mikemariano

THAT HEADER IS AMAZING. I hope 2K16 is finally the year Vanaman can dunk on Obama.

I finished the play I came to Vancouver to write. And I like it!

Good lord. I wouldn't wish a Wikipedia page like that on my worst enemy. Somewhere in my parents' home is a sealed Archie Sonic Holiday Special from 199X. I loved the Archie Ninja Turtles but wouldn't read their Sonic, for whatever reason.

The uninterrupted intro (after Jake messes it up) uses the Idlest Thumbs service which pastes together old Idle Thumbs intros. The intro is created by robots!

Ugh, I only took pictures of what I thought Henry would photograph, so mine are only crime scene photos.

Since Ned stalks and steals from the teenagers, I figured he obsesses over everyone that comes near Two Forks. He is intentionally obvious about his stalking—he wants you to feel like you are always being observed. He got his son killed and got away with it—nobody observed him. He has a hard time dealing with that, and wants to give you the comfortable terror of being watched and judged, which is the very thing he's lacked for years. Gone Home is incredibly gamey. You run through a maze with no objective beyond hunting down keys and unlocking doors, playing as a character with less backstory than Doomguy. It became the setting of a Counter-Strike map! It's more difficult to imagine that happening for Firewatch—who's going to want to play against someone who just camps at the top of the tower?

Twitter-stumbled across this review at, uh, shutupvideo games? I think this is a good way of describing what I got out of the game:

I did that, too. I also hiked back to the phone line tower before that and saw that the wires had been repaired, so I figured that Delilah could have sent a cleanup crew as well as a repair team. This also ties into Delilah telling Henry his duties are really just to sit in a tower—he's not a ranger! I wanted to use that tool, too!

I guess I'd have to replay the entire game to confirm this, but I didn't see any mementos of Brian in Ned's hideout. Were there? He took everything from the teens, but Brian's hideout is untouched. Ned obsesses over the details of others, but not his own. It was also really sad to read Brian's plans for retrieving his backpack. It's an elaborate method that avoids any and all rope climbing. That's a great take on Delilah. Though I wouldn't say there was no relationship—it just means that the special connection she claimed with Henry was just another thing she could abandon. And you can keep hope alive! Henry can be a big ol' sap and invite her to Boulder. She'll never come; if your wife is with her parents she won't even want you in Boulder.

You can hear the windchimes in the clearing—maybe even at the beginning of the game? As I was playing I kept walking back and forth in a certain spot, trying to tell if the chimes were actually part of the game. When I felt they were, I thought, "oh, I guess there is a location up there that I will get to later." And there was! I turned Julia's photo face up and kept my wedding ring on! Then I told Delilah to come to Boulder, so what do I know? When talking to Delilah at the start of "The Big Fire," she asked, "Are you looking at the fire?" Henry replied, "I'm looking at you," which is indeed exactly what I was doing as the player. I wonder how contextual that is? "I'm looking at Forrest Byrnes." I feel like the villain's confession needed to be either more desperate for a connection with Henry—or way more detached from society. Maybe he thinks everything is futile—your kid's gonna die and your wife's gonna forget you so what good are the relationships we form?

My officially not supported 2013 Iris integrated graphics MacBook Pro has been treating me just fine on low (still gorgeous) settings. I'm relieved! I might be halfway through? I don't know if my Henry quite matches up with his ongoing diary.

That was the same link four times but you are absolutely right that it deserves to be clicked on at least that many times.

Oh, yay, I have the exact same laptop and no gaming PC so I will give it a shot. Keyboard and trackpad controls for life!

Chekhov's Trowel

Oh man, dedicated graphics card required. My sweet, tender integrated Intel Iris has failed me!

After not playing it since August, I beat The Magic Circle tonight! I assumed the game would end after completing its only real objective, but the way it mixed things up was very clever. I chucked some spoilers into the main thread. And hearing James Urbaniak and Stephen Russell together! A symphony of voice!

I beat this game tonight. It was a lot of fun, and the way it expanded on its premise after I thought it would end was really interesting. I liked that the game went from making fun of "lazy devs" to then focusing on entitled gamers, then putting the player on the spot as well. It really approaches something like The Larry Sanders Show or The Player in terms of creating a funhouse version of the entertainment business. It can serve as a time capsule for how video game development sees itself and its history from today's perspective.

That is AMAZING! The video is nearly identical to the Giant Bomb Quick Look for three minutes, then the player stumbles into a MASSIVE SPOILERY secret. "Was I, was I supposed to do that? I'm scared." Then the player goes back to doing the tutorial! It's really an amazing watch—though I suppose no one should actually watch.

I took this snapshot from the Giant Bomb Quick Look. Is the player character wearing a suit jacket? And his (?) hair sticks out a little in the back? Oh no—wait a minute:

I will forever get Shogo confused with Oni.

Amazing! Though "Rumsfeld" and "thinking three moves ahead" didn't overlap as much as they should have in the past.

Whoa, that explains why as a lowly Mac user I will never get to play Black Mesa or Prospekt.

This is a really dumb question, but what do you do in this game? You color in a shape, but only some parts of it? Based on...I don't know what?

The Witness comes out in less than two weeks and also doesn't have a price. Maybe that's the new standard practice?

Lying to himself.