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ColonelJohnMatrix posted:I am so excited for the Bloodborne episodes of BFSC to start up. The game is loving incredible and 10 hours in I'm enjoying this every bit as much as I did the original Dark Souls. I actually enjoy this environment, the weapons and theme even more. There is no future in which I play Bloodborne on the table right now, so I'm going to have to pull BFSC off my rotation indefinitely and try not to feel resentful when it inevitably keeps coming up on the other podcasts I listen to.
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Mar 25, 2015 17:06
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Re: this week's Idle Thumbs--the interview with Miyazaki Chris (I'm pretty sure it was Chris) was looking for does exist. It was published in Japanese in an artbook, and somebody on the Giant Bomb forums translated it in six parts starting here. It goes into a lot of really fine detail about specific boss, character, and area designs, so there's a lot of context that I imagine is lost if you aren't intimately familiar with the game itself, but it might shine some light on where the Souls visual style comes from. There's also this factoid (from an Edge article that I can't find the full text of, referencing another Edge article I can't find at all) that explains a lot about the tone and atmosphere of Demon's/Dark Souls: quote:[Miyazaki] explained to us in a previous interview, for instance, that the veil of ambiguity hovering over the Souls games grew out of his experiences as a child poring over western fantasy literature. Due to his patchy comprehension of English at the time, there were large chunks of each book he couldn’t decipher, leaving him to fill in the details with his imagination. He set out to create that same sense of awe and bewilderment in his games, letting players fill in the gaps with their imagination instead of having every plot point and objective clearly articulated through in-game text or cutscenes. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Mar 27, 2015 |
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Mar 27, 2015 05:43
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Playing through Scholar of the First Sin: New .exe Edition I keep running into things that feel like BFSC wish list items. There are Heide Knights in Heide's! The Pursuer pursues you! They put something in those sewers before the Wharf! $20 is probably still too steep a price but I'm appreciating the graphical updates (especially since I upgraded my computer between now and the last time I played DS2) and I keep finding neat new surprises so it gets a passing grade from me. I'm excited to hear that episode when it comes around.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:36
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Tae posted:Super Best Friendcast talked about those issues, probably because they actually use and dealt with skyrim mods on a regular basis. I thought some of Pat's concerns about some of the big all-but-mandatory mods going pay-only were a little unfounded, though. In general I think worrying about a worst-case scenario that could happen even though there's no real specific evidence that it will happen isn't very helpful, but he specifically had a whole thing about how SKSE going paid would mess everything up that was completely off base since SKSE isn't on the Steam Workshop and never will be on the Steam Workshop because that's not how the Steam Workshop works. (SKSE is a separate executable that hooks into Skyrim and edits the game's memory like a trainer or something, but the Workshop only deals in standard mods that you load as .esm or .esp files through the mod list without any additional tools or hacks involved. That's always been one of the Workshop's big limitations and one of the non-porn reasons why sites like the Nexus are still relevant.) Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 18:55 on May 6, 2015 |
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May 6, 2015 18:48
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Song For The Deaf posted:If anyone here is curious about how the Watch Out for Fireballs! Soundtrack Showdown shook out, Final Fantasy VI was the winner. There's a full ranked list up at http://duckfeed.tv/soundtrackshowdown Jet Set Radio didn't win this poll is Objectively Wrong. I mean those top five games all have pretty good soundtracks but they're not Jet Set fuckin' Radio. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 05:26 on May 16, 2015 |
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May 16, 2015 05:23
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Illbleed would be an amazing WOFF. Actually playing that thing looks like a complete nightmare but boy is it an experience. I was also thinking the other day that Chibi-Robo! would be a good fit for the show, but that's probably a pipe dream too.
Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jun 4, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 01:21
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Woffle posted:I shudder to think of the kind of feedback we'd receive if we did one of these erotic novels. I get called a prude fairly frequently and we get called out for mentioning anything remotely sexist in games. Not that all erotic visual novels are sexist (I'm guessing?) but I can imagine that there's some troubling poo poo going on in that world. Let's just say that "Harem Wars" and "Ultimate Boob Party" are probably actually nowhere near the grossest anime porn games Japan has to offer.
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Jun 5, 2015 20:46
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I only experienced Ghost Trick through an LP but it's a really charming game and I love the hell out of both Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk so I'm pretty happy to see this poll.
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Jun 11, 2015 19:19
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Also this Let's play is really good. It's informative and lets the game speak for itself, so watch it if you want to learn more about this game after seeing this episode. Yeah, sgf's LP is probably the way to go if you just want to see Illbleed. There's commentary, but not over the cutscenes, and he's a mostly straight-faced presenter who shows off everything the game has to offer without getting in the way. And Illbleed's definitely worth seeing all of, because while some of the levels definitely stand out above the others every single plot beat is delightfully bizarre and it's constantly coming at you with incredible stuff that's completely out of left field.
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Jul 21, 2015 08:30
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Samopsa posted:This is also a good video essay series on that topic, specifically why the bulk of gamergators are angry and abusive, while not attacking them for being clearly wrong (and it's basically a podcast with some supporting images). These are really good videos but I'd also recommend taking a look at this follow-up post about the last part where the creator reevaluates some of his advice following a Twitter conversation with Lindsay Ellis and Zoe Quinn. (And then I'd suggest watching his videos on Phil Fish, Advanced Warfare, and the fall of the adventure game because they're really good too.)
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Jul 23, 2015 22:00
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The only problem with Paper Mario is that it's not TTYD.
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Jul 23, 2015 22:59
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bobservo posted:But it's not Super Paper Mario, so there's that. This is basically heresy but I'd actually say Super Paper Mario is my favorite game in the series, and I'd argue it's better than the original Paper Mario (though it's definitely not a better game than The Thousand Year Door, I'm not completely crazy). The mechanics are novel and sound cool on paper, even if in practice they don't quite work out as well as you'd hope, but more than anything I love how weird and existential and vaguely melancholic it is. It's a flawed but strange and interesting game with a tone and story that's completely different from anything else Mario has ever touched and a lot of really great story beats, setpieces, and level concepts. The Thousand Year Door is a fantastic game that does just about everything right and is basically a masterpiece, so I kind of get why SPM has this reputation as a big disappointment next to that, but IMO SPM is still a genuinely cool game on its own merits. The original Paper Mario is also neat game in its own right, but to me it feels a little bit 'safe' next to TTYD's madcap antics (let alone the weirdness of SPM). All of the basic ideas are there, and they work right and feel good, but in terms of tone, humor, and storytelling (and gameplay to a lesser extent) I can't help looking at it as a prototype for TTYD, sort of the more-restrained first step you need to take before you can commit to something bigger and more inventive.
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Jul 24, 2015 01:37
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SoulChicken posted:Given Danielle's move to NYC, I don't expect her to continue to be on Idle Thumbs (they've never used Skype for guests). How will I get my analysis of iPhone anime games????? Pick up Match Three, Gita has you covered.
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Aug 14, 2015 00:08
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Another note about the 999 extrasode: FFXIV has had exactly one complete transformation, from a lovely game into a pretty good one. It's still an MMO through and through, with all the endgame timesink grind that entails, but it's probably the best one of those on the market right now, and the main story (especially in the expansion) is really solid. You could probably do a run of the hypothetical Final Fantasy podcast that just went through the main story content like it was a normal Final Fantasy (or, well, maybe more like a couple of normal Final Fantasies stapled together) and have it work about as smoothly as you could ask for. The bigger stumbling block would probably be XI, since that's its own nightmarish beast of a game that's gone through a billion iterations and may or may not still be playable in the theoretical distant future where that podcast could actually exist. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Aug 17, 2015 |
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Aug 17, 2015 01:14
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So It Goes posted:To add to all the popular good games out, anyone who liked earthbound should play undertale and anyone who liked shovel knight should play plague of shadows as well. I don't expect either to get much coverage but they are excellent games in their own ways. I was actually just thinking about mentioning Undertale in this thread as a descendant of Paper Mario, at least in terms of being a charming, funny small-numbers RPG with reflex-based active combat (not to mention all of the other cool stuff it's doing besides). Undertale is fantastic and I've never been sold so hard on a game by the tutorial boss of all things.
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Sep 19, 2015 03:37
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What I'm getting out of these last couple of posts is we really just want Platinum Games' Legend of Zelda.
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Oct 18, 2015 01:13
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I like Okami a ton but it's definitely bloated and too slow for its own good. There's something I find weirdly charming about the pacing issues, particularly the way it ends like three times, but when I think about going back to it I find I just kind of don't want to sit through all of that again. It doesn't help that I played the Wii version, where the finicky motion controls made basically every weapon unusable except the beads.
Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Oct 19, 2015 |
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Oct 19, 2015 21:12
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ElMaligno posted:Here is an extremely wikipedia article on how the US Coast Guard managed a real life G-g-gho-gho-ghost ship So you're saying official protocol on ghost ships is "shoot the fucker."
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Oct 27, 2015 18:50
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Undertale is one of those games where someone not liking it as much as you like it is almost frustrating because on the one hand you almost certainly have a good reason why you personally think the things they don't like about it are actually great but on the other hand you know that no amount of explaining your reasons is going to change their mind and you'll only make them resentful if you try. I just want people to like things that are good 
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Nov 13, 2015 01:15
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So It Goes posted:People are too obsessed in gaming with people liking the same things as them, especially stuff like Undertale which is pretty niche to begin with. A quick glance through Gary's twitter shows it came down to he legitimately sucked at the game and died a lot which then reasonably frustrated him. This is not the type of experience I could ever relate to since I thought the game was pretty easy and almost never died (including original blind pacifist playthrough), but that doesn't invalidate his experience nor should it affect anyone that someone else had a hard time with a game even if they did not themselves. One of the most annoying aspects of the Souls community is the way they wear playing it is some weird masculine badge of honor that validates their identity as a gamer. That's definitely something I've seen other people take issue with, and I feel basically the same way about it as you--I found the game reasonably challenging and generally well-tuned, so it's a criticism that just seems alien to me, but that doesn't mean it's invalid. There are a decent number of ways to control the difficulty and make fights that might be giving you a hard time more manageable, too, but most of those are pretty obscure and they're more like Easter eggs than anything so you can't expect someone to know about them on a first playthrough. If you're having a rough time of it and getting frustrated, there's not a lot of middle ground to find because, like, we just had completely different experiences and in a way we might as well have been playing different games. Still, I don't think wanting other people to like the thing you like is some kind of obsessive gamer thing. It's not, like, a rational or useful feeling, but human beings have a lot of irrational hang-ups about all sorts of stupid things. People like to have their opinions validated. It's dumb but you can't really help it. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 02:02
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Woffle posted:He died 23 times on the pacifist end boss. It's fine if you didn't but there's no mileage is just saying, "It's actually not hard." This is where that impasse I was talking about before comes in, though, because for me it really genuinely was not a very hard game. None of the bosses (at least, other than the specifically super-hard genocide ones) took me more than five or six tries at the absolute most, and when I did a second playthrough I never died once, partly because I already knew the patterns and partly because I understood there was no reason not to stock up on healing items and use them liberally. Even when I was dying, though, the difficulty never felt unfair or too punishing and I thought the combat was really fun and inventive. That was my experience with the game, and it doesn't do anything to change the fact that you found it difficult and frustrating. By the same token, though, the fact that you found it difficult and frustrating doesn't do anything to change the fact that I didn't. So where does that leave us? Do we throw our hands up in the air and say "subjectivity!" because both sides had fundamentally different experiences that can't be reconciled? Do we just have to conclude that the game is too hard unless it isn't? This is a really weird aspect of video games that's essentially unique to the medium and I have no idea how to have a productive conversation about the difficulty that isn't just "I thought it was hard" "well I thought it wasn't hard" back and forth forever. Woffle posted:The idea that the difficulty gives weight to doing the right thing is undermined, for me, by the genocide ending, as I mentioned. If the idea is that it's hard to do the right thing, why is it harder to do the wrong thing and easiest to do the middle? That's a weird, muddled message. That's not really what it's about, though, at least not the way I see it. A genocide run is all but impossible to stumble into with casual grinding. You basically need to know it's there and deliberately choose to seek it out. A pacifist run means you were resolved to do the right thing; a neutral run means you weren't, and you started killing things that were in your way because you wanted to get stronger or you gave up trying to figure out how to avoid it or it was just faster/easier to kill someone instead of trying to spare them. Genocide, though, is a different beast. It's something you need to actively seek out and choose, not out of any desire for good or evil, but because you just need to know what happens. It's not for players who lack the resolve to do the right thing, it's for players who couldn't leave well enough alone--who got the true ending, tied everything up nice and neat with a happy ending, and then undid it all because they knew there was more and they were compelled to see everything. It's a deliberately non-standard path through the game that takes a direct look at some of the meta themes that only get touched on in the other routes, and the question it's posing isn't about morality but about the way we as players interact with a game's world. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 04:39
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Woffle posted:I sort of buy that but it doesn't sit perfectly with me. Yeah, and that's the other thing I was talking about before. I like that game a lot and I probably have a response for most criticisms people might have about it (for example, the spider boss has new patterns and lines of dialog for every turn, which is almost always how the game signals progress in boss fights, and while sparing enemies does involve some trial-and-error you usually get some kind of hint and you never have more than three or four options to try anyway) but at the end of the day first impressions stick and if your initial feelings are negative or ambivalent there's no way somebody like me is going to change your mind with a "well, actually..." Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Nov 13, 2015 |
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Nov 13, 2015 05:09
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Personally I just thought the bullet hell stuff was really fun & rewarding and I wouldn't want to change it. There would definitely be ways to balance an "easy mode" that would help people who hated the mechanics and couldn't deal with them get through the game without taking away too much of what made that stuff work for me (because I actually totally disagree about the combat and the storytelling being separate things), but that wouldn't come for free. Implementing an alternate difficulty mode has a pretty significant cost in terms of development time and resources, especially if you do it right and rebalance the game in a meaningful way instead of just saying "gently caress it have an extra 80 HP," and while this is a purely subjective opinion that I'm able to hold largely because I like the gameplay as much as I do, I'm glad that theoretical opportunity cost went towards making the core experience stronger instead. The colorblindness thing is a fair point, though, and honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you could get Toby Fox to look into implementing a colorblind mode if you mentioned it to him. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 01:20
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In the history of dumb anime games Kingdom Hearts is quite possibly the single dumbest franchise of all and I appreciate that about it.
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Nov 17, 2015 01:31
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Jippa posted:I haven't heard an IGN podcast in over 7 years or so, if you wondered what you were missing out on: That dude is really salty about some IGN guy getting a relatively innocuous fact wrong.
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Nov 17, 2015 18:00
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NickPancakes posted:It's like how being blind turns you into daredevil; being colorblind allows you to see the deeper aspects of the game. I thought it was radioactive waste that turned you into Daredevil.
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Nov 18, 2015 09:48
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I appreciate Drakengard for the same reason I don't actually want to play Drakengard, which is that very few games (and especially very few Square-Enix console RPGs) are so intentionally and overtly unpleasant and hostile towards the player. It's an ugly, unfun slog of a game with discordant, atonal music and a plot populated with the most hateful people possible, but all of that serves a thematic & satirical purpose, which is something you don't see a lot in video games. Nier is a much more aesthetically pleasing game that handles similar themes with a defter touch and far more nuance, which is part of why it's so much more successful. Its somber, faded beauty and cast of damaged and misguided but sympathetic and likeable misfits are much more pleasant to spend time with, but even beyond that they're a better vehicle for the questions Taro wants to ask and the themes he wants to explore. Drakengard is about how the typical video game protagonist is a mass-murdering lunatic, which is a fair observation and effectively explored (and was less well-trod territory in 2003) but kind of a rhetorical dead end. Nier, though, is about despair and the inevitability of death and how desperation can drive people to terrible things, which is a much richer vein to explore. Opposing Farce fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Dec 2, 2015 |
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Dec 2, 2015 08:27
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KoldPT posted:I heard a friend of a friend say "I bought a ps3 for Drakengard 3" yesterday. This is my contribution to this argument - someone played the first two and liked them that much. Nobody liked Drakengard 2.
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Dec 4, 2015 02:49
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I think there's some merit to Yellow Submarine but to be fair the Beatles basically aren't in that one.
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Dec 5, 2015 04:29
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At the end of this week's WOFF Gary mentions something about Warcraft 3 "using RTS stuff as an engine for a different kind of game" and I couldn't help thinking A. yes that's true and B. that game is DOTA
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Mar 25, 2016 22:59
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Honestly a WOFF specifically for Final Fantasy would probably be perfect for my weird one-degree-removed relationship with that series so I'd be pretty happy to see that happen, but all of those pitches sound pretty appealing to me (Steven King is the one thing on that list I have no feelings towards but I could see enjoying that show anyway). I'm not in a position to pitch in right now but I'll be happy to throw in a few bucks a month when I can 'cause you guys do good work and you deserve it.
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Apr 16, 2016 02:32
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Zombies' Downfall posted:Tetra Battle is the one thing about FF9 that's strictly worse than something in FF8, it's too complicated and they don't explain it for poo poo I'm playing through the PSX version of FF9 right now and I just got past the card tournament in Treno and boy am I glad I never have to do that ever again. I hope.
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Apr 16, 2016 06:19
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Woffle posted:The final fantasy show would cover spin offs. I've planned it out and it's years worth of stuff. Very, very comprehensive. It wouldn't be like a BSC season per game, but each game would get multiple episodes. We'd be breaking it up roughly by chronology, so, NES era and contemporary spin offs, SNES era, etc. I feel like the real question is, but do you play the MMOs?
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Apr 16, 2016 11:59
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