CaptainFish

In my playthrough, the dynamic between Lee and Kenny and Lee and Lilly hinged entirely on that episode. I feel like that those relationships really define the experience of the rest of the game, so I find it fairly important.

I'm replaying them after a lil' bug, and so far my favourite lines are a tie between 'How do ya like that cow, Clem?' and Larry's string of stuttery curses at the dinner table. Episode 2 still stands out to me as a great standalone episode.

I was interested in this, but being reminded on the most recent thump ep made me pick it up. There's some really decent storytelling in here, in terms of form and content. Most of it occurs just naturally in game, which is nice. I've 'beaten' it but now I'm going back to get the stuff I missed, which maybe could've been surfaced a bit better. If I hadn't picked up a letter by mistake trying to get a weapon I don't know if I ever would've figured that out.

Vell händled.

Oh man, a The Neverhood shoutout! That game has a weird and awesome soundtrack!

I agree. I've had a lot of success on my current run by simply focusing on satellite coverage early on. The money and panic reduction benefits are great, and once you start getting continental bonuses you're set. I don't tend to experience very many UFO in flight missions, I've maybe had like 5 tops. Rushing satellites also allowed me to actually make use of expensive upgrades and facilities. Edit: I've gotta say, I'm not sure how it works, but the way this game doles out nicknames is fantastic. Maybe they're just based on class, like my sniper named Ice or my heavy called Collateral, but a lot of the others are great. A sniper called Warlock!? Awesome.

I've had some definite issues with line of sight (not sure why this sniper can't shoot that thin man, she even has shared sight and the yellow support has vision) , and also times where the assault close quarters reaction shot doesn't go off, costing me a unit. I've also experienced that cover issue, with a sniper in low cover only getting 20, even though they have the low cover is full perk. The thing I miss the most is not being able to free aim, though. Only explosives give you the tools to remove cover or obstacles reliably, but those have dangers depending on positioning and other aspects. Suppression sometimes hits the cover to take it down, but sometimes it misses entirely. I wish I could just choose to shoot through a wall to enter a building or shoot an explosive object that my opponent is using as cover with any soldier. I'm not sure if the game would support it though. It seems to just calculate a percentage chance to hit and just roll against that, rather than modelling a cone of probability for each shot, choosing one, and then accurately modeling anything it comes into contact with. I've definitely shot enemies through objects that weren't the cover they were behind.

Is anyone else having trouble moving their mans up or down floors using mouse & keyboard? I scroll up, or press the up level keys but the cursor still stays on the bottom floor. I didn't feel like replaying the tutorial from the demo so maybe I missed something, but I'm having some real issues getting people on roofs. Outside of that I'm generally enjoying the game outside of how the aliens trigger. The free movement they get seems really broken, especially in a terror mission I got.

I agree with elmuerte's post referring to difficulty spikes in games. It hasn't frustrated me to the degree that I've stopped playing games on hard, but it can be quite disappointing when a game feels great except for a few key parts. Dawn of War 2 comes to mind as a game where the basic combat felt awesome but the boss battles were quite annoying due to the buckets of health they had. I do think there's something to be gained from playing a game on hard though. Starcraft 2 exemplifies this for me. On normal, that game was pretty much a cakewalk for me, but on hard, some missions required quite specific use of the new unit and later levels needed you to formulate good strategies. The achievement system took it one step further requiring you to play even better to achieve the specific goals. I felt like I was being asked to perform better in a very achievable way. Starcraft also failed in the same way with it's hardest difficulty, Brutal. I didn't play much of it, but read about how it was balanced. First off, the AI plays better than on other difficulties, focusing down key units like medics and SCVs better than on hard and such. This seemed great! However, the game also put you up against units higher up on the tech tree than you'd normally encounter, and increased the HP of the AI's units even more than on hard. The very first mission forced you to deal with a siege tank when all you had were marines, which pretty much required you to mass units because tanks counter marines. It felt like the game might require inelegant solutions because your toolset was so tied to the progression of the game. In general, simply adjusting the HP and damage of an enemy feels pretty weak especially in games like Starcraft where there are built in mechanics that you could adjust to create a lead. Give the AI more armor/damage upgrades, give them more bases or higher yield minerals or increase their starting units and production capabilites. The upgrade ones kind of sound equivalent to just adjusting hp, but they are different in that they could actually occur in a match of the balanced multiplayer. On the other hand, adding more simulation stuff into your game seems like a good way to make it harder if possible. Sniper Elite V2 upped the level of the bullet simulation, but a less physics based shooter could increase recoil and make gun magazines perform appropriately. Anyway, I generally like to play games on a harder difficulty, this usually means if given easy normal hard and expert i'll play on hard, if only given three i'll play on hard or normal, based on my gut. Kind of an aside, but the weirdest difficulty/mode I've seen was in Winback 2 in which all the enemies are completely invisible, no model at all. I guess they expected you to memorize the placement of every single enemy?

I'm glad that there was some mention of the offputting part of the XCOM demo, I thought maybe I was alone on that. The singular pathed tutorial was poor (I've heard it might be skippable in the final release), but I've heard enough about the rest of the game that it hasn't impacted my opinion of the game. The way the map and encounters occured in the 2nd mission (I did the Kansas City one) felt poor to me too. Super linear map, 3 groups of aliens seemingly just waiting for you to encounter them to cutscene aggro. It was missing a lot of the mystery and foreboding I felt in a large area in X-Com. I really would've preferred to have one large map to mess around in, but I feel like this was a demo designed for making the sale to those who weren't already on board, rather than providing a true taste to someone who's already invested in seeing the full game. I did really enjoy the design and Command and Conquer style characters-talking-to-you-as-the-commander dialogue though. Can't wait to actually play the real game.

Hmm, nonlinear storytelling eh? What about an adventure game in which the real characters are viewing a film split into 4 reels. However, rather than just being able to watch them in order, you're forced to go to other, later reels to figure out how the characters initially solved the puzzles, essentially breaking down the direct cause and effect nature of adventure games while also causing the story to proceed in these 4 parallel acts and blowing my mind.

I really love this game! Beat it on easy a couple days back, and on normal this evening***, both times with the Stealth Cruiser. It was weird getting used to not having shields starting out. Beams and asteroid fields suddenly became this incredibly dangerous threat compared to how they are fairly easy to avoid on other ships. I've had a lot of luck and am at like 6 ships unlocked. I think the achievement system is really nice, as it gives you smaller goals to work towards other than just victory while you're learning all the systems, and doles out nice rewards for accomplishing them. I can definitely see myself trying to get all the different layouts and ships to see how different they are. One thing I wish this game had was a log. Just literally printing at least all event text to a .txt file with a time/date stamp title would be a lot of fun to go back to. It would be even better if it could record battle logs or (and this is probably undoable and not worth the effort it would take) had a full replay system. My favourite thing to do so far is probably boarding. I've had some weird issues though. A ship I had boarded in the helm jumped away while I was fighting the pilot, and i lost a couple of other crewmen learning that cloaking blocks the return teleport signal. Also, when you try to attack a door you no longer count as being in the room you're in, for the purpose of getting recalled out. I don't think I've unlocked a teleporter focused ship yet (that's probably the mantis) but I can't wait to try a playthrough with that as my focus. ***Edit: Forgot to post my little crew breakdown. It contains an I. Thumb.

I fixed my issues and played up to the current point over the weekend. Great stuff. I sided with Lilly in episode 2, and I'm not entirely sure how episode 3 works if you don't. I mean obviously there's a version for that, but so much of the episode seemed driven by my specific dynamics with Lilly and Kenny up to that point. I've never had a branching story game be so strong that I can't imagine the other side, and honestly I don't wanna see how it looks. Can't wait for episode 4. Side note:

Holy crap spoiler bars everywhere. I usually wait for telltale stuff to all be out before i play through them, because I have a shitty memory and really like the long varied experience a 5/6 episode run delivers. However, I heard so much amazing things about Walking Dead that I had to fire it up.It was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with a game. Especially a game's story. I love the way the system forces you to make choices on a timer. It forces the decisions you make to be truer, since they can't be mulled over forever. There's a decent amount of gut reaction in each one. At the same time, it makes the decisions that you do have endless time on feel even more important. I feel like those are moments where I have complete control, so I'd better make the most of them. I love the way it reveals information about the characters (mostly the protagonist). The reveal in the drug store was one of the most natural unforced story reveals I've ever experienced. I actually felt it slowly becoming apparent as Lee hides it from everyone *including* the player. It made him seem even more sad and alone when I realized that he wasn't going to let me in, this was truly *his* experience. I also think the way there is action in the game is really nice. I thought the first motel sequence was fantastic, and also kind of hilarious what with the waist high objects. Clementine is great, and garnered a very strong attachment that made me honestly scared to fail at some of the action moments. Oh and my favourite, although tiny thing, was how the choices you see, the ones which I assume to be Lee's intent in his mind, doesn't always come out as such when you start actually talking. One thing I wasn't so sure about was the way you can lie after ultimatums. The first time I played through episode 1, I chose every cop out response (I thought I could save you both!) even though I absolutely knew that wasn't the case when I made my decisions (except for the very first one when I might've had a little hope). I felt pretty bad about it, but how else could I justify my decisions. On my second run through I definitely avoided those, and felt a bit truer for doing so. I then started up episode 2 and really enjoyed everything I played through a large part of it. The way this game develops a sense of dread, discomfort and fear is amazing. However, I had to stop when I ran into that PC bug that meant Larry recounted doing the exact opposite thing that I experienced in the episode 1 conclusion. The weird thing was, I wasn't sure if he was lying or if I was missing something until I rechecked the stats. I replayed episode 1 once to try and fix things, but at the end the stat breakdown didn't match up. Just in time for the new Steam stuff to get rid of the forums which probably had easy to find stickies for help with that stuff. And of course since I'm so far behind, the examples people give for how they are sure they fixed it were all spoilery, and the fixes are outdated and don't seem to work. So I guess congrats Telltale, fuck Telltale. I'll try and figure out how to make everything work though, because this is seriously one of the best experiences I've had in a game. Period.

Put me down for not minding the audio stuff either. Vell Casted. What was Jake's Bug? Edit: Oops, just saw them above. Love that Cabel video.

There are a lot of games I only play partway through, then come back to. The Ball is one I've probably actually quit though. The portal levels they added were the best part because they had a really nice pacing compared to what I played in the actual campaign.

Just noticed I can't find an easy link to your twitch.tv page from the site.

Great site! Issue: the soundtrack live version of Wuxtry! links to The Fanboy's Lament. Oh wait, episode renumbering, it might be the 'The Idle Thumbs Podcast' Theme. Whatever, the last link on the soundtrack page needs fixin.

I had the exact thought waiting to play Mann Vs Machine as Jake. I've played 600 or so matches of a queue system and never felt annoyed in Dota 2 but TF2 does it so poorly. Just the simple fact that it gives you a constantly updating queue time that never seems to be accurate is infuriating. Why be that precise with your predictions if it isn't going to matter? And the fact that you can't get back into matches you pay to queue into, even if you have a full 6, is inexcusable in my opinion. You're basically paying to 'get out of the queue and into the game' but if anything goes wrong you're stuck starting over. I've found that everything outside of actually playing MvM is extremely frustrating. I've actually found there's a huge gulf between TF2 and more recent source stuff. TF2 has crashes and dropped games all over the place, the loads seem super slow, and it has never performed well (I don't have a great machine, but I've seen complaints of fps issues elsewhere too). Also the interface breaks on alt-tabs or even at random times. It reminds me that TF2 was this simple thing that a lot of stuff has been bolted on, whereas newer stuff like Dota 2 is so polished.

Oh yeah, I forgot they only appeared there. I felt so bad for Knoxx. He was clearly in the wrong game universe, he desperately needed one where anyone was sane.

At first that poster kinda made sense, in terms of what the most effective way of garnering the attention of the average Pandoran, but I don't honestly think Steele would've let that shit fly.

http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/ 6 person horde mode for TF2 with progression! Even if you're not going to play it's super worth it for the awesome video and comics. And it's hitting August 15th!

Pretty sure you shoot lady ninja siren people in the dlc. It's a feature!

Oh on the topic of the cast, I assume once Chris said the title, Jake gave Sean a staredown so he wouldn't make the 'Idle Thumbs #X: Y' joke. Because it has never been more appropriate.

To be clear I do think the tree sounds fine, I just think the way they framed their motivations was unnecessarily disparaging. Honestly a helping skill tree sounds more fun than a high risk one, because it seems like the first one would make more weapons viable. I was thinking this before, but if he had explained the skill tree line with an actual anecdote I feel it would've been less terrible than his weird half-hypothetical generalization. Especially the cute character line, which just gives it a weird context in my opinion. If he was referring to a real person who thought the art was cute and would like to play as her but has no shooter experience it would've bugged me less. As it's quoted it sounds like he's prescribing the mode to an entire group of people.