T w e n t y S i d e d

This is the final segment of the show we did for new year. Tharsis bugs me in the same way that Xcom-2Or X-Com 2, or Xcom 2-, or XCOM2, or whatever the stupid name is that I’m sick of looking up every time I have to type it. does. A game with this much deliberately random noise in the outcomes is completely uninteresting to me. “Oh. A low number. I lose. Oh! A HIGH number! Lucky me. I get to not lose this turn.” Random number generators are not interesting adversaries. Losing to them is annoying, and winning feels meaningless. Yuck.

Up tomorrow: The 7th anniversary of the show. I can’t tell you what game we’re playing, but I can promise it will focus on us driving into poles over and over again.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

We really need to stream more often. We do it so rarely that we all forget the pitfalls and have to re-learn the whole thing again. It doesn’t help that each game has its own unique way that it thwarts streaming. The resolution is messed up. The in-game framerate is garbage for no reason. The in-game framerate is fine but the stream shows it as terrible. There’s no audio from the game. It streams a blank screen. It only streams a portion of the screen. There are just too many ways that something can go wrong.

I suppose part of the problem is that every game is a special snowflake with its own ideas on how rendering should work. Welcome to PC gaming, where the rules are made up and the specs don’t matter.

Today’s mishap is that the audio levels are out of balance so that Jarenth and I are very quiet.

It’s a shame. This was my favorite part of the stream. This is a really fun game to watch.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I know we’re nearly done with Until Dawn. But we decided to take a break from that because this week marks the 7th anniversary of Spoiler Warning. We recorded something special to mark the occasion. That will go up this Friday. In the meantime here is the first part of our 2017 new year stream:

And once again we run into the drawback of VR, which is that it’s very hard to share. For many people this is the only way they’ll ever get to see these games – including some great Portal content – but we had to switch to something else because too many viewers were finding it uncomfortable to watch.

“Hey. VR is AMAZING. You seriously need to check it out.”

I tried watching someone play a VR game and it’s awful. It’s like watching a half hour of shaky cam footage. Actually, I guess it’s not like that. It is that.

“Yeah, it’s hard to watch someone else play. But trust me, it doesn’t feel like that when you’re the one playing. When you’ve got the headset on, it’s nauseating in a totally different way.”

Is this a game about playing fetch? Are you kidding me? Like, fetch with a dog? How is that a videogame?

“I admit it looks boring when you’re just watching. And it’s true that normally first-person fetch wouldn’t be very interesting. But trust me, VR is incredible. You have to experience it yourself to understand why it feels so amazing.”

If you say so. I guess I could give it a try and see if… EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS? A VR headset costs as much as TWO consoles? That’s madness.

“I know it’s expensive now. But we’re still in the early adopter phase, so prices are naturally pretty high. Don’t worry, the prices will probably come down once there’s a demand for the headsets. We just need to wait for some good games to come out.”

A VR headset costs as much as two consoles and yet has less good games than the Wii-U, which was already a failure because of lack of titles?

“I know it’s overpriced, hard to watch, with very few worthwhile titles, but trust me. As long as you’re not one of the unlucky majority that gets VR sickness, you’ll have a mind-blowing experience.”

Technically our VR apologist is right, but this is still a massive barrier to entry. Having tried VR myself, I really want to see it succeed. But this is a huge hill to climb. I’m not convinced it’s possible.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.