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Sean

Idle Thumbs 151: A Fascinating Experience

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Okay, I actually think that's kind of really awesome? I mean, it's obviously freakish and disturbing, but I find that bizarreness pretty interesting and evocative.

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I'm really interested in the controlling multiple characters aspect of the game. That makes it sound like Signal Ops, which had awkward controls that made the game difficult to get into initially, but was a really fun immersive stealth type game once you got the hang of it.

That was my thought, too, though unfortunately I never was able to get Signal Ops to run on my computer.

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They need to take that robot way further. I want to see what it can do that a human cannot. It's got a pole going into its chest, why would the choreographer try to maintain any semblance of humanity? I was hoping it would spin on its z-axis and shoot a hand 20 feet away only to retract it back with a cable.

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I don't know if it was posted elsewhere, but I found the video of the Dendi Q&A anecdote by happenstance today.

 

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Legitimately horrifying, especially the fingers just articulating like mad.

 

If it wasn't attached to the wall, those jazz hands would be crushing the windpipes of everyone in the room.

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If it wasn't attached to the wall, those jazz hands would be crushing the windpipes of everyone in the room.

 

Like the tentacles of the sea anemone, they wave playfully, inviting humans to come near in order to be grasped and dispatched.

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I didn't particularly enjoy Free to Play. The sickening sentimentality came to a head when I laughed out loud at the Dendi Revival/My Dead Father montage. The CGI bits took me out of the moment most horribly as well. Did ye on the podcast say it was a way to show people what it was like to play the game? (I may have misunderstood) When I play I see nothing like that - the graphics are the very least of what that game is about. They to me where nothing more than poorly placed CGI adverts (and oh how I hate dollied up representations of video games, LoL did the same thing). I just watched an episode of smash brothers this morning, and i got a far better sense of the ebb and flow of their battles through the grainy, warped video recordings than I did through F2Ps polish.

 

There was the makings of a good movie in there. The live scenes from the international were very cool, and the 3 players they picked were very interesting and different guys.

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Had a rather similar experience to dibs there. I rarely got a grasp for what the game was they were playing and found the extreme zoom things distracting rather than elucidating (and more than a little condescending). I see it as a missed opportunity that the film doesn't even attempt to explain what the game/sport is actually like. As a result, there's very little incentive for an outsider to start caring about it, beyond the Karate Kid plot of western underdogs against the scary and possibly evil Chinese players.

 

What a weird undertone there, by the way. Why didn't the Chinese team get the same heartfelt background stories as all the others? They were set up purely as antagonists, and the way the story unfolded caused another strange thing. When Na'Vi won against Ehome it felt not so much as a miraculous victory from the jaws of defeat by some amazing strategem, rather it made DOTA look like a game of random chance: you can win by just picking any odd combination of heroes. That's another reason it would've been so much more interesting if they had taken the time to explain what the game was and what was happening. Unless you're already invested in DOTA, it plays like a relatively okay-ish story about a few dudes growing up and playing video games in a tournament. And menacing, machine-like Chinese.

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They should have just done a 90 minute interview with HyHy's aunt (she should have had more air time). "Go to school and get a fucking job you bum" is probably the narrative that most prospective video game pros hear and rightly so.

 

I'm with Rodi on the treatment of the Chinese players.

 

 beyond the Karate Kid plot

 

Sweet comparison!

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The Singaporean aunt was the worst human being in the film. I hated how she pretended to have her nephew's interest at heart while completely undermining his self-worth and confidence with passive-aggressive remarks and emotional blackmail. And then playing the victim. She's a bully.

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Oh gosh yes she was horrible. I got a strong vibe of one of my own aunts (grand matriarch of my mother's family) from her, which mean I thought she was hilarious though, rather than unwatchable.

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Regarding what Rodi mentioned about the random chance it also seems a little odd when Dendi chooses a character he's never played and goes ahead and essentially wins that match because of it.  The narrative they are trying to get across is that it is an extremely bold choice and his ability as a player allows him to overpower the other team.  But it seemed extremely strange and felt more like desperation.  It also gave that "random" vibe a little more credibility even though it likely isn't the case.

 

As for Betrayer, what's the deal with the goofy armor sound effects?  The Giant Bomb quick look is just strange hearing these cartoon sounds that seem to be the exact opposite of what the game is trying to portray.  Here's your brooding stealth game with a side of anvil clang, odd.

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I don't watch a bunch of Dendi streams, but I always found him to be entertaining and a bit of an enigma in his appearances at the internationals 2 and 3 so I found his story pretty effectual. The film did focus a lot on the emotions for the players because of the game, and I guess you could say it's exaggerated, but it felt true to me. 

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The chinese were portrayed as the unbeatable machine because as far as anyone was concerned they were, atleast from DOTA1. If you know how koreans look at Starcraft that's how china was in dota. A bunch of stuff caused them to not even make top4 at TI3 but they dominated TI2, 7 teams in the top 8 were from China, only Navi wasn't chinese. At TI3 they just appeared to be closed to the playstyle of teams from outside their country while everyone else seemed to play a wider style of game.

 

About Dendi never playing enigma it might have been him never playing it in DOTA2 or in any practice matches with the team, he must've played it before. Even if he never played it he 100% knew how to play him at atleast a basic level.

 

Navi almost always ends up gaining an advantage from bally plays and risky gambles or atleast used to. They seem much more consistent in comparison to when they won TI1.

 

This was at TI3

 

It's a highlight pasted together out of clips but Navi fell behind early in the game and then for 30 minutes did this pudge hook into fountain, it was removed a few months after the tournament.

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Forgot to post this before: at some point someone (Chris?) makes a joke about Super Eagle, as if it's some kind of anti-aliasing technique or whatever. In any case when I heard that I thought of Super Eagle, the pretty sweet FPS game by thecatamites, Kat Chastain, and New Vaders. Definitely worth a play - it's short.

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I was going to post a response and encouragement to people who are still on the fence about watching The Smash Brothers but then I saw that horrifying gyrating robot and lost my train of thought. All the same, just watch the

and see if it doesn't hook you. Now I need some brain bleach...

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I was going to post a response and encouragement to people who are still on the fence about watching The Smash Brothers but then I saw that horrifying gyrating robot and lost my train of thought. All the same, just watch the

and see if it doesn't hook you. Now I need some brain bleach...

 

The Smash Brothers is definitely the goods.

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The Smash Brothers is definitely the goods.

 

Embarrassingly, after all the discussion and endorsement on the podcast, it took Flynn actually embedding the first episode of The Smash Brothers in a post on this very thread to get me to finally watch it. I'm really glad I did, but bummed at how low the bar had to be set for me to actually invest the time.

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