Latrine

Everyone likes variable pricing structure, right?! http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/13/7540627/evolve-turtle-rock-behemoth-season-pass I really liked the Big Alpha but I don't feel good about plunking down $100 for the complete package, especially when half the stuff in it won't come out until months after launch. Also it looks like there will be another "closed technical test" this weekend. You should have access if you own Left 4 Dead or Bioshock Infinite on Steam.

Ugh, I knew they were doing a reference to that bit and I thought it was eerily similar and the Left 4 Dead mints were weird but I guess I didn't fully connect it. But the part that really bothered me was when they started talking about Subnautica and I couldn't tell if it was a new game or something they talked about before on the podcast.

The Tetris Grandmaster block just finished and it was amazing. Those games are crazy.

For about a minute after the Braid joke I had the sinking feeling that this episode actually was the kind of This American Life style resplice/clip show of existing material that they were talking about at the start of the show. That would've been amazing.

I was confused because I saw a tweet from Patrick Klepek claiming that people would need to buy the new version. Digging up a little more on it, their messaging regarding the PC version has been a little confusing. So yeah, it's kind of wait and see exactly what's happening at this point.

The problem isn't that it's just a new SKU containing all the old content, it also contains several small upgrades like expanded multiplayer and apparently some new story content that won't come to the original version. I liked Dark Souls 2 a lot, but I'm not going to pay full price to get a few tiny new features. If there's a discount for people who bought the original + the DLC or it's on sale down the road then maybe I'll reconsider.

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth does not have a co-op objective, but it did have an ARG inside of it. Apparently there was a certain item in the game that you would bring to a special room and it would reveal a piece of an image. The community was supposed to assemble several images that revealed the death screens for four of the different characters. Playing as those characters in a certain order and dying in the way described by the death screen unlocks the final secret character in the game, The Lost. Unfortunately, before the community could assemble the images the method of unlocking the Lost was exposed by people hacking into the game. More info here: http://www.reddit.com/r/bindingofisaac/comments/2lpv6b/puzzle_pieces_spoilers/ And here: http://www.reddit.com/r/bindingofisaac/comments/2lxx87/ed_on_the_losts_datamining_its_disheartening_ive/ By the way, The Lost is a character only for super masochists.

Countercounterpoint, it's entirely possible to believe in equality for women and see it as necessary to fight for that right while also choosing not to attach this 'feminist' label to yourself. It's just a word; if its meaning has been tained by a bunch of unethical video game journalists, why cling to it? (Because if there's a label you like to self-identify with then you want it to have a positive perception, especially when there is a pushback by a mainstream that you see as unjust. This is why Gamergate is not extinguishing despite being much less defensible than just 'gamer' as a label. It's also not so easy to create a new label that may be more marketable without discarding a history that you may care about, e.g. the history of feminism and the context in which gender equality is being fought for.)

It said I already owned it but I think I just claimed that first key. Thanks Murdoc. My Steam link.

Half-Minute Hero is a good RPG comparison, but when describing it as a time limited Super Meat Boy then what comes to mind is 10 Second Ninja and the Time Trial mode in Towerfall: Ascension.

I have to disagree with this opinion regarding sci-fi vs historical for the reason that I find modern human scientific inquiry is just as interesting, if not more, as the historical record of human progress. Literary science fiction is able to bridge potential future discoveries with the modern context of our own civilization and human condition. (Literary historical fiction of course does the same with the historical record.) The reason I think people are dismissive of sci-fi and fantasy is because there is so much genre fiction that it drowns out most of the literary works, and even makes the best works difficult to appreciate due to the association. Although I will say that I think Beyond Earth fails here not because it isn't trying but because of its poor execution. This is a cross post from the latest IT episode thread but basically I think a lot of the interesting fiction they've pieced together for Beyond Earth is buried in the Civilopedia, and what they do decide to surface in voice over and text you normally see during the game is so abstract that you can't even tell what it's supposed to be. For example The Promethean, which just gives +4 Health and +2 Culture and a free Virtue, has art that just shows you some abstract squid chair looking thing (still disappointed Wonders are now just moving drawings and not full movies) as the visual for what it is. The quote that accompanies it is actually good but still doesn't explain what the thing is: "Anansi looked at the man's genome and said 'Messy! Messy! Who can live like this?' He took a broom and swept up the genome, and when the man woke up, he felt much better." - The Uncle Nevercloned Stories. Only by reading the Civilopedia entry do you understand that the Promethean is a new human genotype that has been genetically engineered to remove all genetic flaws and succeptability to diseases, a kind of perfect human. There's all sorts of long scientific jargon in the entry but the final sentence is particularly good and should've been surfaced better: "A Promethean moves with spare grace, sees the world in colors unknown to the old Homo sapiens, ages easily and slowly, retains her faculties through the lifespan, and, when the end comes, often has left behind a legacy that could not have been achieved by Old Man." It's not even clear the Wonder is actually supposed to be real living people until you read this.

The worst part about the Beyond Earth UI is how to select the air units that have been stationed at a city with no other units. There are two ways. One is clicking the little plus at the bottom right menu and selecting Military Overview then scanning through the list of military units to find the flying units, although you do have to remember what name they have after the last time their name changed from being upgraded. The other is actually noticing the tiny number above the city they are stationed in and recognizing it as the number of air units stationed there (took me halfway into my second game to see it). Clicking on that will bring up a popup of each of the identically named air units and from their you can select them from this arbitrary order. The sad thing is that I'm pretty sure previous Civ games had a similar UI for flying units but I just don't remember it being so frustratingly hidden. Of course just clicking on the city tile when there are no other units stationed there does nothing because reasons. Also one of the other major things that boggles my mind is that some of the most interesting pieces of the fiction are buried in the Civilopedia, the quotes for technologies and other things are generally too abstracted. For example to actually understand what any of the Wonders are supposed to be you have to read the corresponding Civilopedia entry, most of which are way too long to read while already playing an incredibly long game of Civilization. For example The Promethean, which just gives +4 Health and +2 Culture and a free Virtue, has art that just shows you some abstract squid chair looking thing (still disappointed Wonders are now just moving drawings and not full movies) as the visual for what it is. The quote that accompanies it is actually good but still doesn't explain what the thing is: "Anansi looked at the man's genome and said 'Messy! Messy! Who can live like this?' He took a broom and swept up the genome, and when the man woke up, he felt much better." - The Uncle Nevercloned Stories. Only by reading the Civilopedia entry do you understand that the Promethean is a new human genotype that has been genetically engineered to remove all genetic flaws and succeptability to diseases, a kind of perfect human. There's all sorts of long scientific jargon in the entry but the final sentence is particularly good and should've been surfaced better: "A Promethean moves with spare grace, sees the world in colors unknown to the old Homo sapiens, ages easily and slowly, retains her faculties through the lifespan, and, when the end comes, often has left behind a legacy that could not have been achieved by Old Man." It's not even clear the Wonder is actually supposed to be real living people until you read this.

It's an option according to the press release: http://news.xbox.com/2014/10/xbox-one-special-savings Xbox One + Kinect + Assassin's Creed Unity and Black Flag + Dance Central Spotlight = $450

God, that was driving me crazy.

Yeah, that owl statue thing is an annoying one. I don't remember exactly if there's more to it but mild spoiler about how that works: So yeah you'd have to search the whole map probably to find the solution. I'd recommend just looking this one up to save time.

I'm pretty sure the regular cubes and cube bits have icons on the map indicating where they are. I don't remember any hidden cube bits.

No European team made it out of the group stages, which is surprising since I think Fnatic and Alliance both looked good even in games they lost and they were two of the only three teams that managed to take games off the Korean powerhouse teams.

I finally played through this after leaving it open in a tab. Very cool game, maybe a little blunt with some of the characterization but it does lots of interesting things. Also it's nice to play a game that cares about really communicating something and doesn't seek to just entertain using established game conventions. It stands in stark contrast to the Twitch stream I was watching earlier of a guy torturing himself with all the unoriginal and low quality genre game pitch videos regularly posted on Kickstarter.

Wow, the second to last one is amazing.

I feel like the odd thing about Henry's arms isn't their shape or how they match the stylization of other silhouettes in the world, but the relative level of detail that makes them look particularly "cartoony". There's a lot of high frequency details in the environment, particularly in trees and other foliage, whereas the only fine details on Henry's arms are some lines that give the impression of arm hair. That said, I've rewatched the trailer a few times now and I'm starting to get used to how his arms look now and they certainly seem to match the big rocks and man-made objects in the watchtower.

But were they cold? They're a good deal better when refrigerated.

That would be cute, but I think Firewatch takes places about 6 years before Gone Home. Jake mentioned it was 1989?

I've been playing Particle Clicker instead: http://particle-clicker.web.cern.ch/particle-clicker/