dium

I've been playing this a bunch since getting it in the most recent bundle; I gotta re-iterate what everyone is saying here. The tutorial is super depressing, and the theme in general is pretty sobering. But the game itself is simply the best in its class. The building tools, the employee deployment system, how rooms and room-requirements are defined, scheduling, the "grants" system that adds some much-appreciated structure to the first few playthroughs, the sandbox freedom perfectly balanced with goals/failure conditions ... everything really. Everything is excellent except, somewhat, the depressing setting. The worst parts of the game by far are the little prisoner bios that I think were written by Kickstarter backers. Completely tone-deaf. The game is good enough that I've trained myself to ignore them.

Yes. I really like it. I wasn't sold on the first few episodes either... all the jokes felt cliched and routine, like a bad multi-cam sitcom losing the laugh track and trying to be "edgy". I'm thankful that my girlfriend wanted to stick with it, because every episode was significantly better than the one before it.

Mmmmaybe? What happened last season*, as far as anybody can decipher, is that episodes were leaked really early and Nickelodeon freaked out and aired episodes two weeks later with almost no promotion, interspersed with weird "only on Nick, you can't see this online!!!" promo bumpers, and then halfway through the season it was ONLY online but on their website. The entire season is still there, free to stream on the Nickelodeon website. But I think most people are like you and aren't going to bother going to some Children's HTML wasteland to watch anything, free or not, and are going to wait for it to show up on Netflix or Hulu (you'll probably be waiting a long time for that). Maybe some people would watch if they promoted it, but they haven't done any discernible promotion for the show since Season 2. If this is an experiment, it's an experiment to see if a show can do well with a promotion budget approaching zero. The answer seems to be no, it can't. *It's so weird to already call Season 3 "last season" since, yes, it did end only a month ago.

Season 4 of Korra is airing in two weeks. Online on their website only, no less. Nickelodeon is clearly washing their hands of this show and dumping everything they have as quickly as possible. It's a real shame because I want the show to do well and Nick doesn't seem to... It's also a shame because I expect literally none of the people I managed to convince to give Korra another shot will be caught up before new episodes air. It's just not gonna happen. Goddamnit.

I don't think Mega Camerupt looks that bad. (hmm... ok, the more I look at it the more bothered I am by its shape) Mega Sharknado is a disaster though

I was a big theoretical fan of steampunk back when the concept was new to me, which seems like forever ago. Since then I can count the number of steampunk things that I actually like on one hand, with most of the fingers lopped off, and all of these things have been very small and very indie and non-commercial (my avatar is from one of them). It's a genre with more-or-less nothing to show for itself, but with enough concept art floating around that everything already looks played-out and generic. This indiegogo is no different. (I still have the faintest hope of a long form steampunk thing actually working, even though I probably shouldn't. Whatever it would be would probably need to be grounded in a very specific real-world time and place, and tone-down the fantastical elements pretty drastically. Sort of an alternate history with steampunk-flavored magical realism, maybe. I say I want this, but maybe what steampunk really needs is to just die and stay dead for a little while.)

Whatever you're linking to is 404ing for me, so could you elaborate on what you're talking about? Also: I wish Netflix wasn't so horrible about foreign language stuff. I basically never want to watch English dubs of anything that was originally in another language, and if it's in Japanese I don't want subtitles. But Netflix always has the English dub as the only option, and when it's subbed the subs are baked-in. Boo. (Hulu is better, and yes, I realize that Crunchyroll exists precisely for the kinds of people who complain about this)

I've basically never stopped liking pokemon since I was ten years old, but man, I dunno how cool I am with playing a new Pokemon game every year. I feel like I oscillate between hard poke-craving and a totally satisfied disinterest with pokemon, and only a year between games isn't long enough for me to start feeling those pangs again. I've never played any Hoenn games, though. They're basically the only ones that passed me by. So as much as I say I'm not excited for pokemon... I'm probably gonna get it. I can only hope the game is longer than XY (a complaint that I almost never make about any other game series). I've been spoiled by previous generations into thinking there'd be a huge variety of stuff to do after the elite four. I guess if they're releasing a new game every year now they might feel less pressure to do that.

I agree with you about Season 1 of ATLA; I think it's a pretty average season of children's television. I tried to rewatch the series back when Korra was announced and found myself skipping a lot of episodes and not really enjoying myself as much as I expected. But the second and third seasons are top-tier, I think. Unrelated: I just finished the first season of Netflix's Bojack Horseman. I liked it a lot! It started kinda slow for me, but it was one of those very satisfying seasons of TV where every episode felt like an unequivocal improvement over the one before it. Related: this is obvious to anyone who's been paying attention, I guess, but Kristen Schaal is quickly making out a place for herself in the pantheon of ubiquitous voice actors (where Steve Blum reigns as king).

Part of what's so frustrating about arguing with these people is that their statements (like those) seem so self-evidently ridiculous. My argument always wants to be "just read what you wrote, man! you're an idiot!" Some good news (well, better), because I've spent my whole week so far being depressed about gamergate and the celeb leaks and the like: http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/9/3/6101103/prostate-cancer-foundation-returns-donation-after-celebrity-attack?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=voxdotcom&utm_content=wednesday

I agree that it's bullshit elitism if you demand more than that generally, but I don't think this analogy holds for every game. Fez is the best example of a game where I truly believe the "real" part starts after credits roll. Diablo 3 is a softer example, but there are definitely mechanics that you either don't explore or only barely scratch the surface of before the first completion of the story campaign. I dunno if it's a GOOD thing that these games put so much of themselves after "The End", but I don't think it's unreasonable or elitist to consider these specific games unfinished at that point.

I do this too! That episode actually best represents my favorite era of Idle Thumbs***: the one starting with the podblast Surprise! and ending with the first death of the podcast around episode 50. I call it the "F--- Nick/Congrats Nick" phase of the podcast, and it's the origin of some of my favorite long-lasting Thumbs in-jokes: the shitty wizard, the space asshole, Jeff Goldblum's name, Chris' bizarre concept for a Waluigi game, and of course: the memification (and ritual burial) of Nick Breckon. More importantly, it showcases some of the weirdest and most experimental editing that the show has ever had before or since. Chris has said on the podcast (I forget which) that Monty Python was a big influence on some of his podcast editing; episodes from this era are clearly what he's referring to. Listing my favorite episodes, I end up listing almost half of them: Surprise!, You Gotta Have Spice, Video Game Baby, Salacious Thumb, Episode Forty-Five, In Space, and Farewell, Video Games (The Shitty Wizard). ***(Besides, perhaps, this most current era that I delineate with the introduction of Danielle) Edit: haha, filters

I have no idea what you're talking about, Jake.

This week has been atrociously disheartening, scary, and sad. No "silver lining" really comes close to counterbalancing that. But at least it's been a somewhat effective human decency smoke test.

For a while I've preferred to say I like "games" rather than "gaming". Similarly, I can't deny that I'm a "gamer" by almost any definition, but it's never the word I'd choose. These are really stupid little distinctions and even I think I'm being silly about it, but "gaming" and "gamer" are words with such gross connotations both to me and to the non-game-playing people in my life that I find it useful to avoid them. Podcast commentary unrelated to Quinn/Sarkeesian/gaming misogyny, soon to be lost in the current of that discussion: Sean's enthusiasm for the Donkulous Oculus Rift has made me interested in the device for the first time ever. I wonder how much of my previous disinterest is due to the disinterest of Thumbs up until this point; you guys are pretty influential w/r/t what I decide to pay attention to in gaming. In any case, it's because you were so skeptical before that your newfound opinion is convincing. Even if the Oculus experience is genuinely awesome, though, I'm still not convinced that it has a place in my actual life. I really want to try one out, but I think I already manage to shut out the world well enough without literally cordoning off my senses with a black box. Maybe if I still lived alone.

I probably shouldn't complain about this conversation happening here because it's (relatively) calm and it's on-topic for the podcast in question but daaaamn I'm so used to this forum being a safe-haven from this bullshit. ): Bless all of you with the fortitude to have this argument over and over so many times.

I dunno. It's definitely better than the first season. I guess it depends on what about the first season you didn't like. I will say that, frustratingly, the entire premise of the third season is wrapped up intimately with how Season 2 ends (which should be unsurprising to anyone who actually got that far). I can't blame anyone for skipping Season 2 to get to Season 3, but you'll definitely need to read a summary or something to catch up.

Your point is good, but for the sake of argument: yeah, they could migrate to one of the other game platforms that exist now. Of course I don't actually believe that would happen. And even more "of course" I'd love Gabe to surprise me.

Unfortunately, I suspect Gaben knows a little too well who butters his bread to ever speak up about any of this. ):

If Gabe Newell — christ-like "savior" figure for the masses of horrible "PC master race" gamer man-children — publicly supported "feminism" in any capacity I would be so happy.

Nobody responded when I brought it up at the beginning of the season, so I suspect nobody cares about Season 3 of Legend of Korra. If so, you're making a mistake. The season just finished and it was the most beautiful season of television I've seen in a while. It was easily (EASILY) the caliber of ATLA's final seasons. With the caveat that, unfortunately, it was only 13 episodes long compared to 20 or 21. If you ever liked the Avatar cartoons but fell off the wagon last season, you owe it to yourself to watch Season 3. It's available for free in its entirety on Nickelodeon's website. I'm having trouble convincing people to watch it since Season 2 scared so many people away... but I have to try. It's so, so good, but apparently doing pretty miserable business for the channel.

Nor did anyone on the podcast, I don't think.

Danielle and I have the same birthday! We also have the same name! Almost. Hers is more French. We are basically the same person. Also: the proximity of my birthday to Valentines day has had no discernible effect on either of those days for me, except that it's easier for other people to remember when I was born.

Legend of Korra is back, in case you didn't hear. I dunno if people still care about Korra, which is understandable after last season. It was a very weak season of television (both in my opinion and in popular opinion) that was only slightly recouped by some good episodes toward the end. So far, Season 3 is a breath of fresh air. All the main characters are out of their horrible, petty, plot-convenience-inducing angst idiocy that they spent the latter half of Season 2 digging themselves out of. There's no teen romance (so far). The animation is back to a consistent high quality. We've met more old friends from A:tLA (but it doesn't seem too fanservicey) and new faces that've already piqued my interest. The plot is developing in a couple of promising directions. Only complaint: not enough Lin Beifong.

I'm stupidly proud of my self control this Steam Sale, which might be a pathetic thing to be proud about but that's fine. Before hand I made a short list of ~15 games that I might consider buying, and almost all of them appeared in a daily sale. However, I only actually bought two: Papers Please Bioshock Infinite DLC Season Pass I also got Brothers as a gift. Total damage: 13 dollars. An important change in my thinking this year was to start considering my free game-playing time as a precious commodity as important to conserve as money. My Steam backlog is still in a state of ruin from the last few years of Steam Sales, so two purchases might still be too many.