Chris

Idle Thumbs 244: Heroes vs Villains

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Idle Thumbs 244:

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Heroes vs Villains

Jake Rodkin has vanished. In his absence, we discuss Bushido Blade, Yakuza 5, Rainbow Six: Siege, and the obscure Japanese open-world game Mizzurna Falls. Which can mean only one thing: Steve "Hot Scoops" Gaynor has returned.

Discussed: Rainbow Six Siege, Mizzurna Falls, Bushido Blade, Yakuza 5, Spintires, Phantasy Star Online, Google Street View, Bigger Luke

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Re: Bridge the "unethicalness" of saying something other than pass is not because of what it might communicate to your opponents but what it might communicate to your teammate. There are all sorts of bidding conventions which in effect are a series of agreed upon protocols for making bids that do not actually represent, for instance, your strongest suit (at the earlier rounds of bidding), but are in fact coded tells about your distribution of cards.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_convention

 

Calls made during the auction phase of a contract bridge game convey information about the player's card holdings. Calls may be "natural" (that is, are based on a holding of the suit bid, or a balanced distribution in the case of a notrump bid) or "artificial" (show a feature unrelated to the named denomination). A bridge convention is an agreement about an artificial call or a set of related artificial calls.

...

The purpose of this bidding is for players to inform their partners of the content of their hand and to arrive at a suitable contract at which to play the hand (or to prevent the opponents from arriving at a suitable contract). Although bidding is often "natural" (describing a hand by simple reference to possession, shape, and strength of the named suit) players may also bid using conventions, which assign more specific information to certain calls, particularly at the more advanced levels of competitive play. Bill Root defines "convention" as, "A specific agreement between partners to give an unusual meaning to a bid".

 

So saying "I pass" versus "I'll pass" versus "I think I'm going to pass" versus "I guess I have to pass" is enough, for instance, to potentially denote a suit, which then represents an unfair advantage.

 

edit: as a random example, Comfy Canapé which is deployed in response to the opposing team opening with 1NT has an initial response of 2clubs denote strength in hearts, rather than the "natural" connotation of clubs that one might expect.

 

more: I should note that the hidden information in a game of bridge is not just what cards you or your partner have, but at a meta level what convention you happen to be using. If you can crack what convention your opponents are using, for instance, that can tell you something about your opponents' cards.

 

SHOWS HOW MUCH I KNOW. Apparently, in tournament play this is ENTIRELY wrong. You often have to tell your opponents what your convention means if asked. Still, the point about communicating limited information to your teammate holds.

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My favorite fights in Bushido Blade were a few minutes of positioning followed by both characters attacking and dying. Never had a 'tie' in any other fighting game. Also in the campaign if you use non-honorable tactics you get a different and earlier ending to the game, which makes the fight with the guy carrying a gun really hard.

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Re: Bridge the "unethicalness" of saying something other than pass is not because of what it might communicate to your opponents but what it might communicate to your teammate. There are all sorts of bidding conventions which in effect are a series of agreed upon protocols for making bids that do not actually represent, for instance, your strongest suit (at the earlier rounds of bidding), but are in fact coded tells about your distribution of cards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_convention

So saying "I pass" versus "I'll pass" versus "I think I'm going to pass" versus "I guess I have to pass" is enough, for instance, to potentially denote a suit, which then represents an unfair advantage.

edit: as a random example, Comfy Canapé which is deployed in response to the opposing team opening with 1NT has an initial response of 2clubs denote strength in hearts, rather than the "natural" connotation of clubs that one might expect.

more: I should note that the hidden information in a game of bridge is not just what cards you or your partner have, but at a meta level what convention you happen to be using. If you can crack what convention your opponents are using, for instance, that can tell you something about your opponents' cards.

This makes a lot of sense! Thanks!

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Damn, I didn't know Omar Sharif posted here.

When I was a kid I didn't know what Bridge was, and I didn't really know who Omar Sharif was, but I definitely knew that Omar Sharif was really good at bridge.

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In high school, my friends and I would go on the Internet Gaming Zone and join games of Bridge, which must have been super frustrating for the poor saps with whom we were paired, since we didn't know (or care) how to play at all. We'd just click on everything until something happened.

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I've taken to playing bridge online against 3 computers, which means I get owned more frequently than when I played against humans. I am obsessed with bridge now ;(

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I've taken to playing bridge online against 3 computers, which means I get owned more frequently than when I played against humans. I am obsessed with bridge now ;(

 

Oh man, be careful with that! When I got obsessed with Race for the Galaxy a few years ago, my friends could only play on weekends, so I found an online computer version and it changed the way I play. I though it was for the better, but... well, I wouldn't say that the ruthless and mechanical style that I was taught made me not a fun person with whom to play, but we did stop playing Race for the Galaxy only about a month after I discovered solo play.

 

And then I kept playing alone, for many months after!

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Oh man yeah, whoever wrote the code for the Race for the Galaxy program did a great job with the AI, it always crushed me on anything but easy difficulty. If the AI for bridge is anything similar Sarah is going to turn into a monstrous Bridge Lord.

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God I hope so. It's so rare for me to be better at any kind of game than Chris (he kicked my ass in Gin)

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Oh man, be careful with that! When I got obsessed with Race for the Galaxy a few years ago, my friends could only play on weekends, so I found an online computer version and it changed the way I play. I though it was for the better, but... well, I wouldn't say that the ruthless and mechanical style that I was taught made me not a fun person with whom to play, but we did stop playing Race for the Galaxy only about a month after I discovered solo play.

 

And then I kept playing alone, for many months after!

 

Bridge is a very human, team-oriented card game. Playing against AI will teach you what kind of hands you can and can't play into certain bids, and how to finesse hands after winning a contract. But, if your partner REALLY wants to play 4NT with a hand full of garbage the only thing you can do is lay your cards out and go get some hors d'oeuvres. The biggest benefit in that regard is the computer isn't going to bid into a crazy thing unless you were the instigator.

 

I tweeted at Chris that the hardest part about learning bridge was that my grandparents had 80+ years experience when they were trying to teach me. Trying to explain to them that bidding 1NT after someone opens with 1C/1D not to show that you want to play No Trump but that you have even distribution and 10-13 points (I don't remember these things exactly) was an exercise in frustration, because it was very non-intuitive. To them it was natural and they'd been doing it for decades and I was getting stuck at the "easy part". That's not to suggest that they were poor teachers or impatient, just that the part where you actually play cards was very easy compared to the part where you use weird code to say 7 things at once. I was also an early teenager, from my recollection.

 

Bridge is the DOTA of card games.

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So looking into the Yakuza games it seems like the perfect game for me right now. I got back from a trip to Japan about a month ago, and the idea of playing a game in an open world Tokyo environment doing mundane things/attacking people by swinging a couch at them is super enticing. For a newcomer what's a good entry point into the series? 5 sounds good, but I guess there is also Yakuza 0 for the PS4 which I guess I could pick up whenever I get that system?

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I'm so glad that Nick discovered the pleasures of Spintires. It's a brilliant simulation/game. It shines even more brightly in multiplayer; when you help each other through the mud, there's a major sense of cooperation.

More moving vehicles on the trail also amplifies the already significant comedy of errors element.

Also, Bushido Blade is baller as fuck.

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Damn, I didn't know Omar Sharif posted here.

 

I think I've personally only actually played a handful of times, but it was popular with my grandparents on my dad's side and their siblings. I had a grand uncle who played for the Taiwanese national team.

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So looking into the Yakuza games it seems like the perfect game for me right now. I got back from a trip to Japan about a month ago, and the idea of playing a game in an open world Tokyo environment doing mundane things/attacking people by swinging a couch at them is super enticing. For a newcomer what's a good entry point into the series? 5 sounds good, but I guess there is also Yakuza 0 for the PS4 which I guess I could pick up whenever I get that system?

 

Yakuza 5 would be a good place to start since it's sort of the culmination of Yakuza up to that point with a lot of playable characters and minigames and stuff like that. However, if you want to walk around virtual Tokyo, that game doesn't even get there until the Final Chapter. At least that's my understanding. That's a bonus for me though, since all I want to do is hang out in Virtual Osaka and drink product placement whiskey.

 

If you just want to hang out in Virtual Tokyo, Yakuza 4 might be all you need. It lets you off the leash to explore Fake Kabukicho pretty early on.

 

Yakuza 0 looks fun. It's set in 1988, and Japan in the late 80s is a trip and a half, but a lot of stuff is probably lost on us Americans.

 

One final note about Yakuza 5: the first three things you are tasked with doing at the start of this game are

 

1) Buy and deliver a gift for an apology

2) Transfer money to an orphanage

3) Beat up some hoodlums

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When Steve talked about listening to the cast being his way to keep up with the other thumbs, I imagined him recording his responses to the cast to send back to the thumbs. But since they don't leave space for him to talk really it would just be an hour of incidental reactions like "Oh sweet", "Haha" and "Holy shit!". So if this exists please start releasing it as the new podcast Idle Thumb.

 

Also I came looking for the link to that let's play, and since I didn't see it anywhere I found it myself.

for the curious but lazy.

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This episode was really good because it brought back all the memories of Bushido Blade I have from my pre-teen years. That was probably one of the few games of the original Playstation era that stayed with me in terms of personal game aesthetic. There is a part of me that has the hubris to think I could someday help create a game that is Dark Souls world building and environmental storytelling but with the Bushido Blade combat model. 

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When Steve talked about listening to the cast being his way to keep up with the other thumbs, I imagined him recording his responses to the cast to send back to the thumbs. But since they don't leave space for him to talk really it would just be an hour of incidental reactions like "Oh sweet", "Haha" and "Holy shit!". So if this exists please start releasing it as the new podcast Idle Thumb.

Something like this actually happened with Nick at some point I think??

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Yakuza 5 would be a good place to start since it's sort of the culmination of Yakuza up to that point with a lot of playable characters and minigames and stuff like that. However, if you want to walk around virtual Tokyo, that game doesn't even get there until the Final Chapter. At least that's my understanding. That's a bonus for me though, since all I want to do is hang out in Virtual Osaka and drink product placement whiskey.

 

If you just want to hang out in Virtual Tokyo, Yakuza 4 might be all you need. It lets you off the leash to explore Fake Kabukicho pretty early on.

 

Yakuza 0 looks fun. It's set in 1988, and Japan in the late 80s is a trip and a half, but a lot of stuff is probably lost on us Americans.

 

One final note about Yakuza 5: the first three things you are tasked with doing at the start of this game are

 

1) Buy and deliver a gift for an apology

2) Transfer money to an orphanage

3) Beat up some hoodlums

 

Osaka is really cool too. Those are both cool, enormous Japanese cities. Thanks for the info!

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Something like this actually happened with Nick at some point I think??

 

 

Edit: i'm still baffled at how to embed videos  :getmecoat

Edit 2: shout out to Johnny Driggs for this clip b/c it was his meticulous time-stamping and notation on the Youtube channel that helped me find it quick.

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