Gabbo

This year EA is bringing the Trilogy of Five to the world of video games... EA Presents: Hitchhiker's Guide to Command and Conquering the Galaxy -Special Vogon Collectors Edition w/DLC Book of Vogon Poetry It's sequel. The Need For Speed At The End of The Universe It's 2nd sequel, EA Presents: Will Wright's Life the Universe and Everything And it's sequel 3nd, EA Presents: So Long and Thanks for the All The DefJam Fistfights It's final [official] sequel, EA Presents: Mostly Armed Also from EA: EA Presents: Foundation's Mirror's Edge EA Presents: Mercenaries on the Campaign Trail '72

Try and get both in one slap and feel good about it

Of all the the days I don't check the main page/forum like usual, it has to be this one. I await the aural awesomeness invading my ears. Hopefully 3 months allowed Jake to work on UI's and play something (on a Mac...).

Only inexplicably massive sales for Dante's Inferno can save us now.

This AND Jonathan Knight of Visceral Games giving his thoughts on a MacBeth game (and gaming in general for that matter). I actually fear that Remo might have gone into a coma simply to spare himself the trauma.

It's like MST3K in this regard. When they're too overtly topical, the jokes don't work or have lasting appeal. I can't condemn the name dropping though. They're generally pretty obscure and out of left field. They don't name drop <insert current headline grabbing celebrity> too often. Wouldn't mind an original IP, so I really can't argue that. A three-headed wizard looking for sacred tears, on the moon. Get on it Telltale.

I for one welcome more dog and president rabbity-thing Season 2 was a huge improvement on Season 1. So long as the engine is overhauled and Telltale/Video Games allow me to use Max on occasion without having to soul swap Sam into Max's body, I welcome possible changes to gameplay and location. Hopefully they continue to get more off the wall/violent as time goes on, since they certainly did as S2 progressed (or did to me). I think the thing that bothered me the most in both S1 and S2 is the limited amount of screen they could move in/interact with. The games were essentially set on a horizontal plane most of the time (vertical for driving I suppose). There's a huge city they could wander, and we got a sliver of a street to go left and right on. It annoyed the hell out of me until they left and found more of the 'Z' axis.

I went back and finally finished The Longest Journey, for the first time. I had finished Dreamfall in between starting and finishing TLJ, so I felt it was time to get on it. I think it's held pretty well. I mean the mechanics of point and click adventure games are still solid, even if the genre isn't as rampant as it was when TLJ was released. To quote from the podcast, "honey on the cat hair makes a mustache." I never felt like I was constricted by my options or that they were limited in some way. So long as you have a brain, you can get through it without too much trouble. Even if you can't the story should still draw you and make you want to find out what's going to happen next. Graphically, the animations and characters look like... well they look like a game that's a decade old. The cutscenes hold up much better and the (mostly) static backgrounds still look quite good. I guess the core mechanics of point and click don't ever get old or boring if the game is able to draw you in and make you care about whats going on around you (which is how Dreamfall allowed me to get past its horrid controls/camera and combat) and TLJ was able to do that despite its age and look. Odd, as I played Still Life after TLJ and enjoyed it less than TLJ even though at their core, the gameplay is the same. I think the settings in each game may have played a part in what I saw as logical/plausible solutions to puzzles. Complete fantasy allows for suspension of disbelieve over games set in the 'real world' and how I expect characters to behave/be allowed to behave in them. The gameplay in TLJ and Still Life had many of the same restrictions on what their respective pc's could do, but Still Life felt more rigid in their implementation.

I don't know about the two year old, but several of my friends have told me they loved The Incredible Machine when they were younger. GoG has them for cheap. You could play along with them of course. I doubt logic/physics puzzles would be something they gravitate towards on their own.

DCotE is more an adventure game in first person, so it makes sense that combat is for the most part shied away from. Though how it gets around this is, as you've layed out rather fun/mind-melting. I don't mind combat being a main focal point in games, I just wish there were weight and consequences to the use of combat. Reprimands for hitting innocent bystanders, that have some affect on how the player is plays out the rest of the game (not just a scolding during a cutscene or the mission ending). Having families of victims mourning over their bodies after a firefight or running and screaming in terror during one would add more weight to pulling the trigger. I'm still waiting on someone to make a game out of the idea Anthony Gallegos had on RebelFM (and that I'm sure has been brought up on other 'casts.) in which you take the role of a medic in a CoD setting and have to perform surgeries on the battlefield in first person and patch people up as bullets whiz by. You take the FPS, remove the shooting and make players deal with the consequences of others shooting at them instead. Mind you, I doubt anyone could stomach the amount of gore that would be required to represent this realistically for very long. I don't know if this is really what you meant with the post, but I think it kind of fits.

I'm sure he's eaten at a restaurant during his time there.

Looks cool, but would I don't know if Back to the Future would make for interesting gameplay other than fooling with the Delorian.

Jake Rodkin is infiltrating your mind while you sleep

What has Maxis been up to after dropping Spore unto the world?

The Berenstain Bears took up a huge amount of my childhood reading/being read to, as did pretty much any Robert Munsch book. Where the Wild Things Are, also Just Me and My Dad. When I was a bit older, I'd read a lot of crappy pulp fiction from my local library that isn't worth remembering the titles of. Also Shadows of the Empire by Steve perry. I remember reading that for ages.

The end of the episode makes me want to hear even more outakes/the unaired episode all edited together as a blast-cast. Half an hour just wasn't enough. Usual high quality episode, going out on top. Though my wallet is not happy, as it's going to get a lot emptier with you making me want Dragon Age (and even swayed me on Far Cry 2). I may just have to take a Jake-esque stance on games from here on out. The news of sporadicasts was the best news of the week. And as a PC gamer, this hasn't been the best week in terms of news.

I'm sure I'll use it at some point (invite please!), but it'll probably be when its added to something like Pidgin/Trillian. Until then, I'm just going to be curmudgeonly and not care about it.

If the PR from Infinity Ward hasn't done so already.

And Batman.

I doubt there will be much upheaval over this particular release. Manhunt 2's fury has long since died down, and would need something really bad to outdo the current CoD6 'shooting people in an airport' controversy that's making the rounds right now. As for the game itself, if Rockstar can make the gameplay less repetitive than the first game, I may give it a look. That's what killed (ahem..) the first game for me. I managed to finish it, but it was boring as hell after so long.

He does masterful work, especially when he's paired with Aronofsky.

This tidies it up nicely. Though fuck my friends if they don't get any Idle Thumbs references. Their loss for not knowing the greatness that is Video Games Wednesday. They don't really dig podcasts, so evening turning them onto to IT was a failing endeavor. It hasn't stopped me from adding a few Thumb meme's/references to conversation now and again. Every Wednesday (or really late Tuesday if I listen to it as soon as it drops) would means laughing fits that put me in a better mood, while also wanting to game, just to make up for Jake's apparent lack there of. Though since I don't own an mp3 player it's never me giggling uncontrollably in public, unless I'm at work, in which case, I get some weird looks. My interest in 'game design' from a gamer point of view has become more critical thanks in large part to the three of them taking the piss out of nearly everything Jordan Meckner didn't make. To this end, I've also begun enjoying adventure games a lot more, and have gone through a large chunk of my backlog, re-experiencing old games in a new light. I won't play Far Cry 2 though. I'll do anything for Thumbs, but I won't do that.

And now I will learn if Idle Thumbs can cure illness, as I'm listening while down and out with a cold. 1/3 of the way through. Nothing yet. The discussion of Uncharted 2 makes me quite curious about playing it.I think I'll have to rent it and play it on my brothers PS3 now. Thanks guys Torchlight is being added to the list of games I'll get at some point too, thanks to its single player focus and Chris drooling all over it (not a D2 fan). Speaking of, I'm glad the blast wasn't considered '49', even if it was quite good, Schafer laughing at his own jokes a bit too much, but it was a really good look at the game and its design. Something I will miss with no Video Games voice in my ears.

It's also on Rock Paper Shotgun, so +1 for that: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/27/mining-my-own-business-space-asshole/#more-20274

Another vote for NOLF or NOLF2. Cate Archer might be a good way for her to connect to the game.