Melbu Frahma

Gotta admit, I never played the game and probably never will - I'm not a huge platformer - but I was still extremely thrilled to see the game getting produced and published for those very reasons. It was nice to see.

I recently found a copy of the Descent port for PS1, and bought it on the spot, extremely excited to get it home and try it out. I used to own the original for Windows/Dos, but I let my brother keep it when he moved out of town with his wife, and I figured this'd be an easy way to play the game, without having to get another copy of the original, a decent keyboard and a joystick that the game would support, and figure out how to get it to run in DosBox. Then I discovered that the graphics were far worse (which I should've realized, really - PS1 port), and there was no support for the DualShock sticks, which made flying really cumbersome and annoying, as well as removing the possibility of buttons for bombs and flare and banking. Overall, just a far less fluid version of the original, that I had trouble enjoying on any level really. Played through the first level, and called it quits. And it got me to wondering: what other ports have you found to be a mess? I'm not talking so-so, or "eh, should've been better I guess" here, but really, really disappointing.

That's actually an interesting point, when tied into the consumer/producer argument. It's a relatively well-known fact that movie studios love to bandwagon genres based on breakout blockbusters, and whatever else Twilight is, you have to concede the fact that its fanbase is (bafflingly) huge. Hence why we got so many similar IPs trying to start up franchises (Hunger Games, Beautiful Creatures, The Mortal Instruments all come to mind, off the top of my head), because Hollywood and the publishing industry look at Twilight's success and see easy $ signs. If you know there's a huge crowd of people - women, in this case - sitting out there, wanting to spend large amounts of money on similar things, you produce those similar things, because it makes good business sense. It's the same reason Hollywood went on a massive action film producing spree a few decades back: because people were shelling out huge amounts of money to go see ripped men blow stuff up with their fists. It made sense to continue funding that kind of film, so long as it kept making that kind of money. Taking it a step further, it's pretty easy to see video game companies, looking at the success of the Twilightesque IPs, and thinking, "Well, that's how we'll reach the untapped female demographic. We'll create games with storylines/concepts similar to the character dynamics of Twilight, because if we can even get a quarter of the women who spent money on that stuff to spend money buying our games/system to play that game, we'll make a nice, tidy, easy sum of money." I'm not saying that's what's happened in video games in the past, mind, although I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was happening. But I'm pointing out that, like Malaki-Legend was saying, these are companies who are built around providing the product they think the consumer wants. And when you look at the kind of IPs that are thought of as selling well in the female market, you can understand why they would keep producing products that cast females in that particular vein. To be perfectly honest, I'm just surprised we haven't seen a Twilight game yet. (And no, I don't count this.) Disclaimer: This is not to say that I believe all women love Twilight, or espouse its views.

Fixed. Yeah, I stopped holding my breath a while back too. I figure it'll be out when it's out.

The $60 price point's too much of a turn-off for me, especially when I have to be connected to the internet. SimCity was always the perfect vacation/grandma's house game for me - the kind of game that, if you hit a lull in a trip, or need something to tire your mind out so you can go to sleep in a strange hotel room on the road, you could boot up and play for an hour and have a great time. I might look into buying it on sale if and when they get around to creating the larger build areas they've mentioned they might make; that was my other complaint with what I've seen of it. I don't like having to rely on other cities to get important buildings.

, by Lindsey Stirling.

(Apologies in advance if there's already a thread about this; if there is, I can't find it.) Hey, so, I've been hired at a new job that I start tomorrow, and one of the perks we get is the ability to listen to Pandora radio while we work. However, I've never used it - always was more of a Last.fm kind of guy - and I'm trying to get some stations set up for my use. I was mostly wondering if any OCRemixers had stuff on there? I know Zircon has Antigravity on there, but that's all I've been able to find. So anything further would be appreciated.

Exxxxxxxcellent.

No link again?

This honestly made me chuckle out loud.

Yeah. I can count on one hand the number of LPers who haven't made me want to shoot myself after listening to the first five minutes of their first episode.

This definitely isn't my usual cup of tea. Having said that, this is bloody well amazing and everyone needs to listen to it. Right now. Yes, even you, hiding behind the ficus in the corner.

^ Pretty much. Generally speaking, I hate buying games sight unseen - I've gotten shafted with one too many shoddy, shoddy games. So usually, I wait for them to be out for a week, and then look at someone's Let's Play and watch the first couple episodes - not far enough to really spoil anything, but far enough to get a feel for the game and whether or not it'd interest me. Then there's #2 and #3 (which are the same in my book), and tbh, there's more to it than just that for me. Not only does the player have to be interesting (and by interesting, make me laugh), but the game has to interest me too. I don't really watch these types much anymore, but when I was in college, up after midnight with nothing on tv to watch and nowhere to go, but unable to sleep, I'd go watch an episode of Jesse Cox failing horribly at something, and get a few laughs out of it. Free amusement, and I'd get to learn more about a game I probably would've never got around to playing myself that had interested me. About the only other reason I watch an LP, and this is REALLY rare, is if I'm having trouble with some aspect of a game and there's a dearth of ancilliary information in textual form. I think I've only done this two or three times, total, in my life - in fact, the only time I can think of off the top of my head was Aquaria. I couldn't figure out how to get the whale's mouth to open for the life of me, and there wasn't anything I could find to read on the topic, so I looked at an LP.

Hey, so, I was wondering if I could be whitelisted. MelbuFrahma6. I promise I won't blow anyone's stuff up.

^ Which, speaking of, I guess I should get around to be asking to be whitelisted there. Beyond that, I do go on westeroscraft from time to time to explore, but that's because I'm a huge Game of Thrones nerd.

Wait, that game's yours? Awesomesauce. True story, I was actually going through my Greenlight queue this morning, came across Xing, and gave it a hearty thumbs up. And I've given maybe ten thumbs up, and about 80 thumbs down, so that says something. Good luck man!

(All character names in this response are whited out to prevent spoilers.) And I can agree with it, at least in part. I mean, for crying out loud, we don't really even merge back into the meat of the King's Landing storylines until the last quarter of the book, and then we get one, maybe two chapters for each character. I wanted to see more of Jaime and Cersei than we did. I think for me, my biggest let down in the book was how... unfocused a lot of the new stuff felt. We had a LOT of new POVs, and many of them were quite interesting, but we only get two or three chapters for each. One of my greatest disappointments was that we get two or three chapters for Davos in the first third, and then nothing the rest of the book; I kept waiting for just one more chapter regarding him, even if it was a short, throwaway one, but no. Lord Jon Connington's content was particularly interesting, but again, we're left with barely anything from him. My other biggest issue was that, for some reason, Tyrion's chapters just weren't grabbing me like normal. They're typically among my favorites whenever they show up in other books, but I just wasn't getting into the first third, or the last third, of his chapters as much as I wanted to. I did love the ones where he was on the river with Griff, and Ser Jorah's prisoner, though. I dunno. The way I look at it, ADwD wasn't bad, but it doesn't necessarily succeed as a stand-alone volume in the series. It's definitely no Storm, and not quite Feast or Clash... but then, it was never intended to serve as a true stand-alone volume. It happens almost entirely simultaneously as Feast. And that's the thing - as a volume of extra material, serving as a bridge between Feast and The Winds of Winter, I think it succeeds. One last thought: I was very glad the other day to run across an article where the showrunners for the series said that after they're done with the two Storm seasons, the seasons immediately after will be a mix of Feast and Dance, being filmed as an integrated whole. And that's really how it should be - there's no real reason to film the books separately. EDIT: Agreed.

I was actually discussing that with a couple of friends who've also read them all. One of them said, for her, the reason why she enjoyed it less than the others was that it felt like very little happened, and little more got resolved, particularly with the characters across the sea. Which I don't agree with, but I can see that point of view - the first third of ADwD was basically a recap of things we already knew happened from AFfC, but from other character's POVs. Oh, btw, I don't remember if it's already been mentioned in here or not, but if you play Minecraft and love ASoIaF, you owe it to yourself to check out http://westeroscraft.com/.

I intercept your shipment partway with a ragtag band of misfit bandits and whisk it away to safety, then offer to trade it to you in exchange for $20. It turns out to be a double-cross, though, and I escape with the money. You spend five years hunting me down, only to discover I have died and had your rewards buried with me. or do what kyle said

Teaching someone how to play video games, who has absolutely no experience with them whatsoever. I love my wife, and I'm glad she's learning how so she can relate when I talk about games with her, and so she can enjoy a hobby that has given me plenty of joy, things to think about, and amazing experiences... but once I'm done with her, never again. Never, never again.

And hardingfele. Moar hardingfele.

He was in the Sonic Zone Remix challenge, maybe that's what you're thinking of. I believe he made it to the second round, if I recall correctly. Think he was in your bracket too.

Seconding this. I'd much rather see the project get released in an official capacity, with a scaled-back art section, or scaled-back whatever section is holding it back, than this. And I'm sure the majority of the project artists, if not all, probably feel the same way.

Yeah, similar here - when I first saw it, I thought it seemed rather fishy, so I refrained from d/ling anything until the artists/staff came on to show their okay for it. Didn't want to have any of it if that wasn't how the people on the project wanted their hard work to be presented. Glad I waited.