syntheticgerbil

Haha what?! That Grim Fandango comment is straight trolling I think. The Monkey Island aspect is probably from steep score inflation on adventure game scores from adventure game fan sites from 2000 and onwards. Every game was AMAZING apparently for a while there. Anyway, I've always been kind of interested in playing Future Wars simply because Eric Chahi did the art for the game and every screenshot I have seen looks amazing (much like Another World) with the low resolution and flat coloring style. He didn't design it though so I have no idea if it's a game worth playing or not. Wasn't the design led by the same guy who did Flashback, Cruise for a Corpse, and that James Bond game?

Hey, this is looking great! I am sort of confused how it will play (I don't feel like reading the paragraphs around the video in that link at the moment), but this definitely seems more in tune with what Double Fine would do as opposed to Costume Quest. At least on up front glimpses of art direction, animation, and weird concept at least.

Haha, that IGN quote is so brilliant I don't even want to look inside the review and understand the context. :tup:

Once I had somehow stumbled upon a livestream of this guy playing Desert Bus. He was ridiculously delirious and I think he had been up for 16 hours or so straight playing this (or he was using an emulator to pause and come back over and over). He was just talking nonsense while it drove and had so far completed one trip and and was nearly back. On his last mile while everyone in the chat was clamoring for his success, he suddenly veered off the road and laughed at all of us, shutting down the stream. True Story.

If he franchised Psychonauts into a deluxe series of games, then everyone could stop ragging on him for being so supposedly unsuccessful.

That movie was so scary when I was like 8. That fight was incredibly epic to me back then too. Now it's just hilarious, but still good all the same.

Does it really have a fireplace though? I had a fireplace in one apartment I lived in and it turned out it really didn't go anywhere and that you weren't allowed to make fires there. To make up for it, there was a power outlet inside of the fireplace instead. I stuck a TV in there.

GOD DAMN IT ANGELA! Also, follow my web log where I try really hard to keep up and post drawings I do. It'll be fun if you be my buddy and yell at me to keep drawing and posting so that I keep drawing and posting for all of our own goods. mrseanlane.blogspot.com

There's been a lot of gold ones over the years, but I can't be bothered to dig them up. Mostly it all used to involve WOW GOLD. I did enjoy Angela Baby's signature most recently: I cannot wait for a website with hundreds of wholesale art malls!

It's just Clint Hocking alone with the DoTT remake now.

I think the frustration from not figuring out what to do in an adventure game is much less stressful than the frustration created in Brutal Legend where you just spent 20 minutes on a stage battle, thinking you nearly won, only to die and have to start again. Then again, I had the PS3 bug where I could not go back to the game after finishing it, so I had to start around 80% and plow through until the end of the game, which only really took an hour or two. The stage battles suddenly got very quick after I knew what I was doing and could easily call on what I needed when I needed while multitasking and fighting the guys on the ground with those double teams. Really it just sucks because virtually no strategy is explained in Brutal Legend, and since the game is so short, after your first stage battle you are dropped into these really intense ones soon after the first, making you feel lost. And as far as the Meat Circus, still no comment, 'cause I didn't find it hard. Maybe I've played more than enough 3D platformers in the past to not be bugged at that point?

That sucks Kingz, the audio is sort of the most important part in the game. Also Miffy, I'm betting if you really liked the first one, the second one will take your socks off aggressively. I have beat no games in the last month, except I did get over 300 points in each game mode in Game and Watch Collection 2 on DS, making me feel that it was very beaten. It took at least 20 times to finally understand the fireworks were making a Mario hat at 200 and 500 points in the air. I kept thinking it was a man with a big nose and angry eyes until something just clicked.

Hmm... I'll probably get this just because it's Jane Jensen. I was more excited at some point maybe 5 years ago, but I don't care any more and feel like the game will probably be cheap, since it seems to be a common thing now for some adventure developers of yore to farm out their game idea to some eager German adventure game fans only to end up kind of a mess. Seems like a dumb way to design games. The main character seems like someone was trying too hard to make his dream girl and didn't really create someone appropriate for the game setting. I guess I'll bite when there's a non-German boxed copy of this game, assuming that ever happens (since people seem to be indicating the whole box and instructions are in German). If not, I'll hope for a XBLA or PSN release for the US.

I think what happens is neither's works sell as expected and then they get the big angry god finger pushed at them and scorned for not selling enough. Also, I get the feeling Gilliam makes a lot off those DVD sales, while retail game industry refuses to put anything on the shelf older than 6 months unless used, so Schafer is at a clear disadvantage. Aww, that's probably true to an extent, but I feel like he really knew what he was doing for good adventure game design. I guess most people feel that adventures are all poor design at this point (new ones and retroactively damning old ones that were once considered good) and a ridiculous way to ask someone to play a game. He was probably never confident to fully design anything other than an adventure, hence the lead design roles being taken by Erik Robson for the Double Fine games. Either way, I think I agree with Vimes, where the concepts are golden, but maybe the execution on those last two games was poor or disjointed. I think Psychonauts did a much better job of balance, but I can see how some might be upset with the changing gameplay styles from level to level. I felt like that was part of the charm. But I'm also one of the apparent few who did not have a hard time at all on the Meat Circus. Brutal Legend's campaign mode was all screwy. The story came off unsatisfying, rushed, and prematurely ended while the RTS stuff was just thrown at you halfway through the game with little help. Like I said in the Brutal Legend thread, after playing like 30 online battles and reading a few guides, I really started to appreciate and have fun with the set up (as well as see the ingenuity of all the characters you could control), it was still way too hard of a nut to crack. The payoff for being good or understanding the RTS part was weak, since no one was playing online anyway and none of my friends in real life were at all interested.

There was a big argument recently on Cartoonbrew as well about how stiff and expressionless the animation on The Simpsons has gotten over the last 20 years, but while the animation, even rough, in Seasons 1 and 2 are a plus (and to a lesser extent up to Season 5), I think what I was liking about the show was that the animation showed the cartoon quality and not the plots themselves to a great extent until I got to Season 5. I mean the show is never anything I think anyone holds up for great quality in animation even though there is some remarkable staging, poses, and movements along the seasons I have revisited, but I'm guessing maybe it's a similar problem where the show got too wacky for it's own good? But I'm guessing the people who wanted the show more grounded, Homer less idiotic, the plots less crazed probably are in a minority compared to those who wanted scathing pop culture references, the show to push boundaries, more satire on society, and more movie parodies since the show has been successful for so long and from what I've read, most of the early stuff no longer gets rerun. I guess I liken it in this way for what fails for me: So Burns is inconsistently weak in the series, sometimes doing a full dance and number routine and other times not being able to crush a paper cup. At the same time, Homer becomes inconsistently stupid in the idiotic region or mean where as the first three seasons he may have only been a simple lunkhead or selfish. The Monty Burns inconsistencies don't bug me because it's always done for gags and it's not really essential to the episode or series at hand. Homer is the main the character so when he's stupid in a ridiculous or mean way at points when the episode's emotional crux is at hand, it ruins the believability of the characters and the show for me. I don't usually watch anything simply for the gags, I really need to be hooked into caring about the characters to care about a show, movie, animation, or whatever else.

I finished that DLC dungeon way too early in the second game alternating between the hellfire from the sky orbs and invincibility orbs I had saved up so far. You then get this ridiculously overpowered weapon and outfit for completing it. I think you're only supposed to try that dungeon after finishing the game if you go by the levels of the enemies inside.

What was up with that dog? It seemed like there was going to be a point to him or at least it was going to become a sidequest.

Currently, yes, but I can imagine more than a few in the past that would probably leave one feeling pretty ripped off, guessing they were bought around market value when they were new and all. Also doing the pool stick jab motion for Wiiplay makes the joints in the middle of my arm hurt, unlike real pool.

I vaguely remember Lisa's Wedding but those other two you named were seemed pretty good the last time I saw them, Kroms. I think I'm getting the feeling maybe things get a little more stable again in Season 6, so this should be fun.

I still don't have a 360. I need it to play some ports that were better before the PS3 came along (Still have never touched Ancel's King Kong) and there's still a lot of Live Arcade titles I'd love to play that are available no where else. I guess I don't have the motivation to buy some deluxe system for the sake of owning mostly downloadable titles.

Wow, that's strange, I remember becoming increasingly annoyed and dissatisfied with Broken Sword 2 as the end approached, but did like small pockets inside the game, like the beach area with the old pirate ship or the whole beginning part of the game. I agree with the assessment of Broken Sword 3 completely, which is where I gave up. I almost didn't finish the thing, but I stuck though. I usually manage to finish most games, even if mediocre, but Broken Sword 3 was a definite chore, especially on Xbox with the ridiculous loading time.

That's pretty dumb, it seems like the game should give you the option to maybe scale back and not use the 24bit depth buffer (not that I have a clue what the hell that is) or simply just not care, since the graphics are, as Thunderpeel says, not especially advanced. Most stuff is just pictures wrapped onto polygonal planes. I guess that patch'll make it do that. Hope it comes soon! I think Steam patches always come out relatively quick. I'm not sure if the game stopping bug has been patched in the PS3 and 360 versions in the meantime though, if that's any indicator of Hothead's timeliness.

Hmm... I'll list the half I think are pretty good, but I don't actually think any of them quite stick out as classics like they do (for me) in Season 4. The last season seems to have contained every episode that was genuinely memorable to me plus others I sort of forgot were great. I'm really into the around the house or in the neighborhood type situations, so stuff in Season 5 like Homer going into space or even the Springfield Casino getting built seem way too much for me, even with the movie parody situations added, which I'm not too big on in large doses. Finishing the Season, it's seems like it really calmed back down in the last five episodes, so I'm hoping this will carryover to the next season. These are great I think though: Homer's Barbershop Quartet, Homer Goes to College (well, until Homer hits the dean with his car, then it's just idiotic I think), Rosebud, Treehouse of Horror IV, Marge on the Lam, Bart Gets Famous, Homer and Apu, Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy, Homer Loves Flanders (except Homer jumping a boat on Ned's car), Burns' Heir, Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song, and Lady Bouvier's Lover.

I guess that's the strange thing, I don't like Cape Feare at all. Never really have, even though it's from the team I guess I feel was golden. I didn't expect to see the show start to slide so soon either, being somewhat confused that this isn't really the order I remember the episodes in. I'm not really sure it has a ton to do with Conan O'Brien, but there seems to be talk on the commentaries that everyone was a little confused or in shambles during Season 5 with lots of people leaving and and being hired. I guess that's why the episodes seem so different sometimes? One will be way too over the top, yet the following episode will still be somewhat down to earth. Maybe it has something to do with Dave Mirkin? He seems obsessed with things exploding and extreme cut away gags, while I feel like maybe that's not what I'm looking for in the show because that wacky stuff works more effectively with more rounded and dynamic animation in my opinion. But I did like the Barbershop Quartet episode a lot and everything before Season 5 has really been great, even the episodes with the really rough animation on the first season. Even if this hasn't been a good show for over a decade, it's really nice to revisit it and see how great it once was (and how ridiculous the controversy was back then over such a harmless show). It's lame because I doubt this would have impacted me when I watched them as a kid, but the love the family has for eachother is a major drawing point and it seems to have started dissipating already. Originally I must have stopped watching the show midway through season 10 just browsing an episode guide, but probably for way different reasons.

I haven't seen anything new much. Still going through Simpsons while I work on stuff. I only have a few episodes left until I'm done with Season 5, but I think this is where the show starts to get bad. About half so far this season have been garbage while the other half good as usual. I guess it's strange to figure out what went wrong, because Matt Groening keeps saying on the commentary in kind of an obnoxious way about how hard he worked to keep the "cartooniness" out of the animation and keep the show more real, but as the show goes on, the characters get progressively less real for me and the situations becoming classic Saturday morning over the top cartoon. Maybe it was just Al Jean and Mike Reiss keeping the show strong? I don't know. I do agree with Matt Groening on eliminating the floaty over expressive stuff that animators tend to cram in their stuff as well as the wonky slamming doors and other things like that, so I think seasons 2 and 3 had the best animation. After that, it just seemed to go overboard with the style and everything is now kind of stilted and jerky with the movements. Also, the dream sequences seemed like a good place to express the weird cartoon situations instead of actually doing it in the show and just cutting as if to say, "oh well," but that way of doing things seems completely eliminated now. I'm also really not into the Homer becoming more stupid thing, even though I guess it didn't bother me when watching the show as a kid. I also was way more engaged when the Simpsons had to balance their budget as a usual thing rather than a plot device that comes and goes when needed. According to the commentary, the writers seem pretty satisfied with themselves for fluctuating the show's reality and Homer becoming more dumb, so maybe what this show was meant to be is not for me. I was also pretty irked at the creators bashing the Korean animators during Season 3's commentary on multiple episodes. It was kind of getting downright mean. Anyway, two more seasons to go and then I'm done. I'm hoping maybe the ridiculousness is scaled back in the next two for the idiocy of Season 5, but I guess I'm not counting on it. The Christmas episode where Bart steals a video game was very memorable and heart warming, so if the show can still output that quality in Season 7, maybe I'm still in for a treat. Also Season 7 of House has been pretty bad or unmemorable so far.