Jake

In my opinion the games get better starting with 104: Abe Lincoln Must Die, with a couple dips in quality along the way (I'm not too fond of season 2's second episode, Moai Better Blues, and I'm mixed on the episode right after that as well, for instance) but I hope you enjoy them as you go Steve is credited under special thanks for some of the earlier episodes because he went to many of the playtests for the first two seasons.

What's your Telltale username? (you can PM me and I'll look up your stuff)

There's "With StarCraft II" and "With StarCraft II 2," actually.

As usual, I'm the worst. When will the archive return? Soon. Sorry. ...

The famed Lazuli line!

Yeah it's been out for a couple months! http://www.telltalegames.com/store/tdp-disc

Spiral tracks are pretty unpleasant to ride, unless I'm misinterpreting.

Here's a recent one I made. It pales in comparison to all the stuff I just linked, by probably an order of magnitude, but hey! Making DVD packaging is really fun. Cover painting and illustration at the top of the back by Steve Purcell, obviously. Devil's Playhouse logo by Stephen Whetstine Menu stuff: Sweet transition: In-game title sequence, a crappy fan rip: FCUn89HUNcQ Closing credits, in the style of some fictional late 70s/early 80s kids sci-fi show: fOerr_fPIHE&NR The idea with the Sam & Max Season 3 stuff, across the board, was to try and combine the aesthetics of 70s/80s B-run and direct to VHS sci-fi with the more traditional Sam & Max-style reference of 40s noir detective stories. I never got it to a place that I totally liked (especially the in-game main menus, which I had high hopes for but was never able to fully bring it in line with what I wanted), but hey. I love cheesy shine effects and weird colors, and I also like just-pre Modern mid-century stuff a lot. Working on Season Three was one of my favorite projects since people started paying me to make things.

Unrelated to those guys, the Venture Bros season 1 and 2 DVDs have some of my favorite poster-style art:

Here are three process blogs by designers who do Criterion Collection covers: http://samsmyth.blogspot.com/ http://ericskillman.blogspot.com/ Some examples: Also: http://kellerhouse.com/ including one of my favorite recent posters: and some other cool stuff: --- For Remo

That trove of unreleased Thumbs is why people think that podcast is worth anything. If we released those instead of the re-records our perceived track record would be that we are horrible.

You can turn that rumble off in gameplay settings, too. (which I did and am glad for it)

We're planning on doing more. We did another episode and it was a little bit of a mess so we didn't release it. Odds are there'll be some more stuff coming up soon though, with the Parade Of Summer Trade Shows on the horizon.

http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/Games/BioShock-2/minervas-den/

I liked the soundtrack more in the context of the game (which is understandable but not always the case for me), but I've still been listening to the soundtrack a lot. A lot of it sounds like a bunch of robots being awestruck and mystified by Philip Glass, which is fine by me.

Fun fact: The entire Thumbs podcast archive is huge. Gigs and gigs and gigs. I was surprised.

Working on this today. Copying lots of files around at the moment.

9999999 is the one which always gets stuck in my head. Glad to have an MP3 of it.

Trains are starting to come together a bit, which is quicker than walking but not as sweet as flying.

There are about 30 episodes which aren't re-linked yet.

When I said "in the spoiler" I was referring to the contents of Rodi's spoiler (quoted above in my post). I didn't say anything spoilery but what I was saying was based off of a

Agreed!

Early-mid X-Files did that to me on good weeks, probably more successfully than any show has since. (That could be because I was an early teenager at the time and now I'm 30...) I don't watch much genre TV at this point, so for me Doctor Who is the only show that comes close (or even tries), but I'm not actually creeped out by it that often. (I like that it does a good job of being creepy and mysterious, but it doesn't genuinely scare me.) And there's the problem (in the spoiler) -- "If you look closely you'll find..." sure, but if you don't look closely, the entire movie is The Jack Sparrow Show, which is completely wrong. The reason he worked so well as a character in the first movie is because he was never the focus of the story -- he showed up part way through other people's story, on a trajectory 30 degrees off from the rest of the plot, and stayed that way, bouncing around off-angle to the rest of the world, intersecting it only at either the least or most appropriate moments that the film could support while keeping the wheels from falling off. Over each subsequent sequel the story has become more and more about Jack -- slowly bringing that 30 degree off-axis tilt to the rest of the plot further and further back in line with everyone else -- and I think they've become worse and worse because of it. Elliot and Russo seem to be masters of coming up with fun plots on the page (case in point: both Barbossa and Blackbeard's story is fun "if you look closely," or if someone excitedly tells you about it before you see the movie), but at least with the Pirates sequels they seem unable to focus on the things that actually deliver that plot, instead overindulging on the side stuff which amuses them (or which they think people will be amused by). When watching the movies you can always tell the reason they thought to include something, or why they figured a character for a particular moment or motivation, but the actual beat by beat execution of the stuff increasingly feels like it came out of the mouth of a sugar high kid or a rambling homeless person. It's really frustrating. I had no expectations for the first film and came out surprised and loving it. It was a great classic Hollywood adventure story, a well told, character-fueled pirate tale built on clever plotting and a reasonably unconventional structure. Not a thing anyone actually expects to exist. The sequels have become an increasingly convoluted mess. I was hoping the fourth film would be a chance to wipe the slate clean and do something free of all the baggage the sequels accumulated, but instead they diverted even further from the structure and clean intelligent storytelling which made the first film so good, and topped it off with what seems like a significantly lower budget, and an inferior director and cinematographer. Also, I think they finally stole the last page they could from Monkey Island's playbook, by reducing the goddamn plot all the way down to "find the 3 items to unlock the big door." On Stranger Tides was, against all odds, a story of the Spanish versus the English in a race to complete the Three Trials. Oh yeah, "On Stranger Tides." It had nothing to do with the book. Seems like they named it that solely to avoid lawsuits. "Suggested by the novel 'On Stranger Tides' by Tim Powers" is the wording in the closing credits of the film. So yeah, you're in luck. The film and the book have nothing in common other than a character and a location feature in both. Oh and the name. Ack I wrote a lot. I write a lot when I'm frustrated I guess.

That specific complaint's not reason enough to not buy the game in my opinion. But, to each their own. I'm only a little way into the Traffic cases so far but am enjoying it. I don't think this is a fun game to watch ("why is he just turning that gun to the left?) The face capture tech is awesome except when its not. Sometimes it seems like their camera rigs failed to pick up a surface difference and then an ear sort of melds down into the shape of the side of the face and is just a texture instead of being modeled until they turn their head. Maybe its just the lighting, who knows. The body mocap acting is the most surprising, in that (like a lot of GTA games) its still bad. I guess nobody cares about body acting, compared to face acting, but the popping and stuff was weird to see in such a high profile game which is so focused on the people. BUT I am liking the game a lot. The investigations are fun and the world is beautifully done. It's basically Phoenix Wright Noir, or the most expensive Telltale CSI game ever made, and with a far better setting than either of those, but that makes a huge difference.

I think that's already supported by the plugin. Its either already been scripted or proposed before. I'd love to see both a rolling horizon ala Deathspank/Animal Crossing, and some spherical curvature at the horizon line. Not all the time, but it would be a fun way of looking at the game world for a bit. Inception and LBP/animal crossing- style scripts are available here.