Jake

Idle Thumbs 188: A Refined Baby

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Danielle, you should trade friend codes with me for Pokémon trading and battling!

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I think the only thing really lacking this year is the sort of game that can develop a consensus for game of the year. There were all sorts of great releases but they by and large have been servicing niche genres rather than the AAA FPS and open world stuff that had come to dominate the industry (and seems a bit stale this year outside of possibly Shadows of Mordor). Alien: Isolation seems like the most interesting horror game in years (at least in the AAA space), Elite: Dangerous is the most interesting space sim in years, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Divinity: Original Sin, and Shadowrun: Dragonfall seem like great RPGs, the first act of Broken Age and third act of Kentucky Route Zero were stand out adventure game experiences, there's been a whole host of great mobile games (80 days, Desert Golfing, Monument Valley, Revolution 60), Reaper of Souls seems to have reinvigorated Diablo, the Wii U seems to have really hit its stride, and it was a great year for local multiplayer (Sportsfriends, Towerfall: Ascension, and Nidhogg were awesome). As with most years, there were more awesome gaming experiences than I've had time to play which is all I can really ask for.

 

Hell, even on the AAA FPS side, general critical consensus seems to be that the latest Call of Duty is the best in years, and Wolfenstein: The New Order is pretty fantastic if you want something that's, y'know, not Call of Duty.

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Hell, even on the AAA FPS side, general critical consensus seems to be that the latest Call of Duty is the best in years, and Wolfenstein: The New Order is pretty fantastic if you want something that's, y'know, not Call of Duty.

 

You're right. Titanfall (which I really enjoyed) and Destiny (from what I've heard) were also solid AAA FPS releases this year. I guess it was an off year for strategy games with Beyond Earth being somewhat underwhelming, but even in that genre Endless Legend was a really good game.

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I can sort of see how this year might feel slightly lackluster compared to 2013, but on its own merits it's still so full of crazy goodness that I haven't been able to keep up at all. And none of the games that have been reputedly disappointing or technically broken are things I had any real hopes for. But then, I'm a PC gamer. If you're looking to one (or even both) of the new consoles as your sole gaming source, I could see it being a pretty lackluster year, yeah. (Though, you'd still have Shadow of Mordor, Alien: Isolation, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and undoubtedly other stuff from earlier in the year that I am now forgetting.) That's kind of par for the course for early adopters, though. I can't think of a console I've owned that would have had much to offer me in the first year and probably even first two years of their existence.

 

My general impression is that a lot of the AAA and AA releases have been somewhat lack luster, also a lot of the most anticipated titles were pushed until the start of next year. Smaller games, on the other hand, have risen to fill the gap quite well. Even then, I ended up buying and/or finishing games from last year far more than playing new games from 2014.

 

Next year looks like a real banger though.

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It seems like the console release cycle has to play a role in AAA games as well. We are just one year into this generation for the PS4/XO, and notoriously it takes time for devs to get up to speed (even when the consoles are developer friendly). Now take the Wii U. In its second year, and it feels like a decade or more since Nintendo got this much love from the core gaming audience.

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I think what I liked best about this episode was finding out how much my childhood had some parallels to Jake, Danielle, and Patrick. Just through all the tangents that sprang up.

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I think what I liked best about this episode was finding out how much my childhood had some parallels to Jake, Danielle, and Patrick. Just through all the tangents that sprang up.

 

 

I love hearing people talk about the Scholastic Book Club, because that's a huge childhood memory of mine and I'm a bit younger and also Australian.

 

Getting your parents to buy you look-and-find books from a magazine is a global phenomenon, apparently.

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I strongly disagree with part of that article.

 

 

That's not true—she dies and Bond doesn't give her a second thought.

 

Later, the bad guys destroy his Aston Martin and that's when we really see James Bond ready for vengeance.

 

Unless you literally think he just thought it was a waste of a scotch, his rage-destruction of all the henchmen around him was obviously fuelled by his anger at this woman dying. Right? I don't know how you'd read that scene as "he didn't give her second thought."?

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This year also maybe had lot of Japanese games coming to steam - Legend of Heroes, Valkyria Chronicles, FF III and FF III-2, several visual novels, even a new version of Blaz Blue and Dead or Alive (I didn´t see that coming at all, not that I care, but got me by surprise)! ...along this some curious surprises, like Creative Assembly doing a horror game, Shadow of Mordor, which a lot of people didn´t expect much, turning to be a great game. Beyond Earth was a let down, but not a horrible one, while Endless Legend was a amazing surprise that deserve much more attention.

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Unless you literally think he just thought it was a waste of a scotch, his rage-destruction of all the henchmen around him was obviously fuelled by his anger at this woman dying. Right? I don't know how you'd read that scene as "he didn't give her second thought."?

He was p mad about the car tho.

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I love hearing people talk about the Scholastic Book Club, because that's a huge childhood memory of mine and I'm a bit younger and also Australian.

 

Getting your parents to buy you look-and-find books from a magazine is a global phenomenon, apparently.

 

For me, the Scholastic Book Club was primarily a way to acquire more Calvin and Hobbes.

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Unless you literally think he just thought it was a waste of a scotch, his rage-destruction of all the henchmen around him was obviously fuelled by his anger at this woman dying. Right? I don't know how you'd read that scene as "he didn't give her second thought."?

 

Jokes? I thought it was jokes.

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My favorite books from the Scholastic Book Club were the Bunnicula series.  Those are some of the only books from my childhood that I've made sure to keep.

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For me, the Scholastic Book Club was primarily a way to acquire more Calvin and Hobbes.

 

YES

 

ALL CALVIN & HOBBES ALL THE TIME

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YES

 

ALL CALVIN & HOBBES ALL THE TIME

 

After getting all the collected editions through scholastic for good behavior in class and reading them many many times on our road trip out to Nebraska, I finally got the $100 complete edition last year for Christmas. I have opened it precisely once : (

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After getting all the collected editions through scholastic for good behavior in class and reading them many many times on our road trip out to Nebraska, I finally got the $100 complete edition last year for Christmas. I have opened it precisely once : (

I got the similar giant Far Side box set, and they're just impractically huge in actual use. They're beautiful books, but an iPad app would be much better for appreciating the contents.

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Having now finished the episode the first thing that comes to mind is: Oh my god. Pogs. I... I somehow entirely forgot about pogs. How could I have forgotten about pogs? Unconscionable.

 

One of the dumb kids' artifacts that I remember most fondly is Weepuls. Little fluffy critters with adhesive feet. (The wikipedia page for Weepuls has a great story about their resurgence in popularity in 2006 in the Netherlands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weepul)

 

If you'll excuse me, I'm going back to 1998 with Doc in the DeLorean so that I can play with my Yomega Fireball and Duncan yo-yos, utilize my extensive collection of Gelly Roll pens, play with my favorite Tamagotchi (white with a red border around the screen), play with my Marvin the Martian's Count Down Rock-o-tron "Space Jam" toy, win every race as Tiptup in "Diddy Kong Racing" while humming the "Hot Top Volcano" song from said game, and be dismayed because even though our cool fourth grade substitute teacher wanted to show us "Jurassic Park," Ellen had to be a buzzkill and call her mother to ask permission to watch a PG-13 movie, and of course her mother said no and ruined it for the entire class. (But I was secretly okay with this because Ellen was very nice and cute.) Find me at the intersection of childhood, creativity, and nostalgia, if you'd like to join; the password will be making a dragon and snake with your hands and singing the lyrics to Polaris's "Hey Sandy," the opening theme song from "The Adventures of Pete & Pete."

 

Edit--I'm adding this video because it's still the greatest opening of any TV show, ever:

 

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EDIT: Also Shantae was totally the best platformer of the year and nobody from Idle Thumbs OR Giant Bomb played it and that BUMS ME OUT.

 

Pretty sure GB did a quick look of it....yup:

 

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Pretty sure GB did a quick look of it....yup:

 

That's the DSi one from a while back, ported to PC this year. The new one is Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, which fixes a ton of problems with the previous two games.

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I forgot about Pirate's Curse. I liked Risky's Revenge and then bought the original GBA game on the 3DS Virtual Console, but the controls on that one are a bit fiddly, and I stopped playing it. I think the huge Kickstarter campaign they ran for the newest one overshadowed the fact that there was already a Shantae game in development.

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tegan, I want you to write about what you liked about Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, and what problems are fixed from the previous games in the series. I was trying to engage in a conversation about the game on the first page, since I did not enjoy the game as much as you did, but you did not respond. 

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Please no more "woofs" I beg of you. I mean, it's still going after Sean is absent with his 20 "woofs" per episode. Plus around the same time this started coming up on Idlethumbs, Griffin on MBMBAM maybe champions Sean on the amount of "woofs" per podcast.


Now cringe:

 

Was Scholastic super expensive? I was never allowed anything from those as everything was deemed too expensive for my parents to afford. Instead I was given trips to a used book store, but between my allowance and my parents buying used books to make up for no Scholastics, I collected a ton of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes pretty quickly. I finally gave up all of my old books for basically no money to Half Priced Books after I got that super nice set, but I did keep some of the ones with the original spot illustrations between strips. It's pretty shitty that those weren't reprinted. Complete fucking Calvin and Hobbes my ass.

 

Haha, is the file extension .gif a work of art to be interpreted?

 

Also Donkey Kong Country? Hell yeah there is bias! They were always so ugly and I feel like the platforming was so so subpar. And so many Donkey Kong Country games were just considered poor among the few that people enjoy. Even if it's now Retro and not Rare, I think the damage was done.

 

BUT HOW ABOUT RAYMAN BIAS? Each game has had genius platforming (or at least solid) but always gets criminally overlooked. Well until recently with Origins and Legends which were much loved. Rayman 2 was well reviewed back then, but I don't think I've ever met anyone who was as fond of Rayman 2 they way I am.

 

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