Jake

Idle Thumbs 165: KeLo. Is. Here.

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Even before the chat about advertisement slogans, based on the early "it's a NINTENDO" sentiment, I was imagining 90s magazine full page ads: "Do you like games? Do you like good games? Then you'll LOVE the Nintendo Wii U"

 

Of course, in this ad, the illustration is of a kid playing a Nintendo console, bathed in the glow of a small CRT set, whose display we cannot see. The kid is playing a NES with an R.O.B. and a Wii U gamepad. The slogan is to be read in the voice of Reggie Fils-Aime. (I almost wrote that as Nintendo Fils-Aime, whatever that says about me.)

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Oh man, this episode. This episode. So many moments that made me giddy:

 

When Nick discussed the WiiU's controller, talking about how he thought he wouldn't like it because he had seen it and made up his mind before using it, and then he actually used the thing and says it's great. When he reminds Jake that it can be used as a TV remote. When he talks about the gamepad just sitting in its little cradle. When Chris talks about how he hasn't had a fun, goofy multiplayer Mario Kart-esque experience in forever. When Danielle gets to introduce herself and it's made official that she's part of the show. When she reveals the truth bomb that she ALSO RECENTLY GOT A WIIU. When the eventual discussion of how Nintendo's exclusives make it a great partner with a PC. Guys, this episode was the CULMINATION of so many things I have hoped for. It was as if the crew sat down and said: "Now, I know we don't know this guy on our forums at all, but it's time for us to record an episode where we just make him very, very happy."

 

...And then Nick just casually tosses in a reference to how terrifying the SNES Jurassic Park game was, and I fucking lost it. I could write a book about that damn game.

 

Thank you guys.

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Jesus Christ, the part with Nick's dream fucking destroyed me, I haven't laughed that hard in a long while. Thanks Nick, Congrats Nick.

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Signed up just to say that Danielle is an amazing addition to the podcast. Finally, a source of new game playing.

 

And this thread...

 

Ghost dog.

 

Skeleton-dogwoman-thing.

 

The Lyra doll.

 

One of those things was reclaimed as at hilarious short-lived meme, one is slightly amusing, and one is is a horror spawned from the bleakest pits of the abyss.

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I can't get the image of Call of Duty: Ghost Dogs: Way of the Samurai out of my head now. An all-ghost dog enemy Call of Duty game with Jim Jarmusch as the story lead. And Forrest Whitaker as the head of your ghost dog battalion. 

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And this thread...

 

Ghost dog.

 

Skeleton-dogwoman-thing.

 

The Lyra doll.

 

One of those things was reclaimed as at hilarious short-lived meme, one is slightly amusing, and one is is a horror spawned from the bleakest pits of the abyss.

 

I am positively chuffed at having completely ruined this thread.

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This is probably just my weird personal priorities coming through, but I appreciate that Danielle has a very different cadence and pitch to the other hosts, so it's always clear when it's Danielle talking and not someone else, even in sub-optimal listening conditions.

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This is probably just my weird personal priorities coming through, but I appreciate that Danielle has a very different cadence and pitch to the other hosts, so it's always clear when it's Danielle talking and not someone else, even in sub-optimal listening conditions.

 

I'm going to be an asshole and state that, for me, the different in cadence makes it harder to listen to, but that's only because I play video games while listening to podcasts.

 

It makes it slightly harder to subconsiously differenciate between what is podcast and what is game.

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I am positively chuffed at having completely ruined this thread.

Now you have to make something to do with dogs! Just not dead, please.

 

I remember that in the first Metal Gear Solid (or at least Twin Snakes), you were not allowed to kill the dogs. If you shot them they would end up killing you. You could put them to sleep with the tranquilizer, but if they woke up you were so screwed. The only way to efficiently solve that area was to have the dogs love you. Sort of how Zelda games are with chickens. Is it so bad for game designers to put in things like that?

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Incidentally, one of the major reasons I'd been dismissing the Wii U was that motion controls absolutely ruined the Wii for me and I was under the impression that Nintendo had stuck to their guns and made the Wii U motion control based as well (with the extra gimmick of the tablet/pad thing). Now it sounds like actually most/(all/all of the relevant) games for Wii U fully support a traditional button-y controller? Is that true? Have I been living in a cloud of self-imposed misinformation? I'm not sure I'd be sold on the Wii U even so, since I rarely play console games anymore and I'm not particularly drawn by most of Nintendo's first party games (mostly just Metroid, the Mario RPGs, and Zelda, and I already have plenty of all three on my backlog). But it would make me willing to consider it at all.

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I'd be interested in hearing / reading more discussion on the anticipated future impact of Minecraft on game development and design practise.

Procedural generation, alpha funding, and voxel or at least 3D cuboid style visual representations are already massive now.

Exmaple: Thinking about that, albeit from a play rather rather design perspective, I realised that I had assumed Firewatch would use procedural generation in one form or another. Because that's how games are made now, so of course it would. Has anyone else experienced a similar thing with post-Minecraft game announcements?

Edit: 'voxel' isn't quite massive enough to make it into mainstream spelling correction software, it would seem...

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Did anyone else feel really bad when they heard that Sean was just sitting in the other room? Did he lose the coin toss or what?

 

I know that realistically he was probably working, but I like to imagine him sitting still on a couch listening to everyone in the podcast studio laughing and getting along without him.

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I thought voxels were more interesting because of the rendering technique, Minecraft still renders with polygons.

 

Lots of games use procedural generation for worlds or gameplay but indie games seem to use it a bit more often. Not all of them use it, many have fixed/hand crafted levels.

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Did anyone else feel really bad when they heard that Sean was just sitting in the other room? Did he lose the coin toss or what?

 

I know that realistically he was probably working, but I like to imagine him sitting still on a couch listening to everyone in the podcast studio laughing and getting along without him.

I bet he was watching football

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Now it sounds like actually most/(all/all of the relevant) games for Wii U fully support a traditional button-y controller? Is that true? 

 

That's pretty much true, but the big secret is that it was pretty much true of the Wii as well. It's just that it comes with a twin stick style controller (the tablet) in the box now.

 

Also, since it came up in the cast: the wheel in Mario Kart is awesome, and I regularly get beat by people in MK8 who use it. Giving yourself the ability to turn using your large muscles instead of your small ones (shoulders vs thumbs) is worth trying if you haven't yet, especially in a game with familiar mechanics and physics.

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I don't have a wheel controller, just a regular Wii remote which I had to hold NES Style and then try to turn with. I bet the wheel itself would be fun if the game was tuned to it.

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I don't have a wheel controller, just a regular Wii remote which I had to hold NES Style and then try to turn with. I bet the wheel itself would be fun if the game was tuned to it.

 

Yeah, that sounds uncomfortable!

 

Anyway, great show Thumbs. 

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Also, since it came up in the cast: the wheel in Mario Kart is awesome, and I regularly get beat by people in MK8 who use it. Giving yourself the ability to turn using your large muscles instead of your small ones (shoulders vs thumbs) is worth trying if you haven't yet, especially in a game with familiar mechanics and physics.

 

Are we talking about the wheel that came with Mario Kart Wii, or is there a new one for 8? I tried the Wii one when that came out and couldn't get the hang of it at all; it seemed way too imprecise and the wheel was still basically only the same size as a Wii remote. And unlike an actual steering wheel, it doesn't re-center itself, so just driving in a straight line is a challenge. I guess it's possible to get used to it eventually, but it didn't seem any more intuitive to me than just using a controller.

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Are we talking about the wheel that came with Mario Kart Wii, or is there a new one for 8? I tried the Wii one when that came out and couldn't get the hang of it at all; it seemed way too imprecise and the wheel was still basically only the same size as a Wii remote. And unlike an actual steering wheel, it doesn't re-center itself, so just driving in a straight line is a challenge. I guess it's possible to get used to it eventually, but it didn't seem any more intuitive to me than just using a controller.

 

The wheel works the same in MKWii and MK8. I don't know about 'more intuitive than a thumb on a stick', but you've got more degrees of turning available to you than you do on a stick. If you think about how a typical race turns out, you spend most of your time drifting one direction or another anyway. Having a full 180 degrees of motion for those mid-drift adjustments is meaningful. Going absolutely straight doesn't end up being a thing that comes up very often.

 

But I'm someone who tends to dive into 'controls with a learning curve' head first. If you've got a decade of Karting under your belt, it can be a hard sell.

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8 doesn't ship with a wheel, at least not the most common version of the game. It's just a disc in a box.

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Did anyone else feel really bad when they heard that Sean was just sitting in the other room? Did he lose the coin toss or what?

 

I know that realistically he was probably working, but I like to imagine him sitting still on a couch listening to everyone in the podcast studio laughing and getting along without him.

 

He should have randomly barged in and said "I know you guys are having fun but I'm still working"

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