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Being in a Marvel movie greatly increases your connectedness.

Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. are central to a lot of plotlines in the first 10 years of Marvel movies. With either them or characters connected to them appearing in other movies.

Then you have other franchise connections. If you've been in a Kevin Smith film, you're at most three steps from Samuel L. Jackson by way of Kevin Smith -> Bruce Willis -> Samuel L Jackson. And even if you're not in a film in the "View Askewniverse" like "Zac and Miri Make a Porno", that movie has Justin Long, who was in a movie with Willis.

Every actor in the Fast and Furious franchise is connected through Vin Diesel.

Every actor in the OT and sequel trilogy of Star Wars is connected through Harrison Ford. The prequel trilogy connects through Natalie Portman.

Just between those, it's not too hard to reach everyone.

Louisiana? Not surprised.

If the demo is not enough to engage someone to buy the full product, it is not a good demo.

If a game needs to be played for 30 to 40 hours before it gets truly engaging, it is not a good game.

Entertainment's goal is to engage. There are many ways to achieve that, but no one should have to slog through tedium in order to get to "the good stuff".

Technically, there's no purpose in any of it. Playing the game and not playing it are the same.

It's a puzzle in that it's a line you have to draw to complete all the puzzles. What's that worth to anyone is what it is. There are lots of games with post-game content that's not technically required to "finish" the game.

But the goal of the Witness is to find and draw these lines. If you didn't find and draw that line, Blow would say you didn't find and draw all the lines.

So, it is a puzzle in the game. It is. It's a puzzle. It's in the game. You don't know whether it's pointless or not until after you complete it. So you can't look at it and say, "Well, this is not needed, I can skip it".

And the overall product is kind of bad. It's overly tedious and mistakes hiding necessary information with being clever.

You realize you’re agreeing with me, right?

I said that bit was bad puzzle/game design. You say it’s dumb. Which is another way of saying you didn’t think it was a good design.

I think it’s psychologically interesting how many people feel the need to defend Blow and his games to the hilt when he’s produced so very little.

You can feel that way, but that’s not what I perceived when I was playing through the demo. It was “leaps” and more “steps”.

For the most part, most games are antagonistic. And that's fine, that's the fun. Goombas are player-antagonism. Dark Souls is antagonistic. But they are engaging you and testing your ability to execute game mechanics with increasing amounts of precision.

Having to sit through a full hour of video to slowly trace a line is pointlessly antagonistic. It only tests a player's desire to sit through your bullshit. Being able to do it does not make you better at any other part of the game. It doesn't even make you better at that part of the game.

It's not meaningful however. If your save gets corrupted, you have to start over. Nothing of value was lost.

I mean, Blow writes single-user software that doesn't have to interop with anything else, persist any meaningful state, or be modified after release.

He has a very limited view of what is required of software.

The problem is that he's not entirely wrong. The JavaScript-ification of everything is kind of a problem. Electron apps everywhere is an issue.

But a lot of issues are also just trying to deal with bad actors. Doing authentication or authorization wrong can have real consequences. And it is incredibly difficult. Because security is in opposition to access. And trying to make security invisible is even more difficult.

See, that's not a good puzzle. It's not good game design. It's antagonistic to the player in the worst possible way.

> You could have slashed 2/3 of the puzzles and the game would have been tighter and more satisfying imho.

That's a large part of my problem. You go "Oh, ok, I get it", then have to solve another dozen puzzles.

I think the other big issue is that you can't get really clever with block manipulation.

Either they present you with exactly what you need to solve the area or they give you more. Giving you more, in most cases, will just break the puzzle and make it too easy. So you know in a general sense what you have to do just by what tools you have available. Then it's just a matter of doing them in the right order.

And, yeah, it's fine. But that's the best I can muster for it.

And I see it's $30, which feels an ok price point. I was feeling more like $20, but $30 is fine.

Like you get presented with a series of grids that uses the rule of the area. You solve the 5 or 6. Which leads you to another series of grids using the same rule. You solve those. Etc.

Finding the puzzles and discovering the rules are the most involved part of the game. Once you know that, the actual puzzles are just ok. But they're line drawing puzzles, there's a ceiling.

Even the environment puzzles are kinda meh. "Oh, that looks like it could be a line. Yep. It's a line."

Like the Witness, Order of the Sinking Star descends into tedium.

You just repeat the same type of puzzle over and over. The Witness is a bit more tedious considering the real “puzzle” is rule-discovery rather than the flow-style puzzles that make up the majority of the game’s interactions.

Like the best I can say about Order is “yeah, it’s ok”.

Looking at the title, I guessed what this was about.

Finding a decent dentist is fucking hard. I travel 40 minutes to my dentist because he's solid and I don't want to switch if I don't have to.

You want someone who is going to identify problems and correct them, but not try and make everything a problem. Basically, look at where they spend their money and listen to what they recommend.

You don't want a dirty office, but you also don't need crown molding and gold leaf to fill a cavity.

I had a wisdom tooth issue and went to a dentist. He extracted it, said I had a number of cavities, etc. Never scheduled a follow up with him. Went to a different dentist, he said I had considerable plaque, but couldn't really tell on the cavities until he cleaned that up. So I did that and then he said I only had one or two.

They recommended I get a Sonicare. While they sold them, they also said I could get them anywhere, but to make sure I get one as it would help with plaque.

My current dentist had to extract one of my teeth because my wisdom tooth cracked it. He had also wanted to remove the wisdom tooth because the gap could be problematic, but after extracting the cracked tooth, he had to tap out. He told me that my roots are apparently the longest he's ever seen. So unless an actual problem develops, he was going to leave the wisdom tooth. And if I ever need another extraction, he was going to refer me to a surgeon. Other than that, it's just been cleanings and checkups.

So yeah, you really need to vet your dentist. If a dentist ever tells you you have multiple cavities, get a second opinion. Drilling a hole in a tooth and filling it with epoxy is quick and nets them a couple hundred per hole.