Nappi

Fantastic episode! I love the image of 200-foot-tall PewDiePies reacting to wildlife and processes of urban decay while the remains of human civilization live underground and communicate in fortune cookie messages.

Confession: I had not watched a Fast and Furious movie until a couple weeks ago. I was under the impression that they were a steaming pile of soulless action garbage, like the Transformer series. Subconfession: I have not watched a Transformers movie either, rendering the previous sentence completely irrelevant. Anyway, I fired up the first movie some time ago, then proceeded to watch the other six. I was positively surprised to find warm, goofy action movies with clever casting. Spoilery impressions of each movie below: The Fast and The Furious: I liked the friends and family focus of the movie. I also appreciated that, despite the premise, the main characters being suspicious of each other did not dictate the course and tone of the whole movie. The film was surprisingly "down to earth". For example, I loved that one of the most emotional scenes was a side character losing his father's car in a race. 2 Fast 2 Furious: I have practically no recollection about the plot of the movie. Something about drugs? Also, where is Vin Diesel? Totally forgettable. Fast & Furious: The plot is still not very memorable, but at least Vin Diesel is back. Fast 5: Oh my god, this is one of the best heist movies I have ever seen. Like Ocean's Eleven with cars, where the director doesn't pretend that George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon are not the same character. Amazing cast, great tone, whacky action. And those ridiculous Vin Diesel and The Rock moments... ugh. I hope they keep it up! Fast & Furious 6: Nope, they've done fucked up. The cast and action is still great, but this movie has borrowed too many elements that I absolutely despise from modern action movies: A deeply sadistic antagonist; a previously empowered female character being downgraded to a target, victim, and motivation for the male leads; the killing of side characters just to give other characters a darker backstory; and the "just kidding, world is still shit" ending. I hope Furious 7 corrects the course. Meanwhile, it is time for... The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift: A fun movie. Unfortunately, the casting did nothing for me with the notable exception of Sung Kang. I was glad that Tokyo Drift was not as dark as Fast & Furious 6 despite the shared ending. However, this movie makes me even more angry about Fast & Furious 6, as it shows that Gal Gadot's character was killed off (without a funeral or anything, by the way) just because Sung Kang's character didn't have a woman in Tokyo Drift, and that Sung Kang's death was clearly not caused by a sadistic Jason Statham. Furious 7: Oh wow... They dropped the ball even more spectacularly in terms of tone as compared to Fast & Furious 6. Jason Statham plays a good baddie, but it just doesn't fit this series (or more precisely, my ideal for this series). He is sadistic to the point of being ridiculous: In the first scene he visits his comatose brother, swears revenge, threatens to kill the hospital staff if anything happens to his brother, and then pretty much blows up the hospital. What the fuck? Also, yes, eye in the sky surveillance, and attack helicopters and drones is just what this goofy car movie needs... And 8: I have zero reasons to go see this. The relationship between Vin Diesel and Paul Walker was one of the best parts of the whole series, and Walker's goofy smile whenever he realized he was surrounded by friends was genuinely uplifting. With Walker dead, and some of the more interesting side characters gone, and with the series seemingly committed to ramping up the tension, darkness, and brutality, I see no way for the next movie being interesting to me. Anyway, I don't regret watching the whole series. It was worth it for The Fast and The Furious and Fast Five alone.

Beautiful stuff!

Also, supposedly a millionaire after Fast 5, but somehow works under a small-time criminal ?

Kerbal Space Program Making History expansion should be released very soon. How about Idle Thumbs community generated space challenges that Nick tries to beat?

I'm really looking forward to finally playing Shadow of the Colossus game later this week. I have been fascinated by the game since its original release, but I didn't own PS2, and by the time the game was re-released on PS3, I didn't have regular access to that console either. I think the new release looks absolutely stunning. I can see why the differences in the art style might bother people who grew up with the original, but to me, it still seems to fit the atmosphere they are going for. I haven't watched the critique videos, though, partly because I want to avoid spoilers and partly because this is the only way for me to experience the game anyway.

I beat this horny game! I think the difficulty was very nicely balanced throughout. I played on normal and only died a couple of time – once during the prologue (due to not knowing how I should fight big bosses) and once when fighting a regular enemy that somehow single-hit me into a baby (?). I got silver/gold from most of the chapters, but feel that I would have to put more effort in learning the fighting system if I was to go for platinum medals or beat the game on hard mode, which is something I'm not interested in but it is cool that it's there for those who are. Surprisingly, I ended up liking the boss fights with fast enemies the most. My least favorite were the ones where the monster was outside the play area or where you were floating in air, as I never quite figured out how I was supposed to approach these fights. I liked the sections where they varied the gameplay a bit and wished there had been more of those because running from combat arena to combat arena started to feel boring quite fast. In addition to some of the horrible looking and poorly paced cutscenes, my biggest disappointment with the game was that the setting, for the most part, was super dull. The prologue was quite exciting and I was hoping that the game would be taking place in "the real world" with angels and demons or whatever disrupting the normal course of things. Instead, I spent most of the time in really bland heaven-and-hell-themed locations. Similarly, the beginning of the game got me excited about all the wacky characters I would meet, but in the end the plot was nonsense (to me) and the characters I ended up spending the most time with were the least interesting. In any case, I feel quite positive about the game. Not enough to buy Bayonetta, because it sounds like it is rougher than the sequel both in terms of polish and difficulty, but enough to be looking forward to Bayonetta 3. I hope the setting will be more interesting, and they will not go budget on the cutscenes. By the way, Selene's Light is a complete waste of money. It gives a very short period of Witch Time and makes it much harder to gather magic points for special attacks. I could have spent that 100,000 to buy more of those crazy Nintendo costumes.

That is like the various fake bomb detectors, which began their life as bullshit golf-ball-finding dowsing rods and ended up becoming much more harmful, but with current buzzwords. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29459896

I mean, a dozen Real Dolls melted together would be a perfect Inside collector's edition item.

Right. I end up skipping most of the battles in Total War campaigns by the end (partly because there are so many and partly because I prefer the turn-based stuff), but at least those games don't force me to watch the battles anyway.

I don't remember if that was available during early access, but that implementation sounds pretty weird.

Nicolas Jaar released a new, sample-heavy album under an alias A.A.L (Against All Logic). It is pretty dope! Music to wait the next The Avalanches album to. Presumably it will not take 16 years this time.

I bought Pit People on early access because I desperately needed to play a game like that at the time. I was playing Into the Breach when I noticed that the game finally got released. As I said on Slack, Pit People highlights really well how tight the gameplay of Into the Breach is, whereas Into the Breach highlights how wild and cool the art style of Pit People is. Even when I first played Pit People on early access, I found it strange and simply not fun that the enemies took so many turns to kill. Now that I'm way into Into the Breach, I doubt I will play the final game for a good long while. It does make me wish that Into the Breach was visually more interesting, though. Edit: Pit People has real-time auto-resolve for combat. Oh my..

Good work Nick! Gotta love that commitment.

I have played a total of less than 6 hour according to Steam with 6 attempts. I think the one where I played through all the islands and beat the game took a bit less than 2 hours. Nine hours sounds a bit long, but on the other hand, it is clearly working for you, since you beat the game!

I'm really looking forward to hearing your comparison of the different versions. I have only played the PS4 remake, and I loved pretty much everything about the game apart from actually playing it. The final fight was 100% against the camera and janky-ass camera-relative moving controls and not the actual boss itself.

I've been slowly playing through Bayonetta 2, basically one chapter a day after work. I just fought my second white-robe dude (end of chapter 7, I think), and I had a lot of fun dodging and attacking. I'm still not, dodge offsetting much, but even so, I have done quite well, i.e. have not died since the very beginning and do not have to rely on lollipops too much (still use the healing ones occasionally though). I did not expect my biggest gripe with the game to be the quality of the comic style cutscenes. I don't mind the use of (basically) still images, but I don't understand why they have to look so bad when during gameplay things are so much sharper. Also, even simple conversations drag a lot, which feels a bit jarring considering how fast-paced the action is.

I played two games on Easy on Blitzkrieg Squad, and beat the game with 2 and 4 corporate islands completed. Although, easy is quite easy overall, one still gets in interesting situations with the enemies. Like osmosisch, I wasn't very efficient with the pull tank, and at first, I mainly used it to block emerging enemies or to continue the circuit for chain lightning strikes. However, when I bought the cannon that shoots in two directions and upgraded it to do 2 damage, I was basically unstoppable. I have unlocked Rusting Hulks and Blitzkrieg squad so far and wonder what I should go for next. I have 3 coins so far, so I could just go for Zenith Guard immediately or wait a bit and unlock one of the other ones. Looking at some of the achievements, I'm not sure if I will be able to unlock every squad without having to go for some of the annoying challenges (e.g., "Finish the first 2 Corporate Islands in under 30 minutes." Ugggh..), so I would like to unlock ones I that I find interesting first. While the combat does not have much randomness (apart from enemy spawns), I still feel that a good run on Normal requires quite a bit of luck. With Blitzkrieg Squad, for example, things become much easier once you get a couple of power cores and are able to upgrade your Lightning Mech to chain through buildings without them taking damage and increase the damage 3. I think I will keep playing on Easy for a bit more to unlock and familiarize myself with the different squads, and then switch back to Normal. Not sure how much I want to grind to get a perfect run, though. I like this game a lot more than most games with roguelike progression mechanics. However, I would still love to see a campaign mode with permanent progression (in terms of abilities or maybe even squads), with handcrafted challenges.

I played four rounds (I think) on Normal, yesterday. In the first two, I died before and during the boss fight of the first island. After that, I got a couple of missions in on the second island. Finally, I started on the second island, completed it, and then died on the boss of the first island. I unlocked Rusting Hulks (which got me the furthest), and Blitzkrieg (which I'm yet to try). I think I will switch to easy next and focus on unlocking more squads and familiarizing myself with the different units. I'm not a fan of roguelike progression mechanics, but the turn-based puzzle combat gameplay is right up my alley, so I will probably spend a lot of time with this game. I love how little randomness there is in the game. I was also positively surprised how different the various squads were. Too bad that many of the squad and overall achievements seem like they could become pretty frustrating once you are actually aiming to get more coins, and not just unlocking the easy ones accidentally. I also think the art style could have been more interesting considering the mech theme, but that is a really minor complaint. As I said, I love the gameplay, and it has already infiltrated my dreams.

Thanks for the advice! I will definitely try to engage with the combat system, and I am actually enjoying it quite a bit at the moment (just finished chapter 2). However, I doubt I have the patience, time, or interest to try to completely master it or to play through the game multiple times. I also don't have a lot of patience for grinding or banging my head against the wall over and over again, which is why I'm interested in items/techniques that make the game easier. I have found that usually when people say that certain item or skill breaks the game by making it too easy, I'm still perfectly happy with the difficulty level. Is the Dodge Offset stuff actually explained anywhere in the game? I watched the Youtube tutorials, and I think I got the basic idea (although, it will take some time until I can reliably perform those during heated combat), but I don't remember seeing it mentioned in-game. Also, the menu/inventory interface is super obnoxious. Is there anything else there that is important apart from lollipop crafting?

I ended up buying Bayonetta 2 for the Switch. I have only completed the prologue and the first chapter so far but I'm liking the game quite a bit. I'm not super into these kinds of action games, but the crazy shit that is happening on the screen keeps me entertained. The menus are hella confusing, though. Where should I spent my money? Should I invest in Selene's light for example? I don't mind if the purchases make the game too easy for some players, because I'm not going to spent time mastering all the nuances of the combat system or play through the game multiple times at different difficulty settings anyway. I already got Bat Within and some cheap basic moves. I started playing this game immediately after completing Shadow of the Colossus. I have to say that this is one of the most jarring transitions I have ever experienced with video games.

Anyone worried about the controls feeling too streamlined or the kid and the horse being too easy to handle (mainly referring to the video here), fear not, the gameplay is (still?) super bad and frustrating at times. After spending a lot of time fighting the camera that kept going underwater when I should have focused on a flying colossus in a beautiful flooded area, I realized that I would probably enjoy this game a lot more if someone else was playing it. I'm fine with the kid being clumsy and the movement being slow, but Jesus Christ the camera in this game is annoying as all hell. I just killed my 8th colossus, and I am at the stage where I have to really push myself to complete the game. It's a shame because the colossi are beautifully animated and some of the fight mechanics are really interesting.

Yeah, it is awesome! Probably my favorite feature since Project B.E.A.S.T.

I have killed four colossi so far. The game looks nice and runs ok. I love the atmosphere. I might turn the trophy notifications off (if possible) because not celebrating the you defeating these giant feels like such an important part of the game (they go as far as basically killing you every time one of them dies). The controls are going to take some getting used to. The combination of right stick camera control and forced cinematic perspective makes anything other than riding directly towards your next objective feel really awkward. I'm having a really hard time with climb jumping as well. Hopefully the later stage colossi do not require a great deal of speed and precision because I might throw the controller out of the window.

Orson Welles' commercials are fascinating: