mikemariano

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by mikemariano

  5. Posted

    It should be made clear that when chris talked about deus ex mankind divided ending with a "ten minute video", he wasn't talking about a ten minute cutscene. It was literally a slow zoom on a talking head news broadcast that lists all the results of your choices over the game with really really bad news broadcaster dialogue, for ten marfing minutes

     

    Ha ha wow.  Though Chris might have liked it more if it was a local news broadcast filled with errors.

  6. Posted

    I am trying to play Pillars of Eternity for a second time through with the additional White March content and cannot find anything to enjoy about the combat.  I never thought I'd be a partisan in the "turn-based vs. real-time-with-pause" wars, but I keep thinking back to Wasteland 2 and how each combat decision felt meaningful.

     

    Like Bjorn, I quit Wasteland 2 twice and never finished it.  Fights remained difficult and I got into a situation in which it was seemingly impossible to finish the story.  I also never gave the "Director's Cut" revision a try.

     

    So yeah, I'm definitely still interested in what the next game might be, but there's a good chance it won't be for me.

  11. Posted

    Woah, missed that. That's crazy. Why only the male ones?

     

    That's probably coincidence instead of design, but if this is meant to include characters who had prominent public roles in town (and that's a total shot in the dark), wouldn't Norma or Catherine be good choices to include?

     

    I found the official blurb on the Amazon page for the audiobook.

     

    Four original TWIN PEAKS cast members― Kyle MacLachlan, Russ Tamblyn, Michael Horse, and David Patrick Kelly―who are appearing in the new TWIN PEAKS for SHOWTIME®―join three new actors―Amy Shiels, Robert Knepper, James Morrison―to voice the audiobook edition of the novel, along with co-creator Mark Frost and original cast member Chris Mulkey. Additional actors Annie Wersching (Bosch) and Len Caiou (Blue Bloods) will also be featured.

     

    That's Our Waldo apparently already made the joke that Mark Frost will voice his old character, news reporter Cyril Ponds.

  12. Posted

    The main takeaway I got from today's Polygon article is that Warren Spector loves his lore!

     

    The original System Shock takes place in the year 2072, while System Shock 2 takes place 42 years later in 2114, also the year in which the new game picks up the story.

     

    I still hope you play as Shodan in this game.  If they're going to build on the goofy ending cutscene from the second game, they might as well commit to Shodan's ability to possess people and turn it into a game mechanic!  Like a reverse Headlander!

  14. Posted

    I saw this a few weeks ago and thought it would be good to share here.

     

    At first I thought I had previously seen this but I hadn't and it's good!

     

     

    "Davey Wreden" or "Charlie Kaufman," the characters, are not real beyond sharing names with their authors. Like any fictional characters they went through months of editorial process, re-writes, re-recordings and reconsiderations before their creators were done with them. So really I believe it's impossible to know, I think, and also probably not worth knowing when it comes to assessing the work.

     

    This is really good.  I felt in both works that the fictional relationships felt complete.  Donald never felt fake to me—he wasn't just a foil to Charlie; he had his own goals and relationships.  And Coda demands an identity separate from his relationship with Wreden—one that Wreden will never know.

  15. Posted

    Rock, Paper Shotgun's "Have You Played...?" series discusses The Beginner's Guide!  Wade into the comments for some still-strong opinions!

     

    One of the negative opinions felt that Wreden, as the narrator, was specifically narrating to someone who bought his game on Steam, therefore any of his confessions are just "content"—just audio files you paid for.  Therefore any emotional appeal in the game is false!

     

    I have a hard time getting to that point.  I never thought of the narrator as the guy collecting my dollar bills (even though he is?)—I thought of him as a storyteller.  I guess, "hey, buy this and let me talk at you" is a valid reading of this game (and almost anything), but it's really limiting.

  17. Posted

    Metroid II is my favorite Metroid game!  But as Derek said, the isolation was a huge part of that.  Music and a mini-map don't really aid that, but the YouTube stream I was watching seemed pretty good for the first 15 minutes.  This is impressive work!

  19. Posted

    Now I wish Sean was on the cast, because as soon as you floated ideas like an Idle Thumbs version of Book It! and fake plastic Rock Band fax machines, he would have immediately tried to get you guys to make these real.  We'd be ordering fax machine peripherals on the Idle Thumbs store by the end of the month.

     

    And you guys still know how to play the hits!

     

    JAKE (53:38): "Listen to developers collude—discreetly."

     

    ME: "Oh boy, they're gonna do an Evony joke!"

     

    *Several seconds of silence.*

     

    ME: "Here it comes!"

     

    CHRIS: "Um, OK, so...so let's..."

     

    ME: :o

     

    NICK: "Collude with me, my lord."

     

    ME: "YES!"

     

    PEDANT CORNER: Nick, dolphins and manatees aren't fish.

  20. Posted

    A few podcasts have delved into some deep discussion of Day of the Tentacle.  Watch Out For Fireballs recently did an episode and a follow-up listener mail about the game and its re-release.

     

    The Dev Game Club podcast, run by two former LucasArts staff members, devoted four episodes to the game, ending with an interview with Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer.

     

    Their discussion is similar to the re-release's commentary, but goes a little deeper into the decisions made during the game's development.

     

    I recommend listening to more hours of Day of the Tentacle discussion than it takes to play the game!

  23. Posted

    The long-in-development heist/hacking game Quadrilateral Cowboy finally has a release date: two weeks from now on Monday, July 25th!

     

    The basics of this game have been known for a while, but I'm excited to see how it plays out in a full game.  I also have no idea how easy it will be to chain commands and time everything perfectly while getting through a level—I'm terrible at thinking ahead!

     

    We'll find out soon!

     

    Sadly, I will not find out soon: the Mac and Linux versions are still two months away.  That's how I missed out on Big Blum Mode!

  24. Posted

    Congratulations!  I look forward to the day your child stares intently at you as you pour candy into a giant box and mail it away.

  25. Posted

    I'm a non-local who had two great trips to Portland.

     

    Powells is not too far from Ground Kontrol and is great.  It's just a bookstore, but it's a lot of bookstore!

     

    If you can get out of the city, Multnomah Falls is gorgeous.  Along one of the trails, I was in a cave looking back out at a waterfall overlooking the forest overlooking the Columbia River overlooking a mountain range.  It was wild!

     

    There's also a fancy houseboat in Portland that I wanted to find even though it's totally somebody's private property and not anything like a tour.