saladbone

Man... I dumped so many hours into this fucking thing.

For some reason I still have fond memories of the worlds and nightmarish looking characters despite awful platforming sections and some grade A wackadoo voice acting

It was bonkers and I was 9, I have no regrets.

An hour before beating the game, "Onlyyy Youuuuuuuu" began playing over a stereo sitting atop a weapons shop table. At the time I was just chilling with friendly npcs and immediately laughed to myself and wondered why I wasn't sent hurtling into a bloodthirsty rage. Knowing now how both endings played out, you'd think the devs would've scrubbed that track from the in-world radio stations since your programming seems to be so crucial to the story.

I whacked a nearby npc with a shovel anyway for funsies. OH GOD, WAIT JACOB WAS RIGHT

@imhungry:

Yea I could see that too. He does seem genuinely enthusiastic about his work on Advanced Warfare from this interview and others. And seeing how he's an executive producer for H.O.C. it makes sense that he'd be excited to pepper in video games when possible.

@sammo21 The Gear VR is featured in the latest season of the show

@captain_insano: Oh man I don't know. "Doug being weird" describes a large chunk of what I've enjoyed about this series.

@captain_insano: Haha just went in and fixed it. Hopefully it refreshes properly on the main site. Thanks for letting me know!

Hey there!

I'm running the website in a Chrome window and the usual big front page story display isn't appearing. Simpy just a list of all the videos and features but no big window of the most recent post from the site. Is this on purpose? Just a heads up!

I could definitely get a sense he was going for the "dig yourself into a hole only to crawl your way out" style again, I just didn't think the material was as divisive or interesting as in previous specials.

Definitely agree here, it seemed as though he and the audience were on a different wavelength. They seemed to lie in waiting for a punch line and not listen to what he was getting at with his rant. Then when his rant would sort of fizzle out because the audience wouldnt give him anything to play with, you'd just get an awkward half-hearted applause break. On previous specials you would get an obvious recoiling from the audience, Burr would acknowledge it and feed off of it which would only make the payoff later more cathartic and hilarious. This time it was like that give and take wasn't there.

And to @liquiddragon's point that he needs a new well I tend to agree. But it could also be the issue that Louie was facing when you crank out a special every year. Burr just had a baby and that coupled with his animated show most likely didn't have the time to hone new material on the road. Hopefully he takes a couple years between this and his next one.

My only beef with BL2 is that I couldn't find a character class I really enjoyed in the vanilla game to the level I could in the first game (until the addition of the mechromancer class). That, and it failed to produce anything close to a satisfying final boss fight in the same way that the first game fell short. But in relation to the story/writing/humor, etc: Considering I'm there with 3 friends just trying to have a wacky fun time, I'm just happy they filled their sandbox with something of character, it could've easily been a brown, bland world bereft of any personality which the original trailer back in 2009 hinted at.

But in reference to the OP's first question, I think back to Sly 2, Jak 2, and Ratchet and Clank Going Commando are three examples of sequels that expanded on the original formula in every way possible. And in Jak II's case, reworking the formula completely to the point that going back to your boilerplate 3-D platformer is very, very difficult.

Blizzard games for me. I never played Diablo and barely touched WoW, but my buds growing up were huge into those games and were always raiding with their guild into the wee morning hours. So, hanging around them with nothing to do I'd ask them loads of questions mainly about who the boss was that they were fighting, hows he related to the guy on the box, who is the guy on the box? why is he so angry? etc. and in turn was pretty fascinated by the worlds I was absorbing through osmosis. Also Brad's discussion about how crazy Starcraft gets by the end has me wanting to see what the deal is with Jimmy Raynor. Though that may be a wormhole I'm not quite ready to jump through just yet.

@yummytreesap: I'm nervous that if I added this to my warm up jog I'd end up dying of a heart attack. haha great tune tho