Golden Calf

God I'm so bad haha. The game is deceptively complex, with all the different variables going on at once, from attack pattern to damage to armor to shovel type, etc., etc. It definitely fills that Spelunky hole where I can play 30mins-1hr tops each day and get a little better each time though. I think the shopkeeper's singing goes a long way in establishing a lighthearted tone, plus the mellowness of zone 2, among other things. They made a lot of great artistic choices. I've found bard mode is actually really useful in building good habits. Before I'm decent at handling specific enemy movements, I'll usually just end up flailing when I run into them. Bard lets me take as long as I need to plan and internalize good patterns.

Each weapon has a different area of effect. So, with a dagger (only hits 1 space in front of you), you would have to move first, but with a broadsword (hits 3 spaces in a line perpendicular to your facing) you can just hit it from where you're standing, by pressing either of the two directions where the enemy is.

I vote Danielle for Far Cry 5 protagonist.

The actual point of Velvet Sundown is to convince everyone on the ship that the environmentalist's petition is actually about legalizing whale bestiality and not to sign it.

Cut off their limbs, so good.

You're not alone. That guy's writing is so hilariously lame, and he always seems to think he has an interesting take.

God I loved those games so much. They're basically my earliest gaming memories. That and maybe zoombinis or math blaster. I especially love the weird galaga clone mode in Spy Fox 2 (I think?), which I played for hours and hours as a kid.

The environment is pretty awesome, easily one of my favorites from the game - the paths weave around one another a bunch in a way that makes exploration pretty fun, and the art is really cool. Two of the three bosses are utter garbage though, reusing models/mechanics from the rest of the game, and I didn't find the final one very interesting. Overall I've still been enjoying it though.

Speaking of Slate podcasts, the Double X Gabfest (their feminist cast) spent a third of the episode this week discussing a video game.

From Harry S Truman's Wikipedia page: Makes me sad to think how he would seem like a joke nowadays.

Ya I love that stuff. Edit: oops, meant to put that all in one post. Silly me.

Blood gives you 1/2 a heart back after you kill 10 enemies. It seems really hard to say what the best weapon type is. They alter your move set so much that each is going to have situational advantages and disadvantages that you will have to work around, which I think is kind of cool. But in terms of materials, I think high-level players are going to tend first toward glass (highest damage, breaks upon being hit), then obsidian (next highest damage, depends on you staying on the beat), then titanium (next highest damage, no conditions).

There was a neogaf thread a few days back along similar lines that he explicitly mentions (that's what I get for only skipping through before posting). It was pretty infuriating, but there was also some good pushback. Good video.

He works for a consulting group called Hit Detection, with a few other former games journalists (Jeff Green, Robert Koffee(sp?)).

Surely this can't be right, right? I remember hearing this sentiment at my school's feminist club this past year, and that it bothered me at the time, but I didn't think about it enough in the moment to be able to respond without sounding dismissive or douchey. But it really bothers me. It seems to be abandoning a definition which, though sometimes difficult to prove in individual cases, is very strong and useful, in favor of one which elides the problem of proof but is so feeble that it can be boiled down to 'any behavior/expression a woman dislikes and chooses to call sexist'. Two points: First, if we're going to be fair-minded, we have to let MRAs make the same move. If a man feels he is the victim of a misandrist act, he is, regardless of others' intentions / the facts of the situation. This is not a world I want to live in. Second, the definition is completely incapable of distinguishing between acts which are superficially similar but different in important ways. Let's say there's a guy who thinks women shouldn't get drunk, that they are just asking to be assaulted if they drink in college. And let's say there's another guy who thinks that everyone should refrain from drinking in college, that the type of drinking done in college leads to bad habits of binge drinking, that losing control of your faculties is dangerous (for all sorts of reasons) and immoral (leave aside whether you agree with him, or even think he's reasonable). Let's say that the guy 1 tells all his nieces "Be careful around alcohol, it's dangerous," and guy 2 tells his nieces and nephews the exact same thing. One of each niece perceives the advice as sexist (assumes guy 1's ideology in both cases). Under this definition they're both right. I claim that this shuts down legitimate beliefs / arguments / actions. Using this definition can't be an argument, it's a foreclosure. Feminism doesn't need a nuclear option, I think it already usually has the strongest argument in the room. Side note: several of my friends (some of whom are Jewish) and I have on multiple occasions been accused of antisemitism when we criticize the Israeli government. I just can't concede that perceived prejudice constitutes actual prejudice. To be clear, I absolutely do not think that even a significant minority of claims of sexism are frivolous. But this is why there's no reason to weaken the definition. Also, I'm not saying people should have to justify at length any claim of sexism. If someone's obviously being sexist, and plays coy/naive when called on it, they can fuck off. I am suddenly aware I've likely thrown myself into the mainsplain pit. Let me know how much of an idiot I am : \ Edit: Looks like Problem Machine beat me to the punch by 4 mins, and much more succinctly. Slightly reassuring that I'm not alone, I suppose.

haha that rocket is great

that bit is forever emblazoned in my mind. It asks deep questions: what does it mean to be human? who's the badass biotic bitch now?

I genuinely believe the medium would be pretty damn good without all that crap. I never watch/read/listen to anything with stylistic choices like those in Dragon's Crown, and I really don't feel like I'm missing out on anything worth caring about by doing so. If you had a game whose character representations were as racist as Dragon's Crown's are sexist, I think there would be a huge outcry and significantly fewer defenders of that game's artistic choices. If you check out Danielle's review of the game, she explicitly states that the gameplay elements were perfectly fine: "It's a fun mix of RPG tropes and dynamic brawler action", so it's not exactly like going to a football game and focusing on one minor aspect; cheerleaders, alcohol can be pretty cleanly separated from the core game of football in a way that art just can't be from video games. It's a core part of the experience, something the designers thought about and worked on for months as a central component of their project. With regard to violence / other concerns: fair enough. I'd be very happy to see games rely on violence much less, or at least much more thoughtfully. However, the existence of other off-putting artistic choices in no way invalidates a particular concern. We're all capable of evaluating given works from many different perspectives. It's not an either/or. With Dragon's Crown, I think it's fair to say that at this point the artistic choices are basically the only interesting part of that game from a critical standpoint, several months after its release. No review I saw claimed that the gameplay was particularly innovative or well designed in a way that makes it still worth discussing. For me, it would have seemed much weirder if the hosts tried to ventriloquize some imagined other person who wasn't bothered by the art. They don't do that with other game elements: when they criticize particular game mechanics, they don't spend a ton of time running down a bunch of possible other reactions. They try to honestly explain their own perspective / experience. Why should they do any different when discussing aesthetic choices? This is a sort of baffling question to me: what else should you be using to evaluate a game besides your opinions and beliefs, especially when it comes to artistic choices? If you find a particular food gross, you can appreciate some parts of how it's made all you want, but you're still going to find it gross.

Jesus did they hire a 12 year old to run their corporate twitter?

I think you mean objectively better

What the fuck do people even say instead of "He was like, I was like" in place of "he said, I said"? Repeating 'said' over and over in quick succession sounds horrible to me! But now I sound like a complete moron whenever I describe people talking. I hate it. Goddamn California.

Chris' experience with Close Encounters happened pretty much in reverse for me with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I wasn't allowed to watch the movie growing up, because the bonkers blood spray from one scene (I don't remember which) was deemed too graphic by my mother. Other children however, particularly the ones I remember having the worst senses of humor, repetitively parroted so many goddamn punch lines from that movie growing up that, when I finally got around to watching it, all I could hear was a bunch of shitty middle schoolers. I don't think I made it past the first 30 mins. To this day, I am incapable of seeing that movie as anything other than hackneyed garbage, even though I know it's not (or might not be, anyway) the creators' fault.

How much would it be? I'd happily pitch in.

Jesus