CaptainFish

I actually got the no death run the other day. I used the knight, the monk and the scientist, I think. The knight I used because he can shortcut falls with his invis, and the scientist I used because her hacking is helpful with fuses and some doors, and the monk has the shortcuts previously mentioned (grab the key in the knight, solo grab the treasure). The only hints I'd give with the mine is to use the knight to quickly drop down and grab more dynamite, take the shovel early and remember the puzzles need 1, 3 and 2 people from top to bottom, and that the top puzzle puts your dude at the miner, and finishing all 3 teleports all your dudes. I died once on the island (fell into that hole with the hot air balloon while I wasn't paying attention), but I exited and retried and it started at the start of the island rather than the exact midpoint I died at. I then finished it up and still got the achievement. I'm not entirely sure, but as long as you quit right after the death before completing another puzzle, the game might always restart you before the death for an easy out if you make a mistake. I also encountered specific dialogue for skipping the sign with the url on it in the monk's level, so that was a nice find. This is made even more clear if you replay after getting bad endings:

Yeah, all the time traveler stuff made sense to me and I didn't have trouble with the mechanics either. Going to let your buddies in and seeing their skeletons was definitely a great touch, especially how they just kinda appear at the bottom of the screen without any fanfare.

Finished up all the endings today. I think I very much prefer the bad endings over the good. I understand that the good endings are mechanically about I think I would've preferred it if you could actually subvert the character puzzles themselves, maybe using other character abilities. With some of the character puzzle endings going so dark, the good endings don't seem earned. I still really appreciate the general tone and content of the game!

I thought the good endings were the alternates. Thinking about going back to this just to complete all the stories.

Great cast. I found it a bit weird that the "Rubber Chicken with a pulley in the middle" was lumped in with the "use monkey as a wrench" puzzle. The former is completely straightforward on it's face (use pulley on rope), it's just kind of clouded by a strange item, whereas the monkey puzzle doesn't makes sense even after the pun does it's work. It's, uh, pretty bad. I feel like a lot of that part of episode was written/choreographed in an interesting way. Specifically in how it avoided matter-of-fact or humorous direct descriptions of clickables in favour of, what felt to me, like a personal monologue. A lot of the stuff Lee says is something that's pretty much only meant for him as he goes through that experience, rather than just entertaining/informing the player.

I played Super Meat Boy with a keyboard and Rayman Origins with an arcade stick and never looked back. I found the Rayman discussion strange, because aren't all cartoon depictions missing physical features almost by definition? I just took it as how they drew humans in that setting. In Rayman 1 everything had that style from the fairy that gave you powers to the various enemies and bosses. I guess I'd think of Rayman as a weird 'not man' if he were unique in his design in that game, it wasn't a cartoony style *or* if he was animated using his appendages in non human ways (throwing his head at enemies rather than winding up and throwing punches). I will admit he stands out a lot more in Origins. I struggle to see why it would put someone off a game, but then again I'm used to other stuff like Vectorman, Plok and Ballz, which are probably a lot weirder. Also a lot of older games liked to use nearby collection of disparate parts/orbs to make up their character design anyway.

I really loved the tone of this game. Totally the opposite of what I was expecting from an adventure game with the protagonists they presented. There were several moments where I was chilled by the actions my characters were doing. Sometimes it was just due to ambient sound. I also appreciated that it wasn't a lot of writing. It made the narration and dialogue feel really important when it popped up. The control of your characters is pretty frustrating though. Walking around and jumping over pits was generally fine, although positioning most every jump at the height where it becomes a ledge grab and mantle was super annoying. But then you have the ladders and ropes. Ladders are mostly fine as you can jump to quickly ascend or descend, but ropes seem even slower, and the jump to climb up option is removed! I do love the sound the Time Traveler's hover boots make, and how it changes depending on movement speed. As for puzzles, I found most of them to be really well thought out. I never had to resort to rubbing random objects on each other, each one felt logical, and often ideas utilizing character abilities worked just as planned. All in all a pleasant experience. Oh, the narrator is amazing. Reminded me of Q quite a bit. (Or discord if you roll like that)

I've mentioned this before, but the interactive fiction game The Gostak was entirely about learning a 'new language.' (It still used english pronouns but most other important words are invented) You then used the structure of interactive fiction to to explore the language on your own terms. Of course this would be a lot different if you were trying to actually learn a different language with it's own structures but I still found it interesting and fun. Perhaps if you were trying to learn vocabulary you could use this method to pick up major verbs and objects in their base form, and then learn how they're used structurally (conjugation and such) somewhere else. Or hell, maybe you could pick up more than you'd realize just by having familiar language structures to learn from. What I really enjoyed about it, was it was all based on relative language, so by the end I had created what was essentially my own fiction based on how I imagined the words to act. For example, the titular phrase, "The gostak distimms the doshes", tells you what those words mean to each other but not definitively. It could easily be the baker bakes the bread, or the moon orbits the planets, each leading to a completely different fiction.

Mega McCheese confirmed? I usually avoid spoilers for things I'm already on board for. At the same time my memory for things I'm not interested in is so tenuous. I heard a spoiler on the Giant Bomb GoTY discussion that at the time made me write off Assassin's Creed 3*, but I can't remember it at all now. *In terms of the plot going anywhere interesting, not in terms of the gameplay being fun.

At first, I found it really weird that cart life had music like any other video game would. After hearing it described, I'd expected only ambient sounds, or maybe poignant strings, but what it has is an upbeat chiptune ost. It's the sort of music that I'd expect if I was playing any shop/restaurant running casual type game. Which is pretty much whatever light music they'd choose to use. I'm guessing that's the point, making a game that is similar to those games in a lot of ways while inserting, by gameplay and narrative, the real parts of those stories that are never in those games. I'm not saying the music is bad, mind you, I just had the preconceived notion that if a game wanted to do the things the Thumbs purported it to do it would have to be this artsy fartsy thing. But no, Cart Life is a video game much like any other, except every part of it is directed at a specific goal/thesis. You don't need much more than that. It really seems to be the perfect foil to Far Cry 3, where it seems things were put in that don't even belong, let alone build together to a specific idea, feeling or goal. I had an AGS crash so I haven't gotten past the first few days or so, but I'd highly recommend getting some soda to sell, just to see how that is sold, it's a little touch but it's great.

When I saw that scene in the , the way it's framed visually looked just like a stealth takedown tutorial. They placed a single man looking away from you while you're sneaking around. If your brother had said, 'go take that guy down and grab his gun, I'll cover you!' nothing else would have to have changed for it to work that way. They should've just had him looking in your direction while you sneak through underbrush, to make it clear he's not to be snuck up upon.Sure, storywise you don't have the ability to do that, but from what I've heard, that's one of the weaknesses of the game storywise: there's no real reason your dude starts being able to be an FPS character. In fact narratively it would probably be better to have him do that while scared out of his mind, realizing what he has to do to survive.

The easiest way to avoid them is to but that's generally a less interesting way to play the game in my opinion. I think when I originally did it I made noise in the vent under them by running.

Ell oh ell.

Holy shit! CONGRATS TELLTALE! YOU GO GUYS! Laughed my ass off at Jake just saying 'Thanks'!

Best character was a bit weird. Shepard isn't even the best character in his game by a long shot. Was hoping for some Telltale love there.

Great cast! The Secret of Monkey Island story was so great and touching. I have an important question though: How much danger layer would you incorporate in the Danger Lair?

Just got and finished this game. I really enjoyed the general feel and play, although i did get hung up on some contextual actions: jump and hide in vent being the same button screwed me a few times, and having several B actions in one spot with only position as the only metric to decide which one triggers and drop body becoming drop body through thin floor without any option not to. I feel like I always bump up against stuff like this in a lot of games though After I decided on a whim to throw a guard at another and experienced the terror mechanic, I decided to split the difference and do a lethal level followed by a non lethal one through out the game. Lethal was definitely the easier of the two, but I enjoyed some of the antics you can get up to. My favourite moment with that was using the Terror themed suit to stealth kill a person in front of another, purposely timing with a lightning flash in order to terrorize the other guard. With stealth, there were a few spots where I really had to think about how to use my gear to advance, which was nice! I used the silent suit for most of my stealth levels as well, so I didn't even have the option to brute force it, which I liked. As for the plot,

Desmond isn't of mixed race? Isn't that like necessary based on the protagonists of the previous games? As for games without narrative, it's interesting when you look at early fighting games how they were pretty much given just enough plot for the game to make sense. We want a variety of fighters and styles, so we'll make it an international tournament. And that's pretty much as far as it goes. Every time they bolt on more story, it seems just for the express purpose of adding on more mechanics (superheroes having a more bombastic fighting style), bringing in more characters or new levels to fight on. However when you make a fps or strategy game, developers put that conflict front and center. Rather than just story telling between missions, the action is literally stopped so that characters can have conversations and drive the narrative. I'd say it's because the 'developers' (using quotes to include anyone who can influence the development) believe that the mechanics aren't strong enough to drive interest alone, but that is the opposite of the case in the multiplayer, which is often a more gripping and compelling experience for a lot of players, just based on time played.

Oh, did anyone else think that

Holy shit. Amazing..

I definitely played the hell out of a colour version of glider on PC-CD-rom. Glad to see that Thumbs is still the go-to site for goatse news.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Eqk9C1wVT0U International interviews!

This game really was something. I particularly enjoyed the section. I definitely enjoyed seeing all the flavour text involved with that upgrade and related downgrade after i finished the game once. One of the ending sections impressed me quite a bit.