This is where Kotaku readers go to talk about the stuff we’re not already posting about. Think of it as the official unofficial Kotaku community forum.
In Real Life
This is where Kotaku readers go to talk about the stuff we’re not already posting about. Think of it as the official unofficial Kotaku community forum.
MY CAN'D MEAT WRITE UP.
3:05PM TO 3:28PM, SATURDAY THE 23RD JUNE, 2012
As you all know, I had a semi-valid excuse for not attending the entirety of the meat. It's not really a great excuse, but I kind of made a promise that implied I wouldn't abandon my wife when she was in pain. I'm not sure how legally binding that promise actually is, but I felt kind of morally obligated to uphold it today. Long story short (or technically, long story slightly longer by means of appending this summary), I was only at the Can'd Meat for 23 minutes.
One of these days I will attend a meat in its entirety.
Anyway, there was a small group noise that might have been a cheer (might have been a collective belch) when I entered, prodding my two-year-old in front of me. For the first time, I saw a meat through her eyes, how she would have seen it, and I understand her hesitation. Strange music, strange people, strange... smells? What the hell is that in the kitchen? A man who would later introduce himself to me as Effluvium Boy said that it might be Doc What... or it might be whatever he's cooking. I see at least one empty tabasco sauce bottle and nod sagely in agreement.
All the usual suspects are there, and some unfamiliar faces. I get introduced to Jordi and James NeinHandle (hi guys!) and have time to group hello everyone. Some have noticed that I have lugged in a big box of books with me. After a brief stampede, there are still about thirty bazillion copies left; I may have overestimated demand slightly...
My two year old got interested in Nerf Guns that were shooting pellets around Blaghman's kitchen, but I decided that perhaps they aren't the most appropriate toy for a psychotic small child with anger issues. Also, she noticed rum balls, and began to brave the crossfire for a taste... thankfully Doc What had a child-friendly alternative on hand:
Caramello Koala. That's good.
Wait, she's already had chocolate today. That's bad.
But it keeps her quiet. That's good.
Oh, wait, she got some caramel in her hair. That's bad.
Pez has found a damp cloth to clean her. That's good.
I still feel like a dud dad. That's bad... but par for the course.
Annie took a real shine to Flu, who is a bit of a spunk really. If they were closer to the same age, I'd probably encourage the attraction. But it's too weird to think about things like that so SHAME ON YOU FLU. (PS: everyone else weirded her out... no offence, guys (PPS: This was a joke, so don't kill me))
What stands out in meats for me isn't what gets said. It's what happens afterwards: all the things that I meant to say or forgot to ask stand out in my mind, and start hurling rotten fruit at me. I feel like such a socially awkward wallflower.
Anyway, here's what I meant to say:
* Shiggy + Doc What: Potaku is truly awesome - you should be well proud.
* Effluvium Boy: Yep, I'm a public servant. The work is shit boring, but the pay is good. What do you do for a crust?
* Bish: Wanted to say anything more than hi, really.
* Everyone who owes me money now: I'm sick of waiting. Honestly, it's been hours. I've already called the debt collectors. I told them to forget the money, and just to break your legs instead. Mkay?
* To the folks I said hi to but didn't recognise: What are your names?
All right, that’s 600+ words for 23 minutes of meat. For those who made a weekend out of it, I expect about 20 000 words.
You've set a fine precedent for verbosity in Meat reports, young Shane. I approve. :D
Sounds cool, even for only 20 min.
How is the baby doing?
Btw ever since you won the Kudos on Friday I had this comment stuck in my head to type out to you. About how your wife completed shameless gaming month early by winning the pregnancy game. :-)
All is well - thanks for asking. The baby is totally awesome - the main source of exhaustion is actually the overenthusiastic two year old who always wants to be involved. We have to deflect without discouraging, which usually means extensive road trips and other tiring outings! :P
Ha Ha. I remember stuff like that. I always wanted to hold and feed my little sibling when I was younger. Good to hear all is going well.
Hi Shane! (I don't think I said that while you were here :P). How rude of me!
Mashaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I don't think Skylanders Giants is too soon. My daughter's finished Skylanders a bunch of times and is hanging out for some more things to do. But did I see you mention hats?! Are you trying to send all us parents broke? :P
Greeniuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus! I tweeted at you about The Last Story. I've played about an hour and a half now. I've been sent out into the town to explore. I'm loving it so far. I was sad when I noticed I didn't have the things I needed yet to be able to trade for green dyes though. :P
Hi Strange,
Ha ha. I wasn't thinking about it from the parents perspective with regards to the toys. Your right, having hats and other accessories would be expensive. It would add some play value though if the skylander was bundled with a costume or something. My issue with the Skylanders toys was that you couldn't do much with them, that's why I suggested accessories and moving parts. I have a bunch of LEGO and transformers toys so I like to play around with stuff-moving their arms, posing them etc.
Also, Skylanders Giants looks cool, it's just the gameplay shown so far doesn't look too different and I was hoping they would add other characters like Crash Bandicoot and maybe more element variants instead of bigger versions of current elements.I just hope Activision don't burn out a really cool new franchise with too many releases.
I love the Skylanders concept and I hope they move it to other IPs like Transformers or even LEGO.
How many toys does your daughter have btw?
I meant you're right not your right. Those two get me all the time.
No no. If you met her you would know her right is covered in hats and accessories and her left is devoid of decoration.
It's a Brisbane thing.
Hey at least you don't use ur or your for everything. This idiot in high school always said u'r . Like if he's going to bother putting the apostrophe he might as well do it right :P
She has 13 Skylanders figures at the moment. And two of the expansion areas. She likes to draw them and that's about all she uses them for outside of the game. I actually think making them posable would probably raise the cost of them, so I hope they don't do that. :P
I do like your idea of moving the concept to Transformers and Lego though, that would be awesome.
Woo! :). I really like the weapon/armour/upgrade system because I don't have to find/buy a slightly better piece every time (like most games make you do) and I can just upgrade them for added benefits. Combat is unique too and is something different. I found it a bit "off" at the start but that's cause auto attack was on, changing it to making A the attack button made it feel a bit more natural :).
I just never really felt like doing much in The Last Story other than 'rushing' the main mission. Maybe it was because I didn't really want the game but got it anyway :P. I think it's still sitting in my Wii and I really need an excuse to test out my shiny new golden nunchuck so hopefully our discussions will help :D!
I'm considering turning "auto" off, too. I find it confusing just running into guys to attack.
And yeah, I think with games like this you have to be in the right frame of mind when you start which is part of the reason why I waited so long after it finally arriving.
I'm really liking the characters so far, as well and I'm looking forward to playing again. I was already thinking of the game when I woke up this morning , which is a good sign. :)
The characters are good but the strong British accents take a while to get used to :P (Syrenne?). I think I was up to chapter 20 or so but for the most part you're given certain characters for the mission. I like it when games do this so I don't have to pick a party out of a bunch of characters and neglect the rest. In most RPGs I'll just stick to certain characters and I won't even touch the other characters :P. FFX did this well though because it let you swap party members out mid-battle, more games should have this!
I also like how you can change the equipment on characters which aren't even in your party. This lets me swap around a decent set of gear for whoever is with me :)
How are you finding the controls? I struggle when it makes me waggle the analog stick from side to side because it just feels wrong on a nunchuck. And because it's Wii (so WiiMote Nunchuck) camera controls suck :(. I feel the default third person distance between the camera and Zael is too close but I can't change it.
Good to hear that you're really enjoying it. I love that feeling of waking up and just wanting to play a game! This also means you'll SUPER LOVE Xenoblade! I was never in the right mindset for it because everytime I played the game I'd get bored and stop only after an hour even though it'll feel like I played for ages.
I'm already starting to get more motivation so I look forward to more discussions :D, thanks Strange!
So...uh...am I like the ONLY entry in the Gravity Rush competition?
Because, yay.
I think a lot of us that have Vitas already picked up a copy of the game. It's pretty much the first really interesting exclusive.
It's also pretty fun though I'm having some issues with the controls. Specifically I find the motion control to tweak aim drives me insane, because it moves in the opposite direction to the way I want it to go, but you can only invert the whole camera system so if I invert everything the game's unplayable because the sticks are all wrong. Needs a way to reverse just the gyro motion. Uncharted is the same with this and I literally can't play it as a result :(
Yeah, I was going to pick it up this week, but then: competition.
So which way does it go if you move/tilt it right?
If you push the right side away from you it moves the cursor left. Bakes my brain.
Intuitively if you think of the surface of the system as the tip of a big analog stick, tilting the right side away from you should be the equivalent of pushing a stick right, however it moves the opposite to the way you expect in all directions.
Woo! If it means anything I liked your entries and thought they were 'win worthy' regardless if they were the only ones or not :P
What Neg said is true, I think most people with Vitas already had it since it's probably the most interesting title. I know it was the only title that stood out to me for the initial lineup announced for Vita.
It's that time of night?
Wow...
Did anyone else watch Black Caviar?
Greenius~
Why did you give me so many dogs in Minecraft?
I ended up taming them all =P
HAHAHAHAAHAHHA
Blame Nob!
I'm glad you forgot I also wanted cats and fish =P
I did not forget, cats despawn.
right I forgot =P
But where's the fish then?
Whenever you're there too :P
Jee whiz scree!
Fine, right here, right now?
WHAT!? I'm just an innocent bystander, in fact I said scree wouldn't like it :P
Thanks for preventing the squids though Nob
Squids were spawned everywhere. Not sure in your house or not but my little village loved them :)
They despawn as well so they're not really an issue :P
No one can stop him from spawning squids. It is ... inevitable, all we can do is delay him.
Anyone up for some Halo: Reach with McGarnical and I today?
Campaign or multi? I've never played either so sure :). What time? I don't think I have you on XBL (might have McG) but I'm Greenius.
I also have an Xbox mic :D
Added everyone from TAYnames the other night. No mic for me, but I can't talk today anyway. I've no idea whether it'll be campaign or multi, (or what time it will be, as McGarnical has domestic duties to tend to first) though I'm happy to start now, if you'd like.
I typed that when I was in bed so give me a while to eat breakfast and something :)
So I feel like I'm commenting too much an would like to apologise if the Green Eggs and Spam is getting to anyone! tis my holidays and I get bored, earlier in the week I was looking for any excuse not to study :P
Anyways... has anyone played Stranger's Wrath HD or Renegade Ops? On PS3 when I start up the game, both of them asked me to adjust the screen ratio so the arrows touched the edge of the screen. I found that in both times the screen wasn't exactly even and the whole thing was shifted slightly down and to the left. So while on one side the arrows touch the edge of the screen perfectly, the other (opposite side would either be stretched out so the arrow is half off the screen or too 'short' leaving the arrow nowhere close to the edge with a giant black bar.
Did anyone else have this? Like it's not terribly bad but it's kinda annoying having a slightly stretched game or having uneven black bars on the screen.
Yeah some games do that and it's weird. The top and side arrows should be able to be moved individually so you can find the perfect size. I find it common in downloadable titles though, most retail titles give you decent sizing options.
I have a SD TV(I can barely read the text in most games) and the sizing options always make the game look weird.
Wow, quiet tonight. Well, the whole week was quiet, but still. I'm in some house, it's quite odd. Also, I found ten dollars. ... ... But how are you all?
HI BLAGHS!
I hear your meat thing went well :). ALL THE KUDOS, unless you want me to nom Bish or someone else again?
HI GLAH MAN!!!
Rob Thomas.
Gets the ladies when he sings "I don't wanna be lonely no more",
Loses them when he sings "I don't wanna have to pay for this".
Perfect.
Wow. Now I can see what NegZero was talking about with the bosses in Lost Odyssey. First one wiped me out in 2 rounds and not a thing I could do about it. And grinding is soooo slow. Oh well. Keep at it. Enjoying the game so willing to put up with a few foibles.
NegZero was wrong :P
Only the first boss is tough but the pacing from then on is pretty much perfect. Combat isn't hard at all.
I am absolutely categorically not wrong. Every boss has a weakness or a status ailment it will do to you or something that you will NOT know until you're in the fight. So every time, you have to be prepared to lose.
The first boss is particularly bad because it chooses its attacks at random. And the game's badly tuned, you need to grind to be strong enough to beat a lot of the bosses but it stops you fighting enemies in a zone after a while, but usually doesn't give you enough to unlock the status ailment blockers or whatever the hell you need.
A properly tuned JRPG you should be able to go through a zone up to a boss without running from any fights and be at the appropriate level to fight it. Doesn't happen in LO.
I also recall having issues with save point placement being particularly bad at points, requiring you to re-do sections to get to a boss.
Sir Preston: give that boss a few goes, sometimes he'll be crazy strong, sometimes a cakewalk. It's all random :(
I dunno man, it was years since I last played it but I usually always explore a dungeon and fight all the enemies (no extra grinding, no running) and I don't remember ever having problems in LO (except for the first boss fight).
The first boss requires you to have a good grasp of the guard function, position your team correctly, and have learned the guard recovery skill. I think that's the one you need. Someone correct me... but if you have these down, you can tackle the boss at any level and prevail with some small amount of luck.
I had to grind this because I'd leveled the wrong skills.
This so much. You never know what skills you need to have until you get to the boss and find that oh this guy does paralysis with every hit or something, so you have to die, reload a save and then grind that skill out which is amazingly frustrating due to the fact the encounter probability drops off in an area the more you fight.
I have a work question. For an employer to put you on the books would it put them out of pocket too much? The salon I work in now as a casual salon assistant pays me cash in hand at $17 per hour. The modern rate (they didn't have a casual pay rate for the role before) is $19.70 per hour. So I'm already underpaid. But that's not what's really bothering me. I want to be put on the books so I can claim YA and move out. My boss said that I don't earn enough to make it worth their while, my co worker said it's because it will cost them money. I'm more inclined to believe my coworker. So, would it actually cost them that much to put me on the books? If I'm paid properly I'll be earning $197 a week (currently $170).
Avoiding payroll tax and such most likely.
Is that...a lot. It's a small business. They only have one staff member that is on the books right now.
Generally not. It just depends how tight your employer is. With only one staff member official I'd venture very.
So I'm late to the party (what else is new?) but I just hooked my X360 up to XBL this weekend in preparation for #mondaynighthalofights, and decided to buy Trials HD for some kicks and giggles.
Well, wasn't that both the best and worst decision EVER.
I like how it's taken me back to the days of Sonic, that sense of speed and the ridiculous way in which I physically move the controller in a vain attempt to convey both a sense of urgency and response that my on-screen counterpart simply does not deem necessary.
What I don't like is that I end up spending half an hour or more on the same track, simply trying to complete it without crashing, let alone getting the perfect time.
I suffer from sweaty gamer hands, which is absolutely disgusting. This game REALLY makes it so.
The frustration is a drug, and the nostalgia is a high. Best worst game ever.
Do you have Red Dead Redemption? I'm keen for another TAYbie horse slaughter!
Same! My gold runs out soon :). Is GTA on Tues or Wed?
How was Halo for you Aleph? I was just about to send you a message on Steam/Twitter when you joined. It was fine for the first level but the 2nd and 3rd were laggy as making it almost unplayable.
Also why HD and not Evo? Evo pretty much beats HD in every way :P
I didn't realise they weren't one and the same to begin with. I really don't play xbox much at all :p
@batgirl, no I don't have RDR sorry. The multiplayer games I do have are Halo:Reach, Halo:CE, Brink, GoW2, L4D2, Portal2. Generally, if I see the right game for the right price, I'll buy it though.
@greenius, my first few missions with Becaroonie and yourself were horribly laggy, to the point of pulling the trigger and firing almost a second later. Subsequent games with McGarnical were fine, albeit my skill level showed :p
I might be able to get my hands on a copy of Reach. I've never played a Halo game for more than 5 minutes so I'd be just as terrible. WE'LL LEARN TOGETHER, ALEPH.
I'm not sure it's a matter of learning for me, I played the HELL out of Halo:CE "back in the day" (Read: Git awf mah lawn, etc)
I just really, really suck at fps with a controller. I'm far too familiar with a mouse >.<
Haha I think HD came out in 2009 and Evolution came out earlier this year, you can really see the improvements. It's good that you got HD first though otherwise it'll be impossible to get back into if you played the much improved Evo first.
Download the Trial for Evo and see if you like it, or just straight up buy it (it's definitely worth it!).
I saw your gamerscore and remembered you saying you pretty much never played your Xbox :P
Man, some of the graphics tech behind Evo is fascinating. It's still using a lot of the underlying code, but it uses a similar system to id's Megatexture stuff, because you're mostly travelling in a straight line, so it can work out exactly what texture details need to be on screen.
It's really cool.
Though the shadowing is worse some of the time, but that's because it does some really funky stuff.
/nerd
So, i have discovered that creepers love me in minecraft.
Also, LOTS OF LEGO for christmas...at least for Mum. I bought her 3 sets. I want my own, but I want normal large block sets
Coolest mum ever!
Also, earliest Christmas shopping ever?
My tablet is working fine. :)
Just had to find the right driver for it.
I've just saved nearly $130.
\o/