Chris

Idle Thumbs 204: The Reader's Pleasure

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No Jake, strange . I will quit my job and make space dinosaur lesbian goes to Ed Hardys Disney World. Also I really agree with Chris's opinion about Bloodbornes visuals on this and the previous episode. I could barely finish watching the review footage because I found it looking so bland'ish. Really liked how demon souls and Dark Souls looked.

But to be fair to Bloodborne I saw a really nice screenshot of a sunset desert thing so I guess I maybe just missed the pretty parts

 

I've noticed that Bloodborne's super-detailed art does really poorly with any amount of video compression applied. It is very monochromatic compared to Dark Souls, but looks far better in person or in a screenshot than it does in any video I've seen.

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SPAFF! I realize the show has already reached critical host to chair ratio overload, but I would not be averse to more appearances from Spaff.

 

I bought Ori last night and played it way past bedtime, but I'm surprised at how unlike Metroid I feel like it is compared to other people. I think it might be the weight and movement of the character and monsters, and how the weapon works, rather than the way the game is structured.

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Ori definitely feels very Metroidvania-like to me, but it focuses heavily on platforming and doesn't have much of a combat focus. Being reductionist, it's sort of "what if we put a Metroid frame around Super Meat Boy".

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When I heard Chris talking about that Besiege gif, I realized we were very different people.

I'm assuming it was this one:

 

 

What's crazy is I can't even find the one I meant. There are apparently tons, I now realize. But this is the closest to the one I saw:

 

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What's crazy is I can't even find the one I meant. There are apparently tons, I now realize. But this is the closest to the one I saw:

 

 

I have actually been annoyed with how difficult it is to find non-penis creation videos for Besiege. 

 

One of my favorites: 

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So is Spaff going to be a regular by any chance? It was kind of nice hearing from him. I always found it bizarre that all UK staff deserted this forum the second the podcast started. It would have been cool if at least some of them had stayed.

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For anyone who goes to Disneyland, and specifically, Disney's California Adventure, if you want to go on Radiator Springs Racers, the Cars-themed ride that Chris described in the episode, you should seek out the single-rider line, which takes the (at peak) three-to-four hour line and makes it a more manageable thirty to forty five minutes. Cars Land is an enormous triumph for California Adventure, even if you (like me) don't care much for the film.

 

Radiator Springs Racers is a fine ride, with some neat whiz-bang stuff throughout and a nice sense of speed, but because of the enormous popularity of the film Cars, the damn line for the ride is insanely long. The single-rider line is designed to allow for every seat on individual six-person car to get filled in each ride, which means, in practice, that a family of four will get in a car, there will be two extra seats, and they'll just put two members of the single-rider line in there to fill it out. Because of the family appeal of the ride, the single-rider line is really great for this ride. OR, you could wake up insanely early and get there, which also is nice since early morning Disneyland is one of the most wonderful things. 

 

Danielle's description of Disney World is part of why I was so sour on it when I was younger and went. It was too big, and too spread out, and it didn't feel as special as Disneyland does. I am one of those west coast assholes who declares Disneyland to be the true experience, though, so take what I say with a grain of salt. 

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For anyone who goes to Disneyland, and specifically, Disney's California Adventure, if you want to go on Radiator Springs Racers, the Cars-themed ride that Chris described in the episode, you should seek out the single-rider line, which takes the (at peak) three-to-four hour line and makes it a more manageable thirty to forty five minutes. Cars Land is an enormous triumph for California Adventure, even if you (like me) don't care much for the film.

 

Radiator Springs Racers is a fine ride, with some neat whiz-bang stuff throughout and a nice sense of speed, but because of the enormous popularity of the film Cars, the damn line for the ride is insanely long. The single-rider line is designed to allow for every seat on individual six-person car to get filled in each ride, which means, in practice, that a family of four will get in a car, there will be two extra seats, and they'll just put two members of the single-rider line in there to fill it out. Because of the family appeal of the ride, the single-rider line is really great for this ride. OR, you could wake up insanely early and get there, which also is nice since early morning Disneyland is one of the most wonderful things. 

 

Danielle's description of Disney World is part of why I was so sour on it when I was younger and went. It was too big, and too spread out, and it didn't feel as special as Disneyland does. I am one of those west coast assholes who declares Disneyland to be the true experience, though, so take what I say with a grain of salt. 

 

I had no idea there was a single rider line! I'm not sure if I'd want to do that though, after having a less than stellar experience with the single rider line on Goofy's Fly School.

 

Cars is a fine ride, even though I also do not care for (and have not seen) the movie. I definitely understand why it's such a popular ride. Nothing will ever bet the joy of the Haunted Mansion though.

 

Also:

post-26249-0-02620600-1428008012_thumb.jpg

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Yeah, Haunted Mansion is really one of the highlights of the entire theme park. I really like how devoted HM fans are to the ride and it's history. For instance, here is an enormous wikipedia page (actually, it's about the same length as Chris Remo's page, which I find pretty amusing) for the "Hatbox Ghost," one of the animatronics that was on the ride for all of a few months after it opened. It became something of a legend, with a real insane cult following, and is going to be a pivotal character in the upcoming movie (no, not the Eddie Murphy film from 2003), and will return to the ride. ALSO, last year they discovered actual

and caused a huge to-do across the HM-verse.  

 

ALL THIS TO SAY: Disneyland fans are as obsessive as any other.

 

Did you guys see any of those weird "Disneyland gangs" that prowl the park making things happier for everyone?

 

EDIT: ALSO YES I was hoping you'd post that, A++ Space Ranger 1 

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Confession time: I actually tried to make a functioning Cities Skylines map out of Nick Breckon a while back, but couldn't get it to work properly because all the photos of him out there are very low-res and high-contrast.

 

It would have been called Cape Breckon Island, for what it's worth.

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What's crazy is I can't even find the one I meant. There are apparently tons, I now realize. But this is the closest to the one I saw:

 

GOTY 2015

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Did you guys see any of those weird "Disneyland gangs" that prowl the park making things happier for everyone?

 

I've definitely seen a few of them! Denim jackets and tattoos and waiting in line to get on the teacups. The best.

 

(I also love the Cars area of California Adventure, and I still haven't seen any of the movies! One of the best-looking areas in the park, especially at night.)

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I really, really like how 

 to "Sh Boom Life Could Be a Dream," like
.

 

Oh man that's the best. That Cars Land video really represents everything that is conceptually cool about Cars and its setting. It's a bummer I found the actual story and characters to be garbage.

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When Chris said 'imgur' when talking about meme culture it sounded so disgusted and disdainful to me I immediately thought of chris's classic wikipedia image.

Good times. Also some great finger-snappin' goodness this ep.

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Danielle's Steve Gaynor dream reminded me of something I still find pretty wonderful, even if it's now 12-years since it was written, and I have all but stopped caring about those shitty Penny Arcade guys. Tycho once wrote:

 

"Romeo and Juliet is a Goddamn timeless template.  I saw it set in Ireland with an all female cast and it still worked, one family was all lesbians and one was all dinosaurs.  You just can’t fuck it up.  You dab your eyes at the end and wonder what is so wrong about the love of a lesbian for a dinosaur."

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I'm really curious if the stuff in Bloodborne is actually that much more audacious than the Souls games. I feel like a lot of the argument was based on premise, and Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 probably would sound as bad at first glance. It's a medieval setting in which everyone is essentially a zombie and some of the first enemies and shopkeepers are glowing eyed zombies. There's a decent amount of fantasy tropes and bosses like the Gaping Dragon and Quelaag that are audacious, but it's the overall execution of the world that sets it apart. Because of that, I kinda bristle at the idea that this is more preposterous because it's werewolves in Victorian England, without any specific examples of how that is handled. That setting and content seems to imply a steampunk aesthetic, for example, but what I've seen seems to resist the urge to rely on visual cues of steampunk while still having stuff like transforming weapons and guns that you could imagine being draped in that imagery.

 

It would be pretty cool if Danielle could deep dive into that subject, having played the game. I won't be playing Bloodborne in the foreseeable future, but as a souls fan, I would be really interested about specifics.

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I think people are missing the obvious comparison with The Order: 1886. Put the two side-by-side and it's easy to see how well-presented Bloodborne is.

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I thought it was a bit funny that Chris said he had a harder time getting excited about Bloodborne because of its aesthetic but then said he doesn't care much about direct sequels that don't change much either. I actually feel just the same hehe. That said, Bloodborne won me over. It's a setting that I'd expect to hinder my enjoyment of a thing but here it's so well executed that I'm into it anyway. So far though it doesn't have the same melancholy as Dark Souls, it's more horror and despair. At the same time it's not afraid to be goofy in subtle ways, and to quote someone else it has monsters that aren't afraid to look stupid. In a good way.

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I'm only about a third into Bloodborne but so far it's really managed to win me over despite my reservations (I love shields, and the victorian thing felt a bit over the top). The atmosphere became worshipful and horrible at the same time in a way I find very touching.

 

I'd also say that while the Souls games are about worlds that are post-fall, so far Bloodborne feels more like a game that's still mid-destruction which is a very interesting change.

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Hm, interesting, what you guys are saying about it feeling horror-ish and mid-destruction actually reminds me a lot of my impressions of the DLC in Dark Souls. Everything felt very actively going to shit, rotting away by the moment, in contrast to the feeling of long-lost hope that permeates the main section of Dark Souls.

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You mean the Abyss content in Dark Souls 1? That does indeed take you back to when things are in the process of falling apart; Gwyn's greatest knight has been corrupted and a kingdom is falling into the abyss.

 

Bloodborne does feel similar, yes. Though of course it's so much larger it's hard to compare directly.

 

One thing that struck me while I was thinking about the victorian werewolves thing, is that the thing that does a lot to defuse the expected bullshit that comes with that combo is that there's no upper-class British accent to be found. Given From's love for British/European accents, I'm sure this is no accident. Nothing would have killed the mood faster for me than some upper class twit going "I say old chap, werewolves eh? wot wot." Instead we get a right proper Mancunian hunter of hunters for example.

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