Jake

Idle Thumbs 177: The Good Ones

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Gang Beasts is great - while it is hilarious with two players for awhile, the combat is so simple (which is fine) that I feel it requires at least three players to keep the game interesting and surprising. Excited to see what gets added in the future, feels like the team has big plans and strong support from the players.

I played La-Mulana for a couple of hours but had to give up because it's puzzles and progression are obscure to the max. Maybe someday I try again and look some hints once in awhile because it has a great sense of mystery to its tomb raiding.

Did not have a SNES as a kid but I have strong memories of seeing DKC screenshots in some Nintendo magazine and being absolutely amazed, what kind of black magic creates graphics like that!

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If anyone looks into La-Mulana, I've played the original to completion and was at the end on the remake (though my computer crapped out before I could finish it).

 

As remarkable as the game is, it suffers from obtuse puzzles with obscure hints. I hit my fair share of points in the game where I had to look up how to overcome puzzles (or remember where to go). While things are relatively the same in the remake, it had a mix of good and bad changes to puzzles. Some of the puzzles I described as being obtuse got simplified, but then some elements of the game were changed and made the game that much more confusing.

 

All that said, I still think it's worth having a look into. There's still an element of platforming / combat to get some challenge from. I wouldn't know which version to recommend to people; the original has a presentation that sells the authenticity of the puzzles being impossible to learn to solve on your own (as many games from that era had issues with). But the remake allows the game to control way, way easier.

 

If you take notes (like with a pen) of every hint you come across or make notes on every room with a really unique feature, I think you can manage to get through the game on your own fully without looking up a guide. But it's gonna take time.

 

They're making a part 2 after all this time. I'm hoping they design the puzzles / backtracking to be easier to understand.

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Danielle: did I just hear you doing the first four notes of the George Michael's Careless Whisper sax riff? y/n, thx

 

That was what I heard, too.  Even that was enough for my face to start melting from that epic sax riff.

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I really appreciate La-Mulana's design despite any issues with puzzles (of which I have many) because the sense of progression is so great. Both character and goal progress. You're given a set starting point, but once you get a little way into the temple it really opens up in a significant manner and you actually have a variety of challenges and puzzles, a lot of which you can take on in any order you choose. For a long while La-Mulana was just a thing that I booted up once a day until I solved a thing and it always felt like a fun enjoyable chunk. The character progression is also amazing. So many things you'd just think were core to how the player character plays are upgraded and enhanced over the course of the game that you really feel the value of every item you find and puzzle you solve. It does start to get  messy when you start running out of puzzles and options as you come closer to finishing the game, and genuine frustration can set in. I'd definitely agree with Henroid's recommendation to write down and draw the hints you come across, or use screenshots. Pretty much every piece of text in the game is important.

The remake seems pretty good from what I've played of it, but I really miss the MSX-inspired original art, music and references that were in that first game. I could tell that stuff was important to the creator and that importance stuck with me through the experience of playing the original version. It felt especially interesting because the MSX was a system that I hadn't engaged with at all (outside of Metal Gear 1 and 2) and that doesn't get a lot of direct homage when retro releases are made.

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Oh yeah, DANIELLE THE OTHER KONGS ARE SO SHITTY

 

 

 

dRpM7Et.jpg

 

UGH

 

SZR3sJd.jpg

 

OOF

 

bTBrJNI.png

 

WHAT

 

Yeah, seriously! I happen to love Donkey Kong Country 3, *despite* Kiddy Kong. But just look at that model for Candy. Just look at it!

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Wait, so London sank into the sea and then came out the other side and is now on a Sunless Sea? At this point I'm probably going to buy it but I still have no idea what the setting is.

 
It was stolen by bats, actually, and whisked down into an immense underground cavern complete with Unterzee (which is the Zee you are zailing in Sunless Sea). It's now run by giant hooded figures running a very strange and eldritch bazaar where the currency is echoes and you can buy practically anything. Nobody dies anymore. Hell has established an embassy made of brass, and will quite cheerfully purchase your soul from you - you weren't using it, were you? There are strange, tentacle-faced Rubbery Men (or are they men?) who speak a language of whistles and seem very fond of amber, who form a scorned underclass. Cats speak and hoard secrets and conduct shadow wars with the bats. There are revolutionaries and nobles in a sort of exile, constables riding velocipedes, a body-hopping serial killer called Jack of Smiles (though of course, with no death, being murdered is more of an inconvenience), sorrow spiders that have a tendency to hoard human eyes for mysterious purposes, animated clay men, etc, etc. Of course, that's Fallen London. Sunless Sea presumably takes place mostly on the Unterzee and the further islands in it, which you can visit to some small degree in Fallen London, but most of that game happens in London itself.
 
Fallen London is at fallenlondon.storynexus.com. It's free and awesome, marred only by the action economy preventing you from delving as deep as you might like on any given day (Sunless Sea will avoid that, thankfully) and some grindy patches. But seriously, if the above sounds enticing (and it should, it's one of the best settings in gaming), it's well worth at least poking at. The writing is incredible, and the slow burn of secrets....so good.
 

s Sunless Sea actually related to Fallen London?  I've played Fallen London but I know nothing about Sunless Sea apart from what was discussed on the cast.

 

It's the same setting, same sensibilities, same company and writing team. Different gameplay and a different part of the setting for the most part.

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I am glad someone else was too weak to resist doing a "well, actually" lore dump. Really convenient for me.

 

The company that made Sunless Sea basically did so because they had a few projects that they thought would go gangbusters not turn out so successful, and so when they asked their players what they thought they should do next, basically the consensus was 'take Fallen London, put it in a game with good mechanics' so that's what they did. It's written to lean on the tone of Fallen London without being a sequel - it's enough that you're sailing out from a London and there's zombie guys, but you don't really need to know about how many times the Tomb-Colonists have died and how little of their bodies work properly. Sunless Sea's the stronger game - its mechanics are better (even at this ill-tuned stage), and its writing is more confident. Fallen London is brimming with ideas but I don't begrudge anyone from not wanting to wait months to be able to extract them.

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Would you call a place where you curated deli selections a place where Meats Meets Meats?

 

 

I'll see myself out.    :getmecoat

 

It's where curated cured meats meet curated uncured meats; a curious curation of cured and uncured. 

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Hmm.

 

I seem to have every video game in the Idle Thumbs curation list except for Sunless Sea (which is on my wishlist). 

 

Maybe I should get Sunless Sea... 

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Puzzle Bots aside
capsule_sm_120.jpg

 

Puzzle Bots was actually created by Erin Robinson of Lively Ivy, for whom Wadjet Eye was the publisher. (Erin did however contribute art to Blackwell Unbound.)

 

Gravity Ghost excitement!
capsule_sm_120.jpg

 

New computer game from the studio that brought you Puzzle Bots! January 25th! "The little indie Mario Galaxy that could!" says August 2013 friend of the podcast Kirk Hamilton! More on Gravity Ghost at GravityGhost.com!

 

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For weird unlicensed donkey kong games, I recommend Donkey Kong 5: The Journey of Over Time and Space.

 

QVFPUEv.png

 

It's a gbc game that uses sprites and music from various other games (mostly not donkey kong) to remake Super Mario Bros 1. I just love that the first thing you hear when you start playing is the music from pokemon pinball.

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It's maybe not the best example, but seeing video of the new version reminded me that Gauntlet has a female melee character (Thyra the Valkyrie, apparently named after the historical Thyra) and a male archer character (Questor the Elf).  The Elf is generally the fastest character while the Valkyrie has the best armor.

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re: japanese i die games, in addition to the seminal cave story by pixel, there is also the stuff by ABA games/Kenta Cho whose earlier stuff, especially, should be of interest to bullet hell shmup fans.

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/games/

rrootage, in particular, is super good

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Yah!  Sunless Sea talk!  Thanks for giving your thoughts about it Danielle.  I really wanted to hear someone discuss it because of Fallen London.  There's so much that looks interesting about FL, but the time commitment and structure of it completely turned me off of it.  So the idea of being able to explore that world with better mechanics and without the artificial time constraints of a free-to-play game sounds fun. 

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I think the characterization of Back to the Future as a white kid inventing rock and roll is a bit misleading. Marty was just playing a song he knew. In the original timeline before anybody started going back in time, "Johnny B. Goode" was still written by Chuck Berry. Then when Marty played it at the Fish Under the Sea dance, the timeline changed so that Chuck Berry plagiarized it from himself instead of writing it, creating a free lunch paradox. I can't remember the details of how the time travel rules work in Back to the Future, but I think you could make a case that either Chuck Berry still wrote it or that nobody wrote it, but either way, I don't think the movie ever implies that Marty has any claim to it.

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I think the characterization of Back to the Future as a white kid inventing rock and roll is a bit misleading. Marty was just playing a song he knew. In the original timeline before anybody started going back in time, "Johnny B. Goode" was still written by Chuck Berry. Then when Marty played it at the Fish Under the Sea dance, the timeline changed so that Chuck Berry plagiarized it from himself instead of writing it, creating a free lunch paradox. I can't remember the details of how the time travel rules work in Back to the Future, but I think you could make a case that either Chuck Berry still wrote it or that nobody wrote it, but either way, I don't think the movie ever implies that Marty has any claim to it.

 

Its definitely not implied that Marty has a claim to writing the song, but the idea behind saying that he "invented" rock and roll is that he inspired the creation of the song and subsequent genre.  Then again he was inspired by Chuck Berry, who was inspired by Marty, who was inspired by Chuck Berry, who was inspired by Marty...  Of course it all breaks down when you think about it too much.  There's a different time travel issue I have a bigger problem with but I won't go into it.

 

Also for no reason I can sort of legitimately use this

 

:greatscott:

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There's a different time travel issue I have a bigger problem with but I won't go into it.

Please do! I'm super curious.

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"If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour... you're gonna have to hold onto your butts."

DocFly McBrown Gate Goldblum

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Please do! I'm super curious.

 

Well since you asked (I'll spoiler it since Chris hasn't seen the movies)

 

Its actually from Part II but it affects all the movies.  Let's call the timeline shown in Part I and the beginning of Part II timeline A.  The nightmare 1985 from Part II is timeline B.

 

When old Biff steals the DeLorean to go back and give the almanac to his past self, he returns to the time he came from, the future of timeline A.  This needs to happen in the film for Marty and Doc to be able to go back to 1985 again.  But according to Doc, the moment young Biff got the almanac it created timeline B.  When old Biff got back into the time machine and went forward again, he should have wound up in the future timeline B and either stranded Marty and Doc in the future of timeline A or erased those versions from existence.

 

I can think of 2 possible explanations that would allow the movie to still sort of work.  One is that the events we see in the film after old Biff goes to the past are in fact the events of timeline B.  This is supported by the fact that when Marty and Doc return to 1985 from the future, they end up in the 1985 of timeline B instead of timeline A.  Of course this introduces new problems such as how Doc was able to make the time machine in the first place if he's in an insane asylum or why they're aware that there's anything wrong with the timeline.

 

The other is the weird delay in the effects of time travel that the movie shows, such as when Marty's siblings slowly fade from his picture in the first film or the tombstone changing in the third one.  Its possible that in this universe, the changes hadn't "caught up" yet so old Biff went back to the future he left from.  Then again other stuff changes almost instantly such as went Marty stops fading from existence as George and Lorraine kiss.

 

Confused yet?  If you're not, then think about this: what future would Marty and Doc have gone to if they went back in time before 1955, then went back forward again.  Would they have gone to the future of timeline A or timeline B?

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Back to the Future 1 implies so much weird looping timeline stuff that they just pave over in BTTF 2. I mean... it seems implied if you watch BTTF 1 separate from the others in the trilogy, that the reason Doc and Marty are friends is because Marty met Doc in the 50s, that their friendship exists as an inevitable self perpetuating loop in time. There is probably some other more convoluted explanation you can come up with, but it feels to me like they are friends just because they always were. The feeling of the Chuck Berry loop is the same to me -- Marty knows the song because it exists in his time but his going back in time ends up creating the structure that leads to him knowing it as an adult.

Of course the movie ALSO has people fading out of photographs and stuff, which implies changing events, so who knows. The rules Doc lays down on the chalkboard in the second movie don't really track with a lot of good, subtle stuff they imply and do in the first film, though. (Or rather, if you backport those chalkboard "multi dimension" rules to BTTF 1 I think it makes it a significantly worse film than when you treat it as its own isolated story that doesn't really try to codify how any of it works.)

Back to the Future (1) is one of those movies that as a kid I liked in part because it was part of this epic three part story, but at this point I much prefer to look at it as it was originally presented -- as a single film that had no plans for sequels or continuity or a universe or mythos or reason, and was concerned with being a thrilling and interesting story in and of itself, not how it slotted into a rule system.

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