prettyunsmart

I'm definitely tempted. I'm writing something about VR, which I think I started doing subconsciously so I could rationalize ordering one when they come out.

You can preorder an Oculus Rift on January 6th. VR is a thing you can pay money for and potentially receive a functioning consumer product.

And Valve also sold the only copy to Martin Shkreli before he got arrested.

I didn't think I'd have ten, but I totally do. In a sort of specific order but not really: Rocket League: The game I probably launched the most times this year. It fits perfectly with how I play games these days. I can sneak in a match or two as a break between the things I need to be doing without feeling too guilty about it. The Beginner's Guide: What can I say? I'm a sucker for introspective metafiction. Neon Struct: Die Augen der Welt: They made a Deus Ex-style game that feels like the original while removing all the clunky bits. Undertale: "You pet the dog. It was a good dog." Splatoon: It allowed me to feel like a kid...and a squid. Also, it was a shooter I could play online without hating humanity. Crypt of the Necrodancer: My Spelunk-a-like of the year. The soundtrack is the best, and when you get into the rhythm of the combat, it feels like you're dancing with skeletons. Contradiction: This man. Her Story: It was a great year for FMV mystery games that were great to play with another person (see Contradiction). Playing through Her Story with my wife was one of my favorite gaming experiences of the year, even if the story turned out to be a bit crap (or completely crap) at the end. The Witcher 3: How the hell did I finish this game? The fact that I actually stuck with a 60 hour video game when I barely finish any games these days is a feat in itself. Super Mario Maker: I made a Mario. It was neat. Honorable Mentions Until Dawn: For being the best game I watched someone else play this year. Metal Gear Solid V: For being the game I have the most mixed feelings about. Read Only Memories: For being the game that would probably be pretty high on my list of favorite games of the year if I hadn't just started playing it yesterday.

There are lots of things I like about Austin joining the GB East crew, but my favorite might be all the potential for awesome tabletop stuff that he brings. Fiasco was great. Now I just want him to run a Pathfinder game so Vinny can revive V-Bomb.

I've mostly been playing the main story since I heard that the game lets you keep going after the credits roll. I figured that what my character would do would be to pursue the main plot until the end, then worry about factions and other things like that. Now that I've actually made it to the end, though, I don't know if I feel much like building up settlements because I still want to see some more of the side quests that I haven't wrapped up yet (I overheard someone talking about the Museum of Witchcraft in Diamond City, which sounds pretty awesome), but I just don't know if I care too much about settlement building or crafting.

Oh man. I just found a postman outfit, and now I'm regretting not making my character look like Kevin Costner.

Now playing in my head for the foreseeable future:

There's an option under gameplay to turn the controller on and off (which I think you need to use the controller to activate) which lets you switch back to the keyboard. I was hoping for seamless switching between controller and keyboard since I'd like to explore with a gamepad and shoot with a mouse. Oh well. At least I have a dog friend.

I was seriously considering loading up a New Zealand VPN so I could play it today, then I thought about the total value of my Steam account and what I'd be losing if it got banned. Also, I there's all that work I'm supposed to be doing.

Hello! I'm a grad student (literature, but dabbling in rhet comp), and I'm currently teaching a pop culture studies class that's wrapping up its gaming unit today. Here's what I have assigned so far: Games Terror Aboard the Speedwell (we had just wrapped up a unit on horror films, so the thematic transition worked nicely) Frog Fractions QWOP Sportsfriends (in class) GTA V (in class) Monopoly (in class, using it to explain the concept of persuasive games) A collection of advergames (expanding the idea of what a persuasive game could mean) Cart Life The McDonald's Game Readings Clara Fernandez-Vera, Introduction to Game Analysis Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games Ian Bogost, Unit Operations My department just went through the process of putting together a game-themed first year writing course that ran for the first time this semester and is currently working on getting a couple of proper games studies courses approved by the college. I might be able to put you in touch with the people who taught the pilot courses here.

I've been meaning to recommend Hello from the Magic Tavern in this thread for a while, but I keep forgetting. It's a weekly worldbuilding podcast run by a mix of people who work at Jackbox Games and improv comedians from Chicago (kind of like Nightvale, but with multiple hosts and a much lighter tone). The premise is that Arnie Niekamp, producer at Jackbox, falls through a portal behind a Burger King and ends up stuck in a magical world called Foon. Each week he interviews someone different like a talking flower or a bridge troll along with two regular co-hosts, a shapeshifter/talking badger named Chunt and a wizard named Usidore. It's probably best to start from the beginning if you're interested. The jokes can be corny, but it has been one of my favorite new podcasts of the last year or so.

Pretty much this. I was going to say that a lot of people who find older movies hard to watch probably comes down to editing style. Older movies tended to hold shots longer, and often this means people see them as boring since we've been trained by more recent TV and film editing styles to expect shorter shots. For example, Citizen Kane has an average shot length of 12 seconds or so, while Iron Man 3 has an average shot length of 2.4 seconds. Even outside of big budget blockbuster movies, we're used to shorter shots. Look at a movie like The Grand Budapest Hotel (which keeps a decent pace, but isn't a blockbuster action movie). It's ASL is 5.3 seconds. EDIT: If you find any of this interesting, check out Cinemetrics, a giant database of information about film shots run by a faculty member at the University of Chicago.

This may not be in the spirit of the thread, but I could use some game suggestions around a theme. I'm teaching a unit about games for the first time ever in my class in the next few weeks, but I'm having trouble figuring out what I can assign that: Doesn't require spending money on hardware or software Would be playable on most any OS or mobile device Is something that people who don't play a lot of games can engage with The goal of the first couple days of the class is working out a method for analyzing video games, so the actual thematic content of the games doesn't matter as much as if they're representative examples of what games generally look like. I'm leaning toward looking at older arcade games for their simplicity and TWINE games for highlighting narrative, but I wish I could have something that my students would more immediately recognize as like the games they know and love. Thoughts?

Does anyone want a copy of Bionic Commando: Rearmed? I picked up the Humble Capcom Bundle because I've never played RE4, and I ended up getting a duplicate copy. Also, I don't think I've really given away too many of my other games listed in this post from June, so feel free to ask about any of them too.

I've been playing the expansion and I've been really enjoying it so far. It seems to be a bit more light-hearted than much of the Witcher 3, which is pretty nice. No grim-dark end of the world stuff. Just fun distractions like: I can tell it's heading to a more serious place as I reach the end of it, but I'm glad it gave me a reason to come back to the game. Also, I got this hat for Geralt, and I've refused to take it off since. It's made the more story-heavy cutscenes pretty fun in an unintentional way:

From a long term, media history perspective, I think there actually could be some value in developing a taxonomy of things we call games, mapped along a spectrum of mechanics driven competitive things to narrative given experiential things. But for now, the whole "is it a game" thing so quickly devolves into "is it a game for hardcore real gamers or a non-game for casual non-gamers" that we probably need years and years of critical distance before even trying to have that discussion.

I was able to move through the last few missions just by doing gold side ops when they showed up, but the last mission stubbornly refused to show up for several hours until I took Quiet out on a few side ops and used her abilities. Then, it appeared and the game promptly ended. So, it could be coincidence, but if people get stuck, it could be worth trying.

The same thing was happening to me. At first I wasn't doing all of the "important side-ops," but then I was still running out of story missions. I also ended up playing all the gold tape entries and raising my bond with Quiet and that seemed to do the trick. I think I ended up doing one repeat mission only before the credits rolled.

I also think the resource management side of the game is a bit in tension with the "open-world-Snake-simulator" side of things. This might be my own neuroses at work, but I always found myself looking at the amount a deployment would cost when I thought about bringing all the launchers and bombs with me, especially if I thought I could pull the job off with only a tranquilizer pistol. I know you get more money than you need just by doing missions and side-ops, but knowing that taking C4 with me would mean it would take marginally longer to get the next upgrade really kept me from branching out too much.

So a funny thing happened. I lost internet access for a few days, meaning I could only play the games that were already on my computer and had launched already. I hadn't started SOMA yet, and other stuff that I might have played would have been best with an internet connection (like Heroes of the Storm or Rocket League). So, I jumped back into Metal Gear. I played one side mission with Quiet as my buddy. I had her shoot everyone. As soon as I extracted the prisoner, mission 46 showed up. In spite of all my complaining (sorry!) I actually beat this game. I still think the way missions are unlocked is unnecessarily obscure. Like, nothing said "you have to take Quiet out and use her abilities otherwise you can't advance the story," but I'm pretty sure that's what was going on. But I'm still glad I played it. And now I have

I'm not sure why, but I just keep doing side missions and nothing new ever comes up. Which is fine. I still enjoyed my time with the game. But I don't know how much more of my (pretty limited) gaming time I want to spend coaxing the game into letting me finish it.

Huh. So do credits roll after the Quiet stuff? Or is getting the "true ending" the only way to actually finish chapter 2? I knew the game was unfinished, but the process of trying to wrap it up has been kind of absurd. I still like the game, but I think I'm pretty much done trying to finish it at this point. I declare myself to be a video game baby.

Is that required to advance the main story? I don't care about the true ending. I figure I'll never put in the time to see it. But now I'm stuck after 43. I did all the important side ops. I keep doing regular side ops and going back to mother base, but I have no new missions showing up. I've barely used Quiet because of gross character design stuff, and because of how useful D-Dog is. Do I need to max her bond out to finish the game?