ariskany_evan

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Everything posted by ariskany_evan

  1. Titanfall

    https://twitter.com/VinceZampella/status/437980161263153152 Too long, didn't click: 21GB download, 48GB installed. Wowza! Sad to say I won't be picking this game up now. I've only got a 75GB windows partition on my MacBook, so I'd be pretty limited in what else I could have installed. It's the kind of game I'd love to have sitting on my hard-drive to pick up and play anytime, but I'd be uninstalling it constantly to make room for other large games. Oh well! I'm probably in the minority of who this will affect.
  2. Banished - The Indie City Simulator

    Re: Souring on the late-game Is there a community/city-building game out there that has a really great late-game? I tend to find that I play the beginning-middle of these games over and over, and I rarely stick around for the late-game. Either I run out of things to do, or it gets too complicated for me to manage. Tropico's missions were a great way to get me to try different play styles and give me a win condition, but that specifically skirts around the lack of late-game as the mission usually threw a hurtle in the early/mid-game. I'm curious to know if there's been a game like Banished, etc. that had a late-game that wasn't just a more complicated version of the early game.
  3. Games giveaway

    I've got Steam keys from the most recent Humble Bundle! Hit me with a PM if you want! Dust: An Elysian Tail Guacamelee! Gold Edition FEZ
  4. Movie/TV recommendations

    Made my way through the first episode of True Detective on HBO last night. Loved it! I really felt transported watching it. Nothing took me out of it. edit: Thanks, Tegan!
  5. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    Gave Dust: An Elysian Tail a good hour of my time. I thought it might be pretty at first, but it quickly fell into the "so pretty it's garish" category (with the Trine games). I walked through a village and got myself about 8 quests. Too many quests to start the game with! Level design felt pretty uninspiring. The character felt floaty. The monsters all lined up in a row felt unnaturally placed. Collecting the coins and item drops felt floaty. It feels like there's a good depth of game in there, but everything around it doesn't appeal to me, so I'm quitting!
  6. Recently completed video games

    Finished up Gunpoint. Such a perfect thing. The puzzles felt complicated enough that I had to put some thought into it, but easy enough that the flow moved unbroken. The way it felt in the hands was brilliant. Pulling off a complicated maneuver on the first try was super satisfying and always felt earned. And the length!! If the market is going to be flooded with so much good content, the games need to be shorter, otherwise I will always be 20 feet deep. Tom Francis did such a good job! On to Dust: A Tail on PCP. howlongtobeat.com is telling me 9.5 hours. Seems a bit long for a side-scroller... We'll see!
  7. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    I ended up quitting Dragon Age Origins a while back after about 10 hours because I found it too dull. I couldn't connect with any of the characters and the world didn't feel alive. I was probably just depressed when I played it... I remember when it first came out people uniformly complained about difficulty spikes, so you may just be hitting one of those walls. Here's one weird tip for a winning strategy: <spoiler> Lower the difficulty? </spoiler>
  8. Harmonix's Chroma - The Rhythm Multiplayer FPS

    I hope Cage's 4'33" prevents people from casting spells.
  9. Loadout: Am I the only one seeing this? [NSFW]

    So very glad this discussion happened! Makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. I think there's a difference between being someone with an overt agenda, and someone who is caught feeling like something is questionable (who still has an intrinsic agenda, but is doing his best to acknowledge that and be open-minded in choosing how to express themselves). Prettyunsmart's question of "Am I the only one seeing this?" comes from a place of loneliness. I watch [a show I won't name because it's not pertinent] and think "I like this show and these comedians, but it also seems homophobic." I can't just sit there and not talk about it! Otherwise a feeling of extreme loneliness overwhelms me. So I force my wife to discuss it with me (thankfully she puts up with me and my lack of friends). So I am always appreciative of someone explicitly and clearly pointing out some aspects of a game that could be culturally/politically problematic. And I'm also appreciative of people disagreeing, as long as it's not couched in dismissive-ness. Nothing worse than seeing a discussion derailed to argue about whether we should be discussing that thing in the first place. Everyone here is awesome.
  10. Recently completed video games

    Finished up Rouge Legacy. I needed a game to play and not think about things including the game itself, and this absolutely hit the mark. Took me about 16 hours, which for this style of game felt too long. Definitely went stale by the end, but that just may be my having over-leveled. The whole aspect of winning by attrition appeals to my timid/addictive personality, but undermines some of the feeling of accomplishment. On to Gunpoint!!!
  11. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    Ha! I've found as long as you live close to where you work, the traffic ain't a problem. Also meditating and/or Idle Thumbs help when you do get stuck... I have officially quit Farcry 3. Thanks all for letting me know that the rest of the story isn't worth it. Moved on to Gunpoint and I don't think I'll be quitting that.
  12. Saturday Morning Streams

    Wife and I will be doing some spring cleaning, so I'll throw it on the TV! Just realizing now I've never actually seen any DayZ footage. Heard so many stories about it, though, that I'm curious to see if it matches up to my imagination....
  13. Titanfall

    I'd love to know what words you'd use to describe a neck snap execution that is more to your liking.
  14. Titanfall

    Weirdly excited by this one, though I'm definitely going to hold off a few weeks after launch to let the hype die down before purchasing. It seems like there's an amazing sense of possibility for player roles/choices in a match, but until people have been playing it with the public, there's really no telling. There could be some horribly boring, rote manner of playing through a match that one user figures out and blogs about, then everyone high-level starts using, etc. Until it's tested in the wild for a few weeks, there's no telling how dynamic it actually is.
  15. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    Had to quit GTA5 due to a yellow light of death on my PS3. - Was surprised to find they still prize the animation of the character over control. I really could care less if my character realistically slows down to a stop after sprinting. Or those moments where you're trying to turn your character around quickly in a gunfight and he turns like a boat. - Wife and I moved to LA this past June, so we were psyched to virtually explore the city while physically doing the same. Found it funny that Silverlake/Echo Park are relegated to a weird lonely street with a bunch of hipsters walking around. I guess the crazy hill-iness of that region was not fun to play in. Otherwise I feel like they did a wonderful job capturing how beautiful this area is. - Also surprised that there's not a lot of new emergent gameplay, if any. I had hoped at this point that there'd be things to do "in the moment". This ties in with my desire for more direct controls: I want to boot up a game and pretty immediately be playing. Not enter into a very pretty lobby that has the same limited world interaction as GTA3 (sorry for the hyperbole). - Put about 7 or 8 hours into multiplayer. Even with such a huge playerbase it was hard to find lobbies that would fill up for anything but racing. The whole thing felt sharp-edged, inelegant, and scattered. That being said, I enjoyed my time with the game. Just not that bummed to be forced to stop playing. I love those mountains! Anytime I want to escape the city, Griffith Park is right there (I'm sure the beach has a similar effect for those on the west side). Loving LA thankfully seems to be a popular opinion for those that live here. The only hate I've encountered about the city was from friends and family on the east coast. (not that there are't terrible, horrible things about this city. It's just been the best place I've ever lived in so far...).
  16. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    Considering quitting FarCry 3. Cleared all of the outposts on both islands, but haven't done much of the story on the second island. My character feels very overpowered at this point. FarCry 3 is exactly why I dislike narrative-lead games longer than 15 hours. I'm on that descending slope where I'm not that excited to play anymore, but I want to see the story through. They nailed the whole "bunch of ignorant bros on a brocation broing it up", but haven't been leaning hard enough on the whole "here's why they're problematic" part. Me, I'm a non-bro, so I'm incredibly hateful towards the character I'm playing as, and I'm pretty sure the game wants me to feel that way... though it's as if they realized that bros make up a good percentage of FPS sales, so they sanded down the whole critique part to a place where it's really up to the player to interpret things. So I'm having a weird time with it! Anyone recommend pushing through the second island's story? Or should I join the Quitter's Club on this one?
  17. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    My brother said: "Check out Judee Sill's self-titled debut." I said "OK!" or something of the sort. I tend to trust my brother's recommendations, so I did no research about when the record was made, who she is, etc. I thought: Joni Mitchell on acid. This is pretty, well recorded, and kinda bizarre. She makes some really weird compositional/arrangement choices and pulls them off effortlessly. She also has this way of pronouncing certain words where she twangs them in a very unfortunate way. Needless to say, I was sold! The lyrics for the first group of tracks are all weird imagery with animals and crowns and stuff. It wasn't until I got to the 6th track on the album that she starts singing very directly about Jesus. My wife laughed so hard that I didn't realize that all of her tracks deal pretty directly with Christian themes and imagery. So now instead of crazy acid-loving folkster, I'm thinking crazy religious folkster. Then I read her wiki: Reformed burgler, sometimes prostitute, HUGE drug user (died of a heroin overdose in the late 70s). So I was half right! She's a crazy acid-loving religious folkster. What an odd combination.... The first 5 tracks on that album are golden. Highly recommended!
  18. Dota Today 10: Dunkin' Bro-nuts

    I sympathize with Brad's empathy. Taunts are fun when playing with friends, especially the repetitious comedic effect of macro-ing the same line over and over again. But a taunt, even with the silliest most sincere intentions, is still technically provocative. It's not that there is definitely someone out there that the taunt offends, it's that there could be someone out there that it offends. Maybe Brad's a bit of an empath?
  19. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    Seeing Oneohtrix on Friday at the Echoplex!! I still struggle with his most recent album. I can't figure out when to listen to it. It always feels perpendicular to whatever mood/setting I'm in. Really curious to see how it plays out live... I used to work in a mastering studio, so I am no stranger to the beautiful sounds of a proper hi-fi system. It's the kind of thing that makes you dig through your collection again just to see what new details emerge. It makes listening so much more engaging. I've found certain strains of medical marijuana do the same thing, it should be noted. Might be cheaper than getting a new hi-fi system....
  20. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    Blasting this at my office as both of my bosses are gone for the day:
  21. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    Oh man, I am jealous that you're opening the treasure chest of Flaming Lips content for the first time!! Re: Unknown Mortal Orchestra over-listening: Isn't it sad the way that one falls out of love with music? It's this weird, slow descent into knowing something too well. I tend to find it so depressing that at the first hint of over-doing it I pull out and stop listening entirely. I'd rather cement the music in a place of love.
  22. Dark Souls(Demon's Souls successor)

    Noted mysterious electronic producer Burial just posted his first "selfie" and wrote a note to the public on his label's website. This quote made me smile: "Hopefully by the end of most years I have done some tunes that are decent enough to release. but Dark Souls 2 is on the horizon soon so I'm not sure if I will have many new tunes for a while because I need to play that game a lot. But I'm going to try to get some new tunes together before it comes out." Source: http://www.hyperdub.net/burial/
  23. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    I've been attempting to make my way through Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes on my phone. I love the battle system. It's fun, it's puzzly, it's kind of randomly crushing. I just enjoy it. I want to play that when I pick up my phone. But instead I have to spend time wandering slowly from walking point to walking point, speaking to someone about "betrayal" or "the demons!" or "I'm a nutty wizard!" I think it's a problem with setup. A lot of games are centered around a win-lose gameplay system. Thus narrative conflict is used to justify the need to continue looping through. Speaking broadly and subjectively: narrative conflict requires a setup for someone to actually care. Within 2 minutes of booting up M&M:CoH you're thrown into conflict. The Elves shout at each other about the dire circumstances. "THIS IS SUCH A BIG DEAL. OMG. THE DEMON DUDE IS HERE. THAT'S A BIG DEAL." The urgency feels forced. It's hard to care about the characters when you don't know who they are. A knight goes back to his home castle and everyone's like "YOU'RE A TRAITOR PRINCE!!!" And I'm like "WHO IS THIS GUY I'M PLAYING AS???? CAN I PLS JUST PLAY THE PUZZLES??" There is no other way that this would have worked given the gameplay systems implemented by Capy; there's no way for them to establish the world and characters other than through conflict and/or super long dialog between two or more portraits. Chris mentioned on the most recent podcast just clicking through all of the story stuff in the Banner Saga to get to the battles, but some part of me really struggles with that. I'm getting to the point where I have to appreciate a game as a whole entity otherwise it's a waste of my time.
  24. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    I will always prefer The Soft Bulletin!!! Flame war on!!!! Soft Bulletin was the perfect blend of Drozd/Coyne. Simple, beautiful pop songs (Coyne) with beautiful, lush arrangements (Drozd). Yoshimi went in a compositional direction that wasn't as interesting for me. Felt very much so like a purely Coyne lovechild. Still got a lot of love from me in high school, but I've never gone back like I do to Soft Bulletin. The horrendous keyboard orchestrations juxtaposed with the most beeeeeautiful drum sound:
  25. InFAMOUS Vanaman

    Yeah! Infamous 2 was a snoozefest for me because the sound design in the city was terrible. Clambering around the city I was accompanied by the sound of crickets. It felt very weird. Could only make it through about an hour or so before i gave up (also due to gameplay feeling too similar to the first installment). I just got a PS4 because my PS3 just gave me the yellow light of death. Even though I have zero games to play on it, this is on my wait and see list... Curious to watch people play this on the streaming channel when it comes out. The Infamous formula felt like it buckled under the weight of one 30 hour experience, so I hope they've done a lot in making it fresh again.