Chris

Idle Thumbs 38: Up On This Boss

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Hand-delivered by horse bag

"Up On This Boss"

This week on the Thumb we dive into the many meanings of Nintendo's mysterious inflatable horse peripheral, reel at how many GameCubes are turned on right now, and debate whether "Castroid" is a game genre or horrible medical condition.

Games Discussed: Shadow Complex, Civilization Revolution (iPhone), Punch-Out!!, Bionic Commando, Batman: Arkham Asylum (Demo), Mass Effect, Waluigi's Waluland, Nintendo Horse Bag

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erm...

ok...

wtf is the difference between Video Games and Computer Games!?

XBox360 isn't a computer? Games on the PC doesn't use video?

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You missed the chance to put Punch-Out right after Time Donkey in the games list. :naughty:

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btw, halfway through the cast there was an annoying high pitched tone :/

You should also get 55 WIZARD OFF (yes, I know, one too much) just to turn OFF the wizard that you turned 55 WIZARD ON.

There is one thing I didn't understand. What exactly did you mean with "when your character is out of control, you are out of control"? Isn't that pretty much always the case?

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Holy shit you talked about Discworld Noir, I've never heard anybody else even acknowledge that game exists. It's probably my favourite non-lucasarts adventure game. I just searched for it so I could install it again, but I think I've lost it :(

elmuerte: when you can't interact with your character, your character can't interact with the world. As opposed to cutscenes where you can't interact with your character, but it IS interacting with the world.

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Holy shit you talked about Discworld Noir, I've never heard anybody else even acknowledge that game exists. It's probably my favourite non-lucasarts adventure game. I just searched for it so I could install it again, but I think I've lost it :(

I tried to play Discworld Noir a few years back, but it refused to work on a modern Windows. Considering VirtualBox now has DirectX support it might be possible to create a Windows95 or 98 VM and play Discworld Noir on that. Or maybe somebody created a fix for the game. I still haven't played it :(

elmuerte: when you can't interact with your character, your character can't interact with the world. As opposed to cutscenes where you can't interact with your character, but it IS interacting with the world.

But how is that a cool thing? And I don't recall anything like that in BioShock tbh.

What I do like is cutscenes where you are very limited in controlling your character. For example in Prey when you get abducted you can still move your head to you can look at the space ship.

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I loved dissecting abominations as Max Roivas in Eternal Darkness.

Discworld Noir I'm gonna try and get that going in DOSbox, sounds good.

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Talking about the "Nintendo Horse Bag" and Discworld Noir?! I must listen now! :tup:

Discworld Noir I'm gonna try and get that going in DOSbox, sounds good.

I'm pretty sure there's no DOS version of Discworld Noir... It's one of those awkward Windows only games released between 98 and XP that tend to have problems running on the modern Windows OS. I haven't tried installing it recently, but I think there's some fan patches out there for a few major problems.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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So what was that Jake said somewhere that you recorded something about Brütal Legend?

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So what was that Jake said somewhere that you recorded something about Brütal Legend?

It's bound by rule of bargo, but will appear soon.

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I don't really get Chris's point about Mass Effect piling on non-interactive cut-scenes. If possible I'd love to hear some examples.

I find myself in the cut-scene camp, since I like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear, but at the same time time, I get just as frustrated as you guys do when cut-scenes come up in many other games.

For instance, in Halo 2 there were all those scenes with the priests and the religion and that made me angry. I'm just like, "You think that's an interesting concept? What are you doing Bungie!? I thought you guys were smart!"

I think the difference for me, is whether the game has characters that I can get invested in. If the game has that, then I'd happily sit there and watch tons of cut-scenes about nothing at all. If the game doesn't have that, the cut-scenes need to have such an incredibly light touch as to barely exist. Halo 1 is an example of that light touch coming out nicely, Halo 2 is the lack of that light touch.

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I don't really get Chris's point about Mass Effect piling on non-interactive cut-scenes. If possible I'd love to hear some examples.

Well, there's plenty of stuff having to do with the main story. I don't remember specific scenes or anything, since most of them I found boring. But there are undoubtedly tons of times when you just sit there and watch or listen to something happen dealing with Saren and the ancient evil and the Reapers or Reavers or whoever they are, all that crap. I just hate being in a video game and being told, "Hey you have to sit here and watch our movie for a bit." It makes me physically restless. In Mass Effect I find myself just skipping through many lines of dialogue, which sometimes screws me up because then I'll accidentally click on a response I didn't intend to say because an option will suddenly pop up after there hasn't been one for a while.

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It makes me physically restless.

This is where Horse Bag comes in.

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Man, it's nice to hear someone discuss Bionic Commando in some detail, and without the "man that game sure does SUCK" snark. There's a lot of good things unfortunately obscured by the annoying load times, instant deaths and general archaic-ness.

Chris, did you notice how incredibly bad the implementation of the collectible system is? You have to get to a checkpoint after collecting one. If you die, it is reset. For something as metagame-y as collecting floating glowy 3D renders of sprites, it feels extremely unfair, especially when you consider how goddamned hard it is to get many of them, and how there are usually four or five between each checkpoint. With a few changes, it could've been a fun "how the hell do I manage to swing over there?" series of challenges, but as it is, it's just annoying.

Anyway, stick with it, the second half definitely gels better than the first gameplay-wise, though the story reaches astonishing depths of hilarious awfulness.

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I found the discussion of the weather outside the Presidium humorous. I too am playing Mass Effect from the beginning (and finding it mostly spectacular). If you interact with Garrus while standing in the Presidium's main hall, he's scripted to tell you exactly why the weather outside is that way.

I'm not going to ruin the illusion for you guys, but it's something I laughed at while listening to the cast.

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For the record - I have never, not once confused any of your voices. Have you really gotten that many complaints about this? Seems kind of ridiculous to me as you all have distinctly different manners of speaking.

Great episode by the way. Struck the perfect balance between information & opinion with total jackassery, which is what keeps me coming back for more. Not like you could plan for that sort of thing, but it's nice when things work out sometimes.

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For the record - I have never, not once confused any of your voices. Have you really gotten that many complaints about this? Seems kind of ridiculous to me as you all have distinctly different manners of speaking.

Great episode by the way. Struck the perfect balance between information & opinion with total jackassery, which is what keeps me coming back for more. Not like you could plan for that sort of thing, but it's nice when things work out sometimes.

For some reason, Penny Arcade Forums posters seem incapable of distinguishing us. They're the only ones who I've seen actively complain about it. Other people don't complain, they just misattribute our statements obliviously.

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Anyway, stick with it, the second half definitely gels better than the first gameplay-wise, though the story reaches astonishing depths of hilarious awfulness.

In regards to Bionic Commando, have you beaten it?

I was listening to a 1up podcast and I think they spoiled this, but I'm not sure if its true or not. Its just too ridiculous:

His bionic arm is made out of what used to be his wife?!

If thats true its almost like I have to play the game just to see it. You know, for the train wreck factor.

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Chris is easy to distinguish. It's Jake and Nick I sometimes confuse, especially when everyone is talking at the same time.

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For some reason, Penny Arcade Forums posters seem incapable of distinguishing us. They're the only ones who I've seen actively complain about it. Other people don't complain, they just misattribute our statements obliviously.
Develop accents, speech impediments.

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Bonus info: Dominic Armato often sounds like Chris.

OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND????

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