Chris

Idle Thumbs 166: Cyberpunk Cop-Killer

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I revisit that scene in The Hurt Locker in my mind a lot. It's a great scene. Adults just need focus, for some reason and kids love to do everything. 

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Chris talked about how Wings of St. Nazaire is actually like those space sims from back in the day but I have to correct him - Wings of St. Nazaire is indeed like Wing Commander, which used sprites rendered at various angles to represent all the ships, but it's very different from X-Wing and TIE Fighter, which, even back then, were full 3d games using polygonal ships rather than sprites. This, incidentally, is why I was a much bigger fan of the Star Wars games than the Chris Roberts games - everything was much smoother, there was a far better sense of scale and of movement, and the capital ships particularly worked far better. Of course, Wing Commander could be far more detailed with its prerendered bitmaps than X-Wing could (X-Wing had to rely on just plain Gouraud shading, which meant the ships were the right shape but entirely untextured) so Wing Commander's screenshots were much prettier, but X-Wing played much better with its full 3d fidelity.

Which, incidentally, is why I'm not a massive Wings of St. Nazaire fan. I mean, yes, it's gorgeous, and it does work better than Wing Commander worked (in large part because I think it's using 3d models for its capital ships, or at least it was when I tried it like a year ago) but honestly we're at the point in video games where you can make something like Enemy Starfighter in Unity and use actual 3d models and get all the benefits that come from that, and we've been there since, you know, X-Wing came out in 1993.

 

Agreed. I played for 20 minutes or so last night. Aside from not figuring out which controller button (I used a controller please I'm sorry I used a joystick as a kid don't hurt me) fired missiles, I enjoyed it. However, the aesthetic is 100% Wing Commander and long term I prefer the 3D of XWing/TIE Fighter much more.

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I have an American midwestern accent when I speak English.  I've been told I have an American accent when I speak Chinese, but I have no idea what that means or sounds like.

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I get told the same thing with my Spanish.

I'm Mexican and from Cincinnati and I have somewhat a Midwestern/Southern accent and way of speakin. And apparently it weirds people out at times.

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I noticed.

OF COURSE Jake noticed. Jake notices everything. Anytime anyone on the podcast says anything that even remotely suggests wordplay, you can almost hear the klaxon going off in Jake's head: TARGET ENEMY WEAK POINT FOR MASSIVE HUMOR!

Jake's silliness is always brilliant but I also love the moments when someone says something that is accidentally hilarious and Jake doesn't have the chance to joke about it but I know he's for sure silently enjoying it there with us, the readers.

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I like Danielle being on the podcast so that there's another voice I can identify.

I can recognize Chris. And I can identify that there are different people talking, but I cannot for the life of me tell which other host it is. I'll hear someone who isn't Chris and think, "Is that Jake? Or Sean? Or Nick? Or someone else?" It's like the "Chris and Friends Show". 

And now its the "Chris and Danielle and Friends Show".

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Two things:

 

1) I think this is the first time someone on the podcast has made the "that's the name of the episode" joke and then had it actually be the episode title.

 

2) Lupin being a werewolf is the worst fucking plot twist. His name is Lupin.

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I like Danielle being on the podcast so that there's another voice I can identify.

I can recognize Chris. And I can identify that there are different people talking, but I cannot for the life of me tell which other host it is. I'll hear someone who isn't Chris and think, "Is that Jake? Or Sean? Or Nick? Or someone else?" It's like the "Chris and Friends Show". 

 

I can tell Sean apart fairly easily, because he talks a lot faster than either Nick or Jake, but I definitely confuse Nick and Jake.

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What's weird is that I often confuse Sean and Jake, and also confuse Nick and Steve.

But when I was first listening, because I had trouble separating Sean and Jake my brain amalgamated their personalities into one Dota playing Nintendo fan on the podcast rather than conceptualising them as two people.

It was an odd time.

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Two things:

 

1) I think this is the first time someone on the podcast has made the "that's the name of the episode" joke and then had it actually be the episode title.

 

2) Lupin being a werewolf is the worst fucking plot twist. His name is Lupin.

 

 

1) I thought that had happened a few times now, but all really recently...

 

2) Plus his first name is Remus!

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I like Danielle being on the podcast so that there's another voice I can identify.

I can recognize Chris. And I can identify that there are different people talking, but I cannot for the life of me tell which other host it is. I'll hear someone who isn't Chris and think, "Is that Jake? Or Sean? Or Nick? Or someone else?" It's like the "Chris and Friends Show".

And now its the "Chris and Danielle and Friends Show".

If only they each had varying accents.

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I have no problems telling the various hosts apart on the Thumbs.  I've had plenty of other podcasts where I have that happen, but the Thumbs all seem unique enough to me that I know who's talking. 

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For me I think it helps if I have seen and remember what the talkers look like so they are not just ethereal voice ghosts in my head - anyway, Danielle brings a refreshing new flavor to the thumbs tone pool.

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I very occasionally get the sound of the voices confused, but even then I usually know who's talking because of how they talk.  They all have different ways of expressing themselves along with some tendencies and personal idiosyncrasies.  I feel like even if you replaced the actual voices with one neutral voice, I'd still be able to tell who was who just by what was said.

 

 

1) I think this is the first time someone on the podcast has made the "that's the name of the episode" joke and then had it actually be the episode title.

 

If you mean someone saying it as a joke but then it actually happened, then this might be the first, but there have definitely been

.

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Lupin being a werewolf is the worst fucking plot twist. His name is Lupin.

Plus his first name is Remus!

 

When I read the books, I thought it was an open secret or something and was really confused when it was later treated as one of the major revelations.

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The inevitable Harry Potter expanded universe series will feature a character named Dracula Vampiro. The twist will be that he is a vampire.

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I feel like having Danielle as a reliable contributor of new games to talk about has relaxed the close pruning of off topic conversation. Maybe it was just my perception, but for a while it felt like any topic that was straying too far got shepherded. I think the podcast is best as a stream of consciousness, and it's flowed so well this month.

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I feel like having Danielle as a reliable contributor of new games to talk about has relaxed the close pruning of off topic conversation. Maybe it was just my perception, but for a while it felt like any topic that was straying too far got shepherded. I think the podcast is best as a stream of consciousness, and it's flowed so well this month.

 

Danielle being in a position to play and talk about new games that the other Thumbs probably wouldn't touch is an exciting prospect to me.

 

 

I hope Danielle plays the new Pokémon in November

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I think there is no chance that Danielle will play the new Pokemon in November given that Polygon employs Griffin McElroy. 

 

 

 

 

Unless the new Pokemon includes a platforming segment.

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Knowing that Chris hasn't seen or read Harry Potter makes me want to recommend Wizard People, Dear Reader. It's this alternate audio track for the first Harry Potter movie where Brad Neely (the guy who did a bunch of internet cartoons like that Washington thing) narrates everything like a shitty audiobook. It's GOLD but every single person I know has grown up with Harry Potter so it's probably an entirely different experience for someone who's totally clueless about the books or whatever. It's all on youtube, or there's a download with better audio quality if you want to poke around for it. 

 

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Pokemon needs a clever animal pun name for Danielle to play it.

 

Like two out of three Pokémon have clever animal puns for names.

 

Knowing that Chris hasn't seen or read Harry Potter makes me want to recommend Wizard People, Dear Reader. It's this alternate audio track for the first Harry Potter movie where Brad Neely (the guy who did a bunch of internet cartoons like that Washington thing) narrates everything like a shitty audiobook. It's GOLD but every single person I know has grown up with Harry Potter so it's probably an entirely different experience for someone who's totally clueless about the books or whatever. It's all on youtube, or there's a download with better audio quality if you want to poke around for it. 

 

Oh fuck yes, I love WPDR. It's worth noting that Neely himself knows absolutely nothing about Harry Potter.

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