Deep Dive Devin

I think it'd take longer to finish all that anyway, but doing things in that manner would be both inefficient and potentially harder. I don't think anyone wants a repeat of the late-2014 cram to finish Freeman's Mind 1.

I wonder if they'll take this time to finally finish that fucking comic book.

Hah, I just checked the steam community page and you could feel how many people were there because of Ross's video.

Mucha Lucha was always slightly disturbing to look at. El Tigre definitely won in the aesthetic department.

It wasn't on purpose? What was the actual context?

What an utterly strange game. Other than a couple Zero Punctuation episodes and the articles exposing David Cage and Quantic Dream for worker abuse and general creepiness, I'd never actually experienced anything he made in much detail. Having seen this, I think a window of someone else playing them is the best way to see them, this episode was a blast. That kickboxing scene where Ross ignored all the QTEs reminds me of a later Dragon Ball Z fight, where a large man brutalizes a teenage girl, steps on her head and knocks out several of her teeth. The previous material of this arc was mostly comedy. Goku eats a lot, Gohan plays at being a superhero, Vegeta breaks a punching machine, the usual. But then this just hits you outta nowhere. Merry Christmas, kid. Now, they both have superpowers, she can fly and even knocks his head most of the way off (he puts it back on), but it's still a shocking tonal shift. Except it's the exact opposite of Fahrenheit here, because we went from silly invincible kung fu battles to Videl, who mostly exists outside the superpower stuff (being the daughter of a guy who famously denied these were real), taking some of the most realistically-violent punishment in the series. I guess the change of tone works better in one direction than the other.

Hey, a festive excuse to shamelessly push my own content on others. It's NiGHTS into Dreams! It's not technically my most-recently played game (Bruce revealed we recorded this episode weeks ago, the bastard), but hey, it's the Christmas season and NiGHTS is a wholesome sort-of Christmas game. I really vibe with the aesthetic and music, and I love dream worlds in gaming, but I'm definitely put off by the weird gameplay style. It works great for this game, but I can sorta see why the sequel wasn't as well-received (also because it was 2007 Sonic Team). This one feels like a personal art project, and while I prefer the Psychonauts brand of mental world, I can't help but really appreciate the passion on display here. Feels like major studios don't publish anything this idiosyncratic anymore.

I take a lot of late-night walks (when it's not extremely cold outside), and yeah, I get that all the time. I've been listening to the audiobooks of Discworld while doing so over the course of the last year.

Feels like Metal Gear Solid 4 is considered the worst mainline MGS game, and while it certainly goes overboard with the movie cutscenes, I think I enjoy its gameplay more than 1, 2, 5, or Peace Walker (which, everyone seems to like Peace Walker but I really find it bland).

I'm pretty sure the simplest reason to not play Free Riders is that Kinect exclusives are always shit and are absolutely miserable to play even when they work.

That'd be production IG, known for Ghost in the Shell, Psycho Pass, assistance on End of Evangelion, and...other stuff, probably. I know they did the shit FLCL sequels, but that's not exactly a big seller. Riders 1 has actually gained a cult following in the last few years, with a lot of competitive and online mods released for the gamecube version, and the PC version just recently got an online mode. That said, it has a lot of obscure mechanics and weird shit to keep track of such that it's not the most accessible, and it's a pretty difficult game even if you do! Zero Gravity has also got a bunch of the Riders 1 mechanics modded back into it since I think they wanted to simplify the game, and it's pretty close to the perfect medium (plus, Un-Gravitify is one of the best vocal themes in the entire series. It's so good, you guys).

Are you really calling people naive for condemning vertical economic hierarchy while ALSO asking "why don't the people who built the system to benefit themselves NOT do the thing that doesn't directly immediately benefit them"? Why do you think we're NOT having debt forgiven? It's not some bug in the code, it's a natural result of the way things are built.

Bold of you to assume it would stop there.

No shame. There's a reason I bought a stupid-ass pair of pointy anime shades, and it sure as hell wasn't Gurren Lagann. ANYWAY:

I concur, but I always thought Derse Dreamers had kind of a schizophrenic pace. I like the use of Atomyk Ebonpyre, but that's just because I already like that song as a motif, in practice it sounds like the guitarist is trying to speedrun to the Endless Climb part of the track. If I wanted to hear the drum kicks I'd go for Beatup, and if I wanted to hear Endless Climb, I'd just go listen to Endless Climb or one of its many remixes.

That Stadia response might be one of the worst I've seen from a gaming industry representative...ever. It's far-and-away worse than the "pride and accomplishment" EA comment from the Battlefront 2 shitshow. Big "just call me a slur at this point" energy to the whole thing.

Most cumulative playtime overall is a potential, though. It kept the playerbase up for years before it started falling into disrepair. Fortnite is probably the only thing that has a chance of beating it, but it'll probably still need to keep going for a couple years.

Nah I feel like that would be the whole thing, not just the start. Entire story stylized like the "Worker and Parasite" bit from the Simpsons

Not really? He said the Division was mindless, but still fun. Maybe we'll never get a period as positive as the stretch between The Secret World and Rama (and TSW and Darkspore both had the death sentence undercurrent anyway), but it's not like Ross doesn't like games on the show nowadays.

I'm happy to hear Ross is planning to buckle down and go after the movie project. I've been thinking about what that thing's gonna be like for years.

Unskilled labor is a classist myth to justify poverty wages, just so we're all clear.

Played this recently, didn't do most of the extra stuff. Really enjoyed the core combat, exploration, and atmosphere. Brought across the Spanish-Catholic cultural influence well with some excellent art, music and environmental storytelling. Worldbuilding is very cryptic, limited to lavish and kind of confusing item descriptions, but with less Berserk and more Jesus than in Dark Souls. Ran into problems occasionally where my character couldn't dash or jump off of climbable walls. I was annoyed to discover you can warp between checkpoints, but only if you donate enough money to the church, and there are no overt signals to what the benefits of donation are. That would've helped the endgame search for health potions and items. I've also decided I just don't enjoy the "pick your shit up when you die or else here's more problems" mechanic in souls-style games. This one just caps your magic power more and more until you pay a toll to get it back, it feels pointless. Even in Dark Souls, it's just more busywork to get the souls back if you lose them. Still worth a recommendation just for the utter uniqueness and the incredible richness of the tone and world, it's like nothing I've played before. Backtracking is not nearly as big a problem if you just pay your communion dues and don't forget like I did.

To the first thing you asked? I have no idea, I've never watched Heroes. The second thing is a pretty resounding "no".

I'm not sure why it would, honestly.