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It seemed so much more sinister. Maybe I was reading into it too much or maybe it was bit of a red herring put in there on purpose, but I liked the fact that I didn't know if I could trust her. She could have been pulling my strings for all I know. I'll definitely have to replay this to parse these conversations again.

I just wanted to add my voice to the ones complimenting this game. Most of my gaming time these days is limited so I try to play only the games that I think are worth my time and have some originality to them and Firewatch definitely was worth it. It impressed me right off the bat with that emotional intro. And it was a treat to play a non-perfect but yet more-realistic protagonist which is an avenue I wish more games would take. I really agree with SuperBiasedMan about how neither of the main characters got any better over the game. I think that's an interesting choice in that we just generally assume characters (well-written ones, at least) grow over games yet at the end of the game I'm not sure Henry or Delilah are any different. Perhaps they've realized they really can't run from their problems anymore. I keep thinking about Henry taking the hand of the rescuer on the helicopter at the end. After spending nearly the entirety of the game avoiding people, he finally makes an actual human connection. I do have to say though I was a little disappointed in how the overarching of mystery of the game was tidily wrapped up by the end. It seemed like a little bit of a let down just to say "Oh yeah, the campers are safe, Delilah left, and it was all the fault of guy with PTSD". There was such a build-up that just pinning it all on Ned at the end was just a bit too cursory for me. The Henry-Delilah relationship in particular seemed unresolved. Not that I wanted or expected them to get together at the end, but to spend all summer talking and yet never meet seems odd. I know there was a comment of this mirroring online relationships but that doesn't seem relevant considering the era of the game. I almost wish she were a figment of his imagination as that makes more narrative sense to me. I'm still not sure what that conversation between Delilah and the other person when they were talking about Henry was about. If anybody can explain it to me, I'd appreciate it. Overall though, I really enjoyed this. Great story, atmosphere, visuals, sounds, music. I look forward to their next game.

I am behind in listening to the podcasts and had no idea this thing was going on, but I just wanted to chime in and say great job to all the people involved in this. There seriously could not have been any better gifts given than these.

I thought the first series was good and the second series was GREAT. I really enjoy the TV series. I'd say it's my 2nd favorite show on TV behind Breaking Bad. I've read the 1st book, but only after the 2nd season was over. Maybe that influences my opinion of the show. I don't know.

The Blind Side is an extension (or excerpted? I forget.) of that article. It's a great book that has suffered due to its sappy movie adaptation. There's much more analysis of the evolution of the modern NFL game in the book. I also second Moneyball. Two basketball books that are worth a read are Loose Balls which is a very funny oral history of the American Basketball Association and The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam.

If you replay it, the text will be different in certain situations so watching it on YouTube wouldn't necessarily be the same experience that you might play through. Also: There's a lot I didn't catch the first time that I noticed the second time around. There's more replay value than I expected which makes me feels better about parting with $10 for it.

One other I just thought of that I don't see listed above is the direct control that MI4 used instead of point and click. If I'm not mistaken, this was the same engine as Grim Fandango's which seems to be maybe the only critique people make of that game. This might be a critique for the Adventure Gamers forums though. On a similar note, I remember a lot of critiques about the 3D environment too. I personally thought they did a very good job with that, but the 2D proponents probably weren't happy with the change at this point in the series. Marek reminded me about the plot which did have a lot of veiled critiques about corporate culture. Maybe that's out of place in a Monkey Island game, but it did remind me of Sam and Max Hit the Road where similar commentaries are found throughout the game. I guess this shouldn't be surprising since the main designers (Stemmle and Clark, right?) were the same for both games. But it seemed to work better in S&M than MI4 for whatever reason.

I don't think MI4 was particularly bad, but it wasn't as good as the previous Monkey Island games. Since the first two, and even the third to some extent, were so beloved, it had a lot to live up to. And since it played a little loose with the Monkey Island legend (Herman Toothroot=Gov. Marley, monkey statue turning into giant robot), it probably didn't endear itself to the hardcore MI fans as evidenced by some of the sharper replies here.

I have to admit that I play on easy, but I'm sure my FPS skills are far below the average gamer so I have to do it just to get through. For example, My only complaint is the same as alluded to before. That some of the settings and enemies are a little too repetitive. But since HL2 was so great, I don't mind a little repetition in Eps 1 & 2. I'm looking forward to: Seriously, no comments about That's an Empire Strikes Back type of ending right there. I've got major anticipation for Ep 3. Hopefully, we won't have to wait another year and a half for that episode.

There's no doubt that ICO can be depressing, but make sure you play it all the way through because there is a payoff at the end...

I'm assuming there's no need to mention The Office as everyone knows that's great. Peep Show has really grown on me and is now one of my favorites.

If Burton makes the movie and he gets Schafer to make a tie-in game based on the movie which was based on Schafer's original game, would the universe collapse upon itself? I think so. So be careful Tims.

I'm American and even I could tell it was crap. To me, it seemed to undermine the seriousness of the movie. I'm all for breaking up the drama with a light bit, but that seemed too ridiculous.

I remember Terry Gilliam saying awhile back that he thought the Watchmen would work best as a miniseries on TV rather than a big budget movie. I'm not sure what network would go for that (except maybe HBO), but it's an interesting idea. The V for Vendetta movie was better than I thought it would be, but it still wasn't great. Alan Moore reportedly wanted nothing to do with it. Things that annoyed me about it: - Natalie Portman's "English" accent (Can we just have Yank and Brit actors playing their own nationalities? Wasn't Keira Knightly available?) - The Benny-Hill-style sequence on the TV show - Street Fighting Man over the ending credits. Love the song, but it just seemed inappropriate Need to read From Hell still.

It took me 6 hours on easy so that shows you what a terrible FPS gamer I am. I was pretty pleased with it. I think the value for $20 was good (compared to say, the first Bone game although that's a totally different experience). The only thing I was disappointed in was that it was more of the same of HL2. The environments didn't really change that much so it seemed like a HL2 single-player mod (albeit a really good one). That's minor complaint though and it looks to be addressed by Episode 2 from the looks of the preview.

I hope that there aren't a lot of people who actually try and kick the actor in the ass just because they recognize him from that episode. The guy is probably pretty old now. He did inspire one of my favorite Dougal lines though. "Hello Len. How's the son?"

Either way, I thought it was a stretch. Yes! Thank you! I don't know what his point is either, yet this HL2-is-overrated trend is becoming so prevalent that the article gets linked by Slashdot. I just wanted to provide an example of one of the haters Marek was talking about in his original post.

I've noticed this trend too. There was a link on Slashdot recently to this article about how HL2 is not aging as well as HL1. I think this is total crap as I don't think that HL2 lacks characterisation or promotes epic scenery at the expense of more in-depth settings. The base in HL1 was impressive, but to me, HL2 has a much more cohesive story and is more believable.

I don't blame her for tooting her own horn here as I'm sure she wants to get the word out that Double Fine is now an efficient operation as opposed to before. I think if Esmurdoc stays (and I wouldn't see any reason why not), DF can present themselves as a well-oiled game-making machine to potential publishers (if they don't use Majesco). As great as Tim is at designing games, I don't think it's any surprise that he needed a more operations-oriented manager, a "bad cop" if you will. And now that they have the company-structure set, they can be much more efficient on their next game which will save time and money. I would guess that they could cut the costs on their next title by a couple million dollars.

I voted for the Milkman Conspiracy mainly because it was hands-down the funniest level. I also liked the design of it along with the clairvoyance puzzles. Other levels I liked were Lungfishopolis and Black Velvetopia along with the whole camp in general. I didn't particularly care for the Meat Circus partially because it was so hard but mainly because it didn't seem as creative as the other levels. "Let's make a circus level and then put giant steaks everywhere!" Eh...

It seems like G4 is in full-on love mode with Schafer. I saw X-Play a few days ago where their first review was Psychonauts. They gave it 4 out of 5 stars and had nary a bad thing to say about it. They also had a little mini-tribute to Schafer with a lot of Grim and Psychonauts footage (very little of anything else though...a little Full Throttle and Curse of Monkey Island which as far as I know he was not directly involved in). Also, there's now a little bumper G4 shows between commercial breaks that has Raz burning a heart shape on a tree. Lily shows up and sees that Raz has burned the G4 logo inside the heart. A little disappointing to see something that good promote a network that for the most part is lame, but at least it's more exposure for the excellent game Psychonauts.

I've noticed that Raz looks down when he's able to interact with the arrowheads. Similar to how Manny interacts with objects in Grim Fandango. I wonder how they managed to copy that? Hmmmm... I went into EB today and in the XBox section they had the PC versions on the shelf with a sign saying "Coming Soon" under them. I assume that you could've bought those PC versions and that the XBox versions were temporarily out, but I didn't bother to ask because I already have my copy of the Excellent Game Psychonauts and was only there to laugh at people who didn't have it. (Not really but I felt it was time to get the "hate" back into this thread.)

Here's a link to the Icons episode page. The video on the page is from the G4TV.com show from last week, but maybe they'll have some bits from the Icons episode soon. It was definitely the best thing I have ever seen on G4.

Do any non-Americans like these sports (much less the video games based on them)? It's an acquired taste I suppose, although I agree that most of the games are terrible. My personal choice for a game everyone seems to like but I don't is Morrowind. It's just so repetitive.

He might get one or two years worth of financing before Microsoft dumps him a la Schafer.