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I hate this episode. The rest of the week will be better, I promise.
Interesting note: The problem with the microphones cutting off? Yeah. That’s not due to us letting go of the talk key. Both Mumbles and Josh compared their recordings of our session with the episode audio, and found the clipping didn’t exist in the original. These last few weeks I’ve been going mad, trying to figure out why I keep introducing myself as “Sha-“, NO MATTER HOW LONG I HOLD DOWN THE BUTTON. I thought I was losing my mind.
Nope, looks like a bug in Ventrilo. When you export a session, it clips some messages. Sometimes. For some people. That’s just great.
We could move to Mumble or some other voice client. But that means paying for another server, getting everyone on the new clients, and discovering what shortcomings and bugs and annoyances await us with the new system.
Technology sucks.
Why The Christmas Shopping Season is Worse Every Year

Everyone hates Black Friday sales. Even retailers! So why does it exist?
The No Politics Rule

Here are 6 reasons why I forbid political discussions on this site. #4 will amaze you. Or not.
A Lack of Vision and Leadership

People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
Game at the Bottom

Why spend millions on visuals that are just a distraction from the REAL game of hotbar-watching?
Wolfenstein II

This is a massive step down in story, gameplay, and art design when compared to the 2014 soft reboot. Yet critics rated this one much higher. What's going on here?
Only move to Mumble if Mumbles gets royalties.
Royalties as in royal ranks and titles, and their authority.
Her Royal Highness Mumbles?
I’m… strangely okay with that.
All hail queen Mumbles! with her deranged jester Rutskarn, her mighty old wizard Shamus the young and her black knight Joshinald Cuftbert, she rules over the internet and all things within!
Sometimes I see kids struggling with their cell phones, outraged at some outage or shortcoming in their network and I’m reminded that when I was their age, we didn’t even have flash storage, let alone smart phones.
Shamus, you are speaking to multiple people at once through a network of computers spanning hundreds or even thousands of miles to express and at the same time watching streaming video feed of what one of them is doing in a virtual reality simulation. Now read that sentence aloud to your twelve year old self.
Technology is awesome. But nobody’s happy.
But when the technology tells me it’s going to do something with a reasonable degree of success, and then fails to live up to it’s own self-proclaimed standards of quality, I get very unhappy.
That and it’s just mean of the technology to conspire for Shamus to inroduce himself as Shame.
Who says that his parents aren’t in on the conspiracy?
Since there are only four of you, there’s no reason you couldn’t just run Murmur (the Mumble server) on one of your machines instead of paying for a server. It is, after all, free. I run Murmur on my machine while playing WoW with a few friends, and it doesn’t slow anything down and works just fine. So you should have no issues with the few of you.
Mumbles should totally run the Mumble server. That would set up so many good puns from Rutskarn (or should, at any rate).
Oh really, because I think Rutskarn’s PC running Mumble(s) would set up so many more ‘interesting’ lines.
:P
Rutskarn would finally be able to live his dream of turning on Mumble(s).
That comment deserves a slap with a wet fish.
This would mean I could finally exclaim, “MUMBLES MUMBLES.”
Or, at the very least, “MUMBLING MUMBLES.”
Though they’re not puns by any stretch of the word. I just love redundancies.
Hear her mumbling down
Holding Ruts to the ground
Away from E3 I’ll be found
Laughing along with the mumbling mumbleweeds.
Yo dawg…
Dang, beat to the punch. For the longest time, me and my friends used Xfire’s voice chat system, until the whole thing got bugged to heck with Xfire’s selling out. So I got Vent’s server program and set it up. Easy as cake. I’d wager that Mumble would be just as easy, and very little BWidth.
Yeah, Mumble server is free. Even if you aren’t running it on your personal PC, you can stick it on a small server. It doesn’t take up much in the way of resources, and for a four person team (especially if one is LANned to the server) it doesn’t take much in the way of resources.
So if you try to introduce yourself as Shamus Young, we are going to hear you saying “i am shame.. you…”
This might be a hassle, but you could try to record all the audio locally, then have Josh do all the work of editing the voice tracks together in post. You’d probably also get better audio quality that way.
Or introduce yourself as “Shamus lalalaokthatshouldbeenough” and then have Josh mute out any excess talk. He likes doing that kind of stuff, right?
So 3D holographic cameras capture your soul apparently? Nice going Obsidian…
So Mumbles, how pissed are you regarding Barbara’s return to the Batgirl mantle and total disregard by DC regarding her symbolism and Stephanie’s and Cassandra’s legacy? Just wondering.
It’s a recording of her in her final moments, trapped in the casino by her former lover and his out of control security measures. They then stuck some basic security AI into it and voila – instant guard.
And the security AI is in a depression because it has been kept there for a long time? Why should that character be feeling or saying those things if it’s a security AI? Why would she be saying those things in her last moments in life?
Just because there’s an excuse(and I understood the excuse when Josh explained it), doesn’t make it any less mind-boggling-craptastic-cerebral-numbing stupid when that excuse is horrible.
The AI isn’t depressed or anything silly like that. The thing is basically just repeating a certain repetoire of stock messages.
As for why she saying those things, well that’s explained in the backstory of the DLC.
The holograms actually repeat the loop of her last moments over and over, in order. It’s not like it chopped up her message into phrases and repeats them randomly. It’s the same message looped constantly.
Ah ok, my fault then. The dialogue that I managed to hear while Josh was playing induced me to think otherwise. It actually seemed like she was reacting purposefully to Cuftbert.
waitwhere
MISS BRANT. GET ME PICTURES OF THE NEW BATGIRL OR I’LL OUTLAW COFFEE FOR ANYONE WHO ISN’T NAMED J. JONAH JAMESON!
Here.
That’s all we know.
If you’ve been ignoring DC news, DC is revamping their whole line, another big reboot. This is one of the changes.
Personally, I like her better as Oracle.
We also know that Gail Simone is writing it and that it is indeed Barbara Gordon and not Stephanie Brown with a wig(SHUT UP I WAS IN DENIAL).
I’m trying to keep an open mind, but DC makes it harder with each announcement.
I don’t know. So far I haven’t seen anything that would preclude the telling of good stories. They’re just shaking up the status quo a little. Again. Doesn’t even seem that major, compared to events like Crisis or Zero Hour.
Always remember that without risking such changes we’d never have had Barbara as Oracle in the first place (and how many people were outraged when she was crippled?), or more than one human Green Lantern, or Tim Drake as Robin, etc.
I’m not concerned with the status quo being shaken up. Oracle becoming Batgirl doesn’t really bother me, and even Dick going back to Nightwing has potential (though the Dick/Damian dynamic was great).
My concern, at its essence, is the possibility that Red Robin and Batgirl (Stephanie Brown), books I enjoyed immensely, are disappearing without replacements.
There are lots of books yet to be announced, so maybe tomorrow there will be “Red Robin and the Outsiders” and “Spoiler and Cassandra Cain Globe-Trotting and Being Awesome” (title a work in progress) announcements and my outlook would shift dramatically. Maybe that is Huntress in the JLI image and my outlook would shift a bit.
But working from what I know today, it doesn’t seem like anything to be excited about. (Though digital distribution is a really welcome development).
Despite all the complaints, I thought Chris Yost’s Red Robin was AWESOME. Nicieza’s wasn’t bad, but if I can get Tim written by someone else… At least some good would come of this.
Losing Gail Simone on Birds of Prey (A SECOND TIME) hurts though… I hope we keep Secret Six.
From what I’ve heard on the JLI pic that is Donna Troy.
Along side Lurker’s comments which I echo immensely(really, the current Batgirl is the kind of comic that can cure cancer by touch alone and when Cass appeared in Batman Inc. and Gates of Gotham I just squeed myself to a Joker smile); the destruction of the character of Oracle, one of the two major characters with a disability in comics(the other being Professor X) is a very nasty thing when considering how little characters of reference there are for such readers to identify with.
I might be an heterosexual white male, but I’ll be damned if such a slight tossing aside of a character so important to a minority doesn’t annoy me.
Not much into comics myself, but isn’t Daredevil blind? Wouldn’t that count as a disability? Or is he disqualified because his super power basically fixes it?
Yeah pretty much. It’s very easy to identify with Daredevil independently of whom you are, seeing as his lack of vision doesn’t quite give him any difficulties in life(if anything he can ‘see’ better).
There are some more superheroes and supporting cast in similar conditions, but like I said those are the two main ones.
Yeah, I’m still waiting to see how “Batman, Inc.” fits into all of this. Personally, I think it’s a crass attempt to sell Bat-books and merch in overseas markets, but given how ludicrous the costumes are (not to mention an organization of loner vigilantes. What?), I think it’s pretty much doomed.
If it’s for the reboot, then it completely makes sense.
Seriously Mumbles?
Because by that logic Countdown also made sense.
:P
They’re REBOOTING the series so it makes sense that they’re going back to square one. If they’re ACTUALLY curing her legs in the process then no. That’s dumb. If they’re pretending the joker shooting her in the stomach thing hasn’t happened yet, then what’s the proobbllleeeem? I liked Batgirl: Year One, didn’t you?
I loved Batgirl year one.
But I also love Oracle and I realize what the character means to many people. Independently of how they do this, they’re ‘curing’ a character, something which people with the same affliction in real life can’t do most of the times.
They’re not rebooting it completely to square one you must note, Dick and others for instance are still around; so if they retcon the Killing Joke they’ll be totally erasing a character and what it stands for from their continuity. If they ‘cure’ her in anyway, they will be sending a very wrong message.
It’s a no-win situation with no desirable outcome which won’t offend people needlessly. That’s why the whole internet(and me) is so angry about it.
Oh well, no sense continuing hoarding Shamus blog for this. :P
Those gloves may be realistic/logical, but dear lord they’re nasty.
Also ruts is now playing batman in a crappy 2012 spinoff movie. Enjoy.
Yeah, I’m the guy who’d give the excuse for this on the forums – I read all the history and notes early on. They don’t explain everything, but some things, like who Vera Keyes was, why she’s a hologram etc do have explanations. Actually there’s a lot of stuff that gets explained, the game has a lot of strong themes and a rather in-depth story, Josh just hasn’t mentioned any of it to you, and never takes the time to explain, hence why you have no idea what’s going on most of the time.
And this would be fine if it was like one person needing it explained, but I really don’t see the point in doing Dead Money if you can’t provide commentary or even, failing that, bothering to show it off. Now Honest Hearts would probably work fine with a blind run because as soon as you know Daniel and Joshua then the rest is self explanatory, it’s not that complex, but Dead Money really is.
Well, theres still an interesting point being made: this (supposedly) good, in depth story is completely indistinguishable from a bad story because all the background and explanations are so separate from the gameplay, that sticking to just the core gameplay you miss it. While I don’t think everything should be spelt out for the player, the core that the story is built on should be a strong narrative with optional extra reading adding to the experience, not defining it.
(Note-I haven’t played Dead money, so if josh is skipping over stuff that would be obvious in a normal play through, it might not be as bad as it looks here)
I guess that comes down to what gameplay style this DLC was designed for.
If you do the bare minimum of dialogue required to progress, do no exploring, skip over every single terminal you come acros, etc. Then yeah; you’ll miss out and you’ll barely have any clue about what happened and is going on.
If you instead play it like… oh, I dunno, a Fallout game for instance, then you will get what’s going on.
That seems appropriate. If you go through life ignoring dialog and not paying attention to the news, you’re not going to have any idea what’s going on. Hehe.
So basically it’s only a good DLC if you have high speech and science? I thought the idea of Fallout games is they’re supposed to be fun wherever you’ve invested skillpoints.
I don’t know about high Speech (although I’ve seen plenty of other skill checks in conversation, too), but I don’t recall seeing even one locked terminal this season, let alone in this DLC. So I guess that low Science wouldn’t be much of an issue — high Repair might be more useful, from what I can gather from the playthrough.
Even though it’s no requirement for “getting it”, you will probably get more out of it is you have skills that you can use. But not just speech and science; repair, explosive, even barter is used.
Which is probably why this DLC is recommended to do at level 20. At that point even low-int character will have a couple of skills leveled.
While I don't think everything should be spelt out for the player, the core that the story is built on should be a strong narrative with optional extra reading adding to the experience, not defining it.
This. Even if you don’t read any of the audio logs in Bioshock, you still know the following:
Your plane crashes, and you enter the lighthouse bathysphere which takes you into Rapture, the underwater ‘self-proclaimed utopia’. Doesn’t really look that way though, as the whole place is creepy, and littered with Zombie rejects who’ve used the same super powers you need to use to go kindly help the main Navi guy with some pretty odd chores, before interrupted by Tannerbaun, who regrets her experiments in Rapture in the past, and asks you to take on the side quest of saving some Little Sisters. This eventually culminates in Navi guy (Sorry, forgot his name) asking you to go after Andrew Ryan. So you go through some more tasks to do so, and then When confronted Andrew Ryan asks you if ‘would you kindly’ hit him over the head with a golf club. You then discover that Navi Guy is actually Fontaine, who’s this weird JRPG-ish villain who tries to take over Andrew Ryan’s reign by force, and has been brain-washing you the entire time. Tannerbaun then saves you from a pretty vital scenario, removes the mind-control, and asks you to take on Fontaine to fully free yourself and Rapture from him. Based on the number of Little Sisters you save/kill, you get a different ending.. But through the entire time, you are given parts of the story “force-fed” to you, and yet…the audio logs complement the story.
You can have both. You don’t need to go one way or the other. There is a happy medium between Uncharted and Fallout.
Speaking of Honest Hearts, why do I get the feeling that they’ll try and “beat it” in one episode via Chaos in Zion?
That’s what I did. Got the compliance regulator, .45 pistol, Graham’s armor and off I went. It’s not like there is anything else worthwhile in it.
Yeah, God forbid we’d get any actual spoilers. Who would want that? This show is about punmaking and non-game related commentary, right?
Yeah, this. I’m glad in general that the crew decided to do Dead Money, since it encouraged me to get it and play through it ahead of time (so I’d know what was going on) – and it was an awesome experience, with great characters and an interesting story.
At the same time, the actual SW episodes about it have been pretty terrible – as they’ve noted, the inevitable result of tackling a story that 3/4 of the group hasn’t done. Even if half had played it, I think we’d get a lot more informed discussion of the game, since 2 is enough for a conversation.
I don’t normally have a problem with these sort of complaints – indeed, all the complaints about Mass Effect 2 only made my play-through more fun. But in this case, so many of the complaints are ones that just don’t have any connection with actual normal play-throughs of the DLC itself. Yes, plenty still hold weight – mocking the boring brown and red palette, for example. But all the complaints about the story and the characters, including inventing their own explanations to put in the mouths of the designers and then mocking that… well, let’s just say I’m eager to have them get back to the regular plot of New Vegas. Or even play through Honest Hearts, which I think would be much easier to tackle without any of them knowing anything about it at all.
Dead Money is very complex, and you won’t get the full story without reading the terminals and paying attention. Josh does a horrible job of this, but to be fair, reading terminals is too boring for SW episodes. However, Josh doesn’t explain this or act like there even is a good explanation, which leads to everyone mocking the story without really understanding it. SW shouldn’t have done Dead Money without everyone having played it,which I know is a stretch. The explanations aren’t even hard to find, if you listen to what the characters say (things are ARE NOT hidden in a dialogue tree) and read the terminals (that take almost no time to read), you’ll understand.
Plus, we all know Josh can’t read, so the terminals wouldn’t help the playthrough much anyway.
Just one of them was enough; one that can talk about the story for the others to comment on while Josh does his Cuftbert routine.
Ideally, Shamus; because he serves as sort of the “voice of authority” on the cast: every time Mumbles tries to share her considerable Batman knowledge, she gets trolled, but no one trolls Shamus when he tries to explain things, so it works best coming from him.
Well, no one would do that if she’d talk about a real superhero.
*headdesk*
Batman is real, he lives here in town.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Law_Building
No one trolls Shamus because in this day and age we respect our elders.
I was going to hold back with this till Dead Money is actually finished but seeing how it’ been called I kinda agree. I think it’s good when there’s a person on the show who hasn’t seen (parts of) the game. It worked very well both with SB Lair and the ending of ME2. But I think either three out of four people not knowing the game is too much or Dead Money is too long.
Primarily, there is no real interest in the game from the side of the team. I find the “random party banter” funny and amusing so I don’t consider the episodes a wasted time but still, there is not enough deconstruction of the actual game stemming directly from the complete lack of the interest with the DLC on the part of the team.
One isn’t enough, though, in this case. Josh has done a horrible job of explaining the plot, the other 3 don’t really seem to have an idea of what is happening.
Shamus, I apologise for my great smugness in pointing out what I thought was your fault.
I support your crusade against bad code.
Default:
(Left) Alt: Free look
L: Toggle lights
That’s Arma 2 for you. This image seems to have some mistakes, but you get the picture.
Also, I think there’s a couple of RPGs that have some kind of quest log on L.
And Final Fantasy XIV uses ijkl for camera rotation.
A lot of oldskool FPS games used “L” as “Toggle flashlight”
If I’m not mistaken, TF2 defaults L to “Drop the Intel”
Huh. Meant to be a response to Groboclown below. Oh well.
And I bind L in TF2 to my medic to say, “PUT THAT DAMNED EQUALIZER AWAY WHEN I’M TRYING TO HEAL YOU.”
It doesn’t do much, but it makes me feel better.
Of course then you run into the problem of a soldier who’s run out of rocket launcher and shotgun ammo, and so the game won’t let him *not* hold out the equalizer.
o_o I think that it would be easier to learn to be a stunt pilot quicker than it would be to learn that….
You’d be surprised…
This brings a question to my mind: what key do you use for screenshots in Arma? Print screen? Ctrl+U?
When you buy the game it comes with a USB button, since the keyboard is so crowded with everything else in the entire game.
“]”. I’d tried using the usual idle out-of-the-way buttons, like “O” or “V” but they were all in use and I always ended up with the compass or watch out on all the screenshots, so I bound it to “]”, which was also used for something, mind, but the mousewheel accomplished this something better so I just unbound it.
Amusingly, the mouse controls are missing from the image (yeah that key setup is for one hand) and the flying controls aren’t listed, only so much space per button after all. But the grey movement keys on the left change their function when you hop in an aircraft. And the mouse is used for standard FPS stuff, and also doing numerous additional actions available with the wheel.
And then there’s some useful stuff that doesn’t have a key by default, like ejecting from a vehicle in a hurry (normally done through the action menu, which might be too slow). Thankfully, you can bind things to multiple-key combinations or hitting a key twice rapidly too.
So basically, this is the closest thing I know of to that keyboard smash -combination Shamus was talking about.
And then there's some useful stuff that doesn't have a key by default, like ejecting from a vehicle in a hurry (normally done through the action menu, which might be too slow). Thankfully, you can bind things to multiple-key combinations or hitting a key twice rapidly too.
So how many keyboards are required to play this game? Because after looking at that diagram i see no room for anything else.
And obviously a default 3 button mouse is very inappropriate here.
So 3 keyboards, 2 “gaming” mice, and a therapist to explain the horrible dreams where you can’t help but hit the wrong button all the time…
Not that I am hating on the game, never even seen gameplay of it. But really….
I only really use WASD, C and Spacebar, everything else is for weirdos, like Sek.
That’s where the multiple-key commands come in. I clear the left Control key to use it in these combinations. And some of the functions on the image are for very specific things. Next target (TAB) is only for vehicles, for example, so I can use it for that and Hold breath, which is infantry-only. And I have a pretty normal mouse, actually.
Of course, some people think this control scheme is too limited and add things like… well.
@Someone: Start using the map and leaning. Also, reload your gun. No wonder you’re always running out of ammo.
It’s not that you need to use all of them all the time. Basic movement isn’t that much more complicated from your generic FPS. The F keys are used mostly for the command interface, which you can only utilize when you’re the assigned team leader of a group. If you keep playing, you’ll eventually develop the needed routines for it and using it becomes a second nature. Even so, most of the radio commands (1-9) and command interface can be largely ignored in favor of an organized communication line via Vent/Mumble/Teamspeak/Whathaveyou.
So… wait.. The out of the way keys do things with a purpose, and the ones that are right at hand are immediately replaced by other software. That makes…….
senseIt does make more sense when you play the game. It’s just a pretty clunky interface to use, though it does it’s job if you’re willing to learn it. There’s just no point using it unless you want to play single player or comm.. sheepherd a bunch of AI bots in multiplayer. Using Vent/whatever client is much more efficient when playing with other people.
So true.
Great, now I’m always going to hear “Command-uhh Shepard”. ME3 is going to be really confusing.
Your Left Windows is free, let’s fix that by assigning Get Out / Eject (double press) to it.
And speaking of the Windows key, I absolutely love that Arma allows you to use it as any other key. The only other game I remember that allows that is Mafia. Other games ignore it at best, at worst it is hard-linked to the #!%&$~@ action, aka “Hi, I’m the start menu, you weren’t playing a game, were you?”
I find pressing the Windows key rather awkward, actually. Anyway, the picture is just the default, I myself have eject as Ctrl+E. Edit: Actually I’m not 100% sure it’s Arma 2 and not ArmA.
I’m a bit annoyed by the fact that some other Windows commands work so well. Sometimes I get a reminder when I’m using free look and try to select unit 4 at the same time.
They actually suspended ALT+F4 in the 1.59 patch. You now have to be in the pause menu for the combination to shut the game down, in-game it doesn’t do a thing.
And yes, the diagram is for Armed Assault. Arma 2 doesn’t use Home, End, etc. keys by default.
Yay! Wait… I already have it. Hmm.
Perhaps it doesn’t apply to vanilla Arma 2. I’ve been playing that one because… some people are too something to buy Arrowhead just yet.
If you’re playing just Arma 2 then the latest patch is 1.09 if I remember correctly and that one does not have the ALT+F4 change.
You know Arma 3 is due to be released next year, right? You might want to buy Arrowhead prior to that :P
No, I do have Arrowhead, though I haven’t played it (well, CO) in a while. The other guys I play co-op with don’t. Not verifying names here, but you might find them if you click on Someone’s link up there and delve into the posts from… last month. Could really use some help in the OA propaganda effort to rectify this sad state of affairs.
Edit: Also, I know. I so know. Almost bought a computer to run Skyrim, but this needs to be taken into account.
Unless you add a lot more people, just use Skype.
It’s official: Every episode of Spoiler Warning needs to end with Josh saying “So.. this isn’t good.” Best ending ever.
Justification for Vera holograms: Guy who made the Casino was obsessed with her.
Not really well hidden either mind you…
Btw, Christine is pissed because, after days and days of torture, she’s freed to see Cuftbert who basically says “bitch, do what I tell you or I’ll put you back in there!”
In her place, would you be nice to a person who did that to you?
To expand on that, because I’m that kind of person, she developed claustrophibia from being in the auto-doc. That’s why she refused to take the elevator earlier.
This feature must be incorporated into Mass Effect 3.
What, so every time you need to load you have to beat your companion into unconsciousness? Actually, if they keep giving you stooges like Miranda, that might be really enjoyable.
A drawback for killing off Miranda in my ME2 playthrough?!
NOOOOOO!
Btw, as anyone seen the new Mass Effect 3 Trailer. It seems were going from Space RPG, to Space Shooter, to “down to Earth” Shooter. Dragon Age 2 Syndrome anyone?…
Nope. Too busy gushing over Nintendo’s E3 show. Batman Arkham City of Wii U. Darksiders 2 at launch? Screw Mass Effect and its Kinetic bullshit…
PUNCH people with an OMNI BLADE!
Badass!
Also, FIGHTING REAPERS with a machine gun on the back of a HOVER TRUCK!
YEAH!
Omni-tool blade does actually look fun. I don’t have a problem with the series increasing the action, so long as it also keeps a good story (they are nowhere even near mutually exclusive). ME2 faltered on this (excellent short stories, a couple of which are integral to the overall universe, but nothing tying them into the stupid crappy main story of the game (wait, that might actually be a hidden benefit…)), but I will reserve judgment on ME3 until I see it.
(On the other hand, shooting reapers with a ‘small’ gun just seems goofy to me. Now, shooting them with some Klendagon-style weapons…)
Anyway, the neatest thing I’ve seen so far is
Wrex and Mordin working together. The best character in the first game plus the best character in the second game = Pure squee. I can only hope hope that they both get to join the team (I’m doubtful – they seem more like guest stars – but one can dream, right?). Just throwing this out there, though: Bioware better damn well not make me have to choose between them….I would buy that, and it shames me.
Unless its a fully automatic guass minigun, than I’m cool.
My brain still hurts.
The idea of the Omni-Tool Blade bothers me. Seriously, how the heck does a HOLOGRAM function as a weapon at all? Is it kinetic? Why not just call it a Kinetic Blade?
Honestly, I’m really interested to see Shamus’s reaction. Should be… entertaining, to say the least.
Almost as interested as I am to see a new Spoiler Warning! *taps foot expectantly* C’mon guys, you know we need our fix…
Yeah, the entire thing is a Citizen Kane style monument to the guy’s (Sinclair’s) wife, and here you would find out she’s addicted to med-x, which has been used to blackmail her into helping organize a robbery of the casino. Sinclair found out about this ahead of time and essentially turned the casino’s security systems into a massive mousetrap with the vault below as the cheese. So, as is part of the theme of being trapped by greed, Vera was imprisoned here until she died, with the security holograms recording every second. Sinclair meanwhile, relented and wanted to help her, but the security systems were essentially foolproof, eventually resulting in his death too.
I won’t go into any detail about her co-conspirator because you’ll find that out, but I’m reasonably sure the above won’t be discovered in this playthrough.
Wouldn’t figuring out the co-conspirator require actually listening to what the characters are saying, which so far hasn’t happened either?
If nothing you can explain everything as them roleplaying Cuftbert. He’s got no time to listen to what others tell him when there’s things to punch, drugs to take, things to punch, pockets to bomb, things to punch, things to punch and he forgot everything else after things to punch.
Hops to hop.
Btw, I had the SAME Cassandra/Batgirl thought…
Cutting edge technology will always have it’s quirks.
Even running a local Murmer server for Mumble is going to have it’s own inherent issues. Same with trying to record a voice-conference on Skype.
Anything you do with have some kind of problem. And of course with a local server, you need bandwidth as well. Murmer FAQ says worst case scenario is Number of users à— Number of talking users à— 133,6 kbit/s.
There’s a big book of science to Josh’s left on the book case. I’m going to cry if he doesn’t pick it up next episode. And the hologram’s beam coming from the face sort of reminded me of Liberty Prime. I believe his laser came from either his face or his chest…
Yeah, Liberty Prime had eye lasers.
You could just run your own mumble server. It’s free to do so.
You could also use the TwentyMine mumble server. I should be able to set up a private channel for you guys to use (still need to test this, but a quick google search says it’s possible) so that no-one will barge in on you during recording.
Ok. I tested it out and I have a channel with a working password on it. If you’re interested, reply or just pop-in and try it out (I’ll be on the server all day).
Address is mumble.twentymine.com, port 2762.
Damnit, ninja’d by fenix. Was also going to suggest use of the twentymine mumble server.
Most definaitly worth a try, it seems to be a sysem that works perfectly, plus its a communit server anyway, so thats like an advantage or something, twentymine ftw
Uhh, Josh kept saying he wasn’t going to kill her, yet every dialog option he chose was antagonizing her. Is Reginald taking over your real life Josh?
He’s either completely rushing it or thinks it doesn’t really matter.
I think Josh was either being sarcastic when he said Reginald was mean to Christine just once, or he just couldn’t properly remember what he did because he was distracted by a bunch of yahoo’s yapping about Ao knows what at the time.
Unrelated question: Why is Ao the D&D god of choice to swear to? It seems weird to pick the god whose *thing* is he doesn’t care.
I don’t know if anyone else uses Ao like that. Me using Him/Her/It is something that started both as somewhat of a joke and in answer to a certain debate and has since then evolved into a habit.
Let’s just leave it at that.
Hmm. I thought I’ve seen it used on other forums, but I have a bad memory. It has the benefit of being 1 less character!
In the last conversation he didn’t have the skill points to get the non-killing dialogue option (I’m sure he had a skill mag that could’ve given him enough though – he was at like 70/75) and at that point the only options were “try to kill me and I’ll kill you” and “I’m going to kill you”.
But yeah, if he didn’t want to kill her he shouldn’t have threatened to put her inside the auto-doc and stuff earlier.
He did spare her the elevator ride earlier, though. Doesn’t that count for something?
So when are you guys going to do a spoiler warning of Arkham Asylum to crush one of Mumbles’ other favorite games?
Urr I mean, to teach Mumbles about Batman and some of his reoccurring villains.
Indeed. That game has the potential to speak about the good and the bad bits in equal measure – and the benefit that the only colour everyone will see is either very dark green or deep-sea blue!
But seriously. Do Arkham Asylum next! Mumbles has had it coming for too lon errrrrr I mean Mumbles could learn a whole lot from the game about videogames and comics – two things she really has no clue about, seeing as she is constantly busy with all that musical redneck rampage chair hobby she has.
Good bits- gameplay is tight and extremely fun throughout. Mark Hammil. Power curve develops nicely. You feel like a badass (aka you feel like Batman). Environments are fun to traverse, with powers to match. Stellar examples of narrative through gameplay.
Bad bits- the narrative. Seriously, I know the bat mythos were supposed to be well integrated here, but the entire premise falls off the face of the earth for me. In the real world these criminals would not be taken in alive. Any cop or law enforcement agent would shoot on sight. The joker would be killed the second he was in gun range, bane, croc, etc. With their propensity for escape, sorry don’t buy it. And the assylum itself? How is that even a functional building? Who would work there?
The layout makes sense from a gameplay sense, but not an architectural or functional one. AA is genuinely one of the most fun games I played ever, but these elements kept nagging at the back of my head.
The problem being that Batman has arrested them already and since Gotham doesn’t have the death penalty they’d get into all sorts of trouble if they executed prisoners. And their crimes are serious enough for a Citizen’s arrest to be valid and justified.
Mumbles should totally be the player for an AA runthrough though.
She’ll just try to eat everyone though.
And of course,you have to do all the riddles.Plus make Rutskarn be the one to solve them.
So are you going to file a very loud and angry bug report with the Ventrilo guys, saying that a feature of their program is broken? Or are you just going to sit here and complain? No offense, but I mean, if they don’t know about it then you should probably tell them so they actually can fix it. :p
Wanna bet on their response?
I’m going to say it will be along these lines: “The Ventrilo system has an audio recording capability that requires the user to push the button to start and stop recording at the right time. Moreover, until you send over the involved computers, full details on the internet stream back and forth of the local region of 100-node spread of the involved parties, and the faulty voice (preferably larynx and all), I’ll just class this as not a bug due to lack of any details whatsoever.
Or simply put HAHA NUB LRN 2 Spk!”
You know. practically everything the dev from that libre-office crapware said.
Two thoughts…
1) Maybe he’s a hard-light hologram like Rimmer. test this by beating the piss out of him.
2) “Cooking with Reginald” would be an awesome machinema and I would totally watch it.
101 Incinerator Recipes.
That’s why he’s been keeping it!
Every episode, Reginald tries to carry the ingredients from the fridge to the table while constantly bunnyhopping, and then just gets bored and puts a grenade in the stove.
It’s like a cookery show combined with Mythbusters.
“Did you know that with minor modifications, you can turn an ordinary gas stove into a trap of fiery death?”
“Remember kids, you can try this at home, as long as you still have hitpoints left and can eat the results and drink plenty of water to heal.”
“Now, this explosive will take 2 hours of preparation. But I have prepared this corpse sample in advance; see the beautifully browned flesh and crispy bones.”
Funny you should mention a gas stove trap…
If Cuftbert preferred women he would be able to charm her into not attacking him. See, there is a reason to get lady killer.
Which is kind of weird, since Christine’s previous love was a woman.
She could still be bi.
“It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind”?
Well, the playthrough I did where my Courier was helpful and supportive of her, and fulfilled her goal of revenge on her behalf, the subtle quasi-romantic undertones made perfect sense to me.
Getting it just because of a perk seems a bit cheaper.
A woman who you may have had the pleasure of traveling with…
Bi?
Short-hand for “bisexual”, as opposed to hetero- or homo-sexual.
No, I was replying to YOUr post about her having a female lover. Hadn’t reloaded, so when I posted your was the last post on the line…
I guess that’s what I get.
So she is basically veronica,but with less hair?
Christine’s previous love was Veronica.
Really?God damn it!I made a stern decision not to get the dlcs before they are all out,and you just had to say something like that!
Also less punching things… And adorableness.
Wow, I should have figured that out before now.
I’m just amazed at the will to loot. Most people when they have 10k or so chips and can buy basically anything they will ever need (also you could have made way more than 100 stimpacks that’s just where the meter to do them all at once maxes out at) would stop looting cigarette cartons and pencils, but not Cuftburt.
I am not one of these ‘most people.’ Old habits die hard. I am currently playing with 9 luck (boosted), have busted all the casinos, and have over 70k bottle caps. My ‘to-sell’ bin back at home is full of cigarette cartons and sensor modules. Does that stop me from picking up pencils? No. They have no weight! They’re FREE MONEY MAN
Indeed, any item that has no weight but some value is basically currency – picking up a pencil is hardly different from picking up NCR/Legion money.
I hate it when you try to collect pencils lying on a desk and end up missing them and opening the desk instead, which invariably contains something like a tire iron and a paperweight,
I’m more amazed at people who have the will to refuse to get money.
To be fair, Christine’s been tortured for 2 weeks, as she says, and when she finally gets out, Josh uses his version of diplomacy, and basically acts as Elijah’s stooge. How would you react?
edit: Josh, if you don’t use that meeting people magazine, I’m, …I’m, I’m…
I’m going to write an angry post on the internet.
Oh no! Why is Christine going all crazy on you?? That makes no sense! Well that really sucks, because I really like her character. :(
Btw Ruts, nice Hitchhiker’s reference.
EPIC Hitchhiker’s reference.
I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who caught that.
Indeed.Fission puns are tearing me appart.
Gah!This was supposed to go down there,after X2-Eliah.And I still cant edit my posts.If only I knew what I did to make it so…
For me, the editing on this site breaks whenever NoScript decides to block this page.
I was gonna comment on that the moment I heard it, but then I saw you guys beat me to the punch
tut tut. Just fission around for puns that don’t exist
I see what you did there. ha. ha. Now never do that again.
Admit it, you’re divided on that pun; part of you hates it, but part of you is neutronic for it.
Nope, I reject the possibility of being attracted to that pun. I’m positive about that.
Quite ionic that you just made a pun yourself.
Josh is just gonna hang out makin’ fission chips.
Edit: And we’re all stealing Rutskarn’s pun.
I’m very confused.
At the start of the episode, didn’t it say that Reginald had over 10,000 chips from playing blackjack? So tell me again why it’s important for for Josh to find fission batteries and scrap metal to counterfeit 50 chips? I mean other than to validate the “fission chips” pun?
We need to rename “Spoiler Warning” to “The Art of Convoluted Multi-tier Trolling.”
I still think we should be able to earn college credit for watching this.
I wrapped up the game with something like 190,000+ bottlecaps (plus tons of cash in the form of other currencies, extra gear, etc)… and yet, I still lugged around every single piece of valuable loot I found, desperate to sell it to someone, even though the extra 1,000 caps really, really wasn’t needed.
So I guess what I’m saying, is that needlessly pursuing already achieved objectives is, to me, what this sorta game is all about.
Josh has long displayed classic signs of hoarding behavior. There’s still a broken incinerator in his “being held for you until you finish the DLC” inventory, which he doesn’t have ammo for, but can’t bring himself to throw away.
He`s keeping it for the upcoming Reginald`s cooking show.
Oh, and when he’s looking for junk food, he passes right BY a dispenser where he can trade some of his chips for junk food…
Hey Rutskarn, lots of MMOs use the “l” key for “quest log”. Of course, MMOs don’t have a quicksave feature, and single person games don’t have a quest log. Both of those deficiencies are a shame, as far as I’m concerned… In fact, one might say they shame-us!
Wait… doesn’t about every single player RPG ever have a quest log, including the one they’re playing right now? Unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean by Quest Log.
Single-player games more often implement it as a journal, hence in the j key instead of the l.
That said, yeah, Rutskarn if way off, a number of games use the l key.
They do, but do they bind it to L?
Yeah, but this game has no menu hotkeys – you have to go through tab for everything.
…That’s a horrible pun.
That said, the MMO’s I play I’ve had quest log on “q”. Not sure if I rebound it (I re-bound a lot for DFO, for example), but yeah. Problem solved. :p
Never seen a pissed off Christine – this is going to be fantastic. Go Rude Reggie!
Josh could just record everything from Vent using another piece of software. Nothing bad has ever come out of tossing another wrench into the machine, right?
While playing BF:BC2 today, I encountered a player known as “fission_chips”
This is clearly not a coincidence.
She has the holo-virus, hex-vision and all!
(Sorry, I’ve been watching too much Red Dwarf.)
I fail to see how this needs an apology.
I fail to see how “too much” Red Dwarf could exist. I mean series 8 and 9 were, lets face it, series 8 and 9, but we still watched just because they were a Red Dwarf fix.
So I’m still the only one who liked those, then. Gotcha. :P
(I totally called DESPAIR SQUID really loudly when me and my family watched Back To Earth, by the way.)
I have to say, when I heard Cassandra, I thought of the 100% reliable prophet computer from Red Dwarf, not some unsatisfied billionaire who runs around a city in his rubber suit.
Cassandra isn’t a billionare… Or at least she WASN’T…
Am I the only one that actually thinks of, you know, Cassandra? The Oracle of greek mythology who was cursed by the gods to never have her prophecies believed? Although damn me if I can remember why…
Gods don’t like it when you promise to sleep with them and back out on the deal is the most common story >__o
Since when did Greek gods bother *asking*? My estimation of Canssandra’s badassitude just went up 20 points.
Mumble has quite a few dedicated servers which can be found in the connection list (country/continent) in which users can freely create rooms for themselves (freely as in easy, as well as costing zilch. Also password protected). Sweden has several such servers – I am sure the North America region has some spiffy ones as well.
Just for your information, as they say.
EDIT: Or just create a server yourself. I just had a Derp!
Josh isn’t very good at explaining why you are doing what you are doing or why. No offence.
Although it is mostly explained in-game through text logs on computers, so the game isn’t all that great either.
Well, I’ve been reading the text, and it doesn’t make much sense either.
As I understand it, it’s a raiding of the Sierra Madre, and/or a social experiment. Hence the bomb collars that suspiciously de-activate once you enter the casino, and presumably can’t just leave.
actually all the hologram projectors in the suites are all behind the inside of the doors, which made the first few hard to find but once you notice the pattern they become fairly easy to find. although some are off in closets too, so yeah there difficult, but there are much harder ones to find as you near the end of the dlc and those ones were only hard because i didn’t realize you could shoot them to turn them off.
RAWRG STOP NOT ADDING TO LOCKPICKING JOSH!
/obligatory
Next up on Spoiler Warning: Josh plays Cooking Mama?
So the fission puns are going to cause Rutskarn to split?
Like, split the atom?
Awesome.
ALL HAIL THE PROPHET RUTSKARN
If nothing they’ll have less compunctions killing Dean, which he will do since he’s probably not too happy about getting threatened like Christine. He’ll just be more smug about it (“Hey big boy. Turns out I don’t really need to help you anymore so have fun with the holograms. Kthxbye”). He will not be able to save Godog.
Though I guess to be fair since Josh lacks the skillpoints to be competent in anything other than punching things (which by the way makes him the perfect Fist of the North Star villain) he’s really not able to do anything other than “OMIGAWD I KEEL YOU” diplomacy.
I’m now switching to “this doesn’t make science” now.
One day Josh will realize that when you want to dump extra weight you go to the MISC section, not the AID section.
Even though the gameplay was boring, this episode has some of the best commentary in a while
Agreed. You guys talked about the game. What a novel idea.