I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

[syntheticgerbil]

I explicitly remember my dad getting angry that I was watching a movie with such language.

[Bjorn]

I've honestly assumed that it was a Short Circuit reference since the first time I saw it as one of your other screen names.

[Merus]

Wait. Is this Deadly Rooms of Death? I've heard VGHD talk about it.

 

I was on the development team (for Journey to Rooted Hold and The City Beneath, at least)

 

That's why I'm so upset - imagine Firewatch had been out for six months.

 

(also, I understand VGHD didn't really care for it, it's got a long-standing problem where the graphics are kind of basic and the controls are... legacy (although the undo and the reverse action button make a big difference) but I don't care because it is filled with unique ideas. It doesn't sound like VGHD really got to the point where some of the design decisions made sense - I heard them complaining about how the puzzles are laid out in a physical layout and how it feels like it's wasting time, when that's critical for the way the game paces itself and gates puzzles. It's just that the first handful of puzzles in a DROD game tend to be fairly linear because it needs to teach foundational concepts one after the other.)

[Griddlelol]

I want to play The World Ends With You on my 3DS, but I can only find the U.S. version, which apparently works on UK DSs, but I have no idea if it'll work on my UK 3DS. Anyone have experience with this?

[tegan]

Yes, the only DS games that are region-locked on either system are the DSi-only/DSi-enhanced ones.

 

 

I've honestly assumed that it was a Short Circuit reference since the first time I saw it as one of your other screen names.

[N1njaSquirrel]

I want to play The World Ends With You on my 3DS, but I can only find the U.S. version, which apparently works on UK DSs, but I have no idea if it'll work on my UK 3DS. Anyone have experience with this?

 

You're more than welcome to borrow my copy if you want, which is a UK copy.

[Merus]

While they're not region-locked, mingling only works amongst games in your own region. You probably won't manage to get a lot of PP out of mingling.

[SecretAsianMan]

Uwe Boll's latest attempt to crowdfund another terrible movie is most likely going to fail like the others did, so he released a video entitled "Fuck You All".

[Griddlelol]

So it's the game itself that's locked or not, and cross talk with the console will no make a difference using DS games...right?

 

You're more than welcome to borrow my copy if you want, which is a UK copy.

 

I'd be up for that if you're willing to mail it to me.

 

(Note, I play RPGs very slowly.)

[N1njaSquirrel]

Imported DS games will work on your 3DS, as I have Japanese DS games I can play on my 3DS. but the weird mingling thing for PP (which is basically Streetpass before streetpass was a thing) won't work on your UK 3DS if you have an import copy.

 

I think the mingle thing will work with my UK copy, but it'll be pointless any ways, as nobody else will be using it. Which is a shame.

 

I'd be up for that if you're willing to mail it to me.

 

(Note, I play RPGs very slowly.)

 

Sure thing. PM me your Address and I'll send it over (providing that it's at home, which I'm pretty sure it is) 

 

Take your time and enjoy it!

[Salacious Snake]

Short Circuit 2 on the other hand...

 

This just unlocked a long-unused wing of my brain.

[BobbyBesar]

I've gone ahead with my plan and changed my Steam name to S.A.M.  I feel a bit better already.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_and_S.A.M.

[eot]

Uwe Boll's latest attempt to crowdfund another terrible movie is most likely going to fail like the others did, so he released a video entitled "Fuck You All".

He does the "crazy person on youtube shouting at the world" thing quite well

[SuperBiasedMan]

You can still get PP in TWEWY with mingling if you never meet anyone because they will occasionally just give you some PP anyway in case you're not a DS mingler but still want to collect every pin. (which was my exact situation)

[Badfinger]

I have wondered that as well, but of everything that fantasy has created, dwarves are my absolute favorite thing.  But I can't think of ever having encountered someone saying that it was offensive, and I just did a bit of googling and didn't come up with anything. 

 

I'm going to continue working under the assumption that our love of dwarves is safe. 

Good. Dwarves are my favorite, too. I RP'd a dwarf for 10 years in a MUD. I ain't giving up that connection for nobody.

 

My blood elf priest's name is Onegative in WoW and I would occasionally get asked if it was a reference to the band as if that makes more sense than a BLOOD elf being named after a blood type.

Hah. I had a Tauren named Taurbroiled. I was pretty proud of that. One of my consistent female character names is Clarise. I really like that name! I think it is a good and versatile character name, and outside of punsville I try to make names that make sense as a name. You can understand the amount of times I got "Hello, Clarise". It was a lot of times. The name was not a reference to Silence of the Lambs. I mostly took to responding with a cheerful hello!

 

Let's all get in voice chat and compliment each other on nice plays and be altogether pleasant to one another.

Isn't there a Thumbs Mumble or Ventrilo server? I remember having an excellent time doing DayZ stuff the twice we were able to get people online and organized. We may have also done VOIP for DIablo, and the folks who are doing the D&D campaign were super swell even though I'm obnoxious and then immediately had to bail.

 

 

Badfinger is a name I spun off of Goldfinger because I thought I was ~cool~ and #edgy#, as in the bad finger that pulls the trigger. It was like 5 years afterwards I found out they were a sad Beatles-lite band, but now that's part of the joke.

[Zeusthecat]

I really love that Torgue in Borderlands 2 is voiced by the same guy who voiced Mister Satan in DBZ. I think that was the best casting choice in the entire game.

[Bjorn]

I really love that Torgue in Borderlands 2 is voiced by the same guy who voiced Mister Satan in DBZ. I think that was the best casting choice in the entire game.

 

We're working our way through the B2 DLC right now, and just hit Torgue's section of Tiny Tina's Keep.

 

Him having to prove that he's not a fake geek guy is just amazing.  I love that Borderlands just occasionally drops a lecture on gamers about acting like decent human beings. 

[Zeusthecat]

We're working our way through the B2 DLC right now, and just hit Torgue's section of Tiny Tina's Keep.

 

Him having to prove that he's not a fake geek guy is just amazing.  I love that Borderlands just occasionally drops a lecture on gamers about acting like decent human beings. 

 

We literally just did that same segment last night. I wasn't sure what to think of Torgue at first but he's turned out to be a pretty fun character and that DLC is pretty solid.

 

Generally speaking though, the writing in this game is kind of all over the place. I really liked BL2 when I originally went through on 360 and I still really like it going through it all again now but I'm finding myself cringing a bit more at some of the dialog. The writing for Tiny Tina is especially bad (at least in the main story, I hear the Tiny Tina DLC is much better). But I do feel like it kind of finds its footing later in the game and finally starts hitting the target as Handsome Jack becomes more of a constant presence. There are definitely some issues with his character but I really think he is one of the best and most interesting villains I've come across in a game.

[Bjorn]

I saw you were on when I was quitting last night.  I think we're around level 31/32 with our mains (both assassins), and I'm sometimes playing through as a Mechromancer by myself.  We haven't finished the main story yet, really close, but decided we at least wanted to play Tiny Tina's Keep before finishing it because it looked really cool.  I think I would play an entire game that just Tina and the Gang narrating a D&D adventure with guns. 

 

If I was an editor, I'd cut easily a third of the content in BL2.  There's a lot of meh stuff all over the place.  But the good things are fabulous.  The lady absolutely adores Ellie.  Torgue is awesome and ridiculous.  Jack is incredibly confusing, which is not a bad trait in a villain. 

[Gormongous]

But I do feel like it kind of finds its footing later in the game and finally starts hitting the target as Handsome Jack becomes more of a constant presence. There are definitely some issues with his character but I really think he is one of the best and most interesting villains I've come across in a game.

 

Statements like that make me really bummed out that Handsome Jack totally failed to land for me. He was cleverly written, but at no point was I able to read him as anything more than a video game villain.

[Bjorn]

Statements like that make me really bummed out that Handsome Jack totally failed to land for me. He was cleverly written, but at no point was I able to read him as anything more than a video game villain.

 

It might help that I'm playing both the pre-sequel (where he's a character on the good guys side) and 2 concurrently, without knowing anything at all about his character.  The pre-sequel definitely sets him up as having more depth and a stronger character arc than 2 does.  Although I could be totally wrong since I haven't finished either!

[Zeusthecat]

I saw you were on when I was quitting last night.  I think we're around level 31/32 with our mains (both assassins), and I'm sometimes playing through as a Mechromancer by myself.  We haven't finished the main story yet, really close, but decided we at least wanted to play Tiny Tina's Keep before finishing it because it looked really cool.  I think I would play an entire game that just Tina and the Gang narrating a D&D adventure with guns. 

 

If I was an editor, I'd cut easily a third of the content in BL2.  There's a lot of meh stuff all over the place.  But the good things are fabulous.  The lady absolutely adores Ellie.  Torgue is awesome and ridiculous.  Jack is incredibly confusing, which is not a bad trait in a villain. 

 

I just hit 32 last night. And I'm playing the assassin class as well. Just capped out my sniper skill tree and I'm loving the massive critical damage buffs I have. And totally agree on Ellie's character. She is absolutely fantastic.

 

Statements like that make me really bummed out that Handsome Jack totally failed to land for me. He was cleverly written, but at no point was I able to read him as anything more than a video game villain.

 

For me the interesting parts of his character kind of come out gradually through all of the random backstory bits that pop up as you pick up audio logs and as he taunts you and chats with you throughout the game. For some reason, it just made for an interesting story that the most disgusting and terrible guy you could imagine is completely convinced that he's the good guy and how he oscillates between being relatively charming one minute and an absolute psychopath the next. Sometimes he's being the standard bad guy and telling you how mad he is and how much he wants to kill you and other times he's all chipper and friendly and making light sarcastic jabs at you. He even rewards you for completing a certain quest for him (which is one of my favorite quests in the game). For some reason, his character just came together for me and resulted in a much more interesting villain than 95% of other villains out there. 

[Gormongous]

For me the interesting parts of his character kind of come out gradually through all of the random backstory bits that pop up as you pick up audio logs and as he taunts you and chats with you throughout the game. For some reason, it just made for an interesting story that the most disgusting and terrible guy you could imagine is completely convinced that he's the good guy and how he oscillates between being relatively charming one minute and an absolute psychopath the next. Sometimes he's being the standard bad guy and telling you how mad he is and how much he wants to kill you and other times he's all chipper and friendly and making light sarcastic jabs at you. He even rewards you for completing a certain quest for him (which is one of my favorite quests in the game). For some reason, his character just came together for me and resulted in a much more interesting villain than 95% of other villains out there.

 

Yeah, I enjoyed the writing. It's just that everything in Borderlands 2 has that sort of unsteady relationship between humor and drama, to the point that Handsome Jack didn't particularly stand out for me. I enjoyed my time with him, but the revelations about his character at the end of the game mostly convinced me that a lot of that enjoyment was accidental or inadvertent, so I couldn't help writing him off.

[Bjorn]

I just hit 32 last night. And I'm playing the assassin class as well. Just capped out my sniper skill tree and I'm loving the massive critical damage buffs I have. And totally agree on Ellie's character. She is absolutely fantastic.

 

The lady went with the sniper tree, while I went with the middle tree.  We both got our capstone skills last night, and holy fuckaround, the debuff of my character + her critical hits are just absurd (like her taking a ~2300 point rifle and putting out ~180K crits with it).  I run around in close range debuffing everything with kunai, melee and slag, and she just pops heads all day long. 

 

 

The little bit I've messed around with the Mechromancer is hilarious.  She's got a skill that can boost her damage by up to 700 percent, but also lowers her aim by the same amount.  But then she has another skill that makes bullets ricochet.  So you just run around aiming at enemies' knees and let all the misses bounce around and murder everything else. 

[Zeusthecat]

 

Yeah, I enjoyed the writing. It's just that everything in Borderlands 2 has that sort of unsteady relationship between humor and drama, to the point that Handsome Jack didn't particularly stand out for me. I enjoyed my time with him, but the revelations about his character at the end of the game mostly convinced me that a lot of that enjoyment was accidental or inadvertent, so I couldn't help writing him off.

 

I kind of felt like the writing was at its best though when they carefully towed the line between humor and drama and for me, that was exemplified by Handsome Jack's character and backstory. There was some really dark humor there and it was infinitely more interesting than most of the other throwaway stories in first person shooters. I'll agree with you though that certain events near the end of the game kind of put a damper on things and resulted in an overall less interesting character than they had built up up to that point.

 

 

The lady went with the sniper tree, while I went with the middle tree.  We both got our capstone skills last night, and holy fuckaround, the debuff of my character + her critical hits are just absurd (like her taking a ~2300 point rifle and putting out ~180K crits with it).  I run around in close range debuffing everything with kunai, melee and slag, and she just pops heads all day long. 

 

 

The little bit I've messed around with the Mechromancer is hilarious.  She's got a skill that can boost her damage by up to 700 percent, but also lowers her aim by the same amount.  But then she has another skill that makes bullets ricochet.  So you just run around aiming at enemies' knees and let all the misses bounce around and murder everything else. 

 

One of my coworkers is running a Mechromancer and also just hit his cap last night. Not sure what tree he went with but that death robot special ability has been a lifesaver for us.