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Idle Thumbs 258: Change the Name to Game

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Idle Thumbs 258:

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Change the Name to Game

It's game time. You're confident. You know this. You load up Dark Souls 3. You have some trouble with the menus, but it's alright, you figure it out. Forty minutes later, something on the screen almost resembles a human face. Enter the game—it's brutal, not what you remembered. As your grotesquely-faced wizard is wrecked beyond belief time and again, you reflect on how one can feel so old and yet like such a baby. You load Super Hypercube and watch a small cube slowly and satisfyingly descend into an appropriate receptacle. You make a drink on the rocks.

Discussed: Dark Souls 3, Hyper Light Drifter, Enter the Gungeon, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Super Hypercube, The Foo Show, EVE Online, NBA 2K16

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Oh man, Arabian Nights is a blast. There's an extra ruleset you can use that gives the game more of a real goal, titled something like The Sultan's Quest. Unfortunately it's only the barest rules, so it has no flavor text of its own, so you'd have to make up your own, but it gives you more direction when playing.

Another similar game, but with more of a Bond feel is Agents of S.M.E.R.S.H. It's got Bond type villains, capers all over the world, secret bases, spy gadgets, etc. It isn't quite as varied as Arabian Nights, but in my plays of both games, SMERSH was always a bigger hit, having more of its own flavor, and being a more focused experience.

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On Dark Souls 2, it is the most contentious of the Souls games in a lot of ways (and I include both Demon's and Bloodbourne in the Souls games).  It's the only one not directed by Miyazaki, so some people hold that against it.  In terms of story and world, it's not as rich or well designed as any of the others.  It lacks the complexity and connectedness of DS1 for sure.  It also messed with matchmaking in a pretty terrible way that broke how a lot of people liked to play the game.  Matchmaking was based on total souls collected, rather than your level, so you couldn't just hold at one level.  A lot of people particularly like co-oping a single area, or like PvP at a certain level, and holding a level wasn't intially possible in DS2 (it was patched in eventually).  

But, and I count myself in this camp, a lot of people view it as mechanically better and deeper.  It's combat is much better.  There are so many more options for builds.  It's the best dark fantasy barbie simulator, there are so many more armor and clothing options.   If I want to go back and replay a game, I honestly pick DS2 over any of the first four games, even though I think it is the weakest game in a lot of ways, just because it has so many different build options that there are still things I've never tried in it after more than a dozen playthroughs.  But if I had to suggest a Souls game to someone as their first game, it would be my last pick, because I think as an introductory experience the things the other games excel at are all more interesting for a new player.

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Thanks for mentioning Wizard Jam on the cast! 

 

Here's the trailer that was mentioned at the end of the episode:

 

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Oh man, I just want to share Monster Factory with every human in the world

 

 

The hardest I have laughed in years has been at Monster Factory.  Justin McElroy and Griffin McElroy are the Polygon Employees who make the show.

 

They also are the hosts of My Brother, My Brother and Me along with their 3rd brother Travis. Comedy Geniuses.  I cannot recommend them enough.

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Tales of the Arabian Nights is one of my favorite board games. And no, as much as it seems like there is some skill to it, there's really not. One of the first things I tell new players is that there's technically a win condition, but it's there more so that the game will end at some point rather than being a specific goal to attain. During one of my first games, I had Piety, and found incredible success in praying at everything. Piety hasn't been half as useful at any point since then. A friend once had Weapon Use, and decided that meant he would be good at violent actions, but it turned out that Seamanship was somehow better at getting him through fights. And sometimes you just have some bad luck. During one game a player ended up Ensorcelled, Insane, and Enslaved, so someone else chose where he moved, someone else picked his reaction to encounters, and someone else took all the rewards from encounters.

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I like Arabian Nights, but the overall structure is definitely the weakest part. Earning story/destiny points and the weird bet you make are at odds with enjoying it as a storytelling game.

 

And sometimes you just have some bad luck. During one game a player ended up Ensorcelled, Insane, and Enslaved, so someone else chose where he moved, someone else picked his reaction to encounters, and someone else took all the rewards from encounters.

 

This kind of thing is hilarious to hear about later, but it's a real bummer at the table. I actually wrote up set of house rules to make a lot of the statuses less sticky, because getting stuck with the rules-as-written version of Grief-Stricken can be a real bummer. They're here, if anyone's curious: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ajvtcjbdg6wzdgt/House%20Rules.md?dl=0

 

(They also attempt to sideline destiny/story points, but my quest draft replacement is still not great, because the quests are just all over the place.)

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This kind of thing is hilarious to hear about later, but it's a real bummer at the table. I actually wrote up set of house rules to make a lot of the statuses less sticky, because getting stuck with the rules-as-written version of Grief-Stricken can be a real bummer. They're here, if anyone's curious: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ajvtcjbdg6wzdgt/House Rules.md?dl=0

With the right group that stuff is hilarious at the table too! (Nice house rules, though.)

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I had actually never heard of trainers before the Dark Souls 1 episode of Monster Factory when Griffin searches for a a "Dark Souls Meghan Trainor"

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I only know about Monster Factory via other people, but I've really not indulged in anything any of the McElroys of any stripe have done and so I am kinda happy Chris hasn't either. 

 

This is my favorite rap/game mashup: 

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With the right group that stuff is hilarious at the table too! (Nice house rules, though.)

Yeah, we thought it was pretty good at the time.

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Interesting thought about how indie games have conditioned us to think about games with a retro appearance.

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but the deal breaker for me in Dark Souls 2 was the way enemies would disappear after you killed them enough time. Knowing that there was a potentially upper limit to the economy gave me enough anxiety about playing the game that it made me stop playing even if realistically I never would have hit that limit. I think most people didn't like the design of the levels & bosses though or something.

 

Also, yeah, the menus for that series are pretty bad. I was thinking recently how I really dislike how many RPGs handle upgrading your character by improving a stat that affects some other trait. I wish you were just upgrading the relevant trait, it would result in a much less opaque experience. RPGs do this just because it is a holdover from D&D (which in turn is borrowing mechanics from old wargames). And it makes sense in the context of a tabletop experience where it makes things manageable if you just have a couple of things to track on a character sheet, and then you can consult a chart. But a computer game doesn't have that kind of UI constraint so it seems like a poor choice to carry that system over.

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Wow, that sounds great. I'm excited to try it.

Also, via Soren Johnson on Twitter: an iOS app to replace all the cross-referencing of charts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tales-arabian-nights-encounter/id995461804?mt=8

It's really cool, but like I said earlier in the thread (I think), it's barebones. I'd recommend taking the time to write some flavor for it, or at least some base stuff to give you a jumping point for adlibbing your own.

Also neat is that it was meant to be in the published version but isn't for some reason. To me it feels like it would lead to a potentially better experience, while making it a bit less gamey while adding more gamey elements?

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On the comparisons to fighting games, the timing of the super dash (not sure what it's actually called!) unlock in Hyper Light Drifter reminded me a lot of combo systems in some fighting games like the SF series. You can't just mash it out, if you press the next button for the follow up dash too slowly or two fast, you'll drop it. It has a unique ramp up, though. Slow, medium, then steady. Very difficult to time in the heat of battle, even by the end of the game I was still missing the timing a fair amount.

 

There's that room inside the shop you buy it where you can practice it forever by dashing in a giant circle, crossing tiles on the floor regenerate your meter that otherwise limits you on how many dashes you can string together (along with some other abilities). It's one of the most interesting upgrades in the game, changes how you can move in battle and outside quite a bit, you should really make it the next thing you buy if you don't have it already.

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That's 20:00 UTC (isn't it's PDT instead of PST?)

It's PDT right now, yeah.

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Tales can totally be fun, but I think you NEED to prep regular game players with that idea that it's a silly narrative generator, and skills don't positively affect outcome. I think on our first play (with a bunch of experience board game pals) I had like two boating skills, seafaring, and nautical navigation. i had some boat and sailing encounters and either they skills WEREN'T on the list, but stuff like bread making was, or they didn't do anything useful. I found it frustrating. 

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