T w e n t y S i d e d
In this episode we surf on cars, ride trains, break the AI, and shoot down dozens and dozens of helicopters. If you haven’t been watching my streams and you don’t have an hour to spend on video, then this is the kind of highbrow gameplay / narrative analysis you’ve been missing out on.
Link (YouTube) |
The total helicopter kill count is 32. 8 of those were during the train ride, and the other 24 were part of the rooftop rampage. In the chat it was suggested that a helicopter costs about $120k. Going by that figure, the Los Santos police had to cough up 3.8 million to replace their inexplicably massive fleet of helicopters.
Then on Friday I did another, unannounced Stream of Batman: Arkham City. And then on Saturday night I did the final (for the time being) Stream of Grand Theft Auto V. I haven’t uploaded that to Youtube yet. It’s been fun and we may come back to it later, but it’s time to move on to the next game. I just picked up Nier: Automata. That’s a great game to stream and I’d love to talk about it with you. On the other hand, the damn thing keeps crashing and that’s the last thing I want to deal with while streaming. We’ll see if I can make it work.
I’m not sure how to handle this reposting of streams. In the future. I don’t think we need one of these “Here is the VOD I uploaded to Youtube.” posts every single time I do another stream, and I don’t want to clutter up the blog archives with that. If you’re into streams then you probably know how to subscribe to YouTube / Twitch, and if you’re not then all of this is just clutter. We’ll see.
This coming week the Stream will be a bit later. Here is the event on Twitch, which should give you the proper time in your timezone.
Trashing the Heap
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
Spec Ops: The Line
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
Control
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
The Dumbest Cutscene
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
About the posting of links to streams: How about just linking to the previous episode on Youtube whenever you announce the next one? There’s no urgency about getting that link, but I think it might be a good thing to still have all these links here — and more importantly, on the RSS feed — eventually.
(Honestly I can’t be bothered to register with Youtube.)
Most of the people I watch on YouTube make multiple videos per week or day. If I was subscribed to them, I’d be spammed more often than with the Facebook[1] app on my phone. I mean, this is probably very common; Most popular people got that way because they have regular new content. I just don’t see how YouTube’s model for notifying you constantly makes any sense. A daily, weekly, or on-demand digest of the new videos you’ve missed would be very useful. Otherwise, I stay logged-out. :)
[1] Facebook only lets you un-follow people one at a time. What I need is a button to unfollow everyone except current close friends and family, and a filter for all the baby-picture posts…
I use YouTube both on my PC and on my phone and am subscribed to enough channels that there are usually about 10 videos a day coming into my sub feed (this one: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions). Not once have I been notified about new videos on either my phone, my e-mail or within my browser in any way other than showing me recommendations or the above-mentioned sub feed. There are other features that get a bit annoying, like the notifcations for comments on your comments (which you can mute, individually or as a whole) or likes for your comments (same).
Maybe you’re doing this to yourself by clicking that bell icon everyone’s going on about recently? I never saw any use in that, so it stays off.
YouTube even lets you configure these things inside a browser so you don’t have to scroll through all those preferences/options on your phone IIRC (or it was Google+, one of those).
It’s possible this has been changed and I never bothered to learn how it now works. I basically stopped interacting with YouTube about two years ago, just before the introduction of the bell… Thinking more about this, I think the bell was their solution to the notification spam, in some weird way? I don’t understand what use-cases they’re trying to fulfill here. To get notifications you have to subscribe+bell, but subscribe by itself is just…a way to bookmark channels?
It does exactly what you wanted it to do: The link I made above compiles all your subscribers’ recent videos into a (chronological-order) digest so that you can review them at your leisure instead of being spammed by them.
EDIT: Also, subscribing to channels and liking the ones you actually like makes the suggestion algorithm (the one that provides the videos to the right of the video you’re currently watching) SO MUCH better. I admit it was shambling along for a few years without having learned to do anything (other than randomly guessing things you might like), but it actually started being useful … uh, I dunno, half a year ago? One?
I simply turned off notifications from youtube,so I only see updates when I personally go to the subscriptions page on youtube.There will always be something new there,so I check it about once a day,but if Im to bussy,I dont get constantly bothered by youtube “Hey!New videos!Come and see!”
While this is fun,you should really do a stream of a few story missions.Because people who have not played gta after asn andreas simply dont have a grasp at how dissonant this gameplay is with the story.
Yeah, agreed, I love GTA but I haven’t loved these streams.
Regardless of that, though, I think posting and commenting here is a good idea. I never read youtube comments but I do read the comments here. The golden master example is the guy who posted a link to how the GTA engine is implemented a couple of posts back. Thank you kind sir (tip o’ the fedora).
Your streams are fun to watch, so I’m glad you got a taste for them! If you keep doing multiple streams a week, you could always just limit the update to a blog post every sunday or every other sunday or something? I dunno.
Nier Automata should be interesting. I don’t love that game. The combat is shallow and the mission structure is very repetetive and tedious, among many reasons. But there’s great stuff in it too, and I’ve found it difficult to get out of my head after beating it. I’m just curious how much patience you’re gonna have for its tiresome parts.
I don’t know about not making a blog post about streams. A lot of us don’t really watch them in general, but might check one out if it’s someone we’re already following. And you never know when somebody new will come along who doesn’t know that you’re streaming because it’s not mentioned in the blog.
I myself wasn’t subscribed to Shamus on Twitch; Thanks to this handy blog post, have fired up the rarely-used Twitch app, and changed that. :)
A police helicopter, equipped, costs significantly more than $120,000. A Bell 206, before systems like FLIR and spotlights, is close to a million USD.
That stream is about Arkham City.
“The total helicopter kill count is 32”
Trevor ain’t got nothin’ on Marlow Briggs.
I also contest the notion that the only people interested would already follow through youtube or twitch. I also cannot be bothered to make a twitch or youtube account. I get my Shamus stuff here and would rather not need multiple feeds to follow it, while a blurb on what happened (clips strong) is great even if I’m not going to watch the video. But hey, I’ve been a bit low on vids recently.
If you’re not announcing streams on the blog then a weekly roundup would be in order.
Similar to Ye Olden Diecasts and the let’s play videos, I enjoyed consuming the text content Shamus typed up to at least slightly summarize what happened. And if there was enough description to the post, I might be bothered enough to watch the video / listen to the podcast.
I’m greatly interested in a video that talks about the technology of a game, but greatly GREATLY dislike watching someone just screw around for a while in a game. Unless progress is being made (story, for example), yucking it up with the cops or civilians in GTA is one of my least favorite things to watch.
This isn’t a criticism of you, shamus. I’m sure there are a lot of people that enjoy that kind of thing, but what it’d take for me to watch it involves really strong discipline to not care about unexpecting things and to not get SQUIRREL-ed by the game.
I just want to say I am in agreement.
I very rarely watch video (stream or otherwise) content; I have neither the place nor the time nor the will to spend half an hour or more watching someone else play and talk.
But I *do* want as much from the content as possible – in easily digestible text format. the more there is, the better. Round-ups, overviews, debates started in the stream and continued on the blog, it’s alllll goooddd.
Okay. I think public opinion is pretty firm here: People don’t mind stream reposts, and some really want it.
I think the “weekly roundup” is a good approach.
The schedule now is:
Sunday: Fluff / announcements
Monday: Diecast
Tuesday: Column
Wednesday: Bob Case
Thursday: Wolfenstein
Friday: This Space Reserved for Rutskarn. Violators will be towed at the owners expense.
Saturday: My day off.
Looks like the roundup needs to go on Saturday for this to work. I’ll see what fits with my workflow.
In a weird, small way, it kind of makes me happy just to see the site updated, even if I’m not going to check out the posted article (I’d love to read Bob’s Witcher stuff but I keep promising myself I’ll get around to playing those games… one day…)
So is this “My Day Off” thing a new series you’re starting up? Neat! I look forward to it!
:P
I have to disagree. I see no difference between these stream announcements and the announcements you make every time there’s a new podcast, or the ones you had every time you had a new column in The Escapist. A link to the actual content and a small recap/analysis of it is perfectly normal, I don’t see it as clutter at all. Though you could make a new “Streams” section in the website to group them rather than filing them under “Notices”.
I find it pretty funny that there’s at least four different threads here, all saying that we actually don’t mind and/or want these small announcements here on the blog. :)
I use rss to get notified when theres a new thing on your blog,so I never saw a need to subscribe to you on youtube,and I have even less interest in subscribing to anyone on twitch.But I AM interested in these streams,and I watch them every time you post them here.
I’m watching the stream replay on Twitch now, and I gotta say I do not regret never being interested in the GTA series.
As impressive as this game seems to be technically, I find the whole “playing as angry hobo with massive issues” angle pretty much repulsive, and I keep thinking it’s a damn shame that a studio with that much collective skill spends their time making a glorified asshole simulator every couple of years.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, thank you for confirming my preconceptions.
Regarding the discussion about halfway into the GTA video about blue LEDs, LGR had a nice video on this very topic a few months ago: The Story of Blue LEDs: Inventing the Future
I’m waiting for Gamma-Ray LEDs…Seriously, though, after some quick googling, it appears as though the upper limit for materials would be something like ultraviolet at best. Good to see that humans are maxxing out some branches in their tech tree. :)
I really like what RockStar North did wit the NPC dialog.
Take this for example https://youtu.be/E39D4G5ZTFw?t=1468
On the right sidewalk a NPC says something (to another).
You still hear that dialog half a block later.
Often in many games you hear a NPC say something and then you are gone and it gets cutoff. Never paid attention of GTA V always does this or not.
I thought of one thing that GTA V “lacks” there are no cargo ships or tourist ships arriving/leaving.
BTW! Shamus…
You can ride the tram too. No idea if you can shoot your gun out of it though (other than on regular tops when the doors open). You certainly can’t ride roof. Can’t the cops follow you? Are the windows bulletproof? If not can htey hit you during the semi-cutscene? Can they enter the train during stops? What happens if they do enter and te train takes off? Do they still shoot you or are they in limbo? Will the cops and helicopters shoot the civilians?
And then there is thiaf,where not only will the dialogue not stop if you walk away,it will start again,WHILE THE PREVIOUS SAME DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE SAME TWO NPCS IS STILL PLAYING,if you come back into range.
Hi there,
Firstly I do enjoy your additional thoughts on any given topic posted in addition to the video content.
The other thing I wanted to mention is the following:
As I am currently playing Mafia III I am in a weird state where I do know two of the three great Crime-Sandbox games. GTA never got the hook into me. So I thought to myself if it would be of interest if there were a comparative write between Saint’s Row, GTA and Mafia. Especially given that Mafia is a strange beast. I watched three discussions and each had a somewhat different view on the topic and only one talked about the DLC. In my eyes these content packages make the game quite the intriguing specimen for analysis.
Please see the above statement as a far fetched wish/suggestion for a writeup topic.
I would be interested in reading such a thing as well.
Mafia III alone is already a really strange beast. It has a lot of really intriguing elements mixed with a lot of stuff where you are just left thinking: “Hey, GTA already had exactly this problem in the past and overcame it in a later installment.”. It is both surprising and depressing to see some of the elements that make i.e. Vice City feel so dated nowadays implemented again into a game that could have been so, so much better than any GTA game up to date.
On the other hand, they found some compromise between making the shooting “realistic” and making it bearable, the AI “smart”, but still predictable. Not necessarily a good compromise, but a sufficient one. And the driving is lots of fun as long as it’s not raining. Which it does nearly all the time.
*sigh* I’m ranting again.
Did you make that youtube thumbnail,or does the game has some sort of stream integration?
The java shop is a really nice detail.
The thumbnail is just a screenshot of the game, which I photoshopped to say “Shamecast”. The Java shop (I think of it as the Errant Signal store) is really in the game.
$120k seems awfully cheap for a decent helicopter. If I could get them in bulk for that price, I’d resell the turbojet engines at a profit.
Yeah, police choppers are usually in the 1-3 million range, fully kitted out. The GTAV police Maverick design is based on the Eurocopter AS350, which has a unit cost of $2.4 mil, before the police customization (lights, IR cameras, etc.). Three million bucks each is a good guesstimate.
The last time I had occasion to know the price a turboprop engine for a small aircraft, they were in the $250k-$500k range.
You might be able to get a helicopter for $120k, but it will be a reciprocating engine power source, and that tech level won’t scale up to have the capacity that police helicopters need (cameras in visible and infrared, with optical zoom and stabilization, spotlight, bullhorn, and the ones on the stream had enough spare capacity to maneuver with at least two people other than the pilots on board… Those choppers cost a few million in capital cost and about a hundred dollars an hour or so of flight time in fuel and maintenance.
Shamus, have you tried the FAR mod for Nier: Automata by Kaldaien? It seems to fix most of the game’s problems on most systems. Well, the technical problems, at least. Personally, I loved Nier, it was my game of the year, even though the combat is pretty much broken. But that’s what happens when you mix Platinum’s mechanics with JRPG-style stat-driven combat.
You know what I’d really like to watch? Shamus playing through the original Deus Ex with commentary.