syntheticgerbil

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Everything posted by syntheticgerbil

  1. The Big LucasArts Playthrough

    YEAH ZEUS IS NOT YOUR MONKEY BOY TO JUST DANCE AND DANCE FOR YOU!
  2. Nintendo 3DS

    I'm reading that this is Nintendo overreacting to some parents complaining after becoming upset that their children were sexting pictures over Swapnote. They probably know to check their phone, but are not aware they should check the 3DS. But like you said Sno, it's not in anyway the fault of Swapnote since they had to friend the person in the first place. I don't understand what actual problem there was to solve as this is how everything else in the world works, all other gaming systems and Facebook alike.
  3. Gray Matter

    Rereading and resurrecting this thread because I finally played through this game over a month ago. I feel so mixed, the game could have been amazing, a lot of what was holding it back was the production values, which I guess I expected in 2010. I'm a little surprised that I was so negative about Samantha's look in my first post, because she's actually very pretty. Maybe I have since developed a thing for the goth look again, like in middle school, I don't know. But her look was very snazzy and also well suited to being a magician. Although I guess I didn't realize this game starred a magician either. I also didn't realize I spend half the game playing as sad phantom of the opera dude. Anyway, I like the story a lot and the music is great as well. The pacing was a bit slow, but I was constantly intrigued, so it worked well with that. I don't think any of it felt rushed as sometimes happens in mysteries except for the reveal of at the end. I don't know what the fuck was going on with that but it was just stupid. I mean I am completely on board with I must give a lot of credit to the fleshing out of the David character. The dumb mask was a bit jarring at first, but I liked the style. I felt so bad for this guy and the loss of his wife. Once you play as him and just click around on things, you really start getting more in depth on his pain and sympathizing. I imagine someone who has actually experienced that kind of loss would find this hard to play. Puzzles were all fine until the last big area with the strange gaudy underground area. Most of the clues did not make sense and I was often solving puzzles before knowing why or how. I had to cheat a few times because you couldn't get items until you knew what to do with them and since there was such a deluge of crap in each room that you could not take, I didn't think to come back to certain items. This was the only time I cheated in the game. Gray Matter did have a habit the whole way through of not letting you pick up things or do things until you knew about them, but since you go through the same areas the whole game before the last chapter, I had everything pretty well mapped out in my head. It's hard for me to say whether this is bad adventure game design or good adventure game design, because I've heard criticism both ways. On one hand it can be frustrating that you can't do something you need to do because you missed some bit of dialogue and you are a step ahead of the game, but on the other hand a lot of people get annoyed when you are just randomly able to go around solving puzzles without even knowing why or what your goal is. Either way I didn't really feel the game was overall unfair in that manner. The magic book was a bit awkward because all of the tricks are written for specific situations that would never really be in an actual magic book. The book makes it seem like being a magician is about using slight of hand and pandering for the purpose of stealing, pranking, and manipulating because the point where a performing magician reveals that everything is fine is not a part of Samantha's trick instructions. I mean most magicians aren't using magic tricks as a means to solve mysteries, so the tricks are pretty much tailored to alleviate confusion within the game. I suppose writing in a bunch of extra tricks you never use but pad out the book could help (much like Kyrandia 2), but I can imagine that would make the game a bit too hard. So here it is, the big negative: the production values. They really fuck up the game and tone in so many parts. I had no problem with the painted animatic style cutscenes like some reviews, but I hated how inconsistent they tended to be. Sometimes an artist would paint a beautiful scene with well constructed characters and then it might switch to another scene that is painted by someone incredibly unskilled, with ugly characters, sloppy brush strokes, and bad anatomy. I'm assuming there was at least one or two artists that were really good and the rest were just painted by amateurs. I could usually tell by the hair rendering, where some scenes I'd see detailed brush strokes on the hair arrangement with bounced light and everything and other scenes someone just shit some shitty blotches on the top of a character's head. What the fuck? Such bad quality control. Unfortunately this ended up harming some of the most emotional cutscenes as I was being taken out of the game by being angry at bad drawings. I can't even imagine why they would ever assign the crappy artists to the essential scenes of David at the lake house. The backgrounds and most of the character models were very pretty, but everything was so poorly animated that I can't imagine why some reviewers would have rather had the cutscenes done with the real time models. Everyone tended to move slow and flail around in idiotic awkward gestures. The animation during conversations was either dull or had people mindlessly waving around. No one was syncing up to what they were saying one bit. The little POV box of Samantha's face on the bottom left had the wrong lens applied to it, so she looked warped and awkward down there the whole game. And the last cherry on top is the problem with nearly every modern adventure developed by studios that aren't Telltale: shitty voice acting. I don't know where these companies find these people but so many lines tended to be delivered awkwardly that it often made me feel like the dialogue was subpar even though it wasn't necessarily written that way. At least David's actor was fine, but Samantha's voice actress had so many cringe worthy moments of peppy dialogue that sounded like it was being read by a girl scout. This didn't really match here and she was often loud and not following the tone of the dialogue. Many of the accents were just shit and to make things worse, characters were often not mixed at the same volume, meaning I had to turn it up loud to listen to someone soft while Samantha screamed all of her replies. Ugh. Adventure games are so dependent on story and dialogue and I wish companies would budget to hire the most professional voice actors out there, because fucking it up with a bunch of amateurs seriously detracts from the game experience.
  4. Journey (thatgamecompany's next thing)

    I should have posted this earlier while I was still marveling over this game. "Earlier" meaning a little over two weeks ago since I'm super late to playing Journey. I played through twice and had a great experience both times. Each time I was lucky enough to have a partner that wanted to stay with me the whole way. The first time the person seemed a tad more experienced than me as they pointed out where some of the symbols were so that I'd get them. This was a much more casual playthrough and I just enjoyed how much the social aspect actually enhanced the game in a very low key way that I haven't really seen before. Since there's no communication with a stranger, there's not a ton of pressure to do things right and both players are forced to leave room for error, fosteringa very caring nature in both players. I was mostly amazed someone was waiting for me every time I screwed up, when I can't say for certain I would have done the same, especially since I usually play games alone or I with friends I know in person either in the same room or online, neither of which is really comparable to the experience. My second playthrough was kind of strange (or I should say second and a half) as I was planning on just collecting all the stuff I missed with a guide and ignoring everyone so that I could get the trophy where I pass 10 random people, since I already got the camaraderie trophies first play through with my loyal companion. So I checked the guide for the symbols on the levels I knew by comparing to the little stone thingy in the level select area, taking my time up until level 4 when I realized I couldn't actually backtrack on the sliding part like the other open areas. I kept missing the symbols you had to get by going up ramps on a certain route. After going back to the level select area and restarting the slide a third time, I realized it was resetting my damn scarf and then I got all OCD and annoyed and started over from the beginning, armed with only with a hunch on how to get the symbol on the sand slide that was up really high up. I'm also pretty sure you need a longer scarf for some of the later symbols and I didn't want to risk being locked out of them. So I make it back to the bridge after restarting, recollecting the symbols along the way while ignoring the glyph walls because I already activated all of them in the area. At some point a character with a white cloak entered the area, noticed me, and started following me on my way to get the last symbol, I guess thinking they were showing me where it is. After I collected it, they turned around and flew over to the cave where one of the glyph walls are and started chatting incessantly, trying to get me to go over there. I ignored them, activated the bridge completely, and made my way up past the first piece of cloth when I noticed them in the distance, still standing there all alone and pressing the chat button. I started to feel really bad so I just went over there to indulge them and activate the wall. We then move on to the next area, the desert, and they started leading me towards the symbols and glyphs I've already gotten. I was somewhat annoyed, but they were kind of winning me over by flying around with me and giving me constant power by sending out the energy from their infinite scarf. By the end of the level, I was just having a lot of fun hanging out with this person. Weirdly my autonomous sensory meridian response starts flaring up and I get in to a trance. This usually only happens when someone is talking to me giving me instructions or asking me questions over a phone or something, and it's very strange it just happened from a purely visual sense. People make all those dumb Youtube videos that are supposed to activate the response by talking softly, but it never actually works because I have to be actually interacting with the person. So once this kicks in, I just give in to the person and let them guide me around to every collectable and secret in the game. The sensory response doesn't last for more than like 10 minutes, so the trance subsides a bit and I just started experimenting with what's it's like to have an active guide suck all of the challenge out of the game. It becomes welcome because even before the sliding part, I was already having some amount of difficulty following a text guide during my half playthrough. I hate watching videos on collectables because of how long it takes and how much it sucks me out of the game by having someone's badly recorded shit on Youtube that they tend to talk over or score with blaring music so I tend to stick to text guides. The playthrough went on for about two and a half hours. I think the white cloak was trying to show me some glitches on the snow level but I didn't really understand and probably fucked them up, but they were still consistently patient. Floating underwater with them to that obscure secret hallway where the flOw creature lies was a definite highlight, as I had no idea where I was being led or that I could dive that deep, so it was a nice little surprise. At the final area, they were running around a bunch while I was trying to get them to stay still so that I could get the Meditate trophy. But they would not keep still so I started running around in circles and then suddenly stopping to try to emphasize that I wanted them to stop too. It took me a while to realize that they were writing in the snow (had no idea I could do that, nice little touch thatgamecompany ) and that I was completely fucking up what they were writing. So I stopped moving and they wrote "bye :)" on top of the mess I made. Awww! I then wrote "thank you," but I realized that probably took up way too much room and it just looked like a mess at when I finished and they may not have been able to make it out. I like to think they understood the sentiment, though. Anyway, that was a really great and unique experience. I'm glad I let go of my pride on getting all the crap myself for once and let someone else do it for me, because it was kind of heartwarming. I think through doing that, I got to what the core of the game was all about. I'm also kind of confused that there are players out that are willing to sacrifice that much time and dedication on some random player just for fun. You probably won't find me playing again with my white cloak and leading someone through the whole game, but then again even though I collected everything, there's no way I'd be able to still know where everything is on the fly without double checking some guide and stalling the person I'm supposed to lead. This leads me to assume that this person must do this a lot. Nice to know there's people out there who just want to play out of the pure motivation of helping. Shit, I wrote a long thing again. I imagined this post to be two paragraphs max. Whoops.
  5. Nintendo 3DS

    Does anyone else have an issue where the 3DS randomly rearranges a lot of your icons sometimes? This really annoys me and then I have to remember how I had them before. Argh.
  6. I love every one of you

    Happy birthday Toblix! I wish you a very fun frock.
  7. Life

    Ah, I did find out his name, it was one of the the office managers that e-mailed me before so I have his direct e-mail. It seems like a good idea, I'm just scared I'll come off as obnoxious and too forward. I'll try to psyche myself up tomorrow and take your advice! I should probably note I have had conversations multiple times with at least 3 people at this company through events or friends of friends, and kind of nudged them when I lost my job, but I'm not that close so I didn't nudge them too hard. I had lunch with the CEO before when I was with my last job when they did some outsourcing animation work they were submitting to me to check, but it was more led by another former art director and producer, so I was kind of awkwardly silent most of that lunch, just listening. I did speak to him another occasion about the Epic Mickey cutscenes after an IGDA presentation even before that, but I don't think he remembered me, so I didn't want to make it even more awkward. We're Facebook buddies, but I think it's the type of buddy where he posts stuff and just prefers a like or comment rather than someone actively following the feeds of others. I did mention a lot of these things in my original cover letter for whatever it was worth. If the canned e-mails are to be believed they have always liked my stuff, but haven't had a spot open recently. I never know though because standard e-mail responses usually never mean worse than what they actually say.
  8. Life

    But you could have thrown one last "I'm not getting this deposit back" party! Weird thing happened today. I get e-mailed from a student who I think is going to animation school in Vermont asking me how to make his website stand out so he'll get hired. I told him I pretty much have no clue because I haven't had a job for almost half a year so my site's not doing much. He wants to be a storyboard artist first and foremost, so I at least gave him tips on how to better show off his storyboards and convert them in to animatic form to really wow the people. I did ask him how he found my website, considering I don't live anywhere near him and he said he was asking the local animation studio here, Powerhouse, for advice on how to make a website that'll make people want to hire you. Powerhouse sent them my website. Well that's fine and all except I they never expressed any interest in hiring me since I was fired from my last job, and the two times I've applied so far, I've gotten a canned response, with the second one having possibly an annoyed sentence added in to it. If they like my stuff, they should hire me! I've always wanted to work at Powerhouse since I've found out about them at my freshman in college days. :/ If they are on the verge of hiring me soon, this kind of messes up a thing where one of my former art directors is trying to get me in at a company she now works at, which is a casino game studio. I applied before at this studio d they said no based on the contents of my portfolio but she's trying to get maybe a specific art test that'll prove to them I adapt well. I'm not going to glaze over this even though it creates a dilemma, it is incredibly sweet of her! Thing is, if a situation comes up where I am hired at casino game studio and Powerhouse contacts me a month into the job, I'm leaving for Powerhouse. Reason for this is sometime in fall 2011, months after I was hired for the job I was fired from this year, Powerhouse contacted me to see if I wanted to interview. I turned it down because I had just gotten a new job and it seemed pretty snazzy for all intents and purposes and I also loved the people I worked with at the time. Well I'm still kicking myself for that as soon after that turned down interview, I saw complete ownership of the company shift and people that I enjoyed working with were either fired, laid off, quit, or just hung on like me, miserable. I just can't do that again if it means sacrificing the opportunity of a stable job in animation I might fit right in to compared to me not wanting to offend everyone by being a prick and quitting a job I just got hired for. I know that sort of thing severely wastes company time and money plus it reflects badly on me, but this time I have to come first.
  9. I love every one of you

    Well then we all must be on the battlefield, ripe for bloomin'!
  10. I want to learn how to games.

    Haha, this speaks way more to me than the message in the original comic.
  11. anime

    Okay finished Ergo Proxy staying up way too late last night marathoning. I constantly had to know what happens next. Also the Sayo Yamamoto episodes preceding (Quizshow and Smile Land) were unexpectedly wacky, but a nice fresh break from the show. I appreciate that they show runner was not afraid of such episodes. Great stuff. The only big disappointment the whole series was just how little animation there was and the amount of shots filled per episode that were just stills and pans were a bit unbearable sometimes. The lack of character enunciation when speaking dialogue was a bit of a let down considering the amount of kinetic acting (and action) I've seen well animated in the two other Manglobe series I've watched. I kept thinking maybe they were saving their animation budget for later episodes as tend to happen with some anime shows and most other cartoon series around the world, but I could see no apparent place any extra animation budget was splurged on in the way Samurai Champloo was obviously saving up for action packed episodes after a slower one or two. It's possible that Ergo Proxy was a project with a smaller budget (or maybe they wasted a bunch of money licensing Radiohead ) or that a lot of time was just spent on the still drawings and the look and tone of the surroundings, which is inexplicably well done. Other than that, I didn't fully understand every part of the show, but it is enough where it is obviously constructed in a way where the small gaps between story allow you to draw your own conclusions. I enjoy that thoroughly, it's certainly a far better way to do it than crap like Synecdoche, NY (I know lots of people love this movie and I can't even begin to fathom why). So while the jump cuts and holding of explanation in the show went up until the last episode, it made it very compelling to watch constantly, seemed similar to Breaking Bad in the manner of pacing almost. I was satisfied most questions were answered and had fun the whole way there.
  12. The Big LucasArts Playthrough

    Ah nevermind, that one is pretty bad too. Plus all the stuff near the end. Sam and Max wasn't very good about puzzles. :/ I'm pretty sure pressing escape during Tunnel of Love and skipping to the end made me have a hard time with it as a kid. It's kind of like one of those puzzles where you don't know if what you are dealing with is a noninteractive animation or not, kind of like when you grab Chepito underwater in Grim Fandango and then you must move. Or I think maybe that stupid ass goat puzzle in Broken Sword.
  13. The Big LucasArts Playthrough

    Ah, yeah Sam and Max has a lot of minigames that don't necessarily do anything that help you progress in the game. Battleship is one of them. I remember car surfing a bunch when I was stuck long ago, thinking I get something out of doing well, but don't bother, it's just there for fun. I feel like The Tunnel of Love puzzle is the hardest puzzle in the game.
  14. Snot another Kickstarter: Boogerman 20th Anniversary?

    Earthworm Jim is based on his design for the TV show and not the original game art. NO SALE. God, Boogerman has the worst chin. It's just a big stupid oval with no definition.
  15. I Had A Random Thought...

    A few months after I graduated high school 9 years ago, some girl messaged me on AIM claiming she was a secret admirer and knew a lot about me. She said I would know her by the clues she was giving. I think the only clue I got out of that conversation was that she was eating soup and it "felt weird in her mouth." Just... what the fuck? She abruptly logged off, never to log in again, after finding out I had a girlfriend, who I'm now engaged to. So here I am googling the AIM screenname, trying to figure out who it is. I do this a few times a year. This is not really looking for any kind of long lost love, since I am very happy where I am, but it just really fucking bugs me to never know who that was. It's not like I was popular or had ever really dated any girl for more than two weeks at that point, so the fact that someone was keeping track of me was really strange. Or it was just some fucking joke someone was playing on me. Or maybe it was my girlfriend trying to figure out how faithful I was to her (not likely). In all likelihood, I probably wouldn't even like this person if I figured out who it was. I think that's my only unsolved mystery.
  16. Life

    I guess since I've been dealing with the (U.S.) government for the past few months for collection monies, thinking I'd be turned down at every avenue, the way I dealt with it was is just assume the worst was always going to happen and try to imagine what I'd do then since there was a lot of feet dragging on their part and waiting and I tend to get stressed when I have to wait for answers. Good luck though, I hope your claim isn't denied.
  17. anime

    Ah cool, I might see if I can torrent those just to read the text at the end, I'd be interested in knowing what they have to say since there's not really fan sites around for Ergo Proxy. Yeah, she looks exactly like the singer from Evanescence but only on the album covers. I'm not sure if it's intentional honestly, but I would like to know. It seems a bit off for the show to lift a character design from a singer to a band that doesn't really fit the tone of the show outside of the aesthetic, especially when Re-L is drawn from multiple angles anyway so is not always head on like hte album cover. I don't know, maybe they just wanted the look. I like the look either way. The appearance of the lead singer is about the only thing I like about Evanescence.
  18. anime

    Hey the complete Ergo Proxy DVD set was on sale at Fry's the other week when I was picking up an ethernet cable. Well, it wasn't on sale but it beat the usual online price for used on Amazon by $5 under. I really like this show so far. I don't fully understand everything and the animation is kind of bad or nonexistent in many areas, but it's very pretty otherwise and I feel very intrigued and want to know what happens next. The character designs and robot designs (super freaky) are all very well developed and distinct and I really enjoy when that kind of care was put in to it. I realize the lead writer for the series was by Dai Sato who I have experienced from Eternal Family and his episodes of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, but was not aware of much of his other work. I saw him speak at AnimeFest in Dallas last year with a few other great animators and he had the best smiley expressions and seemed incredibly good natured. I bought the series because Sayo Yamamoto directed four episodes and so far I've seen one of hers (ep. 5) and it was really sad even though it was well done. They really don't care about who they kill on this show I guess , but it's not like any of it is done in a gratuitous manner. I will probably have more say when I finish the show. 6 episodes in so far and the only thing really bugging me is Vincent's squinty eyes. In some parts I thought he was possibly blind and I had missed something, then in others I was wondering why he would open his eyes and if the impact was supposed to symbolize anything. Then it just seemed random on whether or not he was wanted to open his eyes. I don't know much about philosophers or classic literature so I have to wiki some of the references. Nice it's there, but I am afraid I'm too stupid to follow along outside of easier ones like Daedalus. Either way, it's not hindering my enjoyment of the show. The automated council represented by Michelangelo statues named after famous philosophers who are try to reach a judgment from multiple sides is a nice touch. A lot of the background music is very engaging. I can't figure out what the song is for the special features menu in disc 4 yet. I hope I figure it out by the end of the series, because clicking around on Youtube uploads of the OST didn't help much.
  19. Snot another Kickstarter: Boogerman 20th Anniversary?

    According to various things I've read by TenNapel, the rights to Earthworm Jim is owned by multiple parties, making it very difficult for anyone to agree on the production. I know even before the shitty HD remake there was a new PSP game in store involving some consulting by a couple of members of the former team, but I guess it got axed. Looked like it was going to be shit, it was very ugly and the gameplay videos appear to be chock full of crap platforming. Made me think of that awful Boy and His Blob for DS that was slated for release but thankfully disappeared and replaced later with the great Wayforward Wii game.
  20. The Big LucasArts Playthrough

    I just remembered the start of Sam and Max Hit the Road and how much I remember I just enjoyed the setting as a kid. I just liked the feeling of driving to random convenience stores or hanging around my office I guess because that was grown up stuff and I didn't know what any of that was like. Felt "free" even though it really wasn't. A lot of me playing Sam and Max early on wasn't really about solving the game but more about hanging out. Although now that you guys mention it, I always hated that dialogue system. They reuse it in The Dig. I'm a fan of the cycle through the cursor stuff for the sake of real estate. I feel like most adventures have tended to use this (in the point and click era of course). Also Zeus, don't forget to use Max on things routinely. That often trips me up, but Max may as well just be considered another one of your routine icons rather than an inventory item. I don't think he's used all THAT much, but I feel like he's used enough and that's when I always got stuck.
  21. Snot another Kickstarter: Boogerman 20th Anniversary?

    I can't even believe any of the developers who worked on it felt that it was a good idea enough to reboot. I mean, come on, it was just a bad game trying to ride the irreverent Earthworm Jim wave in the 90s.
  22. FCC Complaints About The Simpsons

    Killeen, Texas is just a stupid place.
  23. Half-Life 3

    Ah that unwinnable Skifree. Classic.
  24. Intoxicated:

    I'm slightly drunk at the moment, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to post here. Guess I didn't get drunk enough.
  25. Life

    Could that have set the whole neighborhood on fire?