Link (YouTube) |
This is what the show is all about: Serious, in-depth commentary. My fear is that someone will mistake our exhaustively researched review for Rutskarn and I ignoring Josh and acting like jackasses for twenty minutes.
Also: Pbbbth. Pbbbth. Pbbbth.
Having said all that: Am I the only one who wanted to punch out the dancer? Were we supposed to think he was awesome? I dunno. He’s technically got rhythm and athleticism on his side, but for whatever reason I thought “poser” every time I saw him.
He really is well-guarded. Aside from the crowd of inexplicably applauding onlookers, there are a couple of cops patrolling the area. I wanted to take him down without having to fight everyone in the Detroit subway system, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.
My Music

Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
Video Compression Gone Wrong

How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Could Have Been Great

Here are four games that could have been much better with just a little more work.
Quakecon 2012 Annotated

An interesting but technically dense talk about gaming technology. I translate it for the non-coders.
The Loot Lottery

What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
It’s sort of a shame that the Detroit Subway wasn’t functional the way the Hengsha subway was. I trekked back and forth through that subway tunnel more times than I can count.
I finished the game last night, so I’m eagerly awaiting those episodes to discuss . . . well, spoilers.
Incidentally, someone on the credits was named Cuthbertson, which amuses me greatly.
On my second (more wacky/psychopathic) play-through, I lobbed a concussion grenade into the break dancers and onlookers! They didn’t appreciate my make-shift rave all that much… It ended in a candy-bar fueled punching-spree!
I had a lot of moments like that on my second time through… not picking up everything, not completing all objectives, or otherwise behaving like I’m a saintly ninja with save-scumming powers; just acting on impulse and letting the chips fall where they may.
I must say it was a lot more fun on that second way through, all things considered. So the next time you’re gaming and things are becoming dull… ask yourself: “what would Josh do?”. It’s how I ended up filling Jensen’s apartment with every stray can and bottle of booze I could find. I might not remember the plot of the game a couple months from now, but I will remember doing stuff like that for a very long time!
I liked O’Malley’s email exchange with his underling. It made me think of Norman Stansfield and his crew from the movie “Leon”. Although O’Malley is rather less crazy than him.
I rather liked that when you used the pheromones on him you could get 500 credits for the beta option, but 1000 for the alpha option. I found most of the resulting dialogues (and consequences) from using the “wrong” approach with pheromones very interesting and well written. I would load the game and try every option just to she what would happen, and was rarely disappointing.
Hmm, I’m starting to realize that: 1) I really like this game… 2) I have way too much free time on my hands!
HASS anyone found a way to kill the dancer?
I heard my friend Haas a Wayne to make it work.
I’d rather he come to this site and tell it himself. I don’t just want to parrot him, after all.
If we keep punning like this, we run the risk of becoming a parrot-ty of the show.
Again with the puns?Well,Im not throwing mine chips on the table this time.It haas to stop,and I wont take parrot in it.
That. Was. Awful.
HASn’t anyone found a better way to be funny? MINE eyes are bleeding; PARROT of them has just stopped working.
So, seems Deus Ex is on GoG now.
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/deus_ex/
You guys tried to give it the Spoiler Warning treatment earlier, and, well, we know how that happened… so maybe the GoG version will work? It’s optimized for current operating systems and has no extraneous programs, so who knows.
Just a thought, is all.
Also tried letting you know over twitter, but not sure if it got through since my connection died pretty much right when I tried telling you.
Also, for those who use Gamefly. The new PC rental beta…thing includes Deus Ex Game of the Year edition as a free play to people who use their service.
I’d be surprised if it was really “optimized for current operating systems.” I love GOG, but they’re really doing the minimum amount of work necessary to get old games working on modern systems. For DOS games that means shipping a DOSBox wrapper, and for Windows I believe they’re just automatically configuring various backward compatibility options.
I believe the Spoiler Warning problem was not visible to the person playing, only the people watching the stream. Screen recording of full-screen games is a bit of a hack, and it sometimes doesn’t work. Heck, I ran into that exact same problem when I tried to record some 3d software I was writing to show as a demo. I would bet against the GOG version working any better.
For one example, they’ve offered Dungeon Keeper 2 as Vista/Windows 7 compatible game for a while now, and it has a ton of problems and barely works on most people’s systems still. I believe they’ve stated that a fix is still coming, but nothing had come forth last time I checked. Some fan made fixes have come up for some of the problems, but I refuse to pay money for something that doesn’t work as advertised.
I just bought it. Tried playing it. And am now no longer a fan of GoG. I had audio problems similar to what Rutskarn had watching Shamus’ stream. It was…ridiculous. (That or Cyber Satan is in my computer)
I never actually found a way to kill the dancer and no get away while feeling good about the kill. I just save, lethal takedown, load when I need to blow off steam and (more importantly) kill a dancer.
I have never worked up the nerve to be overtly mean to anyone in any of my playthroughs. I just envision Jensen as a white knight who tries his best to bring everything to a satisfying conclusion and help tons of people out. I help the two morons get Neuropozyne through legal channels. I gave the bracelet to Megan’s mom (except once for the trophy). Etc.
I always saw Zeke as a generally good, but foul-mouthed and incredibly stupid guy. He’s trying to do the right thing, but he has no clue that his actions are stupid and he’s being played.
The way he talks, I envision him more as the Dark Knight.
Zing!
Me hacking into O’Malley’s bedroom for the first time:
*Punch in code, door opens*
Me: Sweet! *Immediately walk in–*
BOOM!!! O.O
Me: OH, COME ON! THAT’S CHEAP!
My exact experience, except the out-of-game dialog was:
Me: What? Huh? Why?
My brother: There were mines.
Me: Dammit.
It actually was the first time I encountered mines in the game, so I had no idea that those blinking lights meant danger.
I didn’t even see the blinking lights. I just walked in. XD
Now that I think of it, I may have even wept and wailed somewhere in there…
Come on, when have blinking lights in a videogame ever not meant danger?
Terrain damage is so unusual in games it’s only noticeable when a game does model this in. Even in strategy games it’s remarkably absent.
The only example I can think of from the top of my head is X-COM Enemy Unknown, and possibly one of the Red Faction games?
Are you talking about the terrain getting damaged by battle stuff?
Because the Battlefield 3 does this. And for the Battlefield Bad Company games that was actually a selling point. Or, at least a big “look what we can do but they can’t” thing.
Also the Red Faction games. You can legitimately solve puzzles in those games by blowing holes in the level geometry. Locked, armoured door? No problem: the wall next to it gets very friendly with Mr. Rocket Launcher.
That’s what I’m talking about yes – though also about the tactical use such a feature might have … Shoot the floor out from under an enemy, use a rocket to blow up the wall where an alien is hiding behind, …
edit: ninja’d
I also think Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway included it. I remember quite a bit of things were destructible.
Also Red Faction, as the guy above mentioned.
Very few of the Red Factions succeeded though. Even Guerilla had to many design errors and it meant there was almost never tactical destruction gameplay.
Bad Company on the other hand, gives you a grenade attachment that blows through walls, but not people. It was pretty cool having firefights with the house being taking down and around you and flanking through a wall. If Red Faction Guerrilla had more health, larger buildings, a rebuild tool, less focus on cover based play, a working stealth system, no infinite respawns, and more missions with objectives inside buildings, it could have done that too and been pretty cool (plus bullets should have gone through walls)
Silent Storm?
Silent Storm was fantastic. Using a bren gun on the stairs in a building because you thought you heard a german was the definition of chaotic satisfaction.
Even moreso in XCOM Apocalypse.
We do not talk about XCOM Apocalypse.
I get where using HE autocannon rounds might be unwise, but when half the building collapses because I missed with a machine gun, I think things are getting out of hand.
Well, there is minecraft. (It’s easy with voxel based games.) :P I think that the reason it was odd for it not to do anything in this area, was because being a living quarters and not a street or alley way everything is more delicate. So, it sets a bit of a contrast. Maybe if a lamp would have shattered and fell on the floor or the bed caught on fire. Even if just charred textures were pasted over everything. But after they all blew up it looked like nothing had happened.
There was also “fracture”, a shooter where terrain modification was basically the main feature: you had special grenades that could dig, create hills and sprout towers of rock. It only worked on the ground itself, not any structure, and still had a limit to how deep or tall you could change the scenery.
I also recall it somewhat sucked. They apparently sunk most of their budget on their ground-modification engine and the story and gameplay suffered a bit. I think it was a third-person shooter. With cover mechanics or something.
I remember thinking how great it would be to combine this with the structural destruction of red faction games.
Company of heroes has terrain damage.And not just that,but explosion craters can be used by infantry as light cover.
Dawn of War 2 has similar mechanics, likely because it’s the same company, and a similar (if not the same) engine. Buildings could be destroyed (insta-death for units inside them), walls could be broken by either large vehicles, explosives, or a couple other less flashy methods. For a given value of “less flashy”, it is 40k after all.
On a related note, I don’t suppose anyone’s heard if X-Com’s new remake is going to have destruct-o physics? And no, I don’t mean that daffy FPS thing. To quote Yoda, there is another.
Look it up, it’s scheduled for this fall.
Yes it will have that.If you check their little tactical guide,youll see an example of removing a wall with a rocket in order to open line of fire for the sniper.Plus,when the project lead talks about it,dectrutible environments is one of the first things he mentions that they need to have(2:30).
No one remembers Myth? I mean, I know X-Com had this, sort of, but Myth was the first game I remember that had deforming terrain. Just arm your dwarves and send them forth.
Interesting little gameplay difference – last time I played the game, I basically started drinking booze and popping painkillers as soon as I saw they would boost my health. Josh, on the other hand, hasn’t used that stuff yet, though he has been collecting them.
Your talk of shotguns in the last post has lead to Cabela advertisements on the side of the site. For some reason, I think this website is a liiiittle bit outside their audience.
I hate the shop owners. You can’t buy directly from them, you do it on the computer.. but you can’t USE the computer, you have to use the person to use the computer.
It’s aggravating.
Shop owners who tell you something like “Hey, everything is on that computer over there, you know, just use it.” I can understand that they’d want to avoid something silly like “there are guns and ammo vending machines in big cities nowadays” but it does ultimately boil down to the same thing except the owner actually needs to set it up and then stand next to it to watch it…
Letting the real world intrude for a moment quickly leads to the that this is a legal requirement compromise set up between two conflicting special interests, like some weird definition of firearm sales that specified “between a person as seller and person as buyer” meaning that there’s a got to be a human involved and another requirement like “Manufacturer is responsible for all uses of firearms and ammunition until purchase by consumer” which lead to firearms being actually handed by bonded vending machine companies…
Completely non-canon, but that’s how this kind of wackiness comes about. Ask someone that lives in Utah or Washington how dumb the liquor laws used to be even 20 years ago….
“Candy bars I just took from the hands of a dead hobo. It’s all right, you just have to scratch the blood where it dried.”
Awesome guys. Awesome.
At least he’s not offering her some soy food.
“I’ve got a few extra guns… some candy bars . . .”
I laughed so hard XD
Does anyone else feel a little…awkward at the youtube screen cap of this episode? I mean, what is O’Malley looking at?
edit:Also, the +1000xp doesn’t help
Ah, the first priority of augmented males…
I just hope the Sarif industries logo is not universally applied….
Oh, it is. And remember, all parts come with serial numbers, and trackers.
On the plus side, they come with FM radio as standard.
Plus some other nifty features,for her pleasure(of course).
Apparently not, if you listen to the conversation coming from the apartment next to Jensens. Or if you took a good look at whatisface, the mercenary who shot you at the start. Not a good look for him.
As soon as I read that thing about how the bodies were burned beyond recognition, I knew what was going to happen
and how dead Megan really was…Really, you need spoilers for that?
It is not like it takes more than the tutorial for anyone to figure that one.
Though, to be fair, it is just because anyone playing Deus Ex: Turban Convolution (or at least anyone who’s the target audience for it) will start out with a very strong genre-savvy bias.
And the worst kind of genre savvy character is a genre savvy character in a conspiracy story. And… strangely I think the only case.
At least the game subverts plenty of the tropes,so genre savvy players usually get pleasantly surprised.
Come on! Where’s the TV tropes link? I want to waste somebody else’s time today… [maniacal laughter]
If you insist.
And here I was, trying to play it cool and not expose anyone directly to that devious timesink.
sigh
Awwww,four links to tvtropes are considered to be spam by the filter:(Oh well,wait for Shamus,and youll read my evil scheme!
Interesting that you can talk to Zeke later. I took the “let him go and spare the hostage” route but afterwords never found either the special guns dealer, or Zeke. It doesn’t seem to have affected the main plot at all though. What did he give you access codes for?
Also, awesome “parroty” pun. Your linguistic dexterity is an inspiration to us all. (all of us who like puns, anyhow)
He gives you access codes for the next operation,
the FEMA base you infiltrate. I’m surprised Josh didn’t do what I did on my playthrough thoughthank the terrorist nicely, then pop his ass in that alleyway where no one can see. It removes the surprise from later apparently. I just did it because he and his buddies were rude, and ‘debt paid’ means ‘no longer useful’.I did the exact same thing you did in that second spoiler but for pettier reasons,
namely revenge for the hostage situation.I was somewhat disappointed that that action locked me out of extra content. Disappointed and it’s good that they thought about that possibility.
In a way, it reminds me how DX 1 checked to see if Anna Navarre is still alive, even though the way it’s set up you can’t avoid killing her except by abusing an AI exploit.
I did it, too, just for fun…
Thanks, Shamus. That image will stay with me forever.
Pbbbth. Pbbbth. Pbbbth.
So, Rutskarn, you want to live that guy’s life EXACTLY, eh? Alright.
42 years in…
Hey man, turn around. Some guy’s trying to get your attention. *chink-chink*
BOOM
Wait, Rutskarn, you think that questgiver was Gob Bluth?
Oh, that’s great. You expect the guy in the $3600 suit is Gob Bluth? Come on!
I played Costume Quest last month and cracked up since they made that reference.
Yay! You found the pocket sec that I pointed out some two or three videos back!
Zeke looks like Maddox.
Also, this was probably the best SW evar.
Every pirate looks like Maddox.
Which is weird, because he dresses like a King wherever he goes.
…Unless he’s King of the Pirates?
Rutskarn’s ruthless parodies of the types of serious discussion this show strives for drags it down. To davy jones’ locker, if you will.
You’re definitely not the only one who wanted to kill that guy. Frankly in this kind of game anyone with an audience is asking for trouble. No! No, mister dancer, this is MY story, I am the hero! You do not get to hog the attention!
Incidentally, more of this please. Game critique is nice, but I haven’t laughed that hard for a while. Forever more, when playing HR the pheromone option is always going to bring up a visual of Jensen with one hand in his armpit.
Heh, I actually like the dancing guy. After all, he seems to be enjoying himself (at least in dancing, if not in lyric) despite the crapsack-y-ness around him.
I dunno, maybe it’s just Zorba the Greek in the back of my mind talking about dancing.
I don’t have much to talk about today, except the following:
Why does everybody hate the dancer?? I mean, I have an instinctive dislike for him too, but I’m trying to figure out what exactly it is about him that makes him so universally disliked. XD
He haas the look of someone from Jersey Shore. He’s a parroty, if you will.
So… will you guys do the mission where Jensen finds out about his past?
So, Shamus, in the apartment it was okay to mine your own business?
Sounds reasonable.
Cool story bro time!
So I was young and playing Tactics Ogre. It’s a turn based strategy RPG for those of you who never heard (blasphemy). There’s a stage where you must save Harborym, a blind swordsman. In the Chaotic Path, he starts halfway between your army and the enemy army, and the enemy army has a concave around him. He of course, CHARGES IN.
If he dies, he can’t join you. This is also one of those games with permanent deaths. Also, the enemies in this stage have some of the best equipment you’ve seen so far (and some of the best in the game it turns out) as well as two of the best spells in the game period. Which means I must not only save that fool, but kill everyone in the stage (AND get their items, which does take some work) before killing the leader and ending the stage.
After a few tries, I do it. Every item is acquired, Harborym lives, all is well… Except it’s my last turn before the boss moves. There are several people within her range that she can kill. My one move is a Priestess, she has one attack, a projectile, powerful enough to kill the boss by now.
It has a 53% chance to hit. So I move to a better position, and it goes up to 78%. Excellent, I shoot. Miss. Hit my best character and kill HIM. This opens up the path for the boss to hit Harborym and kill HIM…
And that is how I found out how weak dry wall REALLY is…
“It's a turn based strategy RPG for those of you who never heard (blasphemy).”
Its not for the pc,so it probably isnt even that good*smug elitist grin*.
Yeah! Well… Well… Nuh-uh!
Seriously, I played the PSP port and it was a very good game. (Though I didn’t have that problem because the PSP version saved the last 50 turns and let you rewind for a do-over.)
PSP version had better translation (by far) and graphics (duh) but the gameplay from the original (and the PSX remake) was tighter…
Stages were different… Don’t remember if saving Harborym was the same nightmare.
Good thing you had drywall, then. Where I live, the walls are made of reinforced concrete. Your hand would break long before the wall does.
Would probably be best. My hand hurt anyways AND I got yelled at by parents for breaking the wall. I’d rather just hurt hand and no yelling personally…
Btw, fun fact: Saving Harborym in the Law and Neutral paths is even HARDER, although there aren’t as many items to collect.
God I love that game… You PC people don’t know what you’re missing…
I believe you,but Ill still stick with my battle for wesnoth,thank you very much.
Is anyone else having problems with the newest youtube streaming?
Connection is very, very slow right now where I am (so slow that Steam won’t even try to allow me access, fun!), but I still managed to load the videos for later watching.
Now it seems like the streaming simply won’t stream more than 30 seconds or so. So, I watch 30 seconds, then wait for 30 more seconds to load, then I watch 30 more seconds… it is getting annoying.
(weirdly, the streaming from Shamus is actually loading all the way. Anywhere else I have to deal with this…)
i found it very entertaining to watch this video and reading you tell how much you wanted to slap that dancer made me think about this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYpuzHyEY8Q
Please, enjoy. : )
oh and here is the best way to save zekes hostage :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPvAe86KyWg
Okay, help me out here. What is the schedule for Spoiler Warning? Just asking for clarification on the timetable, not asking for more posts.
tuesday->thursday: Spoiler Warning
wednesdays: Josh plays Super Saiyan
saturdays: shamus column
Am I missing anything?
Also, these are for GMT times, this may be different for USA people…
Looks like you’re ahead of us, time-wise. The “schedule” for people in the west is:
Sunday: Random YouTube video or other lazy filler post.
Monday: Random thing
Tuesday: Spoiler Warning, Shogun
Wednesday: Spoiler Warning
Thursday:Spoiler Warning
Friday: Experienced Points, Spoiler Warning
Saturday: NOTHING!
But this week, it looks like we’ll be getting a Saturday Spoiler Warning on account of OUR TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY. (Josh is toiling away at this now.)
Cool, thanks.
And thanks for the two-year anniversary. Is it Metro 2033?
(jk, that’d be a horrible game to discuss on a livestream on account of #000000)
Why dont you space out spoiler warning a bit?How about tuesday,thursday,saturday,saunday?Its better to have inked ones on weekends,and if they are spaced out,people will have more time to muse through the already pretty long comment section for each episode.Plus,it gives you more time to upload the videos.
EDIT:Or,seeing how you are recording on sundays,how about monday,wednesday,friday,saturday?
I don’t know how long it takes for Josh to edit Spoiler Warning, but releasing on Monday might not give him enough time.
My favorite example of the “mining your own apartment trope” happened in a D&D adventure, wherein the party was investigating some shady nobleman’s house to gather evidence. Now, in order to protect his secrets, he had his desk drawer (in his bedroom) magically trapped.
The thing is, the adventure was designed so that you could run it at a variety of levels. So at low levels, it was just a random poison gas trap. At high levels… it was a magical Acid Fog trap. And what’s great about Acid Fog is that it basically eats through everything.
So it did, indeed, destroy the evidence we were looking for. And his desk. And his bed. And his bedroom. And the supports of his house. And his servants. And, as it turns out, his familiar (since he was a wizard), which in turn instantly made him lose a level for having it die.
So this fellow paid thousands of gold to install a trap that, if triggered, would destroy all of his material possessions, everyone and everything he knew and cared for, and even drain him of precious XP – but it certainly made sure no one would be able to read his diary…
Just checking – am I the only person who thinks Megan’s mother is way more attractive than Megan? I think my reaction to Megan is the same as a lot of people’s reaction to Miranda from ME2 – I know she’s supposed to be attractive because of the story but her face just seems off somehow.
Ruts, at my halls, the fine is the same for using Blu-Tac as it is for smoking weed. Hell, arguably less. We don’t get fine for weed until the 2nd or 3rd offense. £25…
Official Uni halls too XD
Laughed out loud ^^ Well done.