ariskany_evan

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Posts posted by ariskany_evan

  2. Posted

    So there's like a whole lot more past the block picker upper. There's upgrades and it gets pretty crazy. There's also more to it than just to use it to jump over things. The creator spent a lot of time on that gun, trying to get it all working and such. Especially with the upgrades to it later.

     

    Also look at the map, it's a pretty good indicator as to where to take you next.

     

    All I'm saying is that it's a shame to quit just as the puzzles start getting good.

     

    There was something about coming to an obstacle that was tall enough that can't be jumped over, but short enough that I can easily imagine climbing over (if the game allowed for that kind of input verbiage) that felt so inelegant.  The solution was equally inelegant:

     

    pick up a tiny blue block with a recently acquired tool and attach that blue block to the obstacle. Jump onto the tiny, minuscule block, then jump over the obstacle.  My feet must be teensy-tiny, and my leg-strength out of this world!

     

    Prior to that I had just been wandering around, exploring the space, marveling at the twists and turns and surprises.  It's a beautiful game to experience in first person, but as soon as that tool was chunked onto my screen, the immersion crumbled.  The acquisition of a fixed object on my screen in a world that is all about disorientation seemed antithetical to what I wanted out of the game.  I didn't want to master the space, which is where it seemed I was being pushed.

     

    "The Don't Look Down" room fall could have been so much more effective if the tool wasn't there.  Or when you're confronted with white space filling up your entire screen, it's a lot less disorienting when there's a fixed object in view. It centers my gaze; I now see the game through the tool.  Everything I come across needs to be clicked on with both mouse buttons to make sure the tool doesn't do anything.

     

    And again, totally happy and positive on this game.  It just feinted in a way that told me the rest of my time wouldn't equal up to the joy of the first hour and half.

  3. Posted

    I was worried going in that it would be a Jodorowsky love fest, and it certainly starts that way with all the talking heads whispering their accolades about meeting him at a party, etc.

     

    But as the film goes on, I noticed that the filmmakers weren't editing him entirely positively.  It felt like a true capture of a man and his project.  The more we find out about the project, the more impossible it sounds.

     

    The amount of pure optimism was astounding.  "We're going to make a film that replicates the effects of an acid trip."  The gigantic script, the all-star cast and crew that basically amounted to a 17-year-olds wishlist of who would make the coolest movie ever.

     

    So there was something in me that cheered at the fact that it didn't get made.  It revealed an ugly part of myself that quietly believes that we're not capable of affecting the kind of massive-scale positive change through art that Jodorowsky prescribes.  I'm also the kind of guy whose wife calls stifling because I ask questions about when she thinks she'll have time to make a pie crust when we already have a busy evening planned.  So as the movie unfolds his growing ambitions, I'm the guy going "You're crazy. There's no way you can pull this off and stay true to your vision."  So I left the theater with an ugly feeling of self-satisfaction.

     

    But then again, someone more optimistic than me could leave the movie feeling bummed that it didn't get made.  Awed by Jodorowsky's ambitions.  The filmmakers did a great job of presenting as much of a neutral palate as they could (while still telling a story).

     

    The music is fantastic.  Spacey krautrock makes everything amazing.

  4. Posted

    They've been tweeting recently to that effect.  Steam will be available at 10am pacific and "later that day" on PS4.

     

    My hope is that the PS4 is out by the time I get home from work, so I can start the download before I go out on the town for some birthday libations (whiskey, then ramen (then Transistor)).  The joy of being on the west coast means that there's at least some hope it'll be out tonight before bedtime. :)

  5. Posted

    I finally saw Frozen! I liked it, and it's easily the most interesting in-house thing Disney's done in ages, but I feel like it's still shy of greatness. Three points:

     

    1) what was with the first fourty minutes or so being nonstop musical numbers and then never doing one again? Not even a reprise at the end or something.

    2) I really liked the tiny changes to Elsa's appearance and mannerisms when she goes off on her own. It was a good way to visually hint that she might in fact be the villain, a theme that they call back to a few times even if it never actually comes to fruition. There's a little bit of Malificient in her by the time "Let it Go" finishes.

    3) making that goddamn snowman sound like a normal person and not give him a goof voice made him way, way more tolerable than expected; even if it seems to contrast with his look.

     

    I just watched it, too!  It had a scattered plot, I didn't like any of the characters save the snowman, and the world felt limited and unimaginative.  It felt like a half-baked movie to me.  The music lacked a stylistic cohesion, but I knew coming in that there's not much of a chance of a modern Disney movie having music I'll enjoy.  I think I had set my expectations too high, having heard people proclaiming its greatness.

  6. Posted

    Quitting Antichamber.  Gave it a solid hour and a half.  Loved what I played!  The exploration and level design was super fun.  It was super good.

     

    I was miffed once I found the block picker-upper.  Had been hoping this could be an input-less experience.  Once I had to start picking up tiny blocks and placing them on things to jump over things, my interest started to plummet.  I explored a bunch, pretty much until the timer in the hub room ran down, secretly hoping that the game would end, that there was no proper ending, just an attempt to get as "far" as possible in the time limit.  Alas!

     

    The sound design was so nice.  I loved being in the world.  Just got to a point where every room I returned to felt like a dead end, so I'm happy to have stopped while I was still feeling good about it.

  7. Posted

    Friday nights are for writing a threatening email to my university library because they have restricted my ability to request books through interlibrary loan.

     

    Hahahaha. I used to work interlibrary loan at a small liberal arts college, so I've been on the receiving end of some of those emails. :D

  8. Posted

    Was driving to yoga last week and saw a group of about 20 dudes running down the sidewalk on Sunset Blvd hauling heavy-looking tires and wearing crossfit shirts (there's a studio about 2 blocks away from where I saw them).  Some had looped around a bus stop and were making their way back.  Kind of terrifying!

     

    So that said, I'll stick with my yoga practice for now, though I need to start getting more aerobic stuff going on as my metabolism is finally giving out (and I don't feel like making changes to my eating/drinking habits just yet).

  9. Posted

    This has been my favorite as of late:

     

    U Talkin' U2 To Me?

     

    Scott (Aukerman) and (Adam) Scott talk all things U2!

     

    Recommended if you like those two people and think they're pretty hilarious.  Liking U2 is not a necessity, and in fact can be more funny if you don't.  They don't talk much about U2, in fact.  It's so gleeful and energetic.  Start with episode 1, as the series really tells a story, and they expect the podcast to have an end (hopefully for their sake) pretty soon.

  10. Posted

    Pilot Hunter isn't just Attrition with a different scoring system--it plays much differently. There isn't as much reason to farm grunts and you usually call down a couple more titans per round than in Attrition. The change in focus makes the mode stand out, and it is actually a lot of fun to play (and seemed to be where some of the best players were congregating).

     

    I have to wonder if the "improved" matchmaking system fragmented the player base all to hell.

     

    Interesting that that's the case.  Being as terrible/casual as I am at the game, Pilot Hunter plays like "Attrition Without XP" for me: I've only gotten pilot kills over 4 in a match once or twice in my time with the game.  Cool that at a high-level of play it brings out a different feel!

  11. Posted

    Yeah!  $3 is great, though the deal is now over... I've played it for about 30 minutes and am enjoying it as an interactive art space.  Have just started coming upon things that resemble more standard first-person video game puzzles, though.  YUCK!  :P

  12. Posted

    I don't think you can say with certainty that the base is too small (even if that is the case), just that those modes were the least popular. If a lot of people were playing variety pack and dropping when one of those modes came up, it doesn't matter how big the user base is if no games are starting.

     

    Of course I'm not speaking with any certainty. :)  Just thought it was a coincidence that people were noting here this morning about not being able to find matches anecdotally, then Respawn goes ahead and makes the changes to the match type selection screen.  Sorry for my hyperbole!

  14. Posted

    http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/16/5723996/titanfall-pc-ctf-pilot-hunter-removed-private-match-variety

     

    I guess this is another sign that the PC player-base is too small to support so many modes.  Great that they're analyzing the data and making bold changes, though I assume this is going to anger whatever subset of players had a love for CTF.  Pilot Hunter is just Attrition with a different scoring system, right?  I personally tend to go for the campaign first as I haven't been able to finish up the militia side, then (when that usually fails) go straight to variety pack, so I'm not smarting from the change.

  15. Posted

    Mornings are dead. I've only been able to play in the afternoon and evening.

     

    Yeah, I've tried a few times to play on a Saturday morning and definitely takes a good 10 minutes to find a game. (pc)

     

    Got two rounds in last night with two of the new Expedition maps.  Swampthing and VR training.  Both are fun!  Swamp has great verticality, and wall-running between trees is great.  There's a lot of natural high-ground, so there's plenty of opportunity to pick off titans or jump down for some rodeos.  Pilots feel nicely camouflaged (when they're not out in the open).  The VR training map on the other hand is so clean, pristine, and well lit (my framerate skyrocketed up when I first fell in) that there's not a lot of places for pilots to hide.  They didn't have to design for "believability" so there's tons of wall-running corridors.  I almost never get in my titan, so I can't speak for how they feel in-titan.

     

    I'm only on gen 1, lv 34 and of course was placed against a team with a few gen 10s....  Let's just say that my goal in these games is to die as little as possible ala Dota 2 rather than trying to constantly get kills...  Certainly has reminded me to just have fun exploring the maps and not just sprint to the red dots on my map at all times.

     

    I was secretly hoping that the expedition pack would update the main title background.  Maybe it's that it's rendering it in realtime (my settings are on low since it's been so hot in LA), but it always looks like badly compressed video.  Something about their font choice, too, just rubs me the wrong way.  :)

  16. Posted

    Quitting Monaco!

     

    Came as part of a bundle; I don't think I would have bought the game otherwise.  Curious nonetheless.

     

    I enjoyed some of the art (mission briefing screens), but it mostly didn't appeal to me.  Characters had an abstract design that didn't communicate clearly.  I had trouble parsing who were civilians, who had weapons, who would just run around and alert people.  I also had trouble figuring out when I was carrying an item, how it worked, etc.  I just ran through the early levels, and the fact that between levels/floors in a stage the guards don't carry over meant it didn't feel like there was much reason to not cause a bunch of chaos if you had a clear path.

     

    I also wasn't necessarily in the mood for stealth gameplay, so I wasn't as receptive to the game as I could otherwise be.

  17. Posted

    Me too, I loved playing through each episode in a single sitting and treating it like a TV miniseries, usually taking a day or two off in between episodes.  

     

    I love having a month or two between episodes.  Makes the "previously on" sections useful.  I played two episodes back-to-back within a few days in the first season, and I found the summation of something I just witnessed the day before to perform a strange "reduction" of the expansive space of each episode.  I like having a bit of time to live in the experience of each episode, let it fade from my immediate memory, then have it jogged through the highlight reel.  (I also play each episode over a week or two, usually in 20-30 minute chunks when my wife and I can find the time).

  18. Posted

    What do you with 9-5 desk jobs do when/if you have downtime?  I struggle with feeling guilty and nervous about my time use when I have nothing pressing to work on.  (And this might just be me), but I also find that prolonged periods of downtime in a day makes me feel detached and less capable of communicating when work/phone calls do pop up.  Any tips?

  22. Posted

    I was lead cinematic artist for the episode of Walking Dead Season Two that just came out. It was my first time being in an official lead role on a game. It would be cool if people bought and played it and, ideally, didn't hate it.

     

     

    Congrats!!!!  Wife and I scrambled into starting the second episode last night when we saw the third was releasing yesterday.  Some of the shots and framing so far have been spectacular.  Psyched to see your work!

  23. Posted

    It's a beautiful barn-like structure in upstate New York, outside of Cooperstown, a town only notable for the fact that it has the Baseball Hall of Fame.  They still seem like a pretty small operation, and they do everything in-house.  Thanks to the Duuvel ownership they have access to a nice bottling line and distribution, hence why I seem to find them everywhere these days.

     

    The one notable thing from the tour compared to my other tours was that they do open fermentation for a few days (or weeks?) when it's fresh out of the boiling kettle thing.  That allows yeasty foam to build up, which they skim off the top and reinsert during the bottling process, which is I think what is the source of their bottle conditioning...  My beer cooking science is pretty rough, though, so I may have mixed that up.  :D

     

    Allagash is still my favorite.  Tiny operation in Portland, Maine. Tons of experimenting with recipes and aging in different kinds of barrels.  Which meant that the tasting at the end of the tour had all sorts of stuff you can't find for sale.  The Ommegang tasting was just of the stuff you can get regularly and didn't even include their new Game of Thrones brew. Not that I'm complaining.  Trying all their beers at once side-by-side is still interesting!

  24. Posted

    I have a job interview tomorrow! Finally! It's for a position at a brewery, which I expect to be fairly hard work, but is probably one of the last places I expected to get called back for.

     

    Good luck!!  All the tours I've done at breweries (Ommegang, Allagash, Saranac, next weekend The Bruery) people seem pretty happy!  Though it does seem like a physically demanding job depending on what you'd be doing.  I've got too much of an addictive personality/weak constitution to work at a place like that.  :D

  25. Posted

    Enjoying the new Gobby record!  It's beautifully textured, deconstructed dance music.  Great for a late-night swamp party.

     

    http://gobbymusic.bandcamp.com/album/wakng-thrst-for-seeping-banhee   (it's on spotify too)

     

    Also this review is terrible! http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=14691  

     

    I want to quote the entire review.  It's so bad!

     

    "It sounds like Gobby took whole songs and sent them through a shredder, and while that kind of reckless method can be fun, it could just as easily wear on your nerves."  In summation: Depending on who you are and what type of person you are (I certainly did my best to make sure you were entirely confused as to what kind of person I, the reviewer, am!), you might like this album or you might not.  3/5