Salacious Snake

That earlier Cryo Dune game is cool as shit, especially if you have the awesome power of CD-ROM. My favorite Dune game was probably Emperor: Battle for Dune, though. It has some of the most glorious Westwood FMV shit, and the 3D engine was pretty impressive at the time. Great soundtrack, too. just gonna leave this here:

This site seems neat, but I'm having a hard time rating things. There are so many movies that I've seen, but I don't have strong feelings about one way or the other. I don't want to give them a middling score, because that feels mean!

I just made a new twitch account to get away from the crappy old username I was stuck with. Now it's my crappy real name! https://www.twitch.tv/jd_cohen I followed everyone in the top post. I'm probably just going to stream some PS4 games; right now I'm into Steep. Microphone action may be limited, since I'm not in a good environment for it. I can't run wires across the living room with a toddler and dog running around, so I'll just be using a headset for now. Looking forward to watching people play video games!

The live action feature film needs to be accounted for as well. This episode really cracked me up. When it reached the "are bats birds?" discussion I began to question the safety of driving (with my son in the car) while listening. I was dying.

I totally forgot about Resistance. I think that may have been the best Bohemia campaign. I agree about the AI squad stuff. My favorite bits in OpFlash/ArmA are when you're just a dude among dudes following orders, because it's so cumbersome when you have to babysit a bunch of virtual student drivers. I've always wanted to get more into the multiplayer, but it seems like a commitment.

I've never played Darkest Dungeon, but hearing it discussed, it made me think of Dan Verssen's Leader series of board games. Verssen makes interesting choices about what to abstract or automate versus what elements should involve more granular interaction. Specifically, you spend more thought on preparing your sortie by assigning pilots and aircraft and munitions than you do on moment-to-moment tactical considerations once the shit hits the fan. (Which makes a certain kind of sense, since you wouldn't really have that much time to react to things once action breaks out.) And when the dust settles, you need to manage pilot stress levels (or straight up insanity if you're using the Cthulhu Conflict expansion for Hornet Leader). I don't really have a point to make, but I thought the parallel was neat. It got me wondering what a Dungeoneer Leader might look like. Also, I should probably play Darkest Dungeon!

On the subject of shitty promotional Mario statues, check out this UK Happy Meal guy. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-01-09-mcdonalds-new-mario-toy-features-the-plumber-on-the-toilet Edit: did not mean to make that bad pun

Yeah, I also wished it was easier to not kill hordes of people. I ended up just calling in gang hits and felony arrests over and over again until most places were cleared out. I agree about the stealth stuff. I often felt like I was going to pull it off at the start of a mission. I'd see my objectives, and I'd have a plan of how to do it sneakily, but then I'd be detected out of the blue and the shit would hit the fan, and the next thing you know everyone's dead. Watch Dogs 2 also suffers from a pretty common problem in games that give you multiple ways to approach things: it's easy to find a preferred method based on your unlocked abilities and play style, and things get really repetitive unless you make a conscious effort to switch things up. And mass murder is just by far the path of least resistance. The thing that really drained my enthusiasm was the narrative. It starts out promising enough, but when the stakes are raised later in the game, it just loses all its identity. By the time it was over, I was basically playing out of spite. As long as I'm complaining about things, the "hacker vision" thing is just so fucking ugly. That blue-gray static actually makes me slightly nauseated. It should look cool when you're ~seeing the matrix~ like that, but it's the worst. A positive note after all this griping: the impromptu multiplayer shenanigans that can occur can actually be pretty hilarious and fun. If you invite someone to stick around and do a bunch of co-op missions and cause some mayhem together, it can be a real hoot.

I'm really enjoying this thread, just wanted to put that out there.

I definitely remember digging Allied Assault, but then my fondest memories are related to the multiplayer. Starting to see a trend with how I relate to these old shooters.

Yeah, it's not a particularly inspiring campaign. The multiplayer was a hoot though. Also, I love Operation Flashpoint, but I can't fault you at all for giving up on it. It's like taking up a modern military flight sim.

Peace Walker is great, and I'd consider it well worth your time, considering how much you seem to be getting out of the series. With a little distance from both, I think I may like it more than V. PW has a lot of the stuff that makes V great, but the portable format made it necessarily less laborious. It also directly sets up major story stuff in V. I also think you might want to check out Ground Zeroes at some point. MGSV in a small, densely designed playground works really well.

I made a group! https://www.flickr.com/groups/3071349@N20/ Join it! I'll theme it up better later. I'll also take suggestions for a better name.

3258-7412-9538 Added everyone above me!

I used to love used game stores. The prices were always crazy, but Multimedia 1.0 on St Mark's had so much cool shit. I felt like a boss riding the train home with that complete in box Jaguar CD attachment. It was a good place to round out your Game.com or Wonderswan collection. I think that place still exists in some form, in a new spot with a new name. J&L in Chinatown is good for (again, pricey) Neo Geo carts and other import stuff. I'd always go there after losing a few fighting game matches at Chinatown Fair. I miss having that kind of disposable income!

This is so cool! I love the way they got the chasing lights around the O.

Keeping busy at my in-laws' over the holiday: If anyone wants a high quality recording in this style, maybe to add some ambient nature sounds to a game, I can make something. I was thinking if I find some good fart noises, a pretty solid swamp ambiance could emerge.

http://www.clickhole.com/article/oral-history-star-trek-5174

I give blanket permission for Wizard Jammers to use any of my music, which can be found at http://music.wieners.xxx I'm also planning to make some annoying stuff built out of "bird noise, "fart noise" and other such iconic noises over the course of the jam.

Shit yeah!

I played the alpha and thought it was alright. It finds kind of a bland middle ground between the craziness of SSX and the more down to earth technical style of Skate.

I love it. I really need to travel more.

I'm glad they brought back CTF; I hope it catches on this time. It's the only mode that really takes advantage of the crazy movement, since it's all about slipping past enemies and then having a desperate chase across the level. The more I think about it, it seems like they kinda blew it with the multiplayer modes, since they mostly involve hanging around and shooting each other, which is not at all where Titanfall excels. It should have more Haloesque shit like Oddball, one flag CTF, Crazy King (I think that's the one where it's king of the hill, but the hill moves around), etc. Like, steal the bacon, where the bacon is some experimental Titan at the center of the map would be good.

I wish there was some kind of offline bot-match or something just so I could experiment with different loadouts and stuff. There are kind of a lot of options for your pilot and titan, and I hate testing things out in a competitive environment. Like, I'd love to get a feel for the grappling hook physics in a more laid back situation.

I think this was the first podcast I ever listened to and I have no idea how I found it!