MrHoatzin

With that in mind, I move we turn this thread into the official Brendan Ferguson appreciation thread.Woohoo, Brendan Ferguson rocks! :tup:

We are so sad. So very fucking sad. TAKE PITY!

But "Awesomely deep character skills..." and "Unique and strategic magic system..."! Obviously, you're just jealous of how awesome their game is.

Personally, I liked the penultimate episode. Visually it was a serious improvement over Episode 1 (even though it recycled a fair bit of its assets) and the trial dynamics were fun. It felt far less like the usual fetch quest (find the ingredients for the soup/voodoo doll/ring/map/etc), it gave the player the sense of agency over his/her own destiny. I wish this was easier to pull of in more adventure games, this structure where it all starts with a simple directive or goal (prove your innocence), and the ways and means to get there are discovered through further structured inquiry (cross-interrogating witnesses, confronting them with evidence, etc). :tup: On a somewhat unrelated note, I wish there was more adventure games out there that gave more investigative agency prefaced with a simple goal that doesn't amount to building machines from stolen junk. There hasn't been anything like Discworld Noir since Discworld Noir; Discworld Noir being a shining example of this mechanic implemented with great success. :tup: Anyhoo, I was a bit blitzkrieg'd by the staggering slew and rate of revelations, gotchas and dei ex machina near the end of the episode, but it didn't bother me enough to come here and complain. In retrospect, it could've been handled a little more deftly, perhaps. A little more Wire, a little less Lost... or maybe that is ridiculous. I wonder how a The Wire-inspired Monkey Island game would be structured. CREATIVE EXERCISE TIME!

Rapidshare!* __________________ *May be neither rapid nor particularly share.

Most vocal people in general are idiots.

Too bad Bioshock is still under the 2K label. Why do these big publishers remove all individuality from their studios when they scoop them up in the first place?

Emperor Norton would not approve of such familiarity, I hear.

Everyone here is made in Jake's image.

Man, I have left and reentered the States too many times, in too many different ways. I've done it as a non-resident alien, as a resident alien, as a resident, as a permanent resident, as a citizen—by plane, by land—through sleepy border crossings where agents didn't much seem to care, as well as semi-militarized zones where a dog jumped on my car and barked and slobbered all over the window for no reason whatsoever (apparently that meant that I was clean). I've never had any kind of normal status such as "Tourist" or "Student". It was always some sort of esoteric visa tied to my mother (who's a scientist), that they had to educate themselves about before giving me a stamp in my passport—but they would never say as much; they would just disappear in some back room for half an hour. Dealing with Homeland Security bureaucracy was never fun. And they seldom have a sense of humor about the Kafkaesque shenanigans they force people through. I never know if the fuzz is going to see some detail about me or something I say as irrelevant rambling of a silly fat kid, or as a reason to send me to Gitmo. So I'm somewhat traumatized by it all. I finally became a citizen a month ago, but then proceeded to marry a Mexican on a student visa... which means the fun times with the Homeland Security and INS will not end for another 3+ years.

Yes, and now you're confessing to everything on a public forum. I think you should rethink this course of action.

It is awkward to read that thing. The fact that this place ever answered these descriptions—and proudly—makes me emo. Hi, my name is Kingz and I used to be (am?) an obnoxious dick.

The no blood thing in both death scenes was distracting and made it seem like a puppet show. Ultimately, tho, I feel it was weird but not ungood. => __________________

Yeah, no. At some point I had a reason to hide my birfday so I made it the first of january, but it is not my birthday. Thanks anyway! :tup:

I think I got rather far, and then kept getting killed by some yetis and lost interest.

Technically I am a Merkin, but I used to not be one. Maybe I keep coming here for sentimental reasons. Also, most of the people here spilled over from Adventure Gamers and Mixnmojo and the like, from an adventure gaming tradition which has been doing somewhat respectably well in Europe while dying in the States for the past ten years. Maybe.

Hey I got hitched! Everyone had fun, best wedding ever, I've been told. The raddest part was seeing people from radically different contexts hitting it up successfully. So now I am a grownup. What do I do now?

HEY KIDS, YOU'VE BEEN DRAFTED: Go here and vote for original things. Post a few lines of support. Don't let the thread just die. A little grassroots nudging may help tip scales in favor of a risk or two.

Saw The Princess and the Frog yesterday. The characterization and the music were revolting, but I fancied the animation. :tdown: + :tdown: + :tup: = :tmeh:

Me too!

A bunch of crazy creatives persuaded the people in marketing of both Nickelodeon and Burger King that this would be an excellent idea, just to see how far they could push the suits before they figured out they were being led on. I have managed to get away with some pretty ludicrous things by getting the boring corporate people to trust my judgment in matters of what is cool. Doesn't happen often, but it is a wonder when it does.

Moai Better Blues is an awful, off-putting odd one out. I liked all of the other episodes in that season. The problem with S&M, I feel, is that it relies on so much topical humor and famous peep name dropping. It can't be helped. TMI was really great, tho. The only thing I wish it had was a better name. Tales of Monkey Island is so generic-sounding. Maybe there will be a retroactive subtitle when they churn out another season in two years time? Also, I want original IP. Time is ripe. Can we have an amen?

I think contemporary art is exactly the thing to look up to. 1 and 2 are both false. They may be true for some artists, but they are not truisms. If you said that those were problems of the contemporary art scene at large, I wouldn't necessarily argue with you. This doesn't mean that there isn't stuff to be learned from how contemporary artists approach problems, or that 1 and 2 are necessary evils that cannot be avoided. Since it is so unhinged and chaotic and relies on an audience participating or witnessing things, it is a better model than movies, which are static and set up by a hegemonic auteur. Some of the better installation artists could make pretty impressive, effective video games.

Thanks, everyone!