CaptainFish

Just starting it up, really interesting so far. The inability of the interviewee to grasp that torture could fail was telling. Uh small thing, this file has different artist and album information than the others, and doesn't have the Podcast genre. Thought I had somehow forgotten to copy it to my mp3 player until I checked in my music for the artist "Idle Thumbs Staff."

Nice cast, count me in on enjoying Danielle as a guest!You've established a great roster of people to have show up on occasion. I've owned Saints Row 3 for quite a while, and I too haven't had a lot of enthusiasm for getting into it. It's not that I don't enjoy wacky humour, it's just in that position of being recommended so hard on that front it feels like it won't live up to the hype. Giant Bomb has done this specifically to me with Far Cry 3 well, where they talked about a specific level as being amazing, and then when I experienced it, it was just kinda meh. I also have a fair amount of open world reluctance, because they are generally long games, and I don't enjoy the driving/shooting mechanics for as long as the game lasts ever. GTAIV from a writing standpoint is a game I enjoyed very much. I loved the characters. Just having a game about various immigrants and their life in a new country felt unique. Little Jacob is the only character I can remember with an actual strong patois accent in a video game played straight. Even so, I didn't finish it. However, that was mostly the gameplay, rather than me not enjoying them attempting to tell some sort of interesting story. I feel like a lot of the SR to GTA comparisons seem like they denigrate the attempts at serious storytelling that were the only draw for me, assuming that I just want a goofy world to mess around in. I would be way more on board if the arguments were being made from a gameplay standpoint, like with Just Cause 2, a game I did enjoy goofing around in because it was designed for that. Because of that, the super powered avatar makes 4 seem really interesting. Great e-mail about fighting mechanics. I never really thought about execution as a choice before I started watching Crosscounter's Excellent Adventures series, where they played Street fighter online. Both the hosts of that show play charge character mains, because, as said in the e-mail, their execution requirement is a bit lower. Sure your timing has to be just a strong for links and combos, but at least the basic delivery of a sonic boom is considered easier than a fireball. It's also something I noticed a lot playing Fei Long as my main online character. He has great specials, but not a lot of easy ways to chain into his Ultra combo because of its long start up. A lot of other characters, can do specials into Ultras, making it easier to get to that chunk of damage. On stage, you see heroes like Seth, Crimson Viper and Akuma excel at times, even though they might not be as sturdy and require high execution on their moves, but they have so many options that they can sometimes dominate. It's similar to Dota heroes like Visage or Invoker that require more micro but can have a higher impact. It's fun having a wide range of choices that can reward certain playstyles or skillsets. But, honestly having a variety of games with different approaches is great. Distilling fighting games with stuff like Super Smash and Divekick is awesome, and also makes learning some of the ideas of fighting games easier in some ways (importance of spacing, knowing your opponents tools, the importance of getting in the head of your opponent and such). High level Seth dominating at Evo:

There are no words for how fantastic the end of episode 6 was. Powerful game, powerful stream.

Funny that Jake is terrified of the robot revolution, but has also mastered the robot voice... He'll be the first betrayer!

That play Greg was talking about was from Na'Vi IG I forget if it was a semi or the grand final. IG lost once and played Na'Vi twice, if I remember correctly.

To follow up on my Baroque post, death was actually required in that game, and you'd need to die to unlock new parts of the dungeon and new dialogue, it was apparently a rogue like. More importantly, I got Surgeon Simulator today (daily steam deal). You guys forgot to mention that the music is completely fucking rad (er well outside of the meet the medic level's music, which you did comment on). Also, after playing through I really think you guys need to get to the very last level of it.

There was that Wii game Baroque that used death to progress the plot. I can't really say much more about it because I disliked pretty much everything about that game.

That stream was amazing. Jake you're a fucking lord of surgery. Definitely a great way to memorialize Ryan.

For me the ending it felt pretty clear in some cases what lead to them joining. I actually appreciated the epilogue in how it shows the impact those moments had on their lives. For example, Russel seems like his trust of people has been damaged regardless of any choice by how much of an asshole Nate was. However, he still wanted to find his family, so I was able to use that to get him on board. Wyatt on the other hand, stayed in the car in my playthrough and instantly jumped to find Eddie, because he feels extremely guilty over leaving him (most likely to die) and wants to be able to take that back. I wasn't surprised to hear at all that Twig had the opposite experience. They weren't explicit, but I felt I could definitely suss out what those playable moments meant in terms of the ending. And even if they aren't mechanically accurate in all cases, I'm fine as long as I feel that way. The big question I was left with was whether or not Vince is Glenn's brother. They use such a similar facial expression in that sort of clever smile all I could do is picture him. Also they're both from Macon...

I really enjoyed the short vignettes. As someone who's gotten way into the comics since playing season 1, this felt way closer to those in tone. Especially in terms of the senselessness, ugliness and brutality. Nate in particular was fantastic in this regard, his facial animations and choreography perfectly sold how unhinged he is. Seeing all the new mechanics and ways of presenting choices was quite interesting, and some of the choices felt quite difficult and gray. Vince's choice of who to shoot on the prisoner's bus felt so much more difficult with the removal of the explicit time limit. The fact that it basically comes down to a gut decision felt great, and reminded me of my favourite dilemmas in the first season: whether or not to bring Clem to Crawford. When you can make a choice based on familiarity, preference or moral principle, it's easy to commit, but there it felt so nebulous that i couldn't even decide on my first try. The presentation of Shel's final decision in her story was quite strong as well. I also felt a vibe similar to that of L4D2, where they just tried a variety of settings and effects to present. The foggy road and cornfield came across well. The variety of character attributes and expressions were great as well. All in all, a very enjoyable visit to the world of The Walking Dead. I hope there is room for more content in this vein.

GD studio does replays every once in a while when there's a lull. It's definitely dependent on how you record.

www.dota2wiki.com

There is a nice 'item spreadsheet' in the dota 2 client under learn. Heroes isn't really the same. There's an attribute spreadsheet on the wiki, but you still need to know the abilities. I have to chime in that I hate the bots just as much as Sean. I'll often jump into practice with bots, because it loads the map in advance, and it lets me warm up my fingers before I have to play. But seriously bots are terrible. Tell them to defend a tower, and they'll run up lane into a 5 man push. Bots with a stun will auto-attack once before stunning to a fault, even when it means the entire enemy team kills them. If you're against a necrolyte, or a strong aoe team, your bots will continually feed. It's honestly super annoying. Especially if you just want to try carrying and trying items, but by the time you can fight the enemy team is just massive.

Counter-argument: Nick being on that first cast without any fanfare at all was pretty hilarious. I just imagine it's a call back. >_>

Narrative context all up in! Perhaps the best e-mail read on a cast ever.

God, I remember having my mind blown by the quality of the smoke of deceit music. So great.

Two things. When Sean said Molyneux had a Cube idea after mentioning Walking Dead, I was hoping in my heart of hearts that it was a game based off of the 90s horror movie Cube. Now that I think about it, though, I would rather Telltale make it. Other thing, I liked 'That was the Citizen Kane of my High School experience' followed by 'Me too!'

Oh, by the way you can totally play Windrunner mid. She can lane anywhere. One advantage is she can probably outlane and definitely out rune control pretty much any mid outside of qop and puck, because she has a great nuke, good auto attack damage and animation and can windrun to runes. She also gets really strong when she is able to farm, not only from active abilities on support items, but also because of the extra damage provided by every item you build on her. The thing is she's so good as an offlane solo because of windrun, and works so well with just levels of her power shot and shackle (especially compared to a death prophet who needs farm to really function) that yes, it was a dick move to take that farm/xp from Pierre.

I feel like all kinds of surrendering just makes every player worse. Yes sometimes you get that huge deficit, and you're down to tier 3 towers. But with that close positioning and some good play you can turtle those towers like mad. Get a couple pick offs and that's a tower. Instead, you give up, and the aggressors don't learn how to properly push into a base even with an advantage, and the defenders don't learn how to come back from a bad position. That means that later on, when you're in a higher skill bracket, and it comes down to a slight advantage that means more at that level, you will have fewer of the skills you need to either push in and win or defend and comeback. Dota is essentially a learning exercise, and sometimes you're gonna be behind. It's important to use those situations to try strategies that can get you back in the game. Maybe you've just gotten enough gold for that major item past boots that can actually delay their combo from ensuring an early kill. I'd honestly rather play it out in every case.

Oh, for the Nintendo stuff, I thought it was kinda funny that Jake noticed the uniqueness of a return of playable Peach in a Mario adventure, but also wanted to, uh, downplay it's importance. That was the first that I heard of her being playable, and I think it's awesome. I always thought it was weird that she wasn't available as one of the multiplayer characters in the 4 player NSMB games, or if not her, at least Daisy.

Well kinda, I don't think that kind of thread would've existed because of moderation. It was a discussion that began couched in his earlier design work mixed with the idea that he isn't "actually" Scottish. It was the sort of thread where you read it thinking there are interesting ideas being discussed about aesthetics/design but then you notice enough outrage and offensive language from those having it later on and realize it just stems from prejudice. A garden path thread, if you will.

I now retroactively realized why I found Nick's original "Oh you died" moment during Chris' Metro story so funny. It was payback for every story he's ever tried (and apparently ever will try) to tell on Idle Thumbs. I can't believe I forgot the "Nick tries to talk about something but gets constantly interrupted" trope of Idle Thumbs. The e-mail about inclusive fantasy was super interesting. It also reminded me of the biggest bummer I've ever encountered: outrage over the Demoman's race in TF2. I was just looking for some information when I came across it in the Steam forums years ago. What a dissapointment that was.

He doesn't suck.

They both have a chance to proc, but only one block is applied. 40% chance to not block on one, then of that 40% you have another 40% chance to not block which is .4*40%=16%. So you have 84% chance to block with 2.

Yes, please. I see that stuff and my eyes glaze over. Highlight my last post for bonus. Regarding Disrutor/Glimpse. He is one of my favourite supports to play right now. His utility spells are just both so interesting. Using glimpse to send people back who TP, to position them or just to cancel a channel is rad. His kinetic field has a lot of use as well. I love that it creates an impassable wall on both sides for both creeps and heroes. Put it down behind a tower , and creeps get stuck on the far side of it, and can't defend it for 2.5 to 4 seconds! His nuke even provides utility since it provides vision on the target for 6 whole seconds after the patch. Cast it, and glimpse on the 3rd strike and you bring them back to where they were when it was cast. His ulti is good fun as well. Oh, and Axe totally doesn't suck! I think jungling him is sometimes a very bad idea if you can't make an impact on mid and the easy lane, but having 2 levels of battle hunger basically ensures a kill on most heroes, with a gank. Stack the easy camp and spin on it while regenerating off of a tango, and that's level 2, get another camp or two and that's level 3, gank with lvl 2 battle hunger. You provide so much space for your safe lane and mid by doing this. He works great in lane as well, especially if he can solo and get experience, since battle hunger is so dominant with a few levels. I do think his berserker's call isn't great, and trying to build him blink like suggested leaves him with too many mana issues. Play him as a gank heavy caster who is supposed to get those hungers out and ult when possible and he makes supports wither, allowing you to push towers down early. Get tranquil boots, urn, eul's and aghanim's scepter and you can provide a lot of utility.