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Jake

Idle Thumbs 127: His Boss Encounter

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Idle Thumbs 127:

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His Boss Encounter

Week 127. Sean spends a week in an empty mansion under the pretense of ridding it of ghosts, when in reality he robs the owners blind. He gets lost in a secret passage for two days. Chris spends a third week documenting his time lost in the caverns. Though he accomplishes little, he feels fulfilled. Jake remains at home with the door locked and the curtains drawn, counting the minutes since the mechanical cat's shadow last passed by the window. He loses one mind.

Games Discussed: The Yawhg, Crusader Kings 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Batman: Arkham City, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, Spelunky, Soma

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(I'm only halfway the episode yet, the other half is postponed for the trip back home).

 

When will Nick return? I want to hear him about his Spelunky adventures.

 

 

Rocksteady also did those goofy things in Arkham Asylum. The best was probably the system crashing (

). I fell for it completely and even yelled at my monitor. That this joke even passed console certification :tup:.

So it was awesome that they did a

in Arkham City. I don't think Origins will be as good because it's made by a different studio.

Btw, a similar thing is in Saints Row 4 when you can "chicken out".

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I'm at the Batman part now. Chris: You were thinking of cordyceps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Oh, I guess you found it. Well, you might be interested to know that it was the inspiration for the fungus in The Last of Us.

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Cordyceps became mainstream after The Last of Us. Very unique and cool thing from nature. Absolutely scary.

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Good cast!

 

I love the idea of Boston Dynamics robots overtaking the company to construct and film outdated robots.

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Watching Chris's Daily Challenge videos revived everything I liked about Spelunky, but then watching Chris and Nick do the same daily challenge on October 9th made me never want to watch or play Spelunky ever again.  I've swung back around to complete hatred for this game.

 

Everybody's runthrough is exactly the same.  It's impossible to get better at this game.  There's no skill involved in playing.  So much of the game is geared towards making you believe that what I just said isn't true, but that's because Spelunky is a prison just like the one in that Batman movie.

 

Anyway, the new iOS interface puts the video timeline bar at the top and the controls at the bottom, so I was easily able to avoid seeing how much time Chris had left.  And I forced myself not to look!

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I'm glad the guys finally mentioned some thoughts on GTA V. It felt odd to have the past couple 'casts go by without mentioning the game that it seems everyone is playing.

 

I'm also glad that I'm not the only one who finds it disturbingly hilarious to be around someone using a Rift in public. I had the exact same experience that Chris mentioned while I was attending the SIEGE conference in Atlanta last weekend. Why are you staring at me with your weird matte black eyes?

 

Regarding the Boston Dynamics robots; I always think that they come across as delicate and silly. How humiliating it will be when we are exterminated by a bunch of prancing machines that look like they need to pee.

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Yeah, the clickers in the Last of Us were like "matured" cordyceps.

 

That Arkham City fake ending thing would have made me so angry. So I never played Bladerunner because my parents didn't have a powerful enough PC to run it when the game was available, but from what I understand that game totally supported player choice in terms of being able to have an ending really early on in the game where a player might potentially be missing out on 3/4ths of the content or something like that, and I think it is totally rad that a game might be designed that way. I really hope that game shows up on GOG one of these days...

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Why is Sean embarrassed by saying that Luigi's Mansion reminded him what a video game is? Is it because it's "cliche"? Also, why did Jake force him to walk back that statement immediately by saying: "oh, it just reminds you of video games when you were younger?" (or something to that effect). Why does this podcast seem to be so weirded out that people are enjoying video games on a Nintendo 3DS? 

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Goddammit the looping nature of Vines make everything the creepiest thing ever.

 

Yesterday I sent an e-mail that was pretty much the exact same Spelunky obsevation and question (except not nearly as well worded) so that was fun to hear answered almost immediately.

 

Is that Catwoman false ending in the main game? I remember renting and playing through Arkham City on the 360 way back when, and don't remember making that choice. But I didn't find much of that game memorable, outside of the super fun combat. That combat felt like playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for the first time, realizing that manuals meant that I could pretty much link any combos anytime.

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Why is Sean embarrassed by saying that Luigi's Mansion reminded him what a video game is? Is it because it's "cliche"? Also, why did Jake force him to walk back that statement immediately by saying: "oh, it just reminds you of video games when you were younger?" (or something to that effect).

 

Possibly the walking-back was because most people involved with the podcast have spent a goodly amount of time creating or being excited about games that are pretty far from the "start level, complete challenge, collect shinies, repeat" that Sean seemed to be referring to in Luigi's Mansion. (I think they were just hastening to point out that Idle Thumbs was not radically altering their position on that great question, "What Is Game?"). Not sure what the initial embarrassment was about, but to me it sounded like it "Yes, I admit I had forgotten what it's like to be 'playing' a game (instead of exploring, experiencing, or mastering a game) and it took a Luigi to remind me." -- I could be utterly wrong about this (as much as such a handwavey and ill-defined paraphrase can even be right or wrong), but why listen to podcasts if not to make vertigo-inducing first-person jumps to conclusions about other the speakers' thoughts and feelings?

 

Why does this podcast seem to be so weirded out that people are enjoying video games on a Nintendo 3DS?

 

I don't know, but it creates many hilarious "guwwwww" noises, so I don't mind it. :D (Every time they talk about the 3DS I also spent a few seconds feeling like I should play something on my Gameboy Advance sometime -- but I never do).

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Why is Sean embarrassed by saying that Luigi's Mansion reminded him what a video game is? Is it because it's "cliche"? Also, why did Jake force him to walk back that statement immediately by saying: "oh, it just reminds you of video games when you were younger?" (or something to that effect). Why does this podcast seem to be so weirded out that people are enjoying video games on a Nintendo 3DS? 

 

I think it was the assertion of "what a video game is," because we all (probably to a fault) believe that that is a bullshit thing to decree. I know Jake, Steve and I have taken some crap for our games "not being actual video games." I think Jake was just being aware of the "what is/isn't a game" sentiment.

 

It has nothing to do with playing a game on a 3DS. 

 

We're also "not weirded out," we just find it fascinating that we sit around wanting games to surprise and delight us in new and evolving ways and then our favorite games of the moment are a Mario and a Luigi game. Literally the most historic video games of video games that ever video gamed. It's peculiar but we are enjoying them sincerely. 

 

Which makes me realize that Luigi's Mansion's goals of just making a good video game make it so much more honest and refreshing than something like a Bioshock Infinite that's supposed to be about all these heavy narrative themes but is honestly just about being a badass superhero in a fantasy world. Games keep trying to be x, y or z and, for me, Luigi's Mansion just IS and in being what it is outshines most of what I've played this year.

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So Sean just made an eloquent statement providing additional context and detail to that part of the discussion. I would simply like to add that the statement, "I played a video game, and that made me remember what a video game is like" is just really kind of funny.

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Speaking of Mario, Super Mario RPG Mario is my favorite Mario. The game was great (despite not having Luigi) but Mario in it was particularly so. For example, I really hoped that after SMRPG all subsequent Mario games would continue the idea that, being a man of few words, Mario instead chooses to express exasperation by deliberately faceplanting into the ground. (Later Mario RPG games were pretty good too, but I don't remember them ever bringing that back).

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My narrowing it down to the definition of "playing a game" you had as a kid was not intended as a pejorative.

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Oh, that clarifies things quite a bit! Thank you. I think that I'm prone to getting overly defensive with regards to Nintendo considering their position in the current video game landscape and how much I just enjoy playing their games, even though I am an adult human being. You guys are right, though, Luigi's Mansion is just a fantastic little adventure puzzle game that doesn't try to do too much and does what it does so damn well.  

 

What you should really do is play the multiplayer component (the "Scarescraper"), as there is single-cart multiplayer. My buddy described it as Nintendo's take on Diablo, which is a pretty good way of putting it. 

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My narrowing it down to the definition of "playing a game" you had as a kid was not intended as a pejorative.

 

Okay, so "baby" is a pejorative, "kid" is not. Gotcha.

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I don't think that I interpreted the statement as Jake walking Sean's comment back because Jake was like: "oh, this game is juvenile," but rather, I was wondering why he had to clarify the comment at all. I listened to that part (of what is a fantastic episode, by the way) and thought "wait, why can't Luigi's Mansion make a person feel this way? Why does Jake feel it has to make them feel...like they were when they were a kid?"

 

Sean just made it clear for me: Jake was just trying to get at what Sean was actually saying, which is that the idea of Luigi's Mansion reminding him "what a video game is" is more about historicity, since it taps into feelings he had due to the original games that shaped his thoughts about video games. I agree with that! 

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Okay, so "baby" is a pejorative, "kid" is not. Gotcha.

Hehe.

 

Luigi's Mansion is a great game. It pleases me, at least, to hear you dudes talk about some Nintendos, despite my back-and-forth Nintendo fandom (love 'em, hate 'em, love 'em again).

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I uh went to find a video of the first person SRIV mod, and the first one I found was a guy shooting a bunch of guns (not what I wanted to see, obviously), and then walking into a strip club, and then talking about how the first-person mod is so finely complemented by the nude mod. "...you are now given the function to shift the camera down and have a first-person perspective at your character's exposed breast. This makes for an absolute DIVINE experience..."

 

sorry i just wanted to share my disgust with someone else

 

This video was better though, because it showed a dude jumping, which is what I wanted to see: 

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The whole time they were talking about first-person megajumps I just kept thinking about Morrowind. ^_o

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