Rebel FM
Rebel FM Game Club -- Call of Cthulhu -- Episode 1 -- 02/16/2009
We kick off Backlog 2.0 -- Rebel FM Game Club -- with the first few hours of Call of Cthulu, up to the "sewers" section. Next week, we'll be playing through the "escape from Innsmouth" portion.
Hello, welcome to the first episode of the Rebel FM Game Club, which I guess is what we're going to be calling this thing. We've got the regular Rebel FM crew here, which is Anthony Gagez. Hey, Nick's up there. Hey, yo. And Anthony Geeze. Wait, what? Anthony Geeze? Uh, Arthur Geeze? Arthur Geeze? Arthur Geeze? No wonder he's not human anymore. Yeah, no, I don't get sorry. I have to be another Anthony. Arthur and I are drunk under our dados. Yeah. Yeah, you guys have been devouring this stuff. Entire from travel. That's kind of the only way you can eat them. We're also joined by Ryan O'Donnell. Hello. And Matt Shanderne from Area 5. Yes. Area 5.com show. Dot TV. And Ella, so I'm sorry you can't pay here. Yeah. I'm sure she'd want to. Yeah. She should totally quit her job and just come back. It'll be good. Alright, so we're going to be talking about for our first game. We're going to be covering for this whole month now is Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Year. God damn, what a good choice that was, wasn't it? Yeah. We brought that one up as a dark horse and that was, that was good. Like I was kind of excited about doing Bully, but not as soon as I call it Cthulhu though. Although as it's known on the Xbox 360 and the menu, Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of the Year. Because I got off of it, you know. That's a Kegeloid. That's off the damn edge. That's true. I want to start off the, off the top because if I just get it out of the way right here, then I want to wrap the talk about it again. But God damn it, what's up with the Hobbit doors. They are some short, fat, squat doors. And I feel like I'm the shortest man alive. And then I look at the people standing in front of me. They don't really look like short people until I back up this little bit. Okay, help me suggest that the doors are wide. Like it's, you know, you don't have a good frame of reference. You know, a lot of times when you're looking at a door, so it just looks like this fat, wide door. All right. Before we get to in the door, doors, stuff. Let's just kind of lay out what we're playing the game on, what the game is, how we went about that in the game. Oh, you can also maybe explain to people, you know. The concept of the vault. If you haven't listened to the one up FM backlog segment that we used to do, what exactly this is? Yeah, go for it. Yeah, explain it to him. I will try to do that. Okay, so we will go back into the doors. The idea of the Rubble FM Game Club is basically we take a single game and we play through it. For the most part, we'll be playing through them for four weeks. And so we'll have a new show every single week playing up to a certain point and discussing up to that point. And the idea is that we have really in-depth discussion on these games. More so than you're going to get on a single game at any other point. Where else would anyone talk about the doors? Exactly. No, just going to talk about the doors anymore else. And that's a shame. And unlike the backlog where we only play full games, now we might play any game. Yeah, any game. We can play any game. And we will be doing again, like we will be doing polls so you can decide what game you want us to be playing. Like we're definitely doing Brutal Legend. Well, that is happening for sure, yes. So whenever Brutal Legend comes out, like we're stopping. Hopefully we can get Tim Shafer on the show. Yeah. He's come over. What do you mean hopefully? Tim Shafer is our buddy, he'll come on the show. Tim Shafer is super awesome. So about these doors. So if you want to get the game now, like how did you PC Hook? Because Direct the Drive. Direct the Drive. There's a link on our director drive. It's the only legitimate way to get it. I was disappointed to see that it's like still full price. Yeah, it's $29.95. Yeah, I guess maybe they got burned by that and never be there. Was it like $46.99? Yeah, I mean it's. Do on Amazon for Xbox which is like a really bizarre price. How much? $46.99. $46.99. I mean it's $30. I mean you can, and if you're willing to wait, you can find it on eBay. I'll just say that it's worth, like it's worth it. This game so far, you know, I remember, I started in a surpassed playing where I played two before when I played it. But this is a pretty impressive game that I'm sure that almost everyone missed. And it's definitely worth checking out if you're into a percent adventure game. And you and I are playing in Xbox, everyone else is playing. I want to throw this in here for those who are playing 360 backwards compatibility. Luke in our comments says, "Just a heads up for people playing on the 360." I-R-C, the game does not, does a little bit of installing the first time you run it. But it acts weird on the 360. Basically it has to install its cache. If you've played a different backwards compatible game since you played it last. So he's saying like if you play something else backwards compatible like Halo, you'll have to, then when you play this again, you'll have to sort of reinstall. Well I've never played it before, but it didn't have to do an initial install. I almost thought it'd frozen because it took like 10 minutes. And then I finally just went to the main menu screen after that. And now when I boot it up it goes almost right there. Yeah, it's funny I didn't notice that happening at all. But I'm not planning to play another- You just zone out for 10 minutes? No, I literally did- I don't remember that happening at all. I did the standard 360 updating this game sort of thing at the beginning, but it definitely didn't take 10 minutes. And I mean I think, you know, for us playing on the PC I know Anthony you were talking about on Rebel FM last week about the save game problems that you've had. And it's a little bit buggy. Logantly Spaceman actually says, "Just thought it was an interesting detail but I read that this game was never intended to be ported to PC. It was actually just a one man project that someone took on at the company. They decided to give it an official release." Yeah, there's other issues too. Like there are things where if the game drops beneath 30 frames, which it can't even if you have a great computer just because there's issues up, then it'll literally affect the run speed of your character. So there'll be certain parts of the games like where you're trying to escape from the inn. That's everything which become impossible. So yeah, there are tons of- That didn't happen to me. I mean, but it's funny because if any of these issues occur you can look them up online. And find a solution. Like it's funny. I thought I'd run into a big glitch like one Xbox because I had clicked the right thumb sticking I guess which turns you into like stealth mode. And then your movement's really slow and you can kind of like, like filter body left and right. But I thought I had somehow like, because I walked through a character in MPC and I thought it messed up my movement and then everything was really slow. And I was like, "Damn it, I saved every load of my game." And I was like, "It's still going on. I broke my save." But that's all it was. So far when I first played it I played on Xbox One and now I'm playing on 360. And I haven't had any problems so far at all. And the frame rate's been really stable and no sounds to any problems or any of those weird things that might come permanently in the game. So I recommend getting the console version if you want. If you can, I mean if you can, it's just around here. It's a little cheaper if you can find it. The EV games around here in the East Bay of California like they just did not have it. I imagine it'll be hard to find. There's a particular couple in Seattle and they'll be in there just not anywhere. So before we get into the actual specifics of the game, for those who are listening and who haven't maybe caught up and want to. For this episode we're playing up to the sewer segment. I just got to the beginning of the sewers. I didn't actually play through it. And then where are we going to play for next episode? For next week we're playing all the way through the Escape from Inn Smith. Excellent. Okay, so tell me how much I guess I didn't get far enough because I got stuck where you have to figure out the combination of the sewers. Really? In the variety store. You got to take off the 10 years from the girl's age. That's what I thought I did. As though, that is hard to do at first. Did you ever work to retail? Oh, why couldn't you use a safe floor? You probably did 17 instead of books or something. You know what I did is I just took the day it was that you're there in Inn Smith. It was a couple of years. That's why. And then it's actually a couple days prior to that. But what? No, no, it should have been the day before minus 10 years. The sixth or the seventh? I thought I'd write it. The combination is 2612. Maybe I just did it wrong. Is it not just clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, counterwise? It is. And then you hit it? Yeah. It'll click. When you do it right, you'll know you did it right because one it clicks and two because the combination is set up in such a way that you never have to recircle around zero or something when you do it. When you're doing it the right way, it's all like very few places that you're standing behind. Honestly, Nick, if you figured it out, just go use a FAQ and just make sure you check it out. I know. Okay, so how much farther is there 'til the sewers then? It means that you didn't play the part of the game that made me stop playing before. It's the part that... Which is called a spoiler. Yeah, I guess we can start at the beginning. And also, obviously there's going to be lots of spoilers in this, so... Yeah, let's go. What should I just call this show, spoilers? I like the way the game starts out, how you just start out like right off the bat, like jumping out of your car and all of a sudden you're out of scene. But the one thing that I noticed like immediately though, because I got like either game crashed on me and so I had to redo it. I mean, it's one thing you'll notice playing it is that anything where there's like a cutscene, like an in-game cutscene, you can't skip it. No matter how many times you've seen it, you cannot skip it. You can skip it on the PC. You use the back button. So if you go into your configuration, if you go into your keyboard configuration, there'll be a button there and it'll be like skip cutscene or skip scene or something like that. And it'll be labeled as back. And of course there's no bales I've met in Africa. I was going to say, because he just pressed back on Xbox. It's labeled as back on the PC. For instance, in that attack of the Fishman part, I mean jumping ahead real quick, you know how every time you have to watch them walk up and be like... He's inside the road. But the boss, I watch that as very shy. I looked into it because I'm like, dude, there has to be a way to fucking skip this shit. So I looked in it and there wasn't like back button on my freaking keyboard, so I put it to like backslasher or something. That's a good proof that it was on Xbox first, then. Yeah, exactly. And that these guys didn't completely not know what they were doing. It's the time to blame that I kind of thought that. It feels like a PC game from a few years ago in that it's less forgiving than a lot of the current generation of software. So let's completely go back to the beginning. But I would argue that when you start solving some of the puzzles, they're pretty simple. Even the, you know, the safe one that Nick is talking about, that's very constantly with the, I don't know. I mean, I sort of, it still seems weird to me that it was developed for Xbox first, but I can see it now that I've played something with me. It just, it's always kind of weird going to a game like that and playing it and expecting like a very... I always kind of expect like a low level of quality in the presentation and everything, but it's like everything is done really well. Tons of details in the environment like wallpaper peeling and cockroaches running around and things like that. I always kind of expect one being a game that's not like a triple a game that got a lot of attention. And this is like the, that really high level of presentation. And I love that like you can, he'll, he'll, his, you know, his internal monologue. It's, it's almost never just one sentence. It is with the exception of when you check doors and they're locked. That's like the one that gets repetitive. But like the other ones, it's, you can get a lot of, you can get a lot of information in the story. And it's, it's something that we've talked about in the past before about, you know, the amount of game that's there if you want to, if you want to actually explore and dive into it a little bit more and it becomes that much more. Like a lot of the stuff they put in that extra. You don't have to read them. Right, but I've read all of them. Yeah. They are just really good stuff. It's not normal for me. Like usually I'm like picking up stuff and I don't really care, but in this game, I'm actually reading everything. Back to the beginning of the game. I think it makes that, it makes, it's awesome presentation known right from the very beginning. I mean, you're, it's raining. It's dark outside. You walk past a car with a cat. I like it right now. Yeah. I mean, if you hear a rainier, it's, it's, we're putting that in. We're piping it in through this. Yeah. That's not a rainy apartment right now. Um, anyway, if you walk past the front of this car and it's got a really nice headlight that shines through the fog and it's, you, you talk to a person, you get some dialogue options. And right off the bat, it, it lets you know that it's a, it's pretty serious and it's going to be, you know, you get some impression of the amount of level of interaction that you're going to have and the quality of the presentation all right up at the beginning. And even the voice I think was really like, and writing is pretty good. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, but the one thing that I noticed that, that does put this firmly in last gen is that the voice actors are clearly reading directly from the script as in, you know, it's like, well, like the lead character Jack Walker, Jack Walters. Walters Walters Walters. Yeah, Jack Walters. You know, he says, he says to that, he says to the drug guy, he's, he's all like, I ain't got no time for none of your fission stories. You know, and it's like, you could tell that he was reading off a script where somebody wrote fission without the G in the little apostrophe or whatever, and he read it exactly like that. I get that a lot out of the voice acting, in fact, but I think that most of the other characters in the game are better voiced and better read than Jack. I think especially after we played Indigo Prophecy, which just reminds me a lot of a lot of the periphery characters in Indigo Prophecy, I think we're kind of like F.S. voice acting. I don't think it's half-ass voice acting so much as it's people on the development team that were called in for the last second year. Yeah, I mean, for one reason or another, it wasn't great, but like even go in Insmouth, like everyone you talk to in the town, it's like a lot of them sound the same, but they're still a lot of like character in what, you know, in what they're saying. I think not even mood across. I think not even mood across. What they're saying, but the way it's said, like every person walking around Insmouth sounds freaking freaked out scary. Well, they're all clearly fucked up, too. I mean, like, it's a little hard to tell with the textures just how fucked up they're supposed to be, but it's like, okay, their skin is all grey and it's supposed to look kind of bumpy and pimply and everything, I think. And their voices match quite well. Even like the women, you're like, oh, yeah. All right, how are you doing? How are you doing? So, I guess we should talk about the initial scene then, I guess, in the house. Yeah, I thought that was cool. I mean, I didn't know what to expect. You know, you go in there and you just attack the cult house and I was like, okay, it's just going to be like some guys and I'm going to see like a crazy cult leader. Do you get shot outside every time or no? Did I just get shot? No, you get like a little blood on the screen. Yeah, because I wasn't sure because he was like, go around the house to the right and I was like, I'm going to go left, check it out. Like, step forward, you got shot, so I wasn't sure about what you do. You get great, I don't matter what, yeah. But yeah, I thought it was really cool, like, when I wasn't expecting the total transition from like, Shanty House into like an actual temple. Yeah, like, right when it started happening and you first see the brickwork and stuff, the ornate brickwork, I was like, oh man. What did you think of the whole, I mean, the end of that scene where the two creatures come out? Yeah, I mean, again, like, into bankruptcy through a lot of weird stuff late in the game. This was kind of like, nice having it early. It's like, okay, as long as it's like, in there early, I now have an expectation for supernatural stuff throughout. So it had to kind of set the tone and it was nice that it was like very fuzzy and everything and you just kind of see the shapes of them so it didn't look too cheesy. Well, regardless of how all of this game is, the fact that it was never clear to you or the character, it makes it kind of more timeless. And I think they did that early on showing you those two large creatures, whatever they are. I think they exist because they're going to be explained later on. I think they're going to make the fact that you went insane for six years and don't have a memory. Like, it's not just going to be there just to be there. It does sort of pop purpose. We have a comment from Marty who says the first mistake in the game was that they show a monster very early on and it looks like a reject from Halo and then a sad face. I guess it does kind of look like one of those things. I don't think it'll take a lot of time. I thought it actually looks more like a thing from Half Life to me. Yeah, well, and I think it does look like one of the profits though. I think that's kind of the thing, though, is that with... They're trying very hard to be true to this Cthulhu mythos. I love crafty. I love crafty years. I love crafty years. I've been a good one for protection of Lovecraft. It's pretty ingrained. That's what I was going to say. How much artistic license do they even have with the source? Yeah, and have any of us read Lovecraft? Well, I think part of the problem, I think part of the problem some people are having and I had this discussion with a friend about the game is that part of the thing that's scary about Lovecraft and about the sort of the Cthulhu mythology is more of the things that are unseen than what you're saying. I actually think that the game does a really good job with this. You know, you get a little flash of those weird creatures, but you don't see them on the screen all the time. Not right now. Not only that, but those creatures that are on early on in the game, they're not made out to be malicious either. That's the thing is, like, whatever you read called Cthulhu and stuff, when Cthulhu finally makes an appearance in that, he is very clearly malicious and attacks people and kills people. Or is these things just kind of appeared and then you don't really know what happened? And I think later on continuing to insmith and stuff, you know that there's something going on, but it is always unseen. I mean, there's so much that is unseen and that's actually what makes you scary. So I really like the room right before that, though, with the guy strung up and his pieces of his body in the different jars. Yeah, that was really, really freaky. And again, like, kind of setting the precedent for really disturbing stuff early. But they start, I mean, they start even earlier that we've done that with that room where there's all the photographs of your character. Yeah, I don't remember that. Do those cause sanity loss? Yeah, they do. I don't remember. I actually have a question about the sanity loss. Is it cumulative? Or is it like temporary based? Yeah, it's just temporary based off the year. The intensity of what you see. Like, yeah, I mean, it's like one thing you see pictures of yourself. It's like another thing. When you see a person that's been ripped in half, all of a sudden, he'll just like completely start whispering to himself like, "I'm gonna die here." I didn't really know what was going on the first time. Cause I don't think it explained anything from just getting blurrier. And the game's already like kind of muddy on my TV. I mean, it's good looking bit slow, kind of like dark and muddy. And so I was like, "Am I just like that? Just take a minute break and come back to it?" And I thought it was or is it just something going on? Yeah, I mean, if you had the box copy, you can read the back of the box and it tells you that they're sanity effects. It also tells you if you let the intro go for a minute, it's like warning this game. Yeah, right. And the biggest thing that they don't tell you about sanity effects is that if you have a weapon and you go really insane, you don't put it away, which is the Z button on the PC is that your guy will kill himself. Again, again, like in the galaxy. That was way way past where we were. No, I'm just saying that that's something that people have forgotten for the next week. I mean, you guys have no weapon. You have to just have them bullets. Yeah, me too. Another detail I like about this encounter is that there's still, like even when you go into the different rooms before, you encounter a guy that's actually shooting at the cops and you can peek out the window slots and there's still a battle going on that's still shooting, like, there's stuff like that again, just kind of fleshing out the, you know. The fact that you can hear the battle going on the entire time searching through the house, and if you're like me, then you're going through really slow and examining everything. Yeah, it's a really great sense of tension. I mean, now that we're past it, I'm just going to talk about it. You never fire a shot. You never do anything in that house of the liquid stuff, but you're always thinking that you're inches away from someone coming after you. Yeah. And that adds to the tension of seeing these horrible things and the suicide cold and measure of the poison themselves. Right. I think it's like Arthur Good to talk louder. Yeah. And Arthur Cox, the lively garage band, is pretty much just a straight. Right. It looks like we've lost the patient. I'm a sistolite. People say that I'm allowed us for some of the podcast. We always fight the most to get my voice at a normal level. Well, I'm just saying that if that's the case, electronic waveform is lying to us. All I'm saying is you're lying all the way up your game is higher than anyone else's. It's a sad effect, make it over. But yeah, so beyond even that initial house, then, like, I don't know even getting the intimate experience for the first time in a pretty intense experience with that weird ass bus driver. That's crazy. And what about, I mean, I didn't read the book, obviously, but what's the deal with a private investigator who's gone to jail for six years, waits up the next day, and it just gets his job right outside? What's the whole timeline on that? Because I got a bit confused when I was there because I wasn't paying attention. There's six years in between when you take on the mission from Insmith and was he in mental hospital? So for the whole time? Yeah. No, no, no. He left the house, he traveled all over the place in a bunch of the cold studies, went insane, got committed and forgot about all of it. Because he mentions two visits to the asylum. I was going to say, so here, maybe this is why it's, because that's what I got from it, is maybe it isn't as clear as it needed to be, because the impression that I got is that he goes insane after the event in the basement, and he's admitted to the mental hospital, and then they decide, okay, you're actually okay, and they let him out, even though he has this alternate personality now, but they're like, you're not a danger to yourself and others, so they let him out, and then he spends five years exploring the occult, goes insane again, and then when he comes out of that second insanity, he's back to normal stuff. I think that's what it is, because like I said, a special two visits. Yeah. Well, it would make sense that if you're going to go insane, it'd be like after seeing those two big ass creatures or anything. I guess the person hanging themselves in the beginning is your character. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, is the game building up to that? No, no, no. The game plays after that. Yeah. The game takes place after that, yeah. Okay. That's like the scene. I think that's supposed to be the scene of the intro. Wait for rest of the game, not the intro. The intro of the game is the more of that. The intro is going to turn at himself. The introductory level is like a few weeks before that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And then everything else takes place after all. Because, yeah. It's the regular game's taking place after you've been insane, because people will make reference to it. So apparently the chronology could have been a little simpler. But, yeah. Well, to be fair, I mean, if you haven't read Lovecraft, you can be a little... Right. A little stab at yourself. Also, I mean, does the Arkham Asylum name, was Batman taken from Lovecraft? I think it would be... Probably. I think it would be... Does that be kind of worth the name of that other one? I don't know where that would be. It's not a reference Batman, I don't think. I don't think it does. I don't know when Arkham appeared in Batman more, but I'm pretty sure it is. Although it was not about a public domain at that point. It would be pretty rad if this turned out to be, again, a takes place in the DC Universe. Batman shows up at some point. I think it's Batman from the DC Universe. Yeah, well, the thing is that you need Batman. Jack Walters is a badass in his own right. I mean, have you guys gotten seriously injured in that game yet? Yeah, you all of a sudden hear yourself walking on a broken bone. You'll check your inventory and have a compound fracture. He's just like split advantage. I mean, we're kind of stepping ahead here, but the way that it handles pain and without having a... I mean, there is no HUD, right? No, I haven't seen a HUD. I've seen two references to a HUD, but I've never seen one. What's so great about it is there were parts where I couldn't even tell. The first time I died from getting shot too many times, I couldn't even tell that I was hurt in dying, except for that the world was getting darker around me and it happened really slow and I was walking slower, but I was still doing what I was trying to do before I died. And then when I did die, I was like, I was a pretty... You know, you still hear the sound around you when it's blacked on the screen. And then I learned how to heal myself. After I healed myself. Wait, so when did that happen then? You haven't gotten there yet. Yeah, I wanted to heal myself before then, because I got gashed by the creature in the attic. And then you go and meet up with the girl and she's like, she's like, "Oh, I see you abandoned it, you probably cleaned yourself up." And you end up in your majority and then you see the giant slasher brush of your face. So that's when it taught me to do it. It does teach you how to do it then, yeah. Well, it doesn't really teach you, it says you should use your bandages. And this is what confused me because I went into the inventory and I do think it's really cool that you can see how your character is damaged and you address the individual parts of where he's damaged. But I guess I'll have three. Yeah, and a lot of the dark. And so I selected the pieces and it shows like a floating bandage next to his head. And I'm like, "Okay, well, how do I use it?" And then you have to escape out of the menu. Yeah, you have to escape back out of the menu, which is completely unintuitive. So like that, that could have been done better. Which is why I mean earlier I was talking about how in a lot of parts it feels very much like a PC game and it's in what it will tell you and how much longer it can. Because if you read the instruction book, I'm sure it will cover all of that. But what was the last time you read the instruction book or game? Right, the instruction book doesn't come with direct interaction. Actually, I think it does. There's a PDF from the instruction book. It's not that I write it. So you get the hands of the myth and it just kind of drops you there to wander around and talk to the hell and he's like, "No, we don't. Go away, don't tell anybody." But you've been like the cop. I want to talk about this less right. Oh, you mean half-life ghost ends with? Yeah, exactly. I kind of wish you could control yourself just looking around in the environment during that cutscene. I agree. I'm sure a lot of it was they just didn't want to model the road. But right away it was such a great establishment for how the rest of it, how this next section of the game was going to go. You're like, "Oh, I'm really going into something that's a lot darker and more hate-filled than I originally thought." You know, not only is this like a creepy little port town in a marsh, but it's a creepy little port town filled with a bunch of extremely bizarre people that don't want me here. And you do feel like an outsider pretty much right away. You step up and talk to like the bus driver and then talk to any other person there and they're all like jerks to you. Why don't you suddenly do that? I want the hotel right away to try and get a room. Yeah, I think I was like... RPG conventions. It was kind of like when I finally met up with the woman there who's kind of the first normal person you meet that was like a relief to finally. It's like, "Oh, thank God, someone who's not, you know, this crazy mean, like, monster." Yeah. The game handles that really well too because obviously your character is feeling the same way that you are. I mean, the game does a great job of making you feel like that character, even though that character has a voice. And it's kind of different than something like Half-Life where Gordon Freeman is mute and can't interact with the world in this game you can. You still feel like Jack Walters is doing this mission basically. In a way, it creates atmosphere so well as the fact that there are so many civilians around that are walking around and talking to you or not talking to you, but at least they say, "I'm not talking to you" or at least they give off a sense of mess. Get out! Whereas in other, I feel like there are so many other games where you would walk around town that's largely abandoned and you would just be told that no one is around it and no one wants to talk to you. Right. The fact that everyone's there to actively ignore you, definitely win. And I actually thought it was interesting that there's, you know, there's some people around and you walk up to them and you're like, one of the things that Jack says is, "This town is deserted. Where is everybody?" And it's like, and I remember thinking, actually, as far as games go, there's quite a few people walking around this town. It doesn't seem that deserted to me. So, Greg in the comments says, "My biggest complaint about the game thus far is the lack of direction. I was often at a loss as to where I was supposed to go next. It's a miracle I ever found this town drunk. The alley is practically hidden and there's no indication that you're ever supposed to be looking for someone. I think I've been foiled by Valve games where they almost magically come up with ways to make sure the player is looking where they're supposed to. I think as you got to this point in the game and you start exploring the town, did you guys have any trouble figuring out what you were supposed to be doing or where to go? I didn't at all because to me it was like I'm a private eye and clearly I'm just supposed to wander everywhere until I find something. So, a lot of times they do like you'll have a key and it'll say when you go to your menu it'll be like the key to the private store. But you won't know where that is necessarily or you won't. If you forget that that's your next objective, you wouldn't really know until you go back through the inventory. If you put the game down for a while. Another interesting thing they do is that they have the street signs there that you actually use directions to streets and you just have to look at the signs. So, I thought it was actually really interesting. It's a place. I mean, you need to explore this town to find out where you're supposed to go. It's a very fine line, I think, between feeling lost and feeling like you're just coming through exactly. I mean, I know Ryan, you're playing the darkness right now, which is very much along the same vein where it's like, you all have to be told. It's crazy how old they are. It's crazy how old they are. And one is almost like an HD version of another in terms of what you explore with this space. And I think that they're the same game pretty much before we start everything. As a joke, I did say that, yeah, like it's the same game as Cthulhu. Especially in Smith's feels like a lot of the neighborhoods you go through in the darkness. But I think that does a good job also of feeling like, I mean, it's never in the darkness because you have a train you can take in between, you have kind of different hubs. You can like read, you know, realign yourself with, you're not always like that. I mean, in Call of Cthulhu so far, you're pretty much always going from one single objective to the next that's, you know, fairly open-handed. I mean, they're definitely not the same game, and they both have completely different focuses. But the things that they do the same, mostly in relation to the way you talk to people narrative and character development and that sort of thing. And then putting AI characters within the hub spaces, that part's really nice. I really appreciate that in both games. And that's the most surprising thing to me about playing Cthulhu is like how many, you know, is the people walking around the city and talking to them and then pressing the use button on them again and getting a different vocal response. And, you know, obviously at some point it does start repeating, but it just feels for a game that you would imagine is made for a really low budget. It feels like there's a lot of shit packed into it. Yeah, a lot of women. Yeah, cool. Yeah, it's not a lot of play testing. Right, but I think we should skip not to the drunk part, but the first real gameplay part that might stop people off, which is trying to stuff your way into the grocery store for the first time. And, you know, as soon as you get spotted by the police guy, he kicks you right back out. So this is going to be one of the first kind of examples in the game of giving you use to the trial and error gameplay. But it doesn't tell you that you have a stealth mode, right? It just says stick to the shadows and duck down. I didn't ever use a stealth mode. I liked it's crouched. Yeah, I didn't have to use the stealth mode there. I just crouched as well. I mean, I guess I was just talking about the fact that it is a stealth mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was crouching. If you have, no, no, no stealth mode, you're just like, or an Xbox click on the right stick and the screwing gets kind of funny. Oh, you can walk, you can walk like inches behind him standing up and you won't notice you because I think because you're in stealth mode. I don't know, you can still get spotted once you get, you're not to the part of the game where it gets really tricky up ahead. In a section we'll talk about where you think like, okay, I should stay in stealth mode right where, but on Xbox at least you're pressing forward to try to move your character forward. And he'll just do the look up, move his head up over the box sort of thing, even though there's no boxes around when you're standing in the middle of a hallway. So then you're like, okay, should I even be using this stealth mode? So I traditionally just use it for making the screen lighter when I'm in a shadowy spot and picking up over boxes if I'm hiding from someone and waiting for them. I also like stealth mode because it increases your FOV. Right, yes. So you can get a little bit better view of your surroundings. Are you playing a white screen? I am, a white screen, yeah. In fact, that's one thing that I really love about playing slightly older games on PC is that I can play it in 1920, which is 100. Is there a white screen on PC? Oh yeah, it's white screen on PC. Because the Xbox one is 4x3, right? Yeah, it is 4x3. The cutscenes are, like during the cutscenes I put on the zoom mode on my TV and it fits perfectly and I'm like, sweet. But then it goes back to gameplay and then like, it's kind of, you know, squish sideways. Well, I know that the director drives sometimes actually in the process of making a game work on a modern PC. Sometimes they do add in little extra features. Which is right. That's not an unfortunate case in the Steam. A lot of games. Like, if you try to play that part of the masquerade, it's definitely a certain resolution. So you want a white screen to go. It's either a thing in a console, or can you be asked about it? Right, but I did get caught up a few times in that spot. Like, just, but that's more just because I was being impatient and trying to get by him. And I just waited for him to, you know, walk back the other way on the little side passage and then went past them. I definitely did complete, essentially complete the objective, which is to go into the grocery store, go and find the safe. Grab the booze for the, the boozer out of the safe and also the other item. Which, if you're smart, you look at your menu right away to see what the mysterious item is. See, I totally, I didn't see anything else in the safe. I just saw the booze. So, that's what I grabbed and that's all I assumed I had. This was actually the only part so far when I went and looked up online what to do next. But I totally missed the edge in the floor. So did I. And I was like, what the hell is going on? I think I did the first time I played this game. But this time, I got caught the first time. Then I went back and did it again and got caught again. And I was like, God damn, there is no way to, like, keep this guy from coming out of this house. That means there's got to be another exit. That's when I clicked my inventory and was like, oh yeah, duh, okay. And then it all, then I remember it from the first time I was playing the game. Oh yeah, this is the exact same thing that happened. Then I probably went online and looked to see that I was supposed to open this match. It is a little, I mean, I guess it makes sense. There's a little frustrating that you can't just go and hide behind the counter and duck down and be quiet. Yeah, that's a 90-run straight up hole too. And I guess it makes sense that he knows that you're there because he suddenly can't get in the door and who knows. Maybe he wouldn't open the door a little bit on his patrol or something. But I was just trying to hide from him a couple times and I hid the room at the safe behind the desk and I hid behind the bar. I did that too. He'd run straight at you. I think there's a warning curve associated with taking the 2D adventure game mindset and applying it to a 3D environment. So I mean, you have to start attenuating yourself. Looking everywhere and clicking on everything. And it's a little bit of what we said before about how this game is so light on the tutorials as well. Although I feel like that part is at least a friendly way to introduce you into some of the game. It is. It goes later on. I mean, it will just kill you. Right. Yeah, it's nice that it resets you right to the mouth of the alley. It doesn't even need to load. I think I mean, that is the only friendly. That is the friendly pool we saw in certain ways. That's very cool. And I think that's a pretty good, I mean, it just certain games. You need to be in the right mindset to want to play them the way that they want to be played. And it's easy to criticize games for doing that because usually what that means is like don't play it the way that you're used to playing it. So taking away the conventions that you're used to or like an FPS that has funny controls. Like, yes, you can grow used to playing kills on the way that kills on to the way that kills on to is meant to be played. But there's a little bit of a, you know, a learning curve on that. Well, in this game, once you get that learning curve from this area, you know, from that point on like any time I get a new item, I'm going to my inventory to see what it does. You know, I know that they're going to kick, you know, they're going to be instant deaths in this game. Even though it's not an instant death, it's like they're going to be times where I'm not going to get the checkpoint that I am hoping for in this game. And after we talk about the escape from the fish fuckers, it's a marketing game. Well, they do that too. I don't know if that's what they call them. So, that's a, well, speaking of save, like checkpoints, I hate, hate, hate when I'm playing a PC game and I can't quick save. I have to go to the same save points that you Xbox players have. So, yeah. I hate that shit. There's no reason for it, especially in a stealth win. Again, it's probably because it was made for Xbox first. What I mean is seeing a save point and having the game crash is what I'm trying to push into. Ooh. That's rough. That's when I stop playing for a good hour or so. Yeah. Okay. Let's fast forward in the story. You went through the grocery store. Miles here in the comments. Miles wants to hear us talk about the scene involving a creepy little girl and an attic. So, why don't we fast forward? Like, that's the next memorable part for me. Well, it's the whole basement part. What happens there is there's... You fall down the ladder. I like that whole, that whole break is cool. That is great. Yeah. Like, not a stairs break and everything like that. And then there's the pushing the ladder to make the wall fall. Which is not at all what I thought you had to do. I thought you had to use it to like get up to a higher spot. I mean, like, did you walk up to... If you walk up a big wall. The wall. I can feel the draft. I can feel the draft. So, I mean, I knew I had to get to the wall somehow. But I just like that entire like the old printing press that's not being used and then coming into the dark room. Into the dark room. There's that and then there's the dark room which you could have seen before going down. Yeah, I did see that actually. So, that was like getting into that room was cool to me because I had seen it earlier and there was a little... That does like add to that sense we're talking about of like this is a real place. Exactly. You're seeing these areas before you. It's not like they're divided levels. What about that guy that like when you come out of the dark room building, the printing press building, you come out by the truck and that guy stops you looking for you. Oh, yeah. He's like another normal person. Yeah. He's like the only other normal person. He's like a... What does he like about from there? Yeah, he's like not from there. He can't do himself like the factory or something like that. Yeah. Isn't he doesn't he also warn you along with the girl about staying there? Yeah. So, like don't spend the night. Yeah, so when it came to that point like skipping it a little bit where you have to check into the hotel, the first thing I did before that was look around for the bus driver so I could leave town and then come back the next day. I was kind of surprised. You can find him and he says he says to you like... He says bus won't be working. Yeah, he says it won't be working. I was kind of interested that Jack wanted to leave at that point because I didn't like... I mean, I didn't go there because I wanted to leave. I was like talking to everyone again but he said something new to say. I was surprised that Jack was like bummed out that he couldn't leave then because it didn't seem like he wanted the whole game so far. He'd been telling everyone like, "Oh, it's okay. I can find it myself." I think by that point, I mean as a player and I would assume as a character he was just under the impression... I shouldn't be spending the night here. Yeah. So, I think it's wrong to come back the next day. I mean, that comes after the part that we're about to talk about which is the crucial little sequence. Right. And the creepy little girl sequence... I mean, I realize that this is Lovecraft, you know, and I knew what I was getting into but it still shocked me when the little girl is all torn up and dead. Yeah, I'm murdering a child. I mean, I can't think of any other games where you see a child. I walked into there and some friends were watching me play and they're like, "That kid's gonna die." And I'm like, "I don't know if they're gonna go that far." Well, you go into the house, you get a little girl to let you in a house catch a predator style and then you go upstairs. That was really disturbing in its own way. The fact that your character is like, "Yeah, thanks for letting me inside. I'll go right in and I'm gonna search around." I'm like, "Oh, this is not gonna be good." And I'm talking about how I love mommy the way I love daddy, mommy bites. It's like... And even when you go look at the bars in the attic and you know something's gonna jump out at you, like I still wait just long enough to still start you. It's like, "Okay, wait a second, you question yourself if that's in you're gonna happen, it happens." I wish and it's only because maybe it was because you and you guys and I were talking about audition not too long ago. But I couldn't help but think about the framing on that sequence and how much scarier it would have been if they had done it like they do in an audition. If you had been able to see the thing in the background there but didn't know that it was scary and evil and then it and as your character is looking around the space recognizing like, "Oh, that thing that's been there that I've been looking at the whole time is freaking me." "Is freaky and I should be scared of it." Instead of just having it like cheaply pop up in front of the screen. For the uninitiated audition as a fucked up Japanese slash or slash forward film. Yeah, by depression we get it's really messed up and basically the entire tone of the film changes in one shot. It's my favorite. So giant creepy monster addict. Mommy kills the yeah mommy kills the hero. The glance that got it looked a bit like the like big like alligator monsters in I think the Resident Evil remake. The game could be one. It looked a little like like a merlock. It would be like, "Oh, if merlocks were intimidating." Yeah, it looked a bit like that. That's weird because I just assumed like the mom was rabid or something. I didn't think she was actually like another creature. Then you go and you read his diary where he talks about how his daughter is going to change any day. Well, they talk about how he took the second vow of day on or whatever. And that's another reason that they killed his daughter and it's not really that big of a deal because is she really human? I don't think so. I just think it is a big deal like showing it and to your character as well. He's obviously like, he knows it's his fault. But it is. You're like wow. Her simplicity in her dying is what's really disturbing. He has nonchalance about it. Well, he's not nonchalant about it. He'd say, "I'm so sorry. I had no idea." Then he tells him what the world's name afterwards we keep talking to. I mean, he's gonna miss I guess. I don't know what his Rebecca is. Yeah. Like he tells her he's like, "Ah, it was my fault." Yeah. But what surprised me is the dad. The dad, he was down there crying and everything. And you hear him crying as soon as you wake up and come to and you hear at the bottom of the stairs. And then you go down the stairs and you know what happened. He doesn't go like, "You killed my daughter." He's just like coming. Yeah. You have to get out of here. He wants to save your life. And it's like the guy you had to come when they come. Well, yeah. This guy had to have such a fucked up existence to be worried about this stranger who basically was just complicit in his daughter's death. Well, I mean, and then it really does vary too. He does basically say it like he wanted to kill his daughter. Yeah, he didn't have the balls to do it. Yeah. So it's like these, I'm expecting much more of this type of stuff as the game moves on. And I hope that it doesn't disappoint because it's such, it's this really uncomfortable emotional fence that they stride really well. Yeah. And like I'm hoping it doesn't tip one way or the other. All right. So you get the, he's the guy who owns the variety store. He tells you about what the, he gives you a key to the store and then tells you about what the, the combination for the safe is, which we were talking about. He doesn't tell you though, right? He tells you it's in the diary, he tells you it's in the diary and grabbed it upstairs. I kind of wondered why his diary was in the attic. Maybe he used to go hang out with his wife before she cheated. He was still getting it on. I like his very, I like his very specific instructions on the, on the combination too. Right. It's my daughter's. Just in case anyone else needs to open my safe when I'm arrested. It's death. So then when you go to the variety store, you meet the other girl who was Brian's girlfriend trying to escape with them. Right. The girlfriend of the, the guy who you're searching for in the first place missing person's case. That seems a bit weird. I need to know the bathroom while you guys talk about this next part since I haven't played it again. The other thing I did want to bring up too, that I think one part I'm really enjoying about the gamer, I think it's kind of cool is just as you're walking around the town and occasionally you'll get flashes of stuff or like something besides watching you. Yeah. Some creature it seems like or something that's on the rooftops. Yeah, totally. It's very much like building this sort of tension. I don't know, I don't know what it is or what it's supposed to be. Well, he read his diary entry too and he talks about how, you know, first he thought he was just kind of seeing these flashes from other people's point of view, but now he realizes that it's like even more, it's even deeper than he thought and he can see all these things happening where he's not there. I mean, as soon as I saw the fish like person that his wife had become and you talk to the bum who talks about how something came from the sea and killed everyone, I just assumed it was like something like that, like some type of monster lurking on the roofs that... Well, you do see it at 1.2, very briefly. Oh, yeah, you see it like skip across the window. Right, like right after you go into the poorhouse, like a guy that's looking out the window, he's looking out at it. Yeah, so it's like you see a flight, you see the front of the creatures being you go up into the poorhouse. Right when you're walking by the window, I was like, okay, it should be right out there and I turn to the left and right as I turn to the left it goes right and jumps across the screen. Wow, I don't think I saw that. If you don't look out, you won't see it at all. Totally. That's really cool. I did look around back now. I was looking for that creature though, like I always try to look towards the roof where it was. It was like trying to spot the G-Man. Yeah, yeah. That was pretty much... That was another very darknessy thing too because that perspective was reminded me of when you actually become the darkness little... The little snakes move around the buildings and it makes me want to be able to explore around. You can jump in the game, you can never jump on anything and I always want to in the environment. I always want to try to climb up things. You can jump on something. There's almost nothing so far. There's nothing you can jump on that would break their cool within the model basically. Like if you're jumping on something, it's because you probably need to... Right, right. Should we go to the chase scene? We have a ton of comments about this. I think we have to because it's... I think that's what's stopping the game before. So you get there by going into the writing store. I think a lot of people say... You find an artifact that the Order of Daegon shouldn't have and then you leave and go find the hotel. It's not really fine. You said you find the Book of Daegon. Don't you go to the courthouse first and talk to some people and then go to the hotel? Anyway, you go to the hotel. You go to the hotel. Yeah, it ends up you have to stay the night there. Right. So you go to the hotel and I thought... I like how I wouldn't sleep until you bolt the doors. Yeah. I thought that was really cool. Yeah. And Rebecca warns you about that too. You should say you bolt your doors if you go back and forth. Because you're connected to that other room, I went and bolted the doors in that room too. Yeah, of course. So, trial and error sequence begins. Yeah. Listen to our people quick. Do we want to hear some reader comments? Yeah, sure. Let's start with last year. The chasing at the hotel has me so frustrated right now, I'm ready to chuck this thing out the window. This monotonous exercise is the very definition of trial and error. This has to be similar to what I've heard Jeff ring some flamethrower's edge. Prior to this section, the game was engrossing and captivating. I'll keep practicing at it, but right now I buy the time machine. Somebody at Bethesda years ago would be wondering why they just got to kick the balls while writing this part of the design document. It wasn't the first of all. And if you're playing it on PC, you can start to call it through the same games and just find one that's like a step above that. So describe these dimensions, I'm not there yet. The other thing I want to say is that this time I sort of liked it, but I think the only reason that I liked it is because I only had to try it twice. Well, we did. I remembered it from last time and knew sort of what I was doing. So, anyway, go ahead. Nick, I'll just say, what you do here is you spend the night and then you get woken up in the middle of the night because there are these big, burly fishermen guys who come and are breaking down. And then are breaking down your door and want to kill you. And so it begins like a chase sequence that's kind of like a quick timer event, except for it's not a quick timer event. You do everything in real time. So you have to run through the series of hotel rooms that are all interconnected by like doors. And then as you're going through them, you have to continuously bolt them behind you or push a shelf when there's a shelf through you post in front of it. Go through windows when there's a window to be opened, but none of it prompts you like, "Oh, no, there's no more rooms to run through. Now you have to go through a window." It's just like, "Oh, there's a window I can go through and then you have to figure out I can jump across." So basically, you've got to guide out piece by piece. And every step of the way you've got it. Is it good about restarting you? No, you restart on the bed every time. And if it's the bad check. And if at some point you get shot and it's shot that like breaks your leg, you can't complete it. Because you'll never have time to heal yourself and you won't be able to climb off time to heal myself. Did you really? As soon as you start, as soon as they basically get through the first of the hotel room, they break through a bunch of doors. Once you get outside, they are firing guns at you pretty much the entire time. You swap between buildings and run around. There are a few moments that, if you know where they are, there are a few moments where you can pause and they can fire at you. But you could be ducked out and knock your pit and chase you. There are a few places where if you know what you're doing, you can stop and chill. But for the most part, it's a giant long running sequence that could piss people off. Where that erker is mysteriously silent for the first time in the entire game. There is an aeration or insight that I'd be using. He's not just like a shit. No, he's not. He's not going to be silent. Like if you do try and run to the window, before pushing a bookshelf in front of the door where the bolts broken, he'll say, "No, I need to slow him down first." If you listen as you start to approach it, he does speak. But if you've gotten to that point where he'll tell you, give you a piece of advice, you're already going too slow and you are probably going to have to restart that section. Like if you came in the door and said, "I should go through that window back my bed." I would have liked it if they'd taken the camera control from me for a little bit like they do when you're talking to people and had them like, "Oh my God, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?" "Oh, I can move that book. I can move that book case." And then let you go from there. So part of me, even though I hated it the first time, and this is the part of the game when I stopped, going back through it this time, I find it really impressive that it doesn't do that. And the fact that when you do turn around behind you, you can see them breaking down the doors and they really are chasing you. You know, there are a few, like I say, setups like you jump across this thing and the AI is not going to follow you there. But it is pretty much like you must escape these dudes in real time and you get no help. So can you guys give tips to anyone who wants to try to buy us some more reader comments? Well, we do have, like I was just going to say, SpiritUp describes it as, "The kind where the scenario plays out exactly the same way every time and gives me just enough of a head start to make incremental improvements on my performance each time I play until I finally figure out what the game is asking me to do." And he says, "The only time it's ever worked for him is inside scrolling shooters, so he doesn't really like it here." And I agree, I got really frustrated with it. Although TD mentions, "I actually enjoyed the Fishman Hotel scene. My buddy and I were playing, and the entire time he was yelling at me to hurry up, bolt the doors, they're coming." I don't mind the repetition of it after dying a few times, the intensity made up for it. So he really liked it, and I actually had friends watching me as I play as well, like I said. That did kind of help a little bit, just because it was kind of like they were able to scream, "No, don't forget this, don't forget that." And there was a bunch more on it. There were friends that will go down there. I think it's, yeah, I mean the most frustrating part about it for me was not being able to skip the thing, the cuts even now that I know you can. It's not really nearly as bad. I just think it's kind of a hard thing to decide that you want to do with your game. Make a section that literally, if someone knows what they're doing, it's very intense, very fun, it's an incredible thrill ride from start to finish. But in order to get to that spot, and in order for it to pay off big, you can't have tutorials that hold your hand the whole way. You have to just let people figure it out, and it's kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. I stopped at this part of the game the first time I saw it. Honestly, you don't want people to give up on your game, because I'll just go trade it in. Honestly though, I'm, overall, I actually kind of like this part as well. I think it's something that I'm going to remember about the game. Even if I was frustrated while I was playing it, it's definitely going to stick out as, like, when I think of Call of Cthulhu, I'm going to think about this portion of the game. Like, where I had the, what I did that totally worked for me was, I died twice, and I was like, "Fuck it, I don't know what to do." I went to Game Facts, I went through the section on Game Facts, and like, I got the, uh, I was like, "Okay, alright, so like, I can get through this, like, these first three or four rooms, I can remember these steps, okay, here's what I need to do." And then the rest of it, I was able to do on my own. So, I was like, once I had that direction through, and then I got through, then I was like, "Yeah, dude, okay, that was fun, that was a roller coaster, it was super intense, and I had a really good time with it." The one part I hated, though, is like, after the chase ends, when you get to the warehouse, that's when it gets really bad, in my opinion, because that's when it's really, like, stealth segment, and, you know, you have to jump inside these little fence areas to reset the guards, and it's just, I don't know. I don't know, the stealth areas, like, that, you don't, I mean, the way I did it half the time was like... I just ran through it. Exactly, exactly, sometimes you get shot, and then you do it yourself. But that was frustrating, and like, annoying. See, I don't know, it's like, every time... That way, through, without a problem. Yeah, yeah, me too. And it's like, every time, every time a game, a stealth section like this is introduced in a game, the first thing I expect to hear from people is that it was really annoying and frustrating, and I hate stealth sections in games, and yet, every time I get to a stealth section like this in a game, I make it through virtually unscathed in one or two tries. I made it through the actual warehouse part, and it took several retries, probably less than ten, but more than five, to be very specific. Maybe a bullet point on the back of the glass. And part of it was because of trying to learn how to use the stealth mode better, and getting caught on some things where I should have just been running through and getting spotted by using it incorrectly. But once I didn't make it through that part, and got outside, then I tried to stuff it for a little while longer before I got spotted, and then I was able to run straight to that house where the kid... There's a guy in there, and his friend has fallen off and died, and he killed himself. It's like the end of that chase sequence, basically. I was able to run to the end of it, getting shot maybe twice, but it didn't really matter. Marty says, "Every sneak sequence seems to suffer from splinter cell syndrome, where there's only one way to get through a room, and you will do it or get shot." Unfortunately, the stealth mechanics and level design come where I know we're close to splinter cell, and I say that as someone who doesn't even like splinter cell. The first splinter cell was such an annoying game because of just that. Yeah. Whereas, which is something that freaks me. Oh, there's a trial and error of the game. Well, back in the fact that there was one path that was supposed to be this wide open game, and it was like, yeah, it was a puzzle game. And it was one path that was very linear. Yeah, and I think it's funny because when I'm doing these stealth sequences in Call of Duty, it reminds me of some of the stealth sequences in Thief. And some of it is just because of the generation that it is, but I actually think that the guards and their AI have about the same amount of detection ability that they did in Thief 1. Except you don't have the crystal so you don't have the crystal so you don't know when you're hidden. And it's also like the areas are very only one way through and in Thief you could pretty much just, as long as you were paying attention to the patrol of the guards, you could attack it from any way that you wanted to. So, Anthony then, I mean, who played a ways ahead, is there a lot more stealth in the game? Yeah, I mean, they're definitely more stealth parts, but I mean, eventually, even when you get something like a crowbar, they're easily exploitable things. Like, you know, like how that Rebecca Chick tells you the save points, like the save points with the star around it will offer you a moment or a reprieve. So, later on, I'm just a part where I only had a crowbar and I was like, "Ah, shit, I can't fight these guys with guns." So, what I would do is I would run out and let them see me, and then they'd all run over and I'd drag them all back to where there was a star, and they'd all cover their eyes and just stand there, and then I'd just beat them to death. I do that, I just pull them all to there and just beat them all to death. Well, Greg says, "What strikes me the most is that I still have a weapon. So far, the whole game has been that helpless feeling you get at the beginning of Half-Life games before you get a weapon, but, you know, stretched out." Yeah, the only thing is I don't notice it. Like, I didn't notice that I didn't have a weapon. The only time I'm noticing is when I'm picking up bullets, and I'm like, "I wonder why I'll actually get to use these." The only thing is it still feels like an action game to me, and that's the part that I can't really get to play. That's the whole point is that for the next week when we play, there will be a part where you finally get a gun, and they make it very much like a Rambo moment where he's like, "This is what I'm fucking talking about." It's like, all of a sudden it's like the tables of turns. Are we going to go out a car where you have a gun and you're in a vehicle? Yeah. Okay, because I got a funny E3 story about that sequence when we talk next week. Okay. And then finally, I'll close up with this comment from RCT. He says, "If this game was an old-school adventure game, I would say it's perfect, but all in all, I love everything about this game except actually playing it. How are you guys feeling so far?" I'm actually really enjoying it this time. It is an adventure game. Definitely my impression throughout what I play is that it is a LucasArts adventure game that's way more fucked up than in 3D, with all the problems and purpose that that entails. It's like a LucasArts adventure game with trying to implement action sequences, I guess. It's funny, because I feel like what I'm going to say is I wish there were more games that were like this, that were like old-school adventure games, but from first-person perspective. Well, the thing I love them seems like there should be, there probably are a bunch of them, or there are, you know, there are a bunch of different sub-genres. Like there's, you know, the first-person RPG is like an oblivion or something like that, but this particular adventure game thing where you can talk to people, you have multiple dialogue choices, you solve puzzles with items, I wish there were more games like that. Well, what I'm thinking as I started up, what I was thinking is just that it was like a reminder that developers can make games that aren't traditional action game, or traditional fantasy game, or even traditional horror game. Like this is, you feel like a private investigator for a lot of it. It's just a themes that I don't see in a lot of games. I really really like that. A lot of games try to pull off the thing that you're an every man who somehow is put into this situation and suddenly, you know, you have to be, and that situation, like you find out that, oh, I am actually the most badass marksman in the entire world, all you had to do was give me a gun. And, you know, that'll probably happen in this game because it's like, you know, old school enough, but it really does feel, because of the stealth sequences and because of the way that it starts out, it connects you with the character a lot deeper than I think a lot of other games do that try to do similar things. And I'm really looking forward to the rest of it because my experience so far has been immersive emotionally in ways that I am not used to in games. I'd say if you like this game and you don't need it to be all hooray and stuff, then you should play Hotel Buss on the DS because it's kind of similar in terms of the adultness of the narrative, even though it's a bit more straight than this game is and it doesn't really have that action. But it reminds me of Hotel Buss when I'm playing it. Alright, so we're going to talk about my favorite part so far. What is it? Well, I mean there's the part immediately troubling the sewers, which is the trap. Which is the greatest, that is the greatest I've felt solving a puzzle in a game and so long because it's just... Anyway, isn't this post sewers? No, it's just getting into the sewers. So let me ask you real quick, can you hop into the back of the truck? That's what you're supposed to do. I kept trying to do it and I could not do it. Every time I tried to hop into it, the truck would start moving and then I would get injured. Like, I tried to hop into the truck and then I'd push me away. Did you have to see it? No. That could be the problem. Oh, you have to crouch, but you can't crouch and jump. Well, I'm just saying like jump and crouch immediately or something. I'm just saying like, there's a lot of parts in the game like that where if you don't do exactly what they're asking you to, all of a sudden you'll take damage from the airport. What I ended up doing was I rolled the truck down the hill and like it totally ran over one of the guys. I just ran and like they shot at me point blank and missed. They gave that a lot. Yeah. I jumped right into the sewer after letting the truck roll all the way down and after letting it roll down, I was like, I should have gotten in the back of that thing. I was like, when you get in it and it starts rolling, I think you said something like, this is not one of my better ideas. Yeah, really, that's always awesome. And then you can hear the people screaming like, he's in the truck. I saw that from a distance because like this truck is going down. You turn the truck and they start shooting at this truck and then they realize I'm not in it like after it collapses. Alright, so next time we will be talking up to escape the commencement. Alright, thank you guys for listening. We will be back next week. Thanks for having us. Also, be sure to leave us more comments with your thoughts on the game so far on the post for this episode on EatSleepGame.com. eat-sleep-game.com, eat-sleep-game.com. *sigh* [BLANK_AUDIO]