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Jake

Idle Thumbs 106: Imagine the Man

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Chris's experience of not getting into Demon's Souls initially but then getting a different perspective and then getting into it reminded me of how my perception of that game evolved. I first heard of it when I was riding by bike to class, listening to the Giant Bombcast, and at the time it had just come out and the GB crew, not being into that kind of game, was dismissive and critical of it -- it sounded fucked hard. I've never liked games that were difficult for the sake of being difficult, so I filed that away as dontplay badgame. It was made easy that it was a PS3 exclusive and at the time I only played games on PC, I didn't own any consoles. 

 

Anyway, a while later, at least a year I think, I was hanging out with and messing around on his PS3, looking for something to play, and he suggested it. He wasn't super in to it, I don't think he ever beat it, but he liked messing around with the systems in it and just having dumb fun, while dying over and over. I've always liked dumb fun, so, though I told him I heard it was bad, I took a stab at it. Turns out, not only was it dumb fun just engaging with the mechanics, but I thought it genuinely had something going for it. I soon forgot about it though.

 

Anyway, some other time later I got a ps3. It was after the slim came out and it was on sale on amazon, and I wanted to play MGS4 and the uncharted games. I'm not sure why I bought Demon's Souls at the time, I guess I remembered having some fun with it and needed games. But then I started playing it. And kept playing it and playing it. I had filed it away as unreasonable difficult, a game for crazy people, but as I played it I realized it wasn't difficult mechanically. Instead, it was unforgiving and expected a lot of the player, but no single action was unreasonably difficult. That was (and still is) very satisfying in an era of super limited, tutorialized, or hand holding games. Also I really liked the world and story, particularity the restrained way it was presented. Anyway I got super in to it, and subsequently Dark Souls as well (that didn't take any convincing  I bought it when it came out because i loved demon's souls so much, and played ~100 hours, and again bought and played it on PC when it came out there).

 

Anyway, aside from just talking about how Demons Souls and Dark Souls are great, I guess my point is that don't judge a video game but it's thing someone said about it on a podcast once. Or at least ont entirely. Or maybe just know your tastes relative to the editorial content you consume and/or the predispositions of the people making said content. 

 

I think I started writing this with some sort of point in mind but it got lost, so now its mostly just the story of how I really like the D* Souls games.

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On an unrelated note I never saw that IGN McDonalds takeover before and dang, I can see why people were disconcerted. Wonder what the person who green-lighted that thought would happen.

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On Sean's XCOM ironman chances:

 

You can pull out of that death spiral because of the difficulty level but it may not be easy.  On normal and easy (but not classic/impossible), the alien campaign progression is capped so that if the player falls behind, the aliens will only pull so far ahead.  So you always have a chance.  You'll probably have to do things like: shoot down a UFO, go on mission, get some kills, retreat and fail mission but with your squad surviving.  You won't get a panic increase long as you shoot down the UFO so this really isn't so bad.  Even on non UFO missions, if you have zero veterans, you want to sacrifice panic level increase to keep your soldiers alive.  Just get a few kills and retreat if you have to. 

 

If you are in a spot where you can't even get a few kills and retreat you are probably out of luck but you should always be able to do that on normal.

 

In any case you can lose 8 countries before losing the game.  Losing 3 really isn't that bad of a position. 

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Great casts gentlemen,

 

I wanted to say that I really like the twitch sessions you guys do, kind of lets you guys go really indepth to a single game without it taking over the show.  If I'm interested in the game I can watch and if not I can not watch without missing my weekly cast.  I think you should do something similar to that with dota, be it twitch or just an off-series podcast or something, because I think it'd be good to get all your ideas out instead of just saying "we're not going to talk about this now".

 

Also if all those ideas are discussed and out there, they can stop being brought up every show.  Right now it's an elephant in the room and everyone kind of seems to just wait uneasily until Sean brings it up then you spend 5 minutes talking about not talking about it.

 

I also think you should do whatever you want and keep it fun.

 

-zen

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I'm only maybe 30 minutes into the cast so far so am only going to comment on Dota.  Chris mentioned that he liked the game, but that the way he enjoyed playing it was in a way that didn't require him to get super invested into it and it isn't that possible for that to happen.  What this made me thing of was custom games which currently don't exist outside of completely organizing a full group of 10 people.  In Warcraft 3 DotA people would play games with ridiculous rules such as same hero only mid or death match which basically exist as a means play a game where everyone is going in with the express purpose of only having fun and not getting that invested.  Valve have halfway supported these by adding them as option in custom lobbies, but this is where it gets to the point where you need to organize your own game as there isn't any sort of way to browse lobbies for these games.  The reason I thought of it is that I usually only play Dota in the evenings with other people like Sean and/or other Telltale people, and/or other Thumbs and what usually comes up is a situation where it's our last game and the game ends in frustrating defeat.  When this happens it's always a situation of having to decide if you want to play another in the hopes that you'll end on a high note, or quit and go to sleep in a bad mood.  Not that long ago when this happened I was thinking about how it would be nice if custom games were more prevalent as it would be a way to play a game and end on a high note, where you might not win, but you at least have fun and don't get invested to the point that losing means the rest of your night is going to suck.  I know Valve is still working on some other game modes so hopefully in the future playing them is relatively easy to do. 

 

I'm actually also going to ask something about XCOM.  How many low rank people do other Thumbs have in their squad?  I've been playing with basically one person always being pretty bad, one person being okay but not one of my top guys, and the other guys all being the best that I currently have available.  I'm starting to think that I should probably try and get a lot more of my newbies experience as currently I have a lot invested in maybe 7-8 soldiers and a wipe would be a really crippling setback.  On the other hand this also ensures that I can be pretty confident that all my rookies are going to make it through their first couple missions (except for this one guy I had who got one shot at the end of a mission when I had basically already won.  He reminded me of Speedy from The Venture Brothers). 

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The ratio of veterans to rookies I have in a squad is going to be determined by what my squad size is, what my reserves look like (I never want to risk all my veterans in the event I totally eat it), and what the difficulty of the mission looks like. In other words, there isn't a set formula I stick to.

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For those who may not remember:

qLG4CMR.jpg

You have to appreciate the attention to detail with the little column headers and stuff being branded.

 

And then there's IGN today. If you squint you can see some content in there!

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Of course there was a clickthrough ad before I even got to that. They've come so far...

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The Souls games are ones I would recommend to everyone. That's not to say that everyone will enjoy them or get very far in them, but I honestly think everyone that has the opportunity should at least give them a try. The quality of the design in terms of both gameplay and worldbuilding is absolutely phenomenal, and they're an experience that's almost unique in videogaming. I can't say that I've ever managed very much progress myself, but what I have played was absolutely worth the preorder price.

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Here is as good a place as any I suppose to mention that I picked up Dark Souls for $7.50 during the Amazon sale and it is ruining my life in a wonderful wonderful way. Making my way through Anor Londo now: Fuck Roof Archers (congrats roof archers?)

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There is a spot in Anor Londo that is the most annoying spot in that entire game, and it is such a spot that, i suspect, everybody who has played Dark Souls probably instantly knows what i'm talking about.

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I find that spot hilarious because I heard so many people bitching about it before I got there myself that I was overloaded with both fear and tips on how to deal with it, and ended up acing it on my first go. Never gave me any trouble on subsequent characters either.

 

The cathedral rafters are my nemesis though, goddamn.

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That's kind of why it's bullshit though, because it's impossible if you don't know exactly what to do and pretty damn counter-intuitive. Pretty much the only time I've lost a bloodstain so far :(

 

Anyway, I thought that the kinds of environments that Dark Souls provides to navigate through were really interesting and spent a bit of time thinking about what makes them feel so distinct from other game environments: It became the basis of an essay I wrote up exploring how different games structure their space. Check it out if that sounds interesting to you.

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I would not say it's counter-intuitive at all given the amount of training the game has given you up until this point about how getting in close is almost always a winning move.

 

I like your essay! The connection to Half-Life 1 (and not its sequel to me) rings very true, both in its continuity (almost unprecedented when it came out) and the feeling that you are exploring a complex, real space. Good stuff.

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The thing is, actually closing in on one of the archers still has a non-trivial chance of getting you shot in the ass and knocked off. Your best odds are actually to strip off all of your weapons, trick one into pulling his sword out, and then running away as he falls to his death like a dumbass. I'd consider that counterintuitive. Also, the game has trained you by that point that if something seems impossible there's often a better way past that obstacle, so yeah.

 

Glad you liked the essay! I think there's probably a lot of interesting ways to look at the ways that games treat their space and allow you to navigate it, and each of them gives a bit of extra perspective that could maybe lead to some cool new approaches to game design in the future.

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Huh, I always end up just either parrying the dude on the right or blocking until he falls to his death.

 

Oh, and once I just combustioned his ass on a high-poise pyromancer. I dunno, the archer bit just never struck me as especially dificult compared to some other parts. A lot of it may be playstyle.

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Could be. You did hear about it beforehand though, which is totally my point: It's super frustrating if you don't know what's up and relatively trivial if you do.

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IIRC the archer's can't hit you if you're running. The only tricky part is once you get to the top of the ramp; then, as long as you have a good, high stability shield, you should be able to maneuver so only one of the archers can see you. Dealing with that archer is trivial once he switches to his melee weapon. It's a tough part, but like a lot of the tough parts in Dark Souls picking the right gear helps a lot (I use light armor, a high-stablity shield, lightning spear, and fog ring). 

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Could be. You did hear about it beforehand though, which is totally my point: It's super frustrating if you don't know what's up and relatively trivial if you do.

 

Of course, but my point was that the game actually has done a fair bit of hinting what the solution is, ie. get all up that grill/boss crotch. The hydra fight is especially analogous in my mind.

 

I mean, I see why that situation will kill you if you don't see it coming. But I definitely don't agree that it's impossible to figure out what to do, or even counter-intuitive given the slow speed of the arrows.

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Hah, against the hydra I fell into the water and then picked it apart with arrows. I did better against the second hydra since there was less water between me and it.

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As someone who very much enjoyed not only the mechanics, visuals, and sound design in Bioshock Infinite I feel like.. and I haven't gotten past this episode yet, that you guys haven't hit upon the fact that a triple AAA game took on the idea that no matter who the controlling faction in power and the alarmist propaganda that they spout out corrupts leadership and society.  Does anyone else feels like that concept was a little glossed over?

-Miranda

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As someone who very much enjoyed not only the mechanics, visuals, and sound design in Bioshock Infinite I feel like.. and I haven't gotten past this episode yet, that you guys haven't hit upon the fact that a triple AAA game took on the idea that no matter who the controlling faction in power and the alarmist propaganda that they spout out corrupts leadership and society.  Does anyone else feels like that concept was a little glossed over?

-Miranda

I actually strongly dislike how that message is presented in Infinite, because it seems to me like the argument there is, "It doesn't matter what you believe, strongly believing anything is bullshit because it turns you into a monster." I mean, I DON'T think all strongly-held beliefs are actually equivalent. That's not to say I wouldn't be receptive to a more nuanced version of the argument: in fact, I think the original BioShock actually achieves that to a much stronger degree. BioShock achieves it, in part, by presenting an ideology that is fundamentally cartoonish in its very conception; it's a comic-book ideology, but it is treated in a humane way by the game. Infinite is the exact opposite. It takes actual historical human ideologies and gives them a cartoon treatment that didn't allow me to find any humanity. Infinite, to me, feels like it overly warps the plot events and characters motivations simply so it can make a nihilistic and overly-strained point. The game (to me) seems to ultimately claim principles are pointless and doing nothing is the same as striving for something.

To be clear: I think ambiguity in art is crucial, and I don't yearn for polemic, but BioShock Infinite to me actually feels polemical in its exultation of callous ambiguity, and I just can't find any point in that.

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Ok that's the argument against the storyline I was waiting for.  Thank you, Chris.

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I'm not so sure that that's actually what's going on, though. I think it's really significant that between your arrival on Columbia and exposure to Comstock's rather appalling regime, and the nearly as appalling widespread violence of the Vox's successful overthrow of that regime, you step into an alternate universe. And not just once, either. There are really creepy effects associated with those changes, and the tears are repeatedly called out as being corruptive and damaging to people who use them too heavily, as well as catering to Elizabeth's perceptions. It's been argued, and I think very plausibly, that the reason Booker goes from apathetic, hard-hearted mercenary to someone who actually cares about Elizabeth and wants to help her, is because he passes through those tears with her. And I think it's very possible that the Vox of the final universe, are, essentially, what Elizabeth expects them to be.

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