Chris

It has achievements via Games for Windows Live, yes.

It'll give you a start. When it comes to drums, if possible, try and understand what your limbs are independently doing rather than just internalizing the complete patterns or taking it moment-by-moment. I think maybe some of the training stuff in the game stresses this?

It depends how interested you are in the form. I read lots of independent comics, and I own comics from France, Finland, Japan, Canada, Italy, Israel, etc.

I think the answer, which you imply, is that it's the easiest kind of defined character to write. There's the character who lacks any voice at all, then there's the character whose voice is just detached smarm, and those are the easiest ones to write (and thus the most common in video games).

I don't think that's a "but" necessarily. I listed several anime productions I like, which to me doesn't invalidate my other frustrations with incredibly widespread genre tropes.

Oh I don't know how similar it actually is. Ryan is just a dapper old-timey guy in a suit.

It took me a long time to figure out what the original post in this thread was intended to convey. Until a few minutes ago, my assumption was that it was some kind of virtual dress-up as Andrew Ryan and a Big Daddy.

I can't repond to the really posts in this thread right now, such as the suggestions, because I'm in a hurry, but I will quickly respond to this: I don't think anime is a medium in the sense TV is. It's a particular style. There is, undoubtedly, a huge range within that, but not in the sense of the whole of "film" or "television" or "theatre" or "literature" or even, by definition, "animation." And I disagree about it simply being a matter of not finding the right ones. I don't mean to say I think all anime is bad, or that I wouldn't like any of it. I have liked some of it. However, I do think it is possible to simply dislike the basic stylistic tropes of a certain genre. Someone might just inherently dislike the properties that make a musical a musical, or that make a poem a poem, or that make a metal song a metal song. They might also find individual examples of those things that they do end up liking in spite of that, but that doesn't mean they don't have a basic underlying distaste for certain elements of those forms that generally run through them. (You do this yourself at the end of your post.)

I'm happy to look into alternative suggestions. I really do find the general aesthetic of modern Japanese animation to be largely shit so the suggestion would have to be really rad. I like the first couple decades of the Japanese animation style, when it was still more rooted in the excellent Disney tradition it was born out of, but with an aesthetic that actually looked like it drew from elements of Japanese illustration and based on actual Japanese people instead of the horrific ultra-clean ethnically-nonsensical style that seems to have evolved over the last twenty years or so. Anime I like, in some cases in spite of having a few of my listed frustrations, includes Akira, Lupin III, almost all of the Studio Ghibli stuff, and to an extent Cowboy Bebop. I'm sure there are a couple other things I'm forgetting. Most manga has largely the same dumb shit that I hate, but I do love (extremely) Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who is goddamn certified amazing. A lot of Tezuka's stuff is also pretty sweet.

I find nearly all anime nigh-unwatchable for this reason. I detest it. I also detest abuse of extreme poses, female voice acting that sounds like the actress is constantly on the verge of orgasm, insufferable whiny and unassertive male characters who inexplicably end up becoming irresistible to the opposite sex, choreography that regularly includes jumping dozens of feet into the air and doing a lot of spins for no reason, that idiotic maneuver where characters fall from great distances and hit the ground kneeling (usually after killing somebody) with their eyes downcast then pause and look up into the camera (usually accompanied by a snap zoom), and the trend of increasingly-massive eyes to the point of grotesqueness. Some anime avoids a few of these things. Hardly any of it manages to be rid of all of it. I hate that shit.

Every episode of Idle Thumbs is actually fully subtitled

For some reason, Penny Arcade Forums posters seem incapable of distinguishing us. They're the only ones who I've seen actively complain about it. Other people don't complain, they just misattribute our statements obliviously.

Well, there's plenty of stuff having to do with the main story. I don't remember specific scenes or anything, since most of them I found boring. But there are undoubtedly tons of times when you just sit there and watch or listen to something happen dealing with Saren and the ancient evil and the Reapers or Reavers or whoever they are, all that crap. I just hate being in a video game and being told, "Hey you have to sit here and watch our movie for a bit." It makes me physically restless. In Mass Effect I find myself just skipping through many lines of dialogue, which sometimes screws me up because then I'll accidentally click on a response I didn't intend to say because an option will suddenly pop up after there hasn't been one for a while.

Owned! Oh snap! Got you!

Well, it is

Yeah you caught us well done

I remember when this came out. It set the amateur graphic adventure world on fire in a way few had at that time.

I played it with a controller, as did pretty much everyone I personally knew, most or all of whom had the same complaint.

You've left me with a sadness in my heart

Yeah well you've left me with a sadness in my heart

Hahaha, winner

I went through all of Rock Band on expert drums and guitar, but I don't think I played through all of Rock Band 2. As I recall there wasn't as straightforward a single-player career mode thing. I could be wrong though? I don't really remember.

I don't really think it's his responsibility to be careful about the theoretical future actions of a company he doesn't work for. If LucasArts would literally act in such a blind, spineless way as to simply act on some throwaway impulse exhibited by some Guy On The Internet, there would be even dumber projects they would already be making.

I don't like the Guybrush used in these projection examples, but I think it was just tossed in there for the purpose of scale and matching resolution, not as a carefully-considered decision of what kind of Guybrush would work best.