mikemariano

That's about how much I've done with my life since Half Life 2 came out, so *shrug*.

Me, too! But I killfiled Walker in all forms years ago. I would rather not be on the Internet at all than read anything by him. Try it!

I finally beat Satan—not for real, only in the Darkness Falls challenge. There were no red hearts in Sheol, but luckily I picked up Guppy's Paw on the first or second stage. I hate Guppy items, so I kept my finger far away from the space bar. I never found another item to take the Paw's place. But by the end of the game I had half a red heart and six empty hearts, so it was easy to say "give me those soul hearts, Guppy!" And then Satan died.

I saw Robert Yang's post about this talk weeks ago and thought "maybe I should go!" But I don't know if this is geared for general public losers like me who don't make games. But if we want to do any sort of meetup I think I can get over to...Queens? Oh man!

Thanks, McDoom! I played on the default difficulty and it's frustrating to hear that skill checks are still difficult on an easy setting. Mid-game in Arizona I felt frustrated and trapped, so I attacked the nuclear-armed monks in a suicidal frenzy. I was impressed that the game responded to that, giving me a new quest instead of just ending the game. But I then got just as stuck in Los Angeles and killing doesn't solve anything. So unrealistic!

Yeah, the more Twin Peaks continues, the more Truman has to play the skeptic against Cooper, making it seem like he knows less and less.

It does, sort-of: Is there anything in Twin Peaks that can only be explained supernaturally? I'd like to think that there is nothing supernatural about Twin Peaks and that every weird thing we see is just a coincidence.

This little light of mine...!

I did like that callback to the second episode when Jerry returns from France with a French flag. No Japanese food this time around, though!

She doesn't hate him only because she doesn't have to. If Hank came up to her with one of his schemes, she'd shut him down fast. But you're right that Hank is another avenue for Vivian to criticize Norma, though all she has to do is be nice to Hank (at a remove) and he's basically self-criticizing. Norma and Vivian see the same dope we all do.

Valve will never release another game.

No everything sucks.

James being mute:

I tried to make that sentence work both ways! I did like this quote from Sean: Inflatable winged donkeys for everyone!

Today is the one-year and one-week anniversary of people on Twitter asking when Part 2 is coming out. How time flies!

Gamasutra interview with Sean! With Walking Dead in the rearview, Campo Santo focuses on the future You can do Metroid with lots of dialogue! Just look at Other M...

As far as secret identities go...

The romance that never was between Agent Cooper and Audrey Horne got me thinking about one of Kyle MacLachlan's other great screen romances:

Half falling asleep, I played one game before bed. I got to the with Isaac tonight, then had a horrible, panicked, one-heart run through almost all of it before dying, physically sweating as I barely stayed alive for twenty-plus minutes. I had no idea what I was doing for all of it and had to check the wiki to see what the actual rules were and just how close I was to making it mean anything. It was meaningless, just another negative number on my double-digit streak. I won't sleep well.

And That's Why Skeletons Fart That Way

I am going to threadjack and post this incredibly powerful, personal essay to make this the Metroid II: The Return of Samus Appreciation Station. The essay does a terrific job of explaining how the soundscape, map layout, and enemy respawn rules of the game all comment on the ecocidal horror at the heart of this and the other Metroid games. Samus Aran has never been a more fascinating character—and Metroid never a more fascinating series for me—than in Metroid II. The essay also articulates the things I've always hated about Super Metroid—Samus is back to a killing machine who cares more about fuzzy ostriches than her baby!

That's really clever and I wish more text substitution like that happened in other games or with Twitter bots or some other novelty. But Chrono Cross came on a CD, right? Not an SNES cartridge. To imagine plain text as too big for a CD is wild! And if anything deserves the cast's imagined "FUCK YOU" as said by Luigi, it's that picture. Right next to all those awful Waluigis is an even more awful Shrek.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAT

No fast travel.