SecretAsianMan

To my earlier comment about bosses becoming normal enemies, I think there are ways to do it that are fun. When I said that I was specifically thinking of older games like Final Fight where it's literally the same guy (maybe with a palette swap) who just shows up again for no reason. And those games don't have any kind of player progression so it's the same fight. I'd still prefer to just have a different or new enemy though. Although I will admit it is fun to encounter a tough enemy type again when you're much stronger and wipe the floor with them. Another trash mob comment: I don't play them very often but I think most Lords Management games rely on having lots of trash mobs.

One reason I can think of off the top of my head is games that have a limited inventory system. A game like Diablo for example only has a certain amount of space in your inventory. Picking up junk items takes up space which forces you to choose what to pick up when you're full. Either that or it makes you go to a vendor to sell everything. I agree it's not a particularly compelling reason. A better one would probably be for contrast. Getting lots of junk items makes the actual good items seem better. I once used a mod in Torchlight that caused gold to drop instead of items with low quality. After a while, I started getting annoyed because it felt like I was getting very few drops even though in reality I was really getting the same number with the low rarity stuff dropping as gold instead. It was still an improvement though because it saved me the trouble of using a town portal all the time to sell stuff. As for mobs, I can think of two things. One again is contrast, they make the bosses seem bigger and badder by comparison. They also serve to make the player feel more powerful. The other is the horde angle. One weak enemy doesn't pose a threat, but many could. The thing that bothers me about a lot of games is when they take a boss and make it a regular enemy later in the game. It diminishes the boss fight and feels like lazy design to me.

The charge mechanic for the sniper rifle has been in the game since at least Team Fortress Classic (I never played QWTF) so it's got some roots. I think it was designed like that specifically to keep it from being like CS and leave the running and gunning to other classes.

Good news and bad news. The good news: Harry Shearer has signed the same 2 year deal as the rest of his cast mates and will remain on the Simpsons. The bad news: This show will apparently never ever end.

I would say that movement in FPS's is definitely a big deal in the right areas. Take speedrunning. Compare a speedrun of Quake and a normal playthough. They're both subject to the same mechanics, but the speedrun will use some insane quirks of the system to build and maintain tons of speed. Those same tricks obviously won't work in a game like Half-life or Call of Duty. These tricks are also a big deal in competitive play. As SBM said, TF2 isn't just about your ability to shoot, it's also about your ability to get around the map, which includes lots of vertical movement (such as rocket/sticky jumps). Heck, even Portal 2 added a bunch of movement based paint. I'd say it's as nuanced as 2D movement is.

I have to be a lame pedant and correct Jake about Arkham City. At one point in the cast Jake wonders why everyone who moved out of the city in Arkham City would move back in, only to be evacuated again in Knight. Arkham City was a section of Gotham that got walled off and turned into a prison, so the only inhabitants of 'Arkham City' were criminals (or political prisoners) and the guards. The guards were all from a military contractor named TYGER, who were in turn being controlled by Hugo Strange, the prison's warden and a Batman villain who knows Batman's secret identity. Also, Chris expressed interest in a mod that lets you play as Bruce Wayne. Well that mod came out like a week after the game. It lets you play as 10 characters in free roam Finally, I'm really bummed to hear that DisneyQuest is going away. I haven't been to a Disney park in years and I only remember three things from my last trip: the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, a waterslide called the Humunga Kowabunga, and DisneyQuest. DisneyQuest was by far my favorite thing at Disney. I remember going on that ride that let you build a roller coaster, as well as some other kind of VR thing that involved what was basically a lightsaber. That place blew my young early teen mind.

There is a PC version of Goldeneye, but it's a mod that uses the Source engine and I think it's multiplayer only, so that would probably disqualify it. I'll tentatively volunteer to play some of those co-op games when you get there.

I'm really only afraid of coasters that have a lot of spins, and that's because I feel dizzy for the rest of the day. Drops don't bother me, loops are fine, corkscrews I can handle but if it involves lots of 360 turns I probably won't like it. Most of the time they don't phase me. The ONE exception to that was a coaster called Son of Beast. It set several world records at the time of opening, including tallest wooden roller coaster, fastest wooden roller coaster, longest wooden roller coaster, and the world's only looping wooden roller coaster. The combination of being tall, fast, and wood meant the ENTIRE thing shook like crazy. That loop was maybe the scariest second of my life. The ride later got shut down and dismantled.

I only played it on my phone and in that capacity it's a good time waster when I have a few minutes to kill. It's not a game I'd ever play on something like Steam.

I'm curious what some of your quibbles about the game are. I got it a few days ago and have beaten it once since then. I don't like it as much as 10000000 and I'm not entirely sure why.

The thing I like about 2D games over most 3D games is the viewing angle. It's boggles me that "bad camera" is still a thing in 3D games (although admittedly much less so than it used to be). In 2D games if you can't tell what's happening its usually because of bad design. In 3D games you can have great design and mechanics but have everything be ruined by terrible camera control. One of the reasons I prefer first person games is that I have more control over what I'm seeing even if I do lose some spatial awareness (and I prefer first over third for the precision).

I started playing daily back when Chris and Patrick Klepek used to compete. I would unofficially compete with them as well (although I only have Chris on my friends list). Even after both of them stopped playing I kept going. I think I've missed a total of about 3 days in all that time. At this point I'm still playing mostly out of habit.

Windows 10 will be getting a new version of Minecraft. If you've already purchased the current PC version of the game you'll be able to get the Windows 10 version for free, otherwise it will cost $10 during the beta period. The thing about the Pocket Edition is that the Windows 10 version will support playing with Pocket Edition players both online and local. Basically I imagine that you could create a world on a desktop and have someone playing on their phone hop into that world.

I do that. I was also one of those kids who actually read the manual before playing a game, back in the days when manuals had actual information.

The weird thing about that story is I and many others saw it get tweeted by a woman on twitter named Sarah O'Conner. I feel bad for her because she got flooded with jokey replies and she hasn't seen any of the movies.

Screw Robert Cop and Optical Prime, I want the Ray Liotta toy.

I honestly have no familiarity with the cultural source for Guacamelee so I have no concept of whether this is a 'good' depiction or not. I also have no idea what Drinkbox's team is like (I really hope that it wasn't a group of all white dudes deciding to make a game like this). I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt but I won't begrudge anyone who has an issue with their game.

If you have issue with the appropriation of culture in the game, that I can understand. I have a somewhat similar problem with the game Enslaved. I still think that the references and memes in Guacamelee are easily ignored though.

My only interaction with Neopets was helping my cousin who is 12 years my junior play some of the games on there to get whatever the currency was. I don't remember what the games were other than basic flash games and the type of things that dominate mobile markets these days.

I laughed only once at an incredibly stupid joke that I would normally find tasteless. It was only the fact that it was being said by a goat that I got a laugh out of it. I thought the platforming was actually quite clever at times with the dimension swapping, although I can certainly see why it puts some people off. I will certainly agree that it's a rather harsh difficulty spike if you were expecting a beat 'em up game. I just happen to like both those genres so the mixing of the two worked for me.

Agreed entirely.

You probably did like it before it became cool, you just didn't know you liked it until it was discovered.

I won't deny that stuff is there, but it's so minor and background that it never bothered me at all. It's pretty much all contained within the town and dialog with the goat so it's easy to ignore. I even found some of it amusing, as transparent as it is.

That's pretty much what I mean when I say they don't go far enough. It's an interesting idea but in the end it doesn't really matter all that much beyond the plot, which is terrible to say the least. If they expanded it beyond individual orcs and chiefs so that it actually had a noticeable impact on the world at large it would have been better. Perhaps that was just too large a scope for the first game to use the system, hopefully it will get expanded in a follow up. Also the LOTR universe is not at all a good fit for this but I guess it's too late to change that now.

Yeah I'll agree with that, at least for Spelunky (haven't played Crypt yet). The only times my runs are in the 5-10 min range is when I'm doing particularly bad or trying to do speedruns. I really liked 10000000. I haven't picked up You Must Build A Boat yet, mostly because I forgot to check that it was out. My number one phone game is still Pixel Dungeon and its modded variants.