Extra Credits

@Evi I Paladin

Extra Credits pretty much never does that sort of thing.

True, but borderlands also does a random chance mechanic, and it's... well, borderlands.

I think the mechanic I like most is the Team Fortress 2 mechanic. All weapons are useable as soon as you unlock them, and all of them do something OBVIOUSLY different. So whenever I unlock something new, I'm filled with "OH BOY WHAT DOES THIS ONE DO" and I try it out.

Go play Kentucky Route Zero. Now.

This episode is a hit or miss depending on your views of how competitive multiplayer works.

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Well, it has applications to single player too- that's pretty much what the FOO section started talking about and it's something I'd noted about the latest Legend Of Zelda game I had been playing. The game wants you to get good at using the extra capacities of the wii motion plus and all the extra sword strokes that it can let you perform. Now I'd gotten some way with just circle slash and wild arm flailing and at some point that wasn't good enough but the game was very good at making it easy to get out of that trap and at some point I actually thought "This is where in other games, (after just using this simple tactic because I only want to have fun, even though the game hint or tells about other complex features) I find myself getting screwed over because i didn't "work" at being good at what the developers wanted me to work at".

I find it happens in RPG's (both video game and tabletop actually) where you have all this compex features developed but I just want to set things on fire and nobody makes it fun to get out of that. Some strategy games- Medieval: Total War 2 was not very good at getting me to try different factions because I started with England, I got used to using small forces of heavy cavalry to burst through the flanks and then nothing else was even that fun. But then a very different sort of strategy game Europa Universalis- it's very complicated really but you can start off and try a country and not know about all the different levers and their effects but then you learn about a few of them and suddenly that big problem that was stopping you goes away and then you get bigger goals and you have to deal with more complicated points and so on.

I didn't mention single player for that reason and I really don't think people can debate otherwise because it happens a lot in single player games.

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I remember how TWEWY had a way to make things really easy but also made it clear how much fun playing the game harder could be. "Pretty pins! Must use them!" "The Partner lets out a cool attack that you can get if you navigate their combo map? Let's take this off auto". "Those clothes are expensive... I could get cool stuff quick if I drop my level and chain."

I'd say the icicle pin would probably qualify as a FOOS though, considering it's got pretty high attack and has synergy with the early game's brand charts and Shiki's threads.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

I remember getting good with that game. Originally I was like "There's a button to shut off some of your pins? Who would ever use that?" and then I'm like "I'm getting SUCH SICK COMBOS by switching between my pins by shutting some of them off like that!"

Bleye knows Sabers.

Wait what? There's a button to do that and it adds benefits? I've been playing the game for years and never knew that.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

The L button. Or was it the R button? Haven't played the game in a long time.

You can customize your pin sets so only some of them activate while you have the button held down. It lets you use Pins with similar activations simultaneously.

I thought it was useless at first but really got into the groove with it after awhile, like I said.

Bleye knows Sabers.

That's what you mean. Ok. I barely used that feature but I should have.

The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.

This first part in a series, Religion in Games. They spend the first minute and 30 seconds explaining how they plan to approach this.

This whole episode was mostly explanations and seemed to set up the following episodes.

I'm not particularly spiritual, so this series probably won't be too relevant/interesting to me.

Huh. Yet anoether eye-opener on this one. It's true that, despite all their failings, games as a whole have been showing the societal effects of religion on people pretty evenly. Hey, we're doin' something right!

Bleye knows Sabers.

Fallout New Vegas would have been great thing to mention when it comes to the mechanics of religion. Honest Hearts.

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Part 2 of Religion. is up.

Panhandling sign glued to hands. Need $5 for solvent.

Well that was...underwhelming. It didn't feel like they talked specifics, they never gave examples and talked in broad terms. Were they afraid of offending somebody?

METAL GEAR!?

The topic was gonna offend people anyways....just like politics

youtube.com/Fire Trainer 92

Yeah so why then where they afraid of offending people? Or is there something I'm not seeing? Some other reason they would speak so broadly?

METAL GEAR!?

They really didn't really didn't find any games that explored faith so there really wasn't much to talk about.

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian

Really?

I think the concern was less not trying to offend people and more not trying to incite a flame war in the comments section. Unfortunately, I'd imagine that such an effort is fruitless since many religious and atheist-types tend to clash at every opportunity.

Hyperforce Go! http://vmkid.me/

But they did state that they couldn't find many video games that explicitly deals with faith at the beginning of Part One, if I recall correctly.

New episode.

Seems everyone else was talking about the last one more than us.

Warning: Math.

edited 9th Jan '13 5:23:52 AM by ShirowShirow

Bleye knows Sabers.

I'm hoping for more episodes like this. That was interesting.

edited 9th Jan '13 5:28:39 AM by Alucard

After taking a class in philosophy hearing Decartes and Kant made me smile lol.

Honestly they really shouldn't have responded. Regardless if they were right or wrong, the debate was gonna turn into the same religion vs science debate that never gets anywhere...

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I think they missed the part where nobody in the comments section wanted to take their definition of faith on . . . well, faith. EC were using "faith" as the basis for the axiom mingled with hope, which is not a bad way to approach the concept.*

But to many PA subscribers and a large portion of the internet community in general, faith is a dirty word used by those eeeevil religious types who want to burn down all the science labs and return everyone to the stone age.

And life will be much better once everyone abandons religion and lives in an anarcho-athiest commune like Star Trek, without anyone so much as providing a reason why they believe the future will hold an anarcho-athiest commune as the perfect society, or why everyone will agree on this course or what meaning it gives to people's lives, other than they're absolutely positive science will eventually lead us there.

No, not everyone believes in the future anarcho-athiest commune, but almost anyone's perceptions of the future are based in some kind of hope and/or fatalism, science-y or not. I made a big sweeping generalization for absurdity's sake and EC probably avoided such a thing to not lump anyone into a strawman category, but it's sort of hard to express that without knowing the individual beliefs of each individual who might take umbrage, and why THEY know that their version of the future/metaphysics is fact and not faith.

edited 10th Jan '13 12:17:52 AM by RickGriffin

That's exactly why I never thought it would go over well in the comments.

youtube.com/Fire Trainer 92