CaptainFish

I really love this game. I was wondering, are there any articles about Toby's use of music? I feel like his use of repeating motifs and melodies in different places and instrumentation really elevates a lot of the moments and makes the soundtrack really stick in your mind afterwards. For a non-spoilery example, I ran across this quirky track that overlays a specific version of the dog track with the regular battle theme and was pleasantly surprised to find that they use the same motif/melody. I'm guessing there's a lot of that style of music writing in the Homestuck stuff he did, where some interactive updates go from an exploratory section to a battle or mini-game and he uses the same melody in both, but in a longer form work it really brings moments together.

I definitely agree that N64 (and a lot of 3d ps1 and saturn) games are a mess visually. I guess my question would be, is there a platformer on the N64 that does exemplify good design, or is the issue muddied because of how bad a lot of that stuff looked especially in comparison to the 2d heights of the end of the 16-bit era? I feel like Mario 64 being a tour of "What 3D Games Can Be Like" and less structurally cohesive than it's predecessors doesn't really make it bad or shitty. Also some of that lack of cohesiveness was played around with in the game, because you have stuff like endless hallways that have the return exit right behind you no matter how far you run, or ceiling mural light beams that teleport you into levels, or levels that change depending on what time you jump in the portrait. Even the idea of jumping through paintings to enter levels is a very surreal concept that might seem more mundane now just because of how long it's been since that game came out. It felt like they were playing around with the idea of what a "world map" is, and that became a large part of the design. I haven't played Sunshine, but Galaxy felt like it did a lot of similar things as well. I didn't really play a lot of SM64 so I'm probably not a good person to talk about this stuff. I do know that whenever I was playing it at a friend's place the world instantly conveyed a sense of wonder even years after it had come out.

I think the only parts that have bothered me on replay is the fist fight near the end and the jeep four wheel drive part (especially if you don't get the extra ration). On my first playthrough at a friend's place so many years ago, each encounter was so unique that we struggled through a lot of it.

To be fair, I don't think Kojima likes The Twin Snakes either.

I just watched an excellent co-op LP of Peace Walker, and there's lots of cool singing robots in that game, and it also has a boss fight featuring a full song sung by the boss' VA. Revengeance does use music along with gameplay in a really amazing way though.

I just watched the Lara Croft GO quick look and I'm a little confused by some of the choices. I loved Hitman GO and even with the challenges that game never really stumped me until the Hitman 2 pack. LCG removes that challenge system, and then replaces the 'figure out how to go to this tile and get the briefcase' challenge with collectables in the background. It looks nice, but that doesn't seem as fun for a game about doing puzzles. I really enjoyed the challenge system in Hitman GO because it meant you were solving a level 4 completely different ways sometimes: your initial run, the run that comes under the turn limit (which usually involved really clever movement routes), the run that gets the briefcase and then whatever x-factor challenge (kill all guards, kill no guards, kill no dogs, etc.). I get that the repetition of a level doesn't really fit with Tomb Raider as well as Hitman, but I found it so fun that I wish they had found some way to put it in the game. Otherwise, the game looks great, love the aesthetics and the new mechanics look like fun. I can see the platform-moving levers adding a lot to the game design. Glad to hear they're adding wrinkles to the design of Fallout Shelter, but putting the removal of a bad mechanic behind a paywall is a bit disappointing. I don't really think tapping on rooms to collect resources adds anything to the design other than tedium, esp when there's usually nothing else going on to distract you from it. I still would've really liked if the rooms had functional uses that would cause the characters to move around to make the world feel more real.

This is probably general knowledge, but after doing a little looking around, I found the announcer pack was a collaboration between PyrionFlax and Justin Roiland. Obviously it was a perfect pair, cause a lot of Pyrion's humour, even when he was still learning the game, comes from that real place that a lot of the announcer lines do. The "It's not an accident anymore" line seems like it comes right from the intersection of self-deprecation and game experience that Pyrion employed in his hero introduction videos. It doesn't seem like Justin knew the game beforehand, but his improvisation skills along with his deep familiarity with voicing the Rick and Morty characters produced a great result.

I was really into having all the achievements in Trine (and the related S rank over on Giant Bomb) but then they added in weird steam sale achievements and I stopped caring about them entirely.

The Diablo 3 wizard was the original Wizard inspiration. Trine's wizard had a certain way with the ladies though...

I liked the 4th re-release of Trine 2. Trine 2: Make Enough Money 4 Trine 3

It is pretty weird that GBC Conker didn't make it to the collection considering there are other Nintendo console games on it. I just checked and Rare published it themselves. Seems like a weird omission. The gender locked clothing for Fallout Shelter is quite strange. I had mentioned it before with Three Dog's outfit. It totally seems like a weird oversight. I even find the transforming clothes to be weird, considering that the Fallout 4 trailer seemed to imply that that aspect is a thing of the past.

I totally agree. In general I was really disappointed with the amount of actual simulation and interactions in Fallout Shelter as well. The mechanics being so potentially time consuming didn't help. For example, if you want to max out happiness you can try and do a rush everytime the rush fail percentage is lowest, and that means checking the game like every 10 minutes. So even though I was glad I could play the game during my underground commute, I ditched it after a week or so. I play a Sega Lords Managementge game with energy as well as free and premium character gashapons, but I play it once in the morning and once in the evening without having to think about it any other time. Edit: Unfortunate word filter. M-o-b-a-g-e, the type of mobile games that are energy and microtransaction based.

Haven't listened yet, but I'm seconding this recommendation. I'll even link the online version of it! I kind of liked how it wasn't one specific story, it felt like it was sort of reacting to how you choose to act on the setting presented. It's cool that he chose to do a game that's more about piecing together a reality with Her Story, though. It's definitely on my list of things to check out. Side recommend: Galatea is a game that feels in the middle where the game reacts somewhat to your actions and interpretations, but there's definitely a story to unfold if you're patient enough (as a user and a character).

Podcasts for robots, by robots.

I really appreciate that early animation aesthetic, so I'm looking forward to Cuphead. Although I looked at a couple E3 clips and they were showing long boss sequences that I didn't enjoy. I'd really like to hear Sean follow up on The Last Guardian next week. I'm a big fan of Shadow of the Colossus, but I didn't really get anything out of the demo they showed at all. To be fair, I don't know how much you can demo the stuff I love about that game either. I guess the way they make you appreciate Agro is a big part of it, and the beast is a giant Agro with more AI, but I kind of always expected that without needing to see that footage.

Well there was that one Chris quote about living in the simulation, or something like that.

Oh, one thing I really like about the game, when you have a child there's random name generator, and then it randomly picks between the father and mother to choose the surname. The first time I got the mom's surname, so I pretty much do that every time now. I probably never would've thought to do that on my own. I also always swap both parents when siring a new child and do it two at a time, after the initial bunch of high CHA Walkers and Armstrongs I got in my first couple batches. Now that I think about it, a hyphenated name would probably be the ideal solution... maybe next time I start a Vault that'll be the experiment. Edit: Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how it chooses the surnames, I assumed it's random but I don't know for sure.

I feel like succeeding at rushes helps a lot too, but yeah the game does imply that the correct SPECIAL stat will improve happiness. I was gonna complain about how the workings of the simulation aren't explicitly described anywhere, but there's actually a full help file in the Survival Guide, which is the wallet looking thing in the lower right menu.

When playing Fallout Shelter I definitely experienced the weird bleakness of procreation that Chris described. However, it was heightened for me because I found Three Dog's uniform (the clothes of the radio station DJ from Fallout 3) and a set of pyjamas early. As an aside, a lot of the clothes (like Three Dog's uniform) in this game are gender locked, which is really annoying since they have functional use of improving SPECIAL stats. But both these uniforms increase charisma, which as Chris said, seems to improve the rate at which two characters will go from meeting in a residence to procreating. And, if you've ever played the 3d fallouts, you know that pyjamas look like flannel or silk pyjamas on men, but lingerie on women. So, fictionally, whenever the Overseer of Vault 416 decides to increase the population, he locks a chosen man and woman in a dorm, throws in a gross set of DJ clothes and lingerie, and doesn't let them out until the lady is pregnant. And one thing to note about pregnant women, they are capable of performing their job, but they will always run and hide whenever there's a fire, radroach invasion or raider attack, regardless of how they're armed. Also, my first reaction to the art wasn't really to call it well animated. The Vault Boy design is really cool, but the animation is a lot of flash rotation, it looks fine but I don't really find that stuff impressive. The gender split in my game has never been pronounced. Right now I have 35 dwellers and it's split almost right down the middle, with one more on the male side. I didn't get that bug Chris got with the resources, but the game has felt really easy after the actual flow of external dwellers stopped. You have so much control over when you expand your base that I haven't really had any issue with the big 3 resources. It's a lot different from games like Theme Hospital or Dungeon Keeper or SimCity where how well you're doing correlates with your growth and forces you to constantly adapt. I feel like I could pretty much stagnate at 35 dwellers forever without much change. Edit: I totally agree that the theming doesn't really fall in line with the world of Fallout. Like you guys said, it's weird that you seed a Vault with outsiders, but what I find even weirder is that you just send people out into the world on a semi-regular basis to scavenge and they return without any changes. Leaving the vault is supposed to be this sort of anomaly in pretty much all cases, so it's weird it's a kind of throwaway resource gathering mechanic. Edit 2: Bluh finally finished the fallout segment and saw you told a similar story. Sorry, I got really excited by your mention of the procreation stuff, and then I got distracted by actual news. >_>

Yeah, I did this too. Do people really complain when you give timestamps? I thought it was just an issue of requiring extra editing time.

I really loved all the game concepts, they were really interesting. Later on I really loved imagining the user just frustrated to hell because every time he tries to win a game the enemies pull some jack move on them. I didn't really like the descent into grimdark stuff though, although I'm sure kids at the time lapped it up.

After spending most of a day at a friend's place playing Perfect Dark Zero, we all realized that its aesthetics are totally like a video game in a tv show or movie. That game was in a spot where playing it for extended periods of time made the visuals just fall apart in your mind like saying a word over and over until it loses meaning.

By the end of 2013 Giant Bomb could only find 4 games better than Brothers. I agree that it was gamey as hell, but I enjoyed the new gameplay mechanics even though the puzzles were rote. The settings were pretty as well. However, the ending did totally fall flat for me. The ideas for the returning brother were sound and well presented, but the prelude to that moment was just so limp that it failed to have any impact on me. Basically, everything about that spider lady was ill-conceived.

I finished Act 2 on the day of release. In a lot of ways it was a cool classic adventure game experience for me. I had a scrap piece of paper I was writing stuff down on for Vella's door puzzle, the hexipal wiring and other stuff. I love that aspect of older games, so I really enjoyed being given an excuse to do that and test some puzzles by trial and error. For some specifics: The story did fall flat for me, though. The moment to moment dialogue was all fine, but there was definitely something missing in Act 2 that Act 1 had. Even with the weird premises of Act 1, the content seemed so vital and interesting. Then, in Act 2, the explanations had no traction for me. They felt like bad sci-fi video game lore. Even though they have some parallels with interesting concepts (class systems, pitting the middle class against the lower and the lower against themselves), they were unable to feel real to me like the simple ideas expressed in Act 1 did. I know that's a really vague way of describing my reaction, but I don't really know how else to put it. There's also the issue of leaving questions on the table like Bjorn's and how the maiden feast was so deeply ingrained in almost every person's mind as a good thing. All in all though, I enjoyed playing Act 2 as a game way more than I would've expected. I hope they decide to do another adventure at some point, as Broken Age has basically proven to me that Double Fine and Tim Schafer can still bring really interesting ideas and gameplay to the genre along with beautiful art and dialogue writing.

I dunno, this is pretty good (maybe spoilers): [video removed]