Idle Thumbs 172: http://malaise.ennui/

[Donnie]

I'm just now listening but I fucking loved Chris', "Awww Kojima, come on!" when hearing about PT, and then Nick and Jake both start into the shit that annoyed me about it. I had the same reaction when I was seeing through the presentation layer.

 

Chris' reaction to hearing about the "fading 'S'" is so spot on. Such a 'cheeky-old-Hideo' thing. So much cringe.

[dium]

Danielle and I have the same birthday!

 

We also have the same name!

Almost. Hers is more French.

 

We are basically the same person.

 

Also: the proximity of my birthday to Valentines day has had no discernible effect on either of those days for me, except that it's easier for other people to remember when I was born.

[tegan]

Jake has the same birthday as my ex. Halloween is my favourite holiday, but I hate having that mental association, so maybe thinking of it as Jake's birthday instead of hers will do me good.

 

Thanks Jake!

[Jake]

happy to help.......

[Merus]

Congrats Jake

[Henroid]

Congrats Jake

Congrats Nick.

 

Edit - That didn't go as planned at all!

[BusbyBerkeley]

Oh man, I was kind of surprised/bummed that you all didn't flip out about how great Zombies Ate My Neighbors is. I used to play that game all the time with my neighbor who had it. I actually happened upon it at a local game shop last year and finally got my own copy. Heck, I went as one of the characters for Halloween last year!

 

The classic b-horror stuff in there is just great and I don't think there's another game I've played that was as steeped in that and had a rad charm about it as that one. The coop is still loads of fun. Play it if you haven't!

[malkav11]

Shattered Memories does indeed do a few interesting things but squanders them utterly. It's sophomorically written, not scary at all, badly coded, falls victim to the usual Wii-game curse of random pointless waggle gimmicks...easily the worst game with the name Silent Hill on the package to date. If you want a Silent Hill game not made by Team Silent that's got some actual thought put into it, does some interesting and novel things with the franchise, has a modicum of decent writing, and still isn't actually all that good, Downpour's your game. I do hope that Silent Hills turns out well, especially if it then comes to PC where I will actually be able to play it, but I'd guess that if it ends up being successful as a horror game it won't be because it captures what made the original Team Silent games so good. I think that ship sailed. (Unless the original team is back along with Kojima and del Toro? I hadn't heard that, but if it were the case....maybe?)

[karobit]

A new entry in Things I Am Inexplicably Pleased By: Chris using the term "hooch."

[Turkey]

I thought the bro-fetus was pretty disturbing considering it's supposed to be the psyche of the nutbag conservative dad who just killed his whole family. I don't think the game was exactly condoning what the fetus was saying.

[SecretAsianMan]

If anyone is going to PAX or will be in the area that weekend, this is the event that was referred to at the end of the episode.  It sounds amazing and I'm so bummed I won't be there.

 

http://blog.camposanto.com/post/95382964369/devsnbevs

[feelthedarkness]

Zombies Ate My Neighbors co-op is also great fun because you have one pool of lives, so you can yell at your friends for stinking! (or being bad at the video game)

[dium]

I don't think the game was exactly condoning what the fetus was saying.

 

Nor did anyone on the podcast, I don't think.

[McDoom]

I hate to recycle a post I made elsewhere on the same forum but I am interested if, at all, any of the Thumbs have anything to bounce off of this. The tl;dr being scary games as a genre / theme and their value or success of execution.

 

 

 

I do want to note with a lot of emphasis again that I don't question or put down anyone that are into being scared and such. That mechanism is just broken for me, or something.

Your post about Don't Starve interested me. (Not sure I quoted it correctly.) It's a game that unnerves me without using any scripted moments, as far as I know. I don't know if I would call it a "scary" game, but it still preys upon my anxieties. I think that mostly has to with being thrown into a world and having to solve problems before running into a fail state (death). Meanwhile the sanity meter is telling you what a poor job you're doing. Similarly, I think Amnesia was scary, not so much because the world was gross, but that I didn't know what problems I was going to run into and you were not told how to solve them. I also think Dark Souls can be an uncomfortable game for that reason. Anyway, I think the particular brand of fear these games give to me is more specific to games and their underlying mechanics than a game with scripted jump scares, which is more derived from movies. In other words, games can give you a fear of failure, but it's really hard to fail a movie.

[RubixsQube]

This is so dumb. I made Jake's dream a reality.

 

(PT Ending Spoilers, I guess, if you're worried about that sort of thing.)

 

 

(you can scan to around 1:30 to get to the goods) 

[Stuart]

 

This is so dumb. I made Jake's dream a reality.

 

(PT Ending Spoilers, I guess, if you're worried about that sort of thing.)

 

 

(you can scan to around 1:30 to get to the goods) 

 

Fucking perfect. 

 

 

[Badfinger]

I'm a person that does not like to be scared, and so I just completely avoid it. I understand the tricks, and I'm just not interested in steering my emotions past them. I don't like roller coasters, either. Haunted houses in person are generally no big deal.

 

 

Jake, as evidenced in the Ferguson thread, I feel exactly the same way.

[Henroid]

Your post about Don't Starve interested me. (Not sure I quoted it correctly.) It's a game that unnerves me without using any scripted moments, as far as I know. I don't know if I would call it a "scary" game, but it still preys upon my anxieties. I think that mostly has to with being thrown into a world and having to solve problems before running into a fail state (death). Meanwhile the sanity meter is telling you what a poor job you're doing. Similarly, I think Amnesia was scary, not so much because the world was gross, but that I didn't know what problems I was going to run into and you were not told how to solve them. I also think Dark Souls can be an uncomfortable game for that reason. Anyway, I think the particular brand of fear these games give to me is more specific to games and their underlying mechanics than a game with scripted jump scares, which is more derived from movies. In other words, games can give you a fear of failure, but it's really hard to fail a movie.

Yeah, Don't Starve is really strong at its tension building. But I mostly brought it up to talk about a presentation layer of fear. Not scary to the player, but perhaps to the character as they increasingly lose it.

 

In PT there's not as much separation of player and character in the game. As I wrote, its presentation layer is very predictable to me. Danielle actually responded over in the PT thread about the suspension of disbelief of all this, it's a good read.

[Korax]

Illfonic made the commercial version of the freeware arena shooter Nexuiz that released in 2012, and was then quickly forgotten about. To be fair, I don't think it was necessarily bad, just so incredibly typical and also-ran that people didn't see a reason to play it.

[Yalk]

I have the same birthday as Danielle....I've never actually met (not that we've met) another Feb 13th birthday before....

 

EDIT

 

Danielle and I have the same birthday!

 

We also have the same name!

Almost. Hers is more French.

 

We are basically the same person.

 

Also: the proximity of my birthday to Valentines day has had no discernible effect on either of those days for me, except that it's easier for other people to remember when I was born.

 

 

Well, my name is not Danielle....but we should make a club...

 

 

 

 

The only effect it has ever had on me is that Valentine's day has always tended to be less emphasized than my birthday....so I've always had the luxury of not having to worry about it as a gift giving holiday...a built in "get out of free jail card" for not getting a Valentines day present, if you will...

[Dewar]

I thought the bro-fetus was pretty disturbing considering it's supposed to be the psyche of the nutbag conservative dad who just killed his whole family. I don't think the game was exactly condoning what the fetus was saying.

 

Hmm, I didn't gather that, nor do I really understand what was in the bag. Maybe that's why I don't like these games very much, I think a lot of the symbolism goes over my head.

[MixedUpzombies]

If someone has a better idea of what to do with majesco.cool let me know? Also Breckon was on fire this episode. 

[anthonyRichard]

If someone has a better idea of what to do with majesco.cool let me know? Also Breckon was on fire this episode. 

I think Jake joked in the episode that it should link to http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/cool

[maxwellyoung]

Pleased to hear Remo say that Lovely Planet is an interesting and not a totally shallow game. I find the art and music really appealing from the trailer.

[BobbyBesar]

Re: the P.T. effectiveness, I'm a little surprised that nobody mentioned Fatal Frame, which used a camera conceit to enforce a similar effect of forcing the user to look directly at the horror elements.

 

 

Here's a link to the image with that Yoshi bit:

http://mynintendonews.com/2014/08/06/mind-blown-yoshis-real-name-is-t-yoshisaur-munchakoopas/

 

It's seems clear from the phrasing "properly known as" that T. Yoshisaurus Munchakoopas is not a given name, but the proper taxonomic name. 

Usually in binomial / trinomial naming, the genus is abbreviated to a single initial.So,

Genus: T, which I'm going to assume is "Tyrannosaur", although that's not necessarily the case (there are multiple dinosaur Genera that start with T)

Species: Yoshisaur

Sub-species: Munchakoopas. Possibly there are other subspecies, either than specialize in eating Goombas (Munchagoombas, obviously), or those fruits you can eat in Mario World. Also could be determined by coloration.

 

It's also possible that T refers to Family (possibly Tyrannosauridae), in which case the Genus is Yoshisaurus, and species is Munchakoopas. That matches more closely with typical terminology (-saurus seems to be typical of genus names).

 

In this case, I'd assume that "Yoshi" is probably the common name for the species in the Mushroom Kingdom (e.g. "Dog" for Canis familiaris).

 

The individual's name could also be Yoshi, although that's kind of like naming your dog "Dog". Given that Yoshi's are largely treated as interchangeable, I'm going to assume they don't have given names, they're more like draft / livestock animals.