{"id":20362,"date":"2013-07-16T17:14:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T22:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=20362"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:38:05","slug":"diecast-21-steam-sale-mortal-kombat-deus-ex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=20362","title":{"rendered":"Diecast #21: Steam Sale, Mortal Kombat, Deus Ex"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t like how Josh and Rutskarn have been tarnishing the show with their lack of professionalism. So this week I reclaimed the throne and hope to return the show to its former glory as a bastion of efficiency and order.<\/p>\n<p><!--remove original podcast link<audio controls height='50' width='300'><source src='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast21.mp3' type='audio\/mpeg' autoplay='false' autostart='false'><source src='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast21.ogg' type='audio\/ogg' autoplay='false' autostart='false'><embed height='50' width='300' src='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast21.mp3' autoplay='false' autostart='false'><\/audio><br \/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast21.mp3'>Direct download<\/a> (MP3)<\/small><br \/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast21.ogg'>Direct download<\/a> (ogg Vorbis)<\/small><br \/><small><a href='http:\/\/mbafford-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/diecast.xml'>Podcast RSS feed.<\/a><\/small><br \/>--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/embed\/ztggEajB#FwKNuBHE5WTiyBVANGbjQC_jtZ8ZLlAHFzhmXVdgClA!1v1c\" width=\"711\" height=\"144\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/ztggEajB#FwKNuBHE5WTiyBVANGbjQC_jtZ8ZLlAHFzhmXVdgClA\">Download MP3 File<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/L85ACQSJ#yuu8xItf7C19VpbBrww6UO4NfwMiWq5CZ6K4a4XOk_I\">Download Ogg Vorbis File<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Chris, Potato Chips<\/p>\n<p>Show notes:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>00:30<\/strong> Nom nom nom. We fail to introduce ourselves.<\/p>\n<p><strong>01:30<\/strong> What&#8217;s everyone Playing?<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 50px; margin-right: 50px;\">\n<p>Josh is playing Borderlands 2 and <a href=\"http:\/\/store.steampowered.com\/app\/235580?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_term=civilization%20v&amp;utm_campaign=Brand$Civilization%20V\">Civilization V: Brave New World<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Rutskarn is playing <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Call_of_Juarez:_Gunslinger\">Call of Juarez: Gunslinger<\/a>. Here is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=lzZHfwX9e1s#at=455\">Extra Credits episode about Call of Juarez: The Cartel<\/a> that we mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>Chris is playing <a href=\"http:\/\/kairo.lockeddoorpuzzle.com\/\">kairo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I am playing Borderlands 2. I&#8217;m also playing <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Papo_%26_Yo\">Papo &amp; Yo<\/a>, and for reference <a href=\"?p=12958\">here is a post where I talk about how I was initially afraid of my stepfather<\/a>. I&#8217;ve also been playing <em>Scribblenauts<\/em> and <em>Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>14:00<\/strong> The Great Steam Salepocalypse of world-ending savings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>28:45<\/strong> An unplanned aside on Dark Souls, punishing games, smashing keyboards, and dealing with frustration.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 50px; margin-right: 50px;\">\n<p>For the record, the thing I hate is punishing games, not hard ones. Hotline Miami was sometimes really brutally hard, but when you died you just hit spacebar and tried again. You might die 15 times trying to overcome a challenge, but the challenge is only thirty seconds long. You never lose more than thirty seconds of progress, and you&#8217;re usually right back where you left off within a few seconds. This is an extreme contrast to a game like Dark Souls where dying at a boss means you have to run down some corridors, fight mooks, do a challenge, open a thing, traverse another corridor, fight more mooks, gather some stuff, and THEN try the boss again.<\/p>\n<p>When people talk about &#8220;hard games&#8221; they usually blur these two concepts together, but it&#8217;s really important to differentiate between the two. I&#8217;d rather play a very hard game with a low retry cost than play a piss-easy game that has a huge retry cost. And in the case of Dark Souls where you have both high difficulty AND high penalties for failure? That&#8217;s not a game for me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>37:30<\/strong> MORTAAAAL KOMBAAAAAAAAAAT<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 50px; margin-right: 50px;\">\n<p>This was supposed to be a quick five-minute discussion of the game, and I think it ended up being the longest segment of the show. Oops. Even worse: I added Mortal Kombat to our agenda specifically so we could discuss the shockingly long and complicated story mode &#8211; which is unlike the story mode of other fighting games &#8211; and we never got around to talking about that. Instead we blew a huge chunk of time talking about the female costumes.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember who, but at one point someone said to me on Twitter: &#8220;Lowbrow has a right to exist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I agree with this, and I never want to fall into the habit of sneering at things for not being high art. I think there&#8217;s a place for stuff that&#8217;s pulpy, broad, or aiming for the lowest common denominator. I&#8217;m not going to condemn MK for going for cheap, fan-service-y sex appeal and ridiculous female costumes. I will condemn it for doing it in the most profoundly uninteresting and single-minded way.<\/p>\n<p>I tried to frame my criticism of this game not in terms of sneering at the game for being lowbrow, but for its failures to be lowbrow in an interesting way. I guess I&#8217;ll see how well I did in the comments.<\/p>\n<p>And again, this segment wasn&#8217;t supposed to go on for so long.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>1:02:00<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/news\/view\/125901-Deus-Ex-The-Fall-Disables-Weapons-on-Jailbroken-Devices?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=share&amp;utm_campaign=all\">Deus Ex: The Fall Disables Weapons on Jailbroken Devices<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t like how Josh and Rutskarn have been tarnishing the show with their lack of professionalism. So this week I reclaimed the throne and hope to return the show to its former glory as a bastion of efficiency and order. Download MP3 File Download Ogg Vorbis File Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Chris, Potato Chips [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287],"tags":[76,301,24],"class_list":["post-20362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diecast-2","tag-deus-ex","tag-mortal-kombat","tag-steam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20362"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59401,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20362\/revisions\/59401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}