Salacious Snake

That Batman footage is so goofy. It looks like they just smoothed it out with a basic interpolative smoothing dealie in a video editor. This basically inserts new frames that are sort of a smeary blend between the real frames. (It's useful for putting mismatched footage together or doing slow motion in post.) It has the bonus cheapifying effect of making it look like you shot at a high rate, but with too slow a shutter. A lot of TVs have a built-in "motion smoothing" option that drives me mad. I kinda get why it came about, because as TVs get bigger, the judder in a panning 24p shot gets more noticeable, and it does bother some people. But it makes movies look like taped TV shows! At least with the Hobbit, Peter Jackson knew he was targeting a higher framerate, so he knew he had to use heavier prop swords and stuff so it didn't look super wobbly and cheap (and of course he could light the scenes enough to use an appropriate shutter speed). Inflicting that higher framerate on something that was intended for 24p is just hilarious. There are so many problems with Second Livestock that I don't even know where to begin.

I kinda want to get some 40K minis to play Shadow War: Armageddon. It's basically Necromunda, but you make small teams from the 40K factions.

This is maybe a bit of a stretch, but the first things that pop into my mind are Syndicate and Commandos. At a basic level, they both involve selecting small groups of people and ordering them around, without any base building or anything. I suppose I should also throw in Sattelite Reign. And for something fast and silly, Cannon Fodder.

Really killing it with this podcast. Also, props to the listeners for sending in such spicy emails.

Could always go with "blocks," or, for a cooler branding opportunity, blox. Packin' Blox

I sympathize with Ian's distaste for advancing metaplots in games, a la the World of Darkness's Apocalypse. It can feel like the writers are trying to invalidate or supercede the way your group has developed the world. A lot of games start out with a deliberate sense of mystery, encouraging players to make it their own, and then the pressure to sell more books crushes the life out of the setting. Of course, it's easy enough to ignore that stuff and incorporate the bits you like, but you can run into people in the hobby who feel like it's all required. And jesus forbid you participate in any kind of sanctioned, organized play. That tangent aside, I appreciated everyone's thoughts on Dawn of War 3! I have to admit that I'm one of the people who's disappointed in the selection of factions; it's not that I have a particular attachment to one that isn't represented, but that I'm a little burned out on Marines and Orks because of their ubiquity in other electronic games. I'd love to see them dig a little deeper.

I like the way it pulls back to 3rd person for certain actions to show off that muscly Vin-imation. That combined with the first person "body awareness" that mostly died with the evolutionary dead end of immersive sims* makes me happy. It tries hard to reinforce Riddick's presense as a dense meat man in a physical space. There are also a decent few Riddickisms to enjoy with Vin's grumbly voice. The dark... are you afraid? I'm not; the dark is afraid of me. *except not really, thanks to Arkane! I can't wait for Prey.

This shit is fun. Are you people rocking the test client, or using the "stable" version? Just curious if it's worth livin' on the edge.

Yeah, these shows are great. I love the writing and the reading and just everything.

I don't know if they do them anymore, but with your particular style in this photo you'd fit in well at RetroVision, the Llamasoft community gathering in Oxford. I went one year and had a blast; lots of beer and Vectrex games on tap. Lots of dudes with long hair and beards (myself included at the time), and no shortage of "jumpers."

Yeah, I was going to say that I remembered being cool with a lot of Sterling's writing long before I ever saw his weird star wars villain routine. Personally, I'm all for aggressive curation. And hey, if there's a false positive and something is rejected that maybe shouldn't be, perhaps there could be a process to appeal that decision and make a case for your game. I've seen a lot of games that are clearly intended to trick people into thinking they were buying something else, and that's not cool. There were tons of fake Minecrafts on iOS and android that would use a screenshot of the real Minecraft, for instance. Some "developers" sell emulators packaged with a rom that they have no rights to. The most egregious examples get taken down pretty quickly, but the perpetrators still presumably run off with the money like a bunch of Kangaroo Jacks. The more grey area is stuff that's just bad. It's hard to draw that line. Sometimes people try their best and end up with something kind of low rent, while others put in no effort, and know they can get a few sales based on screenshots and stuff.

OMG, Riddick

my cats just pee on everything That cornish rex in the bath is cute as hell!

The news about D2 made me reinstall the old game, and I just have no clue what the hell is going on. Like, what was I doing? Where am I in the story? What the fuck are all these currencies? The game never explained itself well in the first place, but returning after a long hiatus is just awful. I know a lot of stuff has changed in the game since launch, which is probably compounding my confusion. A lot of games are hard to pick back up like that, but this case seems especially bad. I feel stupid!

The DLC sounds cool, but then maybe I just want to play the star trek New Horizons mod forever.

So much choice hoistage.

Is it just me, or is twitch.tv a confusing and awkward website to navigate? I think it's awful!

Nothing in the ad-free feed yet for me. Wouldn't be a big surprise if patreon's private feed thingies aren't as quick to update, but I have no real prior experience with it, so I thought I'd mention it.

Great episode! I was grinning like an idiot during my commute.

Music under ads makes them easier to skip, because you can just keep advancing until the music stops. Relatedly, I like having the option of paying for an ad free cast. I enjoy supporting the show, but I had no interest in the advertised stuff. The only offer code I ever used was for Hover, so that was a while ago.

Totally worth paying a couple of bucks for the Quake shareware disc, because it had the full Nine Inch Nails soundtrack on it. Just be sure to skip that data track at the top. Is it weird that I feel nostalgia for digipaks? PS I love Dead Ringers. It just has this crushing tension that slowly but constantly tightens through the whole thing.

I heartily recommend the mentioned Deep Space Nine episode, "Far Beyond the Stars." https://www.netflix.com/watch/70205942?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C12%2C6d2bf3fa-4593-4499-87d7-1e3b1b914f7f-29722541 (I don't really know if netflix links work like this.) It stands alone as a piece of Twilight Zonesque science fiction with a social conscience, and you get to see some capital A Acting. Like, 20 seconds in and Avery Brooks is already playing it to the fucking hilt. Casting him as the main protagonist was just amazing, but I guess it's kind of the Trek MO to go larger than life. Stewart could be pretty reserved, but is also very capable of going big, and Shatner is as big as it gets at all times; not even his girdle could contain him.

I like that this podcast's name is not a reference to human anatomy. "Idle Thumbs" has always grossed me out a little. I realize that's probably weird and I'm likely the only one.

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Snagglepuss is more of a Bert Lahr (cowardly Lion), but I still appreciate an occasion to hear Jake's Ed Wynn voice. That comic looks so weird. I don't even get who would be nostalgic for those characters... That era of Hannah Barbara stuff is kind of terrible to begin with.