Jake

Idle Thumbs 181: Rumors & Hearsay

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I knew when I saw that Rektreational match where Nick Breckon was trapped by his own team's serpent wards that this would have some larger psychological ramifications, but I never would have guessed how deep it would go. :-)

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Man, that box art brings up a weird line of thought. All the people in the intro movie were basically just huge cereal pieces with a head, arms, and legs, but Chex Man appears to be just a normal guy wearing Chex-shaped armor. I wonder if there was any thought put into that.

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blueberrynomnoms.nom

I'm surprised that "Necronom" rarely get's a mention in fan circles, given the Giger inspiration.

Blueberry Necronomnoms from Gigerbox.com

 

Chex Quest looks goofily menacing because of how much the Doom shines through - Hey Cacodemon, nobody is fooled by your cartoon disguise!

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The tweet aspect of 80 Days is actually really appealing to me.  I loved it in Sword & Sworcery.   I don't know if that's because of my affections for Robert Ashley extending to anything he's involved in, or that just no one follows me on twitter, so my tweets are 100% for me and not for anyone reading.

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Blueberry Necronomnoms from Gigerbox.com

 

Nutritious snacks with a psychosexual subtext. Use code thumbs..

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Blueberry Necronomnoms from Gigerbox.com

 

I just spent actual seconds searching for the "star" favourite button before remembering this was not Twitter.

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Danielle describing The Evil Within as "batshit" made me want to catalogue the meanings we assign to different types of shit in English.

 

Batshit: (adv.) ridiculously "Batshit insane" (adj.) unbelievable, in a ridiculous or entertaining way "This game is batshit."

Dogshit: (n.) something of very poor quality "This game is dogshit."

Bullshit: (n.) lies, often completely disassociated from the truth. "This essay was bullshit" (n.) something that's unfair "This level is bullshit" (adj.) unfair "I hate this bullshit level"

Horseshit: (n.) lies, often completely disassociated from the truth. "This essay was horseshit" (n.) something that's unfair "This level is horseshit" (n.) something of very poor quality "This game is horseshit."

 

Anybody got any others?

I think "bullshit" often carries a connotation of intentional deception, especially when used as a verb ("don't bullshit me"), while "horseshit" less frequently suggests that.

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Re: Sean's points about how working at Pixar must be soul-destroying because the good things never get the credit they deserve:

 

Anyone who's spent a decent amount of time working in animation will tell you how common it is to have the feeling that something you love – something that is truly great and exceeds expectations and sets a new high water mark – gets shit on by the company or ruined at some point in the production process or ends up underappreciated by audiences. It's the way of the animation industry. Usually you're working on some new piece of garbage by the time that thing comes out. You've moved on, and reminisce with sighs of longing.

 

It's not all Nerf battles and ice-cream buffets.

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The Cars movies have actually traditionally done pretty poorly compared to other Pixar films financially. It's the merchandising that made them so well-known. Monsters University, comparatively, did incredibly well.

 

From Wikipedia's top grossing animated films list; green boxes are films still playing in theaters as of October 17th, yellow boxes are emphasis on my part.

 

 

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I know a couple of people that work at Pixar, and it sounds about as awful a work environment as working at EA or Activision or something.

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I know a couple of people that work at Pixar, and it sounds about as awful a work environment as working at EA or Activision or something.

Man, that's depressing!  I work in a small studio doing mostly motion graphics (and a little character animation) and sometimes consider applying to bigger studios... but I always feel like if I did, I'd just become sort of a cog in a machine. 

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Considering Pixar's currently embroiled in a big wave fixing scandal where they colluded with other studios to keep down employee wages, I wouldn't be inclined to call them an employee focused company. They work off the pedigree. People want the status of working on the biggest animated movies, and they can accept a lot to do it.

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Really, really surprised (and disappointed) to see LEGO MOVIE and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON so low on that list. And yeah, that CARS comes in so low is also surprising, as is MONSTERS UNIVERSITY's success, considering how quietly it seemed to come and go. I wonder how much of this you can chalk up to the inflated ticket price of 3D movies?

 

Meanwhile, IRON GIANT.

 

Only 31 million dollars worldwide? Ugh, now THAT's disappointing.

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- On Alient:Isolation: Creative Director at Fictional Games Thomas Grip really captured my thoughts on Alien with his blogpost http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2014/10/thoughts-on-alien-isolation-and-horror.html

 

- Sean: Since you like Wolf in White Van, you should check out these books: 10:04All the Birds, SingingStation Eleven, & Black Moon

 

- Evil Within: I'm on and off with this game. I really disliked the parts where it's fighting placed enemies in a place or village--what's with Mikami's obsession with villages and villagers turning into Cronenbergian monstrosities? Also, there are a couple places in the game where you hunkering down and fighting-off hordes of games, ugh; luckily, those situations is few and far in the game and they don't last long. Another aspect I disliked are the upgrades: you don't get enough upgrade goo in the game. This lack of upgrade goo makes it hard to turn the character into your own unique thing and makes progressing through the game harder than it needs to be.

 

The game really shines when it's elliptical in its storytelling; there's a Lynchian quality to the storytelling and visuals too. It keeps you on your toes, and it's always visually pleasing and a blast to navigate these bizarre, surreal landscapes. I also liked the stealth and boss parts: those moments in the game really captured the survival horror atmosphere and dread that made RE & RE 4 great games. 

All and all, I think, I'm more on and off; I'm still parsing my thoughts on the game. So, I'm sorry for this rambling mess.

 

-I hate the word hipster(s).

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Man I miss hearing Nick on this podcast. When he's jazzed up about something (for better or worse) the vibe he brings is amazing.

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Man I miss hearing Nick on this podcast. When he's jazzed up about something (for better or worse) the vibe he brings is amazing.

 

I wholeheartedly agree, there's a different energy when Nick's on and talking.  Not that the other casts aren't great, but it's a refreshing change when he's on.

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I'm further into Evil Within and there are sections and chapters in the game that can be seen in a Silent Hill 2 or 3 game mixed with RE 4 action chapters; it's just a weird mixture of two vastly different types of survival horror game. I'm really like it.

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Holy crap, so the coda to that 'Noid story is that the mascot disappeared for many years, until Dominoes brought him back for a brief, one-week promotion to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his creation.  The promotion: a Facebook game called "The Noid's Super Pizza Shootout."  Not.  Fucking.  Kidding.  22 years after the Noid was abandoned because a paranoid, schizophrenic man took Dominoes pizza employees hostage in a store, someone in marketing decided to release a Facebook game about shooting shit in a pizza place to stop the 'Noid.  You can see a video promoting it here

 

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