thefncrow

In what might be the most insane thing I've heard out of GG circles lately, that anti-Anita video by Shitty Kane released a new teaser today where they decided it'd be a wonderful idea to pull Jack Thompson out of whatever hole he's been in since getting disbarred for unethical conduct and get him to talk shit about Anita.

I've gotten deeper in as well, and yeah, I really love the traversal. There's just something so satisfying about how the traversal and combat are intertwined. I'd kinda compare this game to something like Vanquish, in that it's something you could totally play in a pretty boring way and make headway through and be left with the impression that the game is boring, but the real joy in the game comes from playing incredibly recklessly and stylishly. The non-grunt enemies also do a good job of trying to interrupt your traversal, making them something you at least have to engage with on the level of trying to avoid their shots. Also, having now played the side mission Fizzle: The Inside Story, man, you can really tell how much Insomniac must have hated developing Fuse. And I haven't touched the multiplayer myself either, I might be up for a session one night after work or something.

I picked up an Xbox for this over the weekend. Its been a busy weekend, so I'm only about an hour and a half in, but it's fun so far. I really like the traversal stuff. The tone is worrying early, but my understanding is that the writing actually really improves once you get 4-5 hours in, so I'm trying to reserve judgement until I get a little deeper in. Jeff Gerstmann made a comment that Sunset Overdrive looks like a reaction to Overstrike's style and soul being sucked out of it and being turned into what Fuse became, and that seems like a pretty fair comment from what I've played so far.

The most hilarious part of the Blizzard stuff is how vehement the denial of all this is. There's an interview with Keighley with Morhaime where Keighley mentions the denouncement of Gamergate, mentioning GG explicitly by name, and Morhaime nods at the statement. The GG contingent is already screaming about "Look how visibly angry Morhaime is at having these words he clearly doesn't agree with being put in his mouth!"

Meanwhile, since you mentioned King of Pol, he announced that he was done with GamerGate, citing as his reason that he was getting flooded with harassment from GamerGate people. Seriously. (In this quote, I've censored the 6-letter F-word because I don't feel comfortable posting that even if it is a direct quotation)

The quote might be off because I took it from a transcript because I can't listen to it at work, but it seems like TB posted the transcript, so...Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/a-response-to-yts-senior-curator-re-gamergate (7:40 in, supposedly) Transcript I saw and took the quote from: http://blueplz.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-reply-to-earnest-petties-critique-of.html?m=1 For reference, the very slightly different quote I've seen on Twitter referencing the audio:

TotalBiscuit did a response to one of the responses that pointed out how that comment from earlier is full of horseshit, and he writes in this one of the more reprehensible things I've seen come out of Gamergate, in response to being called out for saying Anita got "alleged death threats": He's somehow managed to find a new low after spending quite some time plumbing the depths of how low a person can sink.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/thefncrow Trying to get back into Payday 2 recently after a long lapse in not playing it. I also play way too much Marvel Heroes.

Colbert asks her to name 3 games, and she stumbles a little, but answers saying "It's about the conditions seen on the whole, not about calling out any one game like GTA." Because she answers it by talking about how she's not trying to single out any specific games, that's being taken as "she didn't because she couldn't".

I haven't yet got to that segment of the podcast, but isn't that game like 25 hours long? Even if that was true, it would seem like poor design to count on people marathoning a game of that length.

That jewelry store was the first mission I ever stealthed. It's so goddamn satisfying to get there, case the place, someone takes down the security guard out back, break out the side window and storm into the back of the store, set up the drill, take care of the civilians in the store and bystanders on the sidewalk, rob that place of everything of value, and then walk out without a peep from the cops. Payday 2 was a game I really liked but never played nearly enough of. If this means more people playing Payday 2, I'll have to get back in. Or, at least, I will once I finish this goddamn work project that is sucking my life away.

It was recently added to the base game.

That might not be an option. Most of, if not all of, the console + game bundles are Kinect-less.

Oh yeah, and the DLCs kinda continue that. One of the DLCs, The Zodiac Tournament, has you going to an island off the coast to participate in a martial arts tournament. is the intro to the DLC. It's really short, so I'd hesitate for full price, but I think it's been like a buck before in Steam sales and it's part of the Definitive Edition. Worth playing through.

I was really shocked that Sleeping Dogs was actually good. That game had such a troubled development history. Even before it was going to be True Crime: Hong Kong, it was a game called Black Lotus that was apparently much the same open-world game except it was supposed to feature a female protagonist. Several months after development started, Activision came along and said "You know, what if we slapped on the True Crime name, and turned the lead character into a dude?" They wanted to put it in the True Crime series because they liked what they saw and thought they might be able to revive the name if they could produce a good game. Then, it got cancelled in 2011 and Activision basically took a giant public shit on the game. The initial announcement of the cancellation cited "quality issues", and then they later released this statement: Knowing all that in the lead up to the release, I was expecting that game to come out and be somewhere between bad and mediocre. That it's truly great was a really pleasant surprise.

I don't know that Saints Row 3 is a good litmus test for SR2. I like all those games, but SR2 has a tone more like "What if Rockstar never deviated from the track they were on from GTA3 to Vice City to San Andreas". SR2 is, well, grounded is the wrong way to describe it, but more grounded than SR3, which starts from a place that's just bonkers and then somehow proceeds to become completely untethered from any sense of reality. Also, if you do plan to play SR2 and you got it for PC, you should be aware that PC port is kinda crummy. There was (probably still is, but I can't speak to how it is since I last played it a few years ago) a speed bug, where the game could run slightly too fast or too slow. If you go and look up information on it, there's a fan mod that patches that. SR2 is a game that has some really charming touches, and for all the ways SR3 does improve on areas, some of those really charming touches are lost. I'd love to see another SR game that could bring some of that stuff back in, but I fear some of the stuff (like the way SR2 handles Boss' karaoke) is probably gone for good. I really like Sleeping Dogs, but, yes, the combat gets really brutal between some of the environment combat and some of the hand-to-hand combos. If you tried the original Just Cause, I'd suggest going and looking at Just Cause 2. JC2 is a game that I've not done even half the story missions in, but I've played a ton of it. The missions aren't the best, but the combination of the grappling hook, weird infinite parachutes, and the hijacking system that lets you take over just about any vehicle you can get your hands on (which includes things like helicopters thanks to the grapple) just gives you this incredible feeling. I still fire that up every so often and just go screw around in the world.

You can point to a couple of individual things, but ultimately that would be missing the point. GG is a movement of people who voluntarily decided to associate with that banner. There's no equivalent for the "other side", no movement or banner to unite underneath. Barring every single shithead on Earth deciding to align themselves with GG, there will be shitheads on "the other side" by default.

Polygon joins in denouncing GG. There's still a bit of justification for the silence, and the same "ignoring them so as not to grant them legitimacy", but I do feel this contains less troubling elements than Jeff Gerstmann's GB letter. It's good that gaming media is finally ending the silence, even if it is coming far too late.

I don't know, I'm kinda coming around on the movie. This AV Club article (serious spoilers there) talks a lot about the angle that I'm reading the film from (but I do disagree with his last paragraph). I am with you that the surface-level examination on the film reveals an ugly thing that feels uglier in the current climate of a hate campaign that shares the same initials. I'm still not totally comfortable with the film myself, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea that this movie is something like Fincher in Fight Club, where if a real examination of the film gives you a very different outlook than the cursory read does.

Was coming to post that. Some good stuff, but also elements worthy of criticism (there's an attempt to defend their silence, as well as a quite notable "two extreme sides" bit at the end). But it's good that they finally wrote a significant piece denouncing GG.EDIT: Especially in comparison with GameSpot, which almost simultaneously released a similar letter, which was basically "Harassment is Wrong. PS, we don't intend to write any further on this."

I just saw Gone Girl last night myself, and I want to say I like it. My opinion on that film has kinda been a rollercoaster. Outside of crazy plot spoiler territory, though, I thought the other aspects of the film were great. I'm a huge Trent Reznor fanboy, so I am most assuredly biased, but I really enjoyed the score even at its weirdest with all the strange droning noises. Incredible performances from the actors pretty much all around, And, yeah, the cop dialogue was great, although I had that "I know this actor from somewhere else, but what?" feeling the entire time from the lead detective. (Joanie Stubbs from Deadwood, as it turns out)

You're right. There were multiple threats, one of which did explicitly reference GG according to Anita. The text of one of the threats was released, and that one didn't explicitly reference GG. The author may have just missed that another did.

2 good links to GG stuff. The Guardian posted an article titled Lazy coverage of Gamergate is only feeding this abusive campaign which is about how the failures to actually call out GG as a harassment campaign has helped fuel the movement. Meanwhile, Zoe Quinn opened up her giant collection of captures from the early days of Quinnspiracy garbage to the person running the Fuck No Video Games account, allowing them to demonstrate what the pre-IRC organization of the campaign looked like.

Wow, the New York Times apparently printed a Gamergate article on the front page of the paper. Anita tweeted something to check out the front page tomorrow, and now this story is up on the website with a note indicating that the story appears on Page A1 in the 10/16/2014 edition. Nothing particularly special, and they give way too much credibility to the angle that Gamergate is about ethics in journalism, but how fucking crazy is it that this is front page of the NYT material?

GG has actually gone further than that. They tried to create an online petition asking Patreon to ban the accounts of anyone who publicly reported being threatened. Just take two seconds to think about that, because it's a fucking mind-boggling request. "You mentioned how you'd been sent death threats, so now we're taking away this stream of income you had."