PixlBit

I share your thoughts about psychological horror. Usually Japanese influenced horror is my favorite. I'm not scared of monsters of zombies, but ghosts and the unknown are what get under my skin. The only game I ever had a nightmare about in all my years of gaming was FEAR 1. Those are well paced games that have a balance between full throttle FPS shootouts and slowed down scare sequences. The first game, FEAR, and its expansion packs: Extraction and Perseus Mandate are my favorite. The 2nd game is okay, it's good in its own ways but it's a bit different. I haven't played the 3rd game but I'm sure it's okay as well, but in general the best one to play is the first game and its expansions. Only play the 2nd and 3rd games if you really feel the need to. The little girl Alma scares me to death. They use her in some pretty effective ways and they find ways to creep me out with her. So FEAR is the only game I ever had a nightmare about, but it's not actually the scariest game I ever played. Not even close.

The scariest game I've ever played is Fatal Frame 2 Crimson Butterfly Directors Cut. Mouthfull of a name but it's a terrifying game. The ghosts terrify me, I always feel vulnerable, and they do an excellent job with the art, lighting, sound design, music, and pacing. I've had Fatal Frame 2 for seven years and I've never beat it. I've made it like 60% through the game or more but it stresses me out so bad that I take long breaks from it and sometimes I even start over from the beginning to remember how the story starts.

I'm going to beat the game sometime, I really want to finish but I really have to be in the mood to play it. It gets under my skin in every way a great horror game should.

You bet your bass? 16-bit lakes of yore? Newfangled gadgetry? You're the best Travis lol, always loved your writing.

You're right, when a fishing game is done well it can be really fun. I use to play some decent ones back on SNES and PC, and I'm not sure but we might have on N64 and PS1. My cousin always loved hunting and fishing games and we were always checking out various ones together.

This game sounds like it could be pretty fun, except for the yanking the 3DS all around part. I like the fishing in Zelda games, and when I'm reeling the fish in I always yank the Gamecube controller around and it's a lot of fun. It's different when you're actually playing on a handheld and the screen is on the thing you're yanking around.

I like the sound of the leveling system and the opportunity to have gameplay loops where you have fun things to do during downtime when you're not fishing. Upgrading, buying, investing, etc is all great in my book. To be honest when I play games I probably spend the most amount of time doing the downtime stuff. It's why I've been able to get 80+ hours out of Dragon Age 2. After every quest I use the economy system the game has so I can sell off loot, search for new loot so I can optimize characters. In Skyrim I love finishing a quest and then going off to hunt, gather pelts, then go into town to turn pelts into leather and build new armor with it, and upgrade armor. Sell loot, buy new loot, craft, personalize, optimize. I love doing downtime shit in games. In this game giving the player interesting things to do during downtime between questing/fishing is a key to making the loop complete and making it really neato.

That's really cool, I didn't know any of that. I guess when it comes to people singing in bars or crowds it's not actually about the songs at all and it's not the music I have a problem with, it's whether or not I like the people and if I want to be there lol. When you're around great people you're comfortable with and people sing out of unity, fun, catharsis, and just sharing a nice moment with each other, that's great. I was thinking more about if I'm in a place where people are all annoying strangers I don't care about and they're loud and obnoxious or ultra nationalist or offensive or non inclusive in some way.

I want to be around nice people and nice music, so it's not the shanties, bar songs, or music I have a problem with. I'm going to try and look up some of the suggestions you made. I bet I'll find some great stuff!

UPDATE: Oh well, I couldn't figure out how to embed the videos from youtube here, I'll have to leave links I guess. I'm going to try to embed some videos here but since the features new I may have to take a couple whacks at it before I get it right. I'll post this and hope it goes well, but if it doesn't I'll keep trying to get the videos in. Folk Friday is a great idea. Like you said there's so many types of folk, it has an influence in practically everything and there's lots of unique variations.

I love music that feels medieval, mysterious, and can be triumphant and dark at the same time. I've never much liked sea shanties or songs that people sing aloud together in bars. Those to me can feel silly and forced, like people only pretending to be vikings or people faking to be something that they aren't just so they can fit in. I don't like fake people and pretentious art. I like it when the music paints a deeper picture and is honest and they're not doing it to try and get in on some kind of popular celtic rock or wannabe viking bandwaggon. I really love Skyrim and there's a lot of amazing music in it that adds to the atmosphere and the tone of the lore. In Skyrim you can walk into taverns and the bard is always singing various songs, and you can pay them and request a song too. It's pretty neat. The Dragonborn Comes always gives me goosebumps when I hear it, both the stripped down version as well as the loud orchestral/choir version at the main menu as well.

Dragonborn Comes

Years ago when I was in middle school I came across this old metal album from 1998 by a band called In Ruins. It's mostly a vampiric gothic metal sound, but there's this one short interlude song that was completely different and was unlike anything else I heard in my life at the time. Most stuff I had heard was straight up metal, punk, and 70s rock without much acoustic guitars, classical sounds, and medieval sounds. I didn't know much at all about folk at the time in general so this tiny 2 minute interlude was so fresh and blew me away. It's just the first 2 minutes, then after that it's 6 minutes of metal. I want to find more music that sounds like that first 2 minutes, but I don't know where to look.

In Ruins - Nocturne

Noooo! Now who's going to make aggressive sexual advances to Patrick on air?

It's sad to see Rob go, but I'll always remember the amazing episodes that he was on. The outtakes were perfect, they killed me. Some of those outtakes were from some of my favorite discussions. Dildos in my balls lol. Getting taken to the Hamptons and getting your ass carved and slow fucked like Lee Marvin in the Great Escape lol. Over the past year or more of Pixltalk and now NWP, Rob was always able to bring a strong and diverse mix of great laughs, game ideas, critique, serious stories, experiences, and perspectives. I got to hear about countless walks of shame. I got to learn things from Rob about films, writers, comics, games, and what life in New York is like that I never knew before. As a listener, it was a pleasure, a lot of fun to listen to.

I wish the best for Rob in the new film project as he goes down to Austin. Rob is everywhere writing like crazy, all the internets are belong to Rob these days. Now you've got this new gig with a group of people that sound great and have the right attitude and share some of your philosphies. Just keep doing what you love doing, learn what you love learning, and don't worry you'll always be the sexiest big man around. Hope to see you come back from time to time and chime in on NWP in the future when the opportunity arises.

Keep it pantsless Rob!

Welcome Cary! You're a class act, I'm happy you've decided to give this community a chance. I didn't know you were blind in your left eye since birth. Does that affect depth perception or anything like that? Do you think that the blindness affects the types of games you enjoy or has made you more inclined to play certain types of games? I like studying a little biometrics now and then, how people play their games, and why people play the games they play. Finding out that your left eye is blind makes me wonder how it affects your gaming experiences and what it would be like to put myself in your shoes.

Squishy was a few years old so I think you may be right. He was nearly full size when I got him, and then I had him for a couple years so he probably had a full life.

When I was going through elementary school I had a huge fat hamster named Squishy. He was awesome but he was always escaping during the night and chewing holes in his housing complex he had, so I'd find him the next day somewhere around the house and have to fix his home somehow or have my mom buy new compartments. I always kept bugging my mom to buy more and more compartments because I wanted to give Squishy the biggest fucking house possible. He had a big central playground where he could run in the wheel, play around in the wood padding and dig through it. Then there was a bunch of tunnels connecting to other rooms and padding where he could sleep. Then there was a big tower he could climb and go to this penthouse where he slept sometimes. Then there was a tunnel leading to a big maze that he went through from time to time.

The maze is what killed him though, and it was awful because I watched it happen. I came home from school one day and I always went to check on him first and spent like a half hour or so watching him run around and do stuff and make sure he had everything. That day he was going through the maze, and halfway through the maze he stopped and died there for some reason, maybe a heart attack or some other stress induced condition. I was crushed at the time, but I was able to give him a good burial and everything. He was a great pet while he lasted but I still wish I knew what was wrong with him so maybe he could've been taken to the vet and treated or saved. I don't know if it was a health condition, if it was something in his food, or whatever possibility.

Mousie nibbles lol 

This is the cutest blog I've ever read of yours Tami. I've never seen this kind of angle of your writing before. It's very adorable, enthusiastic, and telling the story of the mice it's like a child's book except with a little more cursing. I loved it.

I have a pet Crayfish at the moment. My nephew Isaiah brought it with him from school, his teacher gave it to him, and I ended up kind of adopting it because I didn't want to see it killed or neglected. He doesn't like me at all and is naturally wants to hide a lot from light, from me, and everything, but I've tried to make him comfortable and make his non-natural life okay for him but I still feel sad for him. He was a wild Crayfish and now he's in an alien environment with no natural predators or prey, there's artificial light, he has a whole tank to himself, it's safe and he gets fed every day and he has places to hide and come up for air and his water is clean, but it still seems like a prison. All his instincts, genetics, and conditioning seem useless now since he's not in the wild.

I only played the demo for this and I liked what I saw. I didn't love what I played, but I loved what I saw. The artwork is beautiful and there's a lot of spectacle that pulled me in. I've heard a lot of good things about the characters and story too, so I definitely want to give this game a chance one of these days. I think I'd like it