miffy495

Armchair: Hell yeah, it's First Class. That's why I'm so damn proud of myself. Also, I already said it in the "exams" thread, but well done! High five right back! Sombre: I actually had to do that exact thing my second year. I was all ready to move in with two friends and had to pull out at the last minute. Just talk it through with her. She'll be disappointed, of course, but if it really is the only thing you can do, she'll understand too and in a month or two you'll be back to normal. It sucks, but it's certainly something you can deal with.

Holy shit, Armchair, that's awesome! Well done, sir!

And then there were 3 games played, just like that. A pleasure, sir. It did kinda sting to be reminded that I suck at strategy stuff, but I enjoyed the games nonetheless. Makes me wonder what a large group game would play like.

I think they have things like the "Rivers" expansion as DLC. In other words, there are some expansions, but they are actually still expansions. I don't have any of them myself, as when I play the real game with my friends it's always been vanilla, but if anything is particularly good I could be tempted.

Wait, so is this like the early Tony Hawk games where they let you loose in a level and you choose which goals to accomplish on which runs? I am suddenly much more interested. Early Tony Hawk + Excite Bike + Trials is an incredibly appealing combination.

Man, I love Carcassonne, but I can't see myself playing it on my ipod touch enough to buy it. The fact that I'd need to be near Wifi to play it with other people, in addition to the fact that I can already do that with the 360 version, will put me off. Still, if anyone has it on 360 and would like a game or two sometime, I'd be happy to oblige.

Mine arrived today. Awesome pin. It was about 3 hours too late to be worn at my graduation ceremony, but I'm really impressed with how fast that thing got to Canada. Thanks, Nachimir!

'nuff said.

My grandmother is staying with me right now so she can come to my graduation ceremony tomorrow. Gaming is pretty much out this week. Next time, yes.

I believe I've said on numerous occasions that it's one of my favorite films. At the very least, it's on the short list. Why?

Of course. You speak as though I'm not a big western fan. Freaking love the genre, though I tend more towards the dirty and sometimes self-parodying aspects (Such as My Name Is Nobody, where even Morricone's score seems to be playfully jabbing at his former work) than the John Wayne righteous cowboy ones. Despite this, I freaking love things like Rio Bravo, but most of my favorites come from the other end of the spectrum.

Damn, glad you seem to be good now. I'd be freaking out if that happened to me.

Also, while that technically is emergent gameplay, it's far less entertaining in most cases to talk about ways one used a game's systems in unintended ways than to talk about the stories and events that unfolded as a result. This is why I believe emergent narrative to be the more suited for this sort of topic. As an example from the podcast, Remo's sneaking around that sleeping thing in the cave in Call of Pripyat. None of those mechanics were not planned for. Enemies could sleep, enemies can hear you rummage in your inventory, and they can't see in the dark. The way that these mechanics converged may count as an emergent interaction to you, but the fact that they converged is missing the point. It is the surprise of coming upon a sleeping monster, the panic as he realized he had woken it, the fear of being stalked in the dark, the frustration of a missed kill shot, and finally the triumph of killing it after all of the above that make the story worth telling. This hinges on the gameplay of course, but if we are not talking about an emergent narrative, all we have are dry interactions. Kind of cool if we want to talk about a spectacular crash in Just Cause or something, but not very useful for any real stories. Similarly, my experience in Red Dead Redemption is based on emergent gameplay in the way you seem to want to define it. The game has NPCs who will occasionally get kidnapped. You may rescue them. There is a gang which does that in Pike's basin. The game also allows your horse to get caught in the crossfire. It also makes breaking a horse and earning its trust rather important. All of these things came together and resulted in a single emergent gameplay experience. That being: dead horse. What made me feel that the story bore relating was not the dead horse, however. It was the bond I had developed with it, the anguish at losing it, and my desire to avenge it setting me on a vendetta against a gang which plays an incredibly minor role in the actual story of the game. This is not emergent gameplay, it is emergent narrative. At any rate, I think neither term covers enough if we are going to be relating stories of this sort of thing to one another. I prefer to go with "emergent event" myself. Sorry to go on a stupid semantic rant here, but pride requires me to hit the "submit reply" button now and await the (justified) responses which call me a pompous jackass.

If we're talking about player-created narrative as emergent (this would be an emergent narrative, not emergent gameplay, but I think that may be what most people mean when they talk about this anyway), please see my posts in the Red Dead Redemption thread for the ongoing story of my quest to avenge my beloved horse, G Money, who was killed in an ill-advised rescue attempt of an NPC who'd been taken hostage by some bandits.

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is fantastic. For those unsure about the writing, it's done by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who wrote the amazing TV series Clone High. As adult and graphic as that show could get, their writing translated incredibly well to a children's movie. It's a bit tamer, but still fantastically sharp and witty and has enough dark undertones to keep those adults in the audience with a slightly twisted sense of humour laughing all the way through. I saw it with my girlfriend in the theater and we spent the entire time cracking up. It was the first time I ever convinced her to get a Blu Ray, as otherwise she'd just kept on buying DVDs. Great movie.

Played for an hour and a half tonight. Half to ride the ferry to Mexico, doing Irish's mission on the way, and an hour to track down and break a Hungarian Half-Bred, the pure white, top-tier horse I intend to exact my revenge on the Walton's with. I named him Junior. Junior isn't quite as fast as G Money, but does seem a bit tougher. This will be useful if he's to stand up in the vendetta I intend to embark upon. He isn't quite the same, nothing could be, but he put up a spirited fight in my attempt to break him. Even dragged me by my own lasso for a bit. I'll have to earn his loyalty yet, of course, but I don't doubt that once I do we'll have some good times. He's a good horse. I'm proud to have him. At the same time, I'm trying to be honest with him. He's been drafted for a revenge mission. If he falls in the line of duty, he will be remembered as a soldier before he will be remembered as a companion. G Money was my traveling companion in this game. When he died, my illusions were shattered. Junior will likely not survive the coming storm, and I don't want him suffering under any illusions.

Happy birthday, Dan!

Cheers man. I've had two friends lose testicles to cancer. None of us are older than 22, so I thought it was a little above average, but just shows that us young'uns should keep aware too. One was at 18, another this past year. The one who lost it super early has been having an annual "half-a-manniversary" keg party every since. I'd take heart from Armchair and not consider it too likely that it is cancer, but even if that's the case it shouldn't slow you down too much if you're catching it this early. Good luck to you.

Good luck, Patters! And Armchair, congrats on doctorhood in advance!

They killed G Money. We'd won races together. I'd been riding him for twenty goddamned missions. We pretty much got through all of the game together to this point. He'd helped me capture escaped criminals, save stagecoaches that were under attack, and we had even fought off mountain lions together. Then, I notice that that fucking idiot reporter Jimmy had gotten himself into trouble again in Pike's Basin. The Walton boys had him tied up in their campsite and he was counting on me to go in and cut him loose just like I had in the mines. I rode G Money down the side of the canyon and we cut Jimmy free, but in doing so I triggered a gang hideout mission. Fine then, I thought, I'll just kill these guys and be on my way. Some poor farmer had had his cattle rustled and they were being kept at the bottom of the basin. I helped him shoot his way in, and on our way out I whistled for G Money so I could continue on my way to Fort Mercer. Then the Waltons decided they didn't want to let us go so easy and set up some gunmen along the path out of the basin. I tried to hop off G Money and get him to safety, but the poor loyal bastard kept following me through. When he went down, I lost it. Put away my pistol, pulled out a shotgun, and got up close and personal with the gut of every Walton boy left in the basin. Those close kills, y'know? The ones where you put your gun right up into his rib cage before you pull the trigger. I hold Jimmy responsible for this, more than anyone else. It's in my nature to help out a hostage, but man it'll be hard for me to not leave him to fucking rot if he gets himself into another one of those situations. I whistled for a horse after leaving the basin and some brown thing with a white stripe on its nose ran up. Riding it just felt hollow. I haven't fast traveled a single time in this game and I don't intend to start, but without G Money the trips seem a lot less pleasant. Just made it to Mexico before turning off the 360 for the night. I hear some of the best horses in the game can be roped in the wild there. I intend to get one. Pure white, so it glows and those Walton boys can see me coming as I hunt every last one of those fuckers down. EDIT: TLDR version: I just got to Mexico tonight. My horse got shot. I'm sad about it. Grieving with a shotgun.

Nice. Glad it seemed a good one, sir.

As I understand it, and from my experience, every Total War game has played this way. It's not unique to Empire, and I actually remember it being particularly obvious in Rome.

Yay for Thrik! And Birthdays!

I'm still in the early going. Just finished "The Burning" and damn was that mission cool. Unfortunately, my time with the multiplayer this afternoon left me a bit nonplussed. It was fine, I guess. It just seemed so empty. Riding around with a couple of other Thumbs was fun, but when we hopped out of free roam and into a competitive thing, it was kinda lame. Add that to the fact that while the free roam was fun, I can see it getting old really fast, and I'm fairly disappointed with that aspect of the game. Luckily, what I've experienced of the single player is bloody awesome, so all's well.

As I mentioned earlier, a couple of weeks ago I finished doing just that. Every episode, at a rate of about 1 each night I had some free gaming time. I think if you played them when they first came out, it's totally worth revisiting them. If someone hadn't played them, and hasn't played anything newer, it would still be worth it. (I have a coworker doing this right now. Hasn't played an adventure game since Curse of MI). If someone has played the newer Telltale games, I'm less sure it's a good idea. It may be just too much of a leap backwards at this point. Beat me to it. Consider me another vote for a 6.