Jolt Country

Not quite sure how I'm going to attack this yet, I just wanted to make sure there was a placeholder thread for when I am.

Watch this space! I demand that Jonsey finish Braid, and here, over the coming weeks/months/finish the goddamn thing, we'll watch my demands get met!

happy birthday robb!

So far, we're scheduled for Friday Night.

This is very exciting!

Cuz you guys, once he's done, we will discuss it, and likely disagree strongly about it, and then there will be a flame war and then JC BBS WILL ONCE AGAIN RISE FROM THE ASHES OF ITSELF!!

It's gonna be a bloodbath. We're doing this for the amusement and entertainment of everyone else. I'd like that noted on the official record.

Flame wars do not make one great.

What the fuck did I sign up for? Braid? We're playing Braid Friday?

14 Hours To Braid Friday!

Then I have to cram as much living as I can in the next 14 hours.

OK, here's the deal. I took a nap when I got home from work. I went out last night, you unfeeling monsters, and I needed to catch up on a little sleep.

I was going to have a pie and finish Braid, but I had saag paneer for lunch. I'm not saying I overate or whatever, but I think the recipe was to drop spinach and cheese into a giant sarlaac of butter, and serve.

I have one monitor that is in HD. I use it to compute with, and I use it to play 360 games with. The if MUD was very funny tonight and people were talking about Braid! So I haven't started Braid yet. YET. The keyword here is "yet."

You could search AOL with that keyword, my friends.

So this is still pending.

On the other hand, Oo-Topos hasn't worked on a standard PC in forty years, so I'm still miles ahead of the other thread.

"Fickle Companion" was simply too difficult for me. I don't understand what I should do, and it's exactly why I stopped playing the game in the first place. I guess I'll try to find a walkthrough, but if I can't figure out something on World 4, it doesn't leave me with much hope that I'll be able to solve 5 and 6.

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell everyone who has ever uploaded a video of Braid to Youtube that they are garbage human beings, unfit to share a planet with me. EDIT YOUR VIDEOS, CRETINS. Yes, it is a difficult game. Bring the fucking video into Microsoft Movie Maker and remove the four minutes of you failing to do it right before you finally pull the right move off.

Nobody who I am upset with will ever read this, but that's not going to stop me from hitting "submit."

I'll allow you to use walkthroughs except for the very last level.

Meanwhile, Worm and you can suck each other off about Fickle Companion, since he also whined to me about that one.

(He didn't find it difficult, of course. According to Worm, Braid is the easiest game ever made and he breezed through as if he had a direct link into Blow's mind. He just complained that the mechanic that level uses is different from all the other levels.)

Well, here's the thing. I was on the right track for the second to last puzzle piece and could have figured out the last one.

You win. Jon Braid wins. All of you win. Are you happy?

And it looks amazing in HD.

So I'm going to keep playing.

All right, I finished world 4.

Would it kill the people who make these fucking things to say, occasionally, "YOUR GAME HAS BEEN SAVED"? The Xbox itself will put up a message like, "Are you sure you want to finish you will lose your progress!!!! And 99% of games are made by fucking mouth breathers who don't believe in save-anywhere, so I'm filled with paranoia. Yes, it's unfortunate that a game doing things right when it comes to saving has to account for the pieces of shit in the game industry that don't, but still, there's no negative to telling me it saved my progress.

pinback wrote:I'll allow you to use walkthroughs except for the very last level.

Meanwhile, Worm and you can suck each other off about Fickle Companion, since he also whined to me about that one.

(He didn't find it difficult, of course. According to Worm, Braid is the easiest game ever made and he breezed through as if he had a direct link into Blow's mind. He just complained that the mechanic that level uses is different from all the other levels.)

I finished the game in a few hours, got stuck on fickle companion and it popped in my head a little later. I forgot what my complaint was about the fickle companion, lemme youtube this shit.

Oh yeah it was a dumb gimmick. The game just had a weird point where it can't decide if it wants to be about critical thought or execution, so it settles for some weird mish-mash of the two with lots of repetition to get the solution for a puzzle to properly work. Mainly I'm thinking about toward the end with the ring.

Also, Pinner, I apologize for being right when I said DROD deserved every bit of acclaim Braid got. Braid was an easy ass puzzle game, the solutions are pretty self revealing. The only issue is implementing those solutions because a lot of the mechanics you have to work with are poor. Especially the end level which was ass, the ending kind of made up for it though.

EDIT: I'm trying to see if Braid can tell me how long I spent playing it. I think after fickle companion I went through all the puzzles in one shot. It's kind of similar to Machinarium in that it's a cute good looking game that leans on 'retro' as an excuse to simply not be better.

Robb is a maggot.

Worm is a maggot.

This is just a HINT of the great content you're about to enjoy once Robb walkthroughs his way to the end of the game and we can start discussing the game proper.

I'd appreciate it if Worm stayed out of it, though, because "this was just way too easy" is not a complaint anybody but him had about the game. I understand he likes the DROD and thinks that that DALEKS 3K bore-fest is the height of gaming excellence, but in any case nothing he says applies here.

FINISH THE FUCKING GAME.

Then it's on. But seeing as how you've only whined your way past WORLD 4 at this point, I guess it'll be a while.

I would also like to demand the following.

When a game is LOADING can it please say "LOADING. . . " and have the dots slowly appear on the screen.

When a game is READING FROM RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY can it please say "ACCESSING RAM. . ." and have the dots slowly appear on the screen.

When a game MAKES A CALL TO INT 92h can it please sa--

Okay, but here is an actual complaint:

To switch between my PC and 360, I have to unplug the HDMI cord from one and place it into the other. I frequently turn my 360 off in frustration when a level in Braid frustrates me. I then go back to the PC, stew a bit... turn the 360 on and, after giving it some time to boot, plug the HDMI cord back into it.

Okay.

Here's what I want you to note. As an objection.

The. 360. Won't. Boot. Until. It. Gets. A. Valid. Video. Output. Feed.

The. 360. Won't. Boot. Until. It. Gets. A. Valid. Video. Output. Feed.

So rather than turn the 360 on, give it a few minutes, and then move the cord over when it's finished fucking around... it sits there and basically demands I fucking watch the boot-up process. It literally prefers to waste my time than boot like every other computer I've ever used in my life.

pinback wrote:I'd appreciate it if Worm stayed out of it, though, because "this was just way too easy" is not a complaint anybody but him had about the game.

It's not my only or even my major complaint.

DROD is the height of puzzle excellence. Braid is like I dunno, might as well have been a flash game? I mean you look at that game where you're the mountain bike who needs to get the apple, and you see a depth of puzzles and ranges of difficulty which is just not present in Braid. Because Braid despite a few coy goofy solutions, was made to be solved by any idiot, which simply isn't the fucking hallmark of a good puzzle game.

There was one ah-hah moment for me, and the rest were kind of I dunno, just immediately apparent. The end was cool, but the game was more an exercise of the importance of IMPLYING importance rather than actually being important. Much like Steve Jobs in his queer little black suits.

Worm wrote:Braid despite a few coy goofy solutions, was made to be solved by any idiot

Dude, Jonsey's standing RIGHT HERE!!