CaptainFish

C'mon, Sean. High on ze schwein.

Chris' reaction to Jake saying Schneider Lens was intense.

That face says "I smell a turd" better than I ever expected.

It's still baffling to me that a company that did a talk about changing the time between sniper shots by 0.2 seconds made a game where you just kinda make numbers go up. I'm sure there's still plenty of balance going on but it seems like such an opposing philosophy.

I basically agree with Sean that VG essentially gave up 3 times in a row, but I was honestly more disappointed at the draft than at the actual GGs. ROtk said in an interview lead up to their match that Vici Gaming had other strats than a very fragile early push line-up, and when I saw what was basically the same draft fail twice in a row and they went for it again it felt like a for sure loss. To give a specific example of a possible different pick, ROtk has an amazing Clockwork that won them game 1, and he went unpicked and unbanned in the last two games. Lone Druid was another hero who did well game 1 and failed to reappear. Seeing that sort of drafting is perplexing, but I guess the pressure and fear can mount and you can make mistakes. Evil Geniuses, who were possibly the best drafting team of the entire event, won a game on Vici Gaming off the back of Universe's Faceless Void play, and then gave the hero to Mason who only managed to hit single hero Chronospheres. On the other end of the spectrum, when Cloud9 was down a game versus Vici Gaming and at risk of getting knocked out of the tournament they went for a Meepo pick, and won the only win for that hero at the event (255 games total, 10 meepo bans, 3 meepo picks). That's the kind of drafting I was hoping to see at the final. Honestly, this TI has taught me more than ever that games can be won during the draft, but VG barely even put up a fight with their picks for those last 3 losses.

Grindy loot experiences where the entire game seems to be about sifting through tons of weapons to find those that have slightly higher numbers than the others has become so pointless to me, and has soured me on games that otherwise have good mechanics. It often just feels like a layer of tedium that you have to manage just to be able to perform well in the rest of the game. It feels to me like it was more potentially important back in a game like Diablo 1, where you could find a staff and its spells could become your primary mode of combat, or a ring's strength bonus meant that you're using a different tier of armor. And it's way different from the mechanic's origins in pen and paper, where finding the simplest magic weapon was momentous and rare and meant +1 to accuracy and damage on top of the +2/3 you already had. If you're gradually incrementing your double digit damage by one or two over the entire game, and the enemies are also gradually getting more hp it seems like much less interesting than how Halo is for example.

I got this after seeing that Giant Bomb Quick Look. It's quite beautiful, but also graphic when it comes to violence. That aspect of it really dampens the effectiveness of some of the fallout from your decisions. So far the torture scenario has been the most effective at putting me on edge and making me dread my decision. The systems and puzzles are fun to mess around with especially in an adventure game style/context where problem solving isn't usually about managing several clear variables happening at the same time. Weirdly enough I like the part that was featured in the browser release the least, and haven't been able to get past it because of a crash bug on top of it being quite difficult and subject to a lot of random results.

Luffy won Ultra Street Fighter IV using Rose. The Abyss Odyssey discussion kinda reminds me of the Murdered: Soul Suspect discussion from before, except I fall on the 'worthwhile' side rather than the 'didn't stick the landing' side. Kinda how M:SS seemed like a game for ghost story fans, Abyss Odyssey feels like it's made for fighting game fans. ACE Team have always wore their love of fighting games on their sleeve, and this game actually fits in the 2D fighter mold. The combat feels really solid to me, and there's a lot of fighting game mechanical references in there***. For example, you can spend your skill points to give moves extra damage or more mana regeneration, but you can also give moves invincibility frames, projectile invincibility or super armor. You can also use those points to allow a character to cancel actions into special attacks or rolls more times in a row. The ability to cancel is tied to a cooldown so you actually have to manage them by managing cancels per combo and time between combo attempts. It ends up feeling like a fighting game enthusiast playground and the ancillary parts like the platforming are mostly to pace the frequency of the fights. In the end I think it's successful; in a run the amount of combat and their pacing feels fun. To me, it's a big improvement over the Zeno Clash games, that were mechanically fun, but threw so many fights at you over and over again that it could easily feel like a slog by the end. It really feels like if any of that mechanical nonsense I mentioned sounds interesting or cool, and you liked ACE Team's style, you'll really love this game. Also, on top of everything else in that game, there's apparently a Noby Noby Boy style meta aspect where the cumulative total of boss defeats will cause the game to change at set intervals and unlock new content, which sounds potentially pretty cool. ***There's also a Marth-esque counter, a golem who has a spinning backhand that I swear looks exactly like Zangief's green hand/Banishing Flat. a zombie that does a throw that starts up like Hugo's Meat Squasher and probably a dozen other moves that are reminiscent of a popular move. Fighting Games!

Thanks for that, I was trying to find that clip but I needed Jaw's Checks In, to get the youtube episode to come up. It's nuts that it was a full 101 episodes ago.

( this post destroyed my drowsy brain) No wonder you're the It's Sayer.

Ditto

As someone who hasn't paid harry potter any attention, but has been on the internet, I'm pretty much in the exact same boat as Chris.

Danielle's accent was enjoyable and refreshing, just like the center of a Junior Mint. Re: Dota talk, I'm wondering how 1v1 is in terms of quality of players. I feel like when Dota 2 went public the quality of the community, that I thought was pretty decent for the most part, has gone down pretty sharply. Being locked in with one jerk is somehow more daunting to me than being around 9 potential jerks. Do you have to mute the opponent a lot, or is it just 2 people focused on the game?

This gamasutra article describes the tech features that Shovel Knight uses that go beyond the NES. They managed to stay pretty close in presentation, though.

Yeah, that was the cool part of having press on the cast, and now Danielle has brought that along with her quest to play animal-themed puzzle platformers.

"Congrats Nick / Congrats Nick" is a sign of that love! <3 Edit: I'm just tripping all sorts of word filters lately.

But hearing all the songs in context is awesome! Also at one point Nick talks about a Gauss Rifle when discussing a game that doesn't have a Gauss Rifle and it's hilarious. Ditto for remembering airfields. I like listening to old casts when I'm otherwise occupied and old Thumbs discourse holds up pretty well, I think, even disregarding the funny bits I enjoyed.

I get that he has to be enthusiastic about his games, but Steve Papoutsis kinda comes off as a douche. It's mostly his word choice I guess. He's also the guy who talked about Dead Space 3 being "quadruple-A" in the lead up to that. I don't really follow a lot of promotional material with that sort of commentary, so maybe it's just the norm for that size of game, but it seems a little weird.

I haven't seen the Metal Gear Ground Zeroes scene in question (I'll probably never see it), but it sounds way over the top and gross. Having fairly serious references to or occurrences of sexual abuse is by no means a new Metal Gear thing though. It's been a while so I could be misremembering, but I thought the way that aspect is handled in MGS2 was alright, but that was all done through codec conversations. The Ground Zeroes scenes seem like they're crafted for spectacle primarily, which is just really troubling. It makes me feel like whatever reveal that happens concerning the Quiet character will be terrible and just as offensive. :\

I like that the addition of hosts to Idle Thumbs: The Return is always super subdued.

That shirt has an old-timey flavour that really reminds me of Destiny?

I don't mean to besmirch Nature Box, but if the ********* slices snack is just dried *********, couldn't you just get it at any bulk foods store? Anyway, great ep, those Star Citizen commercials were more than I was prepared for. I still think the phenomenon is pretty crazy. Edit: Pine-apple is censored!?

But then he has to fight RoboGoose. One of the saddest moments in film.

I'm guessing it's midroll podcasts? The Super Best Friend Cast also uses them for sure and they were on there.

"It's people who've just been [...] huffing their own farts in the same building with people who already know their shit." This sentence floored me. The Grim talk was really fascinating, I only played it once on PC and then my discs were damaged so I don't have a good sense of what that game is anymore, other than good (and frustrating in that part where you have to put that damn item on that screen to open up the secret road or whatever). I'm really looking forward to playing it once it comes out on steam, hopefully in as close to its original form as possible.