mikemariano

Wow, thanks for bumping this thread! I will be in San Francisco for a work conference July 14 - 18. I have two open nights Monday 7/15 and Tuesday 7/16 if anyone is around. (I might have availability on the other days, too.) Apparently my hotel is closer to Dear Mom than it is to the hotel hosting my conference. I'm sorry that I'll miss Ysbreker, Erkki, and Lu! But if any locals are around let me know.

Thanks, Steve! Initials of the ghost you play as from Gone Home confirmed.

Yeah, getting every character captured is never a fail state, and Dave is not special in any way.

I am a proud backer of the Downloadable Content Kickstarter—hearing Jerry and Mike talk to each other during the writing process is fascinating. In the first new episode released to backers, Mike mentioned a Reddit thread by someone coming out to their parents as an atheist. Mike couldn't wrap his head around why that would be a big deal, so Jerry talked him through some of the home and social situations where being a openly non-believer would have a significant impact. It was Mike having a snap judgment reaction and then getting a little perspective. But Mike's been having that dance for years, and it's understandable that people are sick of putting up with it. I don't see the connection with Mike's non-deeply held, willfully ignorant beliefs and PAX as a whole, though. Is PAX gross on its own? I have no idea what that crowd is like. Mike is easily ignorable, but a rancid environment is something else.

Yeah! If Sean hadn't mentioned the Dota Today interview and he wasn't addressed by name in a reader mail, Nick's name would have been completely absent.

Amazing! I played Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego with the PC speaker only and always felt I was missing out. I never should have doubted the power of what was inside my PC all along.

That reader mail was a thing of genius. Forcing a player to write letters to the mothers of fallen soldiers in a game sounds like a Molydeux tweet.

I grew up with these games, so I can't imagine playing them out of chronological order. But I can confirm that Day of the Tentacle has no significant callbacks to Maniac Mansion. If you're wondering, "Oh, I wonder why there's a mummy in Day of the Tentacle? I guess they explained it in the first game." Uh, you don't need to worry about that.

I will soon make my first visit to San Francisco! I am going for work, but will have two free evenings: Monday 7/15 and Tuesday 7/16. Any suggestions for what to do in SF? Any possibility for a meet-up? From Google Maps it appears I will be near the Moscone Center and "The Art of Shaving."

Amazing! By restoring the memory of where I heard it, I can smell the lingering coffee smell from my aunt and uncle's computer room. We had no computer speakers at my house until much later.

Argh, I can't place that theme! I don't even know if it should be spoiled for me; I'm sure I've heard it before.

In Fallout: New Vegas, you start to get attacked by random groups of NCR Rangers or Legionnaires, depending on how you've aligned your character. They seem to spawn at hardcoded spots on the map, deep enough into each other's territory to make it absurd from a story perspective, but also far enough away from opposing outposts, animal enemies, etc. to make it uninteresting from a systems perspective. It's always disappointing when a game has the opportunity to let its systems clash (lure the Legion marauders to an NCR outpost!) but intentionally shy away from it. Similarly, in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you can fight police and civilians in the hub areas, but every mission area is strictly Jensen vs. commandos. There is a mission specifically about civilians getting killed, but you only gain control of Jensen after they are all dead. Perhaps their AI is only reliable when they are hunting you? Games are afraid of their own systems.

I can't believe it's 2013 and this is the first we're hearing that the words "Half-Life 3" have even been uttered inside the walls of Valve headquarters.

So, so horrible. I can't believe we live in a future where this is still a statement someone can argue is true.

Spelunky combines all the worst aspects of permadeath—no saves, no way to recover health*, and an unforgiving time limit. It is nothing but random punishment. I played it nightly for a month and never improved. I am just as bad at the game as if I have never played it. There is no such thing as progress in Spelunky, and no reason to play unless you like to play the same level 4 times in a row because there's no different area after that*. *Yes.

I guess I only posted this in the Luigi's Mansion Scarescraper thread: 5172-0365-4017

I commute through New York Penn Station, which is where nearly all of my not-many-streetpasses have occurred. At least three people who take my train in the morning also have a 3DS, though I wouldn't know who they were in person...

Ah, Microsoft has finally narrowed the definition of AAA gaming down so far that I can't see it anymore. My brothers and sisters! This does not need to be your life! Resist!

Yeah, it's not a huge downside; I think Muir wants his players to have Dwarf Fortress-esque stories for their bloodlines in the backs of their minds, and that's hard if mechanically they're all cows.

Is Journey a game that is radically different now from when it first came out in terms of multiplayer? Are there fewer players to join up with you, or are they all speedrunners who get impatient with new players? I know the difference can't be as radical as all the updates to Team Fortress 2, but I don't know how wildly a changing player base can change Journey.

MASSIVE CHALICE SPOILER ALERT

I enjoy the fact that Muir is thinking about this systemically. This ties into his comments on Dota Today, where he was reluctant to reduce his heroes to simple animal husbandry. He wants to offer more on the non-combat side and this provides a perfect opportunity to do so.

I just started playing the latest iPhone/iPad game from Tiger Style Games: Waking Mars. These are the creators of Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor. The team also includes Randy Smith of Looking Glass fame. The controls are OK. They are similar to Spider in the way that you can flick your character (or the seeds he throws) across the screen, but this time your astronaut can take damage. Also like Spider, the actual tasks are almost too simple, but so far there's a lot of atmosphere to compensate. Did anyone play Spider? I completed it, but I'm mostly ignorant of whatever background story I was meant to pick up.

I succumbed to the flimsy dollar-off offer and bought The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons. It's fun so far, and I love hearing the original Link's Awakening tracks. The videos of Game Boy Color games on the 3DS always looked dodgy to me, but the actual games look wonderful and play well. Did these games really come out closer to Wind Waker than to Ocarina of Time? The feel of handheld Zelda games is so much better to me than the console games. I haven't enjoyed a console Zelda since A Link to the Past.

I don't like starting a new thread just to say bad things, but I'm a bit upset by a comment in this Rock Paper Shotgun review of the new version of Dear Esther. The game had a jump button and they took it out? People were experimenting with the game and sequence breaking, and the only response is to remove a game feature entirely? I said this in a Bioshock Infinite thread: this is bad for games. I hope this wasn't the reason that the jump button disappeared; I hope their doing so adds something else to the play experience. But I'm not thrilled that on the surface it seems like it's a reaction to players exploiting their horrible, horrible freedom to have horrible, horrible fun unintended by the designers.