lobotomy42

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Everything posted by lobotomy42

  1. The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

    I wasn't going to buy Smash Bros, but if it comes with this peripheral and the special GameCube controller, I will.
  2. RIP Nintendo, 1889-2016

    Although I think the Wii U's fate is not great, I do think this is the right move: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-05-13-nintendo-wont-launch-wii-u-successor-until-it-has-satisfied-current-owners The only thing worse than losing money on the third-place console would be cutting-and-running from a third-place console, thus sending the message to their fans that they should never, ever buy a Nintendo console at launch ever again. The last thing you want at launch is a bunch of your biggest fans sitting around saying "Well, we'll wait and see how it does before we buy it."
  3. RIP Nintendo, 1889-2016

    If I had my druthers, Nintendo would release exactly one new game every month, each on its own proprietary hardware designed from-the-ground-up just for that game, which would be totally different from every Nintendo game that had ever come before it. (All old IP would be banned from usage, at least for a decade or two, although I suppose the virtual console re-releases of old games can stay.) I want to see Nintendo's take on a family-friendly open-world RPG with the Nintendo Sword and Shield peripheral with better-than-realistic motion mapping in the actual sword. A racing game that requires the use of an in-home treadmill. A platformer controlled exclusively via singing certain notes into a microphone. A camera-tracked stealth experience that requires the player to sit as still and silently as human possible to hide, and then lots of activity to move again.
  4. RIP Nintendo, 1889-2016

    I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure that expecting economics to predict the exact timing of recessions/expansions is a severe misunderstanding of the discipline.
  5. I Can't Go For That (Game Series)

    Pokemon Final Fantasy (though I've tried *several* times) Metal Gear Solid Half-life (kill me, I know) Assassin's Creed Persona Pretty much any famous shooter series - Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Battlefield Pretty much any platformer that is titled "Blank & Blank" (Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Bling, etc) For most of these, the very *fact* of there being a dozen or more installments is enough to keep me from attempting to play. I generally try to play series chronologically, or at least start with the one that most critics regard as "essential" (or "good") before even deciding if I want to try any more. But when a series reaches 6 titles in as many years before I've ever even played one, it's off-putting. It just strikes me as too blatantly capitalistic or something, I dunno. (And yes, this is exactly what Nintendo is doing with Mario platformers at the moment. They only get a pass from me by virtue of being grandfathered in - and even so, the frequency of the sequels makes me play them less.)
  6. Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road CSG Kickstarter

    Having now played Chapter 1... So far, the game is exactly what I expected it to be, which is great. The story feels very similar to Jensen's work in the past on Gray Matter and Gabriel Knight. I would expect people who enjoyed those games would enjoy, this, too. They seem to be in a similar genre of real-word fantasy/sci-fi. Actually, it seems like genre is driving some of the games problems. Having a "real world" low-fantasy plot drives expectations of realism (we know what New York looks like) which gives certain expectations for what the graphics should look like and what is a "reasonable" plot. (Whereas if this were a typical video game high-fantasy setting, you could just make the plot as absurd as you wanted.) It's kind of an uncanny valley problem, in a way. (But also: what is up with people's arms and hands? They are all sort slender-man-ish, yeah?) I find myself enjoying the dialogue and descriptions. I'm okay (so far) with the main character being a jackass; it hasn't felt overstated to me. There's a fun contrast between Malachi's mostly polite dialogue with other characters and his constant disgust with the objects around him.
  7. Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road CSG Kickstarter

    Agreed about the Gabriel Knight remake being of questionable value. The first Gabriel Knight game is actually the one that has aged the *best* of the three games, technologically speaking, and it's hard to imagine any of the new voices living up to the originals. The art direction also seems to have drifted towards over-the-top-horrific. Still, it's probable that a publisher never would have funded a remake of a "2" or a "3" game, so this might be a necessary step on the path towards remaking GK2/3 and eventually getting a GK4. I haven't started Moebius yet, though I am excited to do so tonight, bad reviews notwithstanding.
  8. Replayable Narratives: Does Anyone Even Play a Game Once?

    This is a great thread. I agree with a lot that has been said here. A few thoughts, probably not original: 1) I think the "replayability" / "non-canned-response-ness" of a game is important, even if (perhaps especially if) you're only going to play the game once. Like kaputt, I rarely re-play even short RPGs or branching adventures, because seeing the same events play out differently often reveals them as systems, and they lose their meaning. BUT not seeing them play out differently, but instead knowing that they *might* have, for some reason, doesn't break the spell. Comparing my own stories to those of other people who made different choices, or just had invisible dice rolls go differently, is satisfying and helps give my choices weight as mine. I only played Alpha Protocol once, but even just knowing that things *might* be going differently adds to the suspense of my decisions. 2) One issue that repeatedly comes up with branching narratives is what to do if some of the branches are way less interesting than others. Is an experience with 12 different endings -- 9 fail states and 3 "real" ones -- better or worse than one with more-or-less one central narrative that can go, at most, two meaningfully different ways? (Heavy Rain was sort of like this.) 3) All that said, I think a very short (less than 30 minute) narrative experience that had meaningful branching on a couple of different dimensions would be worth replaying.
  9. Walking Dead Season the Second

    It's not inconsistent. Within the constraints of "Make a second season to The Walking Dead," I think TT has done everything smartly and right. I agree that switching the protagonist to Clementine was the right move. All I meant was that, for whatever reason, it's just not packing the same emotional punch for me personally.
  10. Costume Quest 2

    +1
  11. Walking Dead Season the Second

    I'm starting to wonder if this series needed a second season. So far, I've found this season to be mainly hitting similar themes and notes as Season One, only contorting itself a little bit more to keep the plot from repeating itself. After the emotional high/low of the S1E5 finale, it's just hard for me to feel anything but numb to the events of this world.
  12. The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

    Can we also talk about what a poor choice Bayonetta 2 is as a "bought" exclusive? It seems like a huge mismatch for Nintendo's audience, and exactly the sort of game that does not need a GamePad to play. It's also completely not the sort of mainstream, must-have game that sells systems to the not-we. The only thing is gets Nintendo is another game to add to the end of those "Well here are some Wii U games" lists that Kotaku publishes seemingly every hour. Did this come about because Nintendo is so desperate for an exclusive (and apparently thinks its still 2004) that is just started shopping around at 3rd party devs, and this was the best they could do? No disrespect to Platinum Games - Bayonetta looks incredibly impressive and I'm aware it has a rabid fanbase - but this seems like an enormously oddball choice.
  13. The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread

    That video looks great until they get into mechs. I don't know why, but I have an irrational aversion to mechs. Did Xenoblade have mechs?
  14. The Banner Saga

    I find this game surprisingly difficult. I am often "winning" battles but with most of my units dead at the end. Can anyone explain the death mechanic to me? On my heroe's stats page there is a skull with a big X/Y implying that my guys can only die a limited number of times? But it's not clear that this is enforced.
  15. Idle Thumbs 10th Anniversary

    Counting from the very first iteration of the website, it has to be coming up soon, right? I don't really have a finished thought around that. But, like, is there going to be some awesome 10 year celebration? Or at least some crazy forum thread?
  16. Your Favourite Book This Year (2013)

    I read Of Mice and Men this year and was duly impressed. Of books I read last year that actually came out last year, I enjoyed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. My mom died less than two years ago, and the mother's death in this novel and the grief struck me as believable*. *No, my mom's death did not send me down an improbable series of events that led to the stealing and return of a famous painting.
  17. Idle Thumbs 10th Anniversary

    The irony for me is, I don't even listen to the podcast particularly often*. I was a huge fan of the old 2005-era articles who then started forum lurking and quickly discovered that these are the best video game forums. And they still are. Like you, it's a bit surprising (but grand!) how constant Idle Thumbs has been as a web site I visit while most others from that period have either died or else just don't seem relevant to me anymore. *Not because I don't enjoy it, just because I don't listen to podcasts that often for whatever reason.
  18. Broken Age - Double Fine Adventure!

    Man it is weird to me that people are still talking about the press coverage. It seems to me that most of the coverage has been extremely positive. The only backlash moment that I can recall was splitting the game in two. It's also weird to me to hear that there exist people in the games industry who DIDN'T back this game. What is wrong with those people?
  19. The Banner Saga

    I'm excited for this!
  20. Walking Dead Season the Second

    Don't we already have a thread for this? https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9034-walking-dead-season-the-second/
  21. Nintendo 3DS

    YESSSSSSS
  22. Walking Dead Season the Second

    It kills me that the PS Store never gets the Season Pass option up on the same day as Episode 1. Doesn't this happen with every Telltale release? I can't wait to start this, but alas, it won't be tonight.
  23. It's probably time to talk about game genres again.

    AAA sort of is a genre, though... Genre is a useful concept because it gives us an abstraction against which to compare the specifics of a particular real instance. There are plenty of games that no one would hesitate to dump into, say, adventure games, even though they might violate one or two of the rules of adventure games, and that's ok, it's still a meaningful concept. When we think of adventure games, we sort of imagine the average of all adventure games, with the bits unique to adventure games taking more prominence and the bits common to all games taking less prominence. This might seem fuzzy, but it's actually really useful (and I'd argue it's a feature of language, not of genre.) I can now say "Grim Fandango is an adventure game, but in it's in 3D with Resident Evil controls." Or "The Walking Dead is an adventure game that has timed dialogue choices and is light on puzzles." Both statements contain a lot of information about the respective games - setting the genre indicates that anything left unsaid can be assumed to conform to type, and additional detail said is an indicator of variation from the type. So I guess my argument is that genre is useful and not particularly contradictory: it's a definition we use to measure deviancy against.
  24. Broken Age - Double Fine Adventure!

    I don't think the following sentiment is unique on this board, but I'll say it: If you want to play adventure games, Grim Fandango is the must-play. It was the de facto swan song of the genre (especially the LucasArts style) when the genre "collapsed" in the late 90s. Even if it weren't, it's IMO the best thing Schafer has ever done (and probably ever will, no offense to DFA which will surely be great.) The premise is sort of absurd to describe: a travel agent in the land of the dead (based loosely on the Nov 1 Mexican holiday) uncovers a web of conspiracy to steal people's tickets to the land of eternal rest and live through a 40s film noir-like experience in order to stop it. It's exactly the sort of game that would *never* get published today. (Although, who knows, maybe the new indie scene would have generated it.) Despite this, I wouldn't say it's "goofy" at all - the game plays it completely straight from beginning to end.
  25. Broken Age - Double Fine Adventure!

    Didn't they say in the last video update that Part 2 was coming in "May if Part 1 sells poorly, December if it sells well" or something to that effect? I'm sure it was meant as a joke, but I suspect it's a joke based partially on truth.