syntheticgerbil

Have bookmarked and it's lying open in one of my tabs! I promise I will play soon!

So, two weeks ago I was contracted to do a short animated segment for this documentary being produced in Austin and it's going to be shown on a movie theatre screen, possibly later for home release. This doesn't pay that well but it's going to be fun, I think. The documentary finished funding through Kickstarter two months ago and apparently one of my favorite directors had donated a chunk of change, meaning he will probably see my animation. This is scary. Tonight, I'm scanning all my drawings for the animatic and I think it's all finally sinking in and I'm kind of freaking out right now. I have two more months to complete the whole animation outside of work days (I have to try really hard to clock out at near 40 hours every week and not get raised eyebrows), and since this is actually going to be on a movie theatre screen, produced at 1080p, I have to make sure to get rid of as much traces of me still being wet behind the ears and needing a decade more or so of improvement. I really can't fuck this one up. So I have to try my hardest to not waste time at home watching movies or playing video games until it's done from this point on, plus I need to really not ignore my girlfriend too much in the process. Gahhhh. Also the referral to these guys making the documentary came way out of the blue from a guy I've hung out locally many times from the old Sam and Max forums. Once again, somehow Sam and Max has led the thread of my life. Bless those freelancers.

I'm sure any thread on ICO that has ever existed on this board has been locked, but I finally beat it last week after a few false starts throughout the years. I didn't know ICO existed until maybe 2005 (from the Thumbs board, actually), didn't buy it until like 2007 since I made sure to import the PAL version and have a PS2 that swapped discs ahead of time, where then my life was too hectic to make my way through to game from start to end. I guess I didn't realize it was so short either, otherwise I could have easily spent an afternoon on it years ago. But I resold that version ASAP on Ebay when I heard the European version was going to be in the HD collection, and made way more money than I figured (it had those art cards). Finally I bought the HD collection on Amazon during Black Friday last year and started only just now after rebuying a PS3 since mine bit the dust last February. A lot of weird delays I can't exactly explain to get to ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. So in that vein, ICO has suffered majorly through time in my eyes. I've now played enough games where they have taken ICO's tropes and made them better (I didn't even realize Sands of Time was using so much from ICO), and I feel I am left with a broken subpar game experience. I appreciate everything ICO did and I do enjoy the story, characters, graphics, music, and atmopshere, but in the gameplay department there's only like two puzzles I felt like I haven't done before in a platformer. The bad controls all around, Yorda's horrible AI, and the impossibly boring fighting were just making the game tedious to slog through. So when others say they beat ICO in the same day, I would do an hour or two spurt and turn the game off for the next night, even though I didn't need to. So this is where I'm completely unfair to a game I know is/was great: I waited way too long. Maybe it would have been nice had they made the controls and game smoother in the HD collection instead of just prettier? I've played it twice so far, for the alternate ending, so it's pleasant enough, I just don't know if I would recommend it today like some other similar platformers that are older and I still enjoy. I'm trying to do that ridiculous under 2 hour speed run for the trophy right now, which isn't incredibly frustrating with saves, but I'm not there enough. Although, I'm a bit confused why the developers would have felt the last 25-50 minutes of the game (depending on how well you play) would be great if you could not save at all? I read ahead on the time attack stuff and multiple playthroughs required to get everything in Shadow of the Colossus, so I don't even think I'm going to start that game until next year. Too many difficult and frustrating twitch games have come my way the last year and I think I'm going to just play some adventure games for the next few months so I can wind down a little bit. Maybe some easier games like Journey as well.

I suppose, but I guess when I was saying that, I felt like something more substantial could have been crammed in to make the 2-3 hour game more memorable. When people do all these vague notional type stories, they almost exclusively do it in short games. A lot of the times, short films seem to suffer from this as well where the end abruptly or things don't make sense. So I guess I'm just saying I wish the creators of Limbo would have tried a little bit harder to put some kind of pull in the storyline or world.

Yeah, I certainly didn't feel anything for the world or characters within. Atmosphere was nice, especially on the rain part, but there's no way this would have worked out if this were an eight hour game. This game seems to borrow heavily from Another World in gameplay, art and sparseness (at least to me), but Another World has you caring about what's going on and your alien friend, even though it's not a lot.

Nah Psychonauts is fun, please buy it!

No I'm sorry, Psychonauts was developed with them Microsoft dollars. This whole bundle is a fraud.

Psychonauts is not indie!

I I just watched that episode last Saturday. Neat!

I thought the Limbo part was pretty straightforward actually. I took it as you were some kid who recently died, woke up, and is stuck in the inbetween hell and heaven purgatory type thing. Stuff is a weird mishmash of things from the real world, much like Wristcutters, and some people have been there so long that they get feral and violent. Really it seemed like the game was trying to be more vague about something that didn't have much below the surface. At least it's not as obnoxious as Braid I suppose. I could have done with more plot like Another World though. Reposting this in the Limbo thread also, since it's active.

It really wasn't that bad compared to some other achievements/trophies I've had to mess with. It lengthened (artificially though) a game I spent about 3 hours maybe beating the first time up to 6 hours I suppose. I think it took me about 5 near full playthroughs to get it. It would have been nicer had you not had to play the game in one go and just not die along the way but save each section? I suppose they did it this way since the game takes like 40 minutes to beat easy once you know what to do. Had the game taken 2 hours every playthrough, this achievement would have sucked. That said, I'd rather not even do achievements like this since I have too many games to play as it is. It's a completionist OCD thing that prevents me from ignoring these things. I thought the Limbo part was pretty straightforward actually. I took it as you were some kid who recently died, woke up, and is stuck in the inbetween hell and heaven purgatory type thing. Stuff is a weird mishmash of things from the real world, much like Wristcutters, and some people have been there so long that they get feral and violent. Really it seemed like the game was trying to be more vague about something that didn't have much below the surface. At least it's not as obnoxious as Braid I suppose. I could have done with more plot like Another World though.

Besides the rampant stupidity and band of sexy killer nuns stuff, I was actually watching that video and trying to figure out if hitting the women in the nose and getting them all bloody was part of the sexy fetishism or if it was just the Hitman doing his usual fights and he just happened to be hitting them in the face.

I think I posted mine in both, and have added anyone I've seen on my list, whether or note I've added people back. I've got some neato swapnotes so far. I've been lacking the past month or two on drawing anything new though. I keep forgetting to mess with Swapnote when I am constantly chipping away at Ocarina 3DS on the go.

Thanks for that, I can't watch Conan anymore because no cable and I never go to the TBS site, but every Goldblum and Conan interview is gold. This is one of the tamer ones even.

Goblins 3 was a fucking great game. Woodruff as well. I own that ugly 3D Goblins game and have yet to play it, but it can't suck that much right?

House season finale was just crap. That show has been crap since the beginning of Season 7. Some of the early episodes of this season kind of went back to the old House style with humor and patients with less animosity, which I enjoyed, but the rest was useless and rushed. I really just wish the show had taken the turn from Season 6 where House was trying to change himself to be a better person. Instead it all turned into an idiotic downward spiral after that where everything was impossible to keep up my suspension of disbelief. Also the show seems to have had dimmer and dimmer lighting since Season 5 to the point where everything just looked washed out, hard to see, and nasty the last 6 episodes. Yuck.

That's crazy, that's the exact same one as I have, sans wireless. What I hate about it is that the USB ports in the back seem broken or made wrong. Nothing really fits into them without a struggle.

I saw Redline recently. While pretty and very well animated, I really couldn't or did not care to follow what was going on. Plot was way behind everything else going on in there. Gratuitous anime but not in the digusting way, and extremely stylish. I think it would have worked so much better if it were 40 minutes like Dead Leaves honestly. Someone told me they spent 7 years making this thing though? Put in that perspective it sort of seems like a waste of time.

Hey I'm actually way more excited about this game than the Double Fine Adventure now! This looks neat!

Happy Birthdsdfsdnl!

I'm not going to bother updating my posts.

All I need is those new post stars to be bigger and fucking red! I'm good then.

Overseer is definitely my favorite. I wish they had done another after that one, as it had the least cheese and was actually a game where I wanted to know what happened next every chapter, outside of just waiting for Tex's next wisecrack. This is with having played Mean Streets first as well. I just hope they get the caliber of actors they had in Overseer to Project Fedora. They don't have to be big names, but I feel like if we are going back to the Under the Killing Moon hammy actors with bad make up, as the video is set up, then it will feel a little off track. I'm sure the video is not anywhere near proof of concept though. Also did anyone ever listen to those radio plays that continued the story after Overseer? They were pretty well produced, yet ended on a cliffhanger as well. I'm wondering if they will pick back up after Overseer or the extra plot from the radio plays.

he7VnI72UNg That's all I've got. It's worth the whole 6 minutes.

Shit! I really need to make time to play Walking Dead (and so many other Telltale games ). This cast has got me all excited for them.