Nick Breckon

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Posts posted by Nick Breckon

  3. Posted

    Nick.

     

    Nick Nick Nick Nick Nick Nick Nick Nick Nick.

     

    It's not a suicide note. It's just an incredibly insane ghost monologue about his true inner feelings after he died. You also missed (or just didn't mention) the fact that right before he died he was trying to blackmail you.

     

    I mean... I'm pretty sure someone mentions the note IRL, unless I mistook one of the other crazy things happening for that. In reading about it in a few places it seems like there was a lot of confusion about whether or not it was a suicide note, and if so, how could it possibly have been written ahead of time??

     

    The whole thing is just bizarre. 

  4. Posted

    I didn't mean to suggest I've ever tried a stealth playthrough of an XCOM 2 level (it never occurred to me actually). But on this note: What's the best way to end concealment?

     

    So, after playing more, my conclusion is that it has to be related to the timed missions with specific objects. In other words, if you need to hack a thing, or rescue a VIP, I think concealment partially exists to let you get closer to/potentially complete that objective before combat breaks out. If I break concealment prior to some of the mission objectives, it can be difficult to slog my way up there while fighting off reinforcements. Easier to stay concealed, kill the timer, and then kill the dudes. 

  6. Posted

    Yeah, the back half of MGSV is really oddly paced. I'm not disappointed with how it turned out, but it definitely feels like they intended something very different.

     

    That said, the cut "actual ending" that's been floating around seems kinda terrible to me, so I'm pretty glad that wasn't included.

     

    I do find it really amusing that the setup for that ending still happens, so they

    watch the Metal Gear fly away and say "darn it Snake we gotta go get that back!!!" and then in terms of OFFICIAL CANON LORE just become procrastinators forever.

  8. Posted

    The weird thing is that they hide new story missions behind what should be optional content. So you have to play through harder versions of missions you already finished to see the new stuff. They really should have called Chapter 2 an epilogue and allowed you to do the new missions without those hurdles.

     

    Yeah, that's pretty much my point. "Chapter 2" isn't really what this is. They probably should have packaged the story missions as "Epilogue," and thrown most of these other missions into the "side mission" category.

  9. Posted

    Nick is essentially saying that there's artificial filler content in the game that is poorly implemented, to the point that scripts are repeating when they aren't valid or are nonsensical. Or, that's how I'm hearing it.

     

    Yeah, I mean, there are obviously a few "original" missions, but it's mostly been twists on Chapter 1 stuff. Which is fine, but to me it has the overall feeling of an unrealized chunk of game.

  10. Posted

    Edit: Nick, there are still a few brand new missions that are well worth playing.

     

    Yeah, I know there are a few, but they all seem to follow the same structure and use the same locations as Chapter 1. Whereas Chapter 1 felt like a well-paced rollout of the various worldspaces and mission concepts, Chapter 2 feels like either directly rehashed missions, or slight tweaks of said missions using similar environments/etc. I'm not knocking the game -- I will probably play it another 100 hours or something stupid -- but it feels like a very clear dropoff in terms of fresh thoughts.

     

    edit -- actually, a question for anyone else playing this crazy game. I was using a rad woman soldier as my character over the weekend, but after dying during an FOB mission she is now KIA. Is it really the case that you can't use custom soldiers on FOB missions without risking their permadeath? (If so, ugh, why??)

  11. Posted

    There are some elements of Nick's position on things happening in MGSV that bother me a bit. Primarily that he seemingly doesn't see through-lines that connect this one to other Metal Gears

     

    I know who the character is in relation to MGS, but that doesn't really change my opinion on that stuff. It's like saying Quiet is naked because she has to breathe. 

     

    Also, I know that I didn't really "beat" the game, but I'm up to mission 41 and Chapter 2 has just been a thinly veiled rehash of missions. They're still fun, but yeah. In any case, I'm not sure this game has an ending at all. Or it has the most endings of any game ever made.

     

    Anyway, GOTY.

  12. Posted

    I just want to point out that my dumb signature on this forum comes from that dumb X-Files episode. Besides making Mulder a gamer (??), the episode also turns him into aggressive perv, where he and the other men in the episode are literally drooling over the sexy video game lady. It's a fascinating disaster. Anyway, look forward to X-Files 2015.

     

    Yeah, I forgot to mention the perv stuff! So weird!

  14. Posted

    Maybe this is a thing that I shouldn't ask about, but throughout the early portion of the episode, Nick has moments where he makes a repeated sharp intake of breath, which could either be something like indigestion (on the banal end) or a tic (on the extreme end). I was wondering if Nick is ok? Am I being rude by even bringing it up? 

     

    ANYWAY, also I really liked when Sean said that his entire 80 Days journey went to pot in Amsterdam and you could hear Jake (I think) making a silly noise in the background from the pun. I like that Jake can't help but make that noise. 

     

    Haha. It was, in fact, indigestion. Not totally unrelated to the topic of making video games, I think I have an ulcer or two. The cast before last I felt downright nauseous.

  15. Posted

    There was some misinformation regarding Evolve

     

    1.  The human players don't immediately see the monster at the beginning of the match.  The monster has around a 15-20 second head start to run away from the hunters.  Odds are the players won't see the monster for several minutes.

     

    Weird. I definitely loaded into a match where the monster was sitting right there. Maybe he was delayed loading into the game? In any case, I wish it took longer than a couple minutes for the chase to ensue.

     

    Re: #2, yeah, I couldn't quite remember whether it was first or third. I think I was picturing the Left 4 Dead monster perspectives.

  16. Posted

    I don't really know much about Nick Breckon, but after that Wii U talk I would bet pretty good money that he grew up in Michigan or the northern mid-west somewhere. Not wanting to enjoy a thing that you know will not last is, I think the cultural thread that holds this region together. I mean right down the the hint of guilt for taking joy in the fleeting, Nick could probably host Prairie Home Companion when Keillor retires.

    .....................

    Born and raised in Plymouth, Michigan..........

  17. Posted

    There's a difference between playing the earliest possible version of a game while working for the company vs. playing a press build as a journalist vs. playing an early access build that costs dollars. At the very least, I wasn't going to comment on anything I knew about Wolfenstein without having played the final version. Even then, it's often a bad idea to talk about privileged information gleaned from a place of former employment. I don't like lawyers.

     

    Anyway, I have a lot I could say about this. I might address it the next time I'm on the podcast, if I remember. I guess I should also play Wolf, if I get the time.

  18. Posted

    Yah, it specifically points out that you: The player in real life and also in the video game are a guy who reached the max level in AC3 Multiplayer and thus were given a job by Abstergo. This ties into the actual multiplayer unlocks in AC3, which has a video at max level announcing that you have won this opportunity, if I recall correctly. Its really really weird.

     

    Assassin's Creed 4, starring video game beta tester Max Level.

  19. Posted

    I just wanted to say that I hate all of you and I hope you die.

     

     

    But in all seriousness, I feel bad about how that discussion turned out. I came into the podcast planning to bring it up myself and talk about how I believed the guy and how nuts the internet was, but when Jake and Chris both took that angle, I thought for discussion's sake I'd bring up the counter arguments. Chris can attest that sometimes I like to argue for the sake of it, which probably isn't a good thing on a topic that people are fired up about. And of course, having barely glanced at the internet in the last few months, I spoke about it pretty offhandedly and inarticulately, which is the primary reason why I haven't been on Thumbs lately. Crunching on a video game pretty much means I have no idea what the hell is going on.

     

    I definitely sympathize with the guy. When a lot of money is involved, I tend to look at two tweets as the beginning of a story rather than the end, but I certainly believe that someone in his position would feel overwhelmed enough to react the way that he did. It's why I retweeted his stuff in the first place.

     

    It's interesting because it makes me think about how close, to me, the internet has become to a necessary evil. I'd probably take that money and not give it back simply because I'd also delete my Twitter account and retire to a cleaner existence. While working in social media for a few years, I had a lot of time to study the general noise that exists surrounding literally anything. It's all pretty gross. I would caution anyone that releases something publicly to hope for the best of people, and expect the worst. This is why communities like Idle Thumbs are so special.

  21. Posted

    A run of Spelunky (at least for me) is often only 15 minutes or so, very rarely more than 30, and there's no winning or losing, you just die and try again in a pretty low-pressure way. Dota 2 is cool but it's too intense for me to want to spend that much time on. I also have a strong resistance against games that are best played with arranged groups, not because they're bad but because of all the logistics involved and because I know I have to commit to a certain amount of time during which 9 other people are counting on me to have uninterrupted focus and attention. One of the reasons I have so many hours of Spelunky logged is because I just leave it running all the time. I've only played two games tonight but probably logged something like three hours on Steam, because it was paused for the duration of dinner. I just find it hard to get psyched up about the amount of focus and attention Dota 2 demands right now. I'm sure at some point I'll have a cycle where I'm more interested in playing hardcore multiplayer games.

     

    Cry-Baby.gif

  23. Posted

    I loved the Monty Python-level of randomness in this episode. It's something I loved from the earlier 'casts.

     

    This is an odd sidebar: has Chris played Dota 2? I can't see him getting into the game with Sean, because the second they try to play against people, the matchmaking will probably rocket to a level that would make the game very unfulfilling for a new player.

     

    Chris always says he doesn't want to devote the time it'd take to get good. But then he goes and plays 600 hours of Spelunky, so I think he's basically just a baby.

  25. Posted

    Too much text, no?

    Besides, talking about something is different than doing it. I can't imagine watching that, but I'm still curious about them. What is the modern day equivalent?

     

    I was kidding. Mostly.

     

    The modern day equivalent is just an MMO. GemStone III had like 2-4k concurrent users, as I recall. Monthly subscription rates. All the same stuff, but in a text-based world, where wild and crazy shit could happen at any time. I remember one log where some sorceror lured dozens of people to a meeting in a field somewhere and then cast "Meteor" (the most powerful spell). It was a 20 page vomit of text wherein people died one after another in gruesome ways.