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One titled "Civilization V" http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7064 This was more active: http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7043&highlight=civilization

The chips are notoriously bad at bass, so the only stuff I would consider dancing too is augmented by other instruments or samples.

I found Company of Heroes and DoWII to be extremely broken campaigns in comparison. If you're having an easy time steamrolling through SC2, adjust the difficulty and you'll have to be more strategic. Marine + Medic will win most missions on normal, but you don't have to play it that way.

Media blitz is part of Matt/Mensk mission line, The Dig is part of the Tychus/Relic mission. The mission Toblix was talking about was maybe the one where Tychus is a hero-marine.

Let's go with Wednesday for the NA FFA. How about 8:30 EST?

Switch it down a difficulty level Toblix, there's no shame in it. Also, always be building SCVs.

I feel bad for suggesting a FFA then ignoring this thread for weeks. Who would be up for a FFA on the NA server some time this week? Anything but Tuesday and Thursday would work for me.

I don't know. Alan was a big reason why I stopped listening to any 1up podcasts. It wasn't him in particular, but all the kids trying so hard kind of made me cringe. 1up just didn't have the bandwidth for so many podcasts after all the layoffs and closing of magazines.

That guy that played guitar looked like he was on some serious drugs when he was cheering for Random. I found it a bit strange that it tried to create a narrative of this scene developing in New York, when it's very clearly an online community. They didn't even mention a single site like 8bc, just that these guys discovered international chip tune artists while doing a world tour. The douchebag levels go a little off the chart later in the show with the bald guy that did the visuals. People talking about how they're "outsiders" and if it ever went mainstream they'd having nothing to do with it. Given that this was filmed in 2006, I bet a bunch of those people already have moved on to hating this scene and thinking it's "sold out". And though they showed a lot of diversity in the music, it seems 2PS wanted to focus on the "pure" music made with LSDJ. I don't even recall seeing Deprecation Guild until the end credits. I'd like to see what a performer who mixed with headphones instead of just raw would be capable of. There would be less fuckups and they'd be able to take bigger risks.

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That's the Gaynor effect. I'm not saying he's a downer, but when you replace someone like Nick who's main role was bird noises with Steve, who likes to kill memes in utero, it's not surprising. Personally I really like the in depth stuff that Steve brings to the podcast, but the jokes-per-minute is definitely lower.In the end I feel like it's comparing children. You know there's one you like better, but you love them both and try not to think about it.

http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2010-08-18-this-is-all-i-can-think-during-starcraft-2s-cut-scenes I love the comments.

I think the dragon age world is actually pretty interesting, if they'd just get out of Ferelden, and stop treating the dark spawn as the only enemies. The best part of DA were the origin stories (other than the wood elves), and random side quests that focused on the different empires and the religious culture. I'd love if DA2 didn't even mention the Grey Wardens.

Nasty

New trailer is up: http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/ I don't like the character design and animation really. It seems like his armor is weightless, he looks weak as hell, and he moves like a woman.

Elizabeth = Alex + skills

I am stunned you can assert that "the story of DoW2 is very, very good", and then turn around and slam StarCraft. Besides the fact that DoW2 is prettymuch StarCraft + space orcs (which i guess is just WarHammer40k - Space Orcs to begin with), DoW2 has terrible mission briefings."We believe that the Ork Rippa Splitta, is in this town, go kill him."

Yeah I agree, you can hit any news stand novel rack and come back with a bunch of garbage that was written for a 6th grader. But I'm not saying that everything has to dumbed down, just that maybe more books could have a complexity curve to them. An intro that sucks readers in before trying to blow their minds with how cleaver the author is.For example Anathem starts out with simple geometric problems, and ends with string theory. And Lord of the Rings pretty much starts off with a "once upon a time", and later starts throwing songs, poetry and elvish lore at the reader. In fact Tolkien is a great example, because you can compare his rough work in the Silmarillion to what he chose to publish in LotR. I think Jake just killed this conversation by pointing at the elephant in the room. But I think the point that some of us have been arguing is that if you're going to be obscure you need to earn it. Idle thumbs certainly does, and if it didn't, it would be the most painful awfulcast to listen to.

To go in another direction. Is it possible that tiered literacy in reading is tolerated because historically reading has been a source of power? Maybe they could learn from more current media. There's something to be said about Harry Potter's success.

It's a shame you can't avoid Raynor, 'cause his over the top alcoholism is really the weakest point of the whole game. That and . I'm not saying that other games are bad so SC2 isn't, what I'm saying is that SC2 is pretty much on par and doesn't deserve to be specifically called out. From the second we saw our first space trucker the tone was set on this franchise, and though the guys at Blizzard may get carried away about how awesome their storylines are, I don't see why people are expecting much more. And if we're not going to compare it to other games, why not compare it to the original? StarCraft had a bunch of crap, and that goes double for Brood War. Maybe it was because some of us were young, maybe it's because nobody else really put that much effort into the backstory of their games, maybe we were more tolerant. I can see how some characters could be grating, and I'm not saying it's Citizen Kane*. But giving it the leeway I give every other video game, I felt compelled to go through every dialogue option after each mission, the same way I did in Mass Effect. *Metroid Prime

You can't polish a turd, it doesn't mean polish is useless.

Agreed. But if something is obscure, it better be worth it.

People shouldn't think of accessibility as some corruption of artistic intent. It's a noble goal, and if done well shouldn't reduce the quality of the experience.

I think it's valid to compare it to other games, the context is implied whenever you're talking about anything. Take any game, and tell me you would be able to sit through it as a movie, or read through it as a book. There's a complex balance of gameplay, immersion and exposition that makes up a games story, so it's kind of unfair to compare it to anything else but other games without some allowances. All I'm saying is that if you're looking for a game that is going to re-invent story telling, then that expectation should be focused on games like Heavy Rain that make it their main goal. What does SC2 do so poorly that almost every other game hasn't done in the past 2 years?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/08/09/100809on_audio_baker I'm pretty sure, he is oblivious to the existence of Quake, which makes that just gold IMO. I'm going to have to pick this up, because from the podcast this seems to be the type of article on gaming written by a non-gamer that I might actually be interested in.Apparently he mentions gaming podcasts as well, calling the crew at Giant Bomb "charmingly garrulous".