Jake

Haha too accurate. I like tf2 so much and am trash at it.

You have to dial a number on a phone in world and it gives you a general hint first. Then you have to call back for a more specific hint, and usually there are 3 layers of hint before it spells it out. It's pretty aware of the puzzles you're on and hides future pieces from you.

Important If True 31: The Illusion of Control We're going on a trip through the world's most bizarre mysteries, unanswerable conundrums, and dumb news, and it's going to take a while, so pack something healthy. No, we said healthy. Okay, fine if that's what you want. This week: If you have to babysit a ten year old version of yourself for the weekend, do you both get paid? What do ants see in you anyway? And, when you push a button that you know does nothing, has the satisfaction you felt when pushing it given that button a purpose? We can't stop pushing Nick's buttons about the alleged nutrition of PB&J sandwiches, so it must be true. Discussed: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, weird jams, haunted sandwich, The NBA's Secret Addiction, Playmobil Traffic Cone Lung, How a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich is Like a Playmobile Traffic Cone and the National Basketball Association is Like a Human Lung, feeding Snickers to ants, Snickers-based ant rituals, the relative impulse for self-care in ants versus octopuses, bothering an ant researcher, generic-brand confections, allsorts bag of candy garbage, bridge mix bag of candy garbage, babysitting your ten-year-old self, existential crisis, tuna fish sandwiches, Jake Rodkin: the perfect babysitter for Jake Rodkin, getting punched by your own ghost, experiencing the past as it happens, mishearing Kraft cheese advertising slogans, the dystopian ambitions of the Kraft corporation, glitches in the universe, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Super Mario Bros. tv commercial and "making of" video, morphed boy bite with bowl fly, stuck in an elevator for the weekend, nonfunctional elevator buttons, the illusion of control, this dismaying observation, video game illusion of control secrets revealed on Twitter, how a toaster really works, toaster don't give a shit Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Jake's Endorsement: Thimbleweed Park adventure game for computers, Xbox One, PS4, and iOS Chris' Old Man Endorsement: canned sardines, a tasty sustainable healthful snack! (try "Fisherman's Eggs" from this list of easy sardine recipes) Nick's Impenetrable Endorsement: Watching StarCraft e-sports—try these introductory videos from StarCraft player and streamer Day9, or just read about The Rise and Fall of StarCraft II Esports Sponsored by: Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

I'm only a tiny bit in to Far Cry 2 but I wanted to see how many other Thumbites were playing it, and what they thought? A stupid thing to point out as my sole example in this thread, but I really like the map in this game. The map and cell phone and other UI things your guy holds are done really well. I like pulling out the map while running around - the way it shakes around as the guy runs does a great job of making me feel like I'm actually trying to check directions while late for something and being an idiot for not just standing still for a second. I'm enjoying the actual game as well, but I haven't played enough to say much about it yet.

Good to be on the Idle Forums and be hyped for Psychonauts again, 13 years later.

I really liked Thimbleweed Park. I liked it a ton. I don't know about the ending, it wasn't what I was expecting and not my favorite but it is also not out of line with this crew of developers. That said, I was totally captivated by the middle of the game, in a way I haven't been by a graphic adventure in ages and ages. It hit the sweet spot for me, where I felt like I could progress at my own pace, the world was full of possibility, I always had someone else's story to switch to, and the cutaways and weird stylistic asides felt very confident and intriguing. It felt compelling and moody in a way I wasn't expecting (and I felt it through the jokes which were occasionally cheesy). I played on Switch and "annoying in jokes" were off in the settings menu by default, and I left them off. I figured (I think correctly) that the game could stand on its own without them. I also made liberal use of the hint line and was thankful it's there and integrated right into the game.

Idle Weekend October 1, 2017: The Vacation Games Sometimes, you have to pay to play. Danielle returns from glorious Scotland to regale Rob with tales of sightseeing, martial arts, and Mario Vs. Rabbids, while Rob has many vacation tales of his own, including the time he was too tall to ride Space Mountain. Both Weekenders learn of childhoods similarly spent in gay seaside resort towns, and everyone is interested in good sitcoms. It's a very idle weekend indeed! Discussed: Saugatuck MI, Ogunquit ME, Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Forza 7, Warhammer: Total War, A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Half-Life 2, X-com (original game), Dishonored, The Good Place, Father Ted Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

lolllll this is the most delicious shit for me to eat. Yum yum yum.

It was so appropriate. I'm really annoyed that both Chris and I forgot to mention it in the episode, even though we both of course thought of it when we saw the email.

Important If True 30: The Octopus Affair While we grapple with the mysteries of the world around us, while we do our best to solve your conundrums, provide you with advice, and tease out your bizarre hypothetical situations, we are being watched. Watched, judged, and pitied, by beings beyond our perception, hovering outside our senses on the edges of our reality. These beings fear for us, not for the damage we might do to them, but for the damage we might do to ourselves. And for our part, we barely know when they're there. In that way only, are they more afraid of us than we are of them. If you haven't guessed, this episode is about centipedes. Discussed: September 21 2017, dads, Important If True Dadcast, annoyed bird cursed to live in a cage of its own creation, centipedes: masters of space and time, classic middle-grade novel My Dad the Centipede, classic kid's book The Big Centipede, Yoda, Yoda Centipede, Yoda Da Man, human evolution, relative scale of human beings, giraffes, the ocean, a big fucking whale, octopus cities, the Gloomy Octopus, octopus evictions, miserable octopus society, Mcity (driverless car testing town), Yodaville (military bombing testing town), Safety Town (children's driving education town), Bartertown (Mad Max dystopian barter town), Gravesend (crime and riot simulation town), Pizzaland (fake pizzeria), "America the Beautiful" musical road, Mellotron keyboard instrument (example of Mellotron string loops), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Amazon, iTunes), Arrival (Amazon, iTunes), Wolverine Street, self-hoisting AI, human beings Send us your questions at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Jake's Endorsement: 80s.nyc (photographic Google Street View recreation of 1980s New York City) Nick's Endorsement: The West Wing Weekly ("The West Wing" discussion podcast) Chris' Endorsement: The Thin Man (1934 film about tipsy mystery-solving) (Amazon, iTunes) Sponsored by: Quip electric toothbrushes with $10 off your first brush head refill, Warby Parker prescription glasses home try-on, Peter's happy birthday! Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Fantastic article. Thanks for linking it.

It was made by imfamous space turtle from these very forums!

I can answer right now: It's not hard because I'm not trying to avoid gaming references. Occasionally one of us makes one on IIT and that's not shied away from. Doing Important If True has been a constant reminder how much Idle Thumbs required me (passively, actively, or somewhere in between) to filter the world on-mic through a lens of gaming, game jokes, game references, etc. Without that pressure there on Important If True, I just don't trend towards it unless it's very clearly time for a game reference or joke. (As opposed to on Idle Thumbs, in which my background thought process was often rapid-fire mental techniques to jump start my brain like "if this was a game, then --" or "this is like [game x] where you --" or other boxed-in fill in the blanks I could run through in my head as quickly as possible to try and bridge the conversation to some other observation or stupid or interesting game-related thing I had to say.) I don't know if that's how it feels for the other guys, but it is for me! Also "Centidad"...

I feel differently from my original post after seeing 17 and 18. Those episodes were way more about this than I was expecting and made a lot of things I was anxious about fall into place.

You've gotta go 45 mph to hear it properly I think.

lol

Hollllly shit

Wow

Important If True 8: Ghosts 'n Goblins The truth often hides just beneath the surface. Especially when that surface is a Furby’s skin, which is also a ghost. So what happens when our children decide they love their robot friends more than us? Before that can happen, how many pounds of spiders would it take to devour us all? Where is the body of Cervantes, and what's it doing? Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Send us email at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Discussed: Cuties, a girl and her water heater, robot propaganda, Cervantes, "Alone Together" by Sherry Turkle, two thousand pounds of spiders, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Bob Hoskins on a blue screen, MIDI piano cacophony Nick's Endorsement: Ice cream sundae with vanilla ice cream, Spanish peanuts, and Sanders Hot Fudge Chris' Endorsement: The cold shower capper Jake's Endorsement: Something True, true tales from the footnotes of history Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Haha or, by Hawk's measure, that could be equivalent to someone chanting "electricity."

I remember reading that they actually changed it because they thought people had an aversion to a fried food restaurant.

They're very hard in realtime if you also expect the player to be able to interrupt/interject at any time. If they are merely there to be observed that's one thing but if a player is also expected to have arbitrary agency over them, then brace yourself for authoring a hilarious amount of content and edge case protections.

Sounds like the "dad who sees a traffic jam then takes the whole family on city streets for 3x longer to 'keep moving'" of video game strats.

We flash back to it at some point early in the season.

I don't know of many besides The Last Express, but it's a very strong example, even if its a singular one.