Oh look,

. It's cock rock influenced.

It's been out for months and sucks pretty much 100%.

The Millennium Bug should look fucking terrifying but not actually do anything.

My productivity for the day has probably been irretrievably derailed by Hyperbole and a Half.

There is not antivirus in existence that can protect your machine from someone, say, filling the connector with treacle. Or glue.

Man, I really need to get a hold of that. I love Zack Parsons.

Having finally got around to finishing For Who The Bell Tolls, I am now 100% certain in my conviction that Hemingway, for such an extremely clever fellow and artful wordsmith, does not understand or even really like women at all.

Yeah, this seems like a wonderful idea, but kind of completely ignores the People Are Dicks effect. It's a shame, because the concept is totally beautiful.

Man, it was really jarring to go straight from this thread to picking up my copy of A Moveable Feast and reading "Much later, in the time after Zelda had what was then called a nervous breakdown...".

So if Zelda is Zelda, then Link must be Scott, but who is Hemingway?  Gannondorf?  I'm imagining Gannondorf walking with Link out of a bathroom telling him don't worry, your penis isn't small.

"A man can be destroyed but not defeated" - from The Old Man and the Sea

I'm thinking that perhaps, rather than using the 3D to enhance the effect of games that are already 3D (FPSs and racing games, for instance), it'd be interesting to use it to add a 3D effect to traditionally 2D games.

I'm too hungover to explain this idea properly, but think about how cool (for an extremely specific, game-atmosphere-enhancing example) Minish Cap would be if playing it was like peering into a little box where little dudes are moving around.

A fast, high-damage melee enemy can be exceptionally dangerous, though - they're larger than projectiles, which makes them harder to dodge in tight spaces, and they can track the player, which I'm assuming most projectile attacks won't.

Looking through that list of exotic bugs you linked me, I was struck be an idea for a high-level enemy, but I don't know how easy it'd be to code its behaviour. How would you feel about including a Heisenbug, possibly - due to how much of a pain in the arse it'd likely to be for the player - as a miniboss? It'd keep a consistent graphical appearance, but would switch between other enemies' behaviours as you attacked it.

I played the 3DS demos a bit at GDC yesterday and today. The 3D effect is fine at about 15-25% for me, more than that is overkill and actually seems to make the "sweet spot" of vision smaller. Didn't see anything otherwise very different about the demos, from a technical perspective - they could have been done on the DSi, to my eyes. Not really excited about it like I was with, say, the Wii.

Which games/demos did you have the chance to sample?

I actually found my (traditional media) life-drawing skills improved immensely once I got used to using a tablet; I'm attributing this to getting accustomed to not looking at my hand so much and paying more attention to the actual drawing, if that makes sense.

Majora's Mask, lest we forget, also required an Expansion Pak to cope with all the extra shit happening on screen. I think it's a marvel.

Basically every time Nintendo releases a Zelda game where Link doesn't look at least fifteen, the fanbase throws their toys out of their collective prams. Target demographics are fickle beasts.

I've got some more ideas for the Overflow but I'm keener to get these designs out the door before I start refining anything. On which note, here's what I got for SegFault:



Rendering quality is all over the place (which is to say, "complete shit on the arms and tail"), but I'm pretty goddamn pleased with that design, I have to say. The railgun arm thing needs work, though.

When I think of Wind Waker, all I can think of is "that Zelda game with the celshading graphics" because almost nothing else about it is memorable. I can't even recall a single dungeon puzzle or boss fight, or most NPCs for that matter. Also, sailing is really, really tedious.

I don't remember much about it either, but honestly I don't remember a lot about a lot of stuff I only played/read/watched/whatever once 8 years ago.

Seriously? That wicked incarnation of Gohma you had to bring the cave roof down on? Helmaroc chasing you up the spiral staircase inside the Forsaken Fortress whilst it crumbles around you? The terrifying sandworm boss? Nothing?

Just use an incredibly loud high-frequency noise.

Make your own!

1. Get some powdered sugar.

2. Mix in some powdered ascorbic acid.

3. Mix in some powdered soap.

4. Form into little balls.

5. Holy fuck why are these so delicious

6. Vomit suds

----

I have discovered that substituting the cheese sauce in lasagna with the ricotta (which you can't remember buying, but is about to go off, so what the hell) makes something amazing. You've gotta bake it longer than usual or it comes out all sloppy, but if you can get it right it is spectacular.

[manly manly men]

O< "Wahhhh Wind Waker looks all kiddy and cutesy BOOOOO (no matter that it was fucking beautiful and an extremely solid and involving game, it's too colourful for us manly manly men)."

"OK here is a new one that looks like every other video game, ever. Look, he's all serious-looking now! And he turns into a badass wolf and shit! It's, like, dark! You kids like Spawn still right." >O

O< "BAWWWWWW this is BOOOORRRRIIIING and not as innovative or fun as Wind Waker which we all now love but not as much as OoT obvs."

"JESUS FINE here's a game that basically looks exactly like OoT with a shinier engine, also we've kept the striking system from TP because that actually ruled, ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY." >O

Don't get me wrong, I fucking love me some Zelda; I've probably played out OoT for now (I might give it another run-through in...say, a year), and Wind Waker, much as I adore the art style, does have a lot of sailing around in some nothingmuch for quite a lot of the game, and much as I bag on Twilight Princess' samey design it's a very robust entry in the franchise. They are uniformly excellent games, and I'm giddy with anticipation for this new'n, after having most of my concerns (spawned by the lackluster early trailers) pretty roundly trounced by the new trailers (which have me mega excited).

But fuck me I wish some of the fans would quiet down a bit.

IN OTHER NEWS: All the Aliens films are the same movie.

A bit of a simplification. But I do see your point.

Ripley realizes that something is wrong, no one listens to her, the established authority attempts to "acquire" the Alien, the Alien eats someone, and they spend the rest of the movie trying to get rid of the Alien.

They differ in the fine details but yeah...every Alien movie. I'm really hoping they manage to do something different with the new film they're working on. No one needs to see the same bloody story over and over again.

Actually, I was just using regular ol' sarcasm. The four movies differ immensely; one's a horror movie, one's a war movie, one's a kind of shit thriller, one's a really shit thriller. (And the new one doesn't have Ripley in it at all (it's set before she's even born), which is something different, but those films are not about the gribbly dribblers to me; they're about her.)

My point was that the Mario (and Zelda) franchises get a lot of undeserved shit for being "the same game", which is patently fucking ridiculous if you've actually played any of them. They've got the same dude in them, and broadly similar mechanics (there are platforms! Mario jumps on bad guys! This is bad for the bad guys, and they dislike it!). Discounting the original Japanese SMB2 that was released as The Lost Levels over here, every Mario title has been a distinct, clearly-delineated entity when compared to its predecessor.

ANYWAY. As someone who hasn't owned a handheld console since, shit, probably the Game Gear, I'm severely tempted to pick one of these up once the price drops a bit. 3D Mario Kart could be bunches of fun, and that over-the-shoulder view for SSFIV is the most deliciously bonkers application of the tech I've heard of. It'll doubtless be a little while before developers start using the capabilities of the hardware in less gimmicky ways and start exploring the potential gameplay applications of the tech, but no console has or will ever launch with the strongest games it'll ever have, you know?

I want to get a bunch of concepting done tonight, so I've queued up a shitload of Bong-Ra, Zombieflesheater, Venetian Snares, Shitmat, Stivs...basically as much hideous breakcore as I can summon. It's amazing how much you can achieve listening to music it's impossible to relax to.

Oh, and some Torche, for when I want to not want to die.

Is there going to be a mario game? Because I can't fucking get enough of playing the same game for 30 years
I hope they have a mario game, and a zelda.

Dude, same protagonist =/= same game. If you think Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Galaxy are the same game, you might be an idiot.

IN OTHER NEWS: All the Aliens films are the same movie.