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Jake

Idle Thumbs 102: Standing on the Shoulders of Babies

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For being a couple of years old, it's suprisingly modern

 

Metroid Prime came out in 2002. It's more than a decade old.

It still blows my mind that there's only a two year difference between Majora's Mask and Metroid Prime, considering how well the visuals of one have aged compared to the other.

 

Also, prepare to be obsessed with scanning everything. The Prime trilogy are some of my favourite games and I made it my goal at one point to play through every major Metroid game in one year at one point. I did my last stretch of Prime 3 in something like a five-hour stretch. On my way to work, I saw a big tire track in the snow and my brain IMMEDIATELY said: "Magnetic Rail System. Press and Hold Z to activate Spider Ball" and realized I had already entered a crouch, attempting to become a morph ball.

 

They are the best video games five out of five stars

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Metroid Prime came out in 2002. It's more than a decade old.

It still blows my mind that there's only a two year difference between Majora's Mask and Metroid Prime, considering how well the visuals of one have aged compared to the other.

 

Also, prepare to be obsessed with scanning everything. The Prime trilogy are some of my favourite games and I made it my goal at one point to play through every major Metroid game in one year at one point. I did my last stretch of Prime 3 in something like a five-hour stretch. On my way to work, I saw a big tire track in the snow and my brain IMMEDIATELY said: "Magnetic Rail System. Press and Hold Z to activate Spider Ball" and realized I had already entered a crouch, attempting to become a morph ball.

 

They are the best video games five out of five stars

Everything you have said has made me bride-on-a-wedding-day happy. Between Knife of Dunwall, my backlog of Castlevania:SOTN, Super Metroid, Metroid Prime Trilogy, and Dark Souls I am completely paralyzed as to what to play first. I feel like a kid on Christmas with a huge stack of toys. TOO MANY GOOD GAMES!!!

 

Edit: Wow, a decade old!?! Jesus! time flies, and Christ! that game holds up beautifully.

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Were you thinking of the same thing as I was, Twig?

Yeah, I was!

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Saw this while browsing the internet, and thought of you Thumbs.

 

Thanks for the awesome show!

Thank you for helping me to sleep tonight. Thank you rockbass, and thank you--oh, sorry, Mr...er-.

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I laughed too hard when Chris said "It blew me away" after repeatedly saying "Goldblume". Only a couple of minutes later did I realise the Thumbs were just laughing at him being like IGN.

 

I am now playing Neptune's Pride 2 and only one cycle into the game I'm already pretty terrified of failure. This is pure stress, now available on iPhone/iPad..

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I am now attempting the role of being King Dick to the people around me, and being all like 'HEY WANNA BUDDY UP? OOPS I DIDN'T MEAN TO STEAL YOUR PLANETS SORRY LET'S BEEE FRIENDS'

 

 

Soon, my pretties, soon...

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Yeah, the diplomacy in this is message system only. So there's no system around it or any announcements (of course, you can just do that yourself).

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...I invested early into Terraria and ended up feeling burned by it (though, not in any deep way). I read their sort of plans and goals for the game and figured I'd get behind it. It certainly was fun from that day one experience and even beyond the official release date it saw a few updates here and there, culminating in one major update. And then it all stopped, and the team disbanded. All the roadmapped ideas they had for the game left unfulfilled.

Hm, does the coming huge new content patch salve those wounds or has that ship already sailed?

 

Regarding the topic of candy rewards reducing the internal motivations we would otherwise be driven by and how this relates to game design, Jon Blow actually did a big presentation discussing this very phenomenon a few years ago. Part of the driving idea, as he mentions, behind Braid is that there's no big in-game reward for solving puzzles, that the main reward for solving the game's puzzles is the intrinsic satisfaction of figuring out a tricky problem. That makes it interesting that Braid was mentioned in such close proximity to this discussion in the podcast for a completely different, and perhaps slightly contradictory, reason.

 

I'd put the video up here but I can't easily tell which it is from the ten or so one hour lectures he's got up on youtube. I'll link it if I find it later.

 

Anyway, he mentions the book Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn there, which I checked out on that basis and which I thought was a really good exploration of how we undermine the very behaviors we try to promote by incentivizing them. If it's a topic you're interested in, I recommend checking it out.

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Hm, does the coming huge new content patch salve those wounds or has that ship already sailed?

Not really, it kinda feels like too little too late. Like I said, Starbound is around the corner (or later this year, whatever) and is starting out with way more content. Plus, the Terraria content update was at first an XBLA exclusive, they didn't want to put it out on PC. Not until people complained about it in droves.

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I'd be interested in seeing a game use the achievement system as a sort of skinner box, seeing if they can make the player do something they don't want to if it'll net them an achievement.

 

I never played it, but I hear that Portal 2...

had an achievement for being a gullible idiot and deliberately jumping down a hole and dying because Wheatley told them to.

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I'd be interested in seeing a game use the achievement system as a sort of skinner box, seeing if they can make the player do something they don't want to if it'll net them an achievement.

 

I never played it, but I hear that Portal 2...

had an achievement for being a gullible idiot and deliberately jumping down a hole and dying because Wheatley told them to.

It's glados, she tempts you with a way out, if you take it she gasses you

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Not really, it kinda feels like too little too late. Like I said, Starbound is around the corner (or later this year, whatever) and is starting out with way more content. Plus, the Terraria content update was at first an XBLA exclusive, they didn't want to put it out on PC. Not until people complained about it in droves.

Actually it's completely different content. I gather most of the XBLA stuff was pretty underwhelming (and made by a completely different company), but, uh, one of the main Terraria guys looked at all of the stuff people were adding in mods and thought some of those ideas were pretty awesome so is adding in a couple of mod ideas and then a bunch of other stuff inspired by that. That's the story I heard anyway. I can still see why people would be irked by the initial abandonment, but I picked it up a while after the previous final patch for $2.50 so I'm kind of excited.

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I think the frequent gating in many games trains you to be a scrounging hobo. I'm sure plenty of people, like me, try to suss out the critical path and avoid it, in favor of turning everything else upside down before they get locked out.

Oh god, yes. I will catch myself saying Oh crap, I went the RIGHT way.

The game I thought wasn't good but was better for having played it was Spec Ops. It wasn't outright bad, but the story was almost aided by the very mediocre gameplay. It was something I was playing to get to the end, not because of the mechanical joy of video gaming.

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I just wanted to drop in and mention that because of this episode I started playing Neptune's Pride II.

So thanks for that, it got me into a strategy gaming mood. I reinstalled Starcraft and played that for a bit, before stumbling on why I enjoy Neptune's Pride II so much: I actually have time to think. Those 13 hours it will take my fleet to get to a new planet? Time for me to figure out my next move. In Starcraft, not so much. I am not always a fast thinker, so the slower pace is a nice change for me that I really appreciate.

...also, it means I wont be spending half an hour straight defending my base from the Zerg while I have other things I really should be doing...

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I think all listeners of Idle Thumbs (well, the ones who join the community here) are playing NP2 by this point.

 

I just joined a random game so I could get my bearings. I'm terrified because I'm seeing the decisions the other players made regarding their starting infrastructure and realized I made dumb decisions immediately.

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I joined a random game under the assumption that, like most games, I would just "pick it up as I went".

While it was true to an extent, now that I have been perusing the help pages and learning a bit more of the ins and outs of the game, I realize there was a lot I could have done better at the start if I had just bothered to read up on it.  (For instance, I am now completely out of cash because I upped my Science infrastructure on a very expensive planet... It doesnt mean I wouldnt still be strapped for money in-game, but I could have made that money go farther.)

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Yeah, Neptune's Pride 2 is really good at making me feel completely inferior to everyone else. In the world..

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Did I miss some explanation of Nick being back? He's been on for the last few episodes, but I don't seem to remember anyone saying something to the effect of "he's back, for good*!" Anyways, it's good to have him back though the dynamics of the Idle Thumbs conversations have changed and it's a little jarring for me.

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Nick was hired by Telltale Games and I think they officially announced his return in the second episode he was in (not Dishonoured Return of Nick, the first time he returned.)

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Did I miss some explanation of Nick being back? He's been on for the last few episodes, but I don't seem to remember anyone saying something to the effect of "he's back, for good*!" Anyways, it's good to have him back though the dynamics of the Idle Thumbs conversations have changed and it's a little jarring for me.

He got a job at Telltale.

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I've said it before, but you guys really need to play a game of diplomacy. All friendshis have to end some time.

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I chose to go to the moon.

 

8qdT3pS.png

Did you choose to go because it was easy?

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