vimes

I like Space Brothers but I suspect this has more to do with the qualities of the original manga than those of the adaptation: apart from a few interestingly directed sequences, the pacing is pretty bad and the brotherly rivalry theme is layered so thick and so often it's sickening. The overused space musical theme doesn't help. I wish they got on with it to advance the plot and characters along. I hadn't check anime TV Series since 2007, and boy, it's sad to see the media is even more stuck in industry-wide trope than back then. I'd say half a dozen of this season's series have an interesting core ideas but all of them fall into the high school romance genre and only a few seem capable of outgrowing that setting. Among them are Tsuritama - far from perfect, but I like the FLCL vibe - Kids on the Slope - a slow burner - and maybe Kyouka. Beside those, I'm really enjoying Folktale from Japan and Project Buta (not sure if it's a series) I'm currently catching up on this 5 year gap and I'll probably post the best of what I found here. So far, 2 are standing out: Nisemonogatari - a pretentious as well as beautifully animated, written and directed series about the notion of fake/fraud (and way better than its prequel Bakemonogatari)- and Mononoke - 12 episode, 4 ghost/mystery stories.

Also, I'm super excited at the "archaeology" pitch: a friend from work and I have recently been talking about that and we felt that nobody really took on the legacy of the Myst series in terms of gameplay or storytelling. To me, this genre - when it doesn't fall into silly math head scratcher - is one of the most thrilling and unique thing game can offer, because it requires the player to build mental models based on partial clues and have him/her validate it through making stuff work again. I simply LOVE this intellectual exercises and that progression! If they are going in that direction, I'll support what they do even more.

I find it increasingly cooler to witness the Idle Thumbs crew tackling on ambitious, personal gaming projects. And it's even rad that they do it now, when there are finally ways to support them directly.

Last time I tried emptying my Steam backlog, I tried to give each game 90 minutes to convince me. I struggled with some and, of course, this rule doesn't apply to broken or overly bugged games, but this arbitrary times seems to work.

The demo didn't really enlighten me but 1) it's Jake's and Sean's game and 2)some friends told me they were impressed with the writing - so i'm going to risk it Question is: PS3, Xbox or PC ?

I also wish there was a 3rd season for Carnivàle. However, since the original plan was to go all the way to 6, maybe it's better that way. Not that I distrust the writer, but TV series tend to up the ante each season and end up in places they shouldn't have gone. For Carnivale, it probably would have translated to a 6th season dealing with wrapping up supernatural battles and massive conspiracy theories. What I like in this series was the humble beginnings, the tragic characters, the dust bowl setting and the "wonder for reason trade" idea that was never really discussed. I don't think they could have maintain the modest scale which would allow to explore those after the avatars became aware of their destinies and the templars showed up.

Congrats Chris!

I don't really think that, on the topic of "shooting someone in the face", the most crucial aspect Video game should expose is that red goo gushes out of the wound. I'd say it's the fact that you take away this individual future good or bad impact on the world. In that sense, I don't think the way Dishonored depicts the physical consequences of killing is very interesting aesthetical or morally, like Chris suggests (if I get his post right). That being said, I was not criticizing Dishonored for not offering an existencialist point of view on assassination. That would be having demented expectations. My remark was meant to convey that I'm saddened that my main reason to around this world and experience those interesting gameplay system seems be gutting half of the population in order to prove that my character was wrongly accused of murder

Cool episode! I want to share my opinion about playtesting, but it will probably sound redundant when compared to Sean and Chris opinions. My take is that, like prorotyping, playtesting is a fundamental tool that is often misunderstood and nowadays politically charged. My idealistic view is that playtesting needs to covers both usability and design intent validation. By 'design intent validation' I mean than content creator (LD, GD, writer) should be able to check that the 'objectives' they crafted their gameplay sequences to carry are actually perceived by the players. The problem is that, if you're looking at a game from the 'product' perspective, it's very easy to confuse the two: ambiguity rarely serves a product and the mode of interaction are usually instant-giveaway of its final function. Anyway, those 2 aspects might look similar, but they are very different. So much so, that I feel they shouldn't be evaluated at the same time nor have the same protocols involved. I think it's a shame that LD and GD are kept away from playtesting (geographically most of the time); but to be honest, I've also met quite a few creative people who struggle to articulate what exactly they want to achieve through their feature/sequence and accept it when it fails. So, they resort to the unusable question : "Is it good/better ?" which I don't think serve creative iteration very well.

I would go for the 'bikes and awesome friends rule' rule, that would somewhat cancel the effect of any card whose illustration doesn't feature some sort of cycling contraption or friendly display. That being said Vampire The Eternal Struggle is the only collectible card game I played more than twice and I enjoyed thoroughly. It features only one currency, it's a very social game with lots of talk and negociation, the vast majority of rules are dead simple, the theme serves the mechanics very well and it supports for a wide range of playstyles. The only aspect are the very dull combat system and the fact that, for beginners or intermediates, the rules of certain powerful cards are immensely intricate... it's difficult to keep track of those and not be surprise torpored by them. We tried to remediate to that aspect (as well as randomness) by integrating some deck-building phase (either through pre-game auction game or in-game) but it never worked out because the playstyle rarely compete for similar cards. In the end, sharing the decks and explaining 'exotic' cards before starting was the most efficient approach... but it didn't solve the unlucky draw. Some friends argued that it's inherent to the genre and that it's not supposed to be chess; e.g gambles are meant to be made but I don't agree.

I like the setting and overall art direction but I'm on the fence about the very-violent aspect ...that being said, the list of people involved in this game is pretty high-profile : the Arx Fatalis guys, Harvey Smith and the art director of City 17. That really intrigues.

I don't want to sound monomaniacal but, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Very crafty and brilliant in terms of story content, story strucutre AND dialogs, but he directed his own screenplay and he was a genius at that too; so maybe it's cheating (I'm not sure it's easy to appreciate a screenplay in the hands of a bad director) I was going to add Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, A Dog Day Afternoon, Presumed Innocent) but I haven't seen enough of his stuff; and RottenTomatoes tells me it's not all that good apparently. Otherwise, like Chris, Woody Allen. It's easy to mostly remember him for his acting and comedy writing but Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan Murder Mystery, September, Mighty Aphordite are also built on great, great screenplays; and their breadth of tone is stunning.

That's a shame, I don't think I'm going to read more books of that series.

That's interesting; I picked up Cloud Atlas when you mentioned it last year on twitter and struggled to finish it. It seemed to me that the book was overly commited to each local tone/genre and pointlessly obsessed with meshing everything together through detail rather than theme. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with English Literature and each style is actually very genuine, but it didn't completely feel that way to me. This made it very difficult for me to see what was the focus point of the book and what was the use of the structure beyond a few gimmicky (but effective) tricks it pulled. If I put those issues aside, each piece is fairly interesting; but honestly, having read a huge amount of collection of short stories recently; they wouldn't really stand among the bests. It's a good book; but given its structure I was expecting something more.

I've only read 2 of the series book and completely disagree, but I'd be interested in knowing which elements of this series makes you draw this comparison

Err, actually, I think I appreciate 3MA because it's very different from Idle Thumbs : the ratio of silliness is quite low and to be fair, with OneLifeLeft back in the days, the Thumb is pretty much the only silly/insightful podcast that works it for me. But thanks for the warm welcome. To reiterate my question : I'm pretty much new at Europa Universalis type of strategy games, should I still be able to appreciate Crusader Kings 2? Or is there a better entry point in the genre?

I had a weird double feature on Sunday Night: The Lorax followed by A Dangerous Method. The 1st one is very forgettable beside half a dozen perfectly timed Chuck Jones moments and very nice animations for the mostly hidden Once-ler. I thoroughly enjoyed the 2nd one, because it painted Jung and Freud as very flawed characters while letting me decide who to get behind depending on which of these flaws I was more willing to forgive. For me, it was Freud, despite his rigidity, his manipulative patriarchism and thinly veiled jewish communitarism. Knightley is quite amazing in it even if inconsistent: she really carries well the sense of self loathing and how it can lead to the physical symptoms she displays; but from time to time, she does get into overacting territory. Overall, I think it's the best Cronenberg movie of the post-Spider era. Then, tonight, I watched The Honey Pot by Mankiewicz for the second time ever; and Jesus, there's no school like old school! Mankiewicz's writing is delectable - nobody blend farce and character development quite like him - the direction is inventive, the structure is griping and the acting is fantastic. Maggie Smith was disturbingly attractive at the time. And the original posters were pretty cool.

Slightly unrelated question; did Sean voice the "Rated M for Mature" bit at the beginning of the video?

I finally jumped the fence and funded this. However, given that this Kickstarter is even more of a mega-special edition pre-order fest than the previous one, I'm pondering if I'm sending the wrong signal. When game related projects came to Kickstarter, I saw it as a great way of putting my money were my mouth was i.e. funding projects I think should get made and distributed. Which doesn't necessarily equal to yearning for the final product. Beside spiting Karimi, I'm basically funding Wasteland 2 on this idea : I'm not that giddy about post-apocalyptic RPGs, but I want to show that I think Chris Avelonne and some of the other people involved should be able to dedicate their skills to something they truly care about. In this case, it's that game; I'd be happier with something less generic, but I'll take what I can. Now, I'm not sure if the message will get through. And I don't know how to signify it to InXile without sounding like a dick. Other than that, this project seems amazingly structured and its dev roster is increasingly impressive; which is pretty reassuring.

First time listening to 3MA and even though it took a while to get to the meat of the subject, I'm really liking it:tup: Crusader King 2 sounds really appealing right now : I'm completely sold to the idea of focusing on a temporary dynasty leader and how it creates a dichotomy between the kingdom's and the character's goal. The thing is, that it sounds like this singular piece of gameplay is buried under a huge amount of hardcore and unrelated E3 feature. And I'm not very good at those. So should I try it?

I'm confused about the role that Brian Fargo had on Wasteland and during the Black Isle era of Interplay. I know he was an Executive Producer, but depending on the company, this could translate to pure management role or creative direction.Any body has more details than what Wikipedia offers?

Yeah, sorry about that, I wasn't super forgiving and thorough:/ I was reading the text as the video was buffering and lost all interest after reading that bit and going through a few of the unconvincing anthics in the video. I stopped at

I find no value in the statement that 'adult shouldn't read young adult books' since I wouldn't let anyone dictates what should be appropriate/healthy reading habits... but I do agree with Chris when he says those books get so much exposure already that it wouldn't make sense for the book club to put emphasis on that genre. We know those exists, and I don't know about other readers, but my main reason for following the book cast is because I expect it to help me disocver new territories and get me out of my comfort zone.

2nd paragraph of her Kickstarter pitch: "Jane is known for games with complex, dark plotlines ala Dan Brown." Oh dear.

I'll give a new Sorking a try any day.