Gamebeast23456

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Everything posted by Gamebeast23456

  1. Idle Thumbs 265: A Chill Hell

    One of the Overwatch videos had me tearing up. So... I guess in this case my taste just missed the mark. Though, I was also in a weeeeird place when I watched it. So.. eh..
  2. Idle Weekend May 27, 2016: We've Been Playing

    Regarding the Sicario discussion, I often detect (and struggle myself) with the question of whether a certain piece of media is trying to portray sexism and comment on it, or is just exhibiting unintentional sexism and therefore should be criticized for it. Relating to Sicario, it was my feeling that the treatment of Emily Blunt's character was a way of depicting how the drug war uses, eats up, and then discards innocent or idealistic people. It didn't seem sexist, or at least, it only seemed sexist in the way that the real world of law enforcement often is sexist. Is that good, or praiseworthy, to coldly portray sexism, especially in a culture that is so fraught with it already? How do we label and talk about works that try to address an issue by mostly just portraying it (that is, by giving very little overt authorial input)? I think of the endless Oscar-bait films about race that come out on a yearly basis. These films are often reasonably well-intentioned and inoffensive, but there is rarely any sort of emotional honesty or personal experience thrown into the mix. These films approach racism like an alien might, "One color of human mistreats another color of human, this mistreatment varies from person to person and is also very situational. Isn't this odd?" A film that treats the subjects of Sicario exactly the same (a government that operates with high amounts of secrecy and very little oversight, how bureacratic rules are only seen as annoying trivialities on the way to a goal, how the citizens of Mexico are treated like fodder from the perspective of the law and the criminals, how easy it is to justify torture and war crimes when you get caught up in a heroic or self-important narrative, etc) without any of the visual style, suspenseful writing and editing, and powerful, impressionistic story progression might just be seen as trite and didactic, telling you all about how the Drug War 'really is' from the creator's perspective. This is rambly, and I'm not sure if I settled on a great point. Good show. I personally really enjoy the format that you guys normally bring with pretty-focused topics of discussion spurred by recent events, and then the mail and recommendations. I also enjoyed this 'What Are You Playing' format this week. Also, fuck man, Overwatch is so great. I've never had so much fun and felt like I belonged in a game as much as I have with this one.
  3. It was weird when Chris sort of shit on the very concept of trying to use voice chat. Overwatch is fun enough when everyone just kinda pieces together what they should be doing and what roles they should take, but it can be a lot more fun when people actually communicate. That's kind of the point of the game. In fact, the result of no one communicating is really frustrating situations where no one seems able to make a single competent decision to help their team out.
  4. I've really enjoyed my progression in this game, even over the course of only three or four hours. When I first started playing at the bottom of the matchmaking pool, I always had to play as Mercy because having a healer gives a huge advantage early on. I really enjoyed my time with Mercy, and I'll always hop back onto healing if no one else is, but I've also started to join matches at relatively higher levels where I get a chance to slot into different roles and experiment more. I, unlike Remo, had limited patience when it came to familiarizing myself with all the different classes, I've just been learning as I go along. This is the best multiplayer experience I've had at least since Rocket League, and maybe since I first started playing Modern Warfare long ago. So much fun, and I love the positive spin that the game has, it always wants you to come away feeling good.
  5. When you guys were discussing franchises' and their ability to bring new people in, and you went to Marvel, I felt it so hard. I've seen like 5 Marvel movies: the first and second Iron Man, that Hulk movie that ended up not really being that important, the Avengers, and Guardians of The Galaxy. I was interested in Civil War because it was getting lots of praise and had an interesting premise and I thought 'huh, I should try getting into this stuff". As it turns out, though, getting into the MCU is crazy daunting. I looked online, and generally the list of films people were saying are 'must-sees' for CW were all the Iron Man movies, both Avengers movies, and both Captain America movies. That's a lot of movies, and ultimately what I would be watching those movies for would be the 'privilege' of being able to go out and continue to watch these films, each time a new one came out, where the circumstances change and the characters hardly do, forever- presumably. I probably won't spend my time that way. I'll keep watching the Netflix MU stuff, and just not even bother. Which is sad, cuz I keep really wanting to be there, and Marvel just keeps adding to the pile.
  6. When I was listening to the cast, I got stupidly excited that the anonymous emailer who delivered quotes from J. Allard's book was actually going to leak a heretofore unreleased J. Allard text, and that's why they were requesting anonymity. I hope I'm not alone in this. Also, I'm eagerly anticipating Breckon reporting back on Stellaris and hopefully a stream at some point.
  7. It is very Idle Thumbs that the Uncharted 4 spoiler discussion is actually kinda just about . I also enjoyed your off-handedness in mentioning how bosses are bad. My Hyper Light Drifter experience seems to be similar to Jake's. I was really into the game as I completed the north and east (I think I'm remembering that right), and then I got totally, completely wrecked by a boss in the next zone over and over until I gave up. I hate bosses. Even the best ones mostly just feel like diversions from the 'actual' game, or at least what my perception of the 'actual' game is.
  8. The characterization of what the 'audience' for game criticism seemed immensely insular. I was particularly confused by Rob's comment that the only audience he cares about are the people who seek out his work and... talk to him on twitter? If this is the extent to which game criticism is relevant, basically other critics and a few people who want to be critics, then I see literally no future for the profession. Especially since I don't think formalist writing about a game is really that good of a way to gauge if I would enjoy or find something interesting in a product or not. I much prefer naturalistic settings like podcasts or videos where people play and respond to a game. In fact, perhaps I epitomize bad, not-in-the-audience internet users because I almost never read review texts and only look at the aggregate of scores to see if there are any glaring technical flaws with a game (because most consumer-oriented websites factor that stuff in), and make my purchasing decisions mostly based on anecdotes beyond that. For example, I bought Hitman after a discussion on Idle Thumbs, and Stellaris after Austin's labor union story on the Beastcast and the GB quick look.
  9. Idle Weekend February 21, 2016: The Right Way

    RE: the ongoing Witness chat. I find myself agreeing a lot more with the reader who pointed out how the game has inherent value in pushing people to do and learn in a way many people may feel more comfortable generally not doing. I will admit that personally, I'm a fleeting liberal arts, linguistic guy. I will try to read fairly difficult books, I will spend lots of time analyzing and thinking about literature and film and music, but I invest as little time into solving logic or mathematic puzzles as I possibly can. That is, until I got into The Witness. First of all, I'm really bad at this game. I've put roughly 4-5 hours in (I don't have the exact number because I played a lot during a move where I didn't have internet for a few days, so the synching got messed up.) I've completed 105 puzzles. I have zero idea if my puzzle completion rate is good or bad, I would assume it's probably on the lame side. However, I am extremely proud of the progress I've made so far, and hope to keep making, because I've done it all by myself, and it has forced me to think in a way I rarely would if not for this game. While I could sit down and work out Sudoku puzzles or enroll in some mathematics community college course or something, and maybe that might ultimately be more beneficial, The Witness has made me do something I generally wouldn't and feel good about it. I like it. Also, there's no better chill game, in my mind, than Euro Truck Sim 2 or now, American Truck Sim.
  10. Does someone have that Oblivion monstrosity or do I need to dig it up?
  11. I can't believe no one is pointing out that Far Cry Primal is just Tail of The Sun 2. Dan Ryckert (then at Gameinformer) playing Tail of The Sun:
  12. Her Story

    After I finished (or at least looked at a satisfactory amount of content and a little more past that), I found myself comparing it to two other pieces of mystery fiction I've thought about recently, Inherent Vice (the novel which I'm slowly working through, and the film to a lesser extent), and Twin Peaks. I was just considering the way these three pieces of media treated the specifics of their plot, and how in a more general sense a mystery can be treated. In the case of both TP and IV, in a broad sense the stories are only partially about solving a mystery, much of what matters in these works are the things you get to see on the way. In TP, it's the various pieces of drama, scenery, use of surrealism and horror, etc. and for IV it is exploring the death of hippiedom in LA. Inherent Vice is especially about a perspective of the world that is deeply conspiratorial, but you aren't ever fully sure if these conspiracies are real or not. Her Story on the other hand is very much about the mystery first. It starts very conclusively with presenting a mystery and asking you to solve it. I only began pulling at the other strands of this human drama as it pertained to the specifics of what happened. The method of telling this story contributes to this feeling; your only interface in this world is observing relics where there is only one voice and perspective. I'm not sure what my point actually is, except that I enjoyed engaging with a fictional mystery that was actually going to let me solve it, and not just be told or not told it.
  13. Twin Peaks Rewatch 33: Odds & Ends

    I'd really like to have threads going through all of Lynch's work. We could go through his ouevre chronologically maybe on a weekly or bi-weekly schedule. I don't know if there's a lot of interest when it doesn't coincide with a scheduled podcast, but I'd be willing to do some leg work if people were interested in the idea. Thoughts!
  14. Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

    I have really been enjoying that New Vegas gives human life an element of dignity in its portrayal that you just don't get in most games. There's a lot of very stoic portraits of many of the small towns that makes it actually feel close to life in a post apocalypse, highlighting "life", not just the slow death I feel like existed in 3.
  15. Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

    I'd like for this game to feature more congruity between the scale of your actions and the way people react to them. Its always weird in these games when you are the most important guy ever, and people still treat you like crap. Assuming this is a game where your actions reverberate throughout the game's plot and you do EVERYTHING. Based on the fact that its a Bethesda game, this seems like a safe bet.
  16. Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

    Yeah, exactly. I think all Bethesda combat is pretty horrible and its a shame that there is such a combat focus in their games.
  17. Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

    I like VATS a lot. I fired up New Vegas and I am actually still enjoying using VATS. I don't know how much I'd like to see of this system in the future, and I'm certainly cognizant of it's flaws, but I think overall it's fine. I feel like Fallout 4 just has to have VATS, though. It feels integral to Fallout at this point.
  18. Lostinthemovies in his email commented on the similarities between Ronette and Laura and the characters in Inland Empire (I haven't seen the film so I don't know their names, sorry.) I just recently viewed Mulholland Drive, and there was a similar duality between both of the women in that film. Does anyone have any thoughts on the similarities between these two films?
  19. Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

    The animation looks about as stilted and weird as Bethesda animation always does. There are elements of their games that look great from launch (just the general vistas and look of the land), things that may get modded to look slightly better (textures, edit: flora), and things that will always kinda just look shitty (character models). I just hope this isn't all built on the same hitchy tech that has been running these games forever, because it's rough.
  20. Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

    I mean, is it really tone deaf? It's sort of just a caricature of that time period, not really meant to be some social statement.
  21. Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

    That is a damn fine trailer. I'm excited to see if this means we're finally getting a technically competent Bethesda game. It should at least work better on consoles, I imagine, though I'll be playing on PC. Exciting to see Fallout back in action, it's been a while.
  22. Hatred: The Most Despicable Game of All Time?

    In some weird way I've equated this game to like GG performance art. Like, if SJW's have the college student carrying the mattress around (something I'm not the hugest fan of, just based on the fact that the facts are sticky at best- but that's neither here nor there,) than Hatred is the anti- social justice equivalent. A pretty bad game that exists just to be some kind of point? It's especially bizarre because it's not like it's new to kill pointlessly in video games, but this is just like the Mt. Dew EXTREEME version, I guess?
  23. Twin Peaks Discussion

    That's some Charlie Brown shit.
  24. In response to one of your ending discussions, I'd like to link to a Film Crit Hulk article about Mulholland Drive. If you haven't seem the film, I'd say only take a look at this portion: "THERE IS A POPULAR CONCEPTION THAT DAVID LYNCH JUST THINKS UP WEIRD SHIT AND PUTS IT IN HIS MOVIES. THERE IS ALSO A (FAR WORSE) POPULAR CONCEPTION THAT PEOPLE WHO LIKE HIS MOVIES EMBRACE THIS RANDOM WEIRD SHIT AS SOME SORT OF PRETENTIOUS RUSE TO SEEM SMART... IF YOU THINK EITHER OF THESE THINGS THEN HULK HEARTILY ENCOURAGE YOU TO KEEP READING. HOPEFULLY YOU WILL GET A CHANCE TO SEE WHAT LYNCH IS ALL ABOUT. THE FIRST PROBLEM IN PROVING THAT DAVID LYNCH ISN'T JUST DICKING US AROUND IS THE FACT THAT HE ACTUALLY PROPAGATES THIS "MY MOVIES ARE JUST WEIRD SHIT I THINK OF!" CONCEPTION HIMSELF. HE OFTEN TALKS ABOUT THE MOST STRANGE METHODS OF INSPIRATION AND EXTRAPOLATION. BUT THIS IS JUST BECAUSE HE NEVER, EVER WANTS TO DIVULGE HIS INTENTION. THIS SERVES THE VERY IMPORTANT PURPOSE OF LETTING HIS FILMS' INTERPRETATIONS "LIVE FOREVER" SO TO SPEAK. IT GREATLY ENCOURAGE DISCOURSE AND AFFECTATION. IT EVEN ALLOWS HULKS TO WRITE COLUMNS ABOUT IT! AND WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT, HE JUST WOULD NEVER DO SOMETHING SO REDUCTIVE AS TO SAY "THIS IS WHAT I ACTUALLY MEANT." BUT THE TRUTH IS THAT DAVID LYNCH, FOR ALL HIS TANGIBLE WEIRDNESS, IS ACTUALLY A PRETTY SMART AND SELF-AWARE FELLOW. ONE WHO IS CLEARLY WELL-VERSED IN PSYCHOLOGY, SYMBOLOGY, DREAM INTERPRETATION AND CRAP LOAD OF SEMIOTICS. HOW DO WE KNOW THIS? WELL, FOR ONE, HE WENT TO PRESTIGIOUS PENN ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS IN PHILADELPHIA AND HULK PRETTY SURE THESE CONCEPTS MIGHT'VE COME UP A FEW TIMES. BUT FAR MORE IMPORTANTLY, THE STUFF THAT ENDS UP ON SCREEN IS JUST TOO VIBRANT AND SYMBOLICALLY CONCRETE TO IGNORE. THERE IS A THROUGH-LINE OF LOGIC THAT PRESENTS ITSELF IN EARNEST. AND A MOST BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF COMMON LYNCH TROPES LENDS ITSELF ENDLESSLY TO INTERPRETATION... WHICH MEANS, NO, HIS FILMS ARE MOST DEFINITELY NOT A BUNCH OF WEIRD STUFF UP ON SCREEN." http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/03/04/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs-the-genius-of-mulholland-drive I think that a lot of the forums activities consist of trying to deconstruct his intentions, and I think this general point is worth remembering.
  25. Twin Peaks Discussion

    DJ Shadow totally samples The Giant on Endtroducing, as a thing that I thought was cool.