SecretAsianMan

What is the tone of the game? I have zero first hand experience in the game and everything I know about it is taken from either a Giantbomb Quick Look or accounts from other people (like the Thumbs). I understand that there's a significant amount of care taken to give the world an interesting backstory with stuff like Nazi versions of the Beatles and alternate history news clippings, plus the characters seems to be pretty serious. Then there's things like dual wielding every weapon and robot dogs and nightmares about Wolfenstein 3D. Is the game serious? Is it silly? Does it try to be serious but come off as silly? Any of those are ok but I want to know what I'd be getting into if I ever did get the game.

Ok, I see what you mean now. Talking about it has started to remind me of some of this. I will agree that does seem unnecessary at times. Here's my half-assed attempt to justify some of it. Molly is this weird case because he's known her since she was a kid which is always a strange thing to think about someone like that in a sexual way. But at the same time she is one of the few viable options for a long term relationship since they're both wizards and whatnot. Not to mention Harry being a pretty good candidate for a teenage girl/young woman to have a crush on since her mother didn't like Harry for a long time, Harry saves her on multiple occasions, the whole student/teacher thing, and the aforementioned wizardly lifespan. Also he's basically seen her naked (or at least topless) a couple of times, I think. Of course, it's much more complicated now that (spoiler because I don't know if you've finished Cold Days) I think the fae walking around half-naked is within character for them for the reasons I described in my previous post. They're extremely manipulative creatures and they know one of the best ways to manipulate anyone (men or women) is with sex. As for Harry focusing on describing the women, in a way I feel like it's sort of a casualty of the first person narrative style. If Harry is narrating the story to himself, then I can understand him focusing on what he would probably rather look at given the choice. On the other hand, if he's narrating to an audience (such as the reader), then yeah he should give both males and females equal billing. Ideally since it's an authored book, it should be the latter but it seems like the former. I also somewhat agree with the concept that he's being at least partially influenced by the mantle of the Winter Knight and his baser emotions are getting stronger but hopefully it's a thing he can learn to control given some time since he is new to the position.

I'm with you there. I didn't really care much for Freeze in the game except during the boss fight itself. I thought the actual fight was interesting and fun (albeit in a super gamey way) because it forced you to use different tactics and gadgets instead of being an arena style fight or a standard stealth sequence like the rest of the game.

Thanks Twig, you too Hey wait a second...

More TF2 stuff because it's apparently the only thing I can speak knowledgably about. After they finished all the class specific stuff, they started adding a bunch of other things that were usually tied to pre-orders from other games and eventually made their way into the drop system. They haven't introduced a new weapon type in a while, at this point it's mostly skins and hats. The competitive side of TF2 prohibits the use of items in matches so it's not really a concern there. There's also a mode in TF2 called Medieval Mode that limits the number of usable items to those that fit a "medieval" theme. This mostly means melee weapons, but a few projectiles are also usable such as a crossbow for the Medic or a bow and arrow for the Sniper. And like Twig said, getting the basic weapon types is fairly easy, it mostly just requires time and patience if you don't want to trade. The things that people want to trade for are the special weapon qualities like the gold plated ones, or "genuine" quality items that are only obtained by preordering a game, etc. Those differences are cosmetic only but that's what people will pay for. I'll play!

I have general memories of Dresden describing characters like Mab and Maeve and Lea. Most of the fae he interacts with are female, at least the humanoid ones anyway. I can understand their descriptions being of a more sexualized nature since they are supposed to be impossibly beautiful. I don't remember anything specific about actual humans but this is probably just a lack of recall on my part. I can't entirely blame him for wanting to describe women more since he is a heterosexual male who is surrounded by women most men would (literally) die for. I guess Butcher himself could use some more tact in the writing. I'll have to reread it at some point. The one part I do remember was a scene (from a early book) where Molly uses a cold beer and a thin t-shirt to...encourage someone to help them. That seemed weird.

When I was a kid and read the Knightfall/quest/end story, I thought the costume was badass. But then again I was like 10 so what the hell did I know. That's probably what they were going for and at the time it worked. My favorite part of the Batman & Robin movie was the bit where Mr. Freeze cries and his tear freezes on his cheek and turns into snow. Mostly because that was an idea originally conceived by Paul Dini for the classic "Heart of Ice" episode of Batman: The Animated Series.

I just read the last 2 pages of this thread. I've never cringed so hard in my life. All this animal talk has made me realize how fixated Idle Thumbs is with animals. Horsebags, bird noises, puffins. I'm sure there's more. Also I suggest Jake's pig noise be the new baboo.

I will totally and freely admit that Apple makes great products. It would be stupid to say otherwise. That said, I don't LIKE their products. I don't have a fanatical love of Windows or Android or whatever either, but I dislike Apple's stuff enough to not want to use them. That's all I'm going to say before this gets derailed any more. Edit: Yay new page that makes me look dumb(er)

I think Apple tries very hard to initiate what eventually becomes the expected experience. Nintendo tries to do this too, they just really suck at it because they don't seem to know or understand who their users are anymore. Outside of Japan anyway. Also yes, comparing the two, ugh.

I both love and hate hearing about TF2 on the cast. I love hearing it because I'm always interested in hearing Jake's take on that game and world, but also hate it because all I want to do is correct everything that is said. So here is a bunch of crap about TF2 that is probably only interesting to me. The store does sell almost every item that drops, be it a hat, weapon, or other thing. The main exception to this is "unusuals". Those only come from opening crates which must be opened with keys purchased from the store. The odds of getting a hat from a crate are small, the odds of an unusual hat even smaller. The thing that makes hats unusual is they have visual effects such as being on fire, floating hearts, shining rays of light etc. The weapons operate differently from most other shooters because instead of just changing numbers like damage and accuracy, they actually have different effects both positive and negative. For example the default rocket launcher for the Soldier has a 4 rocket clip. One of the variants reduces this to 3 rockets, but for every enemy you hit you gain 15 health. I really like the system because it lets you tailor your loadout to how you play the game. Certain situations tend to lend themselves to certain types of loadouts so there is some min/maxing but skill will trump almost every time. Even the stock loadout is viable. Some promotional items are actually different weapons, some are just skins (like the Sam and Max ones). In the case of Sean's Lugermorph, because it's self-made it also sparkles. And the boots that Jake said reduce rocket jump damage to 0 actually do a 60% reduction to damage from your own rockets. There is a weapon that does 0 rocket jump damage, but that's because it's designed to train players how to rocket jump and the rockets do 0 damage to everything. The way drops work is sort of complicated. Items (like hats and weapons) and crates operate on 2 different drop timers so getting a crate does not decrease the number of items you get. The item drop timer determines WHEN an item will drop, not IF. It doesn't look each second and roll a dice to see if you get an item, rather it rolls a dice to determine how long it will be before you get a drop. On average, it's about an hour. There is also a weekly time limit of about 10 hours. If you hit the limit, you won't get any more drops that week. If you're under the limit, the remainder will get carried over to the next week, but you can't accumulate more than 2 weeks worth of time. Free-to-play players have access to a limited form of the drop system (no rare items or cosmetic items) but buying anything from the store (such as a key) will make the account a premium one and give access to the full system. The system requires you to actively accept the dropped item before it will give you another to discourage idling. I won't get into crafting and other stuff because this is already too much information and I doubt anyone is still reading this.

I remember using a toilet in Japan (not a talking one, but I've used those too) that had a basin on the top of the tank. When you flushed the toilet, instead of immediately filling the tank, the water would first empty into the basin so you could wash your hands with it. The water would then drain into the tank to be used to flush the toilet the next time. Seemed like a pretty efficient use of water to me. Basically this

I think you're remembering an after show thing. They didn't even want him to show his face to the studio audience.

I hope you remembered to tell her to rate the podcast on iTunes.

I'm in one of those moods right now where everything makes me mad and I want to hit things. I should probably refrain from posting anything for a bit. And standing near breakable objects. And people.

I don't remember the details very well, can you guys be more specific?

I've never read an actual licensed novel, but I read the manual for StarCraft several times. The backgrounds for the races was basically a short book. I also have a promotional Dead Island comic from PAX around somewhere.

Having recently (in the last few months) finished Arkham City, I'm still pretty excited for this. I'm also getting tired of Batman, but AC was so much fun that I'm willing to overlook it for more of that. As for Hush My first thought on seeing that gif was Men in Black. Now I can't stop picturing Will Smith dancing around inside the batmobile.

With any luck, this will be my last week on night shift for at least a year. I'm really glad this is a long weekend coming up. I need it.

Having gotten the Crystal Cruiser, I'm really having a tougher than normal time getting the second layout. I lost a couple of ships specifically trying to get the achievement for destroying an enemy ship with the Crystal Vengeance augment. I would bring their hull down to a single point, turn off my shields, and let them hit me until I got it, but between several misses and the darn thing just not activating, it took far longer than I would have liked. It's still the only achievement I've gotten because I can't ever seem to get 4 crew members into one room and the game has been refusing to give me Rock sectors so I'm not encountering many Rock ships.

I'm with ya. I'm not arguing that the show should be made, just trying to explain it maybe? I like Batman as much as anybody, but this is getting ridiculous. There are WAY too many Batmans. Enough with Batman. I want a live action show about The Question. Added bonus, it would be a legit way to could get Renee Montoya like Teg wanted.

That is true, but in this case it's a show being sold on it's relation to Batman. If you don't have Batman's supporting cast, then there's no point in setting it in Gotham at all. It could take place anywhere because without Batman and co., Gotham is basically just another city. Assassin's Creed would have done just as well without da Vinci, but Gotham won't work without some kind of relation to the Bat family.

I always assumed it was a product of drinking too much beer.

Ni hao!

People around here say yinz. I would not recommend saying yinz.