CaptainFish

I still think it's " ." It was my initial read, and it's funnier.

Yeah the song is great! Love that brass! I play a lot of Dota 2 and I liked the SFM stuff they added. It kinda felt like how Meet The Scout feels like playing that class, riding that edge of high danger but also high capability where his arrogance/confidence made sense. At one point they cut from Nightstalker chasing Pugna, this big hulking bat person and a short magical skeleton, and it cuts to him grabbing him and physically spiking him into the ground, in place of his regular swiping attack. It's beyond what is actually shown in game, but it didn't pull me out of it that much. The play Sean mentioned from later in the game was stylized as well but not even to that extent, if I remember correctly.

I was listening to this in the background while playing some Shadowrun Dragonfall and heard Sean say @ 21:24, "It's combat in the [manor] of a lord." (originally "manner") And my mind was blown by the homophone.

It's kinda funny to me that Blizzard has gone from almost imposing real names on all forums to making a game where you literally can't communicate outside of 6 presets. They seem like opposing ideas, although they might argue that both things solve the same problem.

Holy crap at that car chase story. Good job staying alive. I got to a slight Calculords hump too, but it was on the guy with the 3d glasses who has all the control cards. Luckily he leads you to the strategy that kinda breaks the game. He can remove offensive and tactical cards from your hand with 2 different tactics, so I just filled my deck with mostly push cards, with as much armor as possible. With that strategy you pretty much just attrition every fight, since once you have enough push it just instantly pops the enemy's cards once you get to their base. You have to travel the entire distance of the map to win anyway, so you might as well make the enemies have 0 health by pushing, rather than depend on damage.

It's about time.

So I tried this Calculords game. It's got 3 lanes, pushing mechanics with automated AI units and you have to strategize how and when to get a calculord bonus. Is this actually Calculords Management?

That sums up how I feel. I've heard of using Donkey Kong Country to slam Sega's library, but never this way.

I can't really speak to the larger goals of replayable narrative. I do know that personally I love replaying short digestible chunks of game narrative. The Stanley Parable represents the extreme of it: incredibly brief chunks of narrative that lead to quick payoff that basically dares you to jump back in. Actually, the real extreme is Aisle. It's probably my preference for short stories, but when a single playthrough is shortened, or rather the idea of "A Playthrough" is extended to repeatedly trying everything in a fairly dense narrative space I can't help but engage over and over until the content is exhausted. Maybe if more games attempted to tell story through separate character vignettes (like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, or TWD 400 Days) and focused on the idea that it's not really what you choose to happen that matters, but rather the entire space of choices. Then, someone like me would certainly run through each one over and over, and still get a full story/message/idea at the end. That isn't to say I don't like extended narrative games. I loved Alpha Protocol's mechanics of choice and played through it several times. It was done in such a way that you could feel comfortable to explore choices and not feel like they had anything to do with either a binary morality system, or a binary reward system (either rewards now/later like in Bioshock, or less rewards for doing the right thing like in a lot of games).

Any MMO for me. There's also a lot of horror stuff I'm way too much of a wimp to get into. I've owned Amnesia since it launched and still haven't gotten past the first like 15 minutes. Oh I guess Donkey Kong Country is one for me. I played a lot of SNES stuff in later generations since I had a Genesis when the SNES was new. I've gone back and played a lot of SNES hits and love them to death, but I have zero desire to play Donkey Kong Country. I must've tried it a couple times, but it never clicked. I feel kinda similar about Final Fantasy, but I could totally see myself getting into them at some point, it's just the time investment seems intimidating. Part of it is definitely the fact that it's this huge series, since I love some JRPGs like Chrono Trigger. I'm definitely not as much into them as most people though. I did play through a decent chunk of 6 a long time ago, but then I lost that progress and lost all desire to replay it.

I don't think you can blame him for the studio closing, but you can certainly blame him for statements he puts his name on whatever the reason. I don't see any situation in which he isn't to blame for something he put his name on. If he agreed to stay on as long as he put his signature on a statement without knowing the statement, that's still his fault. If he has a mental condition, he has more than enough money to have had it diagnosed so that he can reduce the effect on his work, something I bet a lot of people who suffer in similar ways don't. So if he says "we're laying people off because I want to make smaller games" when what happened is "Irrational was not viable to keep open but Take Two is willing to keep Ken on in a smaller capacity", that's on Ken. You don't get to attach your name to statements and not take any repercussions for those statements. The Walking Dead comments on this page are a part of why I think some of the analysis to games that aren't done is so dangerous. People make statements about games before they're out, or when a piece of information leaks, and then someone makes a similar comment about a game that is released with a fully fleshed out character and think they're equivalent. To even imply that TWD is racist because of one aspect of Lee, a fully formed character, is so preposterous in comparison to Bioshock Infinite that only uses barely fleshed out characters of race as a backdrop to a story that was ostensibly about race but turned out to be more about white guilt. I guess you were trying to prove a point, but your point is moot because if you take a full analysis of Bioshock Infinite you can see lots of problems and issues and if you take a full analysis of The Walking Dead it isn't even remotely racist with regards to Lee as a character. Lecturing the forum about facts and knowledge while making such disingenuous statements is pretty callous. On a personal note, the idea that you could play The Walking Dead and then boil Lee down to being a convict is really disgusting to me, even if it's just to prove a point.

(Dr.) Mario was trying to research Cranky to help him in Donkey Kong Jr., but his son kept 'saving him'.

As interesting as they seem, I find it hard to get into stuff like the twitchplayspokemon and saltybet. I love the SomethingAwful let's play threads and love watching fighting game tournaments, but so much of that is tied to humour and effort in the first case and the human element of triumph and skill in the second case. Then these things come out that are essentially procedurally produced content and they get these huge followings. Even the interaction aspect of let's plays was featured in those SA threads, where you're choosing names, voting on big decisions and it felt meaningful (the Spec Ops: The Line thread is a good example of this). I don't mean to take anything away from the people who set up the streams, it's pretty clear that figuring out the pokemon twitch chat control system and saltybet system took thought, creativity and skill, and I get that a lot of it is the human experiment aspect, it just seems that what you're watching from moment to moment is so empty. As for bravely default, it's funny Greg mentioned the belts going away, because that's one of the only things I remember seeing when that censorship story cropped up.

As a black guy, I didn't mind T-Bone, but I was only using the female character anyway. I do think the eyes are weird, but I don't think the character looks as 'grotesque' as some people are claiming. I think it's really tough to judge stuff like this when there are so few representations of people and they're meant to be exaggerated and referential. I did go through all the different outfits to see what was available and you can make both him and Axl (the default name for the white male character) look different in similar ways. They both have more formal stuff with ties and/or collars, vaguely sci-fi looking stuff, hip hop clothing (bandanas and saggy pants). Axl has sleeve and prison tattoos and thankfully there's no tribal shit for T-Bone, so, uh, small victory there. As for Helga, I dunno how I feel about it. On one hand it's a design for a lady that is physically tough in ways a lot of female player characters aren't. She also wears sexy clothing exclusively (midriff is exposed on every outfit) and is designed in a way that still draws attention to her secondary sex characteristics . Is that better than a common comic superheroine female body shape who also wears only sexy clothing? I think so, but it's not much better. Unlike the male characters, she doesn't have as wide a variety of clothing choices which definitely sucks. It could partially be because she was added later, however the way she was introduced kinda makes me think that this is her character's thing (blog) . As for whether or not they're playing her looks for laughs, I think that depends on the player. I usually play listening to a podcast, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's no character voice commentary. She doesn't have any sort of voice or receive comments by anything written in the game. So, for me she just comes off as a tough lady who likes the way she looks in the same way a female Dota character (which are samey and bad for the most part) does. Ideally we'd have female character designs in games that show all sorts of body types matched with style preference like with a lot of male designs.

One thing I remember specifically not liking was used a lot in Darksiders 2: using random loot and progression in what should generally just be a mechanics/skill based game. In that game, you always come across dungeons with harder challenges than the one you're supposed to go to. If you enter these dungeons you'll find you're much too under-leveled and under-equipped to deal with them. Why? Put that part physically after the story based part, or better yet, base the difficulty in your character action game on the ability to use mechanics and unlock abilities and weapon choices, not just higher numbers of damage. In general, I'm pretty tired of picking up random loot with numbers that generally go up over time, because it means you're usually not making a decision based on build, but just on dps. If you find an axe with twice the damage of your whip, you'll use the axe even if you prefer whip based gameplay or take twice as long to kill the twice as tough enemies in the area you're in. I think I'd prefer if the DPS stat was static or tied to core progression, and you only made decisions based on additional effects or playstyle. I'm not trying to say that progression doesn't belong in those types of games. I'd just rather a more directed style of progression, like Dead Space 2 for example. In that game you and your weapons get stronger based on what you prioritize, and you also make deliberate choices on what set of weapons to use.

The vitriol towards the Flappy Bird developer confuses me greatly. As for the game, it is true that it is well tuned to be an experience that requires more focus than the few games like this I've tried. However, even though it is well tuned, I don't think it's all that great. I can totally see why it has captured a lot of school kids though because I experienced that arc. I got the game, played a little bit of it. Didn't get more that like 15 pipes and then closed it assuming I wouldn't play it again. Then, when the game controversy came up, someone talked about their 60 pipe score, so I opened it up, focused on it for like 10 minutes and got 65. I imagine a lot of the enthusiasm comes from being able to just challenge someone and then go back and forth on score, but I don't think the game without that meta has anything that really draws you in. I haven't played Jazzpunk yet, but I found it kinda funny, in comparison to Jake's analysis, that I saw a slight Blendo Games comparison and it made me super excited for it. There's so few games that are remotely similar to those, after all. Then I watched the quick look and the intro was so amazing, and then after that it seemed like it had a much different goal and aesthetic choices. This is something I've heard from others, but Airplane was the comparison that stuck with me: here's this thing that's just a vehicle for humour. So, yeah, when Jake took it to task in comparison to Gravity Bone as specifically as he did I was a little surprised. I probably won't approach the game that way, but it was nice to hear the specific comparison breakdown.

I can fully appreciate clever all chat after doing something legitimately cool. Sometimes you do something awesome, and I think both sides should be able to recognize that. I dunno if the dunkin' bronuts thing qualifies as clever, but I guess I'd maybe accept it one a crucial ult (like one that saves an ally) but not on every single successful one. I'm all for not being abusive, but I think being too sterile isn't great either.

I'm glad you guys touched on Year Beast. I think it's the wrong direction to go in. I remember when I got to the first Diretide I was still learning the game, still hadn't tried all the characters but felt I had decent fundamentals. It was a blast! It was this accelerated 5 on 5 mode that taught the importance of over extending, the value of crowd control (which was very effective against a lot of the blink heavy strats), how to choose heroes for a early fight, fighting at level 1, what to buy in a late game situation and probably way more. Also, since it was so short, I felt way more comfortable to choose new heroes. I played a ton of it, we always tried to compete and it was pretty much always a blast. Since then they haven't really been able to capture that feeling, even when they brought it back, and a lot of that is because of the Rosh fight aspect and people trying to game it. Now I'm looking at a Year Beast playthrough and it seems as dumb as when I saw people glitch out Rosh so they could feed Pudge a ton of flesh heap stacks. I understand it's difficult to think of competitive modes, but I don't understand why they're so focused on these boss fights where a decent chunk of the abilities don't even matter. I even preferred Wraith Night because they redesigned heroes specifically for it, and there was still that aspect of using a variety of abilities like crowd control and nukes in different situations and choosing builds. Here it seems like it all just comes down to auto attack dps, damage amplification, throwing fireworks and dodging spells which is not only kinda boring, but also not bringing any skills back into the core game. Then when it comes out it seems as though they didn't even give it the least bit of thought, because Ursa's fury swipes, the thing that makes Rosh so manageable for him, was apparently overpowered and had to be removed. Isn't Roshan an obvious parallel to the Year Beast? It's kinda hard to figure out what the goal is here. Everything else about the event has been awesome so I don't want to come off as ungrateful about the update. The heroes look great and are a ton of fun, the map is beautiful and the items they've added are great. I just think they might need to go in a different direction for event game modes.

I agree!

Great cast, loved the Nintendo discussion and the pointed critique of the Banner Saga. I get a lot of the rest of my coverage from Giant Bomb, and they haven't covered it yet, so this is really useful information to what the game is. What really struck me in the Nintendo conversation is the mention of a pared down control system. I feel like a lot of the smaller games I've enjoyed a ton have just been 2 or 3 button affairs, and I had those experiences on the Wii with Megaman 9, 10 and Cave Story. Mega Man 9 almost feels like the vanguard of some of those experiences, but in general WiiWare wasn't a bastion of those types of games, instead it was kind of a joke*. Maybe it was just too early to capitalize on that wave, but it seems like they had their chance at having a Steam equivalent, but they didn't pull it off. They were probably hoping VC would do it for them, and to some extent it probably did pull in a lot of money from gamers on the system, but it feels like they could've done more somehow. *Not to say that there weren't a lot of good games, there just seemed to be a lot of shovel ware as well.

Just finished Act 1 this today. I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said. Love the art and the storytelling. I did really enjoy the order I chose: Vella then Shay. In general I enjoyed Vella's section more, Shay's is great too, I just enjoyed the more traditional structure (re: cast and setting) of Vella's part. As for difficulty, I liked the puzzles that were presented, but I did encounter a few spots where I solved something when I was wearing my adventure game tourist hat, trying to experience all the various content. With Vella, I'd often say the thing that I just assumed was the funny or throw away line and get through. I've never been one to just go down a list of dialogue options, and I ran into all the right ones in this game.

I agree with Reyturner, but I don't think this topic is worth discussing to this extent. I do think people that stomp, take one rax and fountain camp are horrible; I report them. Valve should probably punish them more. I honestly haven't experienced that many games that go on much longer than I'd like. I have no desire to have another source for arguments and abuse in game because someone fed and thinks the game is over. I also don't want people to go into games to mess around or disconnect, under the belief that they aren't really wasting time because there's a surrender function. I think the argument that allowing surrenders will generally lower the late game ability of players overall, and thus the quality of the game is valid. But if you are having enough shitty* games and experiences nothing I say will matter, and I think that's fair. *And by shitty I mean games where the enemy team gets a lead and griefs to extend it, not games where you lose.

Uh, ignoring the surrender can of worms, I'd say a good beginner piece of advice (although not as good as that tango one, nice going Sean) is carrying a TP often as early as you can. If I'm mid, I try to get one along with my boots after bottle, if I'm support I might get one before I get boots depending on how the lane is going. It can really help to get you out of some dangerous situations where you're just getting autoattacked down, and you can perform more efficient ganks using one. It also helps you provide early support to a lane if something goes wrong. Another thing that kind of goes along with this: try not to let towers go down easily. Giving your opponent a free tower, especially if they get the last hit, is a huge windfall even if you're getting kills somewhere else. Try to pull creeps past if it's too dangerous to engage, and try to TP early to further back towers so other allies can TP directly to the contested tower faster.

I always thought of the Tango as foraging food. Maybe instead it's a poultice of herbs that needs recently living material to be activated, since you need to buy a set. Not sure what the flavour text is on it though.

I really want a montage of every time they've obliquely mentioned killing the shopkeeper, that should be the true moratorium. It was worth it for "I'M ANGRY NOW!"