Jake

Idle Thumbs 49: Bargo Busters

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t-minus one

"Bargo Busters"

For all your bustin' needs, we present: video games. We create a scale and proceed to visit both ends, taking gentle, guided adventures with famed explorers and robot pals, while our asses are gingerly handed to us by murderous hoards and off-brand knockoff platformers.

Note: No bargos were busted in the making of this episode.

Games Discussed: Torchlight, Uncharted 2, Machinarium, Super Mario 86, Uncharted 2, Diablo II, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Game), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Film), and of course Far Cry 2

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I was hoping the podblast music at the start of the Max Schaefer thing was a sign of this! Chris' calling it Episode 49 at the beginning made me wonder if there would be another update this week or not. Yay for an unexpected drawn-out farewell! Perhaps a 'blast next week as well, just to pad out your catalogue a bit further before the end? Nah, too much to hope for. Still, looking forward to giving this one a listen.

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Dear Idle Thumbs cast, you are all invited for tea and lan matches at my place, anytime. In fact the whole board is invited. Lemme know if anyone is coming to MIGS.

Hey Chris, does the untimely death of idle thumbs cast blasts open up time for a Gamasutra podcast reboot? A bit less silly and a bit more Nutt-y...

...y-ttuN erom tib a dna yllis ssel tib A ?toober tsacdop artusamaG a rof emit pu nepo stsalb tsac sbmuht eldi fo htaed ylemitnu eht seod, sirhC yeH.

SGIM ot gnimoc si enoyna fi wonk emmeL .detivni si draob elohw eht tcaf nI .emityna ,ecalp ym ta sehctam nal dna aet detivni lla era uoy , tsac sbmuhT eldI raeD...

Edited by Floordje

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"Your fingers are on the keyboard" - IGN.com about Torchlight

Anyway, still listening, just hearing the guys talk about torchlight and the first bit is pretty funny with the quotes.

@Floordje; I think I might check it out now that I live here; wonder if there enough of us for a thumbs meet/wake.

Edit: Diablo2. I was without the internet for the first month and half this summer when I moved so I went to my old standby Diablo 2, I honestly never got very far in it, Act 3 always stopped me; so glad to see that was the worst of the content, that desert kicked my ass out just kind of crap content even if it was Diablo fun, and Act 3 didn't do much to help me either. I've seen my friends play the later levels and thats where I want to go.

But its funny how you guys said you play the same build every time, because yeah, that's what I've been doing for a decade with that game... which might explain why I can't get passed certain parts, lol..

Edited by Murdoc

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Hey could you please put up a copy of the idle thumbs newspaper you printed at GDC that came up again in this 'cast? I would like to read about the etymology of the term Video Games. I am not a game developer so I was not there but I am a loyal and loving reader.

Doom 4 sucks.

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Please tell me I'm not reading too much into Jake's comments after the closing song.

Also Jake, yes Cosmos is pretty rad even without the autotuning. Not a sunrise, but a galaxyrise.

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Interesting topic on the voice acting.... I don't think it took until 2009 to have convincing voice acting/natural dialog, but theres a lot of reasons the thumbs touched on and in my experiance it boils down to Talent.

Not the talent of the voice actor, but the talent of the peopel directing them and the talent of the people writing the script. Most game companies have people like me writing a script, "I've heard people talk, I can write this s@#$" and then they get some animation director to direct the voice actors.

Sometimes this can work and a lot of the time it can't, it all depends on the experiance and talent of the people organizing it.

Rockstar's stuff stands out as probably some of the most natural dialog in a game and they have been doing it for years; they jsut have the people to make that stuff happen (and like Jake said) people care about. Earlier legacy of Kain's had great voice actors and a pretty convincing dialog script for the cheesy context it of what was going on... which had the same creative director as Uncharted 1 and 2; so just had to throw in that, because it could explain the awesomeness of Uncharted's dialog.

Alternatively I have a good story about a game I worked on with just cringle worth dialog and performances, but it's more of a rant for when I get drunk.

Ps: don't worry about length when theres so few episodes go, hell don't even edit them, give us a 5 hour cast of funny voices and intelligable noises.

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Even though I loved Uncharted 2, that "narrative bullet" was my biggest problem.

After shrugging off all the helicopter fire, gunfights, and grenade explosions, it just didn't have the impact that was intended. If it had been any other part of the game, you'd have just ducked behind cover and waited for the health recharge to kick in. Same thing with Elena towards the end. The first chapter she's in, she survives a scripted rocket blast half a foot from her face, but a sort-of-close grenade practically cripples her.

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Even though I loved Uncharted 2, that "narrative bullet" was my biggest problem.

After shrugging off all the helicopter fire, gunfights, and grenade explosions, it just didn't have the impact that was intended. If it had been any other part of the game, you'd have just ducked behind cover and waited for the health recharge to kick in. Same thing with Elena towards the end. The first chapter she's in, she survives a scripted rocket blast half a foot from her face, but a sort-of-close grenade practically cripples her.

An interesting solution to that problem was suggested in the latest Joystiq podcast in which

Tom Chick suggested that if it had been Chloe who had shot Drake instead of Flynn then the shot would have had an emotional impact which would better justify the tonal change of the following scene.

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This is totally off topic, but I found some great quotes on steam recently:

-The Windows 7 Recently Played list should be repaired for people who play many games

-Fixed performance issues on Windows 7 for users with many friends and groups

-" It's good and you should buy it." (PC Zone)

First two are from steam update and the last one is about Eufloria.

Also The Wizard

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Has anybody else watched the behind-the-scenes videos for either of the Uncharted games? A lot of what they do seems to be a direct reaction to the problems you were talking about. The voice actors are also the mocap actors, voice is recorded at the same time as the mocap, and everyone records at the same time. It helps ensure that the dialog matches the character movement, and that the characters have suitably "real" reactions and chemistry. They also have the actors sit down to watch gameplay during key action parts to ad-lib incidental character comments. A lot of the "I was just thinking that!" dialog comes from the actor thinking the same thing during that part and improv-ing the line.

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And now I will learn if Idle Thumbs can cure illness, as I'm listening while down and out with a cold. 1/3 of the way through. Nothing yet. The discussion of Uncharted 2 makes me quite curious about playing it.I think I'll have to rent it and play it on my brothers PS3 now. Thanks guys :P

Torchlight is being added to the list of games I'll get at some point too, thanks to its single player focus and Chris drooling all over it (not a D2 fan).

Speaking of, I'm glad the blast wasn't considered '49', even if it was quite good, Schafer laughing at his own jokes a bit too much, but it was a really good look at the game and its design. Something I will miss with no Video Games voice in my ears.

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Chris, you mentioned that the "endless descent" from Diablo and Torchlight hasn't been done a lot. You might be right, I thought some Diablo clones did that, but I can't think of any? I've only played a few of them, though. But aren't all roguelikes basically that?

Also, Ultima Underworld basically was a descent, except it also had you coming back up a lot, and of course it was an RPG. Maybe Arx Fatalis was, too, can't remember.

Anyway, two old games like that that are rather crappy in hindsight -- and I wouldn't actually recommend them -- but I played them A LOT and enjoyed at the time when I didn't have access to a lot of games were Mordor* and Mordor II: Darkness Awakening, the latter of which was renamed to Infinite Worlds and then later renamed to Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan and released under that title, I think.

It was even more literally just an endless descent than Diablo was. There was basically no story whatsoever, you were just raising your stats to be able to descend lower and lower, and going back to town to rest,sell etc. I can't even remember if Mordor 1 had any quests. I think I put 150-200 hours into that game and while I did reach the last level, I think the game stopped working for me after reinstalling Windows 3.1 or something.

* nothing to do with Lord of the Rings beside the name (and it had Mithril)

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Jake's bit about the great unhosed telling developers how to make their games better reminded me of the "Point and click is perfect! Change it back!" crowd over at Telltalle. Those guys were relentlessly nuts.

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As you're killing the podcast, and undoubtedly hurtling millions of lost souls into deep depression, I think it's only fair that you finally fix our thumbs, in penance!

tup.giftmeh.giftdown.gif

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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Can I just get 24/7 streaming audio from all of your mouths?

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My housemate bought torchlight a couple of days ago and I was also really impressed by the music in that game. I've played a bit of it and watched him play quite a bit more. It's pretty excellent. I'll have to try it with the BGM turned down as those guys suggested, just for kicks.

I've *ahem* never played a Diablo game so I'm not really sure how similar the gameplay is, but I've had a lot of fun with this one so far.

Also, my dog in torchlight looks exactly like the cute wolves I was riddled with guilt for killing during my maybe five or six hours of WOW. It's like they're haunting me.

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I've gotta say that I'm really bummed that you guys and ListenUp are both gone. Any chance of you recruiting Garnett Lee for something new?

He is with Shacknews now, right?

Clearly, I have no idea how these things work.

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[Glances at title]

"Bargo Busters..."

"Oh, awesome! I wonder, what... hey, yeah- What could they be dropping info about at THIS point in the season?"

"Let's find out..."

[Looks at episode description]

Note: No bargos were busted in the making of this episode.

"Aah, come on! I.T. stands for Idle TEASE!"

P.S.

Jake, did you get that cross-stitch I tried to send you in the mail? I had to fire it off to Telltale, lacking any other address details to go on... My hope was for you guys to get your mitts on that prior to your final episode!

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