syntheticgerbil

Hey Chris, on Tomb Raider, you would have had to play Legend and maybe Anniversary first because when Crystal Dynamics took over the games the series was pretty much rebooted. Core handled all of the previous 5 or 6 games and Crystal Dynamics just used Prince of Persia mechanics with guns. So basically you were playing a direct sequel to Legend and unfortunately the story (while still not great) for Underworld is absolutely impossible to understand without having played Legend first. It directly references things where the only way you could get what is going on is solely by playing Legend and possibly recently. They don't bother with any recap whatsoever except maybe one sentence at the beginning on the boat. Wait, maybe there was a short 1 minute recap video in the pause menu should you stumble upon it. Yeah I remember now. I watched it and exclaimed to myself that it failed to make any god damn sense to new players as it was just like a bizarre trailer type mashup of dialogue clips and random scenes. Anyway, yeah I only played the Crystal Dynamics trilogy last year and Underworld was definitely the highlight. It is also pretty awesome for just ignoring the need for any boss fights and all "bosses" instead were just an ultimate room of puzzles before the next sequence. I just wanted to defend the story a little bit because I played Anniversary, Legend, and then Underworld back to back in that order and I was pretty engaged in the story and was very intrigued on what might happen next. This is not to say the story is clever as it's pretty standard save the world video game fare, but it was fun enough for a series where you fight dinosaurs and giant squids. The ending was also unpredictably an incredible downer all the way around because the spoiler about the mother at the end was totally not expected (by myself at least). EDIT: And fuck yeah, Cara Ellison! I had to unfortunately quit Not a Game Podcast because she seemed to disappear (along with Craig) and besides Pip, we were left with a bunch of people who were utterly boring and didn't seem to have any knowledge or desire whatsoever to play the games they were trying to discuss. So this is amazing to have her interacting with you guys as she was definitely a driving force along with Craig on the podcast and I miss the original banter of the show. I hope she can make more appearances in the future even though she lives in another country.

Ah okay, I was afraid to click it. Thanks!

Hmmm not on Netflix, but I will see if I can check that out other ways soon.

Yeah those two guys while unimportant to the show are pretty loveable and have some good lines whenever they make an appearance. It's funny a lot of what got me excited for the show was Andre Braugher doing a comedy role. I don't actually know him from anything else besides his role as House's psychiatrist in the season 6 pilot/TV movie and one other episode, but he was great in that show and I loved his acting ability and how strong he appeared against Hugh Laurie on the guy's forever deteriorating mental health. Very cool.

Oh okay now I charged my 3DS and see it. So can I really not remove this game? Is it stuck there the way Health and Safety info is? I can't seem to find a way to delete it within the data management menu.

What is that first image from? The manual from Yoshi's Island?

So what is this microtransaction game?

It is somewhat confusing. Politeness in bed is in general a big turn off for women (or not I don't know, don't kill me). But I am not any good at it, I try not to add too much guilt to my plate. I would think there's way more to feel guilty about in the department of sexual deviance so maybe super progressive men shouldn't worry about being respectful to women constantly?

I think that seems to work because during that whole Dragon's Crown debacle I remember reading some idiotic article that among other things claimed that Vanillaware somehow invented standard paperdoll type animation, or tweening if you love Flash. Macromedia also did not invent this digitally.

I think he does have a point on it feeling a little light, but I definitely feel like the characters are unique, I just usually don't care about them so the more emotional side of the show doesn't play out as well as I'd like. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a ton of fun either way and it's my first thing to watch when I have the new episodes on Hulu every week. Everyone nails the humor pretty well.

It's incredibly convoluted and doesn't really lend itself to just one game unless you go with either starting point (MGS1 and 3). It otherwise won't make sense. If you aren't there for the story or the David Hayter style Snake you should just play Phantom Pain for the fun and not the story. The people that say that are nuts, it's still the same game except the cutscenes are more elaborate with backflips and such, which the detractors say is out of character but I wonder if they have actually ever played a Metal Gear Solid game beyond Metal Gear Solid on Playstation. Snake dodging a missle in slow motion is probably one of the least ridiculous things in the series at this point. Plus it's built on the MGS2 engine which basically all of the gameplay has been iterative of since, so it's easier to get into the later games with that as a starting point. It also has character models with actual faces, so there's that.

Yeah I looked him up yesterday and saw this quote from him concerning his charity: That's such an awesome attitude.

Yes, exactly! I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't THAT. It just felt incredibly uninspired and I had watched like 6 episodes in a row where everyone says goodbye in some way, reflects on the time spent over the years, and then has some loose end tied up. I guess there's worse ways to end shows, but it was utterly boring.

Welp, Bigjko won the thread. Clever clever.

That is who I want to be in 30 years.

I keep meaning to rewatch that one. I saw it in one of my classes at Art Institute and boy was that inappropriate.

Hmm, I think she's pretty agreeable. You just talk to her for lots of story. Her voice acting could be a lot better if I recall. What I find really obnoxious is everything concerning Emma, who you probably have not encountered yet. Tegan, I am not sure why you'd want to start with Phantom Pain, but the first room in MGS1 is notoriously a hard intro to the series. But it does pretty much set you up for all of the skills you need to come natural to finish the series. I have never played the PSX version, only Twin Snakes, is there a difficulty you can set? Also maybe if you can get a copy of Twin Snakes that might be a better place to start since you can use first person view and also have tranq darts to easily put people asleep from afar and stealthily. However I think it takes a while to get that, so you still don't have a way to finish the first room with tranqs. I'd recommend you really just start with MGS3 since it doesn't exactly require any prior knowledge of the story of the series since it's the beginning chronologically in universe and it perfectly encapsulates the overall spirit of the series instead of the twisted world of MGS5. Also don't play the original PS2 release of MGS3 since it doesn't have a camera you can rotate, but every other release does. It's also more open so maybe you will have less of a problem getting caught. It does have burden of eating animals you come across to stay alive, but I never found that a problem and it was mostly hilarious to me to kill and eat every animal I could find. Plus speaking with Paratrooper about how edible each animal was was some of the most hilarious codec conversations in the whole series.

I haven't played this but man that is a beautiful vinyl set!

That sucks, I've heard a lot of theories on not so good Simpsons changes having a lot to do with his absence. If I recall he didn't leave amicably.

I like introducing friends Cat Soup because even though it's bizarre, cruel, and makes no lick of sense, everyone always has a good time.

I am not sure Moot would disagree would he?

I wish they'd sell a version of this with only the making of Blu-ray (like MGS4 did) without all the extra space hogging junk and multiplayer DLC. I'm sad I have to spend that much for a making of thingy. Also NinjaSquirrel, if MGS2 puts you off from the series in anyway, please don't quit. You've gotta play 3! 3 is one of my favorite games ever.

Did he play those before Season 3? I must have missed it if so. I also haven't gotten past the first episode of Season 3 yet, so oops. But yeah that would make more sense.

The funny thing is Sony apparently has stake in funding the show and besides the Vita and PS4, they never mention or show any actual Sony games. It would be pretty hilarious for Frank Underwoood to ask people about Nathan Drake. Apparently Monument Valley was not a product placement and the creators were surprised.

What do Vegeta's neck muscles look like these days?