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Jake

Idle Thumbs 100: King Chromin' For A Day

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Thanks for taking my non-question guys. Also I am not French, just half-Mexican / half-Portuguese.

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2 things:

Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  Saw it in 3D on the big screen here and I found the 3d a terrible distraction.  I'm not sure how it works but this was clearly post-process 3d, not filmed in 3d.  There was a scene with Herzog in the foreground, mid-frame with a deep cave behind him, but the photoshop magic wand tool the effects artists used had a good 3-4 inch cave halo in the foreground with Werner, while the rest of the cave outside that halo was in deep 3d.  (I hope that description makes sense, it was comical)

 

BS:I, I got into the pre-release hype a fair bit, pre-ordered a special edition, played the cog mini-game thing as well, both gave me codes to unlock additional gear.  I really liked how the gear was given out to me.  Never did I see a pop-up yelling at me about DLC, instead about and hour or so into the game I entered a room that just happened to have a bunch of presents waiting on the tables within.  The heads or tails couple were there and I belive there was a subtle bit of in-game text that mentioned the awaiting gifts.  Nice decision on that one.


Not a big fan of the whole shield system.  Even on hard so far it's been a lot of 'fight til I lose shield, stay in cover til shield comes back, return to fight'.  It's not as fun as it sounds :)

 

Grats on 100, thumbs.  Here's to 100 more with or without F. Steve Breckon.

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Huh, I could've sworn there was a choice. Obviously mixing it up with the pendant choice.

How strange that they would ask you to flip a coin and not make a choice, they've done that on purpose. When have you ever been asked to flip a coin and not choose the outcome.

Chris its funny to hear you say you didn't recognise the coin tossers, they're kindve a big deal, were they not in the game at all when you were at irrational? Or did I miss hear you

It's not a matter of "recognizing" them, really--they were simply added after I left, as was a ton of other stuff. As I noted on the cast (I think), the main structure and plot events and systems were all there, but the details changed hugely. Those characters may end up being hugely important thematically, but purely from a production standpoint they're pretty minor compared to the larger structural elements.

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A couple of hours into Infinite and I decided to restart in 1999 difficulty.  I was enjoying the combat a ton until I locked onto a vigar combo that just rolled through every encounter and it got repetetive.   I just can't stop myself from min-maxing when I have a good power!

 

I tried the same combo in 1999 they had an extra restriction on the vigar the prevented what I was doing.  Awesome.  

 

If you normally play shooters on the hardest difficulty I'd recommend starting in 1999, it feels right so far.  

 

Do this on main menu to unlock the setting without having to finish the game first:

 


On PC (with keyboardmouse): Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, (Cancel key), (Confirm key)
On Xbox: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A
On PS3: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, O, X

 

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Yes, congrats Jake for your well-deserved coup and for continuing to make the best movie comparisons.

 

Maybe I'm projecting my own indeterminate opinion of Bioshock Infinite on Sean/Jake/Chris, but after listening to them talk about Infinite for over an hour, I'm still not entirely sure that they like  the game. Sure, there were a lot of positive comments made about Infinite, but many of the criticisms sound so large, so crucial to the game, that I'm not convinced anyone could raise those issues and still honestly say it is a 'good' game.

 

Again, I might just be projecting. After hours of playing Infinite, I still have no idea if I like it or not. There are so many amazing things in this game, but I'm struggling to separate them from the flaws.

 

 

Edit: In case anyone was wondering, the actual lyrics to 'Pump up the Jam' are: 'get your booty on the floor tonight/make my day/make my day.'

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Hearing jakes super stun sky hook story of people's heads constantly exploding in his face makes me want to share my own wacky clothing perk anecdote

So I picked up some trousers very early on which caused a mini nuclear explosion occur around my personage whenever I hoped off the skyline, I imagined they looked somewhat like the wrong trousers from Wallace and gromit and would often picture Booker whizzing through the air on a skyline wearing huge robotic exploding trousers. Theres a part quite early on in the game where Comstock calls off his boys over the intercom, I only twigged the group of ten soldiers weren't a threat mid death defying exploding pants leap. I hit the ground amongst the poor fools instantly turning all of them into flailing lump of melting flesh and blackened bones turning to ash... Oops

Knowing the error of my ways and wanting to appease the video game gods i quickly hit restart checkpoint only to appear standing in exacltly the same spot surrounded by corpses. Doh

As a side note, did anyone try to kill any children?

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Hearing jakes super stun sky hook story of people's heads constantly exploding in his face makes me want to share my own wacky clothing perk anecdote

So I picked up some trousers very early on which caused a mini nuclear explosion occur around my personage whenever I hoped off the skyline, I imagined they looked somewhat like the wrong trousers from Wallace and gromit and would often picture Booker whizzing through the air on a skyline wearing huge robotic exploding trousers.

 

Bioshock spoilers!

Wallace IS Feathers McGraw!

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It pleased me that on this, the one-hundredth episode, Jake was the one best prepared to discuss BioShock Infinity. He truly has earned his moniker 'Video Games.'  :tup:

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i never thought of bioshock as a horror game, system shock 2 was and that is why i never saw any similarities between them and i saw them saying it was the spiritual successor as just a marketing ploy.

 

if someone gave me a gift every day i think i would like them more, but i would have an internal struggle as to whether i liked them because they gave me stuff or i just like them independently of that and then i would feel guilty about wondering about that.

 

to me oculus rift wouldn't really work for me, i am generally physically lazy and i mostly relax while playing games, but i don't feel like i could ever relax while playing a game with the oculus rift, it would probably work better for films for me but maybe not in it's current form

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Ugggg I won't have time to get into Bioshock Infinite for ages, but I really wanna listen to Idle Thumbs...

I had to stop listening at "Did you throw the baseball at the couple or the dude". I just have to.

 

Nice poster Ross.

 

Congrats Jake. Congrats Nick.

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i never thought of bioshock as a horror game, system shock 2 was and that is why i never saw any similarities between them and i saw them saying it was the spiritual successor as just a marketing ploy.

 

if someone gave me a gift every day i think i would like them more, but i would have an internal struggle as to whether i liked them because they gave me stuff or i just like them independently of that and then i would feel guilty about wondering about that.

 

to me oculus rift wouldn't really work for me, i am generally physically lazy and i mostly relax while playing games, but i don't feel like i could ever relax while playing a game with the oculus rift, it would probably work better for films for me but maybe not in it's current form

Bioshock wasn't really a horror game overall, but I think it would be silly to say that it didn't have horror elements at times.

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Bioshock wasn't really a horror game overall, but I think it would be silly to say that it didn't have horror elements at times.

It was moody and oppressive and often creepy and frequently totally tense, which is collectively a subgenre of horror I think, even if its not main-line "Horror" horror.

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I agree with that. I guess in terms of games most horror is survival horror. Except amnesia, which most just simulates what being incontinent is like.

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That's funny, me and a buddy from work had this exact conversation last week and both reached the conclusion that Bioshock qualified as a horror game based on our experiences. I just finished the original Dead Space last week and found the experience to be eerily similar to Bioshock. The mood, atmosphere, and sound design seemed in line with each other, the scarcity of ammo in both games heightened the tension, and they both had certain areas you would walk into that were genuinely creepy (for instance, in Bioshock when you walk into an operating room to find the room covered in blood and a crazy doctor butchering the person on the operating table).

 

When I compare the two experiences, I find it hard to draw a line between these games where one would qualify as horror and the other wouldn't.

 

So I guess the real question is, "What is horror game?"

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i would say system shock 2 was sci-fi horror in the same way that the film event horizon is sci-fi horror, but i never even thought that bioshock tried to be horror at all, maybe the enemies were a bit creepy and you could do evil things but it just seemed more of a dystopian alternate reality rather than horror, i would say it was more an action sci-fi, it just didn't have enough horror for me to categorize it as horror.

 

but yeah good question "what is a horror game"

 

maybe the power of the player goes a lot towards the horror element, i think the power of the player was much greater in bioshock compared to system shock 2, even though you could choose to have telekinetic powers and stuff like that in system shock 2 your overall power was still pretty low, like i hoped that every new area i went into in system shock 2 was empty because you could be killed easy, but i never hoped for no enemies in bioshock i wanted more to kill

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i would say system shock 2 was sci-fi horror in the same way that the film event horizon is sci-fi horror, but i never even thought that bioshock tried to be horror at all, maybe the enemies were a bit creepy and you could do evil things but is just seemed more of a dystopian alternate reality rather than horror, i would say it was more an action sci-fi, it just didn't have enough horror for me to categorize it as horror 

 

That is a good point. I guess it seems as if there are two ways to look at it. On the one hand, if you make a list of things that define Bioshock and another list of things that defines Dead Space they would be almost identical. They even both have the same theme of the player being stranded in a derelict place where everyone has 'transformed' into a murdering freak and/or gone insane to such a degree that the inhabitants of each environment have even experimented on children. So from a purely objective position they should fit within the same game category. On the other hand, I agree with you that there is something different about the feel and the emotional response you get from each game that pushes Dead Space more into the 'scary' territory. So I guess I have a hard time with what the definition of horror is and how to articulate exactly why one is horror and one isn't.

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but yeah good question "what is a horror game"

 

I think it sounds better without the 'a' 

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Oh man I am so excited that the Idle Thumbs crew is playing Bioshock Infinite right now. I liked your immediate reactions and I can't wait to hear what you have to say about the ending. I'm not sure if you all ventured in to the Infinite thread but I definitely started extremely enthusiastic with the game. The first few hours were something really amazing. I have to say I was disappointed with the ending and I really felt like the back third of the game got bogged down with way too much combat. I also was in a situation where medium was way too easy but I felt hard was hard enough to be stressful and somewhat annoying by the end of the game when they really throw a ton of enemies at you. A couple fights in particular really bugged the hell out of me for them not being remotely interesting and ultimately frustrating.

 

I won't say anything more other than to say that I am still thinking about the way Jake compared this game to Sucker Punch and what it says about why we/I enjoy one and hate the other. I do feel some early themes of the game drift away and combat becomes a chore near the end but I'll wait to see what you guys have to say next week.

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I still find it odd that you guys are friends with Zack. He's the one that got me listening to Idle Thumbs back before VGHD existed.

 

Also congrats Jake and Congrats Nick.

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