syntheticgerbil

Oh yeah, you'll end up paying more for the two watch batteries than the VMUs themselves. That's the real steal.

NOTHING MUCH, JUST HAD SEX WITH A DRUNK GIRL.

That's a good chart. I've used it on subsequent playthroughs. The first time I had to do monkey combat, I remember writing a copious amount of greater than and less than symbols next to stances on a yellow post it. It was jam packed, because for whatever reason I thought going into the puzzle that it was going to be much more simple than it turned out to be. I didn't hate the puzzle and it wasn't that hard, but it wasn't enjoyable either, so I'm with Miffy. I first played EMI at a time when I in high school seeking out almost every adventure game I heard was slightly above mediocre (which I don't recommend), so the puzzle wasn't too obnoxious compared to some I was having to trudge through at the time.

The UK seems to have a history of toning down imports, but I can't think of too many specifics outside of some edited DVDs, No More Heroes, and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, but hopefully this doesn't turn into someone proposing to fine someone large amounts for selling to someone below the intended age range.

There will be no racing today.

Not to downplay the true atrocities, but they sure do make great villians in fiction! Hellboy, Indiana Jones, and the original Bionic Commando! Oh my! Well, he also lives in Texas. I'm guessing it's a major factor that has shaped his perception. I feel him.

Did you play Kirby's Avalanche long ago? More people seem to have played that one. Same game.

The South African situation is not a good one for sure, but what an odd survey to hand out. It's more bizarre to me that enough people would willfully answer that they raped someone to create such a high statistic. You usually hear statistics are lower because people won't admit certain things, even on an anonymous survey. If that is the case here, that's scary.

Haha, that's funny, because on the secret Pirate board Telltale opened for TOMI, David Grossman just got done saying Zelda does a good job of holding your hand. EDIT: I forgot my standard, "No worthwhile comments, but what a great episode!" Really though, these just get better and better every week. It's a highlight of my workweek, although I don't know if that makes me pathetic.

Yes, I also own the Tartan DVD because it has more extra making of crap.

Well let me know if you ever hear of an international release or maybe a new release with other language options. I know that's a very unfrench thing to do, since every DVD I have imported from France so far requires me to have French subtitles on if something is in English and never has any other language option. But your country's cartoons are so good. I bought a large Minuscule DVD set as well as the Oggy and the Cockroaches Season One while in Paris last year since I knew is that they were "silent" for the most part. I was not disappointed at all. I also picked up a DVD that has La Vieille Dame Et Les Pigeons which is amazing and only has spoken English as the little dialogue available. Hooray!

Yes, when you can shoot your past self, it's so awesome.

Does the DVD have english subtitles by any chance?

I'm so jealous of your animation industry.

So you aren't a very old guy?

So Mike Stemmle is a writer/designer on this game, and that does concern me. I don't know if it was more him or Sean Clark who mostly failed to understand what Monkey Island "should" be about, but I'm hoping he kept up with fan response over the years and learned from his mistakes. Really I just get the feeling that when those two guys designed EMI, they apparently did not thoroughly play through the first three games, as shown by all the small but weird plotholes like JoJo Jr., LeChuck changing shapes for absolutely no reason, and the Herman Toothrot story. Also their inability to pick what rating they wanted for the game was really obnoxious. More than anything I'm bothered by people saying "darned demons from heck" on one part of the game and later saying "damned demons from hell" on another part. All of the Monkey Islands previously got away with the words "damn" and "hell" being used appropriately, so what caused them to skirt around that and then forget about it? Was LucasArts rushing everyone or did everyone just want the game done and over with? I'm not so bothered by the gentrification story and giant robot monkey. Some good puzzles, points and jokes came out of it. Maybe it didn't exactly fit in with Monkey Island, as the world was definitely much more ruthless in the earlier games as Kingzjester said, but I thought it was neat that the real pirates were being pushed out or sent to rehab because they didn't fit in with the new commercialized society. It wasn't exactly a Sam and Max story, because while Sam and Max comics make fun of tons of materialism and consumer society, it's not like Sam or Max want to do anything about it or really care either way. They indulge in it cynically for the most part. I wasn't really expecting a throwback to LeChuck's revenge after CMI, so I guess the overall story and puzzles were the most enjoyable things about the game to me. I think the major problem that clouds the overall story from being more enjoyable to most others is as Udvarnoky said: more than half the jokes fall flat. Breaking the fourth wall for the umpteenth time for a cheap laugh is just so incredibly tiring. Almost every character and description seemed like it was loaded with one liners. I hate most comedy movies because they all seem to think the best way to make a comedy is with nonstop jokes and EMI went for that, intentionally or not. Also the graphics were shit, except for some of the backgrounds. The level of incompetence in the 3d modeling and texturing of the characters in that game is just ridiculous. Did no one understand that they could render hi-res textures for cutscenes, even if they did not want to smooth the character models for consistency reasons? Seriously, do I need to see the huge ass JPEG pixels on Guybrushs blocky hair swirl even in cut scenes? Why is there a long cutscene with Pegnose Pete in jail where he is shown close up multiple times that reveals his missing nose is like 5 blocky brownish pixels? Why are the polygons in everyone's stubby 3d hands overlapping and breaking without shame over and over? How did no one catch any of that and rerender with at least a mesh smooth on really ugly stuff or resaving textures before the game was shipped? Grim Fandango had none of those mistakes, and if I'm not mistaken, polygon count and texture resolution was upped for nearly every cutscene in that game. I can confirm that the characters in Grim Fandango cutscenes definitely had different hand models than the ingame ones. Anyways, ranting aside, I'm sure Tales of Monkey Island will have much better quality control, although I'm seeing some problems with boring 3D objects in the trailer, most notably the rope Elaine was inside. I'm guessing they'll fix that as they go along. But as for Stemmle, Dave Grossman is the design director, which should keep wacky inconsistancies in check and mean top notch puzzling, as Grossman games seem to all have (kids ones included). And Jake works there and gets more and more design credits now, so I bet he would be good at pointing out any continuity errors. Now all they have to do is eventually shift the tone and atmosphere of Tales of Monkey Island closer to LeChuck's Revenge and I will be in heaven.

I remember that commercial. The whole campaign to sell the game was gross for whatever reason. I remember magazine ads with baby puke(?) slathered around a room with a crib in the middle.

I really loved the grumpiness in this episode, especially from Remo, even though you guys seemed to regret acting that way. There were a lot of great criticisms on the new E3 crap and the gamer complaints, although I'm not at all interested in Heavy Rain, even for the comedic value. I wish I could hear the unbleeped comment about Molyneux. I'm surprised there was no Monkey Island talk though. It's okay to even if Jake works at Telltale right?

Yeah I've noticed. I'm really aiming to live outside of Austin and commute inward. I have somewhere to stay in San Marcos for the initial move, but getting a job somewhere in Austin is the most important part and makes me feel really apprehensive and afraid.

Well when you make your own company and have others do the programming work, can I work for you? Agh, you know, terrible. I'm trying to get enough good portfolio work to make a transition to an Austin video game company at the moment, so hopefully I can deal with less humidty up there.

I'm betting some nutso fan over at Mixnmojo will be messing with the build of the PC version and granting all of our wishes.

Learning by Twitter feeds? I feel sick to my stomach.

They answered the two out of three parts of my really long question up there but skipped the Spiffy the Dog part! My personal special edition of Monkey Island would have the original Spiffy the Dog portrait reinserted back in the game.

Cool, I live in Houston... working on Health games...