soggybagel

Oh man I am so excited that the Idle Thumbs crew is playing Bioshock Infinite right now. I liked your immediate reactions and I can't wait to hear what you have to say about the ending. I'm not sure if you all ventured in to the Infinite thread but I definitely started extremely enthusiastic with the game. The first few hours were something really amazing. I have to say I was disappointed with the ending and I really felt like the back third of the game got bogged down with way too much combat. I also was in a situation where medium was way too easy but I felt hard was hard enough to be stressful and somewhat annoying by the end of the game when they really throw a ton of enemies at you. A couple fights in particular really bugged the hell out of me for them not being remotely interesting and ultimately frustrating. I won't say anything more other than to say that I am still thinking about the way Jake compared this game to Sucker Punch and what it says about why we/I enjoy one and hate the other. I do feel some early themes of the game drift away and combat becomes a chore near the end but I'll wait to see what you guys have to say next week.

I did find it maddening sometimes when she'd say "Oh look a lockpick" but I didn't see it. So I'd scour the room.

I played Syndicate on the 360 a few months ago. The game is absolutely gorgeous even on the 360. I liked how the shooting felt and the speed of movement.

Minor request. I wish this game let you from the menu (not in game) review all the audio logs and rewatch all the news reel stuff. Just for fun!

I'm not one to be too afraid of games but Dead Space was stressful as hell. I honestly had a couple times where I thought about playing but just couldn't.

This will be a spoiler response to savdec449 and its all about the ending so beware folks who haven't finished the game. Also its late as hell and I just finished so I may be incoherent as well.

Wow. Absolutely disappointed in the ending of this game. I'll let it sink in for a while before i post about it in spoiler space but not the conclusion I was expecting or wanted. Keep in mind too that I'm all for open ended endings and things don't have to be wrapped like a bow. But this, I don't know. I don't particularly enjoy this ending, the rate it dumps things on you at the end, and a few other things. I'm also speaking as someone who pretty much got all the audio logs. I think I missed 7 the whole game so I'm not missing out on too much as far as I know. And not so much dissonance but there are actions your character takes when the game takes things out of your control that seem unreasonable at the time. I bought the season pass so I'm interested to see what the DLC will decide to do. Okay fuck it, end game spoilers here:

Some later game issues I have.

Well my point was that there is a lot of evocative stuff early on that helps build a world and that many people prefer experiencing those things entirely fresh. I do agree with you to a point. I don't get people freaking out about movie trailers for the most part unless they are very very blatant about things. That said YOU ARE INSANE!!!!

If you're interested just watch the quick look on Giant Bomb. It's about 30 minutes, it's past the very beginning so it doesn't spoil any of the really cool opening but it shows you some of the gameplay without spoiling really any story beats.

I assume there is no new game plus? Since that 1999 mode is supposed to be the badass mode. Does that mean if we don't collect all the audio logs on one playthrough the ones we missed will still be there but so will all the ones we got? I don't care about the achievement as much as i care about hearing every piece of content.

It feels like the type of video gamey excess that for example, the Thumbs Crew rails against. The first time you pull it off was shocking and not in a good way. I was kind of like, "Oh, so its going to be like that."

Also does anyone think the melee kills are fucking ridiculous? And not in a good way.

Absolutely loving the game. I can totally see how the gameplay for some could be a total turn off. It's certainly deeply familiar if you've played the past two bioshocks and that might not be a good thing for everyone. The world that you see, the world that you heard, and the world that is evoked in the first couple hours is something very special. I'm having a blast but part of me does disagree with some decisions. I can't help that I'm OCD about trying to find every audio log and pick every lock and search every garbage can but that is how I am and it does kind of make the game decisions more stark in some manner. I.E. Me running around after clearing an area to just snoop through every garbage can is kind of weird when you think about it. Also I'm always torn on a game when it makes you decide what power ups you want to assign to...or rather the vitality things. From my understanding you won't ever get to max out every meter and I'm always the lame guy who tries to evenly distribute those upgrades but it would seem that is a mistake as I should probably just pump up one or two things to a higher max. Either way I'm probably about five to six hours in and having a great time.

The thing is I love competition. It's why I don't play a ton of online games (namely shooters which I still love) anymore that are competitive because I have more time committed to other pursuits. But I like to try to be really good at the games I play. Which is why back in the day I would play Quake 3 a ton or Counter-Strike a ton. Where I'd be averaging probably 25 hours a week which obviously isn't the most extreme in hours compared to some, but also way way more for a single game than I do these days. And I will say that when I played on a pub, or a I played with strangers I would never ever talk on coms or rarely even type stuff. But for example when HardOCP had a Counter Strike server set I would always play there and a natural community sprung up around that game and when we'd play there it was what I'd dub friendly competitive. Meaning we all knew each other via our handles and we'd all play seriously so we would talk the occasional smack. And when I play a game with a friend on XBox Live now or just in the same room I do talk a lot of smack where if someone who was a stranger were to walk in they'd probably be a bit shocked as I jokingly am yelling "TAKE THAT YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" But I've never bene the type to ever rage in the freakout mode about belittling people. The closest I probably get is calling someone a dumbass in Battlefield games as they take off with a transport and leave half the team behind. But you know, racism and what not always was a thing I thought was awful and stupid so its just weird that people are like that online. And in regards to the episode, one thing that I still can't over about the new Sim City is that the size of the grid you can build in is so fucking small. As Chris pointed out some of the bigger things to build literally can take up a fourth of your map space. It's just a shame really.

I'll admit I haven't played the new Sim City. But I will say since I'm in the position of not being frustrated at all with the launch since I didn't have to deal with it, that Sim City 4 was a mess when it came out. Again this doesn't excuse any existing issues with the latest Sim City, but for those who are going to jump back to 4 one should remember that when it came out 4 was buggy as hell. It had issues where the full tile sets weren't being built because of some weird bug issue. Traffic algorithms were horrible even after the Rush Hour expansion. One way's and Avenues (four lane roads) weren't even introduced until the rush hour expansion came out. And you still had to download mods if you wanted accurate/adequate usage of public transit and highway systems. Again, there is a long way to go for the latest but it did take some time and a lot of user mods to fix up 4. Sadly it seems like there won't be any user mods for this...well until a offline hack can be deployed or something.

I also don't like the gameplay approach of QTE's in a lot of games where you get ambushed by a QTE and its early on in the game so you're confused about what to do so you die. The learning process is through death. Tomb Raider isn't the worst offender amongst a sea of games that do this but its annoying none the less. This is a game I'm really enjoying though. It's jaw dropping in beauty as far as graphics even on the aging 360 and its just a fun romp. This is the type of "mindless" game I don't mind playing. It's fun, the combat feels tight, and its got great spectacle but its game systems are still deep enough that it doesn't always feel like a funnel pushing you towards massacre after massacre. I think the story is a joke and not at all effecting but at least its trying to do something vaguely interesting.

There are very few QTE's throughout the game but am I the only one who finds them confusing. The way the outer circle dials in to the inner one I have fucked up a few times just because I still don't get the timing of them.

I hope I'm not treading on another thread but I did a quick search and didn't find anything in particular where this could go. Anyways, just saw the new Dead Space 3 trailer which is allegedly a TV Spot. It uses a cover of 'In the Air Tonight' and it makes the game look seem much dumber than I would like and totally turns me off the game. Dead Space 3 Trailer: This happened as well with Aliens: Colonial Marines with this trailer that came out last week. Pretty much universally hated for its HORRENDOUS voice over. It was noted by various Gearbox employees on twitter and various sites that this is not any dialogue that is in the game and it was created by a separate marketing team. Now I sympathize with this issue. It's something that happens all the time in the film industry where an entirely separate group of people put together a trailer (most of the time this is the case, rarely does a director have any input in marketing) with the clips they're given and it can mean the tone of a film being sold is completely different than the movie, but somehow this Aliens trailer seems far worse because its actually just inventing a voice over that by all standards of inference we are going to assume is coming from the actual game. Any other trailers anyone can think of that have such a dulling effect that you end up being completely turned off of a game you were once kind of interested in? I feel like video game trailers more often than not have this type of effect.

Two things. One I loved Cool Spot growing up. It was one of those games that I owned and played a lot even though I beat it. It was kind of like Earthworm Jim (not surprising given the David Perry connection) and it was a platformer that I really enjoyed. Secondly, did anyone else have Sega Channel growing up? I didn't but two of my neighborhood friends did. It was basically a netflix for games type situation where you'd have an adapter cartridge that would slot in to your sega that was a bit smaller than a 32X and you'd connect a coax cable and a ac adapter and you'd get to choose from a large number of games that would rotate every month. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_channel It was actually quite the technology and pretty awesome as you wouldn't have to bug your parents about going to Blockbuster to rent a game and the variety by and large was pretty solid.

I do think that the United States gets shit on a lot for its lack of high speed penetration across the country but then compare the US to a country like South Korea. The fact of the matter is that there is just way more ground to cover where as some countries like South Korea or Japan have the benefit of high density populations in a much smaller footprint. Of course this doesn't excuse the fact that the US Telcoms drag their feet for upgrading infrastructure and look to nickel and dime consumers as much as possible (on top of the issues raised in the podcast in regards to content creators being providers). I do have friends and family that live in more rural areas of America though and something like an always on DRM situation can really screw them over though.

I can't be the only one who saw a big bug eye in that...right?

IT'S AFRAID

A couple things. Obviously I'm here posting because I love Idle Thumbs, but I have to say this episode confused the hell out of me. Maybe it was because I was tired and slightly distracted at the time while listening but there were multiple times that I got irritated or confused because you guys started to talk about a game or were describing things that made no sense to me since I had no context (having not played the games) and the descriptions just befuddled me. "When you acquire a spouse, they become part of your inventory, but they can be a zombie wife." I may be paraphrasing here because I listened to it last night but I just had no fucking clue what you were talking about. And this is something I love about you guys because this is who you guys are and its why I listen but I think it was Jake who was going to make a comparison of how Film attracts a lot more people from wider professions than game development, but he gets cut off for a second, then it is never returned to. Maybe I was just in a bad mood but I was getting annoyed by that stuff last night. Sorry. I just had to vent about this. I do want to really applaud you guys for discussing always on internet requirements and the pitfalls of such implementations. Especially in the way that these platform holders and developers are basically operating on the basis that the infrastructure and tech is about ten years ahead of what it really is out in the real world (I.E. North America in this specific situation). As far as real world scenarios, something that I find extremely frustrating is that EA will shutdown legacy servers of older sports games. SEE: http://www.shacknews.com/article/77220/madden-nfl-11-fifa-11-servers-shutting-down , http://www.shacknews.com/article/72913/ea-shutting-down-online-for-more-games This is frustrating namely because EA chooses to run their own servers and implement their own online pass on top of Xbox Live's requirement to pay for Gold access. Now, I'm an avid sports game player and for a lot of them I do abandon them after a year or so when the new iteration appears. Games like Madden and NHL I move on. SO I'll admit I'm one of those "who cares its an old game" for those series, but it does bother me that an older boxing or MMA game, Burnout's, and Need For Speeds are shut down. Because sometimes with those games I get an urge to play and want to call up a friend and say "let's do a round/race or two" but you can't. Because its SHUT OFF. Lastly, I know you didn't explicitly state this in the cast but I do want to thank Chris for always being an ardent defender of the liberal arts in colleges. Increasingly I see that many people tend to devalue and belittle the liberal arts and I know you've in the past defended them. I was a history major and you (if I recall correctly) a music major. It's just that I tend to hang out both in a literal real world sense and an online sense with people who come primarily from a programming/engineering/hard science background and beyond the jokes about income they often view a History degree or Music degree or Philosophy degree as a waste of time. But I what I saw was that those in the engineering track at my school had one or two opportunities to take a "fun" class in their first two years but then were shepherded down a very strict curriculum while I was able to take a wide breadth of classes that I don't regret for a second taking. And as you all pointed out, this is something that people can bring to the table that is many times unique in an industry like the games industry. P.S. I'm going to relisten to the pod today as I may have just had a cloudy head last night.

I disagree. And I realize that COD trailers have gotten some heat recently because they are advertising 'war is fun' but really, that is what they're doing intentionally. I'm not the biggest fan of the series but I think they are selling a very specific image and it works. I think they're bombastic in a way that I totally understand why swaths of the fanbase would eat up.