Limbo and Legend of Korra

On 11/07/2014 at 07:54 PM by Super Step

First, I mention this at the end of the blog too, but if you could take this short survey, it sure would help myself and my fellow grad students out. It's only 17 questions and responses are kept anonymous. Please and thank you. https://jfe.qualtrics.com/form/SV_bE0s9GgNM1bpsmV

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I decided to focus solely on beating Limbo and removed Vice City and Psychonauts (don't worry, Psychonauts is the first thing getting re-downloaded once Limbo finishes up) from my computer since even if Steam Cloud doesn't keep my save files intact, I wasn't too far in those anyway. Doing so did indeed make the game run faster, which keeps baffling me, cause even with all of those games installed I had plenty of memory on my computer left. I guess Limbo is using memory as I play it. Would never have expected a game that looks like Limbo to be so taxing. Don't get me wrong, it looks slick in full screen 720p, but who'd have thought a black-and-white 2D sidescroller would cause the same laptop shutdown problems Arkham City did when I had it installed.

Anyway, I'm on chapter 16 of 24 and am a bit stuck on how to get this wheel moving the way I want it. I didn't expect to like this game as much as I do, but the excellent puzzle-platforming is engaging and just challenging enough to be rewarding without frustrating me.I definitely want to get through it without any strategy guide help, so please don't spoil for me how to solve the puzzle I'm stuck on.

Another striking thing about Limbo is the incredibly grisly death scenes. I felt genuine tension when a giant spider entered the picture and I had to run to avoid being impaled. I'm also really interested in finding out how all these events and locations - from the murderous tribe with its spears to the soldiers with their guns (which I thought were spitballs at first) to the modern machinery currently trying to kill me - tie together. The death and despair in the background is effective as well. You'd think from the look of it, this would be fine for kids to play, but I'm not so sure now. It's definitely gotten under my skin a couple times and I'm loving it.

As for Legend of Korra, the game is getting under my skin for the wrong reasons. Hate to say it, but I've stopped thinking IGN and Kotaku were being overly harsh with their negative reviews. Now I will say, having seen all the goodies I can unlock means I will probably get a lot more out of this game than they did and it's not broken so much as stiff combat and a camera I wish would follow my movements better make it a frustrating experience at times. But if I'm being honest, the pro-bending demo I played is actually the most fun I've had with the game so far and I doubt I'd give it the chance I am if it wasn't based on one of my favorite franchises. I'm currently fighting the first boss ... es - three Triad crime lords from the first season - and am getting rather mad. Then again, Catara has seen fit to get the zoomies and wanting to take my laptop's plug out with her teeth at the most inappropriate times, so that wasn't helping my mood.

I wrote an editorial about licensed games in general focusing on Legend of Korra for plus10damage that is currently under review, so I'll post a link if it gets published. I can't review the game yet having only played about an hour and a half, but I'm disappointed to be seeing where the negative reviews are coming from. Plus10Damage's Jamison Miller was probably more fair with his 6.5, but this game needs to improve before it finishes if I'm going to say I'd give it the same score. I do think it's an above-average game for its animations alone, but it could have been so much more if the timing on counterattacks etc. made more sense and the environments weren't so empty.

Look at all that beautiful nothing ...

I splurged a bit at the Dollar General Red Box after getting some things for Catara. I decided to rent Edge of Tomorrow and Chef and they gave me 50c off a third rental so I got Snowpiercer as well. I'm hoping to get some work done before I marathon these, so it'll feel like a proper reward. Too bad I missed the e-mail they gave me for a free DVD. Dammit. It's good until Monday though, so may rent a fourth movie over the weekend. Just gotta do enough work to justify all these movies. I've been getting depressed lately and I think it's partially cause I don't manage my time well enough to achieve my goals. Procrastinating like I have been isn't good for my anxiety or anger either.

Speaking of work, I sure would appreciate it if you all could take a survey my classmates and I came up with about location-based advertising. It's only 17 questions and shouldn't take you long at all, is kept anonymous etc. https://jfe.qualtrics.com/form/SV_bE0s9GgNM1bpsmV

Well I'm off to do my Stats homework, which is writing about an article by a guy named Bem who created lots of controversy by publishing an article about ESP in 2011. Other researchers thought it undermined the credibility of the journal which published it and were unable to replicate his results. Should be an interesting read. Apparently a prof in the university Psychology Department met the guy since they both went to Cornell. It was a passing meeting though, like at a house party. Here's the APA citation if you're interested:

Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 407- 425.

I just linked my Facebook with HabitRPG.com so let's hope I can build some real-world stats and get my shit together. Have a good one!

Blake Turner Staff Writer

11/07/2014 at 09:00 PM

I feel sorry for the spider in Limbo. Man, that was brutal.

Oh, and I did the survey.

Super Step Contributing Writer

11/07/2014 at 11:57 PM

Thank you!

And yeah, that was intense, but ... I kinda don't like spiders. lol

11/08/2014 at 04:53 AM

Still. what you did to that spider was kinda cruel...

11/08/2014 at 09:47 AM

It really was, I agree. The smaller ones I tend to just let outside. However, this spider was going to impale me, so I figured it was justified self-defense. I know you feel differently about GIGANTIC animals, being from Australia where you keep terrifying everything as pets, but dammit I was scurred!

Note: I don't actually think Australians keep giant beasts as pets. I do think y'all have one scary-ass continent animal-wise.

11/09/2014 at 10:34 AM

The scary animals mostly live in the middle area where it's uninhabitable anyway haha. I mean yeah we get scary snakes and spiders in urban areas, but there are very few deaths from snakes per despite being a decent amount of bites. The truly scary stuff lives in the water though...

And you pulled the fuckers legs off and then rolled him down a hill and used him as a platform. He was just killing you because it either thought you were a threat or it could feed you to it's young. You tortured the fucker.

11/09/2014 at 01:13 PM

Well dammit, I had to move forward in the game!

Ranger1

11/10/2014 at 07:24 PM

This conversation reminded me of this song:

11/10/2014 at 08:55 PM

Lollerballs.

xDarthKiLLx

11/07/2014 at 10:49 PM

Not doing the survey.

I will say though that Limbo is a fun game. I had more than a few "Holy Shit" moments upon seeing the little boy toon get impaled, infected with brainworms, and other such horrors.

Great game.

11/07/2014 at 11:59 PM

Why not, if I may ask?

Yeah, the death scenes are brutal.

Alex-C25

11/07/2014 at 11:20 PM

Not feeling like doing the survey as that kind of advertisement isn't common in Colombia.

Glad you liked Limbo. I also liked it for the reasons you mentioned and also add how the minimalist aproach helps the game. There's also the horror aspect i've bloged about of course.

11/08/2014 at 12:02 AM

There are a lot of questions that simply ask if you would be comfortable with certain kinds of ads, so you don't have to experience location-based ads first hand to answer the questions. Hell, I don't think I've ever seen a location-based ad cause I shut GPS and data off most of the time.

And yeah, I remember your blog. It's definitely a worthwhile game. Can't wait to finish it.

Matt Snee Staff Writer

11/08/2014 at 02:12 AM

hmmm, I think you've got gigs and ghz confused. Ram always comes in 2, so 1.9 is kind of impossible. I imagine your computer actually has 4 gigs of ram, as it's the common amount these days needed, and i think with less you wouldn't be able to play these games. I think the 1.9ghz is your processing power. But I'm not sure, that's just what I deduced.

Sorry, I didn't do the survey but maybe later man.

11/08/2014 at 02:36 AM

You're right. I have 6GB RAM (memory). I removed that sentence.

Cary Woodham

11/08/2014 at 09:31 AM

I never really got into Limbo for some reason.

Here is my review of Korra:

http://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2014/11/07/the-legend-of-korra-360-xbox-one-ps4-ps3-pc/

11/08/2014 at 09:48 AM

That reason is probably the fact the game is so dark both visually and in tone if I had to guess. Doesn't seem like your style. I absolutely love it though.

KnightDriver

11/08/2014 at 03:22 PM

Did survey. Learned a bit about location based advertising. I personally hate ads on social media and especially on my phone. That companies can track you going into a store or even read the radio frequency of your car as you pass a billboard is pretty freaky. I think whether people think it's an invasion of privacy or not will not stop it from happening. They'll make it some sort of big game and everyone will have fun with it, while they attempt to manipulate the way you buy things. I'm not overly paranoid about it though. It's just commerce after all.

11/08/2014 at 03:49 PM

I honestly don't care about the radio frequency thing cause it has to pull from all the radio frequencies in the area to determine which is the most popular when changing the ad. Unless you're on your own, it's just an indication of what channel most people are tuned to. Even if you're on your own, the ad probably doesn't tell everyone what freq you're tuned to anyway.

The cell phone stuff is a bit creepy though, cause it implies advertisers (who I don't really care about having access to my phone; send me your coupons) are not the only ones who have access to your phone. The good thing is shutting data and GPS off should help keep you off the grid.

jgusw

11/08/2014 at 05:29 PM

I saw Edge of Tomorrow. I thought it was ok. There's a part in the movie I thought was a bit too slow.

11/08/2014 at 09:02 PM

I honestly just stopped caring after a while. Kinda zoned out cause I knew where it was going and the repeat-the-same-day thing kinda took the tension out of it for me. Yeah, he can mess everything up when he gets injured, but meh. Never really had any doubts about where the movie was going and honestly didn't find it that interesting visually despite all the positive reviews when it came out.

Now Chef, that one I really liked. Fatherhood movies tend to get me though and the fact it was also a dramedy about artistic passion made me a mark for it too. I think Jon Favreau is a really talented guy and he seems nice. Plus, Sofia Vergara is even sexier when she's acting straight as opposed to the Modern Family caricature she portrays on that show. Scarlett Johanson isn't bad either. But really, the food was the sexiest character in that movie.

11/09/2014 at 08:22 AM

Yeah, I pretty much stop caring about it around the time they get the rv or jeep or van? to the farm house. EoT got a lot of positive reviews? I actually never looked them up. Lately, I've been noticing that I really joy the movies that have negative reviews and I wonder to myself, "why people have problems with this movie".

I don't know anything about Chef. I'll look it up.

11/09/2014 at 01:07 PM

I actually tend to agree with reviewers, but occassionally they will crap on something I really liked, such as Tron: Legacy. Honestly though, sometimes I'm just in the mood for a certain kind of movie and I really don't care what out of touch old white men have to say about the things I like. It's just that most of the time, I'm a crotchety old white man on the inside myself.

C.S.3590SquadLeader

11/09/2014 at 02:47 PM

Did the survey. Some of those marketing strategies are more than a little invasive for my tastes.

Limbo looks like such an interesting game.

11/09/2014 at 04:06 PM

Thanks for the feedback!

It is. It would appear to be fairly short, but it is sweet.

11/10/2014 at 07:28 PM

Didn't do the survey. I don't have a smartphone, so most of the questions didn't really apply to me. Also, I find that sort of thing intrusive and creepy as hell. Not the survey, the delivery of ads via smartphone.

I got stuck in Limbo. I really should go back and finish it one of these days.

11/10/2014 at 08:58 PM

Actually, that would be fine if you wanted to just say you don't have a smartphone on that first question and just choose the "this creeps me the hell out" option on the following questions. It's up to you though. The trend is definitely people saying it's creepy, so you're not alone there.

Where did you get stuck in Limbo? Last I played I couldn't figure out the puzzle in my second picture in this blog. Also, "I got stuck in Limbo" is a funny sentence to me as a lapsed Catholic. lol Works on multiple levels.

11/10/2014 at 09:44 PM

The part I got stuck on was this ladder on a rolling cart contraption in a dip in the ground. You have to push it, then climb and jump in order to reach the next spot, but I've never been able to coordinate it all so I can climb and jump before the cart rolls back again.

11/10/2014 at 10:18 PM

Oh yeah, that one gave me some trouble too.

goaztecs

11/11/2014 at 10:52 AM

If that link is the same one you tweeted than I also took the survey.

I had to skip through your progress in Limbo in case I ever get back to it. Small steps with time management. Tinker with the routine to find what works for you. As for the movie lineup, it sounds solid.

11/11/2014 at 12:47 PM

Thanks! It is.

As for the movies, I watched Chef both without and with commentary, I liked it so much. Edge of Tomorrow was overhyped in my opinion; honestly,I found it kinda dull and lost interest not much of the way through it, though I watched until the end to confirm it was going exactly where I thought it would. Snowpiercer seemed pretty good, but I just could not stay awake and by the time it came to return everything Sunday, I figured I'd cut my losses and return it and Noah, which I got for free and didn't watch at all. Honestly though, Snowpiercer seemed to be getting kinda repetitive like EoT did anyway, with them basically moving up a train with increasingly violent sequences. Could be fun if I was in the right mood, but I was too damn tired.

NSonic79

11/12/2014 at 12:53 PM

I'm with you when it comes to LImbo and the death scenes. My "Little One" still can't bring herself to play ti after seeing the littel boy getting impaled by the spider leg. I myself was intrugied.

Good thing I'm not one for The Legend of Korra so the game itself dodesn't bother me too much.

Still way behind in my movie watching, trying to get caught up with what is being offered on netflix right now.

11/12/2014 at 02:10 PM

Legend of Korra is pretty much my favorite TV show I've ever followed while it was still airing, but honestly since it was $15 and has its high points I don't hate the game. Just got a bit frustrated.

PixlBit