Biggest thing I like about the Alamo is the lack of kids and teens. We quit going to the AMC on the weekends because the place is just chock full of herds of unsupervised 12 year olds running around all night on the weekends. Which, speaking of AMC, the one we used to go to now has this cattle chute line where you fill up your own soda, pick up your own box of popcorn, ect. It bugs the shit out of me for some reason. It's unquestionably faster than a traditional snack bar, but it feels very impersonal. It also makes it a massive hassle to get my popcorn properly buttered, since I usually ask for it to be buttered in the middle and on the top, and the new setup at AMC minimizes all chances to interact with an employee.

Everything about this thread has become rad to the max.