Chris

Idle Thumbs 291: Mid-Jam Power Move

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Idle Thumbs 291:

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Mid-Jam Power Move
You are not locked in a prison of your mind, this is what you want to be doing. This is what needs to be done. Trees must be planted, more trees. The guests love trees. This boss won't beat himself. You know you can do it, but you can't talk; everyone is asleep. If you don't sleep, the world will stay just as it is.

Discussed: Dark Souls, Planet Coaster, Owlboy, The Senpai


 

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I appreciated the very subtle "mom's spaghetti" that got snuck in without notice.

 

I also think it's interesting that ProblemMachine's reputation in Nick's mind is apparently "guy who says shitty things" when he's the most helpful person in chat pretty often.

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I'm surprised to hear Nick was so down on Ornstein and Smough/Abbott and Costello/Pikachu and Snorlax! I assume his horrible experience clouded his enjoyment because they're one of the coolest fights in the game and some of the coolest looking bosses in the game.

 

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/darksouls/images/0/08/Ornstein_Concept_Art.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131219120729

 

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/darksouls/images/8/80/Smough_Concept.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130426213331

 

Their soundtrack is also easily the best boss music in that whole game.

 

 

They're definitely a hard fight though. I have no shame in admitting I summoned Solaire for that fight. Speaking of which, does Nick know that there are NPCs who can be summoned for some boss fights the same way that you summon players?

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I think one thing Nick sorta glossed over was the chat empathy. Yeah they talk shit sometimes, but we were all where he was at one point. Most of us stayed up waaaaaaaayyyy too late to beat that boss and failed and woke up and did it the next day or the day after. It was hard to watch but it was also super gratifying to be there with somebody who went through the same stupid bullshit I did. I said it during the stream, but I want to repeat here that watching Nick's Dark Souls streams has been one of the highlights of the year for me. Really, really appreciate them.

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Ultimate Mid Jam Power Move is to start making "Mid Jam Power Move" right now.

 

I'm sure Jam King @Spenny is already doing this..

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Those Dark Souls 1 bosses with the multiple enemies (Ornstein & Smough, Capra Demon, Bell Gargoyles) are the most memorable for me because the way they divert attention really throw me off my usual strategy of kiting and isolating. O&S is where I quit myself, so I can understand Nick's pain.

 

I think that paint that absorbs all light that Jake mentioned is vantablack, which is a thing I'm fascinated by. Every time I see images of it my eyeballs feel like they're looking at an image where someone has photoshopped black onto it.

 

 

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While talking about Owlboy Jake(?) used the pejorative "beta" unironically. This took me aback as I'd only ever associated use of the term with misogynistic alt-right shit heads. Does anyone care to comment on this? i could be incorrect about this, but I've always considered use of the word to be fairly vicious and mean-spirited.

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Wow! The character assassination! I could go back through the chat logs, dig up every time I said something nice, told him "Nick I believe you can do this fight, but I also believe it will take you a while because it's a legit hard fight and takes everyone a while", when I said "I knew Nick could do the archers because this moment was the moment cheatin' hitman was made for", but I won't do that because I don't want to dig back through the logs. Also I totally get it, because I too have a way of ignoring every single positive thing everyone ever says about me and only hearing the negatives, like when people tell me I do nothing but hang out in chat and talk shit :o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o:o

 

:mellow:

 

So I've somehow, in my attempts to guide and curate Nick Breckon's Dark Souls experience, become an unappeasable father figure who he lashes out against. Who could have seen it coming?

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4 hours ago, utilityfrog said:

While talking about Owlboy Jake(?) used the pejorative "beta" unironically. This took me aback as I'd only ever associated use of the term with misogynistic alt-right shit heads. Does anyone care to comment on this? i could be incorrect about this, but I've always considered use of the word to be fairly vicious and mean-spirited.

 

Man I almost majorly backpedaled that on air when it left my mouth, or asked that it be edited but let it sit to see what the response was. I was trying to say "not stereotypical alpha male types," and was not thinking in terms of the modern shitty MRA/PUA context. That phrase has existed since before the 21st century, and has always been a bummer of a term but definitely was not always as weaponozed as it is now. 

 

Anyway, I did a poor job of explaining any context of that remark on air (because I also bailed out mid-thought on some of this stuff), but that word was on my mind because I think Owlboy itself might accept it as a valid label. 

 

I don't like some of the things Owlboy seems to have to say about the internalization of "being a man," in that it seems to very strongly acknowledge an "alpha/beta male" split and tells its story through that lens. Maybe that's an unforgiving read on a story that could be said to be about tolerance of everyone and about misfits of different walks finding friendship together, but I think it's telling a story about more specific things than that, and those things might not be all that healthy in their initial assumptions (even if they are well intentioned).

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At first I did not realize that "beta character" was a CASIE aug analysis of Owlboy's personality; instead I thought Jake was talking about a character who was still in beta testing and that's why he wasn't very heroic yet.

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8 hours ago, SgtWhistlebotom said:

Those Dark Souls 1 bosses with the multiple enemies (Ornstein & Smough, Capra Demon, Bell Gargoyles) are the most memorable for me because the way they divert attention really throw me off my usual strategy of kiting and isolating. O&S is where I quit myself, so I can understand Nick's pain.

 

What makes me sad is that there's such a Reddit/4chan-style undercurrent of "be a man and do it yourself" in Dark Souls fandom that people would prefer to quit when stuff gets too hard, rather than summon help into their game and not play the game "how it's meant to be played" as decreed by some assholes on the internet. Yeah, the rush of beating a seemingly impossible boss solo after hours of trying is really great, but all my most memorable moments in the Souls series, without exception, have been with other players, either inviting someone into my game and having them show me the ropes of a tricky area or boss, or going into someone else's game to get familiarity with an area or boss (and also some precious humanity, to boot). When Nick was streaming DS3, there were always two or three people in chat who'd throw literal tantrums if anyone suggested that Nick summon help and it was always so depressing for their weird entitlement to rule out one of the best parts of the game for me.

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I think it is cool that some people have had great experiences with the co-op in Souls games, but I think the much more common experience is that some really difficult boss suddenly becomes trivially easy since the boss doesn't have any good way to handle aggro'ing 2+ opponents, and that isn't really a satisfying resolution. And I think what is cool about Souls boss fights is how they are this pure expression of fighting game mechanics that someone like me, who doesn't have great reflexes, can reasonably tap into thanks to the less frenetic pacing of the game. So while the "git gud" contingent of people can take a hike because the difficulty of Souls games is definitely the least interesting aspect of the series, I am sympathetic to people that feel like the co-op experience isn't great, and prefer to solo boss fights.

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I only used co-op once in DS1 and that was for Artorias (I guess I had a mental block on him 'cause that guy is EASY to me now, one of the easiest (and coolest)), but even so I thought it was fun. This badass ninja lady just rolled in and destroyed that guy and she occasionally backed up to try to let me have a go, which I thought was nice, but I still kept fucking it up, so she had to jump back in while I ran and stayed healed. It was a good time.

 

In Bloodborne I did a lot more co-op, but only after beating the bosses on my own. It was also a lot of fun! This time I got to be the badass ninja lady! ...With a gun, tho.

 

Anyway I agree with Gorm that co-op can be fun and also disagree with the idea that the difficulty is "definitely the least interesting aspect of the series" so very strongly I want to look at you menacingly.

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Some people like to summon and others don't, but people tend to feel strongly about it either way. Watching someone stream a game is enjoyable because you're in a sense sharing the experience of the game, and of course people want others to have the same positive experience that they had with it. For some people summoning would ruin their experience, and they feel like Nick summoning ruins their shared experience (or at least makes it so Nick doesn't experience exactly what they experienced), so I get why people respond that way.

 

I think most people know which category they fall into though and ultimately chat isn't going to influence that. Nick clearly did not want to summon, for his own reasons not because of chat.

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Chris, if you don't want to know what Senpais or the Difference Between Visual Novels and Dating Sims are, ignore this post. Also this is probably going to be really lame.

 

Senpai is a Japanese word that means something along the lines of 'upperclassman'. It extends to outside of highschool, but it's a type of relationship between two people, an older person ('Senpai') and the younger person ('Kohai'). Japanese culture's pretty strict on formality, so in these types of relationships younger individuals are supposed to obey and respect their older individuals, while the older individuals are supposed to guide and help teach their juniors. Relating this to how it's portrayed in anime taking place in highschool, 'kohai' is a person one year younger/one grade below you, while 'senpai' is a person one year older/one grade above you.

 

So why is this a meme? Well in Japanese, there's a lot of different ways to refer to a person depending on what type of honourific ('Mr. Jones' versus just 'Jones') you add to their name. In these types of stories, people either add '-senpai' to the the end of the person's name or simply refer to their upperclassman just as 'senpai'. It sounds bad in English to call your friend who is a year older than you 'Upperclassman', and it's difficult to explain all this efficiently in a translated story, so a lot of people became used to just leaving it untranslated (and leaving a translation note somewhere to explain it). In a lot of these highschool romance stories, there's a bunch of different characters who all are in love with the protagonist. Inevitably there's a girl that's one year younger than the guy protagonist, and thus calls that guy 'senpai'. The meme 'Notice me Senpai' or 'I hope Senpai notices me' is a meme because that story idea of a younger girl desperately wanting the upperclassman to notice her is so common and overplayed.

 

Now onto Dating Sims and Visual Novels. Visual Novels are pretty simple really, they're a lot like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Books (or 'Gamebooks', as 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' is still copyrighted), but with music, sound effects, and other things a digital medium can do. Some Visual Novels feature radically different branching paths, some feature many bad endings, and some are quite linear. Some of them even have no choices at all, which some people further distinguish as 'Kinetic Novels'. Some Visual Novels push more into adventure game territory, like the Ace Attorney series or 999, which includes heavy puzzle-solving, while others don't have much else besides clicking to advance the scene.  While the stereotype is that all Visual Novels feature romance or sex, there are also plenty of games that aren't about that (including the aforementioned Ace Attorney series).

 

'Dating Sims' are a bit different/more specific, as though they are about romancing fictional characters, their defining aspect is that the relationship is discretely measured with systems (as part of the idea of a "Dating Sim") rather than narrative beats. In a hypothetical example, you give a girl flowers on Day 4 and you see that her love has increased by 5 points, and you go to the gym to increase your 'strength stat' to impress her. That's a Dating Sim. Some Visual Novels are Dating Sims, but not all Visual Novels (or even romance-based Visual Novels) are Dating Sims.

 

Just to add a further wrinkle, Japan also categorizes certain games as "Bishojo games" (literally, 'pretty girl games', and because of English influence on the Japanese language, sometimes called "Gal Games"), which fits most people's idea of what a 'Dating Sim' is. Basically if it has pretty anime girls, then it fits, doesn't matter if it's mechanically an RPG, FPS, whatever.

 

Conclusion: "Visual Novel" = Stories that are sort of like Video Games and sort of like books. "Dating Sim" = A systems-based game about romancing people. Hatoful Boyfriend is a parody romance visual novel, but not a dating sim.

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1 hour ago, aquason said:

Now onto Dating Sims and Visual Novels. Visual Novels are pretty simple really, they're a lot like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Books (or 'Gamebooks', as 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' is still copyrighted), but with music, sound effects, and other things a digital medium can do. Some Visual Novels feature radically different branching paths, some feature many bad endings, and some are quite linear. Some of them even have no choices at all, which some people further distinguish as 'Kinetic Novels'. Some Visual Novels push more into adventure game territory, like the Ace Attorney series or 999, which includes heavy puzzle-solving, while others don't have much else besides clicking to advance the scene.  While the stereotype is that all Visual Novels feature romance or sex, there are also plenty of games that aren't about that (including the aforementioned Ace Attorney series).

 

An added wrinkle: much like the unexpected popularity of the Wizardry series in Japan prompting the specific tropes of the JRPG, one of the first Japanese-made adventure games, The Portopia Serial Murders released in 1983, basically created the concept of the "visual novel" and overshadowed other homegrown entries in the "adventure game" genre. Supposedly, the creator read about Western-style adventure games in a PC magazine and, wanting to introduce them to Japan, made his own in BASIC. In the game, you play a silent and unseen detective who interacts with the characters and environment by ordering his assistants to do things or answer questions. There are multiple ways to advance the case, making it technically nonlinear, but there's a single unchanging plot that is present no matter how you solve the case. All the aesthetic and mechanical features of The Portopia Serial Murders, either simplified or elaborated upon, are what established the concept of the "visual novel": first-person perspective, different routes to advance the same story, a low level of player interaction, a focus on conversation over environmental interaction, etc. It never got licensed in America, mostly because it's a very "adult" plot involving murder and drugs, but in Japan it's known across all ages and demographics. "Yasu is the culprit" is the Japanese version of "The butler did it."

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(Strictly speaking, senpai just means "senior to me", like... upperclassmen have more experience, and that's what makes them a lowerclassman's senpai. Most often seen in context of school, as in that example, but also exists in professional fields. And the senpai need not be the "older" person. Just someone who's worked there longer than you. That said, I almost never see it used to address someone younger, except as a joke. Probably because it just feels weird. Also, until recently, people so rarely left their jobs, that just in Japanese society it was (and probably still is) super rare for an older person to join a brand new company.)

 

(Please don't read this post. I'm such a sad weeb.)

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I was so delighted to hear that Nick got to have a true Dark Souls experience on Ornstein and Smaugh. Less delighted to hear how little fun he was having.

 

I'm someone who prefers to solo bosses in From Software games; for me, the fun is in learning the patterns of the bosses and pulling off the execution. Funnily enough, Bloodborne was the first game where I routinely summoned, but then it took me a solid week just to get through the first area of the game.

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Due to some specific stuff with my podcast-listening habits, I listened to the Nick's story 4 times now, and it's still entertaining! Just for fun, counted how many times Chris said "oh my god" during the climax (it was 8 times plus one "oh, for christ's sake", and one of the eight was "oh my god, Nick")

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On 12/3/2016 at 8:34 PM, Merus said:

I was so delighted to hear that Nick got to have a true Dark Souls experience on Ornstein and Smaugh. Less delighted to hear how little fun he was having.

 

I'm someone who prefers to solo bosses in From Software games; for me, the fun is in learning the patterns of the bosses and pulling off the execution. Funnily enough, Bloodborne was the first game where I routinely summoned, but then it took me a solid week just to get through the first area of the game.

 

Watching him stream last night it became pretty clear that for Nick the Souls games are just like an exercise in contemplating the absurdity of existence rather than something you might actually play for fun.

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I appreciated Chris's story and perspective regarding a senpai, because except for probably spending more time in the Idle Thumbs slack than he does, thus gaining additional senpai knowledge through anime osmosis, his experience matches mine. Only understanding a senpai through the memeification and casual usage I see on the internet on a basically daily basis.

 

Thank you for being the everyme, Chris.

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