SuperBiasedMan

I'm really hoping that we get a new Cooper soon. Seeing him shuffle around mostly not there is intensely distressing to me. I didn't find the breakfast scene funny at all, it actually felt torturous (in an interesting way). This honestly has more to do with my personal fears about mental illness/degradation, but it makes these sections very hard to watch especially when other characters in the show treat Coop with so little care. I'd love if the coffee 'woke' him up, but that seems a very quick and sudden fix. I'm expecting it to be longer and more drawn out.

Just about doppelgängers. My read was always that people have doppelgängers in the lodge, specifically Leland and Coop. Leland himself, however, is the one partnered with Bob because he's a willing participant. Remember how Lelands doppelgänger "did not kill any body"? Cooper would not be willing, thus Bob had to partner with the doppelcoop to take over a physical form.

I think this is a decent response given the circumstances. They can't please everyone, he can write this post to show they're listening and aware. I think they've made mistakes, but missteps are inevitable and how you respond to them is what matters more. Unfortunately lots of people as fans can't accept their view of a work being undermined, and lots of people also seem to think problematic things need to be fixed as if they can become pure. I just hope they can handle things better going forward, without stumbling over themselves being too careful.

To clarify, my Trump comment was just about people insisting that X could never happen, just because they consider it ludicrous. Yet both Trump and Brexit happened, in spite of the sureness they wouldn't.

There is in fact a Jackbox Party Pack for the Switch: http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/the-jackbox-party-pack-3-switch

Generally I think the doomsday stuff is just silly fun. Bit legitimately with CRISPR, I don't understand how scientists can so confidently assert that no-one would do anything bad with it, in a world where Trump got elected.

I eagerly await a Gamecube version of those.

Ah I just meant that at first, when I did the motion controls wrong I was too distracted to think about the game properly. In the end I like the motion controls more because I don't know how to curve a punch with just buttons and I enjoy tactile controls when they feel good rather than just silly waggling. Though I do think the buttons work fine when in controller mode. The layout is a little odd but easy enough to use. It's definitely better than the arrangement with motion controls that makes switching targets hard, but the actual motion controls make up for that.

I played a few punchfests and it was a lot of fun. The motion controls were baffling to me initially, I was informed later that was because I was holding them wrong. I don't think the mini tutorial was clear enough about the angle of them, I thought they were just meant to be upright and with the buttons facing yourself. When using the joycons as a regular controller in the grip though, I did a lot better. I was able to think about it a bit more tactically and read what was actually going on. When I figured out the motion controls I actually liked them a lot, except for the awkward method of switching your target. Is there any way to do it besides pressing a button on the side of the controller in your fist? It's very much like Splatoon, Team Fortress 2 and Smash Brothers, they've taken a genre I'm not into and stripped out the offputting elements to replace them with things I can actually follow and engage with. No combos to learn and counters to match, instead I'm learning loadouts, watching how the opponent uses and moves their fists and figuring out how best to work with my own fists.

I just mute all the tags I don't care about. I forget where you can do it, but it's somewhere in your profile or account settings. With stuff muted, just seeing the full stream of topics is pretty manageable for me. The moderation just makes sense to me as easier to do from the start, rather than trying to build it up as the forum grows. It's also better to be proactive than to have shitty discussions blowing up because you thought maybe something would work out alright. They seem to have a ban on just dropping in a link to a video or article and asking 'what do you think?' because it was just an avenue to dump in controversial (problematic) arguments where the original poster could just bounce. I can see why the rule would seem weird, but I'd rather have it than the alternative. Same about not making threads to speculate on real people's lives.

Ah, great thanks! I noticed that I can add people from Miitomo too, so glad that's paying off.

I got a Switch! Just in time for the punchfest. Where have people been putting friend codes? I'm on a phone and can't look through the thread. My code is: SW-5777-6426-9293

I think it's worth examining why an effect being believable and seamless is often described as "good". That's true if you're measuring how convincing it is as a fabricated reality but that's not the only measure of what makes a TV show/film look good. I have a hard time actually engaging in suspension of disbelief. Usually when I watch TV or a movie I do so entirely conscious of it as a fabricated fiction and I'm just digesting it as a piece of media. So really, I'm not worried about Lynch's effects seeming real, when they're evocative. When Cooper was in the glass box and it slowly condensed in on him, it was actually very poorly done and jumpy. Cooper in the box didn't smoothly scale down to a smaller size, he jumped around in the box from position to position, and the box itself shifted around a bit too. This made it rougher, but I think that worked because it made the scene all the more unsettling and threatening. I'm not saying to say you can't call these effects bad, but just think about what makes them bad. And whether or not that always matters in the end. If you know Lynch's effects will sometimes be blunt and obvious, what might be good about them too?

I finished Nier. It's a dang good game about robots and humanity. Weirdly I think some of the best stuff is in the diversions from the main path, leading to me being more interested in side quests here than any other game. Still processing the whole thing but it's going to be one of the high highs for me this year.

I loved every episode of this show, thanks so much for making it.

I googled that and found good news for Europe and Japan: http://nintendoeverything.com/europe-getting-splatoon-2-switch-bundle-special-accessories-neon-green-neon-pink-joy-con/ ...not sure if I'll actually wait that long though.

Damn, I really shouldn't buy a Switch this weekend just to get into that test punch but that is exactly what I want to do.

This further Cars talk makes me want to see the licensed game of Cars made by Yoko Taro, creator of Nier Automata.

I think part of the complication with the authored vs. systemic narrative discussion is that it's easy to only think of systems as being fun based game mechanics. Assuming that systems have to be based on physics, crafting, shooting etc. Night in the Woods is narrative adventure game platformer ish thing. It doesn't contain puzzles really, just a lot of people you can go around talking to, making small choices about whether to spend your day with X or Y person. It has a lot of pre authored narrative content, and minimal systems that are just like branching paths. However I did develop a somewhat unique story in it. The gameplay has a very rote daily loop where you can just walk up in the morning, go downstairs and talk to mom then head out for the day. After many days of this, I felt like the mom conversations were getting rote. So I went straight outside instead of talking to her. I stopped outside and felt kind of bad, so I went back in. Only to then have a very volatile argument over some tension that had been bubbling under the surface the whole time. To me, this is a good mix of the pre authored narrative of that conversation and the systemic choices that allowed me to make a routine, break it and then reverse my decision to discover something much more impactful than I expected. The system was very minimal, but it still enhanced the emotional story that played out, and if the mom conversation was just a cutscene it wouldn't have been the same.

That graphic/audio switching looks so sweet. adds to Switch list

The Handmaiden is a very good movie, from Park Chan-wook, who also directed Oldboy. It's got a great way of unfolding as the movie goes on, I highly recommend going in blind. That said, trigger warning for sexual violence. And you should be aware that there's a lot of sexual content in the movie.

Is there some shortcoming to Steam's refund system? I've heard it functions quite well from the consumer side. (admittedly if you buy a thing and forget for 2 weeks, then yes you'd be stuck with it) I think Valve has a responsibility to deal with literal knockoffs when the artist or company who owns the original addresses them, or with actively malicious games (eg. phishing or virus carrying games). I don't think the general audience has the wherewithal to decide that. We're dealing with a group of people who think it would take a week for multiplayer to be patched into No Man's Sky, a "fundamentally broken and misleading game". I don't have any reason to think Valve would police who makes these decisions intelligently, given that they generally outsource that policing already.

I have no particular points to add, just that I agree with others here that removing these games is a fruitless endeavour that could lead to harming genuine participants for no real gain. The biggest possible gain seems to be the possibility of Steam regaining a bit of their reputation, but I'm not really interested in that (I'd rather games decentralise from that single platform). The last measure I heard about Valve suggesting was to charge much more for game applications onto Steam, so I don't agree that they're generally trending towards improving things for developers.

Having heard the full episode now, Nick's distaste for the lore makes more sense to me. It does have game hints and explanation peppered into the lore and narrative. There's places where you either need to pay attention to know how to do things, or have the Internet tell you. When Nick says the game isn't telling him how to navigate these points, it's because the lore isn't part of the game to him, so he's expecting the parts he's engaging with to have the hints. (I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth here Nick)

The article can be clickbait since part of my definition hinges upon the articles content being unrelated or vapid.