CaptainFish

Luigi revealing he's been a villain all along during his year in the spotlight and now being a full heel is the best wrestling storyline ever.

I get that they chose the contents of their list of secrets because they are controversial. However, I feel like the specific case of outing someone as trans and using the intense reactions as a distraction touches upon a way more real experience that they're using as a throwaway random element of a mechanic. I couldn't really find more examples of that system, but I assume that case is a level of magnitude more messed up than most of the others. I guess originally I thought you were saying something about that specific case being designed for controversy, so it seemed weird that you agreed it was an unintended consequence of them filling their game controversial buzzwords.I get what you're saying now, though. Although when I imagine a game by Ubisoft (or any large company) being controversial I expect lip service, not anything anything that provokes a reaction in me like the example in question did.

Wait, so "the point" you mentioned earlier was that there was no point? It's just a piece thrown in without thought? Cause that seems like the opposite of having a point. >_>

I guess I don't know the gamut of things that are used for distractions. I also don't know the animations and sounds for how the distraction plays out. I can understand it being a fact that the person in question would like to control the privacy of. Hearing it on its own just makes it sound terrible though. Regarding music, the relatively low number of songs in older games point was pretty interesting. Sonic Colours, the Wii release, basically had two unique songs for each zone: the map theme and the Act 1 theme. Each following act would either use that first Act's track or one of two remixes of it. Then you unlock a retro mode and there are chiptune versions of the Act 1 themes. The end result is quite similar to a Genesis Sonic game in that you end up associating each zone with a specific song. Luckily that game had otherwise it would end up being an annoying experience, but now I realize that a lot of the catchiness is due to the repetition.

It's a little weird Watch_Dogs has the "player can be a maniac" issue because Assassin's Creed 1 avoided it by forcing low-profile behaviour to be fairly normal looking and strictly penalizing you for harming civilians. It meant that the modes of that game usually made sense: you would dash about on rooftops out of view, walk calmly on the crowded streets or be using parkour to actually escape a chase. When I look at the two games they have such a similar kernel so it stands out that they couldn't identify or fix that issue. There is a morality system tied to your amount of mayhem/crimefighting so maybe they just wanted it to be an option. Uhh, wow. That sounds like going out of your way to be shitty.

That section is the best part of the DLCs by far, and possibly the best part of the entire Infinite experience. It stunned me. I also spent a ton of time meandering back and forth and listening to the various instruments fade in and out looking for the actual sources. It was a really unique interactive experience. You can't start a show with a showstopper though. Nothing else in the DLC is as fun or good as that part, and that's regardless of the execution of the stealth/shooter part of the game (which I don't think is great).

I feel like this stuff falls flat the same reason any tired writing thing falls flat in games.* There's no personal investment and the joke can't be tailored to the player. Jake says all sorts of ridiculous somewhat older internet jokes on this cast that I literally think of myself just as I hear him say them and they're great. Excepting for some really older stuff Jake's jokes are always gonna hit for me, and it's actually spontaneous and great. In a game there's a more likely chance a joke is not going to be as deep a pull, because those obscure ones can't be understood by as many people, but I'm not gonna find any of the popular current references as funny. That on top of it being difficult to write a situation that feels like it leads to the joke without feeling too overly directed or too random. The title "DeathSpank: The Baconing" basically tells the audience to strap in for generic jokes, which is basically the opposite of the way to do humour like this. That isn't to say that those jokes won't hit for some. I was kinda surprised when I watched the Super Time Force Giant Bomb quick look and later watched a let's play channel quick look and the reaction to the commander wearing two eyepatches was about as opposite as it could be. GB basically detested him and only laughed at his terribleness, while the let's players enjoyed it as if it was meant to just be good funny writing. Both outlets have content I think is very funny so it was kinda weird seeing those reactions be so different. *It's the same reason why video game betrayals often don't work, for example. Not only is there usually a convoluted story that usually telegraphs the betrayal event, but the player doesn't feel like they themselves trust or connect to the betrayer before it occurs making the impact fairly small.

That's what I thought. Looking at the wiki I thought the Mann Co. Store appeared after I stopped playing, but it must've been around, because I remember trading and it launched with trading. I feel like TF2's journey of implenting items was kinda rocky. They were trying something new, sure, but it always felt pretty rough. Getting new weapons was first tied to achievements, but you had to do all of a set to get the 3rd item. TF2 has pretty good achievement design, but even it has a few which are preposterous to get in a match, which led to achievement servers being the way to circumvent that. Eventually they lowered the achievement requirements to a subset of the full class set, but at that point just cheesing the achievements was more convenient. Then they introduced drops but no guaranteed drop timer. Something I really like about Dota 2 is that you always get an item at intervals that basically amount to match time played. I remember wishing for a feature like that back when I played a little bit of TF2 every week and got nothing time after time. Crafting was introduced and the amount of items you had to put together to craft things was pretty high. At some point they lowered the requirement for creating scrap metal from 3 to 2, but when it first started I ran out of extras to craft the new weapons that weren't tied to achievements. Crafting in Dota sucks, but I guess it's not quite as bad as TF2 where you needed 81 items to make a hat, initially. Finally they introduced the store and trading and the community weapons, but at that point the best way to make sure you have the new weapons was to idle, something they seem to only have eliminated less than a year ago looking at the wiki. The general system was and still is cool in terms of allowing the community to alter the game and changing up the play from the initial 9 classes, and it's lead to a great system now for TF2 and Dota 2. With the store, marketplace, trading, drops, crafting and chests you have a lot of options for getting the cool stuff on display, it just hasn't always felt that way.

Do they not sell weapons in the Mann Co Store? I never interacted with it so I don't know.

The way the steam item conversation was described it reminded me of a Day Z story. Sean basically Tex'd the poor guy. I'd have more sympathy if I didn't think cold call traders weren't incredibly annoying. Yeah, this is one of the few times where a developer actually tries to keep something substantial back from prerelease coverage, so I'd much rather just find it out on my inevitable play through.

Danielle drops a "super interesting" at 8:03. Glad to hear you guys are enforcing the Thumbs podcasting style guide.

Javik isn't done like the ME2 extra characters. He's way more core to the overarching story and he's one of two new characters introduced. I also think he's pretty good. I dunno if the Legion comparison works. Legion is a great character but ME2's story isn't as tied to what he is as a character. Mostly because that game is basically Side Story: The Game. It's more like if Legion was in Mass Effect 1 and they removed him.

Waluigi, not Wario.

I hope that's a physical pack of club sandwiches.

Mass Effect 3 seemed particularly strange because without Javik there's only one new party member character. The fact that they were presenting it through marketing as a great place to jump in makes it even weirder.

Quite a hilarious episode, thumbs! I feel like horrible failure is the right way for a Year of Luigi to end. It's in character.

I don't really have an issue with any of the nicknames, but I dislike players who change them for specific tournaments or during tournaments. Handles are just one aspect of gaming/internet culture that's kinda ingrained in my mind. I can understand why it might present difficulties for those who aren't close to that sort of stuff though. The multicultural aspect does add a wrinkle. A lot of nicknames across the board are less diverse than the names they represent, so it makes it much easier to learn both for casters and viewers. I think for a lot of players, their accomplishments are heavily tied to their chosen nicknames, DotA 1 used to randomly load up signature nicknames for heroes when they spawned in. It would be kinda hard going forward to remove the nicknames entirely, but showing full names along with handles in lower thirds is very important for expanding awareness of the players. I also think a lot of the nicknames are amazing. Banana is like the best nickname ever. Er, regarding that picture, I saw this where I came across it "on a more serious note, Arteezy's referring to Dara from 2NE1, a South Korean girl band group. Probably also explains why he's been playing Korean music on his stream all the time." Which doesn't excuse what he said in response to the other comments, but it's, uh... something? Kinda makes you wish there was some sort of central body, or at least central rule set that could set penalties/responses for unbecoming behaviour.

Yeah, Lightning Spear and Great Lightning Spear are effective and a load of fun. There's something about the animation that is really satisfying.

The invasion mechanic is no longer tied to being human or hollowed (at least as far as I can tell), so I spent a lot of the game human, because the zombie model is quite off putting. I got invaded a lot less in general. I did also have an easier time than 1, but that felt mostly because of knowing the systems from the get go and starting as a cleric which felt like an easy option (I didn't know this at the time). The cleric can get the heal miracle quite early and it mitigates the lack of an estus flask. On top of that the weapon the cleric starts with is one of the best one-handed strength weapons in terms of damage scaling. I quite enjoyed the game, pretty much on the same level as 1.

I was also kinda bummed by his lead up and subsequent announcement. To be fair my only interaction with Chris+Spelunky is through the cast, so it basically dropped from my mind when he stopped talking about it regularly.

"Nice anime bullshit." -Guybrush Threepwood 2016

I was thinking the same thing.

Good ol' internet. Just wanted to say one more thing about Hitman Go. It teaches you how to play in such a minimalist way. There isn't a single word outside of each level's three challenge requirements. Instead it just shows you the token or tile space and you figure out how to interact with it completely on your own. First in a simplified space that often forces you into one solution, but that's still better than "This is a guard, Agent 47. If he sees you he'll take you down." It's really refreshing. It also leads to some nice secrets to figure out, because some enemies have properties that others don't necessarily follow, but it's up to you to test to find them (and required for at least one of the challenges).

It's interesting that they try to present breaching walls as the primary benefit of making a free walking robot who can use power tools.

It's super great how the thumbs will still have a job as robot news anchors once humanity is removed from dominance like the debris in that video.