SecretAsianMan

Call of Duty does recognize teabagging. One of the games (I don't remember which one, they all look the same to me) has a thing called field orders. The field orders are random assignments such as kill an enemy with melee or get 2 kills while crouched. Completing them gives you an in-game bonus. One of the field orders is to humiliate the next enemy you kill. You do this by teabagging them.

I know specifically what got me playing that: video games. Lava in video games was always bad and as most games around the time I was young time were platformers, it was natural that would turn into jumping around on stuff. We even took it further and once we beat the lava level, we went on to the ice level and slid around the floor in our socks.

Toshi isn't in the book either, which is why I find the choice of the old cover art amusing.

I mentioned it before when Zeus was first looking for recommendations on the LucasArts library, but The Dig is one of my favorites. It's definitely flawed in some serious ways but its also one of my favorite environments in any game ever. I love the barren landscape and the hints of what life used to be like. The loneliness and isolation really felt appropriate to me, moreso than in most other adventure games where I'm the only one in a world full of people that's actually doing anything. The Dig is on my short list of games I would really love to get a sequel to. Fun fact: There was a novelization based on the game written by Alan Dean Foster. While I haven't read it myself, its supposed to diverge from the game in several ways. Notably, the cover art features the ultimately cut 4th astronaut, Toshi Olema. He was a Japanese businessman who provided major funds and technology for the mission, then in a later iteration became a physicist before being eliminated altogether. He was to have met a rather gruesome death in the game by being melted by acid.

Ok, I see where you're coming from now and I apologize for reading into your post negatively (although I hope you can understand why that happened). However I still think what SBM, teg, and I have said is true. While the creators may call them genderless, the show clearly doesn't depict them that way. Would that poor kid who identifies as asexual know that the gems are? Or would said kid think they're female? Are kids these days aware of what the creator's view is? That's a genuine question by the way, I have no idea how kids today watch things like this. All I know is that if this aired when I was a kid, I definitely would not have thought of them as asexual.

The gems can presumably assume whatever form they want (Amethyst has shapeshifted several times over the series, the fact that they can fuse shows their forms are not fixed, and even Steven himself has changed form a couple of times and he's half human). Given that, I think the fact that they've chosen the forms they have isn't a random, insignificant decision. And I'm pretty sure they refer to each other using female pronouns. Maybe that's for the sake of convenience but I really don't see how viewing them as "space lesbians" is all that big a stretch. I've paid zero attention to what the creators have said about the show and that's definitely how I saw it.

I remember two games that had controller setups that allowed for two people to control one player. One was Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. The game had a setup that used two controllers, one for movement and one for shooting, but it also mapped different methods of attack to each controller. The player character in the game has psychic powers like telekinesis and mind control in addition to conventional weapons. Basically, imagine playing Bioshock except one person controlled the guns and the other person controlled the plasmids. The other game that had a 2 controller setup was Goldeneye for the N64. Because of the shape of the N64 controller, it was possible to dual wield controllers and play two handed by yourself. It made aiming easier because it was a crude form of the modern dual analog FPS setup, but it made other things like switching weapons a lot harder. Playing it with a second person was rather fun though. A further realization: if Murder She Wrote the TV show is The Ship (or Spy Party), then Murder She Wrote the board game is Trouble in Terrorist Town.

The description of Murder She Wrote as a super high society life aboard an 80s yacht where everyone is murdered made me think that would make a fun game. Then I realized that game is The Ship.

My parents live in China so most of the time they're just about as far away as its physically possible to be. Their official US address is my house and they stay with me when they're in the country, but that's maybe one or two months out of the year. We don't really talk a lot and most of the things we do talk about are fairly inconsequential. I don't really open up to my parents that much, not because of any particular problem I have with them or anything, its just not our way.

I'm the kind of person who doesn't really care about aesthetics like how the guns look (to a point at least, I'll care if they look like complete shit). I'm a much more mechanics driven person so I'll pick weapons for strategic reasons over looks every time. Although I will admit to using the P90 (which I think the game calls a Kobus 90) longer than I probably should have because in terms of the real life counterparts its my actual favorite gun. Overkill's method of updating their game is weird to me. When they introduce new mechanics or make fixes in content updates, they have a tendency to horribly break older jobs. Sometimes its for the better but a lot of times for the worse. I guess they're assuming people will stop playing the older stuff as they release more content, which is a reasonable assumption, but there are still things I'd like to see fixed (or unfixed as the case may be). It's also probably a product of their unusual format for mission selection. Your last statement about hard levels becoming trivial is also a big reason why I stopped playing. In general I get stop playing when games get "solved" and the only way to make things difficult is to make the game ridiculously unfair.

I haven't seen the show, but from what I understand Penny is now an official agent so she's no longer tagging along with Gadget. She's apparently more of a lead character than in other shows but I'm not sure what that exactly means.

Part of my complaints can easily be blamed on myself. I'm the kind of person who will look for and use the objectively best gun because that's how I'm wired (blame the engineer in me). Even though I find min/maxing tedious, I'll do it. But I also hate having things and not using them so it bothers me that so many if the weapons and mods are worthless. I think locking skills into one tree would piss people off but would make for a better game in the long run. I'd be interested in trying it with a group of people who played like that, but I suspect the game design wouldn't support it very well. I feel like the intent of the drills is to make certain moments more intense and cinematic. When you're in the middle of a firefight and the drill breaks, it really does feel like a scene out of a heist movie as you try to fix the drill and fight off the cops. But when you're in a no fail scenario or are in between waves, they only serve to pad out the game. I've lost count of the number of times I've run around a bank jumping about doing nothing while waiting for a drill. I also think that stealth needs some fixing. The vast majority of stealth scenarios are best completed with only one person. Having additional people only makes it harder, not easier. Unless of course you have a really elite team of Sam Fishers. There are a bunch of missions that I refused to do in stealth with random people because it only takes one person to screw the entire team. I'm fine with that as a mechanic, but only if its balanced out by a substantial benefit to actual teamwork.

Like Chris, I also greatly enjoyed both Get Smart and Inspector Gadget as a kid and was equally IGN.com'ed when I learned Maxwell Smart and Inspector Gadget were the same person. And my first thought when Jake mentioned French Stewart was that he was the guy who took over the role in the direct-to-video. Also to confirm a third thing, there is a new Inspector Gadget show. It's a CG cartoon that was originally going to be on Cartoon Network but is now Netflix exclusive. Despite being called Inspector Gadget, the protagonist is actually a teenage Penny.

Are you going to replay Fate of Atlantis and take a different path? If so, I'd suggest the Wits path since you did the Team path last time and the Fists path sucks.

Is there a reason that the Movies/TV thread is no longer pinned? I don't really mind it that way, I'm just curious.

I think the way the game currently is lacks sufficient encouragement for variety. Most of the weapons have a numerically optimal configuration and a lot are entirely useless. I feel like the builds don't reward me enough to play around either. Once I have my loud/stealth build, I never feel like there's a substantial benefit to switching to something else. I much prefer games where each role is unique and there's a benefit to having each of them. Ideally Payday could be like that too, but for combat most of the time you benefit from having lots of inspire or armor and in stealth you have nothing but... well stealth. Compare that to when we played Monaco. If we could have all been the Gentleman I feel like it would have been much less interesting. I feel that a significant number of the skills are useless and only exist as point sinks to climb up the tree. I really dislike the tiered skill trees, I'd much rather just be able to pick the skills I want for more points rather than have to waste them in areas that I know I won't use. I think its exceedingly dumb that you can board up windows but not close doors. I find Bain to be really annoying. I dislike how much standing around and waiting there is. I also agree with the stats and timesink complaints.

The SA-X is maybe my favorite thing about Fusion. I really like the atmosphere in the game. An enclosed space station is actually a pretty cool environment and the different sectors still makes it feel varied. It presents one of the better reasons for why you start out weak and depowered, as well as a good excuse for giving you your abilities. The SA-X in particular really adds something as this seemingly invincible monster that represents what you used to be and actively hunts you down. I remember I just... really REALLY hate that fucking computer.

I actually uninstalled it a while ago. It's good that they're going to continue supporting it and 2 years is certainly a long time. I'm just not sure that I want to get back into playing it. Unless they made some pretty big changes/fixes to the mechanics, additional content like maps and characters isn't going to appeal to me enough to come back.

Tuna mayo is one of the cases that I like mayo although I still go pretty light with it. In the case of sandwiches, I tend to think of everything as a condiment unless a specific part of the sandwich was prepared in a sauce (for example some kind of BBQ meat) and then you add more of that same sauce.

That is one of Fusion's weak points. Its much more linear than most other Metroid games (though still full of hidden stuff) and you are constantly being spoonfed by that damn computer. It's the origin of the single worst thing to ever happen to Metroid (which gets fully realized in Other M).

I don't like most condiments. I don't care for mayo, I hate mustard and horseradish (including wasabi even though I love sushi), and don't like any salad dressings (the only salad I actually like is Caesar, unless you count stuff like taco salad). Sauces on the other hand are great. I consider condiments and sauces as separate things, though there is some overlap. In general I think of sauces as things that are used as part of the preparation of the food or are an essential part of the dish and condiments as toppings that come after to add additional flavor.

It's been so long that I really don't remember. I think it got it at a place like Bed, Bath, & Beyond but no particular brand.

... I don't like it. I'll eat it, but only in small amounts and in certain applications.

When you finish Fusion, you should watch one of my favorite "speedruns". I have it in quotes because it's not really a speedrun, though it is run by one of the best Metroid runners Kirby Mastah. What's amazing about it is that he plays both Fusion and Zero Mission at the same time using one set of inputs to control both games simultaneously.

Man, I'm about to disappoint everyone. I've spent the last year or so working almost entirely working on a single project. I can't (and won't because its boring) go into detail but I will say that what I'm doing is extremely important to the plant. Today, we had the vendor come on the site to do some post installation testing. While the system isn't entirely 100% complete yet, it was far enough along to do the test and see if it works. I've been insanely nervous the entire time I've been working on this that I fucked it up and it wouldn't work. I don't have any basis for that other than paranoia and self doubt. The very good news is that the test went great and the thing works better than I expected. The amount of relief I'm feeling right now is unbelievable. To sum up, I didn't completely waste the last year of my life! (also to Ben, the part that I have a plan for isn't finished yet so that victory cry will come later)