Personally I feel that every single game that is a roguelike/lite would be a better game if it wasn't.
A lot of these types of games look interesting to me on the surface, but I want to be able to invest in a character and play through the game with that character and build it up. I don't want to have to start over again and again.
You could definitely combine the cost/time-saving aspect of random levels and spawns etc with a simple save system and have essentially the same game but not a roguelike.
I've been playing the same female Undead Priest in WoW for 12 years if that tells you anything. :D
I dunno what it is about Ron Gilbert's most recent games but he SURE DOES like to labour those 4th wall-breaking jokes to DEATH. There can be good humour in his games and plenty of good characterizations, but the 4th wall stuff just sours the whole experience so much that it ends up being really disappointing. Seems like he needs other writers to counterbalance his over-reliance on being so "whacky". Monkey Island 1 and 2 managed to thread that line well, and part of me thinks that is because he worked on it with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman as well. Made the writing a bit more varied, perhaps.
EDIT: Also, watching a bit more of this... I'm starting to think voice acting is part of the reason some of this humour doesn't land. I remember really enjoying the original Monkey Island games but felt like the voice acting of the remasters ruined the pacing and made all the lines seem so much more stiff. I think that kind of applies here too. Feels like the humour reads better than it sounds being voiced.
I don't know if you've played this game or not, but if you have not this Quick Look does give you a slightly skewed view of the writing.
For some reason the game frontloads a TON of these 4th wall jokes in the first hour or two and then there are hardly any for most of the game. I've played through all of it (took me about 16 hours) and I also thought when I started that these 4th wall jokes were gonna get old real quick and was kind of put off, but they go away and the rest of the writing I thought was great.
I played that Frog Fractions thing back when everyone was talking abotu it and I never understood it. It was just a bunch of random little flash games strung together? Everyone seemed to think it was this super deep innovative thing but I never saw any of that.
Also as someone who used to play TF2 there is probably no other internet phenomena that I absolutely HATE more than ARGs, so that doesn't really help.
Wow Jeff is really in total crotchety uninformed old man mode when it comes to the olympics.
I had it on at work every day and I enjoyed it a lot. It was great to see golf finally back in the olympics for the first time since 1904. (Yes I realize the irony in calling Jeff an old man and also being excited about watching golf on TV).
It's too bad that the Star Trek game isn't real actual Star Trek but that fake JJ Abrams garbage that will never be Star Trek no matter how much they try.
Interesting to listen to them talking about Facebook and Twitter etc, as someone who has never used any social media like that and has the domains blocked in my firewall due to them being too popular and mainstream. I always find it hilarious how people these days have completely confused things like Twitter with reality and act like it's something that should be cared about in the real world. It's completely surreal.
For me it's just non-proprietary open communications platforms like IRC and email.
As someone with over 1000 hours played in TF2 and about 20 hours so far in the Overwatch beta, I can say that I have finally found an FPS again that I can obsess over like TF2.
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