Goose Malloy

Haha, that's a good point about the Tom Francis and Nick thing, I was sad to see him leave Crate & Crowbar, but if this does happen (I'm sure it won't but one can dream) that would certainly be an interesting development. I don't have much to say about the main story here since it's mostly already been said, but I am super sad about it for sure :-(

I think you raise a number of good points, but I would resist the notion that a more systems-driven game would necessarily be devoid of "meaning" (like Kyir I think this is probably a difficult to define and unhelpful metric, but I'll take your notion of imparting knowledge "that is going to be useful in the real world, or that will make me think about things in a different way"). Similarly I'm also not convinced that a game that has more of a narrative focus would inherently furnish players with some "useful" information that would prompt reflection about real world issues. Certainly in the examples you choose I think you could argue that this dichotomy is present; Spelunky probably doesn't have anything to teach us about much else other than how to play it, while Gone Home is as I understand it a game that tries to address real-life LGBT issues and might help players to see these matters in a different light (apologies if I'm misrepresenting the nature of Gone Home, to my shame I have never gotten around to playing it). But I think one could find other examples that problematise this dichotomy. For example, the Democracy series are games that are pretty much wholly systemic in their design, with no real "designed" narrative content per se, and yet one can very much see how the nature of the systems within the games and the manner in which the player interacts with them might encourage the player to reflect more deeply about the nature of our systems of governance, the incentives our politicians have when policymaking, and other aspects of our society's political sphere. At the same time I think one could say that a series like Broken Sword (which I enjoy enormously), while very narrative-focused, probably has little to offer the player in the realm of "deep thinking"; they're enjoyable romps but I very much don't see them as having the capacity to shed light on any societal issues. Ultimately I'd say there are definitely systemic games that can be "useful" and narrative-driven games that can be "meaningless", I think this comes down more to the individual game than being inherent to either category.

Fab, glad to hear you (and a lot of others it seems like) are enjoying this game, I think it might be my next purchase. It's been a long time since I really felt interested in playing a JRPG (iirc the last one I really got into was the Golden Sun series on gba), but the aesthetic and and the positive reception have been enough to garner my interest in this case. How are people finding the story? I certainly like the conceit of multiple self-contained stories with more personal stakes than the usual JRPG fare, but I haven't heard too much about whether they're engaging in of themselves. Changing topic for a sec, I must say I'm not quite finding Hollow Knight as good as some of you I'm afraid. There's certainly a lot to like there, but I'm getting a bit tired of the Metroidvania traipsing around the map you're forced to do if you want to get anywhere, particularly as in some instances the map can be quite misleading Yesterday I went to two different areas that were labelled as crossing points into different areas, but after finding both of them inaccessible I didn't really feel like playing anymore and just gave up for the night. Edit: sorry this was meant to be a reply to Yasawas' post about Octopath Traveller, but I didn't quote it correctly.

Great, thanks for reporting back. I pretty much play exclusively undocked so this sounds perfect for me.

Alternatively I think I have an Indian cookbook somewhere in my house that has a curry recipe that literally calls for 100 cloves of garlic, which does seem a tad excessive (I've never tried making it so couldn't vouch for whether it's a good recipe or not), but it could be a decent solution to your problem.

Yeah I just heard that about The Sexy Brutale, it's a real shame as I was looking forward to getting that on the Switch. As you say hopefully it's the kind of thing that can be improved by a patch. I've been really enjoying playing through Thimbleweed Park so I've got a real hankering to pick up some more narrative-based/adventure games on the console, it seems to be an ideal fit. Unfortunately A Night In The Woods doesn't seem to have come out yet; hopefully there will be more news on that soon. As an aside does anyone know how the game Gorogoa plays on the Switch, has anyone here bought it? It got a really positive review on Rock Paper Shotgun but obviously that was the PC version, so I'm wondering if the experience translates well.

I have a much less informative tiny niggle but for what it's worth Dalek is pronounced with the first syllable rhyming with 'far' and not 'day'.

Thanks again Chris, had a listen to a few of those and enjoyed them thoroughly (well enjoyed probably isn't the right word since they're all pretty much about the massively fraught nature of our political landscape right now, but you know what I mean.)

Thank you very much, I'll definitely check out some of those. That's a super impressive list, I'm British and try to stay reasonably up to date with current affairs and I reckon I've listened to maybe two of those, clearly I need to up my game :-p

I hesitate to bring up such a stupid film on a forum filled with intelligent people but in Austin Powers: Goldmember Britney Spears appears as herself at the beginning and is soon revealed to be an evil robot sent to kill Austin Powers who shoots bullets out of her breasts, which I guess in a way is kind of similar to what you guys were saying. So there's that. Swiftly moving on, Chris you mentioned that you'd been listening to a podcast about British politics on an episode a few weeks ago, do you remember what it was?

I indeed found it pretty repulsive and out of keeping with Twin Peaks' usual style. I mean, it's incredibly graphic but doesn't really contain an iota of the sense of horror that made BOB's murder of Maddie in the original series so terrifying. Instead it just felt needlessly unpleasant to me. Then again while watching the E3 trailer for the new Wolfenstein game I was again rather repulsed by the graphic (albeit fairly normal for an FPS game) violence on display there so maybe I'm just at a period where I'm waking up to the uncomfortable reality that quite a lot of my entertainment frequently depicts extremely graphic violence.

Yeah that seemed like quite a notable counterpoint to me. Equally the Lady in the radiator, while obviously physically "deformed", doesn't seem to display any negative moral qualities (I think, it's been a long time since I've seen Eraserhead.) I think the principal probably works better when solely looking at "unkempt" features instead, i.e. long greasy hair, dirty clothes and a generally dishevelled appearance, although this doesn't really work fully either.

What is the weird 90s music revival thingee that Chris refers to? I think I could half understand what was being talked about but wasn't 100% sure.

If you have posted this before I thank you for mentioning it again as I was completely unaware that this was the case. I'm not well versed enough in Marker's works to be able to call myself a fan (I've only seen La jetée and Sans soleil which seem to be the only two easily accessible on DVD in the UK) but as someone interested in French new wave cinema in general this is a fascinating insight into a facet of one of its most accomplished directors' work that was previously unknown to me, and an intriguing confluence of different forms of media I enjoy.

God I hope not. The stroking animation is already really uncomfortable and creepy (I kept on having a weird tingling sensation at the back of my neck while watching that video, and I found myself unconciously having to turn around several times to ensure there wasn't a horrible green haired man behind me). If you're correct about the source of the animation that makes it even worse. Oh and just as a heads up Fallout Shelter is now available on Android. I have the feeling that it won't end up being nearly as entertaining as Chris' stories are, but I might give it a go out of curiosity. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bethsoft.falloutshelter&hl=en_GB