fraser

@chillster7000: woah! man that's amazing

@chillster7000: looking at their patreon tiers, they also read out the $25 subscribers once a month on the core-weekly podcast, so i imagine they may have done their monthly read out of those in episode 1.

i'd guess most of those names were $25 subs?

i kinda hope they're $100 because that would be incredible!

Spelunky! When you die so often, everything is meaningless, so why get invested in anything.

Nothing more relaxing than that.

@seikenfreak: Hope you enjoy it! It can be a bit hipstery and intentionally obscure (unsurprisingly!), but I think if you can work with that it's a really great show. One of my faves - put me onto Nier and a few things in 2013 I'd never heard of before.

I'd highly recommend the Insert Credit podcast he is on with Brandon Sheffield, Frank Cifaldi, and Alex Jaffe. Mostly a tight 60 minutes, 10 questions - totally different experience to the Bombcast.

The ones without Jaffe are a bit meandering, but it's worth going through the back catalogue. They restarted the podcast last year so it's a great time to get into it!

Sorry - long (spoilery) post.

I'm one of those people who loved TLOU and thought it absolutely did not need a sequel. I'd hoped the inevitable sequel would be completely removed from Joel and Ellie because to me their arcs resolved really neatly in 1. I don't think TLOU has a "cliffhanger" ending, it's thematically pretty airtight - what happens after Joel's lie to Ellie isn't interesting, it represents a culmination of the developments throughout the prior game.

So I was real glad to see Joel die at the start - thought we'd be moving on - less glad to see him hovering over Ellie and Abby throughout the game in some form or another.

I think TLOU2 succeeds in what it wants to do, but sadly what it wants to do is not that interesting/engaging/novel - complicating the utility and morality of revenge is only interesting to a point and has been done loads better elsewhere. It's also not helped by the pacing and structure like others have said which are both maddening and confusing. Halfway through Abby's part I had to stop and figure out where I was in the timeline of flashbacks and flashforwards and plotlines running concurrent to Ellie's actions from the first half.

Definitely think it's representational politics, though flawed, are cool as heck. It's great to see so many different kinds of people in a game, a shame they're all put through the wringer though, and at times it defo feels a bit contrived.

I have to say, though, seeing how toxic the response to this game has been has made me reconsider some things. Made me like it a bit more. I can't believe the attachment people have to Joel and the sense of entitlement about their perception of his death. My favourite thing about TLOU was how it complicated player/character identification - how Joel acts in ways that I, as the player, found abhorrent. Turns out loads of people just loved cracking skulls, shooting doctors and holding up Joel as some sort of hero. In that way, the fact its pissed off so many people, I'm starting to think TLOU2 is actually doing some more interesting things than I thought - asking questions (intentionally or otherwise) about what it means to identify (or absolutely not identify) with the character you're controlling and the story being told. It might be a clunky and not hugely interesting story in its own right, but the response has been fascinating.

I also did the hold rather than mash option but one that I found invaluable was the "High Contrast Display" options (setting 1). It makes the background entirely grey (but very readable), enemies red, Ellie blue, and items yellow.

It was useful for finding where items were in any give space, from a distance, but really I just found it helped for those impossibly dark sections. I really struggled during some darker sections to see how the spaces were laid out, where the enemies were, where ammo was, and this helped so much.

Never left it on for long as the impressive visuals were one of the things that kept me playing, but it really helped for certain combat sequences/pathway hunts

Abby's arrival at GB is defo the best thing to happen to the site in years. I'd echo everyone else's comments that she's got me preferring GBE over GBW, and I'd kind of checked out of GBE after Austin left.

She is hilarious and just seems like a super nice person. Also, as others have said, her "Vinnyyyyyy" is rad.

@vierastalo: aces go places also has the best freakin' theme tune of all time.

i think 'aces go places' and F&F are my 2 favourite franchises (or maybe the lucky stars films?), and i was certainly not expecting to find both in this thread.

thank you, internet person, for making my evening

@ballsleon: I'm not sure why but I laughed so much at that final line :D

I accidentally called my guy F because I can't get used to R2 on the PS4 being the "accept" button instead of the caps button.

Made the reveal an underwhelming reminder.