dium

I also Klik-ed 'n' Play-ed (and a bit of Games Factory and Multimedia Fusion-ing too, but always stopping short of ever having to pay for full versions of anything). I never made anything very systemic ever. Everything I ever made was either a weird QTE/mini-game driven narrative thing (a David Cage style game I guess?) or a failed attempt at a Lucasarts-ripoff adventure game. Art was always stolen, music was always embarrassing midi covers of... well, anything and everything, with no cohesion. Mission Impossible theme, hip-hop beats, songs that Weird Al parodied, etc. Eventually I graduated to AGS where I continued to fail to make adventure games, but this time not because I couldn't get it to work technically but purely because I'd be discouraged at how terrible my art was. Terrible, yes, even by amateur AGS standards; I played a lot of Reality on the Norm stuff and thought that all looked fine.

What are they, though? I didn't mean to say that all steampunk fiction lacks in ideas or themes, but I'm not sure the genre itself has any intrinsically. On the other hand, I think cyberpunk does. Cyberpunk is like a direct response to utopian science fiction: the underlying premise being "what if future technologies don't solve our problems but exacerbate them?" The basic premise of steampunk seems to be "what if technology in the 19th century developed a bit differently and/or was magic?" which isn't quite as heavy. Steampunk can adopt the ideas/themes of the historical setting it's modifying, but historical fiction is hard and it seems like most of the time people don't bother with historical specificity (or they get it grossly wrong). Maybe that's the real problem there. Obviously they're just genres, and any given work will work on its own terms regardless of how we categorize it. I'm just trying to piece together why cyberpunk has so many interesting examples but steampunk has so few. EDIT: I posted this without seeing your edit. Whoops. EDIT AGAIN, THIS IS A DUMB WAY TO USE A FORUM BUT I DON'T CARE: I didn't consider that Steampunk was necessarily dystopian like cyberpunk, but I like that interpretation. Now my preferred (albeit somewhat charitable/theoretical) definition of steampunk is: cyberpunk-style pessimistic speculative fiction, but from the perspective of someone from the 19th century. This definition has the benefit of explicitly including famous proto-steampunk (H. G. Wells).

I'm excited for that! I have a soft spot for steampunk (because I liked it as a teen), but there honestly aren't many popular examples that I think "do it well" at all. We need another one! I think a reason why the internet generally poo-poos steampunk (besides an oversaturation of the stuff in the late 00s) is that, unlike cyberpunk, it's mostly an aesthetic genre and not in and of itself based on any big ideas or themes. Austin & co can certainly shore up that deficiency I have no doubt.

I'm in North America. Yeah I thought about trying this. Wouldn't hurt to give it ago. First character I went in semi-blind, in that I had no idea what any of the stats meant and trusted that I could figure it out as I went along. This time I think I'll straight-up find a min-maxed build and follow it.

I guess I didn't doubt that people were still playing, but I haven't encountered any evidence of it for a good long while. All sort of beside the point, though. My point was, life kept me away from this video game for a month, and now I find no pleasure in it. And that's sad. That restart day thing is cool, though. I've got a few more tries in me I guess. Hopefully beating these dudes will have the revitalizing effect on my enjoyment that I'm imagining it could have.

If you mean Solaire, yes, I'm doing that. I get a bit farther that way, I guess. If you mean internet dude, they don't seem to exist in this game anymore, at least when I'm playing.

Last month I was playing through Dark Souls for the first time and having a blast. I got up to a particularly hard boss fight (Ornstein and Smough), and then went on vacation for 2 weeks. And immediately after returning, I had food poisoning for about a week. So, in total, a 3-4 week break from playing Dark Souls. And now I think my playthrough is pretty much dead, unfortunately. I feel like most of the aptitude I had built up in this game is gone, and I'm not having fun running into this stone wall of a boss fight over and over again. My enjoyment of video games is so fickle. Does this happen to any of you: you have to stop playing something for a while and you just can't get back into it?

Have not listened to the episode past the intro yet but I'm already excited by Chris's dumb (genius) game.

I don't think there's a way that wouldn't be considered "gray market".

I did get one. Thank you for your offer, though, it was generous!

Those movies do look really really good, it must be said. I've only seen one (the Hanzo/Genji one) and the faces of the suited guard dudes getting knocked out were so good.

To be pedantic (but hopefully for a purpose), it's more like saying you hate AMERICAN movies than saying you hate ALL movies. And people DO say that, and often you can easily infer that they really mean something slightly more specific (like "hollywood movies", or "blockbuster hollywood movies"). People are just working with the words they know, and can't be expected to do otherwise. Nobody who isn't an enthusiast (or a Japanese speaker) is going to know terms like shounen or seinen. The word they know is anime. Part of the problem seems to be that we insist on using the word at all. We don't have a word for "Indian movie", we call them "Indian movies". If somebody doesn't like Bollywood movies, they don't have to resort to saying they don't like "Indian movies" because the word they know ("Bollywood") thankfully means something more specific than that. Anime, when we use it in English, just means "Japanese animation" and it's weird that somehow we've gotten to a place where we're using a loan word that way. Yeah I'm sure we've all taken part in this same conversation many many times; I'm kinda over it too.

"Anime" was used in this very thread as a literal one-to-one synonym for "dumb", and is OFTEN use that way, and as myopic and dismissive as that is I understand completely how frustrating that can be. But personally I find it hilarious.

The Steam Controller is great. It requires a lot of you, though. There's the new muscle-memory you need to develop, and there's also a sometimes-amazing sometimes-daunting (depending on mood) level of minute customization. And the customization itself compounds the awkward adjustment time (configurations can feel very different from each other). But like, all that's exciting! It feels very much like a new thing, and the transition period is just part of that. When you're in the mood to tinker, all the virtual configuration knobs and switches can really scratch that tinkering itch. And, ultimately, when you're used to it, it controls games quite well! But if you're looking for a frictionless way to jump in and play games like you're used to playing them, it's not gonna do that. Which means it's never gonna be the right choice for a lot of people. I've tried it out on a lot of games, but so far the games I've played with the steam controller for a significant time are: Undertale, The Witness, Dark Souls. Seems to work the best on Dark Souls, believe it or not. But maybe that's because it's the most recent thing I've played and I'm the most used to the controller at this point. EDIT: One thing that I'm pretty down on with the Steam Controller is that nobody who isn't me who comes over is ever gonna want to use it. So that means I'm probably gonna need to buy a second controller that's something else. Or perhaps pairing a DS3 to a Steam Link is less of a disaster than I fear!

I might write in about this for the second episode, but my first exposure to Harry Potter was reading The Chamber of Secrets shortly after its American publication. I was nine, and the book was a gift from a well-meaning relative who'd heard these books were popular and figured the newest, hottest release was probably the best one to start with. When I ended up hooked (along with every other kid I knew), this same relative decided I must be a fanatic and started giving me Harry Potter themed gifts for my birthday for the next several years. It was very sweet! Anyway, starting with book 2 did not pose any barrier to understanding or enjoyment; I remember most relevant plot points were well re-introduced and re-explained. I don't think I even realized there was a book 1 until after I had finished book 2 and was looking for more to read. Being nine years old at the release of book 2 was actually a perfect starting point for the age-with-the-books thing Ben described. Yes, I was still nine when the characters were about twelve. But the way publication dates started to space out, I happened to be seventeen in time for the final book, and as a result I remember feeling a strengthened sense of having grown up with these characters.

Thanks, I appreciate it! I *think* I signed up for it correctly, but time will tell.

Have people started getting Mew codes in the newsletter yet? I haven't, and this is the second newsletter-related promotion I'm somehow missing out on. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, and it's bumming me out.

Also, I am overseas, but wanna participate in this. So I will, but late. EDIT: getting my idea down: EDITED AGAIN ON 8/8/2016 with final, tested recipe Obviously based on (uhhh almost identical to) a calpis chuhai, with another typical J ingredient basically chosen for color. Initially titled "A Refined Baby", and then switched to "Video Game Baby" because I didn't think it was particularly "refined", but then switched back again to "A Refined Baby" because damnit it's so much better of a name. I have not made this yet, but it's so similar to an established drink that I know it will at least be palatable. I have it's good.

Malort is fine, y'all (refined) babies.

oh, someone on the Internet mentioned Wizard People?!? Wizard People is my favorite piece of comedy in any form or medium, ever.

What has Ed Beach done?

Hey now. (you're right though)

It's trivial to play through the game with both (or all three). ...but I know, it kinda feels like cheating.

the fact that it's a pun is not what's notable here

Goddamnit, Litten's ability is Blaze.