Bjorn

I'm a Royals fan, so at least the tickets are really cheap! I love going to live baseball games with a group of people. It's an interesting social experience that's quite a bit different for me than anything else. It's relaxing, but with the chance of something incredible happening at any moment.

I actually think his ultimate point is a great one. He's picking on Whole Foods, but that's a relatively true statement. We don't spend near the energy attacking corporations for their fraudulent, bad science claims as we do religiously associated organizations. And there is a metric shitton of bad science in terms of health, food and exercise. You can't even really trust the good science, since our knowledge of how the body works and various substances affect it are still in their infancy. It's something that scientists understand, but the general public doesn't. I think a reasonable argument could be made that Whole Foods and others like it prey on the ignorance and prejudices of their target demographic. The same way the Creation Museum does.

I remember them talking about it, but didn't know if that specific quote came up (it is from 14 years ago). Somebody linked to the igndotcom twitter feed in another thread, which sent me down a rabbit hole of reminiscing about how bad it can get.

I'm looking forward to walking into boss fights blind again in DkS2. Going back through DeS, the bosses have been the least interesting part for me, since I mostly remember their pattern, their weak spots, etc. It's fun to not know what to expect! I was able to get most of the equipment that I'm going to want for rest of the run last night. It's going to make certain chunks pretty easy, but I've already been through this once white-knuckled, no reason to drag that out again. I'm remembering just how much I hate the World Tendencies. I think there was a neat idea there, but the implementation of it is just too unwieldy. I went offline last night, as there was something I wanted that could only be acquired in Pure White, which is too hard to guarantee achieving online. The bit I played online, I'm surprised at the number of people that seem to still be playing. I wonder if it's just people going back to it before DkS2 comes out? Though I've seen a lot of incredibly stupid deaths by ghosts, so it doesn't seem like it's all experienced players.

Vintage ign.com: "Women. What an incredibly perplexing creation. On one hand, they can be beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, engaging, and on occasion, down right awe inspiring. On the other, they can be ugly, spiteful, shallow, heartless, ambiguous and deliberately deceptive to the point of frustration that borders on insanity." "Lara Croft is back, and has most certainly matured into the leading lady of video gaming, but is she the girl you hope you're going to marry, or that bitch you still can't believe you got suckered into dating?" "Lara, you're cute, but please just go away. I've got a headache..." And for good measure, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater: "Like the cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane (this game's motion picture counterpart), every single shot is set to deep focus and delivers. Everything in the frame is crisp as a fresh-picked apple."

Some thoughts on the intimacy question: Not that emotional reactions are new to video games, but they are becoming more common. People have had very powerful emotional reactions at public media forever (plays, speeches, movies, opera, sports, concerts). The emotional impact of media has this long history of being a shared response. I suppose I can see why Let's Play videos that have that reaction might feel forced, as it would feel like a solo response that's being intentionally broadcast, but I have to think that the core is that same idea of a shared emotional reaction. I can totally see how and why it would make you guys uncomfortable though. I couldn't do it, I think the process of trying to have a running dialog while playing would interrupt whatever my natural reaction was. Or at least it wouldn't end up being compelling, because I would just get quiet. I actually had to walk away from The Walking Dead Ep. 1 for a moment before I could go on with it. There's a scene late in that episode that struck a nerve hard, and I had to take a break. I'm trying to imagine sharing that reaction with strangers in real time...I can't do it. I just can't feel what that would be like.

I think you would be hard pressed to find a better first post. Good job! :tup:

Man, maybe I just got lucky. I had 2 amazing high school English teachers that did incorporate some of the best sci-fi into their class. One introduced me to Ray Bradbury (There will come soft rains) and the other to Vonnegut (Harrison Bergeron). Those are still two of my favorite short stories ever. If you ever want a guided tour through the history of sci-fi, I'd suggest The Road to Science Fiction. It's six volumes long and has short stories and excerpts that trace and explain the development of science fiction as a genre. It was edited by James Gunn, the guy who founded the science fiction office at KU. I have the first four volumes, and they are some of my favorite short story collections of all time.

Eerg.....erhg....berrgh http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_9oIi8a07Ac

This doesn't have co-op, right? So were you just trading off, or one of you watching? Most everyone I know games to some extent, though there are some friends who only game a little bit (like one person who had only ever played Portal and Skyrim). I find with those people, the best thing to get them to branch out was to find games that they thematically liked, as you did with State of Decay. I found that it doesn't really matter how complex or simple the controls are if the person buys into wanting to experience more of the world. We had a couple out for dinner a few weeks ago. The husband games a fair amount, the wife very little. Games came up, and I showed her Brutal Legend (she's an old school metal head). She was enchanted instantly and wanted to borrow it. Didn't care what the gameplay was, she'd figure it out, as it was basically the perfect game for her and she had no idea such a thing existed.

No, he's creeper and has less soul in his eyes. He's also less believable than the Keeper. His rhetoric is routinely jaw dropping. He has referenced his fight to bring good old fashioned Christian conservative values to state government as being analogous to the fight to abolish slavery. Multiple times.

Na-na-na-na-na-naaaaaa, my governor's worse than your governor.

Yeah, by and large the bosses in DkS felt like they required a comparable skill as the environment you had to traverse to get to them. But I remember thinking the bosses in DeS felt like massive difficulty spikes, particularly if you were trying to fight them in melee. I've only played a bit since my last post, mostly faffed about in 4-1 to get a couple of items that I knew I wanted before going to 2-1. I haven't fought a boss besides Phalanx in 1-1 yet.

This banner is currently at the top of Joystiq. Pretty sure that text usually just has some semi-witty quip that hints at the review.

The Idle Thumbs (both the show and the forums) have really guided my gaming ever since the show came back. I hardly ever read reviews anymore except for a bit of entertainment about a game I already own, or one I know I'll never play. That said I like Danielle Riendeau over at Polygon. Philip Kollar over there also got my attention with his Last of Us review, though I can't say that I have read more than a few of his reviews. And when he was at Joystiq, I really liked Justin McElroy's takes on games (I can't honestly remember if I've read a review of his since he went to Polygon). Mostly because he could really advocate for why a broken game, or a game with some problems, was worth your time playing when everyone else would just slap a 6 on it and be done. Weird, 3 Polygon staff, and I actually don't even read that site very often.

Good lord, I just found that Kotaku article. That's a story I missed when it happened. I hate gamers some days.

I don't know how bad Brewer is, but I'd be willing to trade you Sam Brownback for her. Kansas only barely managed to avoid having the same bill go to the governor's desk, where our resident sociopath would have signed it gleefully. But the Senate republicans only killed it because they realized it was going to be a PR nightmare that would turn a lot of moderates and non-hateful Republicans against them. I'm sure the reasoning was much the same for Brewer.

*discussion of Jake's t-shirt* - Good radio Also, Calculords sounds like a perfect game. I actually really love it when you have two separate systems to manage.

To be fair, I live in a weird bubble. The local university has a dedicated office for the study of science fiction, which was the first of its kind founded decades ago. I hang around with a bunch of people who have worked there or been grad students in that program, so I get a picture that is heavily skewed in favor of a positive view on sci-fi in all its forms, even in academic circles. I know that isn't a common department to find at a university. in other departments in that college, it seems genre fiction is a bit more accepted as there are respected advocates on campus to advocate for its importance.

Probably an interesting discussion for another thread, but I think a pretty compelling argument could be made that there are a number of sci-fi film/tv works which have been as influential and carry the capital of even the great masters of cinema. Alien has probably spawned as many academic analyses as any one Bergman film (maybe not Kurosawa).

"Hoisted by my own petard" should be the title of a Thumbs podcast at some point. Also, the etymology of petard means that it could be very loosely interpreted as meaning, "Lifted by my own fart." In an alternate universe, a similar phrase could have meant that you achieved success through your own incompetence.

To counterpoint this, I thought BI's problem is that it established a relatively boring routine early (fight from medium/long range) due to your relative fragility, and then never really encouraged you to try something else. The opportunity for a dynamic change to combat existed, but the game did nothing to empower that. The combat was atrocious to me, until Charge was unlocked. With Charge, several of the right pieces of gear and a good shotgun, combat suddenly went from being a chore to being a blast. Combat became interesting once you had the full diversity of weapons and powers available. Charge also has some powerful synergy with other Vigors, which were fun to discover and learn. Unfortunately it was hard to realize that, as the combat had been mired in routine and boredom for too long. To be fair, the Vanguard is my favorite class from Mass Effect, and Charge basically turns Booker into a Vanguard. Which there is probably a good lesson there about how and when to withhold weapons/powers from a player. Do it too long, and the game seems boring. Give everything too early, and players will settle into a comfortable combination and are less likely to deviate.

A simulator with some kind of system where prophets and cults could develop and begin to create weird behaviors in your populace sounds amazing. As the world manager, if you try to encourage them because you see good benefits, they could run rampant. If you try to crush them, they could go underground and actually become harder to deal with in the long term. Imagine if the end game of Banished was that a Weird Rock cult developed, took control of the town and drove out a bunch of non-rock worshipers, resulting in you having to shepherd the new refugees to start another town somewhere.

-bespoke