syntheticgerbil

Psychonauts could still have a spin off or sequel one day, it hasn't been ruled out, but Schafer games usually end up being a lonely title in a series. Sam and Max had apparently many other sequels started that no one even knew about according to the Rogue Book, but they are characters well constructed to keep going, since they keep switching mediums and staying alive 20 years after their first comic book.

Well okay, Joey was cute.

Well I'll tell you right now that I think Beneath a Steel Sky is shit for the most part, along with almost all of Revolution's catalog, whether they had this "Virtual Theatre" as they claimed or not. Lure of the Temptress was a bunch of people meandering around acting boring, and I could see that in Beneath a Steel Sky only less so. I thought Beneath a Steel Sky had serious pacing issues. The game started out wonderful, and just suddenly when you think you are maybe halfway through the game, it makes a beeline for the ending as quickly as possible, introducing all of these sudden elements out of no where when you wake up in the plant. The puzzles were kind of obscure or not too clever, as well as having dead end parts and characters that didn't enhance the story (for me at least). There just seemed to be weird filler, like the bar, that I didn't understand the purpose of. Maybe it just had to cram some more Blade Runner into it? I don't think I have to do much to contest Revolution from Broken Sword 2 and up though. Sorry, I'll try not to piss you off further.

Haha, yeah I can't really think of hardly any games made to be perfectly stand alone, except maybe Grim Fandango or Another World, which got a sequel anyways despite what Eric Chahi said. Maybe Ico and Shadow of the Collosus?

I think if there seriously is a problem with Lara Croft appealing to women and not selling at full potential, which I don't buy, then it probably would most likely have to do with what she's represented in the past. She's been marketed completely different before Crystal Dynamics took over, and there's also that shitty movie with Angelina Jolie. People just don't forget the kind of sleaze she had been tending towards in the past with her old polygon inflated form complete with big ugly lips and tits to match. And then Nukem was covering her tits on a magazine cover. Game mechanics and class aside from the last two or three games, this is her past. But I really just think there are probably still tons of women playing Tomb Raider games, and that the decrease in sales is probably unrelated to her marketability towards women. I don't know what to say, I haven't played Underworld, nor have I heard many bad things about it. I think most women I've talked to seem to have a thing for Indiana Jones, so who wouldn't want to do that type of stuff in a game, even without former knowledge of the old Lara Croft?

I did, but it may be because I used to get errors running it a long time ago during the second act where sometimes music for one island would keep playing while it transitioned to another island and then I would have two songs continuously playing on top of each other. This used to occur fairly commonly all during the second act (the biggest one of course) and would piss me off to no end. I'm sure ScummVM fixes this though. But I might have noticed the music was doing complex things either way. I don't know, I must have been like 9 years old.

That and in general it's just a good idea to never bring that up in the Jesusland Confederacy states of the good ol' U.S.A.!

Yeah well I bet that bird would do that dance constantly even without music.

I feel the same way... especially when they are talking about some overly complicated game that is not Slap Jack.

Anyways, listening to the podcast in segments, I think JP LeBreton is sort of abrasive in his style but he sure has a lot of information spewing forth at once. I'm loving this sound part. Props to mentioning Access Software's Realsound, which wasn't really practical but an amazing as a novelty. I'm pretty sure it was only used in Tex Murphy's first game Mean Streets, and a few other early titles, as Martian Memorandum had much more digitized speech but used your Soundblaster and had the standard adlib music for the early 90s PC Game. Also in Mean Streets, the Realsound stuff was hardly used for all the talking you do in that game. I think only your secretary and maybe two other characters had 3 or 4 standard phrases she would repeat in digitized speech, and maybe there was a few screams and gunshots here and there. It wasn't used for a full talkie game. And my first exposure to the FM Synth chip on the Genesis was in Sonic 3 on the first miniboss when they yell "Hey COME ON!" during the music. Thanks Michael Jackson! Also it appears that I'm the only one who thinks Beneath a Steel Sky and other Revolution titles are pretty mediocre.

Yeah they never made the Collected Works thing available over here either, but that's an even better place to start actually, now that you mention it. I wish they had switched some of the bonus tracks around with a few others of the same era, and I think they could have left off half of the Sound of Violence EP since I don't enjoy listening to it, but that's all fanboy stuff that probably wouldn't get in the way of a new listener. Nice to see Mr. Elliott is popular enough to be repackaged. I had the impression not too many people actually listened to Third Eye Foundation.

I love Third Eye Foundation. Merge records used to to print his CDs here in the US but I guess they stopped, so I have to import all the new releases that are under his "solo" name Matt Elliott. I'm not so into the earlier noise/static type of drum and bass (or lack thereof) of Third Eye Foundation from the mid-90s, but Ghost was great. I'd recommend anyone starting out to hear either You Guys Kill Me or Little Lost Soul. The latter is much more somber without the usual sinister electronic harshness, and hints at where Elliott's work was going to end up when he decided to just start using his real name instead of Third Eye Foundation. As far as his stuff under the name Matt Elliott, I thought Drinking Songs was beautiful, but I have not heard the new one Howling songs. The Mess We Made sounded like it was mixed way too low or something and came out leaving me bored and tired. Anyways, link: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=41300952 Also speaking of Merge records, East River Pipe is one of my favorites as well, but maybe his records may be a little too samey. Even though it's the newest, I'd say What are You On? is a good place to start.

Now that you mention it, I remember that they did that, especially in sneaking mode.

Yep...

Why did everyone start arguing about semantics that everyone is correct about to a certain degree? This will take forever. When can I hear the stories of Ken Levine rampaging through the office breaking furniture?

Is that this one?

Including video games (video games (video-games))?!

Just remember folks, Microsoft Songsmith can be yours for only $29.95.

Yikes, but sounds typical. I'd recommend the Michael Pollan books as well. I haven't gotten around to reading them, but I've heard him talk for a long time a few times here on the local station KPFT in the past year, and he seems to know what he's talking about and a lot of it seems to make sense in correlation to obesity rates and the way food is processed in the modern era. And everything seems to be made of corn now for some reason.

I think Sonic the Hedgehog had a major influence in getting me to draw a lot, which later turned into a job. I'd spend hours in the 1st and 2nd grade drawing Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails going on half assed adventures being manipulated through time. It was different to draw Sonic back in 1991-1993, as there was none of this weird furry baggage shit going along with it, and there were no anime storylines. A lot of my comics ended with Kirby swallowing everyone as my Deus ex machina device ending. But that's it... I don't have any hilarious stories about me playing a ton of Pipe Dream and then rearranging the school plumbing on accident or something.

I somehow get the idea that meat and other produce purchase decisions are easier to make in the UK, because I remember watching some BBC documentary on Youtube about how stuff from US farms has way less government regulation on what constitutes a healthy hormone or chemical used to raise and feed the animal. Also there is less checking and less general caring overall. I noticed since this new craze almost everything I can buy at a grocery store is nearly labeled "organic" or "natural" when it's really not. Sometimes I can tell and sometimes I get super confused. Maybe if I shopped here at Whole Foods, or Central Market, but a lot of the time they carry the same items except way more expensive or they cater to the stuck up rich people who love Perrier rather than just people who want to eat healthier foods. I hate when high fructose corn syrup is found in something supposedly natural. It's corn RIGHT?!

When he revealed his towel song at the meeting they looked horrified, but then they clapped?!

No laughing at work?! Seriously?!

I don't know how obscure this game is to you guys, but I had a Mickey Mouse game for DOS when I was a little jerkwad called Follow the Reader. It essentially did what the podcast was saying, which was to save every action the player did, and then at the end of Mickey's day you could print out everything you did, in storybook form. Here's a screenshot: So you could go to the beach, wash dishes, watch TV, feed Pluto, go to Donald's and sodomize him etc. But I remember there was this plant in the living room that would get all weepy and dreary if it didn't get watered like every 20 seconds. So I would continuously water this plant every time I walked by, feeling bad for it. So whenever I got around to printing out my story at the end of Mickey's day, almost every other page would be a picture of a plant and some transition saying something like, "And then Mickey watered the plant." So this was probably one of my stories: "Mickey woke up and got dressed and ready for the day." (clothes hamper picture or something) "Then Mickey walked downstairs." "Mickey watered the plant." (plant picture) "He then went outside to play with Pluto." "Then Mickey watered the plant." (plant picture) "Mickey decided to watch some TV." (TV picture) "Mickey then watered the plant." (plant picture) "After that, Mickey also watered the plant." (plant picture) "Mickey called for some pizza and also called for Minnie to come over." (pizza or phone) "Mickey then went to water the plant." (plant picture) "He then brushed his teeth, and watered the plant." (toothbrush) "Mickey went to sleep. The End" (bed picture) It was such a waste of paper. I would love to make a novel with this game, and see how much crap I could do in one day until I have about 400 pages of repetitious insanity.

...but I thought it was THROUGH a hole. I know it probably means like the rapist can pick whichever hole he pleases, but I like to think of the phrase as someone striking you with rape through a knothole in a wooden fence as you are walking down the sidewalk on the other side.