mustachio

I'm worried Vinny is going to rely on that spectating feature in GTA: Online only to find out how janky it can be first-hand. In terms of getting multiple perspectives, if he still really wants to go that way then he generally only needs two as the heists only ever really split you into two groups at any given time.

There's also the part where I think those heists are extraordinarily badly designed but that's just me (the thought of the prison finale still haunts me). Best to let them realise that on their own though.

I'm definitely on board with the idea of next year being experimental and just scrapping the group top ten in favour if everybody talking about their personal top tens in a positive collaborative way. I just don't think the highly nitpicky and effectively political moves the staff (unfortunately correctly) feel they have to do if they want to get their version of the list on this article is an especially fun experience for anybody, doubly so when people feel the need to just reiterate the same initial points over and over. Every year it's only really in the last two or three minutes that everybody puts the knives down and expresses a positive attitude towards the nominees, and it'd be really cool to see that expanded on.

We don't gotta take ol' Group List out the back of the barn and kill it, but maybe 2018 can be the year of something just a little bit different?

@humanity: The story mode in the previous games was a single player set of missions that served largely as a tutorial and the best place to get your bearings since all the monsters were scaled for a single hunter. It tended to end right around the time you'd be expected to jump into the Guild Hall, which is both the meat of the game and also the area with a multiplayer focus. They're saying the story works differently this time and that it's integrated into what we would think of as Guild missions, so it's hard to say quite how far into the progression it'll stretch, but I'd put bets on it 'ending' about halfway through the list of quests.

Beyond that though, there is a measurable form of progress to these games, the following only applies to previous titles as I'm not sure what the new structure is. Guild Quests are split into three types: Low Rank, High Rank and G-Rank. Low Rank is pretty easy and a solid multiplayer alternative to learning the ropes and getting introduced to each zone and a fair amount of monsters. High Rank gets rid of certain crutches such as always spawning at camp with a map, instead distributing the four hunters each in random zones, with the maps being located back at camp, and less overall free 'just in case you forgot to bring a cool drink on the desert map' items in the camp chests too. In other words, High Rank assumes a higher level of ingrained knowledge and methodology on the part of the player. G-Rank is where things get pretty intense, ideally tackled with a full team of four that know their weapon, know the zones and know how to work together. Each rank has their own version of every armour set, although some sets are only obtainable on higher ranks. In other words, any G-Rank armour set will completely eclipse any High Rank set - these are the largest leaps in player power in the game.

Every quest also has a star rating, with quests naturally beginning the start of a rank at 1 star and gradually increasing towards the end of the rank. Not all quests are required to progress to the next rank, something I hope they surface more in-game this time around. In other words you kind of have main quests and side quests, with the side ones often being a little harder such as "Kill These Two Monsters You've Only Ever Fought 1v1". The high star quests in G-Rank are where the 'dragon' monsters tend to exclusively be. If you wanted an equivalent of an end game boss, they pretty much fill the role with unique music, arenas and mechanics.

I think most people try to hit the end of G-Rank and then decide if they want to try other weapon types or just have it be a kind of fun co-op chillout game with friends. If the idea of making your way up the hunter ranks to fight some magic dragons does not appeal, you'll probably taper out near the end of High Rank, at which point the value proposition of Monster Hunter is considerably lower. It's really an individual thing.

I remember when I got three friends together to play Magicka. That game is fun because the more you try to work together and win, the more crazy bad stuff can end up happening, which is funny because it's unexpected. One friend learned the skill that called lightning down on a random person, instantly killing them. It was funny, but then he kept doing it, constantly, with no enemies on screen, for hours. We even switched to the Tron robes to absorb lightning but the spell still knocked us over. It killed that game harder than anything I've seen, because one guy decided sabotaging everybody else's experience was going to be his Brand. Dan is That Guy, and I'm not angry, just kinda bummed out.

Yeah, it forces you to actually monopolise on any possible advantage you can get, and really ratchets up the tension.

While I can understand a difference of opinion, your reasoning at the end there just plain ol' don't make sense. The timer doubler option is part of a series of basically mutators designed to alter the flow of the game away from how it was intended to be played. Keep in mind that the other mutators range from doubling all enemy health, to making all dark events permanent, to just straight up starting the game at one of the new faction HQ's (removing the need to gain their friendship normally) and that becomes pretty apparent pretty fast. The timer doubler honestly just seems a means to make some of those other mutators actually possible within the timer system - the description for double HP is straight-up "for longer tactical engagements", which you obviously can't have if the timer remains the same. XCOM 1 was a massive slog on harder difficulties because creeping an inch at a time was the defacto way to win, just check out Beagle's run-through of beating Legendary in XCOM 1.

Well, this is kind of a shame because by failing Portent (this mission) you're locked out of a series of DLC missions which can land you some pretty great psi-capable soldiers.

I really hope karma comes to bite Dan in the ass when Alex and Abby put him as the point-man for every subsequent mission.

@vovin: Although there was no shortage of technical gaffs (throwing a smoke grenade at a Thin Man without reading what it actually did, resulting in the Thin Man getting a buff, comes to mind) this particular mission is pretty infamous. It's a massive difficulty spike extremely early in the game and is required if you want to do a section of the DLC, and I would have been surprised if any of them would have been able to get all their soldiers out alive.

Between this series and the X-Com 2 expansion coming out in just over a week, the X-Com part of my brain feels like it's about to overload from anticipation.

@vinny I really hope you consider doing this with X-Com 2 after this 'season' is done. Despite Dan's qualms with it I can't stress enough how much it improves upon and mixes up the formula, and it looks like the expansion is going to be adding such a ludicrous amount of content that between all those new things and the existing DLC, more or less every mission is going to be at least a little bit special.

(also the timers are a really smart addition to the series and Dan doesn't like them because he wants to just do overwatch until the heat death of the universe)

(also also if it's still a sticking point, the expansion for X-Com 2 lets you activate a campaign modifier that doubles the length of all timers)

Visual context in regards to the Edinburgh bridge postcard near the end of the podcast:

What's even weirder is that the Golden Gate Bridge equivalent in the same game (seen behind the Kincaid Bridge) is a hybrid between the real deal and the Forth Road Bridge, most likely the thing a fair number of the developers had to commute over to get to Edinburgh every day.

No he is not. Go away.

@danryckert Not sure if you're planning to play this game beyond the Quick Look but these tips apply to anybody so I'll post them anyways:

1. You don't need to punch trees/rocks at the start, every spawn location is always littered with sticks and rocks so you can make/take what you need and get going as fast as possible.

2. The bow is great but nobody ever looks out for traps. There are some easily crafted ones like Punji Sticks (a stick combined with those poison containers) or a smoke bomb (the same but with a rock instead of a stick). Everybody either keeps back with a bow or charges in with melee, so if you're the guy with snare traps and blinding bombs you'll be king. Basically think Arnold in Predator.

3. The Centre Kill Switch doesn't force people to the middle of the map, you're thinking of the big poison wall that appears at the edges of the map when it hits 10 minutes remaining. The kill switch activates every poison canister simultaneously, which can sometimes actually force people away from the centre depending on where the canisters spawned. Easily mixed up.

4. The best route to victory is generally to find the nearest building, loot it as fast as possible, then grind up everything you don't want/don't have space for in those blue recycler machines. That way you can get loads of FUNC for chests or airdrops (blue chests tend to have the best stuff in the game) and you aren't leaving any goodies behind for any would-be looters.

I'm really enjoying this game so far, especially in the teams of two mode with a friend. I've had little interest in the traditional survival games popping up everywhere lately but the desperate moments you often find yourself in during The Culling combined with the quick matches has resulted in some really memorable moments for me (such as winning a game by just picking up every nearby rock and stick and chucking it at an axe-brandishing pursuer). If anybody wants to know more about it from someone with 14 hours clocked just ask.