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Jake

Idle Thumbs 87: Spray Spin-Grill

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If y'all are interested in streaming Spaceteam, you can use Reflector to mirror your iOS screens to your PC or Mac, and then stream it as if it were a regular game. It works great in my experience.

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This deserves sharing from elsewhere on this forum.

post-6812-0-68896100-1354956465_thumb.png

(pardon the kerning)

I love the "I love video games," it's perfectly placed.

Edit - That didn't carry over like I thought it would be it's clickable, whatever.

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Just preemptively, based on the synopsis: I am so happy to see Spaceteam get a look in. In fact, I came here intending to start a thread about it. As a party game it ticks all the right boxes, and then some. (For a tiny but crucial bit of extra fun, I recommend raising your phone to the heavens as you beam up. Your friends arms' will follow with telepathic synchronicity.)

Massive side-note:

I'm weirdly startled to see the episode's Far Cry 3 banner feature several cassowaries.

CassowaryAppeal_Campaigns_9309_GettyImages_tileimg.jpg

The bird was a local icon in the Daintree Rainforest, where I grew up, making it very disorienting to see outside that context. (It's the same sense of incompatible worlds colliding as, say, your spouse walking into your office, or of bumping into an old friend on the other side of the world). I love the creatures dearly and actively campaigned for their conservation as a child, helping plant the bizarre blue fruit that would invite them back into cleared land. Heck, my big creative outlet as a 12-year-old was a comic strip about a dysfunctional family of them. The cassowary is so fundamentally entangled in my own sense of identity that even digitally harming one is out of the question.

If they are, as the banner suggests, a threat in the game, it's going to be... interesting. In fact, the promise of that very personal moral dilemma - and the stories that would come of it - make me a lot more eager to play Far Cry 3.

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I also made the Far Creed 3 comment to someone on steam, it really does feel like an ass creed game that doesn't irritate me constantly. I've also been playing purely stealth and use only bow and takedowns, only using a gun if i run out of arrows.

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For me, the way I tackle a game is similar to a movie these days. I try generally avoid major spoilers but I'll still watch trailers. I also try to avoid reviews other than looking at aggregators if its a game I'm not sure if I want to buy right away and just see how the reviews are leaning. I.E. Generally positive or generally negative. After that I'll play through the way I prefer which can mean different things depending on the type of game it is. After I finish the game/movie I'll usually think a bit harder about what happened and what I just took in.

Which is to say that when I'm in the midst of playing a game/enjoying a movie I usually am pretty good about dropping critical pre-tenses by and large although certain things will make me smile or enjoy things because I know how much technical work went on behind it. If its a game or movie I really enjoy I'll usually go back and at least play part of it/watch parts of it and also read up about it as much as possible. In that way listening to a film commentary is a way to heighten appreciation of the film because I'm able to kind of disassemble how the film was made. It's why a movie like The Abyss is something I appreciate more now than when I first watched it just on the basis of knowing how much technical work went in to filming the damn thing.

With a game its obviously a bit different but I am thankfully able to still lose myself in games where I'm not thinking about how everything was made and decided for and just take it on face value...for the most part.

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Literally spent 50 straight minutes attempting to get into a car to drive to a place so I could hunt a certain type of animal, only to see a goat and try and grab a quick skin, hunt a komodo dragon, get distracted by a loot pickup, get jumped by pirates, attempt to stalk another set of pirates 100 meters down the road only to have them attacked by a komodo dragon, clean up the mess, see another goat, and then get stuck in a loop of continuosly shifting goats, pirates, and komodo dragons arriving and battling until the in-game sun set.

This happened with one weapon slot unlocked, 90 minutes or less after the game let itself be itself. I know the first impression was a little lackluster, but this game is Far Cry as hell.

PS: Holy shit play spaceteam.

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but this game is Far Cry as hell.

Yup. The game completely opens up right after the "Here's some money, go buy a gun" section. There's a tiny tutorial about outposts, but those aren't necessary to take over unless you care about fast-travel. I was really surprised at how quickly it happened, given what I heard people saying about how it's more hand-holdy than 2.

Last night, I was hunting buffalo with my bow, stalking one as it wandered into a field next to a road. I suddenly heard a jeep driving by, and I must have been too close to the road, because the two guys in it started hootin' and hollerin'. I sprinted into the field and fired off what turned out to be my last arrow at the closest guy and missed. I then tried to take out my suppressed Skorpion to pick them off, accidentally pulled out a mine, and threw it without realizing what I had done until it was too late.

The entire field is set ablaze, and I run like hell, not caring about where I'm going or what I might meet on the way. I just had to get away from the rapidly-expanding inferno. I saw a vast expanse ahead, stopped for a brief moment, and looked down. It was a massive pit cave like those guys with the squirrel-suits jump into, with a pool of water at the bottom. I figured that was my best chance for escape. I dove in, and was treated to a crazy high-dive animation. At the bottom was a system of caves, which I spent the next 20 minutes exploring.

I had a few doubts about it going in, but that experience was one of the most exhilarating things that's ever happened in any open-world game I've played to date. I haven't tried Far Cry 2, but given how much the guys have talked about it, if the experiences it creates are half as great as that was, I absolutely need to play it.

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Actually, my first reaction to Sean saying "Why can't I strangle a man?" is "Would you, Sean Vanaman, strangle a man moments after you recoil in horror when your brother attacks a different man to allow you to escape from pirates that captured you after you went off course while skydiving on vacation?" The game attempts to establish that you have no business handling a weapon in those first moments, it's only after you have rad mysticism done to you that things like that happen. I don't want to make too fine a parallel because Jason Brody is a rich dick, but it's "suburban white man from the west coast attempts to escape from kidnapping pirates". I, suburban white man from the east coast, would be terrified and want the madness to stop at almost any cost. Perhaps I shouldn't project on to you Sean, you may have strangled many a man in your spare time and I don't wish to insult you. In those early moments you are a vulnerable kitten, and only later do you become Far Cry.

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Actually, my first reaction to Sean saying "Why can't I strangle a man?" is "Would you, Sean Vanaman, strangle a man moments after you recoil in horror when your brother attacks a different man to allow you to escape from pirates that captured you after you went off course while skydiving on vacation?"

I had a similar reaction—I think it speaks more to how the expectations of video games have broken our mind when we're upset that we can't act like a sociopathic killer in every scenario. That said, like Sean said they could have done a better job of ensuring that potential interaction wasn't even possible.

On a related note to the Spaceteam discussion, Artemis—a more serious bridge-simulator—also just released an iOS version that networks with nearby devices. Throwing the main screen up via Airplay and then everyone manning their own devices sounds so cool.

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Actually, my first reaction to Sean saying "Why can't I strangle a man?" is "Would you, Sean Vanaman, strangle a man moments after you recoil in horror when your brother attacks a different man to allow you to escape from pirates that captured you after you went off course while skydiving on vacation?" The game attempts to establish that you have no business handling a weapon in those first moments, it's only after you have rad mysticism done to you that things like that happen. I don't want to make too fine a parallel because Jason Brody is a rich dick, but it's "suburban white man from the west coast attempts to escape from kidnapping pirates". I, suburban white man from the east coast, would be terrified and want the madness to stop at almost any cost. Perhaps I shouldn't project on to you Sean, you may have strangled many a man in your spare time and I don't wish to insult you. In those early moments you are a vulnerable kitten, and only later do you become Far Cry.

Here's the thing. If you're going to make that the rationale for taking away or, I should say, distributing a palette of player actions, you have to go the whole goddamn way. I can't just walk up behind him like a buffoon and not have my character react.

If FC3 were an adventure game, Jayson you would either approach or "use" that pirate and Jayson would say "Hell no; no fucking way. We gotta get the fuck outta here," and you would actually learn something about the character. Because the player has no way of expressing intent in games like this OTHER THAN TO MURDER PEOPLE creating the scenario where I'm a reluctant murderer is folly from the outset.

Furthermore, I meet up with Dennis and then it's "buy a gun and start killing guys," and my "character" has no problems with that. Probably because of my courage tattoo.

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I disagree slightly. I think they should have taken maybe 10 extra seconds and heavily reinforced that you're actually in no position to subdue a man with a knife and a gun, even with his back turned. If they'd put say a fence between you and him, something you could easily see through like chain link or a post fence, I think that lowers the tension. He's right there. If he turns and stretches, that knife is only about 10 feet from stabbing you.

It will be interesting to see how Tomb Raider addresses that once it's actually released. They have a similar task but presented differently, because they've been up front with the character arc.

e: wrote and posted that before I saw your reply Sean. Would what I proposed work for you, building just a bit more characterization into Jason and his brother? Or would you have not approached having an open space without the application of the appropriate action "kill man" at all?

I've also noticed I have a fundamental difference of opinion when it comes to dying/killing as a valid outcome from games. I have no problem with being a scared tourist who gets killed when he bumps a pirate instead of sneaking, just like (I remembered) I had no problem with the Dissolved Conspiracy screen in Dishonored if you stabbed one of your housemates. I do agree with you that SOMETHING needs to be there w/r/t feedback besides just bumping into the character model and then getting shot.

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When I saw that scene in the

, the way it's framed visually looked just like a stealth takedown tutorial. They placed a single man looking away from you while you're sneaking around. If your brother had said, 'go take that guy down and grab his gun, I'll cover you!' nothing else would have to have changed for it to work that way. They should've just had him looking in your direction while you sneak through underbrush, to make it clear he's not to be snuck up upon.

Sure, storywise you don't have the ability to do that, but from what I've heard, that's one of the weaknesses of the game storywise: there's no real reason your dude starts being able to be an FPS character. In fact narratively it would probably be better to have him do that while scared out of his mind, realizing what he has to do to survive.

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I like this discussion, because viewing the scenario as a different game type or different tutorial scenario didn't really occur to me and I appreciate both those viewpoints.

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In reply to Jake's confusion in Letterpress about always being blue but the scores switching sides, in Street Fighter 4, when you are playing Endless Matches (Player matches), the host starts on the left side and the other player starts on the right side. If you win the match, you are put on the left side regardless of your previous match. So if you stay in the same lobby for a while, you'll be switching back and forth a lot, which I don't much care for. I have been playing this game regularly for 3.5 years and I still get confused and occasionally find myself looking at the wrong life bar and super meter. I wish it would stay consistent.

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It will be interesting to see how Tomb Raider addresses that once it's actually released. They have a similar task but presented differently, because they've been up front with the character arc.

I'm pretty sure you see Lara bury a machete in a guys head in the new VGAs trailer. I wonder how soon after she's forced to commit her first murder you get to start acting like Jason from Friday the 13th. Perhaps the story of the game is actually about a young lady who gets the taste for mindless slaughter.

Another thing I didn't like about the trailer is that she was a able to pull down a rigid wooden structure with one pull of a rope, so they've given her super strength, instant immersion breaker.

Actually it looks like her climbing hook thing that she imbeds into someone's head. Sweet. I think we're going to have a lot to discuss when this one drops.

One thing I noticed though was that Lara had her hands tied during her escape scene, something I thought far cry could've done.

Side note, that VGA award is the ugliest piece of shit I've seen in my life :)

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Side note, that VGA award is the ugliest piece of shit I've seen in my life :)

It looks like something that crawled out of the nineties, or more specifically, out of the nineties comic book The Maxx.

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Here's the thing. If you're going to make that the rationale for taking away or, I should say, distributing a palette of player actions, you have to go the whole goddamn way. I can't just walk up behind him like a buffoon and not have my character react.

I dunno. Sounds like you're wishing the developers had given the character an ability that should mechanically be possible ( A ), but would be inappropriate at that point in the fiction. That's like the opposite of mechanically allowing the player to suicidally jump off cliffs, or run into fires even though the player character would probably not want you to do that ( B ).

For me, if I'm going to have a problem with ( A ), I would probably also have a problem with ( B ) since they seem like the same problem but coming from different directions.

Hang on, are we talking about Ludonarrative Dissonance again?

---

Edit: I wish I had written a longer reply with more paragraphs, where the first letter in each paragraph would spell out 'LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE'. That would've been funny, at least to me. :P

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The trailers awesome. Watch now yes

I originally thought it would be survival horror type game, I was like "awesome, somebody pushing video games in new and unexpected avenues... " oh it's metal gear. Still awesome! But being that its metal gear I'm sure not to understand most of what is going on

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