I have been watching a show on the cw called Penn and Teller fool us. The good news is that the second season is on YouTube, bad news is that the UK version aka the first season is on the CW site/app.
In short a magician does a trick and Penn uses inside baseball terms to see if they figured out what they did, if not then they perform on their show in Vegas. I think it's worth a watch and has some really awesome stuff like this:
- Dishonoured/Deus Ex/etc Stealth Games: Sneaking around and grabbing bits of information off the guards is much better with voices.
The voice acting was pretty bad in Deus Ex. I skipped dialogue and stopped even trying to listen to guards. The writing was pretty good, but the voices were painful.
Scott, you're cutting it very close to arguing that video games that don't fulfill all the aspects of an orthogame are bad by definition.
Then they have to at least be good idiogames.
But most of them are shit at that and have few meaningful choices: they just have cinematics and quicktime events.
Some, like Dragon Age, have the idiogame part down well, but the rest of the game is nto worth playing: they'd be better as visual novels than they ever were as what they were. Looking at you Mass Effect 1 and 2.
Mass Effect 1 gameplay is completely terrible, Mass Effect 2 gameplay is merely tolerable. It wasn't until the third one and the need to make it fucking rad with the multiplayer that it became a good game, though the Star Trekking was generally enough to push me along through the series. When I replayed 1 and 2 on the PC to get my canon run for ME3, I shamelessly modded both, ME1 to give me zero cooldown Adrenaline Rush and ME2 to buff sniper rifle damage, but I ended up slowing it down and really enjoying ME3's combat in both modes.
Multiplayer has a way of making games like that find a way to play right, and it really paid off in ME3, especially in the AI department. Fuck those Cerberus guys.
Well the combat in 1 and 2 weren't necessarily bad, just mediocre 3rd person shooter. What really annoyed me in 1 was just how disorganized the inventory was, but it gets better in 2. I liked the cheesey moon physics tank levels, even if they were kind of terrible.
I played some of Mass Effect 2 without ever playing 1 or really knowing the story, which probably detracted from the experience, but the story really wasn't compelling. Shepard dying and immediately coming back to life is a shit way to start the story. You could argue that's my fault and not the game's, but if ME fans are willing to admit the gameplay sucked then you can't expect me to play it.
As for gameplay, the shooting was fine but the movement always felt clunky to me. It might just because I don't really like cover shooters. The mining was an atrocity that should never have existed. Non-combat maps were interesting but I usually just found myself wandering in circles looking for the story trigger/exit.
I don't think the combat in ME2 is bad. Unbalanced at parts, but not bad. You can compare it to other TPS' and say that they do everything it does better, but I personally play ME for the mix of combat and story in one package. For some people, they don't care about those things mixed together. I enjoy having my character run around in green armor in both combat and story cutscenes, that's just a thing that makes me happy.
The story's opening is weird...But worked really well if you played ME1. Although, I played ME2 first (technically) and enjoyed the opening, so...
My griping is better suited to the FoYD thread. Went to a good wedding though and now my girlfriend is thinking about our wedding (which is probably two years out).
There's this church that advertises on the bus that is always using C.S. Lewis quotes to advertise themselves, and I never realized how much of a prick C.S. Lewis was before they brought it to my attention. Today I read this one:
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily
First, how do you lump ambition in with drink and sex? I get why those two might be vices, but ambition? That's kinda the root of all action. Hell, Lewis, I'll play the religion game: would Moses have freed the Jewish slaves if he hadn't been ambitious? Would Jesus have still cast out the money lenders, or, without ambition, would he have just said "fuck it, someone else can cast them out." I mean, for a lot of us just being content is an ambitious goal, and my prophet says that it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive.
Second, there's a lot of problems with that child metaphor. Like, who says that making mud pies in a slum isn't as good as a holiday at sea? Maybe an eight year old gets motion sick and wants to play in the dirt. Maybe he can't have the holiday at sea, because his family isn't part of your aristocracy, C.S. And, lastly, wouldn't desire for a holiday at sea be a little ambitious? Doesn't it require ambition to want something more than slum mud pies?
Third, Half Hearted Creatures is a fucking killer name for a metal band. "HELLO LOS ANGELES! WE'RE THE HALF HEARTED CREATURES, AND WE'RE GONNA PLAY YOU A SONG OFF OUR NEW ALBUM, 'DRINK AND SEX AND AMBITION'!"
Plus, Narnia did kind of have a shitty message in its ending. [Spoiler] Everybody dies in a train wreck, but no its totally ok because they're in heaven now. [/Spoiler]
I think I'm the only person on Twitter who really liked the new Moments feature when I looked at it this morning, and I'm now annoyed that it's missing from the Twitter app again.
I think I'm the only person on Twitter who really liked the new Moments feature when I looked at it this morning, and I'm now annoyed that it's missing from the Twitter app again.
Yes, yes you are.
All we want from Twitter is to see every tweet from the people we follow in chronological order. We don't want to see any other garbage. If Twitter ever breaks that core feature, a competitor will steal the market
Well, I often do a continuously updating Twitter search when watching live events like sports or music shows that are streamed online. That way I get the full hose of everyone's comments which mention the event or hashtag or name. Moments looked like a curated version of that, and I can see myself using it for the same job.
And I came up with a scene where someone suggests using Yahoo Answers and another says "There's some lines you just don't cross" or whatever. It'll be a great movie, promise.
My dad hates John Kerry because watching his rise from "who wants to be the last to die for a mistake" to his current role of Secretary of State is kinda like watching a band make one great album that really pushed the envelope, but then go platinum with trite commercial garbage, multiplied by the casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Australian Government has forced a large portion of normal people to understand what VPNs are and how to get around networks by implementing their BS metadata accumulation plan. I must have received questions and messages from 5 of my friends who have shown no interest in IT or how the Internet works for knowledge on VPNs.
The overreaction is going to make the general public even better at pirating and hiding their traffic (or at least make it far more difficult for the Government).
Do New Yorkers fear death more than other Americans? Yes, of course; we have much more to live for, and thus much more to lose. You die before your time in Cleveland, what have you really missed? Some dispiriting Browns games? But here, just think about it—an early demise could cost you thousands of delicious bagels, dozens of trips to our world-class museums, countless years left on rent-stabilized lease renewals. I believe it was Marcus Aurelius who wrote "It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live... in New York City."
I weighed myself for the first time in about two and a half years today. I've put on 5kg in that time, but my body fat percentage has only gone up from 4% to 6%. It turns out that getting serious about proper fitness has changed me body shape quite markedly, and clothes aren't fitting properly.
Now I totally understand why men start putting on weight in their 30's. I never used to be able to put on muscle mass at all. When I used to do more training, all that would happen is my muscles would just get more defined, but not much bigger. Now my legs are building due to running, and my arms and shoulders and back are building due to juggling.
I guess if I didn't keep up my current active lifestyle, I'd put on the wrong kind of weight... which is exactly what is happening with my identical twin brother. It's like he's my baseline control in healthy lifestyle experiments.
Comments
In short a magician does a trick and Penn uses inside baseball terms to see if they figured out what they did, if not then they perform on their show in Vegas. I think it's worth a watch and has some really awesome stuff like this:
But most of them are shit at that and have few meaningful choices: they just have cinematics and quicktime events.
Some, like Dragon Age, have the idiogame part down well, but the rest of the game is nto worth playing: they'd be better as visual novels than they ever were as what they were. Looking at you Mass Effect 1 and 2.
Multiplayer has a way of making games like that find a way to play right, and it really paid off in ME3, especially in the AI department. Fuck those Cerberus guys.
As for gameplay, the shooting was fine but the movement always felt clunky to me. It might just because I don't really like cover shooters. The mining was an atrocity that should never have existed. Non-combat maps were interesting but I usually just found myself wandering in circles looking for the story trigger/exit.
The story's opening is weird...But worked really well if you played ME1. Although, I played ME2 first (technically) and enjoyed the opening, so...
Second, there's a lot of problems with that child metaphor. Like, who says that making mud pies in a slum isn't as good as a holiday at sea? Maybe an eight year old gets motion sick and wants to play in the dirt. Maybe he can't have the holiday at sea, because his family isn't part of your aristocracy, C.S. And, lastly, wouldn't desire for a holiday at sea be a little ambitious? Doesn't it require ambition to want something more than slum mud pies?
Third, Half Hearted Creatures is a fucking killer name for a metal band. "HELLO LOS ANGELES! WE'RE THE HALF HEARTED CREATURES, AND WE'RE GONNA PLAY YOU A SONG OFF OUR NEW ALBUM, 'DRINK AND SEX AND AMBITION'!"
All we want from Twitter is to see every tweet from the people we follow in chronological order. We don't want to see any other garbage. If Twitter ever breaks that core feature, a competitor will steal the market
And then everyone would just go find answers with friends on slack.
I must have received questions and messages from 5 of my friends who have shown no interest in IT or how the Internet works for knowledge on VPNs.
The overreaction is going to make the general public even better at pirating and hiding their traffic (or at least make it far more difficult for the Government).
Also, dat website design.
You all play as Clerics, and also as each other's gods.
Rym andScott
I doubt its a big deal posting the podcast on YouTube but someone REALLY wanted to have it there. Not sure who it is thought, but thought to share.
Now I totally understand why men start putting on weight in their 30's. I never used to be able to put on muscle mass at all. When I used to do more training, all that would happen is my muscles would just get more defined, but not much bigger. Now my legs are building due to running, and my arms and shoulders and back are building due to juggling.
I guess if I didn't keep up my current active lifestyle, I'd put on the wrong kind of weight... which is exactly what is happening with my identical twin brother. It's like he's my baseline control in healthy lifestyle experiments.