designiana

tag yourself, I was watching this live and my reaction was pretty identical to Alex's slow and despairing realization of the words coming out of Dan.

This game is super fun! I tried it on Easy and beat it pretty effortlessly on my first run, so I'll definitely play on Normal from now on. Not sure yet if this will grab me the same way FTL did but purely based on the mechanics I can already tell I'll be playing it for a *while*. Plus I'm a sucker for these kinds of unlockables! My only thing so far is that, despite the more detailed avatars and snippets of dialogue, I never really filled in the characters/story the same way I did for the crew in FTL but ITB's gameplay is less conducive to that, I guess.

I'm biased because this is one of my favourite games of all time, but I like the trailer for the Pathologic Classic HD version: it's long, and all atmospheric scenery + intriguing soundtrack and shows very little of the actual protagonists, focusing instead on the setting, which is arguably the main character of the entire thing. And it pretty much tells you nothing about the gameplay, but it definitely sets the right tone: Also, the trailer for Getting Over It is absolutely brilliant, I love it!

Can't wait, it looks so good!!

The Dream Machine After five years or so the sixth and final chapter came out earlier this month and I finally finished it this weekend. The Dream Machine is a really beautiful, strange and handcrafted point and click adventure that puts you through a lot of surreal scenarios. Two things I really appreciated in this game are: 1) the puzzles are pretty fair and logical for the most part; 2) The conceit is cool, and from what I've played there's a lot of thought put to the text, for example, trying to combine items and/or using them on the environment usually gets an unique flavor text and dialoguing with other characters is a big mechanic, especially later on in the game. I'm still not sure what to think of the ending (I'll probably replay the entire thing since every installment was released so far apart and I barely remember the first few chapters). It was certainly an experience I guess. Still, I definitely recommend it to anyone who's into point and click games!

Just dropping by to say that the entire season was fantastic, the tone and length in particular really worked for me (also, the artwork is lovely!). Hope you guys manage to do a second season!

I actually also have those books sitting around in my shelf too and I'll have to get around to reading them for sure!

My pile of books to read keeps getting bigger, and that plus the fact that I used to spend so much time and energy just figuring out what to read next made me restrict myself this year (and beyond) to a list of 25 books, all written by female authors from all around the world (just 'cause). I started off with My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, which was such an enjoyable and evocative read that kinda reminded me of one of my favorite books (Éramos Seis by Maria José Dupré). I actually wasn't planning to read the entire series at first, but now I'll definitely have to accommodate them in my list, especially because my dad also started reading them on my recommendation and tore through the last two books in like a week and is now dying to discuss them with me lol. Right now I'm reading The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich, which is a nonfiction book about the often forgotten role of women in WW2 with tons of accounts, interviews and the author's own thoughts about the process of making the book. And because this is quite harrowing and not the kind of thing that I can read through quickly, I also just started Prontos, listos, ya by Inés Bortagaray; I'm not super into it yet, but it's so short that I'll probably keep going even if I'm not all that impressed so far. =P

Yes, I was thinking the exact same thing haha. Those look great!

imo the best way to enjoy Giant Bomb is to ignore 80% of their active community and just skip the comment section/chat/subreddit/forums for the most part.

Yes! I loved that they took over the podcast in most discussions lol, which isn't too hard with a Brad + Jason combo and a lack of news. The Full Throttle talk was really, really cool; I've been catching up on all the Lucasarts remasters lately and I'm suuuper excited to play it. I recently finished Grim Fandango for the first time and going back to the Thumbs' old discussions about it made me appreciate that game even more. I hope people's general dismissal of more Zelda talk early on (the chat was particularly insufferable) won't turn them away from the entire episode! (Also! Jake's wish may have been granted: Sources: Nintendo to launch SNES mini this year Major factor for NES mini discontinuation.)

Chris and Jake are on the Bombcast this week!

Just finished Rusty Lake Hotel and Rusty Lake Roots, and had a good time with both! They'e available on the App Store/Google Play if I'm not mistaken, but I played on PC. They are point and click adventures with a very dark and macabre sense of humour and quite disturbing content, despite the pleasant hand drawn art style (RL Hotel has anthropomorphic animals in old suits and dresses!). It's best to play them unspoiled, so I'll just say that my favorite thing was the sense of progression in Rusty Lake Roots and the way that the narrative unfolded in small, unrelated chunks with pretty much no dialogue and very little text. The puzzles sometimes requires a bit of obtuse video game logic and others are somewhat repetitive and not very interesting (there's some standard measuring puzzles, decoding passwords etc.), but it's not really that difficult and you can get them for cheap, so...

Ooh boy. I somehow already put 32 hours into this game. I also think this is a very mediocre game (and I say this even though the first Mass Effect is my favorite one from the trilogy and one of my favorite games ever). A lot of people in this thread already mentioned it, but the UI and UX are really, really bad, even by BioWare standards (at least on PC); just the fact that you press "M" to see the Map and then have to press ESC twice to go back to the game; or that prompts are inconsistent, with some needing to be closed with the spacebar and others with ESC; and that the Journal requires you to slam the ESC key 4 times to go back to the game... In terms of the narrative, I'm very annoyed that the bad guys are once again the -ugly- aliens whose only purpose are to be shot in the face and be the villain of the game (not a fan of batarians, vorcha and collectors for the same reason). And for a game that is supposed to take place in a whole new galaxy, things sure feel very familiar: there's a desert planet, a tundra planet, a purple forest planet, kinda. This game was a great opportunity for some more non-agressive and non-bipedal aliens (I miss the elcor and hanar) but it doesn't seem like it will happen. :/ The first hours of the game also really rubbed me in the wrong way. For a series that was lauded for taking consequences, politics and morality somewhat seriously, the condescending way that everyone treated the planets and its inhabitants with no repercussions was extremely irritating to me. But hey, this planet is a dump and the aliens shot first so it's okay to treat them like monsters I guess. I get that it isn't what the story is about, but I wished there was a little more exploration on the more morally questionable aspects of the whole colonization effort. I encountered a lot of bugs but the only real bad one was on Voeld, where the lighting for the whole planet got fucked up and entering any smaller enclosed space that has a lamp would suddenly flash a bunch of lights all at once everywhere. Thankfully I had already done the important sidequests over there, because there's no fix for it yet that I could find. My favorite thing about this game so far is that you can finally create decent asian characters in a BioWare game, here's my Ryder: I'm waaay into this! I'm really warming up to Liam. His loyalty mission is the most memorable quest I had by far.

I'll be getting it for Wii U as the Switch is somehow selling for 3 times the US price in my country right now. Also, did anyone else check out ZAM's very negative review (ignore the comments)? Most of the aspects that the reviewer hated (i.e. pretty much everything) sounds good to me as they describe it so I guess I'm even more excited to play it now.

Wooow... just checked back and they indeed have deleted about 3 pages worth of comments. Considering Vinny even chimed in at some point to clarify himself in the comments, it definitely was for the best to just delete it all honestly.

For some reason I decided to read the comments on the latest Beastcast... yikes. Nothing unites certain gamerz (to the point they'll defend pewdiepie of all people) like the threat of ~sjw censorship~.

Despite having some reservations, I really did enjoy my time spent in the town just looking around and hanging out with everyone, including Mae. While she can be frustrating at times, I admire that they never tried to make her always likable and didn't cater to the player by always offering a cop out answer and/or the "good" dialogue option. My biggest criticism of the game came down to its length as I would actually prefer it to be more a bit more concise (and on a smaller note, some of the light mechanics didn't entirely work to me). I also didn't particularly care for the last half hour of the game but didn't hate it either, so whatever. The game actually made me really nostalgic for my own smaller-ish hometown, despite it being completely different from Possum Springs. I just spent an hour browsing Google Maps and looking around the places I hanged around as a kid...

I've been listening to Idle Thumbs since the kickstarter reboot and it quickly became my favourite podcast as well; while I obviously enjoy all the video game talk, the main reason I like Idle Thumbs are the people behind it, so I'm very glad that you guys will still be blasting pods in our faces. Thank you and good luck guys!!

Yup. I'm not even american and it's almost 3am where I live but everyone I know around here are glued to their screens and terrified too, trying to not lose hope. :/ What a fucking joke 2016 has been for politics everywhere. Sending good vibes!

Aaand of course someone already made Bazinga.zone a thing!

Maaan I was watching the Giant Bombcast live when the news broke out in chat and I actually gasped in excitement. Looking forward to the official launch!

Hey everyone! I've been listening to the podcast for years now and I've finally decided to stop lurking and join in. I'm a graphic designer working in a small studio in Brazil. I mostly play on PC, Wii U and 3DS; right now I'm trying to overcome my huuuuge backlog from the past steam sales so I'm focusing on PC for now. I look forward to interesting and fun discussions!