blackboxme

I wonder if it is part publisher censorship or just... not having the impulse to create things like that. It reminds me of No More Heroes, with the weaboo protagonist, the internal monologue's coming out of the wii-mote and enemies spurting coin fountains rather than blood when you chop them in half. I really appreciated that, but who would have the impulse the create that kind of stuff?

I think that Sean didn't quite see what Chris was driving at in The Binding of Isaac discussion. Sean was talking about it as an exploration of taboo, where Chris was talking about unfiltered expression. One of my favorite examples of unfiltered expression is Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. It is a look inside the mind of a low level beuraucrat in 19th century Russia with some kind of mental disorder. I don't see that novel as a comment on Russian taboos, mores or society, though the main character does some stupid and immoral things. Nor do I think that it is a damning portrait of that specific man or type of man. While it blows open the idea of what a novel is supposed to be through its structure and plot, or lack thereof, I don't think that's the point either. It's just a beautiful, truthful, dark, funny, largely irrational look inside a specific man's mind, and that makes it timeless.

Please list sad songs from games, or overall sad soundtracks. I'm not opposed to sad songs outside video games too. I'm trying to create a sad music playlist, because I heard that sad feelings make you more detail oriented, which would help while programming and what not.

Dang, that's a really cool version of the song

Thanks for all the responses! This is really cool. I'll do one as well. I love listening to the Jin Roh soundtrack while playing counterstrike: CNs4ksZTONg

Exactly. Giant Bomb approaches things in a very straight-forward way and many people like that. On the other hand, just because you like Giant Bomb, doesn't mean that you don't like more in-depth analysis like you used to hear on Idle Thumbs.

Yeah, those guys are insanely straightforward and literal-minded in terms of how they think about games, which isn't for me but a lot of people seem to like'em quite a bit.

Just 5 minutes ago, it was me vs. the red eyed knight. I was out of mp for fireballs, but I wanted to stay and fight so I got out my spear and shield. He ran along the bridge toward me, pole-arm couched, lunging at me, so I rolled back. Then he walked towards me, shield up. I saw him rear back to strike, so I stepped forward, parried and stabbed him in the face! That was the first time I'd ever killed that bastard in a fair fight, and it was just as satisfying as killing a boss.

Thumbs, you guys rocked on the final cast. Playing QWOP now, I got him to take 2 steps like a normal human being and that made me very happy: what a great game to end the podcast on.

http://kotaku.com/5392920/in-praise-of-hard-games ^ Leigh Alexander did some good reporting on the game.

The controls are pretty fantastic, the character growth systems are great, the environments are really damn cool. Go read one of the thousand reviews that give the game a 90+ review score, or Chris' praise on how it's like a Mikami game.

I thought that the video-game song rang true, especially the line about not wanting to think and just wanting to play games; I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm saying that's the tone of a lot of conversation out there.

Nope.

I thought Mass Effect had a cool ending, I'd recommend finishing.

Vinnie doesn't really seem well informed based on looking at the quick look/ I don't know how he manages to suck that much. I guess he is distracted and trying to explain things. Jeff's take: I didn't do the tutorial, but this game doesn't control well at all! All I could do was use a sword, because I never learned the buttons! The game mechanic sounds dumb! Ugg, that video is terrible.

Ugg, that's brilliant Best Buy: don't you remember how well Oblivion did years ago?

When I bought my copy at Gamestop, the clerk told me that the game was selling really well although he had never heard of it. He had about 6 copies left and he said they'd be gone within a day or two.

This game is bananas. It's like a fantasy of everything you want in an action RPG: great graphics + combat as responsive as you have in Zelda + coop + pvp + RPG depth of character development. I can't believe this game. It combines Horror, rpg, MMO, wtf. I was scared out of my pants in the tutorial, then I go into the first zone and there are horse corpses everywhere and zombies coming at me, with bloodstains and other player's ghosts running around. There's a lot going on in this game.

Like I said earlier, I've been using Rock Band to try to learn to play the drums. So far, I've progressed up to the jagged border between hard and expert. I've been trying to work on my limb independence as Remo said. This means, say varying the volume of the foot pedal or the snare while keeping other limbs constant and things like that. It seems like this variation is where a lot of the musicality and expression of drums comes from. I'm right handed, but I'm also trying to train my left hand and foot, because I figure once lefty is good, he'll be able to help out righty in more situations without taking up too much of my brain power. This has been a really interesting experience, because it showed me the relationship between practice and my perception of time: when you do something novel, time speeds up; when you do something familiar time slows down. This has changed the way that I approach practicing my other instruments and has really helped me. Anyways, thanks for the tip Chris it has been helpful so far.

I think it's official. Bioware needs to hire a Non-nerd with veto power over all creative decisions.

I was going to use Satoshi Kon as an example in the argument with Chris that anime is kinda cool. So, I just watched Paranoia agent, kon's 2005 series, and while it defied all of Chris's problems with anime, it was also about how Kon dislikes anime for the same reasons Chris does

You must buy the soundtrack to Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan to get the full Mount & Blade experience.

I thought this was cool:

great song over the credits too

I knock off points for Mass Effect because they didn't balance the difficulty of the combat. In KOTOR, it wasn't difficult, but at the same time it was decently fun for being easy. Mass Effect on the other hand became so easy for me that I got incredibly bored about half way through. The only thing that kept it fun for me was hacking the game and changing the difficulty to extreme mode. Also, compare the different planets in Mass Effect and KOTOR. The planets in KOTOR were more imaginitive and more interactive than the ones in Mass Effect. Maybe I'm just a sucker for card games and racing minigames, but that at least gave people in the world something to do.