syntheticgerbil

I hate admitting when I eat fast food, but that being said, I love a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit from Whataburger in the mornings. That said, I don't think I ever actually eaten a burger there in 15 years and almost afraid to because all of the other breakfast foods I've ever gotten there have been garbage. I am also partial to a few things at Taco Cabana. I guess I have a thing for Texas chains. Also when did people stop sending e-mails and posts with the signature, "Sent from my iPhone?" Did everyone figure out how to erase that finally or did the iPhone stop being a status of wealth? Was it ever a status of wealth or was it more of a statement of the users stupidity because the user didn't know the settings on their own phone?

I don't even know where you are at. I thought Maggie getting captured by the spider was near the very end of the game.

Haha, love the Gone Home ghosts bit. Really that's very informative for those expecting the ghost. Now they know not to be disappointed. "including whether to commit genocide and whether to let a journalist in a tight white tank top shirt onto the player’s ship." That white tank top, very disconcerting....

Doubling up on recently played and the separate thread is nice too I suppose. The last three pages of recently played all had blurbs about Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which I plan to play this year. I probably won't go back and read everyone's thoughts in recently played since it's a very difficult thread to search, but there is a Brothers thread I will glance at. But yeah I think everyone here has abused the recently completed thread, it's really easy to post in there. I think I've seen Toblix in there a few times even though he has hated it for years now. Did he get over it? YOU HEAR THAT TOBLIX? DID YOU GET OVER IT?!

Awesome!

Awwwww! They are so cute!

Did you ask them where they see themselves in the next five years?

No, I know he ultimately apologized, but going in to some sob story first does not make a sincere apology. Ultimately what that does is deter from the issue and shift blame. This is speaking from something I had to personally learn in my life for multiple reasons. One can't explain away their actions with some past when how one acts in the present is always the choice of the individual no matter what baggage is carried. This is at least the third apology that his been constructed this way. He continues to apologize with the insincere "but" at the end, but instead begins with it. Seriously, all he had to do was cut the first three paragraphs and the beginning of the fourth and it would have been a great apology. On your second sentence, I don't know why it is my job to encourage a public figure to change and get behind him like he's some kind of charity case that we all have to band together and nurse back to health. I don't personally know the guy and he's never going to read my posts. So what's my stake then? The dude owns a major convention and runs a major charity and is nearly 40 years old, so he really should have had this stuff together by now. There's great responsibility with being a public figure and he's had about a decade to do it right. I feel like PA has only squeaked by because of how immature the games industry in general has tended to be and how easy it is to overlook. If every Penny Arcade fan wants to root for the guy to not to be an asshole so be it, but I'd rather have him suffer the consequences and sell off the charity and expo if he truly wants to make it right per his suggestion. Then the baggage and hate can disappear and everyone in the industry will be better for it. In the end, Mike is still going to have all his money and fame and the comic will continue, so it's not really a loss per se. What your saying is the equivalent of asking me to care about whether or not the Toronto mayor gets over his drug addiction and ever gains the respect of the people back to keep a spot in office. As a public figure, he shouldn't be allowed in politics ever again and probably won't be because he should have been responsible in the first place. Those are his consequences. I think ultimately I'd better agree to disagree with you guys, because my opinion on this matter isn't going to change and I'm just getting the feminism thread way off topic at this point.

I disagree. I he's going to to use it as an excuse for being a jerk, then he'd better have something juicy. He didn't use his brother as part of why he's a jerk, so I don't see how it's relevant. Completely ignoring the severity of the situation of someone's childhood, especially concerning bullies compared to just name calling as not everyone who fights or argues with someone is a bully. Of course people in Africa have it worse, but he was specifically referring to his situation in public school and specifically referring to bullying not AIDs, clean water, murder, and whatever else tends to go on in Africa. You're last sentence seems to reinforce my original opinion that the severity of the situation is extremely relevant to his excuse. Plus you can factor in the exact same people he's made fun of and insulted as having it worse than him growing up (rape victims, women, and transgender) and being an important factor on why he shouldn't keep being a fucking asshole as an adult. The guy is 36 years old now, and learning how to not to put down those that are different than you and writing a sincere apology are really things he should have figured out by now, well out of his teens. Really, boo fucking hoo, Mike Krahulik.

I guess I don't see that as a problem that originates from deaths but instead originates from both the genre and choice of puzzle design. I can't think of any adventure game that uses death (and doesn't restore) where the consequences are fair to the player outside of Kyrandia 1 and 2 (3 has insta-restore). In my opinion, pretty much every Sierra game with deaths and without a insta-restore has at least 50% stupid and illogical deaths. There isn't a King's Quest in existence without stupid and poorly designed deaths encompassing most of the game design. The most fair Sierra game I can think of without insta-restore is Gabriel Knight 1, which is pretty much the last of the sort they made like that. If I recall correctly, actually getting to the deaths is somewhat difficult and the ones that are obvious give you fair warning (the zombie parts). The inherent problem of adding death to an adventure game is that you can get the player easily stuck if they are not constantly juggling between 5-10 saved games. This is compounded when such a game also has a bunch of dead ends that are dependent on having gotten some kind of object 2-3 hours back. I've had so many issues with adventures like this where I had saved near a death and had no way of escaping it, thus ruining my current saved game. Even worse, some games allow you to save while you are dying, which isn't so good when you have to constantly remember that F5 is save and F7 even is restore, even though you are frequently doing both. Mixing up a save with a restore at the wrong time is bullshit. Even in the better Gabriel Knight there's a bullshit part at the end in the voodoo part where if you didn't do something before you enter the underground maze, you are screwed. The problem with that is you are thrown in to a situation where you are saving often and the game didn't give much precedence before then as a type that you could get stuck in. It might be the single way you can get stuck if I remember correctly. Gobliiins had a useless energy system but 2 and 3 got rid of that completely and are much more fondly remembered. I just can't think of a way that any game benefits from this virtue. Well that's why I said he'd be better off reading about them or watching a Youtube playthrough of the bad ones and therefore save a bunch of sweet, precious time.

I can't say I finished that Penny Arcade resolution after more than a few paragraphs in and skimmed the rest, but I got pretty annoyed after reading someone's sob story growing up. His growing up story is so innocuous and is most likely what nearly everyone experienced growing up in the public school system. Why did he have to type all of that shit out as some kind of excuse for his bad behavior? Boo fucking hoo. Growing up there are people who have dealt with way worse like drug addiction, abortion, suicide attempts, dropping out of school, self mutilation, and theft but many can still manage to be decent to other people. I find that people with true sob stories don't even bother using it as an excuse for bad behavior and close it up. Whatever guy. The only way I could see Child's Play and PAX being a separate entity is if they sold them off completely to the hands of a more competent group that was less of a boy's club. And then I would still want PAX to have a name change so it no longer promotes this dumb comic I never liked. I can't think of any other convention that a bunch of nerds (in a good way) attend that belongs to some kind of private creative entity. I was never on board with a con started by Penny Arcade anyway because of that principle. Comic cons and anime cons are usually tied to a city with sponsors that can be changed. There's Wizard World, but that pretty much goes with the Wizard publication and I doubt anyone is a huge fan of a news and opinion magazine. I guess I belong to the pitchfork mob trying to vilify them, but I would like to think not. I suppose if it's a fair assessment of me if anyone thinks otherwise.

For health reasons?!

Not trying to be rude, I figure the best thing to do is for mods would be to merge with other topics when they remember an older thread. Threads like "post your favorite video game music" tend to keep cropping up, maybe in the double digits now, but when one is started, everyone jumps on it. I can remember a long ass thread I made for Prince of Persia games that shouldn't be too hard to find. There is also an awesome Metal Gear Solid thread around that encompasses all games in the series too. I remember searching for that one long after it was created and after I finished multiple games and found it fascinating to read from page 1. That's why I like topics all in one place and love when it's kind of an information overload in one place. I don't mind if they are multiple pages long. However, I really hate the "recently completed games" thread even though I sometimes post in it. When people type thoughts or little mini reviews, I would personally prefer a new thread in case I want to search the forums later and add a post to it. Don't really care if there's one post and it dies. Isn't this forum like a decade old now? There's a good wealth of old posts I feel like are worth reading or discussing still.

I take no responsibility for things that happened in 2011. Although I do feel a bit bad because that was pretty lazy of me.

Fucking new technology.

Hmm, so I've been in the process of trying to get a new built computer going for nearly two months and something keeps going wrong. First bad motherboard I had to RMA, second it turns out that the copy of Windows 7 I have does not seem to have a working product key, and last my new video card seems to need to be replaced. I have a Nvidia Geforce GTX 670 manufactured by EVGA. Before I had my motherboard replacement, early December I tried it out on my usual computer (the one I've had for years and I am using now), and upon booting I had green lines and shaking green dots in the bios and within Win XP which would then be replaced with red lines and dots everywhere the longer I used it. I tried installing drivers on the XP machine and still the same issues. I called EVGA and made sure I had the three year warranty (which I do) and told them that I think the videocard is bad because of how it is displaying. The guy on the line wouldn't do an RMA for something running on a Gigabyte motherboard from 2009 and running XP so told me to call back when I got my new PC set up if it still didn't work. So the other day, I finally set up my new PC with my dad's help and the video card was doing the same kind of display crap, but this time only after booting Win7 from the DVD. After installing Win7, the problem continued until I finally got everything up and running and was able to install the latest Nvidia drivers, which is 331.82 for my card. Upon restarting, the screen was fine and no junk, so I was kind of happy to see it was just a software issue... except it might not be. So after using the PC for less than five minutes I start witnessing the screen going black and coming back on, usually with an error message saying, "Display driver Nvidia Kernal Mode driver, 331.82 has stopped responding and has successfully recovered." However sometimes the screen will go back and I can't get it back on no matter what I do until I reset. Also I did once see the green lines again during the bios screen but then it went away when Win7 started again. Either way, I can get about 10 minutes max on this video card before the screen goes black and I can't use it without a reset. Also when moving windows around quickly, playing a game, or changing a youtube video to full screen, I sometimes get a small row of black boxes that flash almost unnoticeably on the screen. I should note right now that this does not happen with the onboard video card. I'm not sure if the my Win7 copy begging for me to activate it has anything to do with this but I'm not sure. The last thing I did before typing this was attempt to use older drivers from Nvidia, since searching around for the given error message I saw forum posts saying the newest drivers are unstable. I uninstalled all Nvidia drivers completely and then installed 331.56, which someone recommended as the last "stable" drivers. Still no luck, same black screen problems. So what do you guys think? Is it a software or a hardware problem? I'm completely dumbfounded because I don't know why this is happening and if I can even RMA the video card if looks and runs fine until the black screen appears (plus intermittent graphic garbage that briefly goes away). Either way, I don't know if I've ever encountered a video card that looked like it was broken upon first plugging it in and suddenly looked fine after installing the drivers. I guess I just don't understand the technology. I'll have to wait to talk to EVGA Thursday and this is going to bug me all New Years Day, so I'm hoping you guys can give me your opinion.

Everyone else correct me if I'm wrong here, but I feel like most of The Dig's puzzles tend to be closed off to one room, much like a Myst game. There sometimes is one item that you have to use to activate or finish the puzzle but often it's just figuring it out on the spot. Not such an inventory intensive game. Though the crystal rods are much more complicated if I remember correctly. I don't remember much with the puzzles in The Dig since they were so separated and the story and music definitely made a much more lasting impression in my mind.

Well crap, I guess I didn't really get a deal. Will watch that doc, Clyde, so that I know what I should do next time. Thank you.

I feel mildly triumphant. Last month I received a speeding ticket for 12 over and I have no idea why, because I wasn't speeding and I had actually just checked my speedometer before passing the cop. Apparently he used a laser radar gun which is supposed to be super accurate, but not infallible. Something went wrong and I have no idea what. I was planning on fighting it, however when I went to court today to talk to the state prosecutor, he recommended that I not fight it since the judge usually sides with the cop in the case of laser violations. Apparently if I lost, I'd owe anywhere between $160 to $360. He recommended I do no contest and then gave me a deal where I could just pay the regular fine for court fees plus the cost of defensive driving ($150), but I would not actually have to take defensive driving and they would not it put on my driving record. He then recommended I ask the judge for community service so I would not have to pay, since I still don't have a job and all. I went before the judge, was granted community service for 12 hours and I'm sort of excited. I have a list of things to choose from and I'm figuring out what I'd like to do right now and then I'll see what actually happens when you do community service. I'm looking forward to the experience.

Fan art Christmas, I guess... I sincerely hope everyone here enjoys their time today. Also, the other days as well!

I was considering that week. I can now check law school off the list. Thank you.

I wonder how you'd name fifth game following that... Gobl(-i)ns?

Goblins 3 is fucking great. That is some pure adventure game fun. The rest of the series (except maybe some of 2) is solid as well, but I haven't played the newer 4, which I think is just a remake of the first one (?). I'd completely avoid Longest Journey, it's just a huge fucking waste of time for so many reasons, such overrated shit. I'd also avoid King's Quest games, because anything before VI is basically unplayable because of so many flawed design trappings. The characters and story are paper thin and there's nothing there but "history" which you can get the gist of with a wiki page and Youtube videos without subjecting yourself to it. An overwhelming percentage of beloved Sierra games are just bad games. If it's not terrible design, then it's terrible voice acting, art, and writing.That said, I'm partial to a few Quest for Glory games, the Gabriel Knight series, Leisure Suit Larry, and Space Quest. Even then, I'd hesitate recommending most of those games to anyone who has not already spent some time figuring out bad Sierra design, as only a handful of games from all of those series are not filled with traps and dead ends. They started to get much better after following the LucasArts adventure design philosophy set forth by Secret of Monkey Island, but starting on the games with the more streamlined interface and lack of dead ends usually means jumping in the middle of a series that already ran multiple games in the 80s and early 90s. Gabriel Knight is usually a good starting point I think because it's a fresh series with higher production values, but it kind of gets weird because if you want to continue the series you have to subject yourself to an extremely dated FMV style adventure game (even though it is one of the best) and then a sprawling epic with godawful 3D graphics and tons of iffy voice acting.

I listen to Idlethumbs when I play Game and Watch Gallery and I curse a whole fucking lot because I can't get all the fucking stars. Fucking 80 star perfect bullshit my ass Nintendo.