Atlantic

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Posts posted by Atlantic

  1. Posted

    I'm a relatively recent TAZ listener but I have some opinions. Mostly parroting what others have said.

     

    The impression I get is that each of the McElroys wants the show to be something different. Justin wants it to be entertaining and Clint just tags along. Travis has more experience playing tabletop games and has more confidence in the mechanics of D&D. Griffin wants to tell his story. All of these things are clashing! With FatT, everyone is confident in the mechanics, understands that the tone is going to shift wildly between comedy and tragedy from session to session, and ultimately everyone has confidence in Austin as a GM.

     

    However, FatT is an actual play podcast and TAZ is a comedy podcast that uses D&D. It does get bogged down in LORE and STORY a bit too often, and the players are shut down from doing something clever or interesting by Griffin a few too many times. He's just not as talented or experienced as Austin as a GM! That's the long and the short of it.

     

    It should also be noted that not everything the McElroys do is gold. MBMBaM took several years before they weren't awful, and even now they sometimes go off on a jag that isn't that funny (I know humour is subjective! but for me the quality of their podcasts varies wildly). TAZ has brought up very different problems, like scope: this whole story has been going on for YEARS now at this point. I suspect they didn't expect to take this long to do, and they occasionally mention that there are long gaps between their recordings. It's easy to forget all the details when there are a lot of moving parts.

     

    When the current campaign wraps up, I hope they do some shorter form stuff and use a few different games. I'm still enjoying TAZ as light entertainment and not some great work of fiction from a GENIUS STORYTELLER.

  4. Posted · Edited by Atlantic

    Friends at the Table chat:

     

    Is anyone else finding this current season a real drag? I loved Counter/WEIGHT once it got going, Marielda was fun... but I don't really care about any of the characters or conflicts in the current game in Hieron. I didn't listen to the first season because the audio quality wasn't great, and this seems like a sequel to that, so I don't get any of the callbacks. I am tempted to drop it until they start a new campaign. 

     

    (I am wrestling with the sunk cost fallacy! Also I don't really give a shit about fantasy)

     

    The Adventure Zone chat:

     

    I started listening to TAZ a few weeks ago to get my actual play fix. I'm enjoying it! A few too many situations are resolved through combat, but it's really just a vessel for jokes. I think Griffin really gets into it and wants to emulate FatT at times, but the others just want to put on a good show. Travis really shines in TAZ, whereas sometimes he's not as quick off the mark in MBMBaM. 

  6. Posted

    23 minutes ago, Badfinger said:

    Would you say the game overall hews more closely to the demo, which I understand is the opening sequence of the game, or the quick look linked above? They are paced and presented very differently for me, and I liked one and did not like the other.

     

    It has a good mix of both. There are main mission sections that do the third-person combat/shmup sections with cutscenes and story, and then there is the open world that connects everything. The world isn't huge, but it changes drastically at certain points in the story. I would recommend doing the main missions until you unlock the fast travel system, and then doing a few side quests. The side quests themselves don't always have the most interesting scenarios, but there are good bits of writing in them.

     

    For what it's worth, I often get bored with open worlds in games but I didn't get bored in Automata's world.

  7. Posted

    I don't really have an answer for it. There are male characters who are sexualised, and there are other female characters who are not sexualised, and all of them have agency over their situation. But they're also all androids, and there are some references to their sexualities without any real answers. This is a game that is interested in asking questions of you every hour or so, sometimes frivolous, sometimes heavy.

     

    Maybe there's a deeper reason for it, maybe that's just how the developers decided she should look.

     

    Or as Anita Sarkeesian used to say, you can simultaneously enjoy media and be critical of its pernicious aspects.

     

    That's not really an answer, but like I said I don't one.

  8. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Vulpes Absurda said:

    Good to hear as right now it's really just kind of dull and blandly sexist.

     

    Well, it's complicated.

     

    Nier was actually way ahead of the curve in some areas. For instance, there were gay and intersex (and specifically intersex and not trans) characters in that first game, and they were shown to be fully rounded characters, with positive traits and character flaws. This game came out in 2010, and I can't think of another intersex character in games.

     

    In Automata, 2B's design is referenced in game in a couple of ways. There is one line of dialogue that points at it (but it does also highlight that this game was made in a traditionally Male Gaze-y way), and there is an achievement that scolds you for trying to look up 2B's dress. But you can still look up her dress. Yoko Taro, the director of the game, said that he was trying to imagine a world 10,000 years and the future and didn't want bald space marines, but he also said that he just likes girls. There's no Kojima horseshit there, but it's still a knotty situation.

     

    I got the impression playing through this that every element has been considered quite thoroughly. You still might not like them, but it feels like there is a point behind everything.

  9. Posted

    This game is GREAT

     

    It features a simplified version of the usual Platinum Games style combat, with a dodge move that grants you invincibility frames and access to new moves and combos mixed with shmup-style shooting sections (of various flavours) and there are androids fighting machines on Earth in the year 11,300 (or thereabouts) and there are wild twists and turns in the story and your moveset and perspective and the music is astonishing and beautiful and invigorating and there are cute anime boys that are born from a robot orgy and there is Journey-esque sand surfing and moose riding and a robot that is modelled after the philosopher Sartre and the ability to rip and your own OS and die

     

    EDIT: i love it

  12. Posted

    8 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

    I got a Steam Link for £16 and, predictably, my current set-up can't really handle it over wireless. PC issues aside, does anyone have any experience with those powerline Ethernet adaptors? I'd be using 3 (my router, TV and PC are all separated) and I wouldn't mind making one of them a wireless extender too (wifi is patchy on some devices in the living room.) I was eyeing up these. Any advice/recommendations?

     

    I have those exact ones (well, different plug/socket since I live in Ireland) and they work a treat. Simple to set up and speed is much improved compared to wireless.

  14. Posted

    This was a vision, fresh and clear as a mountain stream, the mind revealing itself to itself. In my vision, I was on the veranda of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light from within, this gleaming, radiant marble. I'd known this place. I had in fact been born and raised there. This was my first return. A reunion with the deepest well-springs of my being. Wandering about, I noticed happily that the house had been immaculately maintained. There'd been added a number of additional rooms, but in a way that blended so seamlessly with the original construction, one would never detect any difference. Returning to the house's grand foyer, there came a knock at the door. My son was standing there. He was happy and carefree, clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced, a warm and loving embrace, nothing withheld. We were, in this moment, one. My vision ended and I awoke with a tremendous feeling of optimism and confidence in you and your future. That was my vision of you. I'm so glad to have had this opportunity to share it with you. I wish you nothing but the very best in all things. 

  15. Posted

    I haven't seen all of the Coen brothers films but here's where I am so far:

     

    I like these:

     

    Miller's Crossing

    A Serious Man

    Fargo

    The Big Lebowski

    Barton Fink

    No Country For Old Men
    O Brother, Where Art Thou?

    The Man Who Wasn't There

    The Hudsucker Proxy

     

    I did not like these:


    Blood Simple

    Raising Arizona

    Burn After Reading

    Intolerable Cruelty

     

    Haven't seen:

    Hail, Caesar!

    Inside Llewyn Davis

    True Grit

    The Ladykillers

     

    I think I'm a bit different to other people in this thread in that I did not like those four in the middle group at all. I disliked most of the characters and their relationships. Those are also the more overt "comedy" films, and I saw them in the last few years and they feel very dated and kind of tacky and cheap.

  17. Posted

    I meant to do this ages ago, like I did for the Deus Ex: MD thread:

     

    - Alex Wiltshire's The Mechanic column on Rock, Paper, Shotgun takes a look at the Jindosh lock in the Dust District mission of Dishonored 2

     

    When I first did this mission I wandered straight past the room with the lock and rambled around the rest of the area. I solved the conflict between the gang and the Overseers, and then had to go find the lock itself. I love that just by building this area in such a way as to allow for a variety of different paths is such a strength of these kinds of games. Some people found the lock and hammered on it with logic until they broke through, people like me who bumble through a first playthrough get to have a more stealth/combat approach. I have some issues with the area behind the lock, but again, I was happy with what I did on my first playthrough (I won't write about it because there will be spoilers).


    - Over at Waypoint, Campo Santo's ombudsman Duncan Fyfe compares Emily Kaldwin to D*n*ld Tr*mp

     

    It's a bit grim. Fyfe finds that Emily/Corvo fighting for the throne to which they are entitled, even though as a player you don't care about what happens next, is also an apt description of the life of Tr*mp. However, you can choose to play more compassionately (as much as the world of Dishonored allows), and that changes the context of the ending. I think that highlights one of the things about Dishonored that is more true of it than a lot of other games: it is the journey that matters, not the destination. I'd argue that the journey is mostly nonsense, but the moment-to-moment is fantastic.

     

    - Gareth Damian Martin at KillScreen writes about Karnaca, the mongrel city

     

    There are a few quotes from art director Sebastien Mitton about the city in Dishonored 2. Karnaca is a mix of Cape Town, Gibraltar, Havana, Barcelona, probably a lot more. But wandering through its streets, you never get the sense that places are pulled directly from the real world; instead, they are part of Karnaca, and nowhere else. There are very few other cities in games that feel like they exist without you. Bonus: some pretty pictures of Dunwall from Dishonored 1.

     

    Double bonus: a gallery of handsome Dishonored screenshots (?) by Dead End Thrills.

     

    - Claire Hosking examines how Dishonored 2 treats murder compared to other games over at Polygon

     

    The combat mechanics of Dishonored are really good, leading you to want to kill people. But the world reacts in a negative way, through excessive gore and the city turning to ruin. It's a strange tension, but one that suits: Emily/Corvo could kill their way to get back to the throne. It would be quickest! That leaves you as a ruler, born to a pampered life, killing the lower classes. It makes your decision to use stealth an explicitly political action (and I think that is very cool (also, of course it's political because games are political, but you know what I mean)).

     

    - Ian Birnbaum at Motherboard notices the depths of history seen in Dishonored

     

    It's worth a read for a few choice quotes, like "History is everywhere in a way that Americans sometimes fail to understand" when chatting to game designer Harvey Smith and lead narrative designer Sachka Duval. I would love to see or be able to notice these cultural differences in games more often. Yes, Karnaca and Dunwall are mashups of a handful of different real world places, but there is a history ingrained in their geographies.

     

    - Tom Francis found a... disturbing way of landing safely from a great height:

     

     

    - Glixel did an amazing profile of/interview with Harvey Smith, the creative director of Dishonored 2

     

    Smith has had a tough life. He seems like a lovely and intelligent man. :sad:

  18. Posted

    There is not a lot of variety in enemy types or encounter design. A lot of your time is spent fighting other humanoids, with the occasional big demon guy or spider. Most of the encounters end up being one-on-one or two-on-one. And the level design sometimes feels a little bit flat. Sometimes there are surprises, but most of the missions are solely about combatting your way through this zone and then moving on to the next.

     

    I still enjoyed playing it, but unlike the Souls games I don't really have any inclination to go back and play it again (a higher difficulty mode is unlocked after beating the final boss).

  19. Posted

    When Chris was describing the kitchen implement at the end, I was thinking it was what I know as a "fish slice." And apparently it's called a fish turner in the US? Separated by a common language, I suppose.

     

    Also, while watching the video version on youtube, I realised there are much more dainty little hand gestures being made at all times than I ever imagined during an episode of Idle Thumbs.

     

     

    3 hours ago, Cordeos said:

    I was on the subway in Kiev at a very busy station and saw a man with a falcon walking to the train. It was just perched on his arm wearing its little hat thing.

    Side note: also saw a man bleeding heavily from a badly bandaged hand sitting on the stairs out of a subway station there. Kiev was a very intense place.

     

    :tup::tup::tup:

  21. Posted

    1 hour ago, Erkki said:

    I am and I did, also because I'm watching one movie from each country and still haven't gotten to Saudi Arabia.

     

    If you need a film from China for your list, I also recently watched Raise the Red Lantern (1991) which explores similar themes in a very different way. It's set in 1920s China, and follows a young woman as she becomes the Fourth Mistress of a wealthy family. It's also very good, but I wasn't thrilled at the ending. I'd love to hear what you or other people think.

  22. Posted

    I have slowly been working through a big list of films that I "should" have seen, or want to see.

     

    Today, I watched Wadjda (2012), a film about an 11- or 12- year old in Saudi Arabia. It was directed by Haifaa al-Mansour, and according to Wikipedia it was "first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first feature-length film made by a female Saudi director."

     

    It comments on the restrictions put on women in oppressive situations, like in Saudi Arabia, and how some women try to break out of those situations and others reinforce them. It's a fairly simple story and told in a very straightforward way. It feels very inspired by Bicycle Thieves, the 1948 Italian neorealist film. It's a very quiet film, but I think the points of tension stand for much grander issues.

     

    If you are interested in seeing more films by female directors, and films about women, then I'd definitely add it to your watchlist.

  24. Posted

    4 hours ago, Vulpes Absurda said:

    It's especially interesting since as far as I can tell William Adams wasn't actually Irish. Also I feel like there might be an article about how western cultural imperialism is the norm to such a degree that even the Japanese are making samurai games about white dudes but William Adams has long been a part of Japanese history so whatever. Still a little odd though.

     

    According to Wikipedia, William Adams was born in Kent, England. So definitely not Irish then. Also according to Wikipedia, this game has been in development since 2004, and was initially based on an unfinished Akira Kurosawa script called Oni. Apparently the main character being foreigner to Japan is one of the few things to have carried over from the script. 

     

    43 minutes ago, Badfinger said:

    I have been getting more and more intrigued by the game, and then I saw it for the first time today. If you told me that was just Dark Souls I'd believe you and the sails of game enthusiasm were completely deflated. I have not managed to like a Dark Souls, and I have not managed to like things people said in reviews were like dark souls but "maybe too much vania and not souls enough" (Salt and Sanctuary I'm looking and swearing directly at you). Be honest, is there maybe a thing here for me? I'm essentially Jeff Gerstmann's polite no fucking thank you to the entire concept and he is enjoying it.

     

    It does feel different to the Souls games... but it's still a Souls-like. The combat is a lot more character action-y than in Dark Souls, and it moves quicker than Bloodborne, but you're still collecting souls (or Amrita in this case) and fighting bosses and dying and doing it all over again. There are changes to the formula, like it being mission based rather than a big interconnected world and a few twists on the mechanics. I'm enjoying it, but I have played hundreds of hours these kinds of games. If you like complicated combat systems and loot-driven games there might be something for you, but that's a BIG IF.

  25. Posted

    5 hours ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

     

    Oh wow this is interesting and extra weird because you're a samurai in America but it uses Irish? I was already amused enough to hear Dark Souls 2 have legit, irish accents rather than over the top stuff, let alone learn a team ninja game has Irish. I wonder if there's any big reason behind it or is it largely a fun style choice.

     

    I don't think it is set in America... ? It's just that one spirit creature thingy that used a couple of phrases in Irish, but it was subtitled in English. There are also audio log-type things that you occasionally pick up and I think that they are in Japanese. The main character has only spoken in English, but you meet Hanzo Hattori at the end of the first proper mission and he is clearly a Japanese man speaking English. It's actually really neat.

     

    The main character is based on William Adams, who was a real life Englishman who went and became a samurai. In Nioh he starts the game locked in the Tower of London, and definitely seems to be Irish. Maybe Oirish, if you know what I mean. There's also mention of a Saoirse character, who is either the spirit at the beginning or some one else entirely. I haven't seen any confirmation on whether he is or not.

     

    Regarding the Souls games, Ruth Negga played the Emerald Herald, and she grew up in Limerick as far as I know. And she was nominated for an Academy Award for something else. And in Bloodborne, Father Gascoigne speaks with some kind of Irish accent that I can't quite place, and the lore around him says that he comes from far away where they use titles like "Father." I thought it was a clever way to differentiate him from the other characters who mostly spoke with various British accents.