Jake

Idle Thumbs 228: New Game Plus or Minus World

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Idle Thumbs 228:

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New Game Plus or Minus World

If this description seems brief, if we're hard to get ahold of right now, the answer is very simple and not that inexplicable: We can't stop playing Super Mario Maker or Metal Gear Solid V. There's only one thing that will make us stop, and it's an opportunity to talk about them on this podcast.

Games Discussed: Super Mario Maker, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Albino Lullaby, Great Houdini Escape Room

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This morning I made it halfway through the Retronauts 30th Anniversary episode of Super Mario Bros., in which biased journalist Chris Kohler admits he never played every level of Super Mario Bros.  So Danielle's article about the bad Mario Maker levels of Kohler and other journalists is a good idea—fake gamers are everywhere!

 

It's such a joy to hear Danielle and Jake talk about Mario.  It's also a joy to hear Chris use "full release" (32:33) in a sentence and then hear Nick snicker in the background.

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RE: Mario Maker Worlds 

 

sorry - only image could find quickly

post-33948-0-89699800-1442462015_thumb.jpg

 

 

The purpose of the rows/arrows is to utilize a full "row" as connective levels so finishing left -> right to create a smb1 "World"

 

However, to Jake's point i don't know if you'd have to upload all four levels as a package, or link together.  It could be a later feature/unlock that they will unveil as they get a feel for total uploads and server loads.

 

 

Is there really a max of 10 uploads per user? or do you need to get more coins/medals on levels to increase your max upload count.

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I loved Jake's "Fuck off" while describing what Mario Maker declares itself to be. Him saying stuff like that is why he's my secret favorite of the hosts.

 

Edit - I feel like this episode is the true return of Nick Breckon when he goes into the stupid shit of MGS5, regarding Quiet. Welcome back Nick, we missed you!

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RE: Nick and MGSV
 
Some structural spoilers:

 

Nick said he played 22 hours and completed the game. He actually completed Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 begins after doing some nebulous things like doing side ops and returning to mother base and so on.
 

Basically, Nick is not at the end of MGSV, but is instead about 50-60% through the story missions.

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One cool little thing about Super Mario Maker is that Koji Kondo made some new authentic old Mario music!*

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Other random Kondo fact: He did the music for Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic, so musically it was a Mario game from the beginning. And that reminded me of: SMB2 is a dream and SMB3 is a stage play so I'm hoping that a Really New Super Mario Bros on NX will have a twist ending where it is revealed that you have just been playing some random Mario Maker levels... Though that stupid subtle drop shadow** would give away the secret immediately.

* Learned that from Super Marcato Bros podcast 179
** Is it in there just to spice up the old graphics or did Nintendo want a clear visual element that says "Hey this is not an actual classic Mario stage!"

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Nick mainlining MGS: V and having that just make it seem all the more weird is the best.

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There are some elements of Nick's position on things happening in MGSV that bother me a bit. Primarily that he seemingly doesn't see through-lines that connect this one to other Metal Gears

(White kid ruling over African gang is Eli who is actually Liquid, Huey being tortured due to them thinking he's a traitor working for Cypher, their hostilities towards Quiet and why she refuses to speak etc.)

But ultimately these will either be resolved, as he actually finishes the game, or just balanced by his love of its Far Cry 2-ness.

 

Nick's thoughts on this game are entertaining, especially now that I can't NOT think of him as Larry David. Good stuff.

Another great episode, minor nitpicks on the views on Metal Gear Solid V aside.

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Game informer has an interview from back in 2012 where Miyamoto talks about how he sees the entire Super Mario cast as an acting troupe, so you could consider every Mario game to be a play, in a sense.

 

Time and again, Bowser kidnaps Peach. Why do Mario and Peach still race go-karts and play tennis with him?

SM: If you're familiar with things like Popeye and some of the old comic characters, you would oftentimes see this cast of characters that takes on different roles depending on the comic or cartoon. They might be businessman in one [cartoon] or a pirate in another. Depending on the story that was being told, they would change roles. So, to a certain degree, I look at our characters in a similar way and feel that they can take on different roles in different games. It's more like they're one big family, or maybe a troupe of actors.

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There are some elements of Nick's position on things happening in MGSV that bother me a bit. Primarily that he seemingly doesn't see through-lines that connect this one to other Metal Gears

(White kid ruling over African gang is Eli who is actually Liquid, Huey being tortured due to them thinking he's a traitor working for Cypher, their hostilities towards Quiet, etc.) But ultimately these will either be resolved, as he actually finishes the game, or just balanced by his love of its Far Cry 2-ness.

 

Nick's thoughts on this game are entertaining, especially now that I can't NOT think of him as Larry David. Good stuff.

Another great episode, minor nitpicks on the views on Metal Gear Solid V aside.

you should probably use some spoiler tags.

 

EDIT. No problem. Welcome to the forums :)

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I think it's kind of funny that Nick talks about a pre-occupation that Japanese games have with Africa, when the Idle Thumbs mascot game - Far Cry 2 - was made in Montreal and is set in Africa.

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I think it's kind of funny that Nick talks about a pre-occupation that Japanese games have with Africa, when the Idle Thumbs mascot game - Far Cry 2 - was made in Montreal and is set in Africa.

 

Yeah, I think that Nick's thesis about Japanese media and its obsession with Africa is correct on a basic level (to me, it seems like Japan, which practiced imperialism for a few decades on its ethnically and culturally similar neighbors, is just a bit behind the West, which practiced it for centuries with all different races, in getting over the seeming alienness of the Third World). Still, to look at it more analytically, I think it's mostly just that Japan is less insidious and more blatant about it than the West, because the number of Anglophone games and movies that involve something crazy and primeval going down in Africa, the Middle East, or South/Southeast Asia is up there, too. I mean, Ubisoft alone has at least two different franchises that are basically "mad violence in the Third World" and "the past is a foreign country full of weirdos."

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I have been so overwhelmed by DraftKings and FanDuel that when you described Parachute as a new bedding website I heard it as "betting" and I was beside myself.

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Immediate thought after danielle saying room escapes are the only pixel hunt games that are fun because you are physically in the space.. VR room escape has to be the perfect fit right?

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Immediate thought after danielle saying room escapes are the only pixel hunt games that are fun because you are physically in the space.. VR room escape has to be the perfect fit right?

 

In a sense, but I'm sure there are 2D games capable of the same idea theoretically if they just added tiny pieces of interactivity everywhere. I don't mean masses of voiceclips, I mean being able to push and pull on drawers that might be totally irrelevant. Or pushing stuff out of the way. It'd probably be a design mess but pulled off right it would actually make for a good experience. I feel like the actual problem with pixel hunting is that you're looking at a rigid picture for the one piece that you can do anything with. Not that searching a screen is inherently unfun.

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In a sense, but I'm sure there are 2D games capable of the same idea theoretically if they just added tiny pieces of interactivity everywhere. I don't mean masses of voiceclips, I mean being able to push and pull on drawers that might be totally irrelevant. Or pushing stuff out of the way. It'd probably be a design mess but pulled off right it would actually make for a good experience. I feel like the actual problem with pixel hunting is that you're looking at a rigid picture for the one piece that you can do anything with. Not that searching a screen is inherently unfun.

 

Those are the things that Gone Home promised which, despite how much I like that game, ended up a middling success. It might be easier in 2d, or it might not.

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Hearing them talk about Quiet before playing missions 45 and 46 is slightly infuriating.

So much of her character and the way the camera is positioned becomes recontexualized once you discover the narrative justifications for her attempts to seduce Big Boss, and how the game trying to make the player attracted to her ties directly into the theme of Big Boss being a surrogate for the person playing (they really need to finish the game and see how the random character creator in the opening becomes an integral part of the story). It doesn't excuse her design, but it becomes less simple than her just existing as a pretty thing to gawk at.



A story in which a woman's sexuality is used as a plot point isn't exactly kosher or progressive, but it does make it seem less at odds with the rest of the game's story. Quiet is actually central to the plot in ways that becomes clearer over time.

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Hearing them talk about Quiet before playing missions 45 and 46 is slightly infuriating.

 

So much of her character and the way the camera is positioned becomes recontexualized once you discover the narrative justifications for her attempts to seduce Big Boss, and how the game trying to make the player attracted to her ties directly into the theme of Big Boss being a surrogate for the person playing (they really need to finish the game and see how the random character creator in the opening becomes an integral part of the story). It doesn't excuse her design, but it becomes less simple than her just existing as a pretty thing to gawk at.

A story in which a woman's sexuality is used as a plot point isn't exactly kosher or progressive, but it does make it seem less at odds with the rest of the game's story. Quiet is actually central to the plot in ways that becomes clearer over time.

 

Threw some of that in a spoiler for those that are easily annoyed by those things. You might want to go back and edit your post to do the same.

 

Nothing I saw or listened too in those later missions really made it seem like she was trying to seduce anyone. She could have murdered Snake at any time, no seduction necessary. Moreover, even if that was made more clear, just because there is sexual tension between two characters doesn't mean that the camera has to do the things it does in this game. I would have been a lot happier with the game if she was shaking her butt at Big Boss and we saw it from outside instead of having the camera right up in there.

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Threw some of that in a spoiler for those that are easily annoyed by those things. You might want to go back and edit your post to do the same.

 

Nothing I saw or listened too in those later missions really made it seem like she was trying to seduce anyone. She could have murdered Snake at any time, no seduction necessary. Moreover, even if that was made more clear, just because there is sexual tension between two characters doesn't mean that the camera has to do the things it does in this game. I would have been a lot happier with the game if she was shaking her butt at Big Boss and we saw it from outside instead of having the camera right up in there.

I'm not going to sit here and defend her character design as if it wasn't just Japan being Japan when it comes to media representation of women (although I do feel like there's an element of Christian-influenced Western Puritanism to some of the overblown reaction towards the sexualization of women in games), but my point about the player surrogate angle deals with that exact criticism. The camera is Big Boss, and in turn the player, not a disembodied entity. The entire ending of the game articulates that notion; everything shown is from his perspective, not from a third-person perspective attempting to give you an objective view of what's happening. You literally start the game off looking through Snake's eyes.

 

To me the problem with Quiet is that little is done with her sexuality other than that one plot point. In mission 45 it looked like the game was going to make a point about sexual violence, but then it just sort-of chickens out. I don't think her physical appearance clashes with the story of the rest of the game, or exists separately from the narrative like some people imply. It makes sense. It might be stupid, but it make sense within the context of the game.

 

And yeah, I tried talking around specifics, but some people are especially sensitive to spoilers when it comes to this game. I'll add some spoiler tags. 

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There are some elements of Nick's position on things happening in MGSV that bother me a bit. Primarily that he seemingly doesn't see through-lines that connect this one to other Metal Gears

 

I know who the character is in relation to MGS, but that doesn't really change my opinion on that stuff. It's like saying Quiet is naked because she has to breathe. 

 

Also, I know that I didn't really "beat" the game, but I'm up to mission 41 and Chapter 2 has just been a thinly veiled rehash of missions. They're still fun, but yeah. In any case, I'm not sure this game has an ending at all. Or it has the most endings of any game ever made.

 

Anyway, GOTY.

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I'd buy the player surrogate angle if

 

1) The camera was consistent about the times you were watching a scene with Big Boss in it, versus watching from Big Boss's eyes

2) Big Boss as a character didn't express complete disinterest in Quiet, thus having his own opinion instead of being a surrogate

3) I had the option to just not look or tell her to stop (yes there are limited camera controls in some instances, but not in others, and not very well made anyway)

 

I dunno, I'm especially passionate about this since I almost didn't buy the game because of it, yet it's probably one of the better games I've ever played. I'd be a lot less opinionated if the game was bad, but the fact that it's so good and yet missed the mark in such a huge way on this one thing really stings.

 

Edit: Nick, there are still a few brand new missions that are well worth playing.

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Edit: Nick, there are still a few brand new missions that are well worth playing.

 

Yeah, I know there are a few, but they all seem to follow the same structure and use the same locations as Chapter 1. Whereas Chapter 1 felt like a well-paced rollout of the various worldspaces and mission concepts, Chapter 2 feels like either directly rehashed missions, or slight tweaks of said missions using similar environments/etc. I'm not knocking the game -- I will probably play it another 100 hours or something stupid -- but it feels like a very clear dropoff in terms of fresh thoughts.

 

edit -- actually, a question for anyone else playing this crazy game. I was using a rad woman soldier as my character over the weekend, but after dying during an FOB mission she is now KIA. Is it really the case that you can't use custom soldiers on FOB missions without risking their permadeath? (If so, ugh, why??)

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