SOMA EP6: Under The Sea

By Shamus Posted Friday Apr 1, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 89 comments


Link (YouTube)

I’m really curious about the Catherine Edit of SOMA. I watched a few YouTube videos. Near the end of the game you find yourself in an installation where she inhabits the PA system while you run errands. There are a few other points like the one in this episode, where Simon leaves her running while he does a fetch quest. It’s possible she’s awake for a quarter of the game’s five-hour runtime.

Below are a few more comments on surgery, continuing the discussion from the show:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “SOMA EP6: Under The Sea”

 


 

Not April Fool

By Shamus Posted Friday Apr 1, 2016

Filed under: Personal 145 comments

I’m not a fan of the “fake news” angle of the first of April, but I’m usually into the whole “do something fun and silly” idea. So it’s tradition around here that I replace the site theme with something colorful, crazy, or insane. But I’m just not feeling it today. In fact, I think I need to do some good old-fashioned complaining…

  • I’m sick with some sort of pernicious bug that makes the insides of my ears, lungs, and throat maddeningly itchy. This has destroyed my voice and put me in a bad mood.
  • The Escapist has shed all but one or two members of their staff, which included some nice colleagues. I don’t know how this will change the site, but it’s the end of an era.
  • They also discontinued my column. The economic ramifications of this are kind of alarming.
  • My stepfather is in the hospital. The ravages of age are taking their toll on him, but he should be home again in a couple of days. Fingers crossed.
  • My videogame comes out in four days, which is making me panicked.
  • Running and moderating this site has been less fun than usual, for reasons I won’t belabor.

Basically, it’s been a stupendously bad week. If I’ve been cranky or unreasonable, that’s why. If I’ve been inattentive in the comments, it’s why. If I don’t appear on the podcast or Spoiler Warning next week, that’s why.

Aside from the loss of my writing gig, all of these problems are probably temporary. In a week and a half, it’ll hopefully be sunshine and rainbows again. But in the meantime I’m not in the mood for HTML hi-jinks.

It’s not all bad. Archer Season 6 finally hit Netflix. So I’m going to have a nice tall glass of cough medicine and binge watch the whole thing twice. Be careful out there today. Beware of bullshit news.

 


 

SOMA EP5: Insatiable!

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 31, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 92 comments

Note that this season is getting kind of verbally graphic, with jokes about sex and body parts. I think it comes with the territory. Yes, we make immature jokes about robo-dicks, but those jokes stem from the ongoing mysteries of what robo-life would be like.

Anyway, it gets slightly… raunchy. I guess? Honestly, I don’t know what the standards are these days who who taught Rutskarn all those words. Adjust your viewing habits accordingly.


Link (YouTube)

To articulate the point I was making in the episode in a more coherent way:

Let’s say we’re going to build a robot to hold a digital copy of someone’s brain. Are we just copying neuron activity? Because a lot of our personality and behavior is driven by the output of the testes, ovaries, thyroid, pancreas, and other hormone factories. If we don’t include and simulate their activity, then we’ll be missing a big part of what defines the subject and shapes their personality.

For example… Continue reading ⟩⟩ “SOMA EP5: Insatiable!”

 


 

Mass Effect Retrospective 41: Cerberus Sucks

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 31, 2016

Filed under: Mass Effect 210 comments

Last time I talked about how building a massive warship in secret is an implausible idea that, at the very least, needs a thick layer of expositional excuses and lampshading.

Cerberus Building an Army

Cerberus is SO MASSIVE that Hackett thinks that even a "rogue faction" can stage a simultaneous invasion of multiple cities?
Cerberus is SO MASSIVE that Hackett thinks that even a "rogue faction" can stage a simultaneous invasion of multiple cities?

Think back to last week’s hypothetical project to build a single destroyer. Now imagine you don’t need to build one destroyer. Imagine you need to build an entire fleet of them. Also you need warships of several different classes. You also need shuttles, fighters, mechs, and ammunition. You need thousands of trained soldiers, pilots, mechanics, medics, officers. You need special custom-made body armor for all of them.

You need to feed, house, clothe, and train thousands of sailors, soldiers, officers, and military support personnel. You need cooks, plumbers, electricians, doctors, machinists, police, heavy equipment operators, and all those other people we talked about.

You’ll need literally hundreds of TIM Towns for this. Even if you steal the ships or poof them into existence using vast automated robo-factoriesBuilt by who? you still need supply lines of food, ammunition, fuel, and replacement parts to keep your forces going. And instead of moving all of those supplies over the vast empty ocean, you have to transport them from civilization to your (hopefully remote) base through many well-traveled mass effect relays.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 41: Cerberus Sucks”

 


 

SOMA EP4: Deputy Unweld

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 30, 2016

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 38 comments


Link (YouTube)

I just played through this bit of the game a couple of days ago, and I ran into the same problem I had on my first trip through the game: The normal guidance markers don’t provide enough guidance. The common thing for players is to walk toward the nearest light. But here, doing so can send you into the loop. I found I had to leave the circuit of lights and wander off into the darkness at just the right point to find the next marker on the otherwise invisible trail.

I still don’t have a clear map in my head, but from watching this episode it looks like you need to go towards a RED LIGHT, after the game has taught you that red lights = danger.

As promised, here is a link to TRAINS WITH A ZEE.

 


 

Mumblo Drama: Spoiler Warning Edition

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Mar 30, 2016

Filed under: Diecast 170 comments


EDIT: Okay. That’s enough of this. Topic closed.

For me, it's always like this.
For me, it's always like this.

Last week there was a bit of controversy on Spoiler Warning. If you don’t watch the show or don’t read the comments then you probably won’t have the context for this. Basically, Mumbles made some jokes about torturing robots, some other people objected, and then Mumbles recorded this:

During the show, when she said she was sick of the female coach character, it hit on something I’d been thinking about for weeks, which was the series of design decisions that led to this trope. So as she commented on it, I reflexively went, “Oh, here’s a segue into that thing I’ve been thinking about!” So then I tried to talk about it on the spot, and halfway into it I realized it was too big and complicated to cover on the showThis actually happens pretty often. I should rename my column, “Random Shit That Didn’t Fit on Spoiler Warning.”. I ended up turning it into my weekly column. But then that dumped even more aggro on Mumbles. (Sorry Mumbles.)

Hopefully this clears everything up and puts the controversy to rest. This is supposed to be fun.

 


 

Ruts vs. Battlespire CH3: Disco Fever

By Rutskarn Posted Wednesday Mar 30, 2016

Filed under: Lets Play 33 comments

Last week we learned something very important about the Battlespire: it’s going to kill us a lot.

Time to take inventory. Things we got:

  1. Note that doesn’t tell us anything
  2. Sigils that don’t do anything
  3. Bags that hold
    1. Bags that hold
      1. Bags that hold
        1. Bags that hold
          1. Javelins we can’t use

Things we don’t got:

  1. Pants
  2. Slacks
  3. Trousers
  4. Hose
  5. Leggings
  6. Crotchgard(tm)

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Ruts vs. Battlespire CH3: Disco Fever”