Fallout 3 EP2: Home Run Derby

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jan 3, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 84 comments


Link (YouTube)

In the original airing of this series, the drinking game didn’t appear until episode 17. But the series is more fun with it, so let’s retcon things and introduce the game here in episode 2. Rutskarn originally devised the drinking game, which he promised would be extremely entertaining.*

While watching Spoiler Warning, take a drink whenever…

  • Josh opens his inventory and consumes 3 or more things in the middle of combat.
  • Anyone uses the phrase “in the Original Fallout…”
  • Reginald becomes addicted to anything.
  • A new overpowered weapon or item is acquired.
  • An obvious bug or glitch is encountered.
  • All three of us are talking at the same time.
  • Josh tries ineffectually to kill bad guys with f-bombs.
  • The phrase “200 years” is spoken.
  • “STOP SHOOTING ME!”
  • Reginald dies.

It would be interesting to see a heat map of drinks per episode. My impression is that this number would gradually increase over time, spiking near the end. On the other hand, #5 is a bit of a wildcard. It’s probably low (by the standards of the game) when doing central story missions, and comes more into play when doing side missions or [especially] DLC. On the gripping hand, we had plenty of glitches here in episode 2, which is still part of the tutorial and ought to be the most polished section of the game.

* Specifically, he said, “It will be very entertaining when hundreds of viewers die of alcohol poisoning.”

 


 

Dénouement 2012: Part 1

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Jan 2, 2013

Filed under: Industry Events 153 comments

splash_2012.jpg

I played a lot of games this year, but I didn’t get around to reviewing all of them. Here, at the turn of the year several days after the new year, I’ve decided to do a half-assed roundup to say all the things I should have said months ago.

I don’t know if it’s fair to say that we’ve had more false-choice this year than in years past, but we are having more conversations about what choices we valued, what makes for a meaningful choice, and which games were best or worst at offering them.

Damned if you do, Paragon points if you don’t…

The Walking Dead, Mass Effect 3, Spec Ops: The Line, and Dishonored all incited a lot of discussion about choice. I’m getting the sense that all the bitching we were doing three years ago about wanting more freedom in games has come back around. Developers have made games that turned around and said, “Okay. What do you mean by that?”

The games this year, in no particular order…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2012: Part 1”

 


 

Fallout 3 EP1: The Birth of Reginald Cuftbert

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Jan 1, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 97 comments


Link (YouTube)

It's the 1st episode. Of Spoiler Warning season 2. Playing Fallout 3. And suddenly Spoiler Warning is transformed into the show we know and tolerate today. Okay, this episode began a bit wobbly, but by the end we’d settled into the now-familiar rhythm.

I don’t know if it was Randy leaving the show, Josh taking over as player, our accumulated experience, or the addition of Rutkarn, but this show feels more like our current episodes than the ones directly preceding it.

I’m really glad to see these episodes again. Happy nuke year!

 


 

The New Years Stream is Live – It’s Over!

By Josh Posted Monday Dec 31, 2012

Filed under: Notices, Spoiler Warning 11 comments

Jarenth and Josh are here to rescue your new year’s eve parties by acting like morons!

Come check it out!

Edit: Well that was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who showed up to cheer us on as I drove cars onto boats and boats onto land.

 


 

Announcing the Second Annual Josh and Jarenth Save the New Year Stream!

By Josh Posted Sunday Dec 30, 2012

Filed under: Notices, Spoiler Warning 83 comments

That’s right, you asked for it! The illustrious buddy cop duo/pair of idiots are back again to save and possibly ruin the new year! And you’ll be able to watch this terrible trainwreck in real-time tomorrow evening!

We’re not actually quite sure which games we’ll be playing or when we’ll be playing them, but if you tune in tomorrow, you might find us playing:

Sleeping Dogs – Wherein Josh attempts to take down a criminal empire by crashing into things and beating up street merchants!

Space Marine – Wherein Jarenth laughs at Josh because he doesn’t actually know anything about Warhammer 40k – or this game!

Hitman Absolution – Watch Josh guide Agent 47 through his most linear and poorly optimized adventure yet!

Tropico 4 – Josh achieves his dream of becoming El Presidente of a burgeoning banana republic – and then probably ruins everything!

War Thunder – Jarenth and Josh take advantage of the new year to go back in time and shoot down planes in the arcade flight sim you’ve never heard of!

And of course,

Borderlands 2 – Josh and Jarenth murder their way across Pandora to see how long it takes before they degenerate into five hours of car wrestling!

Currently, we plan to start at 6 PM Pacific and stream until midnight Pacific. And I know, that means we’re technically excluding all European New Years celebrations, but we really don’t think we can stream for nine hours straight and I can’t just go cutting it early. Look at it this way: You can have your real New Years Eve parties with all your cool friends, and then come back and watch Jarenth and I screw everything up.

The stream link will be posted tomorrow before we start. Feel free to give feedback about the games we might be playing or suggest others in the comments.

Hope to see you then!

 


 

Postcards From Linux Part 4:
Can You Hear Me Now?

By Shamus Posted Sunday Dec 30, 2012

Filed under: Personal 126 comments

splash_linux.jpg

The Linux-ing continues. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to continue much longer. At the very least, we’re going to have to go into some kind of dual-boot scenario. Aside from gaming, there are a few tools that I need and can’t get in Linux. For example…

Vent

linux_phone.jpg

This is the big one. I use Vent to hang out with my various internet friends, and we also use it to record Spoiler Warning. So I’ve been trying to run the Vent client under Wine.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Postcards From Linux Part 4:
Can You Hear Me Now?”

 


 

Errant Signal – Hotline Miami

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 28, 2012

Filed under: Movies 138 comments

Rutskarn, Chris and I talked about Hotline Miami quite a bit when we were making our way through it. They had wildly different interpretations of the game and it made for an interesting conversation. I should pitch the idea to them of doing a podcast together. I can’t believe Josh hasn’t suggested something like this yet.


Link (YouTube)

Either I have had amazing luck in acquiring titles recently, or this has been a banner year for games. Heck, FTL and Dishonored were probably the “worst” I played, and both were still good games in many respects. A year where my worst two games are a retro space-roguelike and a slightly tepid mechanical successor to Thief? Can we just keep having more years like this, forever? Is that too much to ask? Heck, if Dishonored had come out two or three years ago it might have made one of my “best of” lists.

As Chris points out, this had been the year for games talking about games. Spec Ops, Hotline Miami, and (purportedly) Far Cry 3 all discuss the medium. Chris is tired of it, but I kind of like all the super-meta analysis.

I’m going to see if I can get some sort of wrap-up posts done before the end of the year.

EDIT: Ah. I’d forgotten that Mass Effect 3 was THIS year. I had it in my head that it was a Christmas 2011 release. But it came out in 2012, which sort of re-calibrates my whole 2012 scale. Also, this was a huge disappointment.

Mass Effect 3 was the reader’s choice for 2012 over at the Escapist. Now, I’m glad people enjoyed the game and I don’t begrudge anyone their good time. (My grudge-making is aimed at the writing at at BioWare.) But that’s such a sad choice for “favorite”. I don’t expect the masses to nominate stuff like Hotline Miami, Journey, or X-Com. But didn’t anyone play the Walking Dead? Borderlands 2? Dishonored? Spec Ops? There were a lot of games that were more polished, more mechanically sound, and took more chances than Mass Effect 3. And just about everything had a stronger and more well-executed art style.

Ah well. You can’t argue with the masses.