JonCole

That happened to me yesterday. Got killed by one of those werewolf things because I was being careless, and when I came back no glowing eyes, no blood spot. It was only like 4k blood but meh.

Oh, I was just talking about using Skype for video purposes. Seeing each other talk, if even slightly delayed due to internet stuff, results in a much more realistic, organic sounding conversation than if it's audio-only. Most well produced remote podcasts (but not all, I'm looking at you Not a Game Podcast) use Garageband or Audacity to make local audio recordings and subsequently mix together the separate recordings for the final product. Gorg/Codi/someone referenced doing that, so I didn't mention it.

Patrick Klepek put out his Bloodborne review. I love these text screenshots -

My memory isn't rock solid, but I do recall you saying in the other podcasts thread that you listened to MBMBAM and didn't comment either way on if your ears were bleeding while listening to it (so I assumed that they didn't bleed).

I would listen to this prospective podcast, granted you all aren't boring. I know nothing about anime, so it might be interesting. You should definitely do a least one practice podcast just to figure out the ropes. Beyond that, don't underestimate the difficulty of actually scheduling times that work for everyone. It was hard enough for me and two other people who consistently recorded weekly, let alone a randomized group of people that potentially live on other sides of the world. Also, definitely use some kind of video conferencing like Google Hangouts or Skype while recording (granted people are comfortable with it), just seeing others facial expressions adds a lot of necessary context.

With so many modern collectathon-type games plus the ever-present endless-type games, I really had to change my thinking in terms of what a game being "completed" means. For me, that meant just beating the campaign in for instance Assassin's Creed 3, while I actually liked Watch Dogs much more so I came pretty close to completing all of the side quests before feeling done. Same is true for racing games, where there are a ton of map markers but boy if it's hard to summon the desire to actually complete every event in NFS: Most Wanted while I was dying to in Forza Horizon.

I dunno if the US market will bear the weight of two separate FE games, might be more economical for them to just release one as not to confuse a prospective buyer (I think Pokemon gets away with this because it's a more widely known quantity). Also, I get a general feeling that retailers want to dedicate as little shelf space as possible to games. Also also, "selling gangbusters" for a Nintendo game (400k units) is not gangbusters for many other AAA games, thus potential prioritization of shelf space (if you sell 3x as many copies of COD as FE, why dedicate two spaces to FE and three for COD?) Then again, I'm not some business expert so I may just be talking out of my butt. I'll probably just buy the special edition anyways.

Additional highlight - New 2016 Fire Emblem (not SMTxFE) looks really rad, you play the protagonist and choose a side in a split campaign that seems to favor multiple playthroughs. I'm really stoked about the FE stuff in general, plus Splatoon looks great. Also, props to Nintendo for all the mapping/config options in the DS/N64 VC stuff. Looks solid.

I can only answer the DirectX part, but I'm guessing the Visual Studio part may be similar. Basically DirectX is a huge library of binaries, some of which are required for each game. When a game says it's installing DirectX, it's installing a new version of the whole package that includes the necessary binaries. Since every game requires a number of elements within DX to work properly, each game requires a new installation of DirectX to insure that every element necessary is installed regardless of whether or not the current version on the system already has all of them. In other words, it's easier to just reinstall everything than to determine the individual configuration of each install and only add the new things. I guess it's kinda similar to something like video drivers, where everything is wiped clean with every new install rather than patched. Since it's such a complicated system of software, it's better to assure that everything works when you start from scratch each time.

Don't know if they'll be covering it during the Direct, but Nintendo just posted the Elite Rewards for NA. As usual, Club Nintendo site is down so check out this news post - http://www.vg247.com/2015/04/01/club-nintendo-elite-status-rewards-north-america/ Kinda underwhelming, pretty sure I'll grab Tropical Freeze as practically nothing else is jumping out at me as even moderately interesting except maybe Animal Crossing though I think the zeitgeist has completely passed on it.

http://www.harmonixmusic.com/romance-central/ http://www.animax.co.jp/special/aprilfool2015/

Re: spoiler -

From what I've heard, insight makes certain enemies do elemental damage when they wouldn't normally or even makes certain enemies appear that wouldn't otherwise. It also affects story stuff (insofar as the story can actually be affected, being so passive to begin with), with more subtle things happening in boss fights like whispers in the background or whatever. So while there are reasons to avoid high insight, I think there are also reasons to keep it if you want the "full experience" so to speak.

I definitely do more of a thing where I scour every corner of a new little area before proceeding to the next. Bloodborne really seems to like hiding guys in the corner that are easy to miss at first glance, I don't really remember that from Dark Souls though it may just be a color palette thing or something. After beating the second boss, I actually found two new lamps (three if you include the one at the second boss) within a half-hour. The pacing of finding them seemed really weird, I kept feeling nervous about overextending and then finding the lamp right as I felt that sensation instead of a bit later like I'd expect. I'm eager to warp to some of the intermediate lamps and see if I missed anything going presumably right along the main path.

Yes, although there are ladders to get down without taking much damage (they're hard to see). That way will open up a handful of interesting things. I found that the easiest way to get to the first boss was indeed from the first lamp, once you spawn use the left gate to - Also I beat the second boss last night after my like... tenth try! I actually recorded video of it because I just remembered you could do that, but I cheesed the hell out of the guy (tons of molotovs, burning bullets just for pure, minimal damage) so I don't think I'd be particularly proud of sharing.

I get the impression that there is no alive/dead state, instead you're always alive but you can only be invaded when you use the bell to summon co-op support.

I haven't, I'll check it out when I get home. But in regards to what you said, I guess I was agreeing that it's not really relevant if he's transphobic when he's got that aforementioned history.

I don't really understand the value in differentiating "TB is a trans-insensitive person on the inside that performs transphobic public acts" and "TB is transphobic".

I believe you can use the "Capture Gallery" app (don't know if I got the name of that right) along with a USB thumb drive to transfer screenshots/videos for use on your computer. From there you can GIF it through whatever means one does that, or just publish the video on YouTube or something.

I heard that you can only suspend/resume in offline mode of Bloodborne. Don't know if that's changed since Bloodborne's launch, but it makes sense to me.

I maxed out both bullets and vials before I started bashing my head against Father without really trying all that hard. I guess I'm just more tolerant to grinding than others. Despite Bloodborne being practically the only gaming-related thing on my mind for days, I didn't play at all yesterday. I find it quite stressful despite finding it more fun than the past games I've played in the series(?).

I feel like this is gonna bury the Wii U. I love it and I'll enjoy the games that are out for it, but the damn thing is practically dead in the water.

I think that having vials (and bullets) be consumable is interesting because it allows for a way to make blood echoes more persistent, in that you can spend extra echoes on something or sell them if you just need a few more echoes to afford something. I think it makes the game less punishing in the end through flexiblity. Whether you think making it less punishing is a good thing or not is fully up to you, but I like it.

I don't really understand that criticism of Bloodborne specifically because 1) you can buy vials cheaply at the vendor at your home base, which is an extremely low barrier of entry 2) practically every other enemy drops either vials or bullets, meaning as soon as you learn how to beat the very lowest rung of bad guys you can farm as needed. Even when I'm cranking through vials as I'm throwing myself at a boss again and again, I haven't found the need to buy a single vial and if I did I could always sell extra bullets or farm a small area of easy, predictable guys.