TangoCharlie

This is the first time a discussion of the MGS series hasn't left me feeling like a total alien. As if no one has ever noticed or has always just gone along with the - a lack of self-editing (or any sense of internal consistency or thematic adhesion) - middle-grade-level book-report literary / religious references - college common-room ramblings on the philosophy of war - piss jokes - bikini snipers which all adds up to: tone-deaf tonal insanity Instead of seeming smart, it just seems schizophrenic. I would be willing to get on board with some of the philosophical jams if maybe the game didn't pretend there weren't something super weird about a bikini sniper, especially considering the game's focus on tactical minutiae. And I'd be on board with the bikini sniper if Kojima didn't seem so superficial and sleazy about it. I felt like the only sane person in a world where everyone's drank the Kojima Brand™ Kool-Aid™ and here you guys are providing a safe place to meet and chat And then you go and compare it to Far Cry 2 and whoops I one-click ordered it from Amazon. And I didn't even have one-click enabled. I enabled one-click just to order that game. Click!

SPLATOON! After one Saturday where I think I (our team) won one or two of three dozen ranked matches, I was ready to throw this dumb game out the window. I don't know how to explain it except maybe I was really bad. Even still, though, at the C level, you wouldn't think one turd could drag down a whole team so effectively. And I'm not THAT bad - I had managed to climb to a B rank. Nothing crazy, but at least better than an empty fourth slot. Anyway, there's a great roundup of Splatoon stuff on Metafilter and I dove (sploosh) into some of those links and came back fresh for the latest Splatfest, which was pretty fun! The team-making system seems a bit bonkers - I (lvl 17) would routinely get paired with a lvl 6, maybe a lvl 20 and a 25, and our rag-tag crew would be put up against four mid-20s players. It was hard to make sense of. But I grinded away at that Splatfest level and at a few clothes options and really improved my navigation and level-knowledge skills. I still can't aim at opponents to save my life, but that's less important in Turf War than in ranked matches, I guess. The game still needs a "MUTE MUSIC" option, and I can't shake the feeling that chasing Splatoon clothing perks is not a great use of my time, but boy oh boy has Nintendo got that "just one more round" juju on lockdown. And man is it satisfying when you can pop a handful of dudes trying to make their way up the ramps of your Moray Towers.

Nay, Sir.

oh, ess it?

Has this ever been a topic of discussion on the show or the forums? Sounds like you guys are all on board the "jif" train. "Gin" is a good counter-argument to "gift." EDIT: "wave," "wheres," and "oh ess ecks."

I am confident that this has been covered elsewhere (as you can imagine, it's tough to search for), but why does everyone pronounce GIF with the soft G? EDIT: before someone says, "because it's the correct way," I was hoping for something more substantial. Yes, yes, yes, I know it's how Steve Wilhite pronounces it.

Congratulations! I hope you enjoyed it! What to do next? Post it online? Tell everyone you wrote a novel? I dunno, write a new thing? THE WORLD IS YOUR 50,000-WORD OYSTER

Good round-up of some IF/Twine gems over on Metafilter. Might be redundant to some of the stuff mentioned in this thread, but hey, what, am I made of time? … probably make sure to not miss Horse Master.

What I'm saying is that if you can get a hold on a FC3 save game with all the story missions completed, it's GOTY for sure.

Someone somewhere mentioned that they patched FC3 with a little switch that resets all the outposts, so I popped that game in the other day. Hot damn, I forgot how much fun it is to take over the outposts. The main storyline stuff must have REALLY bummed me out in FC3. Looking at the world map, I think I must have finished the storyline and said, "ahh, fuck this game." But man, just running around doing outposts is spectacular, especially with a filled-out skill tree and the fancy guns. I forgot (or never knew) that disabling one alarm disabled ALL alarms, which really improves the experience. Cutting those alarms is so satisfying, especially once half the outpost is in flames and you hear a dude shouting, "sound the alarm!" knowing that if he had a virtual spirit it would be virtually crushed. Now it looks like FC4 has a map editor that lets you design single-player maps/missions. If 12-year-old me had FC4, I know what he would be doing with 90% of his waking hours. He never would have graduated high school. Thank goodness Today's Me doesn't have a system that can run FC4.

Anyone mentioned Kelly Link yet? I got part way through MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS. I only stopped because A) I was creeped out and I wanted more of a takeaway from the stories. Still, go get it from the liberry, or try some of them stories on for size at her webbbb siiiitttte.

Watched the on this last night (WOO FRIDAY NIGHT). Just felt sad. Sad, sad, sad, and I want my infinitely respawning checkpoints back and just let me buy ammo pouch upgrades at a computer terminal in a little shack and oh, for god's sake please please please give me back a silent protagonist please. Ugggghghhhhhh "PROGRESS" Honey badgers, tho, so it's not a total disappointment.

@COLLEGEBABY - I wonder if you can BUY animal skins instead of murdering animals. But then I guess in that case you're just supporting virtual animal slaughter industry, so it's not much better. 100% would support an NPC to whom you could take leaves and bark and shit and have him turn 'em into vegan knife sheathes and rocket-launcher slings.

Can you set the spoken language to French and turn on English subtitles? Doing that with Italian for AC2 made for a good time.

Chris Remo recommended the BBC World Book Club podcast in an old episode of Idle Thumbs. I gave it a whirl, and it turns out it's fantastic. I've been mainlining it ever since. I have read very, very few of the books by the authors featured in the podcast, but it's Relevant To My Interests, and is turning out to be a real treasure trove. It's providing a lot of very interesting insight into the character of some authors, as well. Some shining features: Harriet Gilbert, the host, is the picture of impartiality. Writers from all over the genre spectrum are represented, and she invests as much careful thought, interest, and enthusiasm in the author of quick-read genre-typical airport crime series as she does in and author of plotless, innovative, award-winning literary fiction. I've become accustomed to people sneering at forms of fiction outside their own tastes, so I'm super pleased to find that Harriet's open, welcoming approach is making me excited about books again. My favourite part, though, is how many examples there are of authors kicking the legs out from underneath the searching type of questions you'd recognize from a first-year English class. When asked about the symbolism of the colour red in his novel, one author responds, "oh, I just really like that colour." A question to a different author about time period and setting gets a response along the lines of, "I originally wanted to involve it more closely with WWII, but I realized that would involve more research than I wanted to do." I love these mundane answers. Probably because it feels like vindication for every miserable English-class essay through which I had to suffer. Don't know where to start? I'm currently really enjoying the episode on PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (direct MP3 link), and I enjoyed the one about Camus' THE STRANGER (MP3), even though I haven't read that book. I dunno, most of the episodes are excellent. Next month features William Gibson talking about NEUROMANCER, and I'm looking forward to that. I'm also really appreciating a podcast about entertainment that is platform-agnostic and has very low system requirements.

I hear you. Thanks! TBH, I'm hoping this game will let me relive fond memories of playing the old, original THIEF.

Question: I'm thinking of picking this up for 360. Are there any non-financial reasons I should wait and get it on PC some time in the future when I actually have a PC? OR: am I missing out on anything by playing this on console?

I am disappointed that this forum does not have a "Favourite" feature like Twitter does. But maybe using the "Quote" feature and increasing the text size is the next best thing.

Agreed. Either fix the other characters or give the "Tracer" a top hat, monacle, cup of tea, and an aggressive sense of imperialistic self-importance.

Holy hell, it's been announced for a day and they already have a match with commentary? What's up, eSports? Ha ha ha, "only" four skills per character, I dunno, that still seems like anyone who's not super dedicated would be able to get a really solid handle on one, maybe two chars.

Dude, I am maybe halfway through B1 and I am stuck on the fight on the stairs with the 2 consecutive claw dudes. Difficulty: normal. :\ Their attacks are so fast, so damaging, and so hard to read I'm thinking maybe I'm just too slow for this game. Seems like the only way I'll get past is if I play through the previous chapters again and build up some skills. Or maybe I should just move on to B2 - sounds like the timing windows are more generous.

I think the funds error might have been my mistake: as far as I can tell, you pay one amount to make the boat leave earlier (a bribe), and then you again pay for the ticket. I've made two runs through the game now, and it SEEMS like it's almost never worth it to bribe. The extra wait is usually a good excuse to get more funds from the bank. On the one hand, I wish I hadn't accidentally read the "cheat" a few posts back re: Fogg's health, cause it's been hard for me to resist it, but not having to worry about that variable made my second run much more pleasant (if less interesting, maybe). I got thrown a real surprising narrative twist, though, and now I see why this game is so well-liked. Anyone else find themselves just skimming the text by the time you're a few legs out of London with a week left?

+1 to LOOKS GOOD There are a lot of elements in Overwatch that have been Overdone in concept-art and vis-dev circles, especially for video games, but I think it looks like one of the best, most well-executed examples of this sort of aesthetic that's out there. Half-anime, half-pixar, all Tumblr-bait. Plus, that cinematic trailer has absolutely top-notch A+ No. 1 Five-out-of-Five animation. Oof.

Oh, I should also credit 80 Days for making me feel as anxious about making a travel connection as I do in real life. Good work, assholes.

80 DAYS So, I just ended up wasting maybe two weeks in Yokohama. I tapped a route to San Francisco, Fogg said something about negotiating, and a "$740 to leave in two days" option popped up. I must have tapped that, because my $$ – sorry, ££ – went down. When I tried to "depart" – I'm pretty sure it was the right day – the only option available was the £2500 sailing. Except, since I'd already handed over £740, I didn't have enough anymore. So I waited for a transfer – of course, the week-long transfer is the only one that would now give me the funds I needed. I'd been enjoying it up to this point, but either I messed up or there's something janky about that negotiating system. There is definitely some occasional weirdness when different aspects of the dynamic text collide, and I'm no fan of steampunk, but I'm already looking forward to my second (hopefully more successful) playthrough.