CaptainFish

Maybe this is just me, but I didn't think the penny arcade games were 'failure' at all. Perhaps Walker is referring to the fact that the series ended, but that was more because Mike and Jerry didn't have time, not because there wasn't demand for them. Either way, reading that let's me discount his opinion of humour in games. Anyhoo, knowing what I know about the AI from Jake's post, I totally understand why Tycho is constantly sitting out, and the Heavy often only bets on decent hands. I disagree that the behaviour is random, outside of Max. The game is less like sitting down to play Hold 'em at a casino, and more like having a weekly game with your buddies. You have to learn the behaviour (and skill level) of the people you're playing with. Strongbad is more likely to bluff than Tycho or the Heavy, so I know I can try to deal with him if he makes large bets. I'm not any sort of poker player though, so maybe my opinion doesn't really count. He does kinda have you guys with the Strongbad Deck, although anyone can recognize most numbers from their top half. It's only really a problem with 8s and 9s. I haven't tried it yet because the Inventory deck is by far my favorite. I also really like the visual effect of the Automata table.

This may not be possible, but is there some way to acquire audio from the game? Specifically I want the Heavy's line "Check, check, check on my saaaandvich, cha cha cha!" It's caught in my head and I keep saying it all the time, so I figure I might need to have the clip to listen to as a mantra. I looked in the steam game folder, and the only thing there were 6 armpit fart .WAVs. Also, why are there 6 armpit fart .WAVs?

Just like real life!

Yea it's not in my steam either.

6 Hours till poker night is out for real. I'm filled with so much anticipation!

I had the exact same reaction. Since it's so short they couldn't have been that far away from the first confrontation. I wonder how different their overview would have been if they had just made it that far.

Outside of the turret section where you can't die, this is a tough one. Do you make your NPC partners, simulated trained soldiers, unable to kill enemies in your way? I can see that meriting a video as well. Do you make them able to die without your aid? That's seems more frustrating. Maybe they should've just left you alone for most of the level. It was so silly when they entered the slow motion room and the other dude just took care of everything, jeez. That is one thing I liked about what I saw from Medal of Honor. There were lots of sequences where you would sneak up on a group or attack a point, and your allies would always engage on your fire.

Sonic Colors is pretty good, although I don't think it plays a s well as the the daytime stuff in unleashed. It's got great music, beautiful levels, no hub world, levels designed for replayability to find items, and the powers are pretty cool too. I even like the aliens you're rescuing and using for powers, because it's similar to how in the genesis days he was just saving animals from being roboticized. My favorite part of the game is the story, which taking a page from Unleashed, is more reminiscent of cartoon sonic. Robotnik is a blustering villian, he's got robot sidekicks that don't follow his orders, he engages in ridiculous speeches about his plans that Sonic hears, only Sonic and Tails are there to fight him, with Tails relegated to a non heroic role, etc. There's also a lot of self awareness. The plot is that Robotnik has made a space station theme park as forgiveness for all the bad stuff he's done. It's got a very Wily-esque feel. Why are Sonic and Tails there? Because of course he's going to do something evil. There's no mega man style 'oh perhaps he's become good finally' nonsense. It's not always funny, but I really like the tone they're going for with the writing. Having played Sonic 4-1 I wished that they took a page from Sonic Team. Sonic 4 is doing 2-d levels that are more interesting in general, but Sonic Colors has controls that would fit much better. The momentum feels much better in Colors. They took out the homing attack for when there's no lock on, now when you jump instead of being shot forward you just get a slight double jump. Sooo much better for precision platforming. And things like the stomp and the slide just seem like they could have a space in an old school style Sonic.

I don't know if anyone has seen this fairly old preview from Game Informer, but from the way it's described it seems really cool gameplay wise. Edit: It's from their March issue, but it seems it just hit the net last week. Specifically, I like the sense that you have a notebook of everything your dude knows, and whenever you want to use that information you can. Too often I feel like I can't bring facts to bear in these types of dialogue systems (Alpha Protocol did a fairly good job). I also like the idea of it progressing from case to case, just solving whatever crimes you've been tasked with. I sincerely hope the game doesn't have a large overarching case to solve, although I'm sure some will be more complex and involved than others. My main reason is that it can lead to save the world syndrome if it's too crazy in scope. Also, if they do put all their eggs in one huge crime, there's a big chance that it won't hit. It might come off too clichéd or predictable, but if there are a lot of smaller stand alone jobs, some will definitely be a favorite. I was also impressed with the way the example presented didn't end in a shootout (or have shootouts be the primary mode of play), but more of a Law & Order + Prince Persia style chase and bust. I'm not really in agreement about having aspects there for regular Rockstar fans that want to break the flow of the game. A cop shouldn't be able to just go on a rampage and get away with it. I feel like they should just follow the America's Army model and just lock you in a cell. (pg 3 a new formula) I'm actually really hoping this game hits the regular motifs of crime shows/films. I want to have a car chase, I want to stake out a joint, I want to shake down a snitch, I want to arrest a guy in front of everyone at his job, I want to spook and chase down a suspicious witness and I want to bring a perp downtown and interrogate him. Sure those happen all the time in movies, tv series and books, but rarely in games, and even more rarely out of cutscenes. Just having a police officer game is rare, and when they exist so much of the game is just combat, or the actual job isn't important because you go rogue or some other nonsense. I want my Police Quest style game.

I wouldn't mind the clichés if those cutscenes aren't just broken up with ridiculous third-person shooting sequences. If it's actually a procedural detective drama I'll put up with a few genre clichés and some bad writing. If interrogating a suspect means shooting 50 nameless henchmen and triggering a cutscene with the perp, then I'll pass.

PROMOTIONS! Congrats Steve!

He did an interview with the Loading Ready Run guys a while ago that was really down to earth. He definitely comes across as someone who just loves making films. However, his pr stunts and his movies are shit. I hope he doesn't beat me up for saying that.

Yes, something like making Rocket Knight, and then some Sonic 3 & Knuckles sprites. Maybe throw in the cast of Shining Force if you're hurting for ideas.

Well I'm glad he got in his question about PCs and Macs, and didn't ask anything about working with the Penny Arcade or Valve guys. I thought for sure after Sean mentioned working with PA and their relationship, he would've probed, but instead he did something dumb.

Maybe posting an enlarged version of the sprites? They're kinda small. They are pretty cool though, ToeJam is my favorite so far.

I think you should number the posts.

I don't think I've ever seen interviewees have to carry an interview before. I did like the 5 words sars thing.

I don't think it would be easy to improve upon one of the best if not the best RTS ever. The original Starcraft was seminal in it's design as a asymmetrical base building RTS. Since it's creation I don't really think anyone has attempted to make a game where the factions are so mechanically different and yet has such great balance. There is absolutely nothing wrong with polishing your gameplay in a sequel. Especially when the game you're improving is still relevant. The masses of dudes who love Starcraft aren't looking for squad based, hero focused, cover integrated mechanics. They're looking for refinement and balance. If it had been a new franchise I would understand the griping a bit more, but as it stands they did the right thing. It would be cool if Blizzard still had a regular RTS development team that would actually create a new franchise in the next 4 years, but there's no chance of that happening.

I definitely felt genuine pride, happiness and sadness in the game's ending, and I'm still sad for what that's worth.

Just finished Season 3 after going through the other two. Top notch work all around. I was surprised at how much the game had changed from the last two seasons. Loved all the time altering mechanics, and the Max toy stuff (the 1st person stuff had a Bioshocky feel). I was full of joy from the moment I saw Sam with the popsicle. Anyhoo, I loved it, and I'll miss in future seasons. I was a big fan of really suspicious but not really evil girl Stinky. I also thought Skunkape was super funny on his delivery, especially the moleman speech in episode 1. It made me really glad to have played the game mostly without subtitles, although I did switch it on when some lines didn't work. I've had a policy of playing these games after the season has been completely released, since I played season 1 of Sam & Max one at a time. I think I'll be sticking with it, especially with how newer seasons seem to have more connections between episodes. One thing confused me about the ending. I'm still not sure why past paradox Max had to use the time elevator, if both S&M pairs were existing at the same time. It made me think it was a completely new unrelated Max. I guess he might have lost past paradox Sam in the past, and then time traveled to a point in the future when future paradox Sam was alone, but wouldn't future paradox Sam remember the electromagnetic monster Sam if it is meant to take place in the same timeline? I'm over-thinking this aren't I.

Kerrigan being the star of Heart of the Swarm has been confirmed for a while. Although playing an actual villain would more fit the classic Starcraft mold.

Apparently Steam Loom isn't supported in SCUMMVM, but this link might help http://steamreview.org/external/loom/. The alternate version doesn't have voice though. Apparently there are some small changes to the executable that make the steam version unable to run in SCUMMVM.

Did they ever license imuse? They should have. Even with it, I imagine it would take a lot of work to do a musical with the level of interaction of that Curse song throughout. I've been thinking all day about a musical version of Secret of Monkey Island. Intro is the same, I want to be a pirate dialogue leads into the first voiced number in the SCUMM bar that introduces the three trials. Guybrush notices the bar, cut to inside, music starts, Guybrush gets in and is treated to rowdy pirate shanties and fun. I haven't figured all the rest out, but there's definitely a Fester/LeChuck number, a Guybrush meets Elaine number, Swordfighting training montage and a crew team-up and mutiny song. You'd definitely need to punctuate the story's big moments with big numbers and just have the rest be incidental dialogue. What does it run through? SCUMMVM? If it isn't I'd Download SCUMMVM go to Steam/Steamapps/Common, copy the loom folder and try to run it through that. If it is then, I'm not sure what to do about it.

Watched the whole Kinect launch thing on Giant Bomb. They're breaking it out into quick looks although you'll miss some of the calibration errors a lot of games were having. There was a lot of re-signing in to choose your profile, although once a game had you, it seemed like you could swap out and it would recognize you. The whole thing struck me as slow, especially on the MS end. All their interface stuff is performed by holding your hand over a cursor and waiting for a timer to finish. This coupled with every game having a tutorial that is one step at a time of the most mundane actions with no way to skip to the next step means you'll either spend a long time watching them or skip them by accident and fail. There was one particularly annoying tutorial system (Kinect Sports) that had three spots, one for each step, but instead of showing all of them and just lighting up the current one being described, it would make them appear one by one. Perhaps as a better idea you could just put your hand over each step to activate descriptions and animations, until you were ready for the next one. It seems like they erred on the side of people not being confused, not on the side of not wasting their time. Third party stuff was much snappier on interface. Harmonix used the vertical height of your right hand to choose menu options and a swipe to the left to confirm, and swipes to the right to go back. This meant you could quickly go through options once you got the hang of it, and it was really easy to do. Sonic Riders used an interface where you rotate a wheel of options and when you wanted to confirm, you'd drag the icon over a confirmation button. Once again this meant that you were going trough quickly. Finally Adrenalin Misfits (that's not a typo) had you make stances to go forward. This was the best use. Hand out to the left to go left in a menu, to the right to go right, hand up in the air like you're asking a question in elementary to confirm. It's weird that this was the only real pose based menu control, since the basic 'Guide Button' action is to stand with one arm at your side and the other down at a 45 degree angle. I thought that stuff would be much more prevalent. The hand cursor stuff in general seemed kinda unpredictable, with weird moments when it would bug out. The voice stuff seemed like the most powerful part, and the quickest. To activate Kinect you have to wave your hand until it picks it up as a cursor, but to use voice commands you just say 'XBox' and then whatever you want to do. The weirdest thing I saw was probably Kinectimals (Quick Look), because it thought it would be a sort of free roam game where you just play with your cat, but instead it was weirdly reminiscent of the Idle Thumb proposed shitty version of Noby Noby Boy. It's constantly coming up with objectives and new items to use, and a lot of them boil down to throw this ball equivalent at things in the environment to knock them down. A lot of it was necessary though, because you need those points to unlock new areas, although the areas just seemed to be more mini games, but with score ranks. That doesn't strike me as having anything to do with training an animal. The game just seemed more like a Kinect mini game collection, where sometimes you have a cat. Even the training stuff was super simple mimicry. I think it would be cooler to train an animal to jump by holding a treat out of reach vertically, than by just jumping up and watching him copy you. I did like that the cat constantly brings you stuff to play with, since a lot of it is locked in a store. Sorry for the long post.

This would have been the greatest. I might have said this before, but it bears repeating: I love Jared Emerson-Johnson's compositions. He might be my favourite composer. I'm a jazz fan so I like that he does proper jazz tracks that are equal parts improvisation, but the dude has a wide range. Classical tracks, and songs that harken to others (Cogs In Motion always makes me think of powerhouse, maybe it's the driving bass line), direct parody (Punch Out theme), Big Band, Surf rock, Reggae, Techno. I like the way each location is scored much like a cartoon with certain motifs worked in and different styles that very much evoke those places. I wish there were more soundtracks available for purchase, even just a digital version would be great. It makes me wish for a musical adventure game (like all singing and stuff), but I don't even know how you would make that.