vimes

Ahah... I bought a cheap collector's edition last week and the DLC just tonight. Sweet irony:tmeh:

This is one the most self-deprecating 'OK,' I've ever read. Also, count me in too.

By the way, anyone knows how the Indie Fund is going ?

Thread revive! ... since I'm catching up on 360 goodness. I think that's a perfect game. I have literally NOTHING bad to say about it. Everything is top notch -to borrow from Rab - from design to fucking execution : controls, animations, sound design, storytelling and, god, the puzzles. Those are better than Portal's, better than Braid's, better than Samorost's, better than the best of the Mysts', better than anything I know or can remember. It's all about trial and errors but it's very fluid, never frustrating, it builds on previous things you've seen or done without ever turning trivial; it never points to the solution yet the clues become noticeable at the proper pace ... and because of that, I never noticed the underlying structure even once. And I never tried anything reckless because the death were so damn traumatizing. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that they seem to have tailor every little things or never stopped at 'good enough'. God, how I wish I had made that game. Also, if the second part didn't move you, it's because you've never played in abandoned factories or on-hold construction site - which I did for a few summers when I was around 10. I can tell you, there's nothing quite as exciting or terrifying as snatching diesels from a neighbor's lawn mower, attempting to start an old machine and succeed in doing so then shitting yourself because you've got not clue what it's doing or or how to stop it. To this day, I don't what the fuck it was doing, but I'm thankful it was somewhat bolted to the floor.

I never 'trick-or-treat'ed in my life, so CQ was complete wishfullfilment/catharsis for me ... in fact, I gobbled it in two pretty long sittings - it's the second game in years that made me burned the midnight oil - and man, the aftertaste is great. I've got bunch of gripes toward the gameplay since it could do far more interesting things with the ingredients it has; but what's there is neatly executed, so it never quite* casts a shadow on the rest. The story aspects are brilliant; so much so that I'll join others and compare those to Ghibli's : the tone is sweet but somewhat authentic, the story complexity is appropriately scaled for the characters and the pace strikes the perfect balance between exploration and urgency. It feels like the Goonies and BTTF too, somehow... Now, I'm really looking forward to the other Amnesia Fortnight projects. * 'quite' because the combat system quickly turns to [XXX-paryparypary-XXX-paryparypary-YYY-repeat] even though the QTEs enhance it nicely.

I don't a lot about Johnathan Blow : why are some people expecting him to be a pretentious twat?

I'm catching up on 'casts, and I realized there were a fairly big number of segments about control schemes - yeah Kinect/Move badmouthing, but also lots of stuff about button based ones. [Ep13 (from 01:07:30) Ep9 and something in Ep10, check them out again]. It made me wonder : should pad control schemes themselves support player expression ? One Button Bob works because you've got no choice; but playing a bit of Minecraft, Bioshock and Mario Galaxy 2, I realized you can replace separate buttons with a shitload of game rules to expand agency. With only 2 actions available but a vast number game objects/NPC reacting differently to these, you can get fairly complex reaction with limited input. But then, are people more able to absorb more game rules or a more complex scheme ? Assassin's Creed Puppeteer fails but I find the idea very elegant : armed/unarmed end models intent/mood instead of definite action ... Still, most games fail to transform intent into the proper action, so it's kind of a dead end ? Anybody played Shattered Memories ? Does this actually works ? Or maybe Crawford's right is literally right and true interactivity means more verbs available at any time. But then how do you filter/bind those verbs without turning into freakin' Flight Simulator ? Fellow Thumbeteers, any thoughts about all this brain dump ?

I read the 'improvements' list and all I can think is that it fits perfectly the changelist format of a compatibility patch. We used to get those for free, a few years ago... Since this clearly is a marketing and polling operation, I wonder if offering the revamped game wouldn't yield better result than selling it ?

Err, what ?

I'm a theoretical proponent of analog movement control, but a lead tester recently told me that the vast majority of gamers usually pushes the stick to the max; only using analog for the angle. A button for walk/run is apparently a less confusing and less 'physically stressing' input.

Bear in mind I have yet to play the game on a proper server.

I'm intrigued people here are surprised by the way the trailer is being presented, they did the exact same thing for the first Bioshock except it was narrated : yTWu6xZHAg8

Well, maybe art is a relativistic concept and then your definition will be satisfying for some.* I don't think there's any issue with this approach : it's much less dramatic/pretentious than looking for a rule and it's more honest, since it pretends to help identifying art rather than offering guidelines to get there. It's more useful too : if you tell people that they can find ways to engineer art from the ground up provided they look hard enough; it inhibits their own vision (since it might not fit existing ones) rather than empower them. And in video games, with the existing pressure to meet 'market's expectations', inhibitions is not what game creatives need more of. For now, I only know a few games that feature The Complete Multimedia Art Package, but I know I'm not having a hard time finding bits of it here and there : the vistas of Red Dead, the gameplay implications of Civ, the 'social' mindgames of Spy Party, the sound design of Dead Space void sequence, the music of Sam and Max, the writing of Grim Fandango and the GTA Radio Stations, the narrative structure of the Path, the gameflow of Mario Galaxy and Passage, the expressive tools of LBP... then, to meet our expectations, there are also tools to try to achieve the vision we might have. Because at one point, if you can't find anything that resonates with you and video games are a significant part of your intellectual life, it's kind of important ato put your balls on the chopping block and participate in creating something that attempts to fit your 'needs'. I mean, look at the Zombie Cow duo, they made a game about vagina invasion, and see how fulfilled they sound! *Well, I don't agree when you say it's all about learning stuff about yourself - for me, something is more valuable to me if it actually introduces me to other people view I never thought existed

Rah, I love the way they’re reinterpreting the strong concepts of the Bioshock I & II universe and spinning them in new directions. Maybe those are obvious, but they kept hints of the original Big Daddy and Little Sisters - sometimes it's subtle (e.g. Elizabeth’s blue Victorian dress and her physical vulnerability) and when needed, not so much (the iconic Big Daddy Helmet) - and it seems they left the balance of power intact so that the dynamic remains obvious... but even there, they injected new ideas (e.g. the destruction of the Big Daddy bring it’s human face out just as you need to finish him off) to provide a new emotional impact for those. IMO, so far, it looks like the best results for a remake /spin-off I’ve seen in years. Also is it me or the crowd noise native is American attack ‘ululation’ or maybe zaghareet? On the gameplay front, I really hope they revisit thoroughly Bioshock's recipe because it was torn between opposing genre and failed. On one hand, it offered very compelling hunting tools (the traps, the camera, the chain reaction prone environment, the wandering boss ...) but on the other, the game was a linear survival constantly pushing you forward and within which I was never really enticed to plan, and wait and prey. Because of that, all those nice gameplay elements lost their interest. Hopefully, 2 years, they've got time to do find solutions to that.

Weird, a friend at work, just showed me the spoon scene from Election, the other movie from Johnnie To. Since I've been in Singapore, I've watched quite a bit of asiangangster movies, and so far, my recent favorites are ... and they are way better than their trailer suggest. io6Ql2kI5NU ztSLNCNCmM0

I like grim fandango cover/dvd splicase the most. On Collector's Edition - this is a bit off topic since I'll take Movie DVD as an example. I'm not a big fan of the statues/helmet/batarang in big box; and I wish publishers were still into the digipak format ... now, the trendy thing is embossed 'tin case' (?). It worked for Bioshock; but it didn't really fit Uncharted 2 SE... and a bunch of other stuff. The world of cover is apparently pretty strange : a friend of mine used to work at Disney France and participated in the early collector's editions published in 2000ish; and they were fantastic. It's not fine art, but it's way better than what we usually get outside the Criterion Collection. He apparently also had a hand in the gloriousFrench version of Roger Rabbit SE and the marvelous Peter Pan SE But apparently, the cover were so classy, that they confused parents away since they didn't get it was a kid movie... So at first, they removed the classy concept art and replaced it with bullshit art vs Then they dumbed down the Disc art... And finally they switched to the 'cardboard sleeve with traditionnal' dvd format with 'rainbow effect layer' on top of it. Berk.

I don't think that Nick should be allowed to use " ... and I'm Nick Breckon!" in other podcasts. No with that tone, with those inflexions or this accents. That belongs to us now! Otherwise, the podcast is very good - the one with the Arkane team is great - even though I'm not a fan of the ambient music and the sometimes awkward trailer-like voice over " ... and they didn't know ... they had just created ... a phenomenon (cue Doom 2 music or something)".

Same here!

If it's already been mentioned, sorry but, if not : Catching up on podcast is magical... I checked this the moment they mentioned it. Google tells us he needn't a full name now, should he be referred as Sean Fam. ?

In the same trend as Rodi, I've been reading 'classics' - mainly because I was getting ashamed of having second-hand knowledge of them. So I've read The Catcher in the Rye, I'm halfway through Dostoievsky's Brother Karamazov and next up are A Tale of Two Cities and a Sherlock Holmes Anthology. At first, I thought Catcher in the Rye wasn't moving me because I wasn't reading it while going through teenagehood ... but I've come to realize that I could never have empathize with Holden, mainly because his angst and antisocial behavior are made possible by the fact that his parents are loaded with cash. It's not like he's angsty against its environment - which would be compelling and truly rebellious - this environment actually enables him to throw fits and tantrum.The only part I could feel for the character was in his completely unreal and detached love for his siblings ... however, after finishing the book and ruminating over it for a few days, I think that the fact that I can't identify with Holden isn't making the book a bad one : it still offers a voice to a very unique - at least to me - character and way of thinking. It's completely foreign to me, so at least it something that was thought-provoking. Also, even the though the writing is very peculiar, you forget there's a writer behind all that; which is no small feat. As for The Brothers Karamazov, I think I'll write something when I'm done (only 400 pages remaining:tup:) because while it's dated in some place - the woman in this book are having hysterics in most scenes and everybody is oozing with passion- I believe that in terms of 1) narrative structure 2)use of secondary characters 3)parallel storylines 4) use of timing and concurrent events 5) character centric moral depiction, there are a bunch of patterns any storyteller lurking at the interactive field could learn from.

Charity event finally makes Idle Thumbs signatures valuable! So, that's Sean Vanaman on the left (I'm guessing, since he looks like the guy who's all over Gromit's Making Of) and Chris, Jake and Steve's Mighty Fringe (bangs) are recognizable ... but who are the guy at the bottom and the far right - one of them must be Nick, but who's the other one?

Sure, weird play keys don't work as hotkeys, but VLC looks like this There are enough real things to complain about, don't make stuff up.

Eh It'd be awesome to see their reaction to The Grande Bouffe. edit : on the other hand, if they don't actually prevent others from watching those movies, I don't see what's wrong with them leaving; I mean it's a shame for them, but well, it's not less rational than watching Ichi the Killer from beginning to end.

If they expected it to be disappointing, wouldn't it make the statement correct ?

Because the Third Man and none of the Mankiewicz's movies would exist ?