soggybagel

I believe the thumbs talked about this on a pod not too long ago but it really has to do with the fact that in terms of Gears of War using Mad World it works and it doesn't. Because at the time we as consumers had no real knowledge of how the game played or what it was all about, that trailer sold us (ME) something more. It sold ideas. On the strength of the song it evoked a lot of unearned interest because of what the song and the trailer implied about what WE MIGHT see and experience. The melancholy of the song, having the Dom reach down and investigate a blown up statues head, these things indicate something that wasn't at all what the game was about. I don't begrudge the people who put that commercial together because they did a hell of a job. It's just that the reality of the game experience was vastly different from what we were being sold. Which in itself is an issue, but something that I'm completely accustomed to. It is similarly how shitty and dumb and rote (in my view) the halo story is by and large but their commercial offerings hint at something a lot more impressive and interesting.

I'm very excited for new consoles.

IT doesn't make it okay but Rockstar still is slowing pushing the needle in a more nuanced direction. I'm kind of getting annoyed somewhat at the complaints about dissonance in Grand Theft Auto 4. I know its only been four plus years, but in the game industry that is a long time. Rockstar themselves have already showed they're maturing as story tellers. Red Dead is a clear marker. It's not award winning writing, but the characterization of Marsten is the strongest character I can think of in nearly any video game. It's the same old cliche story, man gets pulled in against his will to do one last job to save his family. Its your standard crime story draped also in the tropes of the western. But the way they build the character, the world, you're inhabiting him. You can go about towns shooting and killing everyone you want just as in GTA but at least in my playthrough I was far more reticent to do so because it felt against my character's own moral and behavioral compass. Which is a way that Rockstar is fighting against that dissonance that people complain about a lot. Why I'm annoyed is not to say that it wasn't there, the dissonance of narrative vs. character action, but I think they may get somewhat unfairly piled on as this start reminder of how they really fucked up...when in fact they were operating as I noted in a very constrained fashion. Pulling back from the jet packs, and area 51's, and crazy shit in general of San Andreas. They were buckling down, creating a world, and giving people what they thought everyone wanted. Narrative structure in video games has gotten so much better in just those few short years that is actually kind of remarkable. If you go back and play that first generation of xbox 360 and ps3 games its pretty remarkable how shitty most of the storytelling was even compared to something that comes out right now. They've gotten better. Once again, I'm not excusing their short comings, but at least offering some context as well as the fact that we're shitting on a story for a game that no one has played. I would certainly argue that in GTA 4 most of the side periphery characters are very shallow one dimensional joke characters. That includes a complete meathead like Brucie. I think they've matured a lot since GTA 3 though, which was over a decade ago now at this point. I'll be honest that I haven't touched GTA 4 in a long while, a few years now, but I can't off the top of my head think of any horribly depicted women. In fact most of the women (of which there were few!) were depicted as anyone else in the universe is. A comical exaggeration of what we know. I think one was definitely a Puerto Rican drug dealer. One thing I will say about Rockstar's GTA games though is that they are building an inhabitable universe. I played Saints Row 3...which was just okay. But it still felt like a video game world. Same with Sleeping Dogs. GTA 4 is the only game where I genuinely felt for moments that I was driving around a living breathing city. Remo mentioned it a long while ago when he mentioned the Lost and Damned DLC. How when he came back to it he remembered as you do in real life visiting your old home town or things like that, familiar streets, and turns and landmarks. It's a unique feeling that Rockstar created that no other game has done for me. And by shaping that world and filling it with advertisements, radio stations with commercials and djs and songs, and atmosphere in general I think that they are able to pull off commenting on American culture and eating their cake too in a way that other games aren't able to or fail to do so. Because they're creating an experience in a way that no other company does. Which isn't to say THEY CAN'T DO BETTER...and I know I'm coming off as this massive rockstar apologist. I think they can push harder and faster but I'm just trying to contextualize what I think they do so well, why they deserve some credit, and why I don't think they're quite as bad as you may think they are.

Yeah she is definitely pouting. It's definitely intentional. But dominatrix seductress lesbian fiction so I can get off to it? I don't know. You can argue about women and male patriarchy because these are some what unquantifiable BUT also something I don't disagree with. I'm mostly on the side of this being selling sex but mostly on the side of it being silly as opposed to insidious. And yes Rockstar could be doing a lot better, but as i outlined above, they're doing a lot better than basically any other company out there.

I think you're both completely overreacting here. These illustrated adverts among the others that have been released as promotional material are selling an image and are evoking very specific messages. I'm your average late 20's target for these type of ads and the first thing I saw wasn't a hot dominatrix/seductress role play scene that I could get my rocks off. I saw an image that along with the others was selling me a fun adventure in fictional Los Angeles. Yes they're selling a sexy image in a couple of the promos but I don't think they're selling the explicit concept of the male patriarchy and women being beholden to a lower rung of status. The two things I noticed immediately was that she was wearing a Love Fist shirt which is a call back to previous games, and that there is a fake Bentley and Louis V bag which is telling me this is some sort of high status woman who is perhaps flouting the law. There's another image of a black male, with a big rottweiler holding a bat, with a liquor store sign behind him and high tension wires above his head. It's playing on a familiar trope of what I'd have to assume is south central Los Angeles. I'm not saying you're completely wrong. Rockstar is in a unique position as a company that can do what they want and could push the platform of a woman protagonist in a way that most companies could not. They can pave the way and show that "hey, you don't have to be afraid to do these things." Where I think you're barking up the wrong tree is saying that Rockstar isn't self aware. They're aware more than basically any other video game company out there. And if you doubt their creativity and maturity, I would point no further than the two DLC/Expansions to Grand Theft Auto 4. Lost and the Damned had some of the best writing coupled with performances in a video game period. It explored interesting ideas and was clearly a reflection of its time and place (looking specifically at the financial melt down). I'm not saying this was some massive coup for equality but the fact that they released their second DLC titled THE BALLAD OF GAY TONY is hilarious and amazing if you really think about it. Yes, the Gay Tony character wasn't the lead protagonist but he was a main character whom your character worked for. He wasn't portrayed as some dandy fop gay stereotype. He was just a guy who wanted to live the American dream and he happened to be gay. Again I don't want to say this is some groundbreaking character work, but compared to what most other companies are doing and have done, this might as well be a man walking on the fucking moon. The old trope of "one last job" or "getting pulled back in" or "new guy trying to make it on the scene" is old and as tired as you all are stating. I agree. But it's also a trope that exists because its good. Plenty of great pieces of film from the last five years have basically been this, but presented in new and fun ways. We'll always have these crime stories because they can be extremely compelling. Its about Rockstar working harder, being better, because they know they can and want to impress audiences. Grand Theft Auto 4 did A LOT to shift that narrative. People tend to say Saints Row 3 was a reaction to GTA 4 in the sense that it went all out and was just pure lunacy to GTA 4's more buttoned down "real" world reaction. The reality is and Jeff Gerstman recently pointed this out, was that Saints Row series was really a reaction to San Andreas and how insane that game went. My point is that GTA 4 now gets pegged a lot, by lots of people including all the Thumbs guys on the podcast for having a bizarre and jarring narrative dissonance. I agree. But people tend to ignore the part that GTA 4 was a game that actually helped establish a base line point where people actually started noticing it. It helped push story telling in video games. It's been almost five years from the games release at this point. I think people over look how much more restrained GTA 4 was from San Andreas and then you can see how they're changing how they narratively handle things even more so in Red Dead Redemption. Where due to the very strong early character building of the protagonist, even when you had the option of say, slaughtering a whole town, you didn't want to, or at least I didn't because of how strong they created character and world. I felt it out of place if i went on a rampage and tended to inhabit a more balance morality. Back to the image at hand though. I guess I'm approaching it wrong but I'm not perturbed that much by the image. It's selling sexuality but maybe I just don't care or see it as a complete negative as some of the other posters. It's selling the Grand Theft Auto image. Which in other spots is guns, crime, danger, and sex. Perhaps I'm a too indifferent, but to me they're operating under the rules of the world that they sell.

Due to Idle Thumbs I gave Far Cry 2 multiple shots and it never grabbed me. To each his own of course, but I could not agree more with the sentiment regarding Chris's exhaustion with the Assassin's Creed games and how it relates to Far Cry 3 and Ubisoft. I was about eight to ten hours in to Assassin's Creed 3 when I just felt overwhelmed and certainly not in a good way. It just felt like they were shoveling things on top of things hoping to wow me with the pure number of things when a little bit of restraint (and ditching the idiotic Animus shit) could have gone a long way. I gave up on that game because the game systems, the side things, they all worked to kind of just make me feel like I was doing more work than enjoying things and so I put it down and haven't been back.

That's Kiefer Sutherland in that trailer is it not?

For me, the way I tackle a game is similar to a movie these days. I try generally avoid major spoilers but I'll still watch trailers. I also try to avoid reviews other than looking at aggregators if its a game I'm not sure if I want to buy right away and just see how the reviews are leaning. I.E. Generally positive or generally negative. After that I'll play through the way I prefer which can mean different things depending on the type of game it is. After I finish the game/movie I'll usually think a bit harder about what happened and what I just took in. Which is to say that when I'm in the midst of playing a game/enjoying a movie I usually am pretty good about dropping critical pre-tenses by and large although certain things will make me smile or enjoy things because I know how much technical work went on behind it. If its a game or movie I really enjoy I'll usually go back and at least play part of it/watch parts of it and also read up about it as much as possible. In that way listening to a film commentary is a way to heighten appreciation of the film because I'm able to kind of disassemble how the film was made. It's why a movie like The Abyss is something I appreciate more now than when I first watched it just on the basis of knowing how much technical work went in to filming the damn thing. With a game its obviously a bit different but I am thankfully able to still lose myself in games where I'm not thinking about how everything was made and decided for and just take it on face value...for the most part.

This is very unrelated but if you recall that stupid Tribes song that Motley Crue worked on back in the day... TRIBES, TRIBES, TRIBES... Here is a hilarious IGN interview. http://www.ign.com/a...-crae-interview

Cortana has progressively gotten bustier and curvier as the series goes on. I do want to touch on something that you've all mentioned in regards to GTA 4 and now 5 that I adore and which is why I admire the series so much. In that you do get that true sense of a living (albeit sometimes shallow) city. GTA 4 the first time you cross the fake Manhattan Bridge (I think it was that one) was a rush. It felt like a real city. I've never lived in New York. I live in Los Angeles. It's stunning how well they in just two trailers are able to evoke the sense of realness and being there. That's why I was initially so gaga for LA Noire. I love seeing how "my" city is viewed through video games. The lighting, the look, the feel, it just is LA in GTA 5. You all mentioned that in regards to your love of San Francisco in regards to that most recent driver game. I'm excited. It appears they're rendering the hills around Los Angeles, the Saltan Sea type area, and others. Where as a game like Saints Row 3 which I enjoyed but not nearly as much as some people feels clearly sterile and video gamey, GTA 4 and 5 seem to evoke a naturalism of how a real city lives and breathes. As you can tell I'm a GTA fan boy but I agree wholeheartedly that Rockstar does this type of stuff better than anyone. I think GTA 5 will surprise people because we're talking about a lot of years between 4 and 5 with lessons learned from Red Dead as well.

I don't really see how you're coming to this conclusion. A guy intentionally goes out of his way to recreate screen shots using GTA 4 on a PC. You're effectively saying GTA 4 is the same as GTA 3, just a new engine, better graphics, and a bigger city. You know. The same.

One of Rockstars strengths is their writing and voice acting. I think they're getting better at story telling and I have no reason to doubt them in this venture. Both GTA 4 DLC packages were interesting for their own way. They don't just peddle in schlocky imitation. They've become better writers because they take the tropes that we know, play in to them, but also subvert them. Lost and the Damned was very interesting because of how they were definitely interested in exploring shades of the American dream and how it dies in America...along with directly commenting on the economic downturn. They're smart. I trust them.

I loved Grand Theft Auto 4. I had a ton of fun. I'm very much looking forward to this game.

I'm really enjoying Xcom though I just picked up the latest Forza game, but I'm just wondering if Chris has run in to any of the bugs that are cropping up? Also any issues in Dishonored. Not that it really takes away anything from the game, but when you are the one who is dealing with shit bugs it can really kill your buzz for the game. In Dishonored I had a bug where it would auto alert a certain NPC's guards/buddies even when I had killed someone so I had to go back about to a save that was around an hour previous to restart the mission and it seemed like that fixed up. In Xcom I've run in to a few issues but none more infuriating than an issue where when firing a rocket from an elevated position the rocket basically went way off of where I was aiming. I was deep in to an operation and no matter what I did the elevated position meant my shots were missing from the rocket launchers on my heavy so I had to scrub the entire thing. These aren't game ending bugs but it starts to bum you out when they make you lose progress.

I understand their formatting style in so much that if I recall from their movie trailer thing they released they want it to feel more like reading a magazine but the full giant spread style images that break the blocks of text are very annoying to me. And since I'm being a complainer right now, I'd also like to say I'm not a big fan of how the review formatting has the top half of the review text to the left of the screen and then it jumps to the right for the second half. Minor nitpicks but I don't know...I'm the one reading it. JUST GIMME DAT STRAIGHT COLUMN.

Boy I'm dumb. I was looking through the idle forums video gaming forum and not seeing any Xcom thread. Then I realized it was here! Great to read some of your guys strategies and what not.

What? I don't know how in gods name you can do this? The only time I ever listen to anything other than game audio is if I'm playing a sports game or a racing game.

No. The game is somewhat buggy. I was on a mission for

Having a day to digest the end of the game I come back thinking that I need to be more critical of the story/narrative which was less than ideal. In fact by the mid point I really didn't care much at all about the story or what my motivation was. It was basically lets get revenge and save the girl. The hope I think was that the story would be filled in organically via extra chatting with characters and through eaves dropping on chit chat and what not but the further the game went along the more ham fisted the story started to feel to me. The worst things were the I had fun with this game but I don't have the strong urge to immediately replay it though.

I was never very taken with the plot. My choice to play through minimizing death as much as possible and just being sneaky/stealthy/fewer kills had nothing to do with how I thought Emily or any other character and mostly to due with thats how I always like playing these games given the choice. And I found it a bit disappointing though I understand why that me going out of my way to talk to everyone and hear everything they say really doesn't matter at all to anything at the end of the day. I.E. you just returned from a mission and before you go to sleep you just find everyone. It expands the story a bit the narrative is so narrowly focused that it doesn't matter too much. I know they have DLC planned but there is something to me that when playing wistfully looked at the coastline with houses and big buildings out in the distance and wanted to just explore more.

Just finished the game. I played how I wanted to play which is relatively stealthy and avoiding as much conflict as I could. I still probably ended up killing about 10 guys or so. That said, there are some later parts in the game where I think it could be very interesting if you went in to not giving a fuck mode and just killed a ton of guys.

More Spoiler Chat:

I'll say this about Episode 4.

I just burned through Episode 2 and 3 the last couple days so I could be ready for Episode 4's release tomorrow! Overall I'm really enjoying my time with these games though there are a couple annoying hitches and glitching out when playing that sometimes make me restart from my last checkpoint/save. Namely in episode 3 when: ON a side note, I tend to play pretty truthfully to myself and am not restarting if I felt I picked a "wrong" choice in my view. Can't wait to play Episode 4. Other Episode thoughts:

I will! But I'll try to edit it a bit so its less rambling and more succinct.