Idle Thumbs 85: "An Indulgent Dateline" or "An Indulgent Episode Title"

[Jake]

Wild beasts!

Idle Thumbs 85: "An Indulgent Dateline" or "An Indulgent Episode Title"

Call me Halo. With Sean away, Idle Thumbs is accompanied by Kotaku's Kirk Hamilton for a long walk in the first person perspective through jungles and space stations and all sorts of places. Join us!

Games Discussed: Far Cry 3, Far Cry 2, Crysis, Halo 4, Halo: OSDT, The Halo, Waking Mars, The Dig, Gameboat For Kinect

Episode page.

Direct episode download.

iTunes page.

Feed RSS.

[mikemariano]

I suck so bad at Waking Mars. I hope this podcast is just you guys telling me I suck and that I don't know how to grow plants.

[Roswell47]

Yay moar new guests! This is how we got Scoops, Famous and Sniper.

[Dez]

Games Discussed: Far Cry 3, Far Cry 2

Yes, good. Give in to your feelings! Take your grenade and roll it down a hill at me!

[Henroid]

I cannot make it through this Far Cry 2 discussion without constantly laughing. I like Kirk Hamilton already.

[Justin Leego]

Ooh, is that a new wizard? It sounded like this cast's wizard had longer sleeves, or maybe more ruffles.

[subbes]

Master Chief -> Master Chief Tank -> Master Chief Sphere -> Master Chief Planet

It's Halos all the way down.

[Alorithin]

Chris upset that legendary is hard and that the story is awful.

Can't wait till he gets the mantle and has to fight through midnight on legendary.

[Henroid]

Jake describing The Dig as LA's take on Myst is exactly how I thought of the game. But I would go further to say that it feels more comprehensible and I know why I'm doing the things I'm doing in The Dig. It's more put together. Maybe I'm not remembering Myst right but it was nonsensical to me and my drive to beat it was minimal.

[Chris]

Chris upset that legendary is hard and that the story is awful.

Can't wait till he gets the mantle and has to fight through midnight on legendary.

I'm not upset that Legendary is hard--I want it to be hard, and I love fighting Covenant on Legendary. I just think the Prometheans really don't capture what I love about fighting interestingly-varied groups of Covenant.

[Sno]

The level in Halo 4 with the the large transport vehicle/tank, you pick up a targeting laser and for the rest of the level can sight air targets for it to shoot down with its cannon. There's a few scripted points where you are forced to take that action, but you can also use it inbetween to shoot down banshees and phantoms during other parts of the level. (It is, admittedly, totally goofy that they require the Chief to laser designate targets that are literally only a couple hundred feet away.)

As for the complaint about Legendary and the Promethean Knights being bullet sponges, i don't know.

The way 343 has balanced Legendary in Halo 4 seems to tilt the weapon resistances much less significantly, and the result is that even an enemy with as much health as a Promethean Knight will go down much more easily than... say... an Elite in Reach. (Whose shields were so strong that trying to attack them with anything other than explosives or emp was effectively like throwing pebbles at them.)

I mean, but once you do bring down their shields, there is a difference in that they won't go down in a single headshot. (Though headshots are still more damaging.)

In my own solo legendary playthrough, i've found myself falling back on the shotguns a lot, getting in close and taking out the Knights in two or three shots, something i feel like i would not have gotten away with in past Halo games.

I thought the Prometheans were an awesome addition to the roster, but people definitely seem fairly divided on them overall.

The Crawlers are just noise, they're just there to be a swarm, and i think that's probably fine. It's the symbiotic relationship between the Watchers and the Knights that i find super interesting, all these little behaviours and abilities that allow them to reinforce eachother.

[youmeyou]

Love the mic drop at the end. Great cast guys!

I think Far Cry 3 was totally made for me; as it does kinda sound like a game made by people who didn't like Far Cry 2. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more impressions about from you guys, once you've played some of it.

It's funny that the lack of oppressiveness can end up being a bad thing but I've definitely experienced this. Most recently between playing Stalker: CoP right after Shadow of Chernobyl. While CoP was much more refined and more fun to play, it wasn't as emotionally impressive as Shadow was. Mainly because in Shadow I couldn't run 10 feet without hitting an anomaly or radiation cloud so the need to survive was far more pressing and worked nicely with the narrative of the world. I can see something similar happening with Far Cry 3.

[gregbrown]

Totally agree with Chris and Jake about being frustrated with overwrought stories in games, especially as part of the larger trend of trying to turn everything into a franchise and stapling the hero's journey over everything. Sometimes it comes from an outright patronizing view of the audience, but sometimes it's also just a lack of confidence in focusing on what they're good at.

And on a side-note, canon/lore is the worst thing to happen to popular entertainment in the last half-century—and I say this as someone who owned the Star Trek Encyclopedia as a teenager. It's become completely disgusting and is even starting to turn me off back-stories in general in media. Like, I reflexively flinch.

p.s. game boat is real and the real product listing is amazing.

[Sno]

I believe this might be the Kotaku article referenced in the podcast?

[Gormongous]

And on a side-note, canon/lore is the worst thing to happen to popular entertainment in the last half-century—and I say this as someone who owned the Star Trek Encyclopedia as a teenager. It's become completely disgusting and is even starting to turn me off back-stories in general in media. Like, I reflexively flinch.

I own the Dune Encyclopedia, now out of print courtesy of the son Brian Herbert, and I think of it as one of the few good "lore" companions. It's written in-universe as a compiled encyclopedia presented to the God-Emperor, and every entry is basically a small short story that hints more than it gives away. Lore really shouldn't be about answering questions. For that matter, fiction is at its worst when answering questions.

[melmer]

Giant master chief helmet tank gun does fire. You paint targets for it and it blows shit up. Mostly in cut scenes, I can't actually remember if there's any real time shit blowing though.

Admittedly I didn't enjoy fighting against the alien skull dudes. They're fucking hard. I'd waste all I'm ammo trying to pick off the flying things. Then i would end up just charging at the knights, spray and pray, just hoping they'd die before the magazine ran out. This was all on heroic. There's a floating barge part near the end that's was really tough. I may have given up if I was playing legendary

And those new grenades of which i seemed to have an infinite amount are absolutely dog shit

[Roderick]

I think we've reached the point now where we can all give up trying to not talk about Far Cry 2 and just accept this is happening and will always happen, forever.

[melmer]

[Roswell47]

The horse DID come out and you were linked to a picture of it on Twitter from a reader over a year ago.

[Argobot]

The Cortana stuff brings up a really interesting dilemma that I think a lot of consumers of video games have to face. If a game overall is "fun" or "entertaining," and, like in the case of Halo 4, only contains small elements that are frustrating but easily skipable, should you still play it?

[I_smell]

Not listened to the whole thing yet, but I'm calling Far Cry 3 as this year's most delcious DOTY.

EDIT- Chris's description of Halo combat is really good. I've not played Halo AT ALL but he's totally selling me on it. Designing enemies as "elemental" is something I'm trying to do right now, and that's a good way of summarising it.

[Henroid]

I take it Cortana's lines in Halo 4 are as bad as the medics in Starcraft 2 asking, "Where does it hurt?"

[Alorithin]

I'm not upset that Legendary is hard--I want it to be hard, and I love fighting Covenant on Legendary. I just think the Prometheans really don't capture what I love about fighting interestingly-varied groups of Covenant.

Knights channel uncharted 2's blue people in that regard. Taking ammo not as staccato from an instrument of death but as strikes on the rainbow xylophone.

I've only played through Heroic so I don't actually know how hard or unintersting the game becomes.

[Korax]

Prometheans become a degree more bullet-spongy on Legendary than the Covenant units, from my experience. Grunts still die with one headshot, Jackals still die after a staggering shot/headshot combo, and once their shields are down, Elites still take one headshot to down. The laser dogs will explode after a headshot, but the Knights and gyrocopter things take about twice as many hits to kill, even if you take out their shields. I started to have the same "Looks like I'm just going to be out of ammo" reaction that Chris did every time they showed up.

[Sno]

Have you tried throwing grenades at the Watchers? They grab them out of the air with a little energy tether and try to swing them back around at you, but if you can hit the grenade with a bullet before they do, it's an easy kill. The watchers are also actually vulnerable to headshots, but like many other enemies, you have to eat through the shields first. The headshot dot on headshot-capable weapons will make it easier to spot their tiny little heads. (In all likeliness, you've probably already been getting headshot kills on them without realizing it.)

As for the knights, unless you're carrying around any of the power weapons, they're weakest in mid-range combat. Use needlers for the super combine, plasma pistols for emp combos, shotgun/scattershot for riskier close range attacks that stagger, and don't ignore the automatic weapons either. (Shoot in bursts for accuracy! The suppressor is the only automatic weapon where this doesn't pay off, it is purely for close ranges.) Ultimately, it comes down to the precision rifles being very inefficient against the tougher enemies, and that's typical of Halo of legendary. (Excepting, i guess, the pistol in the original.)

Also, definitely don't forget the weapon resistances dynamic, the whole thing about how plasma weapons are strongest against shields while UNSC weapons are stronger against soft targets. (I am not clear where forerunner guns fall on the weapon resistances, but i think they're strong against shields. The suppressor seems very effective against knights, but less so against the unshielded crawlers.)

For those long sections where you're fighting only prometheans and seeing only forerunner weapons, use the scattershot and the suppressor against the knights, and the lightrifle against the crawlers. (I don't think the boltshot is very useful in campaign, though it's particularly evil in the competitive modes.) Also, the scoped fire on the Lightrifle is dramatically more powerful, but if you're just blasting through swarms of crawlers, the unscoped burst fire makes for easier headshots.