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Idle Thumbs 183: The Anonymouses

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Idle Thumbs 183:

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The Anonymouses

As you get older you begin to wonder if the culture has changed, or you have changed. Are you in a place now where you're just unreachable by marketing, not by force but because you are drifting out of sync with the cultural consciousness? Last time you stuck your head up and really looked around they only had level one monsters, but now they've got these big lumbering messes running around eating everything. What has the world come to?

Things Discussed: Evolve, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, 80 Days, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Grim Fandango Remastered, Batman, Birdman, Star Wars Episode VII, Ten Second Ninja, Comic Book Cody

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A lot of aliens were defeated this week, but at what cost? Danielle finally reaches the end of Alien: Isolation, having given the game a complete day of her life. In Beyond Earth, Jake, Chris, and Nick have shot some giant worms and roving green animals, but aren't sure what that means, or why they're there, or who they are, or where the UI is. Sean has announced his departure from Idle Thumbs for a lucrative career in robbing banks, and pontificating on the works of Don Bluth.

Things Discussed: Payday 2, Due Process, Civilization: Beyond Earth, The Sims 3, Alien: Isolation, The Last Door, Return of the Obra Dinn, All Dogs Go To Heaven

 

It's embarrassing how long it took me reading this to notice it's the same as last week.

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It's embarrassing how long it took me reading this to notice it's the same as last week.

shh what are you talking about

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Oh that's why there was no Evolve in the list. I was really confused. AH!

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It wouldn't surprise me at all if the original art style weren't in Binding of Isaac Rebirth. Nicalis released two versions of Cave Story for 3DS. One is eshop-only and has the original graphics with optional stereoscopic parallax stuff. The other, the first release they did, is cartridge-only and forces you to either play with new 3D models in underwhelming poly environments or with the original sprites... in those same poly environments.

 

gamcavestory3d2d530.jpg

 

 

Nicalis is weird.

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Oh man, where is that is that Batman comparison footage? I need to see that. I've actually been humming and hawing over getting that boxed set for myself. It's such a rad thing to exist, but it's like three hundred dollars.

 

Sean actually everyone: you should check out the bizarre commentary/retrospective DVD that Adam West made of himself talking about Batman '66 for three hours. It's bonkers. He spends the entire first segment in his own completely undecorated cellar with zero explanation.

 

K2DvGvZ.jpg

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Haha, loved the Batman eye makeup discussion. I like how in the movie Kick-Ass the Big Daddy and Red Mist characters still have their eye makeup when their masks are off. They even show Nicolas Cage putting on the makeup while he's suiting up. You can see it

around 0:54.

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Android users beware, there is an app called "Around the world in 80 days" which is a match 3 tile game. It is NOT "80 Days".

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Oh man, where is that is that Batman comparison footage? I need to see that. I've actually been humming and hawing over getting that boxed set for myself. It's such a rad thing to exist, but it's like three hundred dollars.

 

Sean actually everyone: you should check out the bizarre commentary/retrospective DVD that Adam West made of himself talking about Batman '66 for three hours. It's bonkers. He spends the entire first segment in his own completely undecorated cellar with zero explanation.

 

K2DvGvZ.jpg

I'm so happy that someone else know about this; the DVD is something that should be seen by all human beings, it's that great.

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Regarding Isaac Rebirth, I played a bunch of vanilla Isaac, but prefer Rebirth's art style much more. Isaac's art style always screamed Flash to me, and I feel like rebirth has a lot more personality.

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Having played six hours of Rebirth I thought I would quickly write in with my own take on it (something I’m a little surprised by);

Having dropped fifty or so hours in the original I was a fan but was apprehensive of the game being “reskin” given the fears you highlighted and did not pre-order. In my runs there have been several new friendly creatures, new room types (expanding beyond the screen) and several new boss monsters mixed in with the original re-mastered characters. The visual style is a personal taste but personally prefer it. I have already beaten mom twice and agree it can feel easier but have noted a high level of polarisation in their difficulty to complete. Moreover the bosses are unlocked as you unlock items, such as the horsemen for beating Mom the first time. Some additional layers of time sink have been noted in my play-through for example “levelling up the store” through donations in the shop.

 

I would parallel this to the Firaxis model of remake rather than reimagine; Personally this is feels like a retro refit to give it the energy to expand on to the free PS+ versions of Rebirth on Vita and PS4 but equally is now my go to even after fifty hours in wraith of the lamb and don’t feel any buyer’s remorse. I would suggest Jake playing it to counter your history with the game and think it will feel very busy for a new player (which makes sense with the primary audience being the vita market)

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As a side note I have been watching lots of evolve on twitch and felt the demo was geared mostly for the streamers; hitting a constant 50k viewers over the weekend (beating WOW and CS:GO often) and felt the public access to this “slice” of evolve was more to have a high population period for streamers to team up with. The slow XP burn on the upgrades worked well for that medium, allowing several rounds before the next thing to show off to the audience. Even with the PR stunt nature of the weekend (pushing pre-orders) it seems evident they aren’t going for long periods of game time given the end “stage” of the round that switches the game to the monster having to destroy a structure on the map to “WIN” after evolving fully (level 3?). Don’t expect three hour hunts and do expect tight quick play to be the primary mode. As a final note I’d highlight the lack of any concern of L4D being competitive and thus assume that isn’t their direction here. I did note several versions of the classes with notable visual and feature changes (unique skills) that unlock with XP such as a robot hunter whose head is detachable. The biggest complaint seemed to be the wait between hunts lasting up to ten minutes between actual matches, with over four stages of queuing/confirmation built into the game’s matchmaking.

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By the way guys: proper nomenclature, please. It's not a "beta."

 

It's the "big alpha."

 

 

 

 

(worst)

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Re: Left 4 Dead 2. I understand not liking the tonal shift, but man, the gameplay of 2 is so much better. There's way more variety in the level design, the weapons, the objectives and especially the Infected. Because I approached L4D as mainly a multiplayer game, that was exactly what I wanted from a sequel.

 

For me, the more apt comparison for Partal 2 is Pikmin 2. Portal 1 and Pikmin 1 are both small games from big name developers that have a unique premise and completely nail it. Tonally, mechanically and structurally, they are both extremely focused. Both games got kncoked for being too short. Both sequels were much longer, had much more plotting (this is more the case for Portal than for Pikmin) and both doubled down on the sillier aspects of their worlds. I still think both sequels are great games, but for me, they both missed the mark of what made the originals so charming. Interestingly, they also both had amazing multiplayer modes that are likely more worth revisiting than the main games.

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Nick, I think you completely missed the cool parts of Evolve, though since you didn't seem to have had much time with it, that's understandable. As you also noted, some of the appeal was reduced by the fact that so few people understand how to play strategically at this point. Not really your fault if it just didn't catch with you, either.

 

But here's what I think are the really interesting parts of this game, after putting a shameful amount of time into it this weekend:

  • The control and tactical use of (mis)information is incredibly important. A good monster player will understand all the systems that reveal their location to the hunters (the sounds of their abilities and movement vs. the sound of them sneaking, their visible footsteps when not sneaking, their scent which is trackable by the trapper's dog thing, the birds which are triggered by getting too close, etc), and will selectively engage with those systems in order to present a picture to the other team. For example, at the start of most matches as monster, I would run at full speed in some direction until I reached some place that I could plausibly have jumped from. Then I would go into sneak mode and loop around in the opposite direction, so that when the hunters spawn they start their search in a completely different direction than I am going, which gives me some useful breathing room at the start of the map, when you're most vulnerable. Similar things can (should) be done throughout the match. This plus the hiding you briefly described makes for some really interesting gameplay.
  • It's an FPS that depends on strategic use of resources rather than (or at least more than) twitch accuracy. As the hunters, all your resources (abilities) except you basic guns have pretty steep opportunity costs: the trapper's arena, the support's orbital strike, invisibility, and shield, etc., all have pretty significant cooldowns, and prevent you from using any of your other abilities for a decent amount of time. Let's say you're playing as the support and you've split off from your team to cast a wider net when you see the monster. It's been a little while since the start of the match (so that the monster has built up a decent shield). At this point you could do a bunch of different things. You could just start shooting, and probably make the monster run off. Or, you could alert your team to where you saw it, and use an orbital strike on the other side of the monster, so that it runs into the arms of your team, only to be trapped by the arena. Or, you could realize that the monster is probably close to evolving, follow it using your invisibility power, hoping that it will start evolving and you can drop an orbital strike on it during that process, when it is immobile and without a shield for ~10 seconds, and then have your team show up to do a bunch more damage. Each hunter has decisions like this, and rushing blindly into situations and just using basic guns, not coordinating with your team to maximize your abilities' effectiveness is a surefire way to get rolled. It encourages cooperative decision-making in a really fun way (though getting saddled with teammates who don't want to communicate or play as a team can be rough).

Also, these are just some thoughts I had over the weekend, not having read any more advanced strategies or thought about it all that much. I bet that once it's actually released and the community has had more time with it there will be way more worth talking about. I also thought the game was really beautiful, and had some more little things I liked/disliked as well, but those were the major points.

 

Anyway, just my two cents.

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I've got some thoughts about BoI, but I want to play it a bit more and at least get past the Womb before making any judgements.  I am going to try some local co-op with it tonight though, which is the feature I was most excited about and made buying it an automatic. 

 

The other big thing I'm surprised wasn't brought up was the seeding feature.  I know Chris was fascinated by the speed run racing leage that was going on for awhile.  With the ability to enter seeds, now that is explicitly supported. 

 

Those two alone justify the work that went into rebuilding it outside of Flash and re-releasing it.

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That looks so good. 

 

Some great work has been done restoring Star Trek in a similar manner (a show which I will take any excuse to talk about). Trek is so effects-heavy that some extra jiggery-pokery had to be done. In The Next Generation, all the original effects shots were composited onto tape, so the restoration effort involved taking all the separate film elements and compositing them anew, along with replacing effects altogether when they didn't have usable sources. They did a great job of maintaining the original intent, and it just looks like a ridiculously high quality version of the show.

 

One great benefit is that we end up with the show's colors being unfucked after having been ravaged by tape:

 

MxiJAqc.jpg

 

The original series sees similar benefits, though they redid all the effects in mediocre CGI that in my (probably overly purist) opinion changes too much. With the magic of blu-ray and branching scenes, you can choose to use the original effects shots rescanned in HD, but on Netflix, you're stuck with the new CGI stuff. 

 

It's just awesome seeing the crazy uniform and lighting colors really pop. I mean, that stuff was designed to sell color TVs. This kind of restoration is so worth doing for shows and movies that have languished in bad tape transfers. 

 

hrtkdHP.png

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One thing that's really weird to me: I recently changed internet service plans, which involved me getting TV service for the first time in seven years. I watched a few hours of TV just out of curiosity, and it blew my mind that everything is ruined in the exact opposite manner to how it was previously ruined. When I stopped watching TV, HD and even widescreen TVs were still pretty rare. Everything was in 4:3, horribly and all the movies were cropped or pan-and-scan copies with degraded colour and clarity. Now it's 2014 and I can see loads of old widescreen material in their original formats, but anything that was originally filmed in 4:3 gets squashed, zoomed in, and cropped; with digital compression artifacts on everything. It's so gross.

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anything that was originally filmed in 4:3 gets squashed, zoomed in, and cropped; with digital compression artifacts on everything. It's so gross.

The worst is when they do that nonlinear stretch where it is sorta normal in the center and then the stretching accelerates toward the edges. It makes me ill.

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There was some misinformation regarding Evolve

 

1.  The human players don't immediately see the monster at the beginning of the match.  The monster has around a 15-20 second head start to run away from the hunters.  Odds are the players won't see the monster for several minutes.

 

2.  The monster plays entirely in 3rd person, it would be much harder to play as the monster in first person since he has to keep track of 4 humans swarming all around him.

 

I played mainly as the monster during the alpha and had a lot of fun.  Lots of target switching and prioritization as the monster as you try to take out the medic and support classes first.  You also have to be quick to respond to the individual tactics of good hunters.

 

Also the part where Nick stated that the monster runs at the same speed as the hunters and they were just going around the mountain forever, the medic has a Tranq gun that severely slows the monster down for several seconds + outlines him through obstacles.  A good medic will keep the monster tranq'd long enough for the trapper to put the dome up thus forcing the fight.

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Before finishing this episode, I thought the title referred to another imaginary animal pun game where you play as mice with secret identities.

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1.  The human players don't immediately see the monster at the beginning of the match.  The monster has around a 15-20 second head start to run away from the hunters.  Odds are the players won't see the monster for several minutes.

I think that just happened to occur in one of Sean(?)'s games, he didn't seem to think it always happened. It'd make sense if someone playing the monster just didn't quite get that they could immediately start running away before the players move.

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From what I've heard of Rebirth it starts out quite a bit easier but as you play it more and more stuff gets added, and every time you hit a new milestone it gets harder.  Pretty soon Mom is like the boss of level of 1.

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