CaptainFish

Fun stuff. The idea really benefits from not only the visual polish, but also many more reactions.Having played the mod it's nice to see the expansion. Inconsequential thing I found: There's also a drawing of Ittle Dew on the floor in one of the paths, that was cute.

I think Sean was playing it without the dlc? I'm not entirely sure how it works to be honest.

Just experienced a turn in her story today. It's not all that different from what they suggested (at least from what I remember). Another Thumbs prescient moment.

The demo was quite fun. I almost felt like they were going to reveal that the demonstration was the game. It felt like a lot of content. The most interesting thing to me was the use of 30 Flights of Loving style quick cuts at the end, as I haven't seen them in any other games, really. There's something really awesome about source games, I dunno what it is, but they feel so nice.

Kinda feeling this way myself. Talk about your nintendo instead.

Man, Arkham City. A game I mostly enjoyed that I thought was worse than it's predecessor in a lot of ways. I remember that Catwoman ending, and I didn't really mind it that much. I agree that the way they treat it with the rewind is pretty bad, but I enjoyed having the choice. It kind of reminded me of all those obvious death traps in Portal 2 you can walk into just for fun to hear reactions and what not. The one thing I'm surprised Sean didn't mention is the super overwrought voice over the credits in which you hear that basically the entire world is ruined without Batman, and not a single one of his Batcohorts could pick up the slack and stop the Joker, or help him. Haven't played the NSMB or Luigi's Mansion Bwo, but it's kinda interesting that having characters join in with the music, can have entirely opposite effects in different games. In one it messes up the timing every once in a while, in the other it adds in more character and draws you in. There was another thing I thought of, a line I'm super surprised wasn't the episode title, but I can't recall it now.

According to PETA , he does. (find their gross game on your own)

I find it weird that both her and Bowser are playable in SMRPG which, as an RPG, is about story and managed to pull it off, but in these platformers where story isn't the draw they haven't just written it off and let you play as her since 2. Or at least put Daisy in there instead of a second toad. Not a fan of Blue Toad at all. :|

Wasn't JP's theory that it was a controller, who is also at Double Fine? The controller looks really interesting. Only real issue, assuming the sensitivity is good and the haptic stuff works*, is that it isn't a viable controller to use for fighting games, or d-pad platformers. *I am assuming it does work, and can simulate a mouse. I've seen a lot of people looking at it and saying it obviously is going to be bad, but I can't see Valve releasing a product like that.

The card hunter discussion was nice, really mirrored what I enjoyed about it. I really think that the guaranteed move per draw is a stroke of genius. I feel like in the design of these games there's usually cards you just need to draw. I used to play Yu-Gi-Oh way back in the day, and you generally made a deck that was half monsters half magic/traps, but if you didn't draw the 4 star or less monsters that could be played on their own you could lose easily to direct damage. Magic: The Gathering I assume is similar in that you always want to draw at least one land per turn (or some equivalent). Not drawing those cards is rare in general when you build your deck properly, but even then, you can lose just to not getting a basic meat shield up half way through your deck. Card Hunter, by giving you that one move, makes sure that you have some ability to protect your unit by attempting to get it out of the way, on every draw. It's a large part of why those one Hero finishes are possible. You are always able to rely on it. That sense is also bolstered by Keep trait on some armor cards, and the Penetrating trait on some attacks, so it doesn't feel entirely up to the whims of random chance.

I only started it last night, and yeah it's a ton of fun! I've had a lot of experiences where i misjudge an opponent's cards and end up having to solo to the end of an encounter, and it's really satisfying. The way it always doles out a movement card is super smart. I did feel like I was on the rough side of some enemy armor rolls, though.

Nick Breckon's supporting cast in their most Nick Breckon's supporting cast performances of the year.

YESSSSSSSSSSSS I was kind of feeling similar about Dota, stopped playing as much and then after TI3 I felt I wasn't always playing as well. You have options, though. Try mixing it up and playing in-houses with 10 friends rather than pub matching, it can be a good opportunity to try new things. Honestly I'm a little down on playing it until a hero/patch comes out to mix up the meta a bit. Right now Spirit Breaker is pretty ridiculous, and he can be quite unfun to play against. Same thing with Abbadon to some extent, although he's not going to change.

You guys need to implement review scores for something just to have "GAGAGAGA Jake face" as your GamePro review face icon.

Thanks a bunch!

Anyone got that The Last of Us discussion end timestamp?

Oh, for movie adaptations, I always liked The Last Crusade. It was early when Lucas Arts games were still not very formulaic, and so much of it's design was inspired by the film's trappings in a great way. Specifically The way the game rewards poring over small details and remembering them to advance spoke to the themes of the character/franchise. I also felt it adapts the beats of the film pretty well, even if it avoids the uh, emotional parts of the story... I always wished for more Indiana Jones adventure games. I guess that's pretty unlikely now with that stuff being at Disney. I'll never get my Telltale Indy and Short Round game or Indy and Sallah game. :<

This isn't super on topic either, but speaking of quickly turned out franchises, I was talking about The Matrix with a friend, and I had forgotten that the sequels to that original film came out 6 months apart along with The Animatrix and Enter the Matrix, something that I think hasn't been seen since (unless I'm mistaken). Perhaps lessons were learned there, specifically.

The guy who punched that other guy is at home kicking himself right now. He set up this amazing set piece where he punches someone in the face, but forgot to set the lighting and sound cues properly so that you're drawn to the event. It might as well never had happened.

Calling XBOCT (hvost) "Jubeau" really broke my mind for a bit there. Had to rewind a couple times to figure out what you were referring to. The Chinese Dota trend was definitely something you could attribute to most chinese teams, but I felt iG was the main team that was reluctant to press an advantage early. One of the reasons I'm a fan of DK is because when I saw them play last year they'd always push a tower after a fight, pretty much regardless of how it went. Then I saw Burning's anti-mage be super agressive in his safe lane trilane and was enamoured with their playstyle. I felt what iG wanted to do was to let the game go past all the towers going down and then use their superior map sense to out farm the opponent. It ended up working in a lot of cases. However I know they have a lot of individual skill to make things happen, but they seemed apprehensive to risk that. LGD.cn was basically letting themselves get outpushed, knowing that they have the best base defense in the entirety of dota. They often tried to get a magnus and a strong carry so that they could comeback. I'm fine with that style of match, but I also enjoyed seeing more aggressive attempts to defeat that style. Alliance, interestingly enough, ended up playing 2 farm heavy style games against DK, and DK is the only team that was able to take a game off of them outside of the grand finals in the second one. Anyway, glad to see DOTA TODAY! is back. c:

Nick Breckon returns in his most Nick Breckon preformance of the year.

Although this is the case we're discussing, this isn't always true. It doesn't necessarily have to be for any goal, just inflicting pain to a prisoner. For example I read it occurs regularly in Pakistan, and at police stations often the goal is to convince the prisoner to bribe the police into a lesser punishment. That's to say nothing of the stuff that happens in their jails. I found it really weird to read some of the comments under that interview Kirk Hamilton conducted. That part of the game is just taken as a feature, and some people are mad that they won't get to cooperatively brutalize a defenseless person. Games.

I feel like being put in high pressure situations where you have to rely on your ability to not only read a situation and opponent, but also act on your training/practice to execute the move you want to do is why fighting games kind of work as a metaphor for the combat sports they depict. Which is kinda cool. It's by no means a necessity, and I don't think it should preclude games that eliminate execution as a requirement, but it's kinda cool.

One thing I think removing complicated moves would do would make you think more about your tools on a level playing field. Sirlin has that amazing story about how he played some Street Fighter Alpha match as Rose against a generally better character and player, and used the one move Rose had that was able to come out faster and beat his opponents character to defeat them, or at least do better than he should have. And I mean literally one specific button. (Sorry for the huge paraphrase go to street fighter alpha 2 in this page for the actual story). Having a fireball come out with the same input as a punch would make you play much differently. I experienced a similar thing when I swapped from PS2 Controller to Arcade Stick on Fei Long for SFIV. I couldn't do quarter circles reliably at all anymore, but I was able to do dragon punch motions much easier. I ended up playing in a much different fashion that was way more dependent on using a variety of normals and special uppercut, rather than the bigger reliable damage of his quarter circle combo move. I learned how to use a variety of normal moves effectively, which was something I just never thought about significantly in 2D fighters. I feel there's a big desire/pressure to do special moves in a fighting game like that (especially one that is a throwback to one you played as a kid). I've definitely failed to do a special move at the right time, only to try again after failing, even though it isn't the right move anymore. However, like the Sirlin story illustrated, you should only really use the tools you need to win. When your fireball tool comes out the same as the kick-that-hits-above-you tool you only worry about using the right one in the right situation. That's why I think it would be really informative and interesting to have more games that are designed like that. I'm not actually convinced that adding macros to a game designed otherwise would be the same, though.

I think execution-free movesets are an interesting and generally unexplored concept. I do think execution comes up as skill most fighters have, but it would be interesting to explore games where reading the opponent and decision making are the main skills being examined. Divekick is a good example of an execution-free moveset game. The file I got was by artist "Idle Thumbs Staff, instead of "Idle Thumbs" for the majority of recent releases. The Album/Podcast title was "Idle Thumbs Podcast" rather than "Idle Thumbs".