Note that in a couple of weeks, Paul is going to be away. I don’t know if I’ll get a replacement host or if I’ll skip the show. We’ll see. In the meantime, enjoy Paul getting once again angry / incredulous at a game.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #331: Dyson Sphere Program, Per Aspera, Huniepop 2”
Cal finally beats Trilla into submission and recovers the holocron. Then Cere shows up, and makes another appeal to Trilla for redemption.
Cere’s speech is actually really good, particularly the line where she says, “I know the choices I made took all of your choices away. And I have failed you, Trilla.” It’s a wonderful scene, well-written, and the actors perform the hell out of it. It’s a good line, although it trips over the fundamental problem with using torture in this game.
Trilla didn’t get a choice because she was tortured, and breaking under torture isn’t a choice. I agree. But Cere only made those choices because she was tortured. So therefore nobody made any choices and nobody in this story is at fault.
Regardless of what you think about how much responsibility a torture victim has for their own actions, the morality of this situation is inherently contradictory because both of these people are grown adults that took actions in response to torture.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 22: Darth Cameo”
Last year was not a particularly fun year. For the most part, I did not have a good time. A lot of the games I wanted to play were either disappointments, or delayed to the next year.
But I can’t claim it was all bad. I did manage to find a few titles that amused me. So here is the list of titles that kept me going…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2020: The Good Stuff”
Cal finally won a lightsaber duel against Trilla, but he managed to lose the holocron anyway. Since the holocron contains a list of a bunch of young force sensitives all over the galaxy, we can’t really let the Empire keep it. The Empire will round the kids up and stick them in the giant alignment-changing torture machine and turn them all into Sith.
Cere knows where Trilla went. There’s a secret Imperial base where they run their torture factory, and that’s where the inquisitors are based. So the only way to fix this is to assault the very heart of Sith power.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 21: The Slog”
In a normal year, I’ll play a few dozen games. The top few will make the “best of” list and the bottom few will make the “disappointment” list and everything in the middle will be forgotten. But this year is weird. If you stick the two lists together, you’ll have basically everything I played.
But before we talk about that, let’s talk about what I didn’t play.
(I only bring this stuff up because I know someone will ask “But what about Game X?”.)
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2020: The Disappointments”
At the top of the show we joked that this is the “second or third” time Paul has been on the show. I just looked it up, and we’ve done 130+ episodes together. Time flies.
Link (YouTube) |
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #330: Big Tech Rants, Mailbag”
The year is 1982 and I’m stuck in the middle of a long, long school day. I’m 11 years old. I’m in a Special Ed classroom, waiting to go back to my regular classroom. I have ten minutes to go.
I start staring at the large clock over the door, pretending I can make it move faster. I focus on it, staring at the center of the clock until the edges of my vision go blurry. Move. Move faster! Get me out of here!
It’s a pointless gesture, of course. Aside from the fact that I can’t control time, it’s not like there’s anything better waiting for me in the other classroom. I’m going to watch the clock here, then watch the clock there, then watch the clock in the lunchroom, then back in this room again, and so on. The end of the day is too far off to get excited about, so I just have to look forward to the next interval of structured tedium.
I keep staring. Move. Move faster!
Suddenly the minute hand begins visibly moving. I blink, thinking that all of my staring has created a weird optical illusion. Clocks can play funny tricks on your eyes – particularly when you’re staring at them – and I figure I’ve stumbled into some sort of perceptual weirdness. I rub my eyes, look back, and the minute hand is still gliding along like a second hand. It passes the top of the hour. According to the clock, it’s past time to leave. I look around nervously. Nobody else is leaving. The rest of the world seems to be moving normally.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Time Keeps on Slippin’”
Here are 6 reasons why I forbid political discussions on this site. #4 will amaze you. Or not.
A music lesson for people who know nothing about music, from someone who barely knows anything about music.
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Since we're rebooting everything, MASH will probably come up eventually. Here are some casting suggestions.
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2014.
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
Small changes to the animations can have a huge impact on how the audience interprets a scene.
An ongoing series where I work on making a 2D action game from scratch.
Fidget spinners are ruining education! We need to... oh, never mind the fad is over. This is not the first time we've had a dumb moral panic.
T w e n t y S i d e d
