Xeneth

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by Xeneth

  1. Posted

    Wait, does it say "feces" or "business"... I can't remember now. Nooo!

    Portal's not installed on this machine right now, don't make me download it just to find out!

  2. Posted

    [sarcasm]

    I dont know about you guys, but I'm totally stoked to play World of Call of Duty: MMOdern Warfare.

    [/sarcasm]

    Jesus christ... what if the MWMMO really is the other MMO Blizzard is working on? Oh god, that would be terrible. (-y hilarious!)

    Pretty sure they said it's a new IP, but what if they just meant that it's NEW TO THEM?!

  3. Posted

    Wait, so this game features anthropomorphic space animals?!

    Did they just sneak that part in during their talks on the 'cast, or did they really just talk about the mechanics?

    Interest piqued. (Due to mechanics, not space furries (mostly))

    I recall sucking HARD at (and loving) Homeworld though, and there were limits to how truly 3D that got- As I recall, you could certainly attack from above or below, but the camera and ships definitely all oriented along a conceptual universe-wide "Up" Y axis, and they certainly weren't modeling differently angled armor plates.

    This sounds liek it might break my brain... But maybe in a good way? Advice?

  4. Posted

    Super interested in this as well...

    That's a shame that it's not really built for online play, but also not really surprising coming out of one guy living almost like the Amish in upstate New York... I'd be surprised if a small but dedicated community didn't spring up and create some sort of connection lobby for interested parties...

    "Oh, it would be cool if someone hacked in a protocol and created a server where people could more reliably connec- Oh, hey a guy just did that. Awesome, thanks guy."

    That's sort of what the internet does at this point.

    That being said, it makes sense that it's not really designed to hook you up with the unwashed. Playing with someone you know, even if it's just a member of a community you're familiar with, sounds almost essential here. It's similar to a tabletop RPG in that the key to telling the best stories is cooperation WRAPPED in small conflicts, (or small conflicts wrapped in cooperation?) which most people seem to lose sight of once anonymity enters into the equasion.

  6. Posted · Edited by Xeneth

    That is...

    Mostly inaccurate and sort of full of fail. There are only two ways to react to that, cooperatively swoop in and clean it the hell up, (good god that sounds like work) or shun it pretty hard.

    Not sure the phenom needs a wiki, really. Thinking back to some random thread back when I was just a lurker that attempted to catalogue or organize the various memes... Sometimes quantifying a thing sucks the soul RIGHT out of it, boys and girls.

  7. Posted

    This whole Portal Arg thing is RIVETING... I would love to get more involved, but lack a steam forum account and the one I just made has yet to be authorized to post...

    I think the next step may be reversing (or "mirroring") the phone number of the BBS to get more data, but I lack the modem and phone line to actually try that...

    Here's why I think that's the next step:

    • Apparently the current GLaDOS 3.11 BBS is now spouting something about an alternate source
    • The images that were CCTV decoded from the initial radio files that weren't clues to the BBS sort of seem to be telling a puzzle story of sorts... and the one that is a scratched out phone number shows up later in the sequence flipped horizontally

    This may not actually be related to the puzzle, but someone put up a version of the steam website where all the images are flipped/mirrored at steampowered.ca... Someone tacked the name Gabe to the end of the url and it leads to this video!

    The internet is ablaze! This is awesome.

  8. Posted

    Awesome!

    No Fallout because I'm assuming you're making the distinction between dystopian and post-apocalyptic.

    Much luck and don't hesitate to consult us further if anything else trips you up or you just want to show off/bounce ideas. I'm not really up to speed on Lain or Proxy, but always down with a rousing discussion of themes/events in Evangelion.

    I'm pretty sure a lot of us find this stuff fascinating!

  9. Posted

    The picture of Video Games Rodkin inset... HOLY SHIT indeed.

    What a stand-up cast! I too was not expecting another cast so soon, but am extatic to be blasted so frequently! Be careful, guys- I'm not sure you understand the fervor of your little fan base here, (Some of us are on our second or THIRD listen of the entirety of the archives... The other day I had some crazy thought about doing transcripts of the whole lot and had to stop myself, how much TIME would that take? Why?!) so if you blast super often and then stop we'll all get withdrawals again or something.

    Also,

    <-- Horsebag totally IS the sleeper meme du jour!

  10. Posted

    I can kind of see where you're coming from, but personally I really like Hellman's style. It's got a very dreamlike quality that I think fits what Blow what trying to say with Braid. Anyway, this is a thread about The Witness, so I'll leave it at that.

    Agreed that I prefer Blow as a designer and not as much as a speaker/voice/expresser of ideas. He's clearly very thoughtful, but at times those thoughts read as pretentious or perhaps just at the expense of the user. Hard to put a finger on, but his design work is brilliant.

    Let me be clear when I call out Myst as an influence here that I'm not suggesting this is a point and click adventure game per se, or even that I think this will have puzzles along those lines...

    The look of these prototype lighting renders just evokes a very material-centric "Rand Bros." kind of feeling. Myst and Riven didn't feature what I'd traditionally call beautiful art direction, but the worlds they created could definitely be described as beautiful. Like those games, these rough concepts evoke a sense of place that seems to be less based on color theory or aesthetic beauty so much as a well grounded sense of weight based on materials. It has something to do with raw wood and metal and stone.

    It's very possible that when the art direction actually kicks in it will lose these Mystlike qualities. I'm not familiar with Ignacio Castaño's work, but he strikes me as more of a technical artist than Hellman...

  13. Posted

    I have played all of them except the second Sonic Rush DS game and the Bioware Sonic.

    Oh god... I completely forgot about that! There was a friggin' Sonic RPG on the DS, wasn't there?! ...Anyone give that a shot? <.< Was it any good? >.>

    Shit, they've tried a LOT of different ways to make the poor guy RELEVANT again, haven't they? I can't say I've ever been much of a fan, I was a Nintendo kid, and lacked any way to get exposed to the blue hedgehog outside the occasional visit to a friends, and I was ALWAYS pissed off that a 2D game revolving around breakneck level traversal would be designed to lock the "camera" horizontally so that your avatar is ALWAYS in the center bar of the screen! Fully half the playfield is filled with irrelevant data 75% of the time... As I said, I never really have a chance to play for that long, but it always felt like it was equal parts level memorization and execution, because it encourages you to go so quickly that it's almost impossible to avoid danger unless you already know it's there.

    I guess the likes of Mario generally can't get going SO fast as to make the framing of the level that big of a deal, but I could swear that some platformer like Uniracer was really good about it...

    If this new 2D sonic twigs to this and eases the "camera" to look a little in the vector that you're travelling on relative to speed, I'd be stoked to give him another shot.

  14. Posted

    I take it this is the vaunted "Horde Mode" that was added to DoW I'm hearing about? Somehow variations on that design end up being my favorite part of a lot of multiplayer games... Not surprising since I usually take teamwork-oriented versus over getting raped by strangers in a huge free for all, and pure co-op over team vs. modes.

    How are you guys coordinating timing, sound like it might be key the way you're talking about teleportation and jump-jetting. Does DoW2 have built-in VoIP that I'm unaware of?

  15. Posted

    I feel for you man- It's a rotten ephemeral digital crap world we live in sometimes...

    A couple of weeks ago my C: drive died on me, so I've been reinstalling program-related crap for days and days, even though the drives with the important stuff continue unabated.

  16. Posted

    Here's another song hidden by speed:

    Holy crap a mini mindblow! Thank you! I certainly thought the tune sounded quite "Nintendo-y", but THAT never quite clicked... Also, that video reminds me of getting messed up and playing Melee at Half speed, where everyone has time to dodge and counter everything while tripping out... and then going back to regular and losing our shit after getting used to it, hah!

    Metroid: Other M... I posted a couple of thoughts about my aprehension over here.

  19. Posted

    I'm excited and completely forgot about this release- I haven't done an adventure game on my DS since replaying Hotel Dusk! (I hear word a sequel's on the way to Europe, and hopefully here too, by the way...)

    I think I have a coworker I could snag it from temporarily if I can't find a copy or the ol' game cash runs a bit low...

  20. Posted

    I'm worried about Other M as well...

    This time, she's hired as an operative to help a group of commandos, with whom she apparently keeps in regular radio contact with throughout the game. You hire Samus because she's the best and can get the job done when everybody else has failed, not to babysit a group of assholes who are apparently too incompetent to do what they specialize in.

    Yeah, I'm not sure I like how the feeling of desolation and "one woman against the galaxy" seems to being bled out of the series.

    I enjoyed the feel of the shooting and gameplay a LOT in Prime 3, but looking back, the parts where the story was being delivered by doods and interactions with other agencies and hunters felt very un-Metroid...

    My favorite thing about Super Metroid is how well it tells stories through visual cues and gameplay as opposed to scanner text or dialogue, so it'd be sad if that was more of a serendipitous side effect of limitations in technology and memory than a conscious direction.

    For example, I recall discovering that the Chozo created (or at least used) Metroids as some sort of power source back when they were explorers and shipwrights, before they settled into more tribal and spiritual ascension phases. No character says that, and there's no ship's log to read... I got that the crashed ship was Chozo-built from how the crewman ghost enemies in the area looked vaguely birdlike, like the statues they leave everywhere. There were some smaller and sickly looking Metroids trapped in locked off areas of the ship animated in the background.

    Shit, I could be WRONG about the above, but it's still awesome that it told a complete origin story in my head by connecting visual cues that the user can CHOOSE to follow if they're obsessed with details. The great thing about doing things that way is that an impatient and goal-oriented user can just blast past the story without slamming A to skip anything or getting annoyed, but it's laid bare "organically" if you're interested.

  21. Posted

    I've been surprised lately that I'm enjoying the (Subbed) anime Soul Eater...

    It seems to be following a very Naruto-like formula as of season one, but for some reason the characters feel a little more fresh than that, and the people as weapons mechanic is interesting. I also like that it doesn't take itself seriously very often.

    Anyway, it's definitely a kids series so your mileage may vary. Has anyone seen the Manga that Soul Eater is derived from? Is it even better? High hopes.

  22. Posted

    I should try to get a job at Telltale so I can pad out your team! Need any more QA guys? That would be the bes- wait... I'm forgetting that I'm TERRIBLE AT TF2 again, aren't I? Damn it.

    Also,

    "But here's the fucking CRAZY thing, he got woken up by a phone call from his other friend, that said that friend was DEAD... IN REAL LIFE! And then he looked at his hand, and there was a CONE OF COLD COMING OUT OF IT!!"

    "Whaaaa~"

    "And then just before, he left the friend was like 'so when are you gonna buy me that drink?"

    *Gasping laughter*

    "And then that all zoomed out, and the gate fold to a Dragon Age box closed, and it said 'Dragon Age: Rated M for mature'. That game's fucked up. That's the new DLC I think, actually."

    "Oh, nice! ...Oh my god, the DLC is called 'Awakening'!"

    *Gasps*

    "NOOOOOOOOO!"

    "WHAAAAAAAA!"

    "AAAAAAHHHHH!"

    EPIC. LEGENDARY LULZ.

  23. Posted

    FINALLY getting around to playing Trine after all this time. I think I'm just past the point where the thi4f learns to use fire arrows...

    I gotta say, the one thing I wasn't expecting going into this based on the Thumbs community banter was the whole "storybook" vibe; It's pretty sweet! Not sure how I was expecting the tale to be delivered exactly, but the tone meshes really well with the art direction.

    I do wish the narration would carry over from the map screen, though. The game takes almost no time at all to load a level, and just looking at the overworld map while this fantastical tale is being yarned feels a bit off. Audio-wise the narration carrying over into the beginning of a level would tread on what the heroes have to say early on and there'd be other timing issues with impatient players to work out as well, but looking at one of the lush new environments would boost the tone even more than the hand painted map.

  24. Posted

    (I like using esdf because it keeps my hands on home keys so I can find my way around the keyboard easily without even thinking about it)

    Wow... I wish I had thought of that years ago, before I became set in my WASD ways. Makes a hell of a lot of sense, but I think at this point the change in distance would throw off my ctrl and shift pinky-ing something fierce, not to mention the automatic 1,2,3,4,5 reach location muscle memory I've got from playing MMOs and the higher degree of "fold under" to reach the alt key with my thumb.

    Games that encourage a lot of hotkeys train such odd contortions to feel surprisingly routine, hah!

    Also, did we ever joke around about the connection between the new Cyborg mouse being called the R.A.T. and Nick Breedon's Twitter being rat-related?

    ...'cause if we didn't we should... totally make a really lame joke about it. Yeah.