Rebel FM
Rebel FM Game Club -- Call of Cthulhu -- Episode 3 -- 03/09/2009
After a longer break than we anticipated, we're back with Episode 3 in our continuing probe of H.P. Lovecraft's darkest nooks and crannies. We also find time to squeeze in a rundown of our 5 nominees for our next series for Game Club. Give the show a listen, leave your comments for the last episode of this series (remember we're playing through to the end this time), and vote for the game you want to play for next time!
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[Music] That peels. Heels. [Laughs] Okay. This isn't really suiting the mood. Yeah, I'm not even, we're not even adding any of this off. Enjoy this. Welcome to Rebel FM Game Club. This is volume three of our discussion on Call of Cthulhu. The whole crew is here except for Nick Suttner because he's a kind of a big jerk. You don't even count Nick Suttner anymore. He's not part of the crew. Well, he would be and special guest if he came now. All right. Well, he might be part of the Game Club crew eventually, but basically he was too lazy to catch up on this game. If we play something that's on a Sony console. Oh. And also, Anthony reminded me, wasn't it Nick who got us to play this game? It was. Yeah, I was like Nick's parting like a curse on us all. I'm just kidding. It's a fun game. But, uh, because it's in this song. No, I'm just kidding, guys. But it's just that. It is a fun game, but it, man, it's bug-ridden as shit. It is. But let's talk about that. Well, wait, wait. Before we get into it, a couple of quick, quick things. First off, Bethesda sent us copies of the Xbox version of Call of Cthulhu, which is awesome. We have three copies to give away. Obviously, at this point, whoever wins these copies, they're going to be getting it after we've finished up. But hopefully they can go and go back and listen and listen along as they play. Well, I think you can have a less bug-ridden experience than playing it. If you've been playing it on PC, play it on Xbox, you'll at least get through it. That's true. Well, we heard there might be a game-crashing bug at the very, very end, but we're not there yet. We'll find out. But, uh, so yeah, I'll announce this on the normal replica as well. Would it be? But the contest is going to be, uh, we want you to email us your great, like your biggest gaming nightmare, like an actual nightmare you've had that's related to gaming in some way. And the top three entries as well as anything else that we think is worth reading, we're going to read on the air. And then, uh, yeah, we'll give those top three entries a copy of Call of Cthulhu for the Xbox. Do you think it would be presumptuous if we said, like, we could sign it or something? Like, all of us in Game Club could sign it or something so they could remember it? Because I feel like these people probably didn't really make the game. I'll sign a napkin that's greasy. Yeah, yeah, I feel like if they already own the game, we should try and make it more special in some way. Okay, well, we could try to make some of those T-shirts and sign that and send it off with it. Yeah, maybe we could send T-shirts with it. Yeah, we'll figure out something, yeah, because I figure they already own the game. So, having a shortcut, not everyone. There are people playing along who don't own it. And then also, hopefully, like, what do you mean? What do you mean? We'll talk about this on everyone. They're listening. I thought you were crying that they were pirating the game and playing it. They're enjoying your door. We'll talk about that, too. Okay. So, send your entries to pcholar@eat-sleep-game.com. And please include a mailing address. And, yeah, we'll read entries next week. I know. Sonic involving Philip is appreciated as well. That's fine. I mean, if that's your gaming nightmare, that's your gaming nightmare. We can't help that. That's my gaming fantasy. That makes sense. I knew you were going to say that. That's so awesome. I feel like I had some other point of business on there. Oh, yeah. Arthur, you have the computer. Can you read off? We got these board games sent to us. Oh, yeah. Fantasy Flight Games, they... I think they... Do they own the license to Arkham Horror in general? I don't know if they own it, but they at least work with it. So, Fantasy Flight Games, who make the Arkham Horror board game as well as the Call Cthulhu card game and World of Warcraft Adventure game, sent us a copy of Arkham Horror. They sent us a copy of all three of those, actually. Oh, wow, really? So, yeah. So, basically, you got all three and took the wild card game and went into the bathroom. Well, I opened the wild card game immediately because I was like, "I want to know if any of these cards have, like, downloadable pads or anything or anything in-game, but I wasn't able to find anything of that nature, so I'm not interested anymore." You're a goddamn weird guy. You're an awful person. No, no, we're actually... You're the guy who opens up a pack of basketball cards and takes out the David Robinson rookie card and you're giving it back or selling all the singles back or something. I don't know, man. You're awful. That's just terrible. You're nasty. Whatever I need to say to demonstrate that you are a douche. No, but we will try playing those at some point. We'll get together and have a board game night and then hopefully talk about it on the show. Maybe we will record it. Also, will this be on a separate feed now? Sorry about this episode, maybe? No, unless they want to wait two weeks for iTunes to get a new feed going. Okay, so starting with the next game. Yeah, next game. We're working on it. I think I'm going to be talking to some people about me. We got further questions and yeah, we will move this to a separate feed. Probably we'll just begin with the next game. Yeah, which we should be determining by next week and we'll talk about that a little bit later today. Yeah, did you guys bring choices for games? No, but I can think of it. I have one in mind, like at least. All right, we'll talk about that. We'll have to take a break and talk about that off air and then announce them. Okay, we'll just have really awkward discussion on air. That's fine too. I think people like that. That's fine too. Awkward, on air discussion. That's fine too. In reference to this, it's interesting because then they get to see what the process is of what we know. Yeah. Which is that there isn't a process. They get to see that we literally just like say what would be fun to play next. Well, let's actually, let's do that before we get into Call of Cthulhu. How about you? The rebel FM sausage is made from fail. So if I had to throw out mine, I've been wanting to play through the thing again. So what we're going to do, it's on PC and on console. All of us are going to put, we're all going to have a single choice and then we're going to put up a pull on the site. Wait, I thought we had two choices. Well, the second choice was a backup in case somebody had matching games. Yeah. The second one. Mine is the thing. It's like super easy to get a hold of. I see it in GameStops all the time. It's like $3. Anthony told me that he was going to buy a copy for all of us. That was my secret place. And then we like the product of the game. I was like, actually, we should just do the thing. And then we wouldn't be able to argue at all because we just have it. I would argue that we maybe shouldn't play exactly the same type of game that we're playing this time. Ah, the thing is so much more of a shooter. But I guess, I mean, that's true. That's true. It is still very much in a similar vein. I'm going to go in a completely different direction than what we're playing this time. And I mean, it's kind of obvious since we talked about it when we were first deciding to play this. But I'm going to go with Bully. Okay. Mine, my choice, I think I mentioned on the air before. And it's going to be a weird one. I think we should play Quake 4. Awesome. Quake 4 single player. Oh, yeah, we talked about that. Yeah. I still think Quake 4 is a good choice as well. It's just a weird one. You know, I think that we could have cool conversations about it. It's not the best game ever, but it's, I think a lot of people probably missed it. It was, yeah, it was sort of there and gone really fast. Yeah. I got released during the Xbox 360 launch. People talk more about Perfect Dark Zero than they did about Quake 4. Which is a goddamn shame. Let's play Perfect Dark Zero. I'm replaced. Fuck. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Yeah. We couldn't even make it through that game. You would have to invite Cheyenne. If you were going to talk about that. Do you have a vote to get? I want to hear what mine has to say. I'm not going to have anything to say because the only thing that I was thinking about was Quake 4 and I didn't prepare something else. I can say two. Go for it. Go for it. If you're okay with giving up one of your choices, Matt. Ha! No, because I actually did have another choice, but it's on Steam and I would have to look at my Steam account to remember what it was. So since I'm supposed to be doing this in the awkward fashion, I'm going to have to give it up, I guess. Oh, no, we can do it later. We'll add that in. Okay. It's a Steam game? It's on Steam. I just don't remember which one it was. I'm just torn between picking something that I really love, that not a lot of people have played, and picking something that I haven't played. I'm Vampire of the Masquerade. No. What are the both of them? No, I wouldn't. Yeah, people have suggested that. Vampire of the Masquerade. You actually reminded me. Call of War is. That is actually one of the things I was thinking of. Oh, okay. Yeah. Call of War is that one? You and me, Matt. Like this. I never had a Call of War is. Neither of us. That's on Steam. Yeah. And it's also readily available for 360. We can play it on Steam. That's cool. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I mean, I have a window. I'm just saying it is that of all the games we've named so far, probably the most. Because it is. That's a 360. Well, except for not for people with PS2s or PS3s and no 360-year games. Yeah. It's kind of a little PC. No, I wouldn't say Bloodline simply because I wouldn't take us from one game that was so buggy that I almost threw my keyboard for the first time ever. That's odd. I was going to suggest hitman Blood Money. Oh, yeah. I think that's a good choice too. Because that's on everything. And honestly, I would be like, that's a solid five choices. Any of those, I would be excited about any of these. Yeah. For me, I think I'm a bully. Sorry, Philip. I'm already playing really. I don't really want to play a bully. I have. I have played a lot of it. I think Ryan's actually played it. So not enough. So I guess we'll be putting up a poll, some sort. Yeah, I'll put up a poll. I was going to say, are we going to do that there? Or are we going to do it on Ryan Scott's forums since we decided we were. Those are your official forums now? We told Ryan that the other day. He's like, ha, ha, yeah, you guys can use my forums. And we're like, no, we're not asking you. We're just going to come in and force with a bunch of rebel FM users and just use your forums. And talk about rebel FM stuff and nothing related to Geekbox. Fuck your burn notice. Dude, that show looks like softcore porn. I love that show, though. It's like such a guilty pleasure. I guiltily will watch it as well. I watched a whole season on Hulu. It's only guilty because you have a hand in your veins. No, see because Campbell. Oh, man. No, because Bruce Campbell is awesome, but not that pretty anymore. And even the female lead in that show, I don't think she's asleep. OK, OK. We can put the poll in multiple places and it'll all go to the same thing. OK, that's cool, then. And, yeah, you will be able to find it on Eat Sleep Game and elsewhere. And then we'll, whatever the winner is, we'll announce it next week. OK, so let's review. We're covering Call of Waras. Call of Waras. Quick for. And then hitman, bully. And hitman. And hitman. And the thing. The thing. All right, that's a good group. Choose what you like best. And if it doesn't get picked this time, it can always be thrown into another rotation. But I don't think we're going to, we're not going to, like, say, oh, well, whatever gets the second most votes is going to be next or anything like that, right? We're not convinced of that one. Yeah, we won't do that. OK, so getting into Call of Cthulhu now. The first three comments there that I had were just kind of like random off topic comment, or not off topic, but random comments that I thought maybe we should address. OK, yeah, we can do this really quick. So first we have one from Formula One, Frank, who says, did you guys happen to post about you playing this on the Pirate Bay, or was that just a helping fan? No. Yeah, I just want to say, yeah, that was not us. We do not condone pirating the game when you can still buy it. Yeah. We all bought it as far as that. Yeah. And Ryan just had it, right? I bought it when it first came out. I paid full price on Xbox4. Yeah, like, I'm not going to shit on the Pirate Bay, but we wouldn't post about playing something on the Pirate Bay, because it's just sort of like, hey, did you want to play this game? And there are 17 torrents for it over here. Yeah, I mean, I know that there are a lot of people that pirate movies and stuff, but for some reason games has always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I don't know what always kind of bothered me. I just, you know, I can only say that, like, I have the money, so I would buy it. Yeah. I love these. If you can buy it, please buy it. If it's available to buy it, buy it unless you can't. But these guys who have made, you know, I think that these guys would want people to be playing their game. You know, I'm not going to say that they would say go pirate it or anything, but exactly. I mean, it's like when, like, when we were talking to Tim Shafer after, you know, when we were still doing backwog and, and we were saying, well, what is the best way for people to buy psychonauts to get you money and he was like, pirate it and then go to our site and buy two t-shirts. Yeah. What was that? So honestly, I don't know what the best way for you to play it is, but I'm sure they would like the fact that you're playing it. And if you ever feel like you get to the point of your life where you can afford to give back, then remember this time when you took for free and pay back the, pay back the community by buying your products. Pay it forward. Exactly. Pay it forward. Our next comment is from Mike S. I'm not sure if this was posted previously, but there is a very good Let's Play of Kalku on the Something Awful Let's Play forums. I just figured that we could mention that in the link to it so that people could check that out as well. Well, I mean, probably some more interesting discussion about the game. It's linked in our comments, isn't it? Yeah, but I figure we can drop the link into the post here, so why don't you guys fight about it? I'll fight. Does anybody here a member of the Something Awful forums? I am not. No. Nope. Nope. Just no appeal. Yeah. I had friends who were like the embodiment of something awful in their life. Yeah. So at that point, it's like, I don't need to read about it. I can live it. I just lurk forums. I heard Labor Post as it is. It's not worth paying for me to be a member of a forum. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I think Something Awful is kind of cool because people are less apt to say really dumb shit. Well, you can't say really dumb shit because they were fucking banned. Oh, yeah. No, they like they rule with an iron fist. If we had forums like that we ran, I would want them to run like this. That's why I want Ryan to give me mod powers of geek box forums because I would just go in there and be a fucking tyrant. If we're going to have revolution talks about geek box, I'll just delete it and... Ryan who? Yeah. IP ban. Uh, okay. So Dan says this is so minor at Silly, but Anthony called J. Edgar Hoover the president. That was Herbert Hoover. My bad. I just wanted to bring that up. I didn't do a... Anthony was a religious studies. Yeah. I was a history major as well, but it was a... I focused on early modern European history because that was much more Christian development focused, so that's what I was interested in. So I didn't really do. I took some U.S. history, but it was because I had to, not because I was interested in it or paying attention. So... That's fair. I don't know if shit about shit except video games. Oh, I guess in films and music, but I just want to throw that in there. That's enough though. It's not... It's not what you're like. So I believed... There were things that I believed Anthony when he said he was the president. Yeah, I mean... I'm dumb too. A lot of people make... Nah, you're not dumb. I like to make dumb mistakes like that. I mean, here, I'll make everyone feel even better about yourself the other day. Arthur was watching the wire and it takes place in Baltimore and I was like, "Where the fuck is Baltimore?" I couldn't remember where Baltimore was, okay? I know. And I was able to stop my eyes from rolling in a complete 360 motion backwards before I said Maryland. Yeah, so it's just one of those things like, "I forget this shit sometimes." Cool. But you asked me where the fuck Israel is and what are the countries that are surrounding it. Anthony, how many times does the word "the" used in the bible? I have a biblical concordance, I could find that out, but it's pretty obscene. So this game's a bit buggy. There's one other thing I wanted to cover, which is that we have... Do you have the letter on here from the guy that was talking about Daegon last time? No. The movie? Oh yeah, we should all watch that sometime. Oh, really? He corrected you though, right? He did correct me. All right. Okay, the whole movie. Wow. Daegon. So last time we recorded Daegon was brought up, which is Stuart Gordon, who directed Reanimator's kind of version of the, what's, I mean, what's the name of the short story of this thing? It's called, I think it's called The Curse of Enzemoth, I don't know. The Curse of Enzemoth, which he said he felt Resident Evil 4 was inspired by, but that, I mean, again, I don't think that that's true, but I was wrong in saying that Daegon takes place in some kind of little Italian country. Having played Resident Evil 4 and read the story, I can see how one could come to that conclusion. Yeah, but not the movie. I don't think there's any, I don't, I still don't think there's any direct connection between the movie Daegon. No, but actually the movie, though, there is a lot of parallels in the movie and the story, like the movie Daegon and the story of the escape from Enzemoth is like incredibly similar, except for the fact that the escape from Enzemoth takes place in America and this is very clearly in Spain. And again, squid boobies. And there are squid boobies. You didn't believe me when I said it with their squid boobies. But there were. So yeah, I was wrong. Daegon takes place in Spain, but it has nothing to do with 34. All right. Good to know. I want to call Cthulhu in its place. I'm going to try watching that beforehand. I can't, before the final episode I'm called Cthulhu, I can't promise anything, but I'm going to go. It's called The Shadow Over Enzemoth. That's the name of the short story. Sorry. Thanks, iPhone. Yeah. I haven't downloaded on my phone. That's how I read it. It was on my phone. There you go. I mean, all those stories. If you're interested in Lovecraft, I encourage everyone to go read it, to go read the backstory for what this game is based on and stuff, because it's all public domain now, so it's all on the internet for free. Nice. I know that. That's cool. You don't have to buy it. I had no idea. I guess I just assumed these days that everybody has an indefinite IP ownership over something. Yeah. I mean, Lovecraft's just so old that I guess it came out before Steamboat Willie. Yeah. So I mean, it's it is super old. Okay. So this game was pretty buggy. Last time we played it, now we're going to really do it up to where you go into the refinery. Yes. You come back with the with the agents to attack that shit. I'm going to I'm going to start right off by saying I really, really, really fucking hated the refinery. Well, you called me up angry within the first five minutes of the refinery. I'm like, how do I get past the machine gun? And I was like, yeah, like immediately. Wow. Filmplex RPGs. No, I like shooters are one of my favorite genres. This was an awful shooter. Yeah. I mean, this game is not it's definitely not a shooting. It's it's and that's the problem with this refinery area is that like, at least for the first half of it, they do they really focus on the shooting. I mean, I guess theoretically, you can stealth through it. Ryan, did you stealth through this? Oh, fuck that. Once you've got guns, you just fucking shoot everyone that really need this. I mean, I was quiet when I needed to be, but generally, you can just stay pretty far back and shoot. There's plenty of ammo. I found plenty of health kits. And for me, it was it was a very standard process of working through an adventure or a shooter or an action game, which is, you know, kind of exploring the space, going through every possible door I could go through and figuring out what the puzzle was. I guess maybe my problem was was sort of that I was having to play in two different mindsets of working through a shooter in an adventure game at the same time. And the the environment wasn't well designed as far as I could tell, like it just it was really confusing. I never felt like I knew where I was in the refinery or that I understood the layout and what I was supposed to be doing. So I just got confused a lot and ran in circles and the guys could respond. So I can understand it. I mean, it does it does repeat like textures and room layouts enough that it does look like kind of like you're all in the exact like you're in the same place the whole time. Yeah. It's my least favorite looking stage so far. It's like the library. I felt that there was often when I was wandering around, you know, I'd say like, okay, well, this seems pretty complex, you know, like my initial reaction was like yours, I think, but I thought it really, as you explored, started to come together. I was like, okay, I go through this door and I wander through all the possible exits and I come out this way or there's this one other way that I can go and I come out over here. Eventually, I just got a handle on the on the space in, you know, three dimensionally, and except for the responding guys, it didn't really seem to be a problem for me. I agree that it's not the best looking stage and it was different, but I guess what I liked about it is that it felt that way like when I first got in here, I was like, this is so overwhelming, there's so many ways to go, but I really solved it, you know, without any help from, you know, I didn't have to look at a fact and didn't need anything. It was just like eventually by doing what I ordinarily would have done made it through just one. Man, I looked at a fact so many times for this area. I guess like, yeah, overall, like my main issue was really just that it was trying to learn the layout while also trying to watch out for the respawning guards and patrols and just every once in a while I would get caught by a patrol in a bad location, like I would come around the corner and run into a guy and die and so that was just the main thing. I'm laughing not because of your story, but because Arthur's cat just leaked my finger and it startled me. It was very soft, you know, when you were gentle, when a cat looks, you expect that sandpaper tongue, but no, this was very ticklish. Tickling and anyway, that was very cute. Sorry about that. That's all right. I just can't definitely, it looks like it has Drown syndrome. Aww. Which will come to later? Drown. Drown. So yeah, we, I, the stage like actually, you know, like you say this game is not a shooter, but this game, but this stage kind of, I really got used to the shooting. Yeah. So much so that it was like the, the guards and the patrols weren't even a problem. I ran around with impunity, like, I didn't try to sneak, I didn't try to stealth. I was just like, yeah, headshot, headshot. Like anybody that I came up against was dead before they could get a shot off and it's like it just, maybe that's-- Yeah, just suck. Does this, yeah. You need to play more of your bosses, man. You need to have like a-- I played so many FPS. Okay. I know that's suck. I heard, I heard a dirty rumor about how you played Killzone 2. You know, he played Killzone 2 on Easy just for the capturing experience. Oh, okay. No, no, no, no. I actually, I played it on Easy the first time through for looking for item like hidden secrets and then the second time, and to learn the areas and strategies and stuff, and then the second time through a normal to write the guide. That was-- So what, what-- I don't think there's any problem with people playing on whatever difficulty setting they want. Thank you. So at the end-- Thank you, sir. And we were saying that maybe he sucks. Oh, well, yeah. My correlation. Yeah. I mean, I don't care. I guess I'd rather when people suck if they actually make it all the way through the game than they're more power to them. That's what I really-- Yeah. I mean, in your defense, I just feel like in a lot of respects, this game isn't mechanically sound when it comes to the things that are action-based like platforming or running or shooting or moving. Well, part of it-- Yeah, part of it is like the-- especially with the moving and like the whole time I was playing, I was like, god damn, I could really use a sprint button. Oh, yeah. Yes. And I mean, things are clearly geared for-- you know, they know the pace that you run at and all the puzzles and everything are completely doable at the pace that you run at. But it's just-- I've gotten so used to sprint buttons in games that it's hard to go into one without having it sprint. There are two slow walking options too is the best part. There's no practice walk. It's like-- OK, so you want to crouch, and now you want to crawl. I know. It is a little ridiculous how slowly he moves even when you're running from like the Leviathan thing and stuff like that. Yeah. Like he's just like, eh. I'm going to get past this thing. He's just my fucking mind. You mean Lord Dig? Oh, the Leviathan thing. Yeah. At the end of the-- That part-- see that? That was really cool. You're going to-- I mean, it was-- That part was when I finally stopped hating the refinery. But then I realized like, this is where you're fighting the giant like slime monster thing. Yeah. Right. And you have to run from a different one or the same one. Yeah. And I never quite figured that out if it was a different creature that you were running from the same one. The part where you're fighting, I mean, you have to go find the fuse and then hit the button to like, electrify them. I was like, OK, I'm liking this, I'm liking this, and then I thought about it, I'm like, wait, this is half life. That's why I'm liking it. Yeah. Because it was just like that tentacle monster thing that you fight in half life. Yep. Same thing where it's in the environment. But it was excellent. Like it was still really fun. Yeah. Yeah. That bothered me, I think this is going backwards a little bit. The only time I did get stuck was there's the tram ride part where you like your whole beginning part is like turning on the fucking machine so that you can like roll, you know, roll through the through the tunnels. And what I liked about that scene is how kind of long it was how, you know, it seems like anyway, and that's also what I hated about it was how long it was because I wrote on that thing three times trying to because there's a part where the bottom opens up. Right. And I was like trying to position myself right in the center of the cart so that I would fall. I was like, this has to be where I get out and I can never fall. And then it took, I probably sat on that cart for like 25 minutes before I realized I'm supposed to jump down at this completely different part over here. Right. Yeah. See, okay. So the tram part is where I encountered the first almost game breaking bug in this. Is this where you're almost through your keyboard because I want to hear about that. That was, that was. Okay. We'll get to that. This is where I almost broke the, the Wasti keys. It wouldn't let me get on the tram. Like it was. Same. Oh my God. Like I went back and forth. It's like, I had to do it now to a wall over and over again. It's like forward, no back, forward, no back, maybe if I straight left, wait, no forward back. Ah, fuck. It went by again. This is what you're doing. Okay. So the way that the geometry right there looks is like it's flat because it's ground. And then it like dips at a 45 degree angle just before the edge. And so if you walk up to the tram before it's 100% stopped and the gate all the way open and try to walk on it, your character moves down a little bit and gets caught up and you can't walk in. So in order to get on it, you have to stand away from it, directly facing it, wait till it stops. Wait till the gate opens all the way up and then walk inside while I'm not crouching in order to get on the tram properly. My head has been shaking there. Honestly, I went through the same thing as fucking in the bullshit. And then to finally get in and be excited and then not be able to move in the tram, which is fine. I'm like, oh, okay. So they won't let you jump out before you have to. And then it goes over a height area and I accidentally hit the left button and he falls out of the tram and dies. Oh, so I can move in the tram. And yeah, I, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. There's a lot of pounding on my desk that morning. I hear that. I definitely was in that part too long. Did you wake up to that? We would wake up to that. Here come the cops. It's the bad QA police. Yeah, we are an Oakland, it's like a constant reminder. I actually was looking for a way to enter a console in the game so I could just turn on no clip or something to pass the party and I could not find it. The part where I thought I was at a game ending bug. I was thinking the same thing but I was playing on console and so I was like, there really is no console. If I'm stuck, I'm stuck. We'll get to that later though. What did you ask me though, Phil? I completely got distracted by snacks. I was just wondering if you woke up to Arthur pounding on his desk one morning? No, that was last night when I was in his room and I was playing Phoenix, right? And all of a sudden he just started fucking hitting his desk and I was like, what's wrong? You may not know it by listening to me, but I'm not a violent person, but man, it's looking my kind of food this week or I would have broken my desk last night. I was definitely angry last night to the refinery as well. It wasn't because of any game ending bugs, thankfully. So get into the tram. So get into the tram, we get off the other side. We kind of skipped ahead here to the creature, which, you know, whatever, there's not a whole lot exciting. It's not exciting, but unlike Philip, I did have fun solving the simple puzzles and exploring the refinery. Yeah, it's not the prettiest space. Like once you get past that bucket area, you don't run into as many guys, as many enemies. So I mean, it at least was less frustrating. Yeah. What happens then? You go and you run into, is that when you run into Jacob Marsh for the first time? You get hit over the head? Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Which, by the way, happens to Jack so many times this game. Every time they need a transition, Jack gets knocked out every single time. It's like, after a while, it'd be like, I'm surprised this guy can even stand up and think at all. He's been bashed in the head and drowned in the head. Well, not only that, he's bashed in the head, but he gets compound fractures every other minute. I was, I was talking about it last time, like, this guy would be in a fucking suit of wood. He would look like Isaac from Dead Space, like, you would not be able to see any of them. Yeah, he handles compound fractures like a champ, though. He gets like hit and he just grunts like me, had to be like, non-stop screaming on my bone. He can see my bone. Or maybe like, he's just like, got bones like a bird or something, like he just gets tapped and it's like, snap. It's funny. That totally reminds me. I actually had a dream. Because like, I, I played-- Is the gaming nightmare? It is a gaming nightmare. Oh. I went to the contest. Dude, I played the, because I was playing like the last part of the game, which we'll talk about, you know, later, the last part that we played up to anyway, and I had to play it several times, because I was experiencing all kinds of bugs and crashes. And there were several times where I got compound fractures or whatever, and like, I just remember that now I had a dream last night that I had like a wicked gnarly compound fracture like on my, on my forearm, and like, I could totally see it and it didn't hurt at all or anything, but it was just there and I was like, oh fuck, what am I going to do? I don't want to have a broken arm. And then you hit the H button and everything was all good. Melt out of the little box. Yeah. It's funny. I just remembered that. I don't like compound fractures, guys. Thanks for bringing back my horrible nightmare, I see. I'd like to see it. So that reminds me that the game does start looking, I thought it started looking really good in the refinery once you get down into the, like, the gold, the gold area. The gold area. The gold area. It's like, melted gold everywhere. That looked really cool. The rooms with the, like, that were for whatever chemical sorting and that sort of thing. They all looked really cool. They totally, totally could have let, uh, totally could have let Hoover die and save this from, you know, the whole red, the whole red scares. Can he die? No. No. Uh. Well, he can. But in the end of the week, yeah. Yeah. I had to do that part a few times when he's getting dropped into the, into the gold. Because you don't realize that you need to go up there. Yeah. You need to shoot the dude and then get up there and then hit the switch all in the. We're getting way ahead of ourselves though, because we were at the part where you go through the door and onto the catwalk and you get hit in the head by Jacob Marsh, right? And then you wake up and you're on the opposite side and there's something in front of you. Yeah. Which is the giant. The giant slung bee. Shagith. That's what they call it. Poop mom. Shagith. I don't know why they call it a Shagith. I think, I think somebody in the, the comments that it's Shagith, they're Shogith, not Shagith. Like, oh, not a. Shogith. Something like, I don't know. Thanks, Kitty. Kitty, Kitty agrees. I actually thought the, the killing that thing was a pretty cool puzzle, but I did get lost a few times trying to figure out what to do and I had to run around quite a bit. See, I did that thing over and over again, because it seems like there are points where you literally cannot beat it where you have to die and try again. Which parts? Oh, that didn't have to be. In this part specifically where you have to hide behind the crates so that you can regain your composure and then go along to the stairs on the side, past it and down. I went, I tried to go past it like three or four times and every time one of the tentacles would slam on the stairs and not be violent. I never had a problem at all, as long as I like just kept moving, I just kept running in. Yeah, see, in that, I mean, that it wouldn't let me do that for four times and I'd call an anthem, I'm like, what the fuck am I doing wrong and it, it doesn't land on the stairs. So maybe you just need an Anthony's presence? Maybe, maybe. But then when you go down the stairs and around to hit that button to, to shoot steam on to it, the button wouldn't work until after it had smashed it. See, see out there, I might suck at shooting, but you suck at walking and pressing buttons. That room was really cool with all the steam in it, the bottom floor of it that was all covered in slime where you had to jump across the boxes. I mean, for a game that has, that does like have some kind of screwed up shooting and platforming mechanics, when it works, it really does pay off and I really liked that entire sequence. Right. It was kind of half-life-ish, but that was not a bad thing at all. I was kind of prepared from the first stages, you know, how the, the jumps that you have to make are kind of cinematic. It takes control of the way of the camera or control the character away from you and you make it across and it's a little bit dramatic. I was prepared for more of that kind of stuff throughout the rest of the game, but yeah, it never does it again. The rest of the game is, it's all up to you. It's not up to, it's not up to you just, it's not, you know, Legend of Zelda style where you automatically jump where you need to. Right. The pacing in gameplay just changed dramatically from chapter to chapter. Like, what felt like it was going to be exploratory and sort of low-key at the beginning is turned into this thing where you're running from giant monsters all the time. So after you, you kill or you get rid of the shug-off, you find Hoover in a cell and run into a bunch of angry starfish. That's true, the angry starfish. That's way back. That's way back. That's way back. That's way of the next area. That's the mansion. Oh, sorry. You're a bitch. Man. Man. You're crazy. That's what happens when Game Club gets spaced out over two weeks. My short, my midterm memory is gone. So basically you kill the shug-off and then deal with all of the, well, my favorite parts of it were the parts where you run away from the slime because I thought, this is when it, when my exploratory first part of the, before I was fighting, that thing had paid off because I had seen the, there was the, there's a route when you're running away from it where you like go up this ladder and go through this pipe and start running through these pipes. And that's really the only way that you can go to like get away from it. I think it forces you down that path, but I was, I had already seen that path before. So I went that way anyway, just because I thought it would be a good way to get past this thing. And I was like, at some point I realized like, oh, this is the way they would have fed, fed me, no matter what, I'm glad I explored this area because this is, it made it seem more cinematic because like I actually knew this space and could escape. Did you ever, did you ever turn around and just take a quick glance at the pipe being crushed behind you as you're trying to escape? It was kind of crushing around, you know, around you a little bit. See if you look at it being crushed, then he starts losing sanity. Yeah. I really wanted to see it though. I wanted to see the fact that you turn around and you can see the pipe just go crunch like right there. You just were. It's really cool. Yeah. That part was really cool. Yeah. But I don't know. I guess it's a, yeah, for a section of the game that's relatively uneventful in terms of, you know, there aren't really many interesting stories to tell in something like Gamequap about this area maybe, but I had fun with it while I was playing it and then I thought it went pretty smoothly. Oh. The next area was way easier though. The next area I think was in general was everyone's, was much more exciting to everyone. Exactly. It's like you're coming back to invade. Mm-hmm. And Smith. Well, I want to throw in a comment here. This is from a master Smith 98. He says, when I finished playing the escape from Innsmouth level, I was a bit disappointed that they killed Brian off so quickly not to say that his character had any particularly redeeming values, value about it, just having him as a companion for a few levels. And then simply dying was a bit weak, but he said that disappointment was soon made up by the next scene when no other than J Edgar Hoover himself starts interrogating you in the asylum. Although it was a bit absurd seeing Hoover, it seriously got me thinking about the integrity of the narrator's story. And then he goes on to say, what I'm trying to get at is that the game actually presents itself like a novel in tone as well as presentation. Even though there's an outward monologue, you the player inhabit the inner monologue of the main character, sharing all of his thoughts, confusion, and delirium. I thought that was really interesting. He kind of basically master Smith is suggesting, I think, as you were last week, Brian, that maybe the appearance of Hoover is a sign pointing towards the fact that the main character might just be totally crazy because it's kind of absurd. Yeah. And that's a bit true because that, having read the short story, this is like all this part after the, even before the refinery, is like a complete divergence from anything that's in the short story. And also, there's just some really absurd things that Hoover has you do. When you get back up to the top of the refinery, and then he's like after the elevator has dropped back down, and he basically says, we're going to blow this place up. You need to go down there and figure out what's on the secret bottom floor. And then you start climbing down the rope, and he pops out and is like, by the way, you've got 20 minutes. Like that was like, what? But you expect him there is like the sadistic guy rubbing his nipples as he tells you like these things that are going to kill you. I mean, I guess it's true, like in like skipping just slightly head, I'm not really, but we'll come back. I mean, if we're just talking about things that are crazy, like, why would you go in this boat ride? And all this stuff. Like, why did you get conscripted to come back into the town and fight it and stuff like that? Yeah, like with all the soldiers and stuff, it's just like, yeah, totally random, weird stuff that I don't know. It makes being a private eye seem like maybe the coolest job ever, you know, or the craziest job ever, you know? But I mean, like, man, he's got an exciting life, you know? They're fishermen and sugar off them. We're talking about like how weird it is the jag or Hoover shows up. That's true. I did like when the, you brought up the elevator when the elevator gets slammed from below though, too. I thought that was super cool. Except it took me, it took me a while to figure out that I needed to press that button. It took me a little while, too. And so I died two or three times before I got, like, oh, he pressed the button. Oh, this is what these crates are sitting on this elevator for. Right. So much sense now. Yeah. Yeah. Cool area. But the next area, I think, is more interesting. Yeah. Let's just move into that then. Let's. So you start off with the squad of soldiers who pretty much all died away in the first like minute. Yeah. Like trying to cross the ice or something like that. Right. They all get touched. That's highlighted on the ice. Oh, yeah. You can tell it's like it sticks out. I was like, okay, I know exactly where not to go. Yep. I died on the ice a couple of times. Well, it's kind of like when you see a cartoon and you can tell like, uh, where things are going to move. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You meet the one, one living soldier and open the door with him and then, or rather, yeah, you, you unthought the door with the flimper and then he opens it and dies immediately. Yes. By like a Cthulhu, a baby Cthulhu or something. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's some sort of like very Cthulhu looking monster. I don't know. I don't know. I just shot it with fire and it died and I was happy to how like, did you have to get it go in and sort of trick it into coming outside? Yeah. Yeah. I had to keep walking in and out of that cave like seven times to get it to walk out. I just walked backwards looking at it very slowly. Yeah. That's what I did. And I'm like, you're still coming, right? You're still coming. Like I was holding my hands like, come on. Just give me. I'm ready. I'm ready here. It's Arnold Schwarzenegger at the end of predator. Just trying to sucker him into one spot. Exactly. I feel like Bugs Bunny playing that part. I like tiptoe up behind him and then try to stay just out of his reach. And then you walk inside to a bunch of jail cells in this weird cave with Mackie, who says get me out. And of course, the first thing you find is a set of keys and it's like, not wrong keys in the entire house, adventure through this mansion. It turns out there's like three or four different keys in the house that you find before you figure out which one is the right. Yeah. I mean, I mentioned that big. That's right. There's going to be a lot of keys in the first place that big. I like the first point where you sort of get a preview of the fishmen in their full finny glory in those cells, like if you look at the cells of how you see people in them. Yeah. I also, I really liked the rifle too, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. As a gun. As a gun. That was the bolt action rifle. Like, world war. It is very, very powerful. That was definitely all I used in the mansion. Yeah, me too. Especially when you, especially when you get it, yeah, especially when you get into the area overlooking the entryway where you eventually go down and there's like four guys down there. The room with the elevator controls or the control for the lid for the speaker room. The control for the lid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's where you get the rifle, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then it's like, then you're shooting out that window at those guys and they burst in the door behind you, which they actually killed me the first time because I wasn't expecting. Oh, you guys, you can, you can do it without them spotting you. If you go into stealth mode or whatever, and just like, peek your head up, take a shot, they ever once in a while, they'll say like, I think I heard something or whatever. And then you just hide back down. Oh my gosh. I'm like. Yeah. Wow. That was perfect. Does anybody else other than you use the stealth mode in this at all? I haven't since the very beginning of it. I honestly used it very little, but this is the one time where it paid off because I found out that I could shoot them and just not have them notice me. It never enters my gameplay vocabulary just because it's never really never used. There you go. So anyway, I shot a bunch of the dudes without getting spotted one time I got spotted and they came up to fight me, but they wouldn't go through the door to that room so that I could just hear them wandering around in the hall out there. Oh, yeah. If you close the door, they totally don't come in. Yeah. So it's not true. Really? I close that door and they came through with shotguns. Oh, there you go. Yeah. The bug. Video games, man. They're different. Weird AI glitches and weird pathfinding things, getting trapped by sailors later on and getting doors opened in tonight. Oh, it also reminds me, did any of you guys ever use the knife while you had it? Oh, hell yeah. Self kills, man. Yeah. That was awesome. Yeah, I never used it, but I read about a bunch of people using it. It does. A lot of people in the comments said they were in. You aim the knife. Aiming the knife. Yeah, you have to aim it to work. I didn't get the knife until I got Mackie out of the cell and I was sneaking up on somebody and then he just unloaded on him. Like, I'm almost there and it's then then all of a sudden his pistol fires and like, Mackie doesn't take unnecessary risks. No, apparently Mackie can die as well. Oh, really? If that happens, then you have to reload your game. Oh, bummer. Before we get to the unlocking Mackie part though, like, here's another time where, you know, more so than even in the refinery where exploration paid off and where when I first got into the space, it was really overwhelming and I thought there were tons of places to go. But then over the course of it, you know, I had a complete understanding of that environment. Yeah. I love the different secret passages that were in there. It really felt like you were exploring this kind of, you know, the house that you always wanted as a kid, this giant mansion with like, cool secret passages in it. Like, it was fun to find all that stuff and to use the trap doors. To go in between. Yeah, there's that stained glass of Dagon and then the one next door out of Hydra and you use it to get into that room. The one part that stopped me up for a long time, a really long time was I never used the book of Dagon to look at the prayer on the wall. That's exactly what's that talk to all of us. Yeah. See, I actually knew to use the book of Dagon, but then I didn't know how to, like, I hadn't found the, or I wasn't able to figure out the safe combination to get the other. I was going to say that one's pretty weak. It was just a year. Yeah. And there's no like, there's no hint that it's here, I guess, except that they've used that previously. It never occurs to you that you found that safe combination. Yeah. And so you're running around looking for shit going, where can I find that safe combination? See, well, for me, it actually been like several days since I'd played and I forgot the safe was even there. So I ran around this fucking mansion like 12 times trying to figure out what to do. And finally I looked it up on a fact and like, oh, the safe. Every time I look at a fact for this game, I feel stupid afterwards and like, how did I not think of that? Yeah. I actually looked in the stupid diary because I figured that's where it would be. Yeah. Like twice going, nope, there's no goddamn combination in here. Right. You know, because it doesn't explicitly call it out. I guess it's just because the game had trained me previously, you know, if they had set it up before, I mean, I guess they sort of do, I still feel dumb for not finding it. But it didn't, all the other times it had said like, this is basically the password to the safe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And this time it didn't. Yep. So hitting you over the head and fit. Yep. Did we want to take a quick break real quick? I don't think so. Something to drink. Yeah. And I could expel what I drank before, which I've seen your audience wants to know. Okay. Take a quick break and then we'll pick up right. Right there after the safe combination. Alright, I'm just going to jump in with the counter here even though it's a little bit further back. I think the Marshall Finders is a good example of everything that's great and annoying about the game. There are so many memorable adventure moments, but they're mixed with mediocre action moments and bugs. He says, I love to jumping off the conveyor and puzzling through each stage of the boss fight. But when trying to turn the elevator on, it felt like the environment was encouraging me to run and gone. The halls were pretty wide and well-lit so the fishman could see me from far away and there were so many blind corners that I never knew where one of them would come from. Getting through without being seen felt more like dumb luck than effective sneaking. So that's just bringing up, I guess those are the same problems that I had with the Marshall Finder. Yeah. Even though he's kind of moved on from that, I just wanted to get that comment in there because I thought it was cool. He wrapped up all my issues. You'd like to see a read to you? Yeah. I mean, that was basically if you agree with me, that's what Phil goes through the comments looking for. No. Idi, Idi. Oh, if you guys agree with me, I'm going to read your comment probably. I did also want to bring up to Embarcus. Embarcus, who's coming, I read last week, he says, "To readress my, see the hands but not the feet complaint if you guys remember that." He says, "I guess what really irked me is the upcoming section in the refinery. I can remember wandering around forever with no idea of how I was supposed to progress. If I remember right, the elevator crashes down and for some reason I didn't notice the dangling cable in the elevator shaft. At this point, the navigation takes an old-school N64-turock feel as I finally figured out that I should leap for the cable and move down it, but there's no climbing detail at all. You float down and through the geometry of the cable." Yeah, the cable actually, the moment I jumped onto it, totally disappeared. Yeah, exactly. I was just floating down. Little parts like this stand out from the rest of the game and seem weirdly unpolished compared to what I must agree is a game constructed with an eye for detail. Wait till you get to Devil's Reef. At that point, you're using the action button to hold on to hand rails as the waves lap at you as you walk along the ledge, but then if you look down at that point, you can see your hands holding the ring. He's basically saying there's just these moments of inconsistency with coolness. Yeah, I guess that just makes sense to me coming from a studio that was probably closing and they probably knew they were closing and it was like they were just trying to finish this game before they ran out of money and put it out before Bethesda gave up on it or something. Yeah. So. All right. I guess. That's wrestling. Yeah. Let's move on. We're at the safe. On a happy note. We open the safe. Yeah. And inside the safe. I don't remember what I don't remember. Inside the safe is the revolver. There is Mackie's. Mackie's gone the knife and the safe combination, right? No, not a knife. The keys. The keys to Mackie's. The keys to Mackie's cell. That's where he's gone. So now you get a knife. And dynamite isn't there? No, it's a letter. It's a letter. It's like a some it's some text. It's the text you need to interpret the other. Right. So you take that back to the prayer like wall and then you after having looked at it with the book of day gone. They can finally say the words. I love the way he says the words, by the way, like he says them like phonetically. Yeah. He says them like the way that I would read Spanish. I had day gone. I guess I was trying to read fucking moon language. I would talk that way. Yeah. I have a tag on. I uh, hi draw. I did like what I liked is that when you walk up to the door, he says the words. Yeah. Totally. I thought that was an awesome touch. Like instead of them just opening. Oh, I have to spell now doing it, and then he has a better memory than I do. Well, he was potentially he wrote it down in his notes or something like that, right? He just can't see his hands. Yeah. I didn't draw those. Right. So let's say we go get Mackie. We give him his gun and rush back inside with him. Mackie is a pretty good shot, by the way. He is Mackie is a suicidal prick. He ran right into that room with a bunch of David's and got this shit blown out of him. Actually, see what happened with me is he ran right into the room, but the other guys just completely ignored him and he ignored them and they ran out and shot me instead. Yeah. Well, with me when I was heading out, it was like, I went one way and Mackie went the complete other way and we met in the middle. Oh. So like, and so like he just went through a ton of guys shooting running to me. So the time we met up, it was, he was like, man, you don't even know the shit that I went through. And every wound that he has is obvious on him. He's like covered in blood as black eyes. I get cleared out most of the house and the room with all the dudes walking around in the, you know, the, the main room. I had cleared them out above, like I said, by sniping me too. So when you come back through with Mackie, there are some enemies that have respawned, but the house is generally pretty cleared out and we kind of just waltzed in there and did our business. Yeah. So you go and you go to the room and isn't it like Mackie operates the crank. Yeah. Right. And then let you down. Yeah. And then I don't remember what's down. So you go through the bottom and there's a boss battle that reminded me of like the poor man's eco boss battle. Yeah, totally. There's these basically magician dudes. They fire spells at you and you hide behind these columns while shooting them with your rifle is what I did. And that's another part that bugged out on me. Like the first time I got to that point, it wouldn't let me move left or right. It was like, it was just leaning and I did check and I wasn't hitting the lead. Yeah. That happened to me too. I ended up dodging the fireballs just barely like I saw them coming in. There's bad geometry on the back of the stage where you walk in through the door. You've got the power of grace gall pushing you back and there's these like based, they're not columns because they're attached to the wall, but the wall kind of indents out. So you're standing behind a column in front of you, the, you're getting pushed back and you can't move right because you're touching up against the side of this wall where the wall is square, it's square giant masks touching you. You're trying to ask that you can't see. I was just surprised actually because that boss battle like I was getting caught on walls and I was having trouble moving and I was getting hit by magic fireball attacks. And somehow I beat it on my first try. So do I actually. Well, the guys are really easy to kill though. It's like one or two shots. That's good. That's actually a bunch of times. Did you get where you hit shot them? Yeah. Really? You hit them once each. Oh, I was. It was probably two times each for me. Yeah. They went quick. Like revolver. Maybe it was twice each. But I rifled them and they all died like instantly. That was going to say that's one thing that I really like about this game is that they're just did. Yeah, the fish people are just dudes with fish shoots on, you know, so like you can totally kill them just as quickly as you can any other regular non-fished human. And those guys, yeah, those guys died really easily. And then it took me actually a while to figure out what to do in that room. That puzzle was kind of obtuse to me. Because you can't see, it's almost like you can't quite figure out all of the symbols that are supposed to be entered from the broken thing on the wall. Like I actually, I had to look at an FAQ for this because I didn't realize that there were six symbols instead of five. I think I looked at a fact for this as well. It's like when there's like a symbol down and below each statue. Yeah. This reminds me of one part in the refinery we forgot to talk about too, which was the very bottom, that hidden rim where you get the jewel. Oh, the Cthulhu room, that was not what I've ever died during madness. That's why I wanted to bring it up was like, yeah, I didn't figure it out the first time I was in there what to do. I was taking too long and then I died from madness. Like I didn't have my weapon out, but he just like squeezed in his head and his massive sanity failure. Yeah, I had that too, but not until an upcoming boss battle which we'll discuss. Okay. But anyway, so that room I just wanted to mention for that reason, right? And to remind everyone. That was a cool room. That little laser trap thing was, yeah, I just figured out that you could move the pedestal that the dude was on. Right. So once I figured that out, it was easy. I'm pretty sure that's the whole puzzle was figuring out. Oh, and moving. It's on track. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Anyway, so then we're down in the, we're trying to figure out the puzzle so that we can follow Marsh. So everyone looks at a fact and we find out the race looking at the concrete things that fell off onto the floor. And then it tells you to look at one of the three statues. Obviously, Dagon would be the deity. So you use his transcoding materials plus the information that you got on the wall and the floor. And the fact. And the fact. More importantly. Yeah. One guy that wrote that fact, you know. You got to pass this part without a fact, man. I fucking salute you because I just could not, I could not do it. Well, I like, I feel like I could have gotten if, if I tried long enough, but I just got too impatient. Exactly. Because I kept looking at the, in the greats, the floor. And I kept thinking that it wasn't a six button combination. I kept thinking it was a three button combination. Yeah. And I thought the hint was, you know, oh, Dagon's their deity. So I bow before Dagon and I look in there and oh, and that tells me what to do. Okay. Now I just have to figure out which symbol is which and match them up or whatever. And like, I was like, how was I supposed to figure out that there's six symbols, you know. Two and two together. It made sense to me because I did exactly what you did, entered it and nothing happened. And I was like, this makes sense considering there. It's clearly a key for something. Right. This symbol matches this symbol, but the button is just a button. I can walk up to it and press it. So if I was, I feel like I should have been able to figure it out, but I won't lie. I couldn't. I didn't figure it out. I fucked it up. And I looked at that back. Yep. Excellent. Yeah. That's the cast of shame. And sometimes when you're playing a game and it's fucked up like that, it starts to really feel like work, especially when you're doing it like with the deadline. Well, and also with this game, you can't be sure sometimes if there's not a game ending bug. That's exactly. It's all like, I will put up with your bugs. I will not put up with your bad puzzle design. So is this what happens when you go through the door? Yeah, I don't think I remember either. You go through the door, is this where it transitions to the next level? I feel like it probably does. Yeah. Like, I can't remember it either. So it must, right? Or something? Well, we can. We can edit this part. I actually opened up a walkthrough on the computer that Phil has just for this. That's right. For refreshers. Again. I did it out. Nothing. This is what happened. We're leaving it in. I'll just roll. I'll sing some Baba Yettu while we wait. Baba yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu yettu. I only know the first few words. It's a bad thing. This is singing. That doesn't fucking count. It doesn't translate without being able to see him shake his head and wave his hands in the air. It's the Lord's Prayer in Swahili. Nice. Yeah. This is where it transitions to the next level. You basically like go forward and then fall into the air. Yeah, you fall into the air and then it goes with the boat. So that's not where none of us. And again, you black out. Right. Yes. And then there's a written text that's like "I got roped into going on this adventure to the reef." Right. And it's like "Okay, why did you agree to this?" And then the ship showed up and I got on it. That reminds me at the beginning of this mansion section. Did any of you guys feel like when the level started? It seems like it enters mid conversation. Like they didn't have quite enough time to finish the cutscene or something like that. It enters with the commander like already explained or the... What is it, Marines or something? It's like he's already mid-sentence explaining what's going on. It was bizarre. I don't remember that at all. Anyways. I believe you though, Phil. The ship is... You have an honest face. The ship is where I actually stopped for this so I'm a little bit behind. You guys can talk about that. I'll start with a comment from Mike R who says "His favorite bug so far took place in this level." Nice. So after being rescued, my character remained in the water while the captain gave me the lowdown on the boy edge. When he was done, I walked through the hull and into the lower part of the ship where I found all the weapons that you get later. Most of the ship was underwater at this point. I was also able to unlock a lot of the critical doors. Later when I tried to get to the surface to start the level proper, the game realized I was underwater and drowned me. This brings me to my favorite bug of the game, which is that on Xbox 360 backwards compatibility, there's no water in the game as I said. Which is so fantastic for this game. Yeah. So there are parts where there are dudes like floating in the boat on nothing on air. Yeah. If you're playing on 360... It's Cthulhu in Space, man. Basically, yes. That's awesome. So yeah, that was fantastic. And Mike R continues actually. He says, "You can definitely tell the development of the game was inconsistent. Some parts got a lot of love, but this section, not so much." He says, "Actually, okay, he's referring to the shoot where it becomes more shooter-heavy." And he says his favorite, his popular culture professor, who is not a gamer, mentioned during his Cthulhu lecture that he played the game but quit at that part, because it's where it stops being a Lovecraftian horror game and becomes more of like a basic shooter. Huh. I thought there was a lot of puzzling in the... There was a lot of puzzling in the boat. In fact, it seems to me like you don't really have to do a whole lot of shooting unless one of the fishmen that's attacking the ship gets by the other guys. He's referring to this whole section that we played. In general, the boat is like having read a lot more Lovecraft and stuff. The boat is just you shooting monsters as they come out, rather than dealing with a lot more psychological horror things. I'm trying to remember if it was in our comments or somewhere else that I saw it, but the boat is basically the game's aliens moment, where all the sailors are shooting off these fishmen and they keep boarding it and you have to go do all the stuff and then later when you have to run and bolt doors behind you and fix stuff, it's just very much like an action terror movie as opposed to a horror movie for that. Yeah, I mean, I just think that when the designers were doing it, they were just trying to go up the way to get you out to Devil's Reef. That was like their challenge. Yeah, and something that they thought was exciting. Yeah, exactly. I guess they could have just done it where you woke up and the boat had already reached there and there was like a text thing. We say without the Devil's Reef. Well, I mean, a lot of stuff happens particularly at the end of this section and you're right that it is the part where there's creatures around for most of the time and they die really fast and seeing them disintegrate, which is what all the enemies do when you kill them in this game, but it just seems really game-y at this part because there's like a bunch of fishmen that all look exactly the same, hopping up on the side really fast. It turns into this, like, got to shoot them all, like sort of whack-a-mole game and it's just not as interesting. But the... The "H True Love" crafts deer hunter. Yeah. Well, I can say at least the soldiers act like they can fire guns. Yeah. They can actually kill the creatures and often kill them before you can get to them. And I found that to be somewhat gratifying because if they all shot the way that those dorks and endsmiths shot at you, then they'd never hit anything. See, so until the very, very end of this section, it all kind of feels like this section feels like filler to me. Mm-hmm. And it's weird because it's not that the environment is... I mean, it looks good for the most part for, you know, it's a nice ship, it's got lots of rooms and crawly spaces, whatever, you know? If you could see water, that's good too. Yeah, once the water would have been nice and I couldn't see any of that. Yeah. But once it got to the final chase, plus the... Plus the waves. The boss battle on the waves. And the waves felt like production value that I was not expecting in that game. Yeah. Like watching the entire ship buckle and fold like that, or nothing will fold, but buckle over and having to grab on. And Matt, you were saying that you saw this on the side. Yeah, well, it was because like the... I wanted to see what was happening to the other ships. Because if you look to the side, there's two other ships. Like one on each side of you that are also going to the reef with you. So when the waves started to come up, I had to do the section a couple times because I couldn't figure out to grab onto the rail. I couldn't either. He didn't take cover. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go inside." Exactly. And I saw Hanson grab the rail, so I went to grab it and it didn't work. And so I was thinking to myself, "Okay, well, I guess I don't get to grab the rail. I need to find cover somehow." So I had to do the section a few times. But when I finally figured out to grab the rail, the first wave that came, I grabbed the rail and I looked to the left. And you can see the ship on your left kind of take the wave sideways and it flips it over and destroys that ship. And then the second wave came and I looked off to my right and should I really be saying starboard and port? And I looked off to my right and I saw the other... On that second wave, the other ship does the same thing. So the only reason why your ship survives is because it's going straight over the wave as opposed to trying to go to the side. And I thought that was a really nice touch and it was really cinematic to just have these other two ships tip over. And then when you're freaking out and you can see from Dagon's view as he's coming up from below, you can see the ship off to the side that's tipped upside down and slowly sinking. And that really kind of made that whole sequence really extra cool for me. So that whole sequence is where we approach my keyboard tossing moment. Right. Because so you have to hold on to the rail when the ship is lurching and then you're supposed to go up to the gun and shoot mages that are on the cliff that are making the waves go. When I went up to the gun and zoomed in, it didn't zoom. Yeah, it doesn't do that. That was the problem everyone was having. Apparently a lot of people are comments. A lot of people are comments from this. It seems like a little bit, but not really so that you can see anything. It basically doesn't zoom in at all. It makes like a fake zoom. But the island's still just as far away. Apparently there's supposed to be like three lights, is that right? Yeah, they're like... They're like the lights at the top of the mages' staffs or whatever. We couldn't see the lights though at all. Arthur was just like guessing, shooting around the thing and then running back and grabbing the rail. He tried that for so long. Yeah, well apparently a lot of people in our comments had this problem and they were guessing that it might just be a problem with Vista, which has me worried since I'm playing on Vista, I'll know. Because I'm playing XP and I was able to do it. I was able to do as well on XP. So maybe it is a Vista thing, but I just played it over and over again because I did not want to use another person's save. Something that I don't know if everybody realizes that this game does is that your performance of the game and how you do and the stuff you do and the people that die and live affects the ending you get, even down to the amount of sailors that survive on the deck when you're doing this part. Which, by the way, they all pretty much died. I killed the whole crew. Yeah, I mean they pretty much died and the ones that don't die get killed when the waves come. Like you see them get thrown off the boat and just like that. But I mean those aren't because of you. I mean if you don't get to the deck with the med kit fast enough, that soldier that asked for it will die and you'll say I wasn't fast enough. Well, but then that's also a game ending bug too. No, game ending. He can't die because if he dies then... No, he died. Parts of the other levels don't have. He died and I kept playing. He had said I'm too late and then the game kept going. No, he was still there though because he's the one that's limping when you lead him to the infirmary. I'm just saying what my character said which seemed very guilty about something. So that's a part where I thought I hit a game ending bug was when you are getting chased through the... You're running through the hallways, getting chased by the fish monsters. You're finally coming inside and homeboys live in a long with you. And they're like close the doors behind you. So I started running and I was like man fuck all these guys. They're too slow, especially Mr. Olimpy. Mclib's a lot back there. I'm gonna just run right by that fool. And ran in, closed the door, ran into the next room, closed the door. And there's a guy in there with me. It's the infirmary. And there's a locked door at the very back and you can't get out of it. And I was like this is it. This door just is supposed to be unlocked and I can't get out of here. I did it ten times and I couldn't figure out how to open that locked door. And then I realized oh I'm not supposed to leave Mr. Olimpy outside to get eaten by the fishmen. Sorry about that. And once I realized that he needed to come in with the keys, then it was all good. But right after you go through that door, you make a quick right and go in another door and then you're supposed to close it and bolt it up. And I did this. I accidentally, you know the controls were a bit wacky accidentally unbolted and opened it once. But when I was trying to bolt it once and the fish guy came in and I shot him a couple times and then closed the door and bolted it and it was still cool. And I was like thank God. And then the two guys are standing at the bottom of this short staircase. And I'm like we really need to get out of here. I'm like fuck yeah we do. Let's run. But they're blocking the staircase and you can't run through them. Yeah exactly. And there's like this long ass pause and they're like oh no really we should run down these stairs. And I'm thinking yeah I don't really let's run down fucking stairs. Go guys. And I just thought that was a really strange sequence. So that is one reason the narrative just didn't work for me as well on the boat. I think the reason why they do that is because there's the really big guy that's chasing you and he pounds on that door and you're supposed to see them pound on the door. Like they're trying to get through but they can't. Right I just turned around and it was all pounded upon. Yeah exactly. And so you know if you're not facing the right direction then you're just get the fuck out of my way dude. My gaming bug happened slightly before that and it was when the fishmen were still coming up on deck and the last fishman apparently spawned but he didn't climb up on deck. He was stuck off the side of the ship. And so all I have there is Henson there with his infinitely reloading Tommy gun shooting, trying to shoot at him through the deck. So I was like ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting. And I'm like where the hell is he shooting and he wouldn't stop shooting. And so I reloaded the game twice. I loaded up old saves. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game. I did all kinds of stuff trying to just. I installed windows again. Just trying to just trying to make it reset somehow so that it would so that it would work. And there were a couple times where I got to the wave scenes where the last fishman came up. And then after a while it just wouldn't do it anymore. I did it four or five times in a row and loaded up from multiple different save points. And every single time there was always one fishman stuck off the side of the boat. And so I went after a while. I was just walking around the side. I'm like what the fuck is going on? And I saw him through one of the little holes that are on the deck. One of the little like where you can let water off the deck or whatever. And I saw him and I saw just enough of him that I could shoot him and kill him. And then they're like why did they stop? And then the waves came. So just really weird bugs. And I think it's because they were trying to do stuff in this whole boat section that they didn't try to do anywhere else in the game engine or any other part of the game. Yeah. So you guys want to talk about the boss battle a little bit too? Right. Sure. Sure. So this boss battle is I actually want to I want to hear how you guys did it first because when Matt was sitting in the room with me when I did it this morning he told me a little something something that made it a lot easier. And by using his trick and what I learned which is that so during this boss battle with day gone which I think it's funny that you fight him here. So yeah. Giant fish monster comes up grabs a boat. Yeah. You have to fight him. Yeah. And it involves basically he comes up in front of the boat. You can fire the giant cannon that you were previously using to shoot the mages off the island in hit you can shoot him and then he'll like shake the boat and try to smack smack down on you upon you on the deck and all these things just apart where he shakes it and you have to hold on like you did on the waves. So it's you know a pretty traditional boss battle with like a bunch of different things to dodge before you actually get a chance to attack. So did anyone have to play it many many times? I had to play it a lot of times because when the mage part happened and he said hold on wait for cover I actually like survived the initial wave without holding on to the rail and managed to shoot all the mages with the gun and so I never realized and even until I got to the boss who I would dig on that there was a rail to hold on to. I actually had to read a fact because I couldn't figure out how to survive him shaking the boat if I knew I was doing something wrong. So yeah I had to play it a ton of times before I finally gave up and realized that I needed to hold on to a fucking rail. There is I did not hold on to the rail once because basically if you, this is how it worked for me, if you go up to the front of the boat and dance around, then I was in the side. That was my little trick that Ryan was talking about. So I shot him with the gun with a deck gun because I mean there's a big ass gun on the deck. Why would I shoot him with anything else? Yep. So I shoot him with a deck gun then I run over and he comes at the side once and he comes to the side again and I'm like wait he kind of went over to where I was standing. Yeah. I couldn't avoid him. So I, I'll try and go up to the front and see if I got some up there so I can shoot him again. Yeah it does. See I danced around the deck a lot just dodging his stuff and it seems like when I was standing mostly near the gun, a little bit near the rail area, but just kind of hopping around in that general spot that the pattern that he followed was pretty much the same pattern every time. It was like hit here low, hit here high, hit here on the other side high, shake the boat, hit high again, then appear in the center and allow you know so that I can find a shoot. That's pretty much what it was like the entire time and then Matt was like oh I found if I go stand near the front that you know he'll come up there more. I was like really? And I did that at one point I stared him right in the face when he was on the side and that's when I got my critical sanity failure and died just from looking at him too long. Yeah. So this time when I finally did it I would walk up to the front of the bow I guess is that what it's called and just looked at the deck, looked at the boat straight on and let him appear behind me he would come up almost every time and if you wait and shoot him in the head rather than in the body I shot him like three times and he died. Yeah it took me about 90 seconds to beat him. Yeah it was a really fast battle. It's cool that you brought up the sanity there Dave G in our comments says sanity is one of the main reasons I had to fight Dagon like six times because I was battling my sanity the whole time. Yep. The funniest thing happened I was trying to shoot Dagon with my shotgun used up to two rounds when I went insane Jack points the shotgun up to his head pulls the trigger but nothing. Get reloaded and so then he did the put his hands to his head and the critical. That's awesome. That is awesome. He's on click. Fuck. I mean I think people started beating himself in the head with it. I think people's sanity must be different because my character never had that problem. Like I could look at Dagon and stuff and I never even got like loopy vision and stuff. So I think maybe it builds over time or something maybe it is like because Arthur seems to have problems a lot more often. Yeah I didn't have any. Arthur is a punk bitch man. I'm just saying that Arthur's character must have seen a lot more shit than mine. Like I must have just like ran past it. I spent way more time just looking at stuff going man that's fucked up. How close can I zoom in for real Arthur's going insane too. Yeah well maybe. I also want to praise the sanity effects. I think it was during this section during this last boss battle that I really was like these are some of the best fucking effects that I've seen in a game like this because there's several you know there's like your drunk effect and everything gets blurry. There's the one where it turns all liquidy on the screen and everything's like moving around you know there's parts where it starts to get darker if you're shot or gets red when your hands are coming up and I don't know like they make the game hard to play in a really interesting sort of way and there were times when I was fighting that boss battle where it was like I was doing it after drinking entire bottle of vodka or something like that and and it was it made it more fun but I was sort of able to do it until the character gave up. I didn't give up I would have kept going but he he wouldn't say and so yeah. I mean if you're like if if you're interested in the whole idea of sanity and keeping people together that Anthony's backlog recommendation is actually interesting one because they do some really interesting stuff as far as like keeping sanity and trust and stuff like that and the thing. That's cool. The only one I could think of was like eternal darkness I guess but I liked it so much. This is just so much simpler you know obviously they try to be more clever with the eternal darkness ones and to me that sometimes falls flat. Yeah I know it broke the fourth wall in the thing it's a in the thing it's not about your sanity it's just about the sanity of people you're with and whether or not they're the thing yeah you'll hand them a pistol and you'll be like all right I'm going to trust you with a gun because I know that you need this to feel better about yourself because or sometimes but then sometimes they might walk into a room and see someone that exploded the thing and they'll be like oh Jesus pistol to the head boom that happened to me I actually stopped playing the thing because I was in a room and my guy was having clearly like losing it so I handed him a gun you said thank you and then put it to his head and blues brains out. Yeah that's why I love that game there's some stuff that happens like that nice so if you don't think the thing makes sense as far as a backlog choice now you know yeah all right so are we wrapping up for this one. I think yes so we're playing to the end now which is a you know people that are going to try and put it off don't because the playing through the whole like the actual part of Devil's Reef is like another like four plus hours and so and then we also will try and watch Dagon. We should yeah I mean everyone should try and watch it all six parts are on YouTube just look at Dagon the movie it's more than six parts it's like it's like maybe like ten parts but other way the movie is only like an hour and ten minutes like it's a very short movie and it's and like I said it's on YouTube so you can watch it in chunks and you're not going to pay anything for it. I wanted to bring up a comment to close off related to one of the things we brought up last week which is that we mentioned the game being on the Morrowind engine yes Trotsky migraine says well both Call of Cthulhu and Morrowind run on the net immerse 3D engine I wouldn't call it the Morrowind engine head first was developing the game on the engine for years before they signed with Bethesda if you really wanted to throw caution of the wind you could call it the Simon the Sorcerer 3D engine also powered by net immerse and created by many of the head first team huh I too am amazed how an engine design primarily to shoot gnomes smeared in a butter in butter out of a telescope could be a dot adapted for decent gunplay so that's that's I would be more impressed if it was adapted for decent gunplay. I mean they're honestly parts where you're where you're amazed that anything in this game works and I do want to bring up this comment just because I thought it was really funny this is two parts this is in our comments section and this is this is one of the reasons that you should go and read our comments every week which reminds me if you guys want to have comments on this last section of gameplay put them in the comments section for this show and I'll be going through and reading but Mark says I finally figured out why everyone of the town is so strange they all have down syndrome that's that's kind of offensive but the next person and I see those more like ground syndrome I think that's right right I think that's hilarious and thank you all for listening. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]