Idle Thumbs 41: Space Boss: The Lord of Space

[Jake]

A Space Cop Adventure in Space

"Space Boss; The Lord of Space"

We play catch-up this week, clearing out both our backlog of nearly-current games, and our overflowing bag of reader mail.

Also there's a blog now.

Games Discussed: Batman: Arkham Asylum, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Spider Solitaire, Time Donkey, Wander Donkey, Mass Effect, Gratuitous Space Battles, AaaaaAAaaaAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, Novint Falcon

[ysbreker]

yay! blog! \o/

[Erkki]

Holy crap. 31:50 happened exactly at a moment when I won a game of Spider Solitaire and the fireworks came up. Bwwwrrrr!

[Chuckpebble]

...but it was concurrent with this episode, the new front page is pretty sweet.

Look forward to listening to this fresh cast whilst drawing impeccably straight lines in AutoCAD.

[jneeriem]

Blog makes me happy.

[Patters]

You know what, I give in, time to finish Mass Effect again. It is showing its age a bit now (on 360).

[Alex P]

Can we see the Batman straight jackets?

Also, want so badly.

[gdf]

I want someone to make a whole Spider-Man model.

[Kos Luftar]

Hey THUMBS,

Can you post the list of books you guys mentioned in the podcast?

[Kos Luftar]

OH MY GOD!

Wizard same sex marriage!

You guys made me look like a crazy person at work, I could not stop laughing.

[William_Dhalgren]

Batman makes you fight everyone, because it's dangerous to open a door with enemies at your back. He also forces the player to beat the shit out of patients in a mental institution, even generic, endless fellows labelled "lunatics" because he deems them unworthy of a name. I totally wrote about it on my blog.

I still really enjoyed the game, though. Definitely worth a rental. I'm not much of a collector, so a once through of the main narrative and an hour in the challenge rooms was enough for me. I'll be reading the comics now. The concept of the game is interesting to me, and I've been told that aspect is explored in more depth in that medium.

fwiw...

[mikemariano]

That 55-WIZARD-NO voicemail was truly inspired. You have clever listeners.

We have a long road to travel before we achieve true wizard equality.

[blackboxme]

To Jake: Ever heard of Librivox?

I listened to most of Dickens and much more off librivox, and it really gave me a greater appreciation of classic literature, and how accessible a lot of it is.

Edited September 2, 2009 by blackboxme

[Korax]

I also played the sniper class (Infiltrator) the first time around, and was frustrated by how the sniper rifle behaved. I ended up just pumping points into pistol, which works really well. I even started a soldier for the harder difficulties, and when you max the pistol skill and put in some good weapon mods (polonium rounds, for instance), you don't need anything else.

I have also been looking for an excuse to get the Novint Falcon, and the discount made it that much easier to justify.

[Nick Breckon]

Hey THUMBS,

Can you post the list of books you guys mentioned in the podcast?

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

The Hound of Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco

[That Girl]

Being that the thugs around the asylum are going around kidnapping doctors and/or looking to kill you it wouldn't make all that much sense to leave them be. There is one area with enemies that you don't have to fight them, but you should because it's both funny and will give you an achievement/trophy.

Also, those inmates are labeled 'lunatics' because they run around being crazy and will attack you. It's not like you're going around punching innocent people for no reason.

I'm a huge Batman fan so I think this game is amazing.

[Erkki]

How long will THEWIZARD code work for the Falcon Thingamajig? I'd like to wait until I hear what you think after using it. And then what you really think next week.

[Moelman]

Hey, I read The Hound of the Baskervilles in like 7th grade and did a book report on it.

I also looked up those Batman skins for the PC demo and I am tempted to reinstall that demo just to try them out, some look amazing.

Also, I am liking the blog.

[CodeMonkey]

Wow I'm glad to hear that Bioware as the same poo problems we do at UbiMtl.

Maybe it's a industry wide issue.

Smells like a good article on Gamasutra ;D

[dpp]

All hail the "Rod King"

[William_Dhalgren]

Also, those inmates are labeled 'lunatics' because they run around being crazy and will attack you. It's not like you're going around punching innocent people for no reason.:

The point is that labeling an enemy type "lunatic," which is a stigmatized word that dehumanizes people suffering from severe mental illness, and then just having them be "crazy" (another one of those stigmatized, offensive words) and attack the player on sight is a horrible thing to do. Patients in any type of mental institution don't jump out of holes in the ground and and start choking other people. It's an archaic stereotype.

To think about it in another way, what if the game were set in a cancer ward and the Joker was recovering from chemotherapy. Wouldn't your reaction be a little different if you had to beat the crap out of an enemy type labelled, "cancer patient."

"But cancer patients aren't violent," you might say, but neither are most people suffering from mental illness. Even the "criminally insane" are not necessarily violent, they're just unaware of the consequences of their actions. People associate violence with mental illness because it's a stigma. In fact, having a mental illness does not increase the risk of violence: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20090202/mental-illness-and-violence-a-link

Once again, I'm playing and enjoying the game, so I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad, just shed light on an issue that's of personal interest to me since Arkham Asylum slams your face into the cold concrete of stigma that's associated with mental illness.

http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/OEL99-0004/default.asp

So...uh. We all still like wizards, right?

[thl]

Remo, how the do you get a >50% winrate on expert spider solitaire? That is truly hardcore.

[UwU]

Thanks for reading my mail, and no I'm not crazy. Those types of puzzles have always gotten to me.

[Cbirdsong]

Thanks for reading my mail, and no I'm not crazy. Those types of puzzles have always gotten to me.

You aren't a total crazy person. A few weeks ago, I put Drop7 on my iPhone, which is an awesome puzzle game. Well, except for the part where it gives me horrible panic attacks when I try to play it for an extended amount of time. I've since noticed this happening to a smaller degree with other games, so I think Drop7 broke my brain.

ANYWAY, this IP address appears to be on a crusade to remove Wander Donkey from Wikipedia!

He posted "This is a fucking joke page!" on the discussion area for Wander Donkey, and it was rolled back by an administrator. He then posted basically the same thing again.

Mr. 167.104.7.5 thenposted this on the administrator's talk page:

I was listening to a video gaming podcast run by journalists and a fan of the podcast emailed in claiming to actually have concocted all the details listed in the wiki page.

He replied:

If that is indeed true, it will come out in time and the error will be corrected

So, apparently, the guy writing into Idle Thumbs is not proof enough for Wikipedia that Wander Donkey is fake.

[UwU]

Can we see the Batman straight jackets?

Also, want so badly.

http://www.giantbomb.com/giant-bomb-mailbag-arkham-edition/17-1244/

There's the giantbomb guys getting one