T w e n t y S i d e d
Thus continues our ongoing saga of self-abuse and childish griping in the face of Bethesda’s shoddy DLC. I highly recommend checking out this link before you watch the show. It will provide some much needed context on the mechanics being demonstrated. This goes double for Rutskarn, who was specifically asking about this stuff.
Pssst. That’s actually a link to the Sid the Science Kid movie which has mercilessly vexed Rutskarn during our last four shows. But don’t tell him!
Remember a few episodes ago we talked about a particular fallout shelter in the game. Well I managed to stumble across it the other day:
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If you’re the sort of guy who has always dreamed of meeting a naked double amputee as she hails a cab and then spending a romantic evening in a coffin-size nuclear bomb shelter, then tell me your next two wishes, because the first one is granted! I like how the guy who set this up brought two glasses and got a “sexy” nightie (the pink pillow-shaped thing is actually sleepwear which acts as a nightgown if you’re a female or pajamas if you’re male) for his plastic date. He may be lonely to the point of being deranged, but he’s still clearly a hopeless romantic. Sadly, it looks like the mannequin got stood up (sorry) because the wine is unopened and the sleepwear hasn’t been put to use. Alas for unrequited love. The wasteland is full of such tragedies.
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
Silent Hill Turbo HD II
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.
Silent Hill 2 Plot Analysis
A long-form analysis on one of the greatest horror games ever made.
Crash Dot Com
Back in 1999, I rode the dot-com bubble. Got rich. Worked hard. Went crazy. Turned poor. It was fun.
Skyrim Thieves Guild
The Thieves Guild quest in Skyrim is a vortex of disjointed plot-holes, contrivances, and nonsense.
The same ‘thanks for doing this’ comment I made earlier applies today as well. Especially now that I know what Rutskarn has to go through to deliver us the funny.
Now all I can think about is how many cubic Sids would go into one Sid.
Agreed. I think I’m enjoying the Fallout 3 Spoiled Warning even more than the Mass Effect one and I remember when it was announced I was a bit sceptical about it delivering the funny.
Sirs, the funny has been delivered and delivered well. Good show.
I don’t know whether that nuke goes through walls or not, but there’s a window RIGHT THERE. There’s probably LOS to the nuke from where you were standing.
Also, you all died a lot on this episode. War is hell, amirite?
war never changes.
at least so im told
Actually, it was probably complete random chance, but when I tried viewing the explosion from the bunker, my character’s head was blown off through the window. It was kinda neat, actually…
This is going to be a LOOOOONG ride.
Some things you guys missed/didnt care about:
After you finish objective one you can see three soldiers posing for a frontline reporter. He takes a picture wich is later used to create anchorage memorial (but since its a simulation it doesnt make much sense).
The vertibirds are seen flying around dropping bombs and the one that lands brings in a squad armed with T51-B power armor.
There’s also an error with the marines for the photo. One is carrying a Fat Man around (visually), but actually has a Missile Launcher equipped (visible on his back after posing). The Memorial also depicts a Missile Launcher.
Yes, that’s right. The training simulation for the operation apparently was able to predict the future by anticipating exactly what the statue would turn out like.
Man, I love Bethesda. And when I say “love” I mean “would love to systematically violate every member of the company with a chainsaw”.
But the simulation was developed after the operation, right? So it wasn’t actually training for the operation, but from it.
EDIT: At least it was still in development between the Anchorage reclamation and the nuclear war.
Why would the military put an easter egg in a training simulator?
Erm, that’s not the only thing of questionable use to the military in this simulation.
Mindless patriotism? Nah, I don’t know, but it’s more plausible than predicting the future anyway.
A software programmer for the military is still a software programmer.
You know? That actually makes sense.
I think if “Ahhhh. STOP SHOOTING ME.” worked, I would use it all the time. I want to hear Josh use that tactic in online shooters.
The Amazing Disappearing Torso was great.
“Seperate but equal vaults” BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Walking mines and frag mines “Oh a girl!” BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Side note. If you actually approach the map, instead of walking away when the General tells you to “come over to the map” you can see it just fine.
Also, if you can succeed a Speech check with the Quartermaster, you get a Gauss rifle.
If you bring your squad with you, you can conserve ammo by letting them kill things. Also, moving with them, instead of running ahead gives you “covering fire” where they kill those hard to reach with grenades and fists positioned guys.
If you’re a melee/fisticuffs character, initially choosing the “Close Combat” package would have given you a combat shotgun, arguably the best weapon for these missions. Or Fire Team for the trench knife and assualt rifle.
Or instead of griping about glitches, use the “unlimited equipment” glitch to get all the equipment packages… yeah, I don’t often recommend exploiting glitches, but that is one was a fun one.
If you sneak up on enemies (who have their weapon put away), you can pickpocket a Chinese assault rifle and ammo, and then kill them. Do it enough times and your ammo problems are over. You can also pickpocket weapons and ammo from the soldiers on your side… like a Fat Man nuke launcher and a few nukes.
Lastly, for squad composition, I actually prefer a sniper and two grenadiers. They are the only squadies (besides you and Montgomery) who will sneak. Mr. Gutsy is just useless for ranged fighting, and that is really what your squad is there for.
Seriously, you bitched about Speech and Sneak being useless in the DLC, but never actually bothered to use those skills where they would have done you the most good (getting more/better equipment and stealth kills)? Come on guys.
Yeah. STEALING from my own side? Why didn’t I think of that?
I love how the solutions to all of the awfulness in this game is to use some alternate form of awfulness.
I’m pretty sure all the actions suggested above are bug exploits, rather than intentional design on Bethesda’s part, so the criticisms about the DLC being poorly designed around shooty characters still stands.
Well, except the solitary speech check, a better equipment choice, sneaking, composing the squad carefully and actually using it. Stealing from your own side (directly or by failing to return weapons) probably is an actual exploit.
Still, what the hell kind of battle simulator gives you better weaponry for winking at the quartermaster?
And don’t forget that you already had that weapon and THEY TOOK IT AWAY.
And it’s a terrible design choice at any rate.
“Oh, you’re an energy weapons build? Well I hope you really like this ONE GUN. And I hope you put a lot of points into speech if you want to keep it!”
It’s like the problems in this DLC are fractal. You look at one problem and see it’s actually a collection of other problems, each of which is actually a bunch of problems, etc.
Well, you did come by the gun by looting it from the corpse of your fellow soldier. (Team member? He did enter by a parachute.) I’d imagine it’s standard procedure to deliver his personal firearm back to the armory, though I’m no expert.
It’s true an energy weapons only -build draws a short straw here, like in the tutorial. Melee wouldn’t be much better with a mere trench knife, though I’m tempted to try and sneak through the whole thing. Melee, energy and sneak do get the unique rewards from the quest however.
“Oh, you're an energy weapons build? Well I hope you really like this ONE GUN.”
Side note: If your actually playing an Energy weapon using character, how in the hell did you survive long enough to make to Outcasts mission area in the first place?
I’m presuming small guns, melee, or fisticuffs? Sure, OA isn;t rewarding your Energy Weapon specialist, but then Mothership Zeta was punishing to my Small Arms character.
I was constantly having to fall back to using energy weapons as I was constantly running out of ammo.
So to you Energy Weapon/Sneak specialists, Mothership Zeta (that buggy assed beast) is like your dream questline.
I admit that I am the type to just quicksave before I talk to someone with a speech check, and just reload until I pass it…
I’m pretty sure only the action named as an exploit is an exploit.
Sneaking to get a stealth kill is an exploit?
Pickpocketing the enemy is an exploit? Also, pickpocketting your own team is an exploit? (okay, in this one… maybe. As at worst it turns one guy hostile and everyone else on your team turns on him).
Intelligently outfitting yourself, your squad, and using them is an exploit?
Granted, Josh isn’t playing a Speech heavy character, I was just pointing out the (one and only) speech option since it was complained about.
Do you realize Josh attempted the Speech check and failed, right? And in the previous episode I think he said that he wouldn´t be sneaking around because it was quicker to run around shooting things.
All I have to say is: I’m sorry.
I was bored just WATCHING the video, let alone imagining playing it. It just seems so lackluster, with such badly defined objectives, mechanics and goals. At the end of the first mission, I thought, “Nice, what a nice way to end it. Lackluster for $10, but if it’s on Steam for $2, I might buy it.”
THEN it went on.
AUGH.
It’s like someone went to Evergreen Mills, and then said “Wouldn’t it be awesome if this were ten times bigger?”
…and even more bland and uninteresting… ;)
And ON ICE!
And in 3D!… ah, wait…
AND! Without a Super Mutant Behemoth to liven things up.
Well, we did get a Chimera Tank.
Which means…
AND a Warhammer 40K crossover! (sort of(sort of lame))
You can frenzy the chimera tank?! Are they robots?
About the shelter in Shamus’ post up there. You guys mentioned this before in one episode, but given all the negativity towards Bethesda in this little neighbourhood of the Internet, I think it bears mentioning again.
Yes Bethesda has a lot of flaws, but they are good at creating scenery and setpieces like that. I remember coming across that shelter and just staring at for 5 minutes or something, trying to figure out what the hell happened there.
I just came across a suitcase, a baby carriage, an adult skeleton and the tiny skeleton of a baby. These scenes convey the feel of the war well.
Too bad they waste all their braipower in the ambient instead of the quest plots.
Not to mention preventing glitches and building NPC AI’s that don’t act like headless chickens.
Yes, it says a lot about a RPG company when everyone who’s been dead for 200 years still makes more sense than everyone alive put together…
Makes you wonder. I would guess the level designers have a lot of time and freedom to decide if and when they put in things like that, whereas the plot/quest/dialog writers have more bureaucratic constraints.
Also, implying things through images lets you add your own meaning, whereas for living characters most of the interpretation is sprayed at you.
I’ve never gotten that torso glitch… I wish you would have tested 3rd person while ready to punch, maybe you had just the lower body and fists. The boxer’s dream!
-You can collect a Gauss Rifle from the quartermaster with one of those speech checks you were complaining earlier about not being in the simulation.
-Always quicksave whenever a graphical glitch starts, it signals impending doom. A good rule for any computer program, but it’s especially true for the Oblivion/Fallout 3 engine.
-“Frenzied” means you took out the tank’s targeting sensor and it was shooting Chinese soldiers too. The same thing is possible with all robots and turrets, as well as ants if you hit their antennae.
-I love how you complain about the bad fire team AI (which is terrible), then don’t order them to follow you and instead charge into missile alley solo.
-The Vertibird is delivering your reinforcements, but I’ve never been able to kill the missile launchers before they blow it up.
-The missile launcher is actually very worthwhile, it just works better if you’ve actually put points into Big Guns. The key is to not aim at people, and instead aim at the larger solid objects that are within splash damage range.
-Out of curiosity, since you all clearly despise Operation: Anchorage, why are you spending time on it instead of quests that are actually interesting?
Out of curiosity, since you all clearly despise Operation: Anchorage, why are you spending time on it instead of quests that are actually interesting?
We are trying to kill the staff at Bethesda with shame.
Its not gonna work for they have none. You will probably just kill yourself with boredom instead.
I figured you were doing it so you could point out the tie-ins Mothership Zeta has to this DLC.
God. Whatever flaws Anchorage has pale into insignificance next to Mothership Zeta.
I would almost like to see the guys skewer it but its so damn long and tedious I think it would test the sanity of everyone involved to breaking point.
Mm. Mothership Zeta was the thing that ended my last playthrough. I think I got to the point after you do the spacewalk, saved, quit, went to do other things, and just could not be bothered to start it up again. It’s like Operation Anchorage, only longer.
I have not played Fallout 3 at all. I watched most of the videos so far, and I must say the Operation Anchorage have been the most entertaining so far: the funny banter is uninterrupted by any meaningful action or dialogue.
Is there anything I can do to help?
The buggers won’t even support Fallout 3 on 64 bit Windows 7 and they expect me to go out and buy New Vegas.
Actually, New Vegas is being picked up by Obsidian. Whole different company, with a whole new slew of problems. But at least their problems are backloaded, rather than throughout.
What’s the problem with it? I have 64-bit Win7 and it runs just fine for me…
On the point of Big Guns, specifically: Agreed. And why not do like in most games with RLs? Shoot at the ground! The BIGGEST solid object. Hitting the roof worked for the towers, so the ground is a logical choice for enemies in front of you.
I was under the impression that the purpose of this Spoiler Warning series was to point out how pathetically broken and amateurish a game Fallout 3 is.
It is. But in the main game you have dialogue, npcs, quests and all that. Those delicious morsels of idiocy and failure which can be painstakingly deconstructed and mocked in so many fun ways.
OP:A however has none of it. Its a bad boring shooter with 5 lines of dialogue. Everything that could be said about it can fit into a 5 minute video.
The idea is to have evidence that it is bad. What better evindence than it is a boring shooter than actually showing the whole of it?
I think after 10 minutes of this crap the evidence doesnt get much clearer. And Josh swearing in frustration can only stay amusing for so long.
There´s always place to doubt:
“Well, the 10 first minutes suck, but maybe the next 10 minutes/the last hour will be awesome!”
The only choice to slay all doubts is to show the enterity of it.
Without this video I’d never have known that the doctor was a commie spy! OK, I’d never even have known that doctor exists, but seeing all the mortally wounded soldiers jump up to punch her was gold nonetheless.
Also, Revenge of the Cripple mine!
1. 1 speech check doesn’t account for anything. That was also a, GUN HE HAD NOT EVEN 5 MINUTES AGO.
2. Quicksaves can corrupt your files in ANY TES/FO3 engine game as do the autosaves.(This is unique to them, not gamebryo)
3. Isn’t a tank supposed to have people inside it?
4. This is the only location that it helps to have them. And if you can do it solo it’s probably better to.
5. At this point Cuthbert probably has more health than a vertibird.
6. Quite, but the only thing it fails to kill, usually, is the power armored people and super mutants. It turn most humans into mulch.
7. This is actually decent compared to most of the quests, in that it’s light on story. The main sidequests in FO3 are in order, Errands for a crazy person, a twilight cash in, fetch quest(nuka-cola challenge,) fetch quest(Stealing Independence,) fetch quest crossed with an escort(Head of State,) A corridor shooter and escort mission(rangers), a fetch quest with a gimmick that ruins the plot(the replicated man,) anther corridor shooter and escort mission(THOSE!), Fetch quest for slaves(getting into paradise falls), a go here, kill this style quest with another gimmick that ruins the plot(Harold and Oasis,) ANOTHER FETCH QUEST(Agatha,) YET ANOTHER FETCH QUEST(bigtown,) ANOTHER ESCORT MISSION(kid from lamplight to bigtown,) ONE MORE FETCH QUEST FOR GOOD MEASURE(Crowley).
Head of State and Those! don’t involve escort if you just let them wander off by Waiting (they’ll always make it, as well). Most escort quests can be cheaped this way, actually. Your dad can cross the wastes just fine after Vault 112, for example.
Hoorah for laziness :P
But dad has plot armor.
Addendum: Waiting on the escort missions is not cheaping them or being lazy, it´s being genre savy. You know they will get stuck on some rocks; or go Rambo against a supermutan overlord; or pick up some grenades and use them to kill theirselves…waiting is actually a way to avoid rage, brain damage and broken keyboards.
@Sid the Science Kid: What the… either thats an old commercial, or its for a different PBS channel than mine, as my local PBS channel has had that show on since last fall IIRC.
With all the loving given to Fallout 3, all I can say is……. when are you going to do Mass Effect 2? :-)
Slightly more seriously, I get the feeling that you like Fallout 3 (there are hints about how many hours you spend there, and with different characters), but I’m not feeling any of the love. Maybe I’m missing the good bits, but the negativity is coming in very loud. Hate to admit it, I was boycotting Mass Effect 1 because of the DRM, but after seeing some of your playthrough I ended up breaking my vow against DRM and getting it. Don’t think I’ll be getting Fallout 3 though from what I’ve seen so far.
Oh, and I’ve noticed that you try to keep the language used on your site remarkably tame (I remember the discussion you had with some sensitive souls in DM of the Rings about the classic Gimli (failed) speech-check to the horse lords with unspeakably close connections to their mounts). Maybe a warning to people that the language in the vids can get a little earthy before they click on the vid?
Mass Effect is an amazing game compared to Fallout 3… and Mass Effect really isn’t that great, so that should give you an idea of how abysmal Fallout 3 is. However, Fallout 3 is also a huge time sink and for some reason it scratches certain gameplay itches of mine, even if it does so many things so badly. It’s hard to believe how much time I spent playing it considering how sloppy a game it is.
Also, I’d much rather see them play Deus Ex or something. Mass Effect 2 is just too boring and linear, and I feel like it’d just be repeating the things Shamus already pointed out in earlier posts.
I agree. Fallout 3 is fun, once you learn to block the stupidity, ignore it, or just plain stop doing quests and dedicate to explore and scavenge. The bad thing is that you need to complete a quest to get the power armor (if you like how it looks, that´s it, because in terms of armor it sucks as any other armor): you either do half of the main plot, or you do Operation Ancorage. Or you get a mod. And then your game crashes three out of four times.
Or (if you could get a mod) you enter, for example,
SetPCCanUsePowerArmor 1into the console. Might as well use it if it makes your experience more fun.Hmm, I have to disagree. Mass Effect is, in my book, a pretty good game. Okay, it becomes more of a movie sometimes with all the talky-talk cutscenes, and the second one is pretty linear (and the story can get cliche at times… sometimes… a bit much), but it’s all a pretty nice game at the end of the day.
Fallout 3, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around, though. I painstakingly got myself through it once, but it looks like a lot more fun with Shamus and Rutskarn babbling in the background, and Josh abusing the system in every possible way :D
(I still giggle to myself when I think of when Josh placed the grenade in Three Dogs pocket… or robbed the Brotherhood of Steel… and… uh, everyone else :P)
My issues with Mass Effect mostly concern the poor shooting, lack of options when it comes to solving situations, mediocre level design, and boring/repetitive/badly-written side-quests. The core story is pretty good, if rather predictable and cliche, and there are a few moments of brilliance. It just never really realises its full potential, and I get the sense that they just ran out of time during development, or just couldn’t figure out how to integrate some ideas into the game effectively.
People really need to stop making the mistake of correlating “time spent” with “enjoyment”. There are a lot of things in the world that people spend a lot of time on that they don’t enjoy at all.
In the case of Fallout 3, likely reactions that still result in many many hours of play include “I have to see how this trainwreck ends”, “I wonder what’s broken about this part of the game”, and “I spent $60 on this crap and I have nothing else to do.”
And my personal favourite, “Oh dear lord I hate myself, but my inner completionist just won’t let me stop!”
I think it’s the latter that got me to spend around 400 hours on the game. Experimenting with different character builds early on is kind of fun, but after the first few levels my obsessive-compulsive “must finish character” drive kicks in. Bethesda games may totally fail in some respects, but they have totally mastered the art of spacing their content out in just such a way as to make their games hard to put down.
There´s also the fact that exploring is fun, except when all the local fauna gangs on you from miles away.
It really is, especially with the map markers from the compass removed — the fact that one of the perks for level twenty was the exploration one, where it marks every location, is just friggin’ baffling to me still. The local wildlife though? Troublesome.
“Look guys, I’m just… looking at this shack. See? I’m not bothering you. I– what the? God dammit albino radscorpion, where the fu– there’s two of you!? What the hell? Is that a friggin’ a super mutant master? Oh screw you guys!”
I’m not sure how it happened, but I was running along and I managed to pick up an angry train of all melee opponents one time. I was mighty surprised turning around to see them all waiting for their turn to smack the ever-loving crap outta me.
The Explorer perk adds all the markers, but doesn’t allow travel to them unless you actually walk there first.
I jumped at that Explorer perk the first chance I got. Wandering aimlessly through the wastes because rumor has it there’s a cool sidequest around here gets old after a few hours.
Hey, I just hope that people who does not enjoy it stops playing it. Personally I am right now doing a let’s play with two parallel characters and inspired by this very let’s play am going to start a melee – energy-weapon combo build this weekend.
Why doesn’t Rutskarn have something to block all the Ads? As far as I know, the adblocker add-on for Firefox will block ads for all of these videos.
A good deal of sites these days can figure out if you’re blocking ads, and will break their service if you don’t watch those ads. While I think that Adblock tends to be abused (sites rely on ad money to stay online), I also don’t think a site should force you to watch painfully annoying ads, especially when they’re likely making tons of money elsewhere.
Plus it’d have deprived us of the glory that is Sid the Science Kid.
How about flashblock? It works well for blocking anything Flash-based for me. If I do want to see something flash-related, including Spoiler Warning, I just have to click the big “Play” button in the center ;)
On a side rave, I love how Josh playing reminds me remarkably of the “Freeman’s Mind” machinima series on youtube :)
SMGs are used by regular military forces, mostly in cities and trenches, though I guess they might also be used in dense forests and maybe really hilly terrain. Of course, in wide-open and mostly flat places assault rifles would be the weapon of choice.
They are also used in rear echelon positions where full scale assault rifles are to heavy or bulky and some kind of automatic weapon is still desired as an emergency backup.
Walking mines are actually an old concept.Remember spider mines from crusader no remorse?It really would be cool to have such a weapon in real life.
And why is the power fist so lame here?
Still,choosing your team and weapons from a computer is kind of cool.Better than the rest of this dlc anyway.
It took me a while to remember what the mines reminded me of: it was Starcraft, of course…
Ooooohhh… of course!
But those were actually hidden. Then they´d pop up and run to the target. The ones in O:A are on a rampage. Real military men would have less of a trouble to find a moving mine with legs than finding a hidden, unmoving one. They are just there to screw the player.
“Haha! No one ever expects Moving Mines in the Open (TM)!”
Pffft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_tracked_mine
Sot it’s not walking, but I’m sure with enough time to do what they wanted the Third Reich would have been stomping around europe in mechs and had their mines walking from place to place.
The power fist is so lame in this case because Unarmed and Melee are (in a fit of utter stupidity) separate skills, and I have whatever the base was (I think I started at 17 in all skills) in unarmed because it’s friggen useless.
In retrospect, I probably should have gone assault rifle and just used the trench knife.
That was painful. First S.W. I’ve actually started to drift off from near the end.
Not even the combined comedic force of Shamus, Josh and Rutskarn can keep this atrocious DLC funny all the time.
It makes perfect sense to me: Josh is deprived of his hard-earned Gauss rifle because he’s proved he is so good at being a one-man army. Let the less talented soldiers have the more powerful weapons, they need the extra help!
Also: at the end of the war, everyone gets a medal, including the Chinese…
Ahhh…STOP SHOOTING ME! Every time Josh says that, it makes me LOL, because it reminds me of my own play at times. I can be looking for some quest object or location (ignoring the environment) and get ambushed and lose 2/3 of my health, be confused, take out whatever was ambushing me, and empty half a clip into the corpse so that I can go back to looking for whatever it was that I was looking for, once I remember what it was in the first place.
I can say for me, regardless of anyone’s take on the game as a whole, that Anchorage doesnt “feel” like FO3 – at least from watching it (havent played it). It seems almost an excuse to just go shoot things. Boom. OK, next.
STOP SHOOTING ME, I’M TRYING TO TALK. LOL.
The sad part is that even though Anchorage tries to remove itself from Fallout 3’s gameplay as much as possible, it somehow ends up being even worse than regular Fallout 3.
I have to admit the body parts gibing is huge satisfying in this regard. When someone ambushes me, annoys me and knocks out a fair chunk of my health I’ll sometimes stride over once I’ve put them to the deck and then just lay into the with my combat shotgun until there’s nothing but a bloody pulp left.
A deathclaw gauntlet is usually my weapon of choice for detaching assorted limbs. It feels more like a (natural) butcher’s tool than a combat shotgun, though the shotgun is very effective too.
I can’t wait Reginald getting his hands on some schematics for the Shishkebab, by the way. A fuel-coated lawn mower blade. A kleptomaniacal murderer with a sword of fire. What could go wrong with that?
Hilarious videos, but I have to wonder sometimes… does the guy playing have any clue how to play? He’s paying zero attention to where he’s supposed to be going or what he’s supposed to be doing… and has no clue about where the enemy is. And throwing grenades at a guy one level above you? LOL. The height of hopelessness.
Complaining that the enemy he’s trying to gun down is shooting at him… wow. I wonder why the other soldiers didn’t just put their hands up and let him grenade them to bits. Hahaha. That’d be hilarious to see though.
Yeah, jeez, he should have known Fallout 3 was a buggy piece of shit. Throwing grenades at enemies? Only a newb thinks that works. And seriously, you must be a total scrub if you think the AI is going to be competent and actually help you out. It takes a real pro, like myself, to know that you need mods, INI tweaks and unofficial patches to make the game playable!
It also takes a pro to figure out that Bethesda didn´t learn anything from the bugfest that was Oblivion.
On the other hand, that´s true. We should have seen it coming.
WE DID! That’s the thing NMA and RPGCodex were calling this thing shit from the moment Bethesda bought it.
The way Josh is playing seems more like he’s bored and fed up with a crappy DLC that already bugged out once, crashed and is thus playing in a fashion known as ‘Oh fuck it’ rather than really trying.
Seriously, if the game was made well enough that the play gave a damn — then you’d play a bit more seriously, but it’s not. Anchorage is just bad, there’s no way around it.
Trust me it’s crashed more than once.
EDIT: Also, if that crash is the same crash I have he likely had to restart his PC because only the screen froze.
I have over-modded my FO3 a bit so it freezes some times like that.
It works perfectly well to do (CTRL-ALT-DEL), and no need to restart the computer. Of course I run it on Vista / 7 and have no idea how bad it locks up if you run XP.
I think he’s trying to rush through this thing, now that they’re committed to it, and is making it take longer by dying so much.
Also, he took grenades specifically to highlight their worthlessness, and is using them here to conserve ammo, and because they’re the only weapon his character can really use in VATS. It’s not like it costs him anything to burn up his AP and grenades on an off chance, when they’re pretty much worthless otherwise.
Yeah, throwing grenades into bunkers to flush out or kill entrenched enemies is just silly. It’s not like that’s what they’re designed for or anything.
Quite, but bethesda applies vats hit models universally. So if something is in the way of your shot with a motherfucking grenade, guess what, you can throw a soft ball sized object through a 5 foot gap 20 feet away.
You actually can use them for that… But it’s really damn tricky to get the grenades through the slot. I found it much easier to angle a shot in with the missile launcher. Because the bunkers are always above you, the rocket hits the bunker’s low ceiling, taking out the hanging turrets and the guards in one fell swoop.
MLs, Guass guns, any energy weapons, a decent sniper rifle… all do great for Bunker sniping.
Grenades suck ass. They will always, I mean always, ricochet off the edge of the window, and if you are at all in ricochet range, they land at your feet.
Yes, VATS grenades aren’t made for accuracy. Although I do wonder whether the engine could handle making the windows themselves VATS targets, so you could just throw the grenade in and hope to kill something.
After the briefing, I was hoping you’d steal the General’s coffee mug.
That pogue General is so army his hair stands at attention.
He’s the Alt-U “Vanilla Ice” who eschewed a career in white-boy hip-hop for a career in the military.
He chose his current posting because he enjoys being out on the ice-ice-baby…
So, you a couple session of spoiler warning ago I started up Fallout 3. Last night I finally figured out that the reason the DLCs weren’t working for me was that I hadn’t patched the game up to date. (This involved me having to also patch windows live up to date as well for some bizarre reason.)
Today, inspired by you guys, I played through OP:A. Unlike you guys my character actually has sufficient skill in small arms. Hitting enemies is still annoying as while sure I could use VATS if every enemy didn’t carefully stay right out of 50% or higher range I would still run out of AP as there always seemed to be no less than four chinese soldiers after me at any point in time.
I gave myself a first hand example of how useless grenades are in this DLC by lobbing a grenade up into the air, having it bounce of a railing, and land right at my feet killing one of my squadmates.
I myself was also wondering the whole time why I didn’t have stimpaks. Isn’t that like the #1 situation they would have been designed for?
I found it pretty funny to have been promoted over the guy who did as much work as I did and was promptly reminded of how Bethesda wasn’t even trying here. Irl maybe one of you would have gotten promoted above the other somehow, but the other guy would sure as hell be giving you shit about it.
Things like that picture you posted just annoy me because I can’t help but wonder why they could put in the effort to do stuff like that but not make decent quests since they clearly can, if they try, make a decent story.
“I gave myself a first hand example of how useless grenades are in this DLC by lobbing a grenade up into the air, having it bounce of a railing, and land right at my feet killing one of my squadmates.”
Grenades are best used in the manner Josh tends to use them, tight groups of enemies at short-medium range, or as a last resort in VATS. I prefer to use them to nail enemies on catwalks above me or behind obstructions or around corners, having learned to time and bounce them really well. Toss one almost straight up in the air, slightly angled towards the catwalk and it’ll explode as it lands, usually knocking the enemy off his feet, if he lives through it.
“I myself was also wondering the whole time why I didn't have stimpaks. Isn't that like the #1 situation they would have been designed for?”
I think Bethesda was really going for showing what it look like as an fps. Or maybe getting people used to alt healing sources? They use “health arches” in Mothership Zeta.
To be fair, throwing grenades at yourself nets the same result in vanilla FO3. And in a number of other games as well. you have to practice your aiming.
For your first point… This is not my experience at all. With good Small Arms skill, this DLC is a breeze, and trust your teammate(s). Concentrate on one soldier, do it stealthing (even with low stealth skill), and with 90% certainty the other enemies will spot your companion first and aim for him while you switch targets.
In the beginning of the DLC, you rarely fight more than one opponent at a time if you use Small Guns, and if you have four enemies clustering in front of you, use grenades! That’s what they are good for.
As for stimpaks? Why? This is (the game within the game) an old fashioned Console FPS with “Health Stations”. It’s done so on purpose. I am actually almost disappointed that they didn’t implement “Save Points” just to show exactly how “Computer Gamey” the whole exercise really is.
And about the promotion: That is the POINT! Again! This is supposed to be a serious simulation that General Chase forced the programmers to turn more and more patriotic, and more and more unrealistic, to feed his over-patriotic Ego. In that light, the idea of the “one man army soldier” that gets an extremely quick promotion makes perfect sense.
Watching this SW has made me fire up Fallout3 a couple more times already. Despite its flaws I have genuinely had fun with it. Some with the quests, and a lot just exploring on my own, much like Oblivion.
For those who haven’t played F3, I would recommend it. Here they’re intentionally rushing and griefing the game, but if you let yourself get immersed and pay attention it can be quite enjoyable. They’ve said themselves they’ve played it multiple times on their own; I think they hate on it because they care for it.
While Bethesda should have done better with the quest plot and variety, the open world exploring *is* part of their overall design, too. For the amount of resources they had to throw at the the game, I think you have to expect sacrificing some mission quality for open world quantity.
Also for O:A, I found the combat tiresome as well, but to me it felt like the designers tried to make a DLC that marketed to shooty characters. They failed to get the mechanics right in part because the game wasn’t a good shooter to begin with, but they tried something different. That said, I wish they made some DLC that was more cerebral/role-playing focused.
They made The Pitt. It was also crap.
True, I guess Bethesda’s pretty talented in their own way.
Though the Pitt was very combat focused, too. Just more towards melee.
It doesnt get much more focused on roleplaying than that. Not with Bethesda anyway.
It took them 4 dlc’s to figure out that people dont exactly crave more crappy linear shooting galleries. The game is at its strongest when you walk around and explore, something only Point Lookout seems to grasp. And it could have been a great dlc if it wasnt for the goddamn arbitrary 35 damage bonus all the monsters recieved, showcasing our favourite developer’s idea of balance. So they cocked that one up too.
Kinda makes you wonder if they were onto something with Broken Steel. It was also a crappy linear shooting gallery but it made the ending less horribly stupid. If they released a couple more dlc packs changing story and dialogue in a similar fashion, Id gladly give up 20 bucks for them.
Don´t forget the swampmen that had three times as much HP as supermutants.
Oh wow, I hadn’t gotten Point Lookout but was considering it. However, the things I dislike the most playing right now are the crazy overpowered enemies added by (I think) Broken Steel. The game was too easy at higher levels, but that wasn’t the way to fix it.
I hope Bethesda gets an injection of fresh ideas (and tech) before their next CRPG.
Oblivion Supports 256 mods at the same time before it causes problems
Fallout 3 has problems with more than 100.
The sad thing is that if you want an immersive gaming experience with lots of fun, plus you want the mods to work with each other, you can way easily go to 150 or more mods.
Generally I would suggest not playing Fallout 3 without F.O.O.K 2 and the unofficial patches.
PS. The video won’t load for me for whatever reason at all.
Because, hands down, Fook 2 adds So. Many. New. Guns!
There is neva enuff dakka indeed.
Bwahahahaha!
“Fallout 3 has problems with more than 100.” So funny.
It has problems with more than two mods, including the main game file.
I could never run the game without more than 6 mods at the same time. Two of them were heavy things (100 Mbs or more) and the other 4 where 10KBs or less. I endured, and tried every combination. The only time the game wouldn´t crash was for 2 hours, without any mods, not even the 1KB one that just changed power armor values. So, screw it.
Out of curiosity, did you check of compatibillity issues between the mods with something like FO3edit?
I did. But even if there were, it wouldn´t explain why just using a single mod crashed the game.
On the other hand, my old computer could run Fallout with a bunch of mods (those small ones I mentioned and Enclave Commander) without crashing for a couple of hours, so I´m always insulting and blaming my ATI card. But, if the card was the culprit, I don´t know how it could make the game crash when the mods just changed some values and lists.
EDIT: I just had a moment of Fridge Logic, and remembered another difference between my old computer and the one I currently use: the version of Fallout I had in the old one was in english. I got a copy in spanish since the voice-acting was more tolerable, but I guess the problem lied there. Still, the FO3edit didn´t catch any incompatibility (not sure if it´s made to detect that kind, though).
It should catch some issues, primarily when two mods are trying to change the same cell or npc. That sort of stuff.
But Fallout 3 will crash for the weirdest of reasons, in my experience. For example, in an vanilla run through the game I couldn’t save or fast travel to or from a single cel outside Big Town: it would just CTD. No clue why as there was absolutly no reason for it.
Oh, I remeber that one. Never suffered it, but I know it was a well known bug, with lots of people having it (although, I don´t remember if it was that they couldn´t travel to any cell in the vicinity of Big Town…).
My crashes were more or less random, except for the timing. Sometimes it would crash when picking up something. Others, when looting. The last ones were for fighting mirelurks.
So, yeah. Bethesda Optimization, I guess.
Sneaking is remarkably useful in this DLC. With about 75 sneak and 80 in melee, I managed to go through the entire first area without firing a shot(and get fired at)… until monty joined me anyway. By the second area, I just told the soldiers to attack and let them do all the work. Oddly enough, they did fine without me.
there is no love towards OA. i just like the loot.
i dunno, i liked FO3.
i liked FO2
i liked FO (though i never got very far in it)
but operation anchorage… eh…
i like just about all the other DLCs. though mothership zeta is too long for my tastes, theres too much just running across the ship to break something and then running back
Ywah, Shamus will have field day with all the “explode these generators to open those doors” moments. ;)
In fact teh whole quest is another “Do all this crazy stuff to open the door (to go home)” quest.
Loot is great though.
And Mothership Zeta has a frigging Samurai!!
The samurai was about the best part of Mothership Zeta.
Can’t communicate with him, can’t use him, he’s just there.
But you can murder him for his stuff.
sweetest armor ever.
the wasteland samurai returns!
I suppose I’m lucky when I really didn’t learn to hate this DLC. I mean it’s not that great for what it is, but yeah.. I guess I was lucky for rolling with Small Arms/Energy Weapons character. Thinking back to my comment in the last episode where I mentioned about the background of the whole facility, it’s almost like it could be some crazy analogy about the development of this game. Developers were obligated to do what they’re told because the guy in charge wanted this and that feature or vanity in the simulation, although they knew it didn’t really belong there or didn’t really understand what was the point even.
I mean, that would be like saying they’re not all that really awful writers at Bethesda, they’re just being forced to accommodate to the whims of their superior(s) and thus it turns into shit.
I should go to sleep though…
Seeing how their approach to writing is “1000 monkeys can write War & Peace” makes me think this is not the case.
hey, morrowind had some really good writing.
and oblivion has its moments, too
fo3 just falls waaaaay short D:
That proofs that they, slowly, changed their human writers with monkeys until there where no humans left.
I imagine the writting department is a zoo by now.
Morrowind had a few plot holes but at least the world made sense and had interesting unique design and backstory. Oblivion felt like your garden-variety Medieval Tolkienist High Fantasy playset. And even that was executed poorly.
You can really see their writing plummet into the abyss of lowest common denominator when you compare it with Morrowind and I still cant quite understand why. Did all the writers and world designers die in a tragic car accident? Were they lobotomised? Or became addicted to drugs? Maybe they were monkeys all along and Morrowind was their accidental War & Peace?
Y’know, I’ve never played this game, but those VATS percentages seem to bear no relationship to your actual success rates on making the hits. Josh seems to be making a lot of 25% or less shots quite nicely, and missing an awful lot of 85% or more ones.
Keep in mind that these percentages show the possibility of a direct hit, largely ignoring the terrain conditions, as if you and your adversary both were standing on perfectly flat surface.
25% is the chance of hitting your enemy in the face with the grenade, when it lands near the enemy but still inflicts damage due to blast radius, it technically misses.