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Idle Thumbs 289: Old Fruit and Dirty Water

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Idle Thumbs 289:

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Old Fruit and Dirty Water
This week you are beset by waking nightmares and cannot continue. Giant insects pour from the sky and from the walls, hungry for blood, or maybe bones. A funny man screams out again and again for meat, for any meal, and you know he will not die because your voice says so; he is now in a state of infinite hunger, living on old fruit and dirty water. A popup window appears above your head, which reads "Everything is okay, none of it is real. You are part of an elaborate simulation built to entertain Steve Gaynor." You dismiss the popup and sleep soundly.

Discussed: Dishonored 2, Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair, Hitman (2016), Transport Fever, MiniMetro, Titanfall 2


 

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I think there are a lot of B-movies being made right now, and are very profitable thanks to just how cheaply made they are. And they all exist in the horror genre, and typically involve being shot with a camcorder either out in the woods, or just in a single house. Planet Money was on this beat last year.

 

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/21/433505958/horror-is-the-best-deal-in-hollywood

 

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/09/11/439632877/episode-650-the-scariest-thing-in-hollywood

 

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The game you're looking for, at least in theory, is Cities In Motion. You control the transport network of a single city at a time on a very granular level. The only problem is the traffic model is kind of broken.

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Also, since you guys are potentially getting some hate mail over your response to West World I'd just like to say that I appreciated hearing your thoughts about West World and the current state of prestige TV, and it seemed well considered and thoughtful to me.

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Why would they get hate mail? It's a thoroughly underwhelming show, though episodes 5 and 6 were slightly better. It's incredible how little I care about any of the characters or figuring out what's going on. After episode 7 you can't help but compare it to BSG. I was emotionally invested in BSG's characters, and the cylon reveals (at least the early ones) were truly impactful. But, the equivalent in West World just made me yawn and check how much time was left in the episode.

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Earth Defense Force is such good, silly, stupid fun.

I've racked up around 30 hours in 4.1 so far doing Multiplayer Co-op with a friend of mine. The sheer insanity of the number of enemies, your arsenal and the way the game reacts when the former are combined gets real satisfying from time to time.

 

I laughed so hard when the game had me piloting a giant mech in what essentially was a boxing match against Godzilla.  

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Gamemaker Studio 2 is super cool, but unfortunately since it's in closed beta right now you can't export standalone executables from it. It's a shame because I was really hoping to build my Wizard Jam game in it, and it has so many awesome improvements over GMS 1.4.

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Dishonored used Unreal, but Dishonored 2 uses the "Void Engine," which is apparently a modified version of idTech 5.

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1 hour ago, Korax said:

Dishonored used Unreal, but Dishonored 2 uses the "Void Engine," which is apparently a modified version of idTech 5.

 

Whoa

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On 11/17/2016 at 9:09 PM, Moosferatu said:

Why would they get hate mail? It's a thoroughly underwhelming show, though episodes 5 and 6 were slightly better. It's incredible how little I care about any of the characters or figuring out what's going on. After episode 7 you can't help but compare it to BSG. I was emotionally invested in BSG's characters, and the cylon reveals (at least the early ones) were truly impactful. But, the equivalent in West World just made me yawn and check how much time was left in the episode.

Nature of existing on the internet these days, there will always be a group who can't handle criticism of something they love and will send hate mail

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EDF is great. I mean, the games are very badly made, but they are also great. They offer a level of spectacle which is probably without equivalent in video games. I played quite a bit of the last one on PS3 before I got sick of the giant spiders ensnaring me with webs that glitched straight through the walls of whole city blocks.

 

Also the coop multiplayer in EDF is supposed to be amazing. You can summon a giant robot and put your buddies in the turrets and stomp very slowly around the city levelling everything in your path. I don't know who could ask for more from a video game.

 

I haven't played Dishonored 2 yet but I had strong and deep feelings about the first game. It was one of the few games where I've felt basically fine about killing everyone (and I mean everyone) in the game on my first playthrough. The world is just so deeply sordid, and almost everyone in it is so far beyond redemption -- and to be honest I have a lot of thoughts/doubts about how meaningfully different the game is when you choose not to kill anyone. That said, my second playthrough was non-lethal, and on a harder difficulty, which made it a lot more satisfying because I'd so extensively scratched the itch of wishing I could just play the game like it was Hotline Miami.

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Regarding lo-fi programming:

If you think of the game-engines and default assets as the instruments, then there are certainly lo-fi games being made. 

http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/games

You can do a lot just by using Unity's standard assets, dropping .jpg on cubes and telling it to play an audio file. One of my favorite games is Destroy Your Home.

http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/5279

...which has coincidentally been cloned in Earth Defense Force Your Home

https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/10305

For something less serene, check out Terribly Fast World.

https://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/9144

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