Twig

I tried out the outfit I got from my Steam preorder and it made Lara look like a cartoon character, so I immediately went back to tank top mode.

I found it extremely hilarious that in one scene she has a dirty tank top and then that cutscene ends and LITERALLY the next cutscene, with no gameplay in between, she has a tanktop torn to hell. I also was constantly baffled by her unwillingness to just grab a jacket off the dozens of dudes she killed. Even when it's snowing, she just keeps on keepin' on! So weird. Also weird (slightly spoilerish but not at all important to the story, really):

6:30 is okay with me! Looking forward to meeting some people. U: I saw Chris this morning in the audience at a Double Fine talk thing and I was planning to assault him post-presentation, but I lost him in mass exodus. O woe!

I'm good for Thursday. O:

Finally started Gemini Rue last night, and was given the opportunity to pretend I was Indiana Jones selling leather jackets trenchcoats. Brought a chuckle.

He refers to Bioshock 2 as a cash-in, implying that it's not a good game. With an attitude like that, I'm not sure I can trust THIS GUY.

I'm workin' today and tomorrow, but probably I will be going to SOMETHING tomorrow night after I get off work. After that it's all GDC until I die from exhaustion. Or until GDC ends, I guess!

I tried to buy Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate last night but my SD card was too small. I needed ~14000 blocks total, but didn't have enough space to free up and keep the games I was still playing. How big are blocks? I'm sure I could Google it. WHATEVER. I'm just mad I couldn't get the game when I decided I wanted it.

Corporations are entities which CONTAIN people. People as the cogs. They are containers of... cogs. Cogpeople. Cogple? Ceogple?

That's ugly though! I want one that looks good. Is that so much to ask?!

UGH ALL I WANT IS A FULLY REALIZED UNDERWATER EXPLORATHON ON MY PERSONAL COMPUTER. Something like Endless Ocean on Wii. Sorry, that has nothing to do with this. ):

I gave it like twenty episodes. I wouldn't call that "easily". It was horrific. I hated it. It had nothing to do with the hosts. Just the format. Moot point, anyway! Like I said, I backed it. Yayyy.

Oh man I'm looking forward to a GDC where I'm not trying to impress people to get a job! FINALLY. Also, I regularly eat at a ton of delicious food places about ten minutes north of Moscone (which is also where I work). If I'm not too lazy tomorrow maybe I'll throw some of those in the pile.

Yeah I feel the same way. Back when I first discovered Retronauts, he was half the reason I loved it. The other half was Jeremy Parish (who allegedly hated doing it or something, I dunno, but clearly he actually didn't, 'cause he's still here for this one!). They had a really nice dynamic, and they're both insanely knowledgeable on the topic of Old Video Games. And I goddamn loved Retronauts; I might've put it at the top of my list for a time! Then they stopped. Then it came back and was like... "live"! Oh. Ehhh. I'm definitely more interested in this than the dumb live thing, but it's missing half of the reason I loved it so much in the first place. Granted, I don't know Ray Barnholdt or Bob Mackey. They could be good! I assume they must've been on the live episodes before that died, but I have literally zero desire to go listen to those. Someone assuage my concerns by telling me Ray and Bob are cool dudes! EDIT: I'm dumb. Ray's been on the Geekbox a lot, pimping his classic video game magazine thing. He's cool! THAT LEAVES BOB. Fuck it I backed it. I hate thank you segments on the episodes, though. I wonder if I can request a special feed that has none of that. ):

I beat Pushmo and then it's like "here's 54 more puzzles!" Fuck you, Pushmo.

Yeah that's a good one, too. Not sure I really agree that a video game with a scrawny dude scared out of his mind but slowly coming into his own wouldn't work, but hey.

CHIP 'N' DALE? I'M IN. edit: oh it's console exclusive i'm out

I'm mostly linking this because Cara Ellison is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers on RockPaperShotgun (which also happens to be the only video game website I regularly read, barring podcasts like IDLE THUMBS). http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/22/rhi-light-my-fire-rhianna-pratchett-on-tea-cakes-lara But I'm also linking it because I thought it was interesting! Enjoy. I kind of wish they had gone more in a direction of every confrontation being hell, being a really difficult, dangerous thing. But at the same time, we wouldn't have gotten the "that's right you bastards!" line near the end of the game. Which was a great moment. Man I am really looking forward to "Tomb Raider 2", whatever that ends up being.

I can't get over how happy Scrooge looks. It's off-putting in the most bizarre of ways!

Yeah! I also love Ava's Demon for the art, but the story seems pretty typical. Nothin' wrong with that, though, unless it turns bad!

I'm pretty psyched for this! I loved Frozen Synapse, but I kinda stopped playing because you could just randomly get screwed or randomly guaranteed a win. Here's hoping they've improved upon that here! (And, hell, they might've done just that in Frozen Synapse. Last time I played was like a week after release. Prior to which I'd been playing a ton of the beta.)

I finally got around to actually finishing the episode. Hey, Chris! You said Big Ben takes up a huge amount of space! That's actually not true. It's a really small object that you could probably easily fit into some corner where high density stuff isn't going to happen, anyway. That is, if you're using curvy roads. If you're using grids, then you probably don't have an area like that. I've got curves out the wazoo, so I threw Big Ben down in a small crevice. (Gross.)

I played this game pretty recently. Over Christmas when I was visiting home, I think. It's a good video game!

AS A PROGRAMMER... design is way fuzzier. You're dealing with enigmatic qualities like "fun" and "feel-rightiness" and even "mechanics" is still pretty damn unquantifiable, whereas in programming, you're trying to get shit working in the most efficient manner possible. You have a distinctive goal. Sure, there's an element of creativity in order to achieve that goal, but in the end, you're measured by very concrete values. Bugs and shit included.

I once had someone rage at me for an entire game because I didn't do well. That's nothing worth mentioning. BUT. At the end, I think because I was baiting him for fun (I know I'm part of the problem, but fuck it if I'm not going to get SOME enjoyment out of a dickbird crawling into my ear for an hour), he invited me to a "I SUCK AT DOTA 2" Steam group that he and his friends had set up. I thought it was hilarious, but that's because I take joy in my own misery. I've of late taken it upon myself to calmly explain to people employing racist and homophobic epithets that they should stop using racist and homophobic epithets and, would you believe it, some of them actually apologize! They still yell at me for being bad at games, though. ):