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Haven't played FEAR? the LP archive has you covered. Click Here to be taken to a haunted YouTube playlist of the LP Note: Degree of haunting will vary from person to person  Latest Video: Part 15: Still Island YouTube Table of Contents Part 1: Penthouse YouTube Part 2: Hospital YouTube Part 3: More Hospital YouTube Part 4: Deeper YouTube Part 5: Arena Fight YouTube Part 6: The Streets YouTube Part 7: Basically Shogo YouTube Part 8: School's Out YouTube Part 9: Hammerhead YouTube Part 10: Snake Fist YouTube Part 11: Escape YouTube Part 12: Alternate Route YouTube Part 13: MechWarrior V2 YouTube Part 14: Tram Ride Fun YouTube Part 15: Still Island YouTube What is F.E.A.R. 2? FEAR 2 (dropping the dots from here on out), like the previous game, is a first person psychological horror shooter. While most of the game is all about shooting or slide kicking anyone foolish enough to get in your way, the game is frequently punctuated by supernatural events orchestrated by Alma Wade, the little girl who followed the player character around causing similar events in the first game. Alma is more a force of nature than an enemy that you can fight, so you are often at her mercy when you encounter her, but so are your enemies and allies. The story in FEAR 2 concerns a team of Delta Force operators (not a FEAR squad, weirdly enough) called to rescue Genevieve Aristide, president of Armacham, the local friendly evil megacorp that had held and experimented on Alma most of her life. This being a video game and all things go pear-shaped pretty quickly and there's some fighting and some wanton property destruction. Most of this is done by or against the player character, Michael Beckett, one of the Delta Force operators who has drawn the attention of Alma. My favorite part was when... Spoilertag everything until it appears in a video, please. Part of the reason I'm doing this is the bonkers story the game throws you into. That doesn't necessarily mean the story is good, but it has some really neat points. You'll notice I mention a few things like Slow-mo and Alma before we see them in the videos; these points were well known before release and I'm hazarding a guess they are the first two things most people think of when they hear "FEAR." Why FEAR 2? There's a lot to recommend this game. The story I've already mentioned, but the atmosphere is really good, the environments are really well designed and it's a solid overall shooter that had some really unique elements like slightly destructible environments, non-stupid AI and special melee moves. There's some things that count against it, like long drawn out sections that are supposed to make the player feel afraid, but the game never quite masters the tension needed to spook players when the inevitable jump scare goes off. I'll probably get more concerned with enemy soldiers moving in these sections than anything the game intends to be scary. What else can you tell me about this LP? I'm going to shoot for a pretty aggressive update schedule, probably three times a week. This will keep us moving through the game fairly quickly, but will make the very long opening segments of the game breeze by (thankfully). I'll be doing this solo for the most part. If someone makes a convincing argument for having guests I may do a couple episodes with other people. Solo commentary seems to work best for the game, though. If you want to talk about game mechanics and weapons and such feel free, I have some thoughts on the latter I'll be freely sharing. Please remember to spoilertag or just not mention story details until they happen, though. SnakeFist Finally, there's a support character who goes by the name SnakeFist on the radio. In the FEAR universe SnakeFist is apparently a long running action movie franchise. I'll be expanding on just why I bring this up shortly. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Aug 5, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 21:03
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Intel Items Thanks to Kadorhal for pulling these together Interval 01 Interval 02 Interval 03 Interval 04 Interval 05 Interval 06 Interval 07 Art MShadowy posted:I've been waiting for one of the enemies to say it so I could do this; my siblings and I always wondered how it was that Beckett could be "too fast" while holding still. We eventually realised there was only one possible answer. Cast Alma Wade  One of the few returning characters from the first game, Alma had a pretty horrific life. First, she sort of had the ability to light things with her mind when she was young, which apparently didn't get much better and eventually her father, Harlan Wade, accepted the opinions of those around him and put his daughter in an isolation chamber. Alma was heavily sedated and her telepathic powers were dampened by the chamber itself, essentially killing her. Armacham isn't a nice company, though, and insisted on experimenting on her. One of these experiments was to see if Alma could be used to produce more powerful psychics and so she was impregnated at 14 with a clone of herself. Yeah, FEAR is hosed up like that. Anyways, the first "prototype" would be deemed a failure and get his memories erased and put into the army. No, that's actually the story. The clone would grow up to become the Point Man, the player character from the first game. Alma was again impregnated with a clone of herself, this one deemed successful. Ten years later Alma and her second son/self synced their psychic waves or something which caused the ten year old to freak out and murder seven of his handlers. He was forced into isolation and Alma was taken off life support and died. Even 20 years later, when Armacham Technology Corporation (ATC) re-opened the Origin Facility to scavenge what they could from it, Alma's psychic signal was still strong enough to kill two teams of private security people and connect with her younger son, Paxton Fettle. This sequence kicks off the first FEAR game. Alma attempts to connect to the Point Man for much of the game, but because his psychic ability lags behind his brother's he experiences freaky visions, but not much more. Eventually the Point Man meets up with his grandfather at the Origin Facility as a repentant Harlan Wade opens up Alma's chamber, allowing her to "escape." The Point Man kills Paxton Fettle and then shoots a bunch of ghosts (seriously) and detonates the nuclear reactor that powered the Origin facility in hopes of eliminating Alma. It doesn't quite work out. Genevieve Aristide  Genevieve "Baby Doc" Aristide is the person most responsible for the current situation. She made the call to re-open the Origin Facility that kicked off the events of the first game, and she handled the situation so badly that Paxton Fettle got his mind-hands on some clone troopers that massacred most of her employees. She was mentioned in a number of the data pads in the first game, but never appeared in person. It's suggested she has heavily invested herself in the psychic and paranormal research her company does rather than the practical side of the business, which seems like a really bad business decision over the long term considering that ATC seems to have fielded zero psychics but has plenty of guns and private security to use them. Stokes  I like Stokes. She's sort of the Delta Force team's information officer and the highest ranking person in the group, though she is actually outside of the chain of command and often defers to Griffin on decisions about what to do next and so on. Stokes isn't afraid to use her weapon either, as we see in the first episode, and can handle herself in most situations. I at once applaud Monolith for not treating Stokes differently because she's a woman and need to un-applaud them because Stokes somehow found a shirt and body armor combination that doesn't quite cover her entire torso while her male counterparts wear giant flak jackets. Come on, game developers, you can do better. Also, watch Stokes during the briefing in the APC, there are a lot of really great details on display with her and Jankowski's movement in that scene that most games would leave out. Jankowski  Redd Jankowski is the older brother of the Jankowski that died at the start of the first FEAR game. He's kind of a dick and a joker and lazy and that's about it. Thanks for being in the game, Redd, I needed to see some really dead eyes as my first human interaction. Griffin  We're in familiar territory, Phil LaMarr has arrived!. Griffin is the leader of the Delta Force team sent to rescue Aristide from her former employers and don't take no poo poo from nobody, particularly Jankowski whom he seems to really dislike. Keegan  Keegan sits next to us on the APC and has an episode right before he gets shot. We had something similar going on. Maybe bad allergies? Red  For years there have been rumors of another member of the Delta Force team, all we have are these blurry photos and a short video showing...something that lives inside the APC. Will we ever know what it is? Possibly, world's a big place, time keeps on ticking, etc. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 21:03
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The SnakeFist Library Lazyfire Overview Pt. 1 SnakeFist's F.I.S.T. The Terror of Bloody SnakeFist Overview Pt. 2 Blind Sally SnakeFist III: Viper Fang Report from FistCon 2014 Blind Sally's morning routine SnakeFaust biosterous Goons discuss SnakeFist: Legend Professor Doctor Saves the Day SnakePunch: Chill chiasaur11 SnakeFist vs. Archie Cooked Auto SnakeFist V the lost script AltaBrown B.R.O.F.I.S.T. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Aug 14, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 21:04
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Part 1: Penthouse YouTube Our introductory level kick starts the plot and we meet the majority of characters in the game as well as get introduced to just about every mechanic there is. One thing that bugs me in the tutorial level is the really weird oversight of not giving you a full on tutorial of the melee system. It's a bit more complex than just punching a guy in the head. You have two special moves available: The jump kick and the slide kick. Both are one hit kills and pair really well with another FEAR staple: Slow Motion Gameplay. The slide kick is much more difficult to do, requiring players to hold forward and sprint and then hit crouch and melee at the same time. The rewards are that you'll bowl over multiple enemies, stay crouched and be able to fire as soon as the animation is over. Good for getting into cover or taking out a guy on a corner. The jump kick is good too, as it clears out a pretty wide area, but it takes a bit longer to execute and leaves you defenseless for a time. You also can't really run and jump kick successfully as running and jumping aren't really compatible. Luckily your character has the lung capacity of an overweight asthmatic 4th grader and can sprint for about eight feet before taking a hit off his puffer, so you won't be caught in the awkward position of hitting the jump button too late and flying right past the guy you wanted to kick too often.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:13
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Kadorhal posted:That was a thing that bugged me too, the game changed up how to do my favorite move and never told me. I think I made it at least a third of the way through the game before I figured it out. Thanks for posting those, I've gone ahead and given them a spot in the second post. chitoryu12 posted:The next level is pretty cool atmosphere-wise. But I like how they went to all the trouble of a full, motion captured scene with that short elevator shootout when most players will just ignore it and spray wildly into the elevator. One of the really good things the game has going for it is the ability to have some really great atmosphere. When it comes down to it the Alma stuff is hardly ever a really scary thing, but the atmosphere is always really good and makes you think every path to you is a possible avenue of attack.
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Jun 21, 2014 01:17
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IronSaber posted:Or say that they can't complete the surgery due to a "preexisting condition." "Sorry, Mr. Becket, you seem to have a torn ACL and we can't perform surgery on you today." *Creepy doctor with a bunch of knives dejectedly walks out of the room*
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Jun 21, 2014 07:39
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anilEhilated posted:I never really got the "horror" in FEAR. I mean, it's pretty hard to be scared when you're armed to the teeth and able to slow time - even the jumpscares were more along the lines of "oh, look, here she comes again". That's all about the first game though - never played the sequels and this does look fairly interesting. The slide kick is really great still once you get he buttons down. The default controls are hosed, though, so you end up having to hold down control and W and then hit C and the right mouse button. Shift is the aim down sights button by default. You better believe the first thing I changed in the options was the controls.
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Jun 21, 2014 09:56
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I forgot to add it to the OP until just now, but if you don't want to jump in with no knowledge of the game, there's a pretty extensive set of LPs of the first game and the DLC that came out for it. The DLC, by the way, is in no way important to the story and wasn't even made by Monolith.
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Jun 21, 2014 16:10
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Mister Xenophobe posted:There are a lot of really cool melee moves in FEAR 1 that never get explained, they're something you have to look up or experiment with to find. Yeah, there's some stuff in the game that never gets explained and you sort of had to dig through press releases and developer statements to figure out. For example: the weapon you are using effects your movement speed and base melee damage. Slapping someone with a pistol won't do much, but you'll move faster.
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Jun 21, 2014 18:40
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:Yup, PM and Fettle are her own biological sons with her father, Harlan Wade providing the 'majority' of the DNA used to impregnate her. Try not to think about that too much. FEAR 2 retcons that "Dad is my Grandpa" thing and states that the Point Man and Paxton Fettle are part clones of Alma, part researcher genes. The Point Man was supposedly not good enough psychically to become a psychic commander like his brother, so Armacham gave him a bunch of surgical enhancements that made his reflexes really good. His visions of Alma were more because of the familial bond rather than because of his latent psychic powers. Becket is a different story, though. anilEhilated posted:Almost as exciting as hunting pandas in Bristol. Chat away. The arsenal in this game is admittedly limited. Sadly, the really cool guns like the plasma launchers and lasers of the world come with extremely limited ammo, to the point where if some of them weren't so drat cool or powerful they would be pointless. The pneumatic spike shooter gun does show up later, so look forward to that at the very least. Actually, the video after next we'll start to see some special weapons, though the game spreads them out so the next time you see one will be much later in the game.
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Jun 21, 2014 23:05
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Armadillo Tank posted:Is this explained in the datapads etc? Also will you be posting that any of them? The second post in the thread has Kadorhal's great work compliling the datapads, actually.
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Jun 22, 2014 01:36
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I just checked it, and anyone interested in playing this game instead of or along with the LP can pick FEAR 2 and FEAR Platinum Edition (with the DLC) for half price during the Steam Summer Sale. For as scripted as the game is it is plenty of fun each time I play.
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Jun 22, 2014 04:39
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Because the forums were down for most of the week I was planninv on putting the next video up Friday and continue 3 a week updates from there. If people seem to want it I'm not opposed to posting videos Thursday and Friday.
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Jun 26, 2014 02:53
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Alright, so I saw that no one had an issue with more videos. I try to give them a day or two spacing just so people don't feel like I'm flooding them with content, though if you guys like getting the episodes I have no problem providing.
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Jun 26, 2014 11:57
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Part 2: Hospital Picking up where we left off last time, Becket finds himself in a strangely empty hospital and some poo poo has clearly happened here. There isn't a ton of new stuff in this video, but we do get our first taste of slow motion gameplay here. You'll notice my adrenaline/fury/rage/bullet time bar is mostly full. Like the data pad entries the profile you play on saves if you picked up the various injectors in the game, which I've mostly picked up already. This means I get to use some extended slow-mo in early parts of the game. Realistically, you don't really need it that much early on and the game throws injectors at you through this section and the next two, so by the time you really need the slow-mo to deal with waves of tough enemies you have over half your bar filled. I thought about making this a challenge run and not using it once, but to be honest moves like the spin kick and the slide tackle are way more viable when you can move at normal speed and enemies are slow. One of the really neat effects of the game, that I only half explain in like five videos is that the slow-mo creates some really cool visuals. Exploding grenades generate shockwaves, bullets leave Matrix style trails and the world gets a yellow hue while all the little effects like sparks, blood and so on get insane. The effort to get that to work over how something like Max Payne deals with slow motion makes FEAR feel a bit more fully realized in my opinion. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 14:50
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:This bit always confused me. For some reason, I assumed you'd been there for some time, given that the first chapter seemed to end with you undergoing some pretty messed up surgery. But then you see the TV and it's been a couple of hours at most? Add to that the fact that you somehow have superpowers now, and it all just seems a bit odd. Yeah, I get pulled by the walkie-talkie screens more because they have the right color for the boosters in this game, while the glowsticks look like datapads at an odd angle from a distance. I'll also agree on the combat shotgun, it just isn't that good a weapon. The second one you get, however, is a monster and will cause me more problems than any other gun in the game once enemies using it become regular.
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Jun 26, 2014 16:51
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Inco posted:Is the video supposed to end at 21:22? The ending is very abrupt. Yep, there just happens to be a fade at the end that I think cut off the very end of things. My mistake. Edit: Upon further review, I cut way too early and forgot to redo the audio at the end. I'll fix that tonight and have a revised video up most likely tomorrow. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 17:35
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I just checked all my encoded videos and something weird happened. The scripts that I used for the first encodings in the sandcastle cut and came back in at the right parts, but parts 2, 3 and 4 of the LP videos all stop and start about 12 seconds before they should. Basically, the end of episode 2 became the start of episode 3 and like episode 2 episode 3's ending was cut off and in episode 4 and episode 4 didn't end at the right time either. I'll strive to have something up for tonight on episode 2 to remedy the issues with it now. Sorry for the issues, I should have re-rewatched these before. Edit: I've gone and fixed my various issues with the editing. We should be all good to go and I've updated the link to the video in the OP and earlier in the thread. If you watched the old video don't worry about this one, it's just got another 12 seconds of me saying goodbye. YouTube Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 23:22
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Part 3: More Hospital We're not quite out of the world's worst/largest hospital yet. More freaky poo poo is happening and we're still being guided along by voices in our earpiece/head to get to set locations, which, ironically, are the only places we seem to be able to go. Not a ton to talk about this video, save for a new weapon. The flamethrower makes you ghost killing Mario, it fires a projectile ball of fire instead of a stream of lit fuel, sort of like a fire flower. I am not a huge fan of this weapon, but it is our first "unique" or Power weapon in the game. In addition to the standard shooter fare of pistols and submachine guns we have a few unique Sci-Fi weapons at our disposal. These guns generally have little ammo to start and generally don't have additional shots lying around the way the standard guns do. This means the game effectively limits your time with the unique and super fun weapons it has and that is a total shame because some are really fun and very helpful. This first one is sort of meh, it sets guys on fire, which some times kills them, sometimes it just burns them down a bit. It has a pretty wide splash radius as well, so hiding next to something when being shot at with it isn't always going to save you. The problem with that is that you almost only ever encounter these things in cramped locations, meaning on occasion your only option is to get shot straight in the face with a fireball that may eat half your armor. Not cool, FEAR 2. Not cool.
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Jun 28, 2014 13:05
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Oops, SnakeFist will start, I swear. I actually have a whole thing typed up on my work laptop and I'm just too lazy to run it for ten seconds and send it to myself. SnakeFist So Blind Sally sort of reminded me people may be interested in what the hell the third post is supposed to be for. As mentioned in the game, SnakeFist is a massive action movie franchise in the FEAR universe that is just a sort of combination of all the major 80's action movie franchises. The game never really expands on that, but I thought it would be fun if posters here did by writing up Wikipedia-like articles, mock scripts and pretend excerpts from novels/books what have you. I was planning on starting things soon with my own serialized overview of the movie franchise, but if people want to start doing things now I'll gladly start linking posts in the third post, the SnakeFist Book Depository, so named after the site where SnakeFist killed the evil clone of JFK while time traveling.
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Jun 28, 2014 21:43
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:Man, Jankowski's junk is going to be super psychic by the end of his treatment. That's one dong you do not want to mess with! I miss the parts in the spoilered bit, but yes, the game has some really neat background details I do want to show off in the near future. Giragast posted:You should maybe try noise removal in something like Audacity, there's a lot of hum in your commentary. Yeah, I didn't notice it listening to it on my setup, but plugging headphones in to listen to something back at work revealed a hum. Episode 5 and beyond have a noise removal script on them. Iceclaw posted:Also, could you please wait a bit for the conversations the soldiers have to play out? Some of them can be fairly interesting. When I can I will, it's one of those things where I did just listen to a lot of these during the practice run and sort of forgot people may want to hear more of them.
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Jun 29, 2014 17:20
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Part 4: Deeper The first hour/hour and a half of FEAR 2 feels like it is much longer that it really is because unlike most of the game you basically wander around the same location with few, if any transitions to new environments that feel wildly different. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, the natural progression of the early levels is one of the things I can appreciate about the game; jolting the player between varied environments works for some franchises, but others having a mostly seamless transition between levels just makes sense. For example, Call of Duty moving you around the world (or space) and between characters works for the story IW/Sledgehammer/Treyarch are trying to tell. At the start of FEAR 2 you can't have the characters hop around the world or even the city the game takes place in, considering they were kidnapped and whisked away to...wherever they are. You also can't just have them magically find an exit and send them to a new location. Instead the developers decided to have a pretty long section where you fight through a small army of people and escape the crazy place you woke up in. That said, the environments in this first section of the game, thought they start to change, get pretty samey pretty quickly. The hospital sort of sets a tone of "a normal place with something wrong" that gives way to what we see towards the middle and end of the video: utilitarian military and industrial stuff. I really wish that the game spent less time in those environments and more time on the hospital style stuff. As it stands the game is sort of a 50/50 split between the two.
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Jun 30, 2014 20:16
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Speedball posted:I take contention with you saying that the character files have no significance because there's a few of them that spell out or flesh out the context of the locations or missions you're in. At least two of the characters we've met so far are sending instagrams to each other and one upcoming level has some pretty significant files to find. Also, there IS a way to reset them all, you just need to reset your profile. There is a truth to that, the intel is used to flesh out bits of the story, but are sort of secondary to everything in my opinion. I think the best analog I can think of (and I've used it before) are the diaries you find in the new Tomb Raider. Yes, they reveal things about the island and characters, but you don't need to hunt them down to understand the story beats or character motivation. I was pretty sure that the profile erasing thing would work, and I remember from my time on the Xbox version of the game that the stuff you had picked up through previous playthroughs stuck with you unless you did it, but I had already had Kadorhal offer to post all the intel items in the thread when it launched and the slow motion juice pickups come at you so fast in the first hour or two that resetting those and the intel didn't seem like it would effect the overall quality or experience of the Let's Play.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:22
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:I'm expecting reactions on a par with Drakengard. I didn't think to do that, but yes, I'm not surprised it still happens, the game is highly scripted if you watch closely. I just wanted to mention that I'm reading the suggestions and taking them into account for the next recording. More melee, more grenades, letting conversations play out and other points people have made will be expanded upon. The next few videos were recorded a week ago but have elements of those in them already, but video eight on I'll be paying more attention to what the thread was hoping to see more of. I refrained from recording this weekend to incorporate things better, actually.
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Jul 1, 2014 02:42
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Sindai posted:Are you recording next to an open window or something? I could swear I'm constantly hearing birdcalls in the background and I'm pretty sure that's not the game. It's actually eight or so feet from my desk,I'm surprised none of my other LPs have had that in the background as I only started doing these after I bought this house with the giant gently caress all tree outside the window. I'll close the window in the future as the birds are especially interested in singing in the morning this year.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:00
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:I don't use them too much due to the PC controls being so horrible. I wound up switching the flashlight ('F') and grenade ('G') buttons, because, as they were, I'd go to use a 'nade and end up startling the enemy with an accidental rave party. Yeah, one of the first things I had to do (and I'll mention this every chance I get) was to unfuck the controls this game starts you with. I didn't have that much of an issue with the console version, but the PC controls are just plain bad. Why is Shift used to toggle aim? Why is Ctrl used to start sprinting? why is Left Alt used to start slow-motion? Why is the middle mouse button used to bring up a weapons wheel no one playing on a PC will ever use? What is every game's obsession with using G for grenades and something less common on F? With some of the moves you are trying to do, like the slide kick, that setup is insane. You would have to hold left control and W and then additionally hit C and right mouse to do it. If you put your hand on your keyboard now and look at how that changes where your placement is you realize getting back to the correct form to move around again may take a second and you'll have to more or less build up muscle memory to do it right. Heaven help you if you want to slow-mo during the run. I'm starting to think I really like PC gaming because I can gently caress around with the controls until I feel like things are in the right spot. Shift should be sprint, Q should be your gimmick button (spotting in BF4, actions in Payday 2, slow-mo here) and F should be grenades. G is a togglable action button like the flashlight or changing seats or something. That's just how my mind works in these games.
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Jul 1, 2014 14:15
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I've hinted at it in the past, but I was thinking of doing something really different with this thread and the in-universe Snakefist franchise. At the end of the day it could be a lot of fun or it could be really bad, but that's going to depend on what people do. I'm encouraging people to write Snakefist fan fiction, so to speak. mocked up Wikipedia articles, script pages, novel excerpts and whatever else you can come up with works. I'll keep a library of sorts in the third post of what people put together and post in the thread. I plan on providing a general overview and everyone else can use that to springboard ideas off that. This is one of those things that either works really well or fails totally, so let's find out which it will be: SnakeFist (Multimedia Franchise) This page is for the multimedia franchise. For the first movie in the original trilogy see here. For the first movie in the rebooted franchise see here. For the character SnakeFist see here. SnakeFist is a multimedia franchise spanning novels, comics, video games, TV series and a two US film franchises that are considered the “canonical” Snakefist while other media is considered expanded universe or, in the case of the “Batman and Snakefist” ongoing comic series part of an alternate universe. Along with these, there are several non-US produced Snakefist movies that are also outside of the scope of the official story and universe by decree of copyright holder Warner Brothers. The SnakeFist franchise began as a series of action movies written and directed by low-level Warner Brothers executive Hal Bouchard credited under the name Rock Mayhew. Bouchard had spent a decade making underground films before being hired by Warner in 1975 and was given a budget of $1 million dollars to film SnakeFist in July 1977 as part of a company policy to attempt to produce small hits through a subsidiary called Transition Films. According to Bouchard the idea for SnakeFist was conceived after an actor described part of the book First Blood to him during a break while shooting the short film Among the Bodies in 1973. Bouchard worked on the script in earnest for the next few years, shelving a near-final draft when he began working for Warner Studios. In a strange twist of fate, Warner held the rights to a First Blood movie and sold them off just a month before Bouchard was hired. In Bouchard’s drafts SnakeFist was a former CIA operator in Vietnam who resigned under unexplained circumstances before the story begins and travels the country at random. In 2006 Bouchard explained “Realistically, I needed a reason for no one to know his name, no one to know who he was. He was supposed to be the veterans who came home and found themselves good at things that weren’t allowed in normal society.” SnakeFist’s story changed much between the drafts and the script for the first movie, changing him into an undercover CIA agent attempting to root out Communist cells in the US instead of being the disaffected drifter of early drafts. SnakeFists’s Effect on Film SnakeFist is primarily a film franchise that began in 1978 with the release of SnakeFist, which concerns SnakeFist searching for a fellow CIA agent in rural Ohio and completing the job the original agent had failed to finish. While the first movie was shot on a $1 million budget by what was more or less a shell company of Warner Brothers, the following movies would have larger budgets and release under Warner proper. By the time the original series of movies ended with SnakeFist 5: Breakneck in 1988 Writer/Director Hal Bouchard was working with a $20 million budget and attracted major stars instead of the no-name actors he had to hire due to the low budget of the first movie. The franchise itself would kickstart the careers of David Herbert, Earl Bowie, Joan LeBarron and Doug Parish and gave Bouchard the ability to pursue whichever projects he wanted to as a director and gave him clout in the Warner boardroom. Despite making his name as an action movie director, he had a long career prior to the SnakeFist franchise as a director of small plot driven movies and preferred to work on those over the SnakeFist movies. Films like The June Crisis and political thriller The Beast of Washington would earn him widespread post-SnakeFist critical acclaim, though Bouchard would never claim a Best Director or Best Film Academy Awards. Of the major awards, Bouchard was only ever nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Director once for Vulture in 1991; considered one of his weaker movies. Many theories exist for why Bouchard would never get nominated, but many point to a 1985 rant against the Academy that appeared as part of an article about him in the New Yorker having soured relations between him and the Academy for many years. The original series of SnakeFist movies was said to have inspired a number of subsequent action franchises. The general action of the first movie supposedly influenced the re-writes of the First Blood script. SnakeFist II: The Tower in 1981 saw SnakeFist deployed to clear Russian affiliated terrorists out of an unnamed skyscraper as they attempted to steal the blueprints for the US’ newest planes and missiles. While the movies are wildly different, many point to this movie influencing 1988’s Die Hard. Roderick Thorpe, the writer of Nothing Lasts Forever; the novel the first Die Hard movie is based on, did attempt to sue Warner for seemingly using the concept of that book without attribution. Warner won a court settlement in 1986 by playing the now famous Rooftop Motorcycle Chase sequence at the end of the film and pointing out that the novel didn’t have any motorcycles, CIA blimps, fire ax vs. harpoon fights, nor a single use of the phrase “gently caress You.” Judge Hailey Middleton threw the case out later that same day. Warner did end up suing Universial in 2003 over the 2001 movie The Fast and the Furious which Warner claimed was a close copy of SnakeFist 5: Breakneck in which SnakeFist entered into illegal underground races to uncover a dangerous ring of Columbian drug dealers using the street races as a way to get the police and authorities to devote manpower to the races instead of their drug dealing operations and other criminal activities. The endings are incredibly similar, as SnakeFist hands the keys to his car over to Aaron Kent, the American ringleader whom he had formed a friendship with so he could make an escape. Unlike the ending of the first Fast and the Furious, Kent doesn’t make it far as SnakeFist produces a detonator and mutters his famous “gently caress You” before hitting the button and causing the car to explode off screen. This last point was part of Universal’s defense, along with the lack of scenes where Snakefist and other riders played chicken in the subway system and the monster truck race on the highway during rush hour. Warner would end up withdrawing the suit and paying the court fees. SnakeFist IV released in 1986 is often considered the fan favorite movie, nicknamed “SnakeFist’s Empire Strikes Back.” by adoring fans. The film sends SnakeFist to New York City to track down a ring of weapons dealers who have acquired material to make a nuclear weapon. The film finishes with a 22 minute seemingly single shot car chase that becomes a running gun battle through the Alphabet City area of Manhattan. One of the largest debates over the movie is if there are cuts in the sequence or not, as it appears seamless, but the use of extreme close ups on faces or guns firing has led to a belief that Bouchard inserted cuts at key moments. This scene was credited by the director of HBO drama True Detective for the inclusion of a long tracking shot during the first season of the show, which was well received by critics and SnakeFist fans alike.
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Jul 2, 2014 17:09
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Calax posted:Does project harbinger ever get explained or should I give an explanation out of my memory from the preorder book? There's an intel item late in the game that actually explains it pretty well, along with a bunch of other projects. The basics of it are that Harbinger was another attempt at finding possible psychic commanders by finding psychically capable people to operate on and increase their latent abilities.
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Jul 2, 2014 19:28
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Part 5: Arena Fight This video introduces the Replica Soldiers to FEAR 2, they're really just clones who are being bossed around by a psychic commander and don't really differentiate from the security guys we've been fighting up until now. They use the same AI, have around the same damage model and have a few basic designs, so there's not much they add gameplay wise. The big difference is armament. The Replicas all carry Assault Rifles, Automatic Shotguns or special weapons. They also happen to show up along with several new grenade types, all of which are pretty drat useful, with the proximity mine being one of my favorites just because you can really mess with people in the right spots with them. This episode runs a bit longer than most others (and I went through again to make sure I didn't have any episode breaks in it I forgot about), but it's worth it because we finally get out of the hospital/complex we spent four episodes on. Truthfully, this is the longest we'll spend in a single location for some time, most parts of the game are a bit more varied over longer periods of time.
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Jul 2, 2014 23:08
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biosterous posted:The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts › Cinema Discusso > SnakeFist: Legend I never would have thought someone would do this when I first considered opening up the SnakeFist thing. Way to go. MShadowy posted:I've been waiting for one of the enemies to say it so I could do this; my siblings and I always wondered how it was that Beckett could be "too fast" while holding still. We eventually realised there was only one possible answer. Hope you don't mind, but I added this to the second post.
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Jul 3, 2014 16:14
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MShadowy posted:If I'd had a problem with such I wouldn't have posted; hope you like it. I'm never sure of the protocol on this because none of my previous LPs have inspired stuff like that.
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Jul 3, 2014 21:30
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Iceclaw posted:Which is kind of a let-down, because in FEAR 1, Replica were noticably better at fighting, coordinating and communicating than the security goons. They used the full capabilities of the IA, while the guards mostly hold their grounds. I think the canon reason why the tactics are similar if not the same is because you are facing off with Armacham black ops teams instead of security forces here, so their better trained and have better effectiveness. If anyone was wondering if you are subject to location based damage in this game: you are. During my test run of the game I was headshot with no armor by a guy with an SMG and it killed me before I could turn around. Dangerous stuff.
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Jul 4, 2014 01:36
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chitoryu12 posted:I don't know the full story. I know that Monolith was bought by Warner Brothers, while Vivendi was able to recruit TimeGate Studios to make the expansions to the first game. Vinvendi owned FEAR the name, Monolith owned FEAR the franchise. The Project Origin subtitle to FEAR was supposed to be the release name for the game, but Warner and Activision struck an agreement at the last minute so the game is officially FEAR 2: Project Origin.
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Jul 4, 2014 03:47
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Alavaria posted:I question if anime conventions even have free pizza... They used to until the great Pepperoni Massacre of '02.
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Jul 4, 2014 06:08
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Ed. Note: Read the lyrics at the bottom to the beat of "Straight Outta Compton" because I couldn't come up with a better cadence SnakeFist's F.I.S.T. was an animated cartoon series that ran between July 21st and September 10th in 1995. Despite high production values and a slew of guest stars, the show was never able to take off and was quietly canceled after airing only seven of the 26 planned episodes for the first season. The series has never seen a home video release and a dedicated group of fans have been posting home recordings of episodes on the internet for years, despite Warner Brothers Animation Division's strict Copyright protection policy. Background With the success of the Batman animated series Warner Brothers commissioned a number of pilots for their other properties. In January of 1994, a full six years since the last SnakeFist movie, Warner approved F.I.S.T. for a pilot. Initially the series was to focus more on the First Insertion Stealth Team members rather than their commander, an aged SnakeFist, but the pilot focus tested poorly. Supposedly a member of the Warner Animation Division staff jokingly suggested making F.I.S.T. into an undergroud hip-hop group led by SnakeFist. Other claims state that Warner itself requested the changes due to other focus testing with the targeted age group among whom acts like the Wu-Tang Clan and Notorious B.I.G. were increasingly popular. Whatever the case may have been, F.I.S.T. was reformatted to star SnakeFist as the lead MC in a rap ensemble called F.I.S.T. The immense popularity of the act allows them to travel the world and thwart terrorists and super villains like the Dirty Mac and evil organizations like the LAPD. The Warner Animation Division would later admit that they had no knowledge of the hip-hop community and more or less had interns and new employees working on the show after the change in theme. Warner also saw this as a chance to insert some of their top acts into a show, which led to the final aired episode where SnakeFist teams up with Ice-T and rampages against the LAPD while the controversial Body Count song "Cop Killer" plays. Plot At the start of the series SnakeFist has seemingly retired from the CIA and has begun a career in music. He forms F.I.S.T., comprised of a number of former agents who had shown "mad promise" as both spies and lyricists. With this crew SnakeFist records albums, but also travels the world putting down threats and putting on shows. In episode 2 it was mentioned that SnakeFist's group had sold over 10 million copies of their first album, which had helped fund their secret activities. There is not an identifiable plot arc to the show, each episode takes the team to another location, featuring a new enemy. The episodes also appear to have been shown out of order, as slimy manager Tommy Vann is found to be working against F.I.S.T. in the fifth aired episode, but appears in the sixth, but is not seen in the third or fourth. Characters SnakeFist: Former CIA agent turned hip-hop sensation. In the pilot episode SnakeFist leaves the CIA to do "real work" and uses a set of stolen files to track down the people who would become members of F.I.S.T. When not on stage SnakeFist is the tactical leader of the team and often takes the pointman position on operations, relinquishing the role to Jason Branch in episode two when SnakeFist had to re-record his part on a track while the operation was going down. SnakeFist's dialog voice actor was Mark Hamill, who would often record his Joker and SnakeFist dialog back to back. A then-unknown DMX provided SnakeFist's rapping voice. Jason Branch: The first member of F.I.S.T. SnakeFist recruited and the assumed second in command. Jason has survivor's guilt over losing the rest of a team he was leading in Azerbaijan prior to the start of the series and almost watches the same thing happen when he takes point in episode two of the series, but the rest of the team made it out of the warehouse before the explosion, restoring a measure of Jason's confidence and keeping him from leaving the team as he had been threatening to do at the start of the episode. Voice actor Chip Hensley voiced Jason for both dialog and during rap performances. Kayla Starr: Recruited just after Jason Kayla is the only African American member of the team. It's hinted that she has an attraction to Jason, but it is unknown if he reciprocates or even knows of it. Kayla spent five years working undercover in East Germany using a "light wrapper" device of her own design to pass unnoticed, as such she is the team's chief technology officer and will often introduce gadgets of her own design for each mission. She also joins the team on field missions where hacking or other technology focused actions will be necessary. C.C.H. Pounder voices Kayla in dialog, rising star Lil' Kim provided the stage voice for Kayla. Bernard "Bernie" Murphy: Bernie is the last member of the team recruited and is wheelchair bound. As such he serves as the voice in the ear of the other members of the team and sending them information about targets and locations. Bernie is the only member of the team who doesn't provide lyrics to the group's tracks, instead he produces the tracks and serves as the on stage DJ at shows. Bernie claims to have lost use of his legs in a firefight in Iraq while searching for documents in an underground bunker. Bernie was voiced by Billy Mays of infomercial fame, a fact his teammates react to when he gets audibly excited ("getting a little loud, Bernie, keep it down!") Jeung Xia: Former Chinese assassin turned CIA contractor Jeung was recruited by SnakeFist over the objections of Jason as he didn't believe they could trust her. At the end of the first episode she saves his life and Jason shows a respect towards her for the rest of the series. Jeung only appears on two tracks in the aired episodes, and this is believed to be associated with how comfortable actress Bai Ling was with how her voice sounded when rapping. No one has bothered asking her if this is true. Impact The failure of the show put the introduction of the Superman animated series off for a couple years as the Warner Animation Division re-organized and re-did focus testing. As such Warner found it was getting a great deal of feedback from children in the New York City public school system, mostly those located in the Staten Island and Brooklyn areas, causing a major problem with feedback. Warner also received a number of FCC complaints as DMX's lyrics for the opening of the show as well as voicing SnakeFist on stage caused a number of parents to call in to complain, even if the words were censored. Warner created an internal division to monitor scripts and recordings after this to ensure it wouldn't happen again. It's also theorized that the poor performance of the show would delay the re-introduction of the SnakeFist character to the silver screen as there had been rumors of a remake or reboot of the franchise for a few years at that point and nothing would come of them until 2003's SnakeFist. Theme Song Lyrics DMX penned the lyrics to all his parts on the show, including the lyrics to the opening theme song, considered one of the finer rapping efforts put forward by SnakeFist (the universally disparaged Yo, SnakeFist Raps had come out in 1989 and is considered too terrible to listen to). DMX was an unsigned talent at the time of the show and was trying to get a deal with Warner. The failure of the show and complaints against him would make him radioactive for several years until RCA signed him. The first verse of the theme highlights the issues with DMX's delivery. You know me, it's SnakeFist What I do ain't yo' loving business Get in my way I'll turn you to red mist You're no one, won't be missed And no, I ain't a Mus-lam Because then I couldn't go ham With a TEC-9, In my trans-am Making motherfuckers say goddamn They say I'm too hard, too sturdy Just cause I don't fall don't mean I don't get dirty Of course, the lyrics were censored for TV, but the complaints rolled in. It also appears DMX or the showrunners didn't really worry about incongruous statements like: In a white suit, I'm a black man Mama ask "you wanna gently caress" I say yes Ma'am The track cuts off at the 35 second mark, but no one has been able to pull together a full version, so it is unknown if it is just DMX on this track or if the members of F.I.S.T. make appearances.
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Jul 4, 2014 21:08
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Speedball posted:FEAR 3 had one very good idea, though: its scares were random and did not always repeat. The game was the least-scary of all but this is a very good idea to have in a haunted house simulation. Yeah, the nice thing about FEAR 2's encounters are that they are pretty random. This means that you are going to get a really easy time of it and get the better situation, or you can get a really hard run of it. The section where I died right after the Assault Rifle showed up I got a completely different layout right before going through the slamming big red door. In the initial run they were sort of laid out and waiting for me, in the second run they were running away from me and they were all in front of the door instead of having a guy behind it. Other situations change as well so you are going to get slightly different set pieces now and again. I'll post the next video sometime Saturday evening, YouTube ate the file and it's now re-uploading.
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Jul 5, 2014 07:57
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Part 6: The Streets After liberating ourselves from the Harbinger facility we need to meet up with Griffin and Stokes, whom have also escaped but are stuck in different areas. This episode sees us engaging in urban combat against both Armacham and Replica forces who are trying to...do something or other, I can't really make sense of why they are where they are fighting over destroyed buildings and sending in giant mechs. Speaking of, Mechs are a pretty rare sight in the game for the most part, but they serve as boss battles sort of like the one in the previous episode. There's another "boss" type enemy introduced in this episode, and I'll let the thread decide how those things came about. Really, by the end of this episode we've seen all but two enemy types in the entire game. Like I've said before, this isn't a game that throws a ton of enemy types or weapons at you. The phrase "Inch deep, mile wide" is one of those things I've assigned to a lot of games with RPG elements and large armories but not much interesting in terms of gameplay, FEAR 2 is deeper than it is wide. You have access to all Becket's abilities by the start of the second level and most weapons have been introduced by the fifth. By limiting things the game opens up a lot of options for how you play it rather than requiring you to use a single gun for certain spots. Case in point: rocket launcher sniper fight.
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Jul 5, 2014 19:30
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Shadowlyger posted:Yeah, seriously. Kicked the sniper rifle off the roof? Oh well, I have a rocket launcher. That's just as good, right? I hope everyone enjoys weird moments like that because I can't take this game seriously for the most part and that's coming through in commentary and gameplay. I'll have everyone know I was using a lot of grenades and melee attacks in the latest recordings and it led to some weird moments and some actually really fun stuff. My problem, and we've seen it before, is that I keep hitting the grenade button when I want to hit the flashlight button, or I hit both and end up tossing grenades where I wanted to turn on the flashlight. Hilarious to watch, it turns out, but really frustrating if you are playing. Edit: I'm also thinking it would be fun to have a friendly contest on the SnakeFist stuff and I'll excuse myself from it. Basically before the thread ends we'll let authors and others nominate content and then do a poll for who had the most creative/best/whatever entry. I'm not sure if there will be a prize beyond winning the contest, I'm pretty much out of Humble Bundle games I don't want to play to give away. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jul 6, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 02:27
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chitoryu12 posted:Speaking of which, what's the spoiler policy for the first FEAR game? Also, are we allowed to freely say who the two protagonists of FEAR 3 are? Spoil away on the first FEAR game, FEAR 2 is mostly self contained in terms of plot points and the actions of the first FEAR game that matter in FEAR 2 are Alma being released and the detonation of the Origin facility nuclear reactors. I've also linked an LP of the first FEAR game in the OP so people can watch those videos if they really want to catch up with everything.
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Jul 7, 2014 19:21
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1stGear posted:One of those protagonists comes from FEAR 2 DLC so if Lazyfire is intending on doing that, you may still want to avoid talking about them. I'm not planning on doing any of the DLC, when I looked at it it seems that neither of the DLC from the first two games has any bearing on the next game in the franchise story wise and it didn't seem to be worth it from that perspective. JackNapier posted:So, I can feel free to info dump stuff from my book then, so long as it doesn't spoil poo poo for the game currently being played, good to know Go right ahead and do so, I'll put another section in the second post for it.
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Jul 7, 2014 19:34
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