Chris

Idle Thumbs 168: I Like the Hair

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That sentiment has basically turned me off all co-op games, I have friends who play games, but there are just too many variables to fall in place e.g. Friend and I both purchased Co-op Game during summer sale, both installed it this week, and both have 10:15 - 11:30 free tuesday night to play it. Just doesn't happen.

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I mean this is actually the exact same situation I'm in. Having a bunch of theoretical people who would be willing to play the game doesn't really change the amount of time I have or the ways that I am drawn to spending that time. It's a bummer.

 

I think my friends, who prioritize video game playing higher than I do in their lives, would be willing to keep an alternate character who they switch to when playing with me to keep the levels equalized, but they'll still probably be playing through the level for a second / third / nth time. When I played one of the later levels in the beta with my friend he had already played that level, lessening the cool experience of fighting a new enemy type for the first time.

 

It is indeed a bummer, but then I remember that the things I'm doing that are not playing co-op video games with my friends online are ALSO fun, so it's not so bad. 

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The sting of the co-op dilemma is hard considering how rarely I even get time to play new games instead of just returning to an old favourite like TF2 or Spelunky for a quickie, let alone trying to co-ordinate like that. I feel like the easiest approach is to attempt it with my girlfriend when we move in together, but even then it'll be a logistical juggling act of making us both in the mood for the kind of game we can co-op.

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The sting of the co-op dilemma is hard considering how rarely I even get time to play new games instead of just returning to an old favourite like TF2 or Spelunky for a quickie, let alone trying to co-ordinate like that. I feel like the easiest approach is to attempt it with my girlfriend when we move in together, but even then it'll be a logistical juggling act of making us both in the mood for the kind of game we can co-op.

 

I feel really spoiled about co-op.  For years I lived with the same group of guys, we were all gamers, so there was almost always someone around willing to game anytime you were in the mood.  And then I moved straight in with my wife and her daughter, both of whom are gamers.  I really can't imagine getting in any co-op if I didn't have people I lived with who gamed.  As everyone above has stated, it's a pain in the ass most of the time. 

 

Even with my old buddies, we are more likely to play a game together if we visit each other's houses than we are to ever plan something online.  That's one of the reasons I've loved the renaissance of couch co-op games that are popping up on Steam over the last few years. 

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Since halo seems to hold an almost farcry 2-eqse reverence among you guys, you should check out goatrope's commented halo 1 speedrun. I haven't played halo since it came out, but it really is a tribute to that games design that it still looks so fluid today, and the commentary added a really fascinating layer.

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Fuck. Teachers who don't know how to pronounce "Sean" are the fucking worst. I used to think it was me for having a bad name, but then I realized as a person I am supposed to know how to pronounce many "foreign" names that to do not sound like they are spelled, yet teachers or people in service jobs who come across many people all day and yet still don't know how to pronounce a common name drives me up the fucking wall.

 

Don't even start by saying it's spelled wrong. God damn.

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Don't even start by saying it's spelled wrong. God damn.

 

Right on; the Irish language doesn't owe a thing to the alphabet of their former conquerors!

 

Though, uh, I can't even begin to spell in Irish.

 

Are there any good Irish language video games?

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And he's totally right, Joruus C'baoth truly is an epic space sorcerer on that cover.

I know, I was surprised to go look that up again and remember that its some shitty other sorcerer guy and not Thrawn. What garbage.

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Right on; the Irish language doesn't owe a thing to the alphabet of their former conquerors!

 

Though, uh, I can't even begin to spell in Irish.

 

Are there any good Irish language video games?

 

is an irish made game that is in English and in Irish.

I don't actually know if it's good, I own it but only played of it and it had more intorductory text based story than I was in the mood for so I stopped and have yet to get back to it.

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I know, I was surprised to go look that up again and remember that its some shitty other sorcerer guy and not Thrawn. What garbage.

 

Shitty other sorcerer clone guy.

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Shitty other sorcerer clone guy.

Man, I completely forgot that Luke's clone is named Luuke in that book.

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Also yes, the irish alphabet almost seems engineered to screw with English speakers at times.

 

How do you pronounce 'bh'? Just like 'v'

Though, how do you pronounce 'Bhuel'? That's 'well'.

"Dun Laoghaire" is "done leery".

 

It endlessly confuses people sometimes, so naturally I like to find examples of it.

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also, i'm sure you got a bunch of emails and twitters about it, but for anybody else Divinity is tactical and turn based, action free. It's pretty hard, even on normal difficulty. The devs said Ultima 7 was a major inspiration for them, and I think it carries through quite well. 

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also, i'm sure you got a bunch of emails and twitters about it, but for anybody else Divinity is tactical and turn based, action free. It's pretty hard, even on normal difficulty. The devs said Ultima 7 was a major inspiration for them, and I think it carries through quite well. 

 

Yeah i thought it was odd, but it is possible they just have no context for the genre so Diablo is the first thing that comes to mind. I hope they all play Divinity for next week, would love to hear their reactions!

 

All of the reverent halo talk really made me excited for the new collection coming out, I has so much Halo 2 multiplayer fun back in the day.

I love the idea of co-op and multiplayer, in my formative years I was in a Day of Defeat clan and it was the best time I ever had gaming. For some reason i just have a hard time building up a group of people online to play with these days. I am always envious of Sean of Brad from GB when they talk about their DOTA crew!

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I think my friends, who prioritize video game playing higher than I do in their lives, would be willing to keep an alternate character who they switch to when playing with me to keep the levels equalized, but they'll still probably be playing through the level for a second / third / nth time. When I played one of the later levels in the beta with my friend he had already played that level, lessening the cool experience of fighting a new enemy type for the first time.

 

It is indeed a bummer, but then I remember that the things I'm doing that are not playing co-op video games with my friends online are ALSO fun, so it's not so bad. 

 

Trying to equalize the skill (or experience) gap in any multiplayer or co-op situation is kind of a bummer, even if you had a totally cool friend you still feel like dead weight and just enjoy the experience way less than you normally would be.

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Martin Sheen's full, legal name is Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez. Here's a quote from him about why he changed it:

 

"It's difficult enough trying to get started as an actor, and my name kept throwing people – they couldn't pronounce it. I thought, 'I've got enough problems, I can't be bogged down with this name.'"

 

That last line in particular hit me combined w/ Sean mentioning his frustration with having his name misread activated some weird feelings in me. My name- Erandi- is an indigenous one. Being the type of kid who filled up with anxiety when any attention was drawn to him, I often told people it was pronounced as E-Randy just to give them something easy and move on. It wasn't until a few years ago that I started introducing myself with the given pronunciation b/c I wanted to face that anxiety and gave thought to the politics of names/pronunciations. Also, E-Randy is a terrible noise that only belongs in a bad cyberpunk story.

 

As a Latino, that Martin Sheen stuff also brings up really complicated feelings regarding white/white-presenting Hispanics WHICH I WON'T GET INTO HERE.

 


And he's totally right, Joruus C'baoth truly is an epic space sorcerer on that cover.

 

Hmm...

 

Man, I completely forgot that Luke's clone is named Luuke in that book.

 

I will be very disappointed if I find out this book wasn't titled "His Jedi Familiar."

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Adding myself into the "people who co-op frustrates" group. I'm glad no one I know plays WoW anymore. When it was big in the circle of people I grew up playing video games with, I was always wrangled into playing it, but when I missed a day that they spent grinding out levels it was a bummer. Then I missed another day and then another and another until they maxed out and I was barely 1/3 of the way there. I'd just give up and go back to Counter-Strike or Quake where I had access to everything without having to go full-on "my life for the Horde." The worst is it would come in and out of favor, so the cycle would renew each time with my hopeful self saying "This time it's going to be different."

 

I can't even imagine voluntarily signing up to play a game like that again, and I loved Halo 1-3. In my honest opinion they even surpass the Goldeneye days when it comes to console, split-screen FPS (not to mention online).

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As pitiful as it sounds, I want virtual friends to play with. My Mass Effect and Dragon Age parties are the closest they've come. Listening to their banter was more interesting than typical online co-op discussions I've had and it's far more convenient to set up.

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As pitiful as it sounds, I want virtual friends to play with. My Mass Effect and Dragon Age parties are the closest they've come. Listening to their banter was more interesting than typical online co-op discussions I've had and it's far more convenient to set up.

 

If you really want to form tight friendships online with people and you have any interest at all in competitive games, I think that's where most of my strongest friendships (actually, all of them) have come from.

 

I don't have the kind of time now to get together regularly with the same group of people to practice E S P O R T S, but finding a team like that really builds relationships. After that game dies down, everyone moves on to other games, and you can usually find someone on your Steam Friends list that has X game to play. Similarly, a small "clan" of people owning a server and slowly getting to know them and then joining their "clan" was always a blast for having people to play with in a much less scheduled, lower-pressure way. Sometimes you still had to go through a try-out though, which can be fun in a way.

 

It's almost a shame that with the rise of cloud infrastructure personally owned game servers are going the way of the dinosaur. But I suppose guilds in MMO's are very similar.

 

The unfortunate aspect of human relationships is that developing them takes a time commitment no matter how you look at it. Though the Idle Thumbs forums seems like probably the best place on the Internet to find fun people to play with at random.

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Ok, So this is really regarding last week's episode, but it's podcast-related.

 

I found Chris' Farting Skeleton dream evocative, but I'm not an animator, so I instead imagined it as a children's book, in which Chris learns a valuable lesson.  Here is a page from said "book..."

 

 

post-9222-0-63693300-1406308831_thumb.png

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Ok, So this is really regarding last week's episode, but it's podcast-related.

 

I found Chris' Farting Skeleton dream evocative, but I'm not an animator, so I instead imagined it as a children's book, in which Chris learns a valuable lesson.  Here is a page from said "book..."

 

Jesus Christ, that's awesome.

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Curious what the success rate of "you've gotta cut that from the pocast" requests is...

 

Pretty much zero percent.

 

UNLESS it's followed up with "Seriously, you have to cut that because we'll get sued," or "Seriously you have to cut that because it will severely damage an important relationship in my life."

 

But that's just about it.

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