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Everything posted by Gwardinen
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So I just watched Wristcutters and wanted to add my recommendation of it, and more importantly the excellent "Trap" or whatever it's called song. I'm just rolling the credits over and over and jamming to it at the moment. When there is trap... set up for you...
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The spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper fills me with such terrible hope that I fear it. I can scarcely contemplate it being great, because if it is great, it may ruin me. But on the other hand, if it isn't, my soul might just lay down and die. Similar feelings about the "Project Dust" or whatever it's being called now that is the spiritual successor to Populous.
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Awesome TED Talks (and similar enlightening lectures)
Gwardinen replied to MrHoatzin's topic in Idle Banter
Yeah, that's a fair point, I'm not really sure what I'm looking for here. As you said, abstract equivalences aren't really useful to anyone, but going into an argument with a closed mind - even if you're completely right - still feels alien to me, and I hate that single-track focussed rhetoric that comes out of it. I don't know, I'm still having trouble with it. Not necessarily choosing which concepts I agree with personally, which I try to do based mostly on the actual empirical evidence each side presents, but on who I prefer to listen to argue. As I said, it seems like no matter which side of whatever issue people stand on, they all argue it the same way, using different words and data. Making my mind up about the situation only really requires the data so I'm not stressing over this, but it'd just be nice if not everyone in every debate was such a zealot so much of the time. I understand that this is the way human psychology works, the parts of our brain dealing with rational changes in decision actually switch off while listening to people with whom we don't already agree, but it's still tiring to be exposed to all the time. I was thinking about this during the film. At what point does a politician start being totally ok with the idea of straight up subverting the will of the people that elected them? Do you think most actually start out that way, more interested in getting power than turning it towards a specific cause, or is it a situation in which you "grow up" as more and more of the realities crash down upon you? It seems rather surprising that there hasn't been a President or Prime Minister who was still somewhat innocent before they got into office and was then horrified by what they had to do. Perhaps there has been, would we know if there was? It's almost enough to make me start lending credibility to certain conspiracy theories about how leadership is determined. -
Awesome TED Talks (and similar enlightening lectures)
Gwardinen replied to MrHoatzin's topic in Idle Banter
So I finally got around to watching the War You Don't See. It was quite good, and certainly thought-provoking, but it does bother me how even those arguing against just swallowing the things we're told if they're told convincingly seek to make their point by doing that. Now and then I despair at how much rhetoric goes into both sides of every important argument. There were plenty of instances in this film in which I thought John Pilger was pushing a little too hard, was being a little too unfair and irrational, despite the fact that it is a pressing and important topic. I wish more issues like this could be debated with both parties taking a bit more of a step back and considering both sides of the issue to at least the extent that is required to make their objections more interesting. People who believe absolutely that they're right, as clearly John Pilger does and so do those he's accusing, just irritate me. I don't know whether it's exactly for that reason or not but the Intelligence Squared debate on the Catholic church of which Stephen Fry's portion was previously posted in this thread did not make me feel entirely ill after watching it, so I recommend watching the entire thing to anyone that's interested. Here's the start: -
Despite my earlier agreement I feel a little differently after having watched Ryan's top 10 list video. He describes why his top 10 games are good much more effectively in these bite-sized descriptions than he has when given an hour and a half to debate it in the podcast. This makes me think he may just be one of those people who expresses themselves best when given time to write something down, rather than in the middle of a conversation. Not necessarily a terrible thing for a journalist, and certainly our own Idle Thumbs were guilty of just saying "umm, ahh, video games!" a lot during the podcast. I think it may just be more noticeable in the Bombcast because Vinny and Brad actually are rather good at having these discussions on the fly.
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I was actually thinking that myself during some of it. Vinny and Brad often made good points and more key than that, they explained why they felt a certain way about a certain game. So far Jeff and Ryan haven't really said anything that made me say "ok, I can see that" and when they do express opinions they don't explain them anywhere near as much as the other two. They may just be pacing themselves, though, since there's a lot of ground to cover here and they can't make an argument of every category. They did give best add-on to Minerva's Den, though, so congratulations to Steve "Hot Scoops" Gaynor!
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That didn't actually occur to me, but it was probably disqualified for being an expansion and not a new game. That's happening in a lot of places. I have my day two podcast paused at the moment in which they're saying "ok we're going to have to spoil the Shadow Broker now" as I had already downloaded but not played it. Now, however, I have finished it (just a few minutes ago) - so I'll probably go back to listening to it soon. It was a pretty awesome addon. Oh, and for future reference there are actually four of them on the GOTY.cx casts, as there usually are for the Bombcasts.
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Germans open their presents on the evening of the 24th, so being a half-German I've tended to open my German presents on Christmas Eve and my British presents on Christmas Day.
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brkl and myself appear to be in, though you yourself don't Orvidos?
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Just got my Christmas card, thanks dude! I particularly liked Monkey's cheeky little candy cane, and was impressed by how you respected Namco Bandai's copyright. Probably smart 'cause those Japs is ca-razy!* *Not really as racist as this.** **Except maybe a little, the Japanese really are nuts.
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So far (ie. early in the game, a few days in) once a day is enough. Theoretically if I really wanted to min-max I could see how long it's going to take each of my armies to move somewhere and set myself alarms to quickly log in and do stuff then, but practically I don't think there's enough going on that it'd really be worth it. That said, maybe a week in this game becomes crazy and you have to log in every three hours or you die.
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You don't need a key to play a game that someone with a key sets up, as far as I know. As for length, I don't actually know but based on what people were saying about Neptune's Pride and how it's going so far in Blight for me, I would guess a few weeks.
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You have my sympathies. To join, head to http://blight.ironhelmet.com/ and attempt to login, it should have you create an account via some sort of Google account. I don't know if there are free Google things you can sign up for that will give you a valid account or how that works exactly, I used my gmail account. After that, I just joined a couple of free games to see what the game was like, beyond that we'll have to wait for the Idle Thumbs game to come together.
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I can't imagine anyone quitting a job over it because there's just not enough time required to do anything in it. I'm in two games and spend a maximum of 20-30 minutes a day on them in total. If I wanted to play it to the extent of full-time employment, extrapolation suggests I'd have to simultaneously join 12 games, and even then I'd have to spend the unnecessary amount of time on each that I do now. I could probably actually get away with only spending 5 minutes on each game per day, which would mean I'd have to join along the lines of 36 games to make it a full-time job. The stress part... well... if you're given to concern yourself over the impending doom of zombies gradually pulling closer over the course of 18 hours at a time to devour your helpless kingdom piece by piece... yes there could well be some stress.
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Boy the constant cuts in that irritated me. I know the live action parts were cut that way so they'd fit the fast and crazy style of the game, but the game sections ended up seeming more stable by comparison because apparently the camera in the game doesn't feel the need to zoom in and out and switch to alternate footage every half second. Also it was kind of fucking spoilery, particularly with how the character described as "the Spock" really obviously changes.
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Are we going to try for an Idle Thumbs game? We'd either need a genuine private game or just to all try to join a free one at the same time.
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Awesome TED Talks (and similar enlightening lectures)
Gwardinen replied to MrHoatzin's topic in Idle Banter
I don't know how much of the page you see outside of the UK, but I took a look and could only find the info that it shows on there around the video. It's just a film called the War You Don't See by a journalist/documentary maker called John Pilger. Haven't watched it yet but it seems like it could be interesting. -
I'm certain pretty much everyone here has this, as does everyone who'd be interested in it that I know - that's why I still have it. I have an extra copy of Half-Life 2 that I am happy to send to someone on Steam if they have any interest in it whatsoever.
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Website was giving me trouble and then I found your game is full and has disappeared anyway, ah well. I'll join a free game for now and see what it's like.
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I'm definitely in. That sounds like a magnificent way to shave years off my life through high blood pressure.
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So I'm 11 minutes in to watching the Spike VGAs, and I just find myself frowning and sighing a lot. I know it's almost cheap, it's almost bullying to complain about this event. I knew going in that it was going to be irritating to me, but I just can't shake this one feeling. It feels condescending. It always feels like that when there's a big event for the games industry, it feels like the people from other entertainment media are humouring us by coming to sit at the little table and talk about how they're gamers too and gaming is really a cool thing these days. Why is it that every one of these events has to be punctuated every couple of minutes by someone seemingly defending the medium? As I said, I'm only 11 minutes in so perhaps it tapers off but there have already been half a dozen references to "real gamers know", "games are selling more than", "we're all gamers here", etc. I don't often watch the Oscars or anything similar but I don't get the impression that half of the event is spent explaining why films are a worthy medium and how popular and important they are these days. As far as I know no Oscar host begins their speech with "we're all filmers here". Now and then, such as when faced by legal challenges that might curtail the industry's free speech and expression, it is appropriate and important to proselytise the games industry. Most of the rest of the time, I really wish people would just stop acting so defensive. What fraction of the people do you think are going to be watching this show that aren't already at least fond of playing video games? If "we're all gamers here" can we stop calling ourselves gamers and seemingly trying to convince each other that what we enjoy matters? Surely that's a given within this context. Sorry for this mostly pointless and certainly unoriginal rant.
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Yeah there was certainly a lot of behaviour that I would expect from people that would use the word "bro" a lot. Particularly this Dane Cook guy... I never really knew who he was but now I understand why there seem to be a significant number of people that fervently dislike him. It did get a little better as the show went on, because there were a couple of funny sections with Neil Patrick Harris and Olivia Munn, but overall the show made me feel a little queasy. I do recommend you guys try to find a clip of Denise Richards introducing an award or whatever it was she was doing, though, as it's baffling and hilarious. Her voice kept rising and falling in a kind of terrifying sine wave, it was like she knew there was meant to be emphasis on some words but didn't know which, so she just modulated her pitch continuously in the hopes that something would sound right. Genuinely what I would imagine early generation sentient robots would sound like. Somewhat related; I actually rather like a lot of the ancillary GameTrailers stuff these days, I semi-regularly check their reviews, Bonus Round and GameTrailers TV stuff (although GTTV is still sometimes rather annoying). It's sort of weird that the GameTrailers side of Spike's game coverage is gradually improving while the Spike TV side of it is seemingly continuing to degenerate, or at least plateau in some sort of terrible cliché of 18-34 white male interests.
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I didn't really know what to think about this when I saw the trailer. I liked Oblivion, but I never finished it because my 360 was stolen and I didn't want to replay all the stuff I'd already done. I did far more in terms of the guild and side quests than I ever did of the main story anyway. I played Morrowind, but not extensively. I for one actually liked the fact that Oblivion was a little less hardcore, as I don't feel like I have the time or patience for something Morrowind-esque in my life anymore. Unfortunately I did also play Oblivion on the 360, so in a sense I played a very different game to that which one might play these days on the PC.
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The League of Legends video actually impressed me more because I know how fast and how precisely that requires clicking. I detected what I thought was a little bit of hesitation on menus, I'm not convinced it's QUITE as smooth and precise as a mouse, but damn if it's not much closer than the other motion controllers currently available. That said, I think if the software for the PlayStation Move evolves sufficiently it could at least approach this sort of thing. Tumble is already a good example of its capabilities in a 3D space. It's really only the Kinect (which was designed more for accessibility than precision) and the Wii (which is simply outdated due to being first on the scene) that are lagging significantly behind at this point.
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I have for the longest time wanted someone with both a cat and a dog to name the cat Pavlov and the dog Schrödinger instead, because it's just the best form of trolling.