Idle Thumbs 159: Wilson's Ghoulish Countenance

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 159:

Wilson's Ghoulish Countenance

Enemies close in, your health almost gone. Time slows, then stops. With the world waiting around you, your choices are endless. You browse your options: A direct attack has its merits, but maybe a dash strike followed by a devastating chain of backstabs would be more effective, or maybe the whole encounter is irrelevant with the deployment of a cloaking field. Your decision reached, you unfreeze time and realize you have somehow instead bought four MannCo crate keys. Despite what you've heard, this is not episode 160, but it does feature special guest Danielle Riendeau of Polygon.

Things Discussed: Transistor, Super Time Force, Dota 2: The International, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Team Fortress 2, Full Bore, Super Noah's Ark

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[Faegbeard]

On Transistor's lore/story, a quite a bit of it is in the save nodes when you inspect the functions. It's still quite fractured in the way Bastion was though.

[tberton]

Sweet, Junior Mints is back!

[tegan]

Sweet, Junior Mints is back!

 

Return of the best guest!

 

Now we wait for the MRAs to show up.

[Coods]

This episode text has one of the funniest lines in all episode texts:

 

" Your decision reached, you unfreeze time and realize you have somehow instead bought four MannCo crate keys."

[Faegbeard]

After the description of the iconic cap and the subsequent google search, I realized that for the past week or so everyone at the EB Games (Australian Gamestop) that is across the road from my work have been wearing the iconic cap. Because the staff uniform is also black with a small amount of dark red, I assumed it was just part of the uniform that for some reason required them to start wearing hats indoors.

 

It is that much of an unremarkable hat.

 

Now we wait for the MRAs to show up.

 

By saying this you are inititiating the exact same kind of shit-flinging but from the other side of the fence.

[CaptainFish]

Danielle drops a "super interesting" at 8:03. Glad to hear you guys are enforcing the Thumbs podcasting style guide.

[Chris]

Danielle drops a "super interesting" at 8:03. Glad to hear you guys are enforcing the Thumbs podcasting style guide.

I noticed that and had to suppress a minor urge to point it out.

[Henroid]

Petitioning now that Danielle be the sixth(?) thumb officially.

[tegan]

By saying this you are inititiating the exact same kind of shit-flinging but from the other side of the fence.

 

I don't think agree with your comparison, but I do agree that it was uncharacteristically snappy for me, so I apologize.

[juv3nal]

By saying this you are inititiating the exact same kind of shit-flinging but from the other side of the fence.

 

It would be if they hadn't shown up last time.

[tegan]

Also, I'm a terrible person because when the discussion of a hypothetical nineties TV show where behind-the-scenes difficulties led to the series suddenly getting super weird and easy to film just made me think of Evangelion.

[Gormongous]

This is completely not germane to anything in the podcast episode, but I never get tired of hearing Chris have the killswitch built into every Diablo 2 player flipped whenever someone says anything in a weird, stilted cadence. "This is yours. This is for you. Die. Time to die. Die. Die. Whoops! This is yours. This is for you. This is for you. Time to die."

 

Also, I'm a terrible person because when the discussion of a hypothetical nineties TV show where behind-the-scenes difficulties led to the series suddenly getting super weird and easy to film just made me think of Evangelion.

 

Oh thank heavens, I'm not the only one. Home Improvement's infamous elevator scene would be even more cost-effective.

[tegan]

Oh thank heavens, I'm not the only one. Home Improvement's infamous elevator scene would be even more cost-effective.

 

Home Improvement's Elevator Scene would need a ridiculous scene transition, though.

[singlespace]

Jesus, the beginning of 159 is the height of professionalism. It's like seeing boss Valkyries descend from the sky heralding sponsors.

[neonrev]

Man, I have a serious need to hear you guys talk about Burial at Sea, which you were waiting for sean to be there for. You guys' and the forums' discussions are what has been excusing me (in my mind) from playing any of the Infinite stuff, and that is the last missing piece from my "Thumbs-related Opinion Matrix" of the content and gameplay of the series. I have weird, 100% completionist issues of this type, please save me?

[Justin Leego]

 

This is probably self evident to everyone else but thanks to Wilson's Ghoulish Countenance I finally realised that Earl Hindman was also in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three as Mr. Brown. If you don't know the film, see if you can spot him...

[zerofiftyone]

Upon listening to the cast on my phone and then re-reading the cast title on the site homepage, I was confused when I saw that the title was different from what was shown on my phone. At first I assumed it was a typo, but now I realise there is only one explanation. 

 

I must be somehow subscribed to the shadow podcast feed as mentioned in the intro of episode 129 and I must have been receiving hidden Phaedrus messages for months without knowing.

[mikemariano]

Talking about lives make me think of how weird some of the Mario deaths are.

If Mario loses a Blooper race in Sunshine or Galaxy, he just holds his head in his hands—but it's counted as a death! It makes the concept of "lives" even weirder.

[tberton]

Man, I have a serious need to hear you guys talk about Burial at Sea, which you were waiting for sean to be there for. You guys' and the forums' discussions are what has been excusing me (in my mind) from playing any of the Infinite stuff, and that is the last missing piece from my "Thumbs-related Opinion Matrix" of the content and gameplay of the series. I have weird, 100% completionist issues of this type, please save me?

 

They did discuss Burial at Sea in Episode 153: Blondie, Freckles and Glasses.

 

Anyway, great episode guys. Danielle needs to be on all the time.

[Berzee]

Re: Wilson, I think I remember an episode of Home Improvement where you can see the bottom half of Wilson's face but the top half is hidden behind a Christmas wreath. Also re: Wilson, when I saw this episode title I thought it was a reference to Cast Away's Wilson-with-a-face-made-of-blood. The truth was far more wonderful.

 

I played the Home Improvement Super Nintendo Game as a rental! It involves fighting dinosaurs with a nail gun. I never beat it.

 

Speaking of nail guns as weapons, in the Batman Forever game, Robin can shoot rivets at people's feet and root them in place. O_O (The manual I think presents them as some kind of ankle-cuff, but that's not what rivets is, manual).

[Merus]

The actor who played Wilson is named Earl Hindman. The mystery is solved.

[Berzee]

Look at that ghoulish countenance.

[mikemariano]

Chris asks why we don't see more coverage and interviews about a game following its release.

 

But we do!  That's when the studio gets shut down and we get a Polygon article about it!

[Roderick]

It was pretty great to hear Chris struggle with words like 'doujinshi' and 'touhou'. Of course not a big deal, since they're largely unknown unless you're way into Japanese stuff.

 

The podcast was somewhat of a minefield for me, since I don't want to hear anything about Transistor yet. I had to skip ahead whenever it came up, and dammit if Sean didn't keep returning to it again and again, like some goddamn Columbo, « Oh, and one more thing about Transistor... »