Gwardinen

I totally did not know that was happening! I am now!

I believe basically all of those options are available from the shift + right click menu, for those who cannot make elaborate claw shapes with their hands.

I'm not going to get into the whole "is Oscar Bait a good term" debate, but I feel I should point out that just because something is critical of a group doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't intended for them. Actually, quite the opposite; praise and criticism both tend to be methods of engagement with a person/issue/group you find important in some way.

Ten things feminism has ruined for me - a surprisingly enjoyable article that is not nearly as horrifying as its title would suggest. With our recent discussions about call out culture and how trying to be completely right all the time can make for difficulties actually talking about anything, I thought some people would be interested to read this. It isn't really strongly about any of those things, but I look at it as an example of how you can be a feminist and be funny about feminism and condemn sexism and acknowledge the lingering enjoyment you had of some sexist things all at the same time. I'm not necessarily putting this out there as a counterpoint to call out culture or anything, just as evidence of a perspective that walks an interesting line and ends up, I think, in an entertaining and approachable place while still tackling genuine issues.

Feeling genuine grief at Ryan's death was a very strange moment for me. I've never been a person who is overly affected by celebrity deaths, for example - even Robin Williams', who played characters I grew up with, didn't necessarily faze me. I find it sad, of course, and I regret the loss of talent and the joy they might bring to the world, and I feel sympathy for their loved ones, but it doesn't hurt me. On the other hand, Ryan's death hit me harder than, for example, hearing of the death of someone I used to know but perhaps am not close to now. I can't really compare the feeling to anything better than that, because on the one hand he was a big part of my life and on the other he wasn't. I heard his voice at least once a week, often more, and I saw his face every few weeks at least. He was a regular part of my life. On the other hand, I never met him. There isn't really a good analogy for that because it's not a category of relationship that people generally define. Somehow the pretty straight up and personal way the Giant Bomb crew relates to its audience made some part of my mind think of Ryan as almost a friend, someone I had effectively been in friendly group discussions with dozens of times (albeit I was silent). There was a little extra sting in the tail because he once took the time to give me some good advice when I came to the GB crew for help with figuring out a job situation, but mostly I think it was simply the way we slowly let these guys into our lives over the course of hundreds of Giant Bombcasts and videos. When Ryan died, it hurt. It surprised me, and I couldn't really explain it to anyone else save by saying "someone I sort of knew died", but it genuinely hurt. I still kind of miss him, despite never really knowing him to begin with.

I'm in the market for a new book, this sounds interesting enough to give a shot to.

That's probably exactly how I'd describe it, actually. If I didn't know who made it I'd have written it off as a pointless cashgrab in the vein of so many other "god games" on iOS.

Are you going to be doing it on Steam? I don't have the game but if you do it on Steam I'll spectate it just in case dibs' mad economic strategies provide answers for our current recession.

True, but honestly everyone has been complicit in that for so long now that even if they'd started ten years ago that argument would still be valid. At some point you just have to start. This is also a good point, and something I felt while reading the interview. Walker at a certain point just started banging on the idea that Molyneux's experience should have allowed him to see all these problems coming, which isn't really fair. Godus' setbacks are not really the thing that Molyneux should be held accountable for, so much as his reaction to them and relationship to his backers. It's that last part that is what lets me give Walker the benefit of the doubt a little - it's ok to an extent to grill Molyneux because he took public money. It's in the interests of the public to know whether he defrauded them, deliberately or not. I still don't really like how he asked some of the questions, but I feel like many of them were questions that should be asked. It took some pretty heavy press beating to get people to stop trusting Denis Dyack and Silicon Knights. Given that the wink-nudge-pinch-of-salt routine that Molyneux's been given over the last couple of decades has apparently not been enough to stop people from investing hundreds of thousands of dollars with him, stronger measures would seem to be needed. It's just a shame that it's happening to a guy who seems genuinely nice and enthusiastic and creative.

I would get Monster Hunter if I had people to play it with, particularly if they knew what they were doing. I've always been curious about the Monster Hunter games but never really been in a position to try them out properly.

I might make an argument for Todd Howard, but that is mostly only noticed by die hard Elder Scrolls fans. The RPS interview gave me a very conflicted morning yesterday. As a longtime fan of Molyneux, I was saddened to see him so stressed and backed into a corner and so clearly unhappy with his place in the industry. I genuinely believe he wants to make great games, and that he really does get excited about his projects and want to share them, but at this point his track record is undeniable. The last great game concepts he had were two generations ago, and even those games (thinking of Fable and Black & White) were absolutely riddled with problems. Everything since has been a poor execution on a not particularly excellent premise. That said, my reaction to that situation is mostly melancholy, not anger. I can understand the frustration of those who backed him on Kickstarter, who might feel cheated now, and I think that's a valid reaction. But I also think that in their own way they were failing in exactly the manner in which Molyneux fails - letting their optimism triumph over their better judgement. On the other hand, games "journalism" (and I use scare quotes not at all snidely - I would love to have John Walker's job, I just also try to stay realistic about the state of it currently) so rarely asks real questions and actually holds people to account that I can't help but feel like this interview was worth having, even if it is itself imperfect. All too often are gaming news outlets mostly just comfortably walking along with PR asking only the questions they know have prepared answers about upcoming games. Even the idea of covering games that have already come out and looking back at their development with a critical eye has only been getting traction relatively recently. So I'm glad that some reporting like this exists, even if I think John Walker's tone was not great. Then again, phone interviews are hard and my own point is that this is not something games journalists do very much, so one can understand where his own lack of experience might have come into play.

I'm going to shamelessly necro this thread because I'm getting back into Blood Bowl again. Is anyone interested in playing? I mostly use the free Fumbbl version, partly because of the aforementioned price point and partly because the interface is just a lot cleaner and easier to use.

I must admit I have already fallen off the Nightly Show. It doesn't help that I have to proxy into Hulu to watch it, or that American adverts are atrocious (I say this not to belittle, but with deep sympathy - there's no reason you guys should be subjected to this crap and every time I'm in the US I can't believe the commercials remain so terrible), but even without those annoyances I doubt I'd have kept watching it. I may have bought a little too much into the idea that this show was going to be the great champion of equality or whatever, but I definitely felt let down by it. A lot of it is pretty dumb, and as Bjorn said, some of it is actually downright mean. The exclusionary attitude perpetrated by a group that is traditionally so excluded is exactly the kind of shit I hate about geek culture sometimes.

Theoretically this should be officially released today. If it follows normal Steam procedure, it'll be in a little over six hours. I'm looking forward to finally trying it out, as I'm being very stingy with Early Access games these days.

I'm just wondering whether anyone else is having the same problem I am with Idle Thumbs episodes at the moment. I use the iOS Podcasts app, but I don't know whether the same problem wouldn't occur with other clients. Basically, sometimes with Idle Thumbs (and only Idle Thumbs) the episode currently playing will suddenly skip to the next episode of the podcast. This can happen at any time and with any frequency and I haven't noticed any particular pattern. I then have to manually go back to the episode I was listening to before, although it does resume fine from there. Anyone else having this issue, or have any idea what might be causing it?

I would definitely go ahead and watch All is Lost. It's surprisingly gripping. It manages to command your attention despite the minimalism of performance. Still trying to decide whether I can be bothered to watch the Interview.

This probably isn't the thread for it, but I just skimmed the metacritic list for top rated Wii U games and only came up with one other one I'd actually be excited to play: Pikmin 3. I'm not trying to be a Nintendo anti-fanboy, and I actually quite like my 3DS (although again there are really only a handful of games I play on it), but I really can't see a future in which it wouldn't end up just like the Wii did at my house. As in, completely unused after the first six months.

There is a Tesco Home Plus near me, but even if they were selling them for that price I'm not sure I could justify spending £90 on a console basically just to play Bayonetta 2.

My understanding is that there is a collectible mode that saves your collectibles but not your choices.

I think the combat had a whole lot of potential that it didn't entirely live up to. I really like the create-your-own-combo stuff that changed the actual effects of your strikes, the base feel of it just didn't necessarily measure up to its concepts. All in all Remember Me ended up being a game I liked, with the slight melancholy twist of feeling like it was a game I could have loved, had things been a little different. Edit: Oh, also, I played some more of Life is Strange. They've started adding basic adventure game puzzles in, and incorporating the time rewinding stuff into them. None of it's exactly earth shattering, but they're neat little sidesteps to the main "wander around and talk to people" gameplay, and so far haven't outstayed their welcome at all. I'm definitely hearing some of the dialogue weirdness that kaputt mentioned now, though.

From another thread:

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is currently 50% off at Green Man Gaming, and may even be further discounted with the code 20PERO-FFDIGI-GAMESX (may because I'm not certain the code interacts with the sale). I don't suppose there are three other people interested in playing it? I'd be willing to pick it up at this price if there's a Thumbs crew looking to do some coop.

I've played about an hour of it. It feels reminiscent of Telltale's style of modern adventure game without being straight up derivative, and the setting is familiar enough but different enough, so so far so good. I will say the primary rewinding mechanic works very well for a game like this, because if you have that conversation wheel moment of going "hey, that's not really what I wanted to say" you just go back and say it differently. In this way the game gets to have its cake and eat it too; the things you say and do can have consequences, but you're not immediately locked into those choices, and if something feels wrong you can change it.

No joke, this is why I'm asking. I saw the Lion King musical theatre show on Tuesday and it reminded me that I fucking love the Lion King. So I decided I should finally check out the thing that it's based on. Also somewhat coincidentally I rewatched O recently, which is a modern retelling of Othello, so that contributed too.

The guys on the Bombcast said that this would not make for a good first Zelda game to actually finish. Would you people agree? Because I was thinking of doing exactly that when the new version comes out for the 3DS...