Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Those of you who follow me regularly know that I always like to do something special on April 1st. Since I could hardly delay a Monday update to Friday, I decided to do something completely unrelated which I incidentally have wanted to do for literal years now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2xx8br6OGU

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

kalonZombie
May 24, 2010

D&D 3.5 Book of Erotic Fantasy
This is still as great as it was when you told me when you wanted to do this a few years back.

SimonChris
Apr 24, 2008

The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.
Grimey Drawer

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Those of you who follow me regularly know that I always like to do something special on April 1st. Since I could hardly delay a Monday update to Friday, I decided to do something completely unrelated which I incidentally have wanted to do for literal years now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2xx8br6OGU
I once had an LP video flagged by Youtube because a character hummed a few bars from Ride of the Valkyries. I wouldn't feel to sure if I was you, Bobbin...

CommissarMega
Nov 18, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Those of you who follow me regularly know that I always like to do something special on April 1st. Since I could hardly delay a Monday update to Friday, I decided to do something completely unrelated which I incidentally have wanted to do for literal years now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2xx8br6OGU

:allears: You better do the rest of LA Noire like this now!

SimonChris posted:

I once had an LP video flagged by Youtube because a character hummed a few bars from Ride of the Valkyries. I wouldn't feel to sure if I was you, Bobbin...

Seriously? Who was doing the humming? Van Canto?

Aithon
Jan 3, 2014

Every puzzle has an answer.
This is wonderful. Especially your voices for other characters. :allears:

Panzer Skank
Jan 12, 2004

He's a regular-crab.
Not, like, a sex-crab.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Those of you who follow me regularly know that I always like to do something special on April 1st. Since I could hardly delay a Monday update to Friday, I decided to do something completely unrelated which I incidentally have wanted to do for literal years now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2xx8br6OGU

Bobbin !!!! Oh my god !!!!! This is incredible and amazing holy lmao i cant believe this !!!!!

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




SimonChris posted:

I once had an LP video flagged by Youtube because a character hummed a few bars from Ride of the Valkyries. I wouldn't feel to sure if I was you, Bobbin...

what? Why is a public domain piece getting flagged, Youtube what have you done

SimonChris
Apr 24, 2008

The Baron's daughter is missing, and you are the man to find her. No problem. With your inexhaustible arsenal of hard-boiled similes, there is nothing you can't handle.
Grimey Drawer

Aces High posted:

what? Why is a public domain piece getting flagged, Youtube what have you done

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JZRFW9sMic&t=864s



Apparently it was owned by "Believe Music" all along. Who knew?

SirDifferential
Sep 19, 2012
I've not played this game before. Weirdly enough, until this LP I always thought this thing was a David Cage production. Now that I know it isn't I suppose that explains why this game has so high ratings.

About the whole "spoilers allowed" policy, I think there's something to be said about that. The whole "whodunit" concept can be abused by hiding sub-par writing and production under plot twists. Games such as 999, the visual novel, are all about the plot twist at the end and, in my opinion, awful on the way there. If the game is built with the idea that the ending is a bait in the horizon, as if a man standing on your back with a fishing rod and a carrot, inviting you to chase the carrot further and further, does it really produce a great game? It's as if the game is tempting: "Come quickly my darling! You'll miss the ending!" while stepping backwards as you struggle towards the end trying to reach it. In all the good stories I've read the journey has always been the relevant part. These "whodunit" mysteries can still be entertaining, but they lose something if the production values were considered a second priority compared to trying to keep the audience in the dark about the perpetrator. I've been hearing a lot about Columbo, but never really watched the show. Now I think I'll finally get to it.

Hopefully you'll do an episode with the "black and white" mode enabled. The saturation does seem to be a bit on the higher end, although I'm not sure it's an issue.

Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

SirDifferential posted:

Hopefully you'll do an episode with the "black and white" mode enabled. The saturation does seem to be a bit on the higher end, although I'm not sure it's an issue.

That was the plan. I was thinking of going black and white for the last Homicide Desk case, but I'm open to suggestions.

TicTacOops
May 23, 2014
For the longest time, I thought Loom was an old first-person carpet-flying game where you had very limited fireball ammo. If that's not the case, what crazy game was that?! :ohdear:

Never knew about Columbo being such a pioneer for murder mysteries. Phoenix Wright must've taken a page out of Columbo's handbook now that I think about it...

SirDifferential posted:

In all the good stories I've read the journey has always been the relevant part.

This for sure. There was one game called Hotel Dusk: Room 215 that I thought was a good take on visual-novel mystery thing. It had an interesting hand-drawn aesthetic and writing that made you care about the characters, even though I felt as if the stakes weren't nearly as high as I'd've liked them to be except near the end part of it...

Wanamingo
Feb 22, 2008

by FactsAreUseless

TicTacOops posted:

For the longest time, I thought Loom was an old first-person carpet-flying game where you had very limited fireball ammo. If that's not the case, what crazy game was that?! :ohdear:

Magic Carpet

radintorov
Feb 18, 2011

Aces High posted:

what? Why is a public domain piece getting flagged, Youtube what have you done
You think that's bad?
When Jade Star did his LP of XCOM:EW, he and GuavaMoment did the audio for an entire episode because (if I remember correctly) a company flagged the sound of the wind blowing outside Jade's house that the mic picked up while he recorded the original commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dsp7Asm0xM

radintorov fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Apr 1, 2016

Aishlinn
Mar 31, 2011

This might hurt a bit..


So you're going to cover the best noir film ever in one of the corners, right? Everyone knows that would be The Spirit.



























Kidding, don't shoot me

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

SirDifferential posted:

I've not played this game before. Weirdly enough, until this LP I always thought this thing was a David Cage production. Now that I know it isn't I suppose that explains why this game has so high ratings.

About the whole "spoilers allowed" policy, I think there's something to be said about that. The whole "whodunit" concept can be abused by hiding sub-par writing and production under plot twists. Games such as 999, the visual novel, are all about the plot twist at the end and, in my opinion, awful on the way there. If the game is built with the idea that the ending is a bait in the horizon, as if a man standing on your back with a fishing rod and a carrot, inviting you to chase the carrot further and further, does it really produce a great game? It's as if the game is tempting: "Come quickly my darling! You'll miss the ending!" while stepping backwards as you struggle towards the end trying to reach it. In all the good stories I've read the journey has always been the relevant part. These "whodunit" mysteries can still be entertaining, but they lose something if the production values were considered a second priority compared to trying to keep the audience in the dark about the perpetrator. I've been hearing a lot about Columbo, but never really watched the show. Now I think I'll finally get to it.

Hopefully you'll do an episode with the "black and white" mode enabled. The saturation does seem to be a bit on the higher end, although I'm not sure it's an issue.

I think LA Noir succeeds by not really relying on huge, monumental reveals. The last Homicide case is technically a "big reveal" case, but Cole spends the whole drat desk insisting that something's out of place and an attentive player easily spots the various strange connections the cases have (like every accused killer mysteriously has size 8 shoes) so the final reveal doesn't suddenly come out of left field. Likewise, the "Looks like a hit and run, really a stabbing victim being hit by a car" case in Traffic can easily make the reveal as soon as you show up on site if you bother to check around enough for the murder weapon. The case then becomes less about "It was really a murder" and more about "How do we prove it was really a murder?"

TicTacOops
May 23, 2014

Wanamingo posted:

Magic Carpet

...there must be something wrong with me that I never thought about that. Thank you.

ditty bout my clitty
May 28, 2011

by FactsAreUseless
Fun Shoe
Never has a game needed actual dialogue choices more than this. At one point it's like trying to play street fighter while having all the buttons randomly reassigned.

berryjon
May 30, 2011

I have an invasion to go to.

Aishlinn posted:

So you're going to cover the best noir film ever in one of the corners, right? Everyone knows that would be The Spirit.

The Shadow would make an excellent piece to review, as there were several movies in the 30's to 50's and they fit the 'Noir' dynamic.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

radintorov posted:

You think that's bad?
When Jade Star did his LP of XCOM:EW, he and GuavaMoment did the audio for an entire episode because (if I remember correctly) a company flagged the sound of the wind blowing outside Jade's house that the mic picked up while he recorded the original commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dsp7Asm0xM

No it's because XCOM uses stock wind noises, and some rear end in a top hat made a claim on them.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

Ilustforponydeath posted:

Never has a game needed actual dialogue choices more than this. At one point it's like trying to play street fighter while having all the buttons randomly reassigned.

Apparently it wasn't as bad in the earlier builds. "Doubt" was something like "Push" or "Press", to emphasize that you were asking Cole to intimidate and insult the subject to try and force more info out of them.

Spatula City
Oct 21, 2010

LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
oh man I'm excited for perpetual Film Corner. I actually took a community college class on noir a long time ago, it was great.
I'm assuming the next one is The Maltese Falcon, but then there's a couple of others that are almost mandatory. Obviously LA Confidential (Bobbin you should also mention the book and Ellroy's work a little bit), but also Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Double Indemnity, and The Big Sleep.

TomViolence
Feb 19, 2013

PLEASE ASK ABOUT MY 80,000 WORD WALLACE AND GROMIT SLASH FICTION. PLEASE.

Yeah, even just changing "doubt" to "bluff" would've been a bit more on the money. The interrogation minigame suffers from the same problems a lot of (particularly console) videogame dialogue systems do, but it does give you enough tools to approach things like something approaching a real detective, which I have to respect. The cases themselves have some interesting branching that I've never managed to figure out the extent of too. If you miss a clue here and there, the plot has ways and means of throwing you a bone so the trail won't go cold.

For all it's flaws I really loved this game and it's a shame we probably won't see another one like it. I'm a huge fan of detective fiction, noir films and the 1940s LA of James Ellroy novels, and while the gameplay in LA Noire leaves much to be desired, the feel of it is pretty much dead-on. I'm glad to see it finally getting the LP treatment and I'm really looking forward to some of these Film Corners. I've got my own mental wishlist of films I'd like to see dissected and it'll be interesting to see how Bobbin's selection lines up with that.

bhlaab
Feb 21, 2005

TomViolence posted:

the feel of it is pretty much dead-on.

Is it? Always seemed more procedural than noir to me. Yeah it goes into topics like murder and corruption, but so does Law & Order.

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

TomViolence posted:

Yeah, even just changing "doubt" to "bluff" would've been a bit more on the money. The interrogation minigame suffers from the same problems a lot of (particularly console) videogame dialogue systems do, but it does give you enough tools to approach things like something approaching a real detective, which I have to respect. The cases themselves have some interesting branching that I've never managed to figure out the extent of too. If you miss a clue here and there, the plot has ways and means of throwing you a bone so the trail won't go cold.

For all it's flaws I really loved this game and it's a shame we probably won't see another one like it. I'm a huge fan of detective fiction, noir films and the 1940s LA of James Ellroy novels, and while the gameplay in LA Noire leaves much to be desired, the feel of it is pretty much dead-on. I'm glad to see it finally getting the LP treatment and I'm really looking forward to some of these Film Corners. I've got my own mental wishlist of films I'd like to see dissected and it'll be interesting to see how Bobbin's selection lines up with that.

From what I've seen, you can also screw yourself out of a max rating just by not going to locations in the right order or letting your partner drive. In one of the Homicide cases you need to visit one location to get a signed book to give you an extra question to ask in a second location, but you can visit that second location first and not have the question. If you want to head back after getting the book and you let your partner drive, though, you're suddenly called back to the station and miss out on the question. That same case lets you get away with the final two-suspect interrogation without key evidence just by making a phone call partway through to check someone's claim.

VodeAndreas
Apr 30, 2009

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Those of you who follow me regularly know that I always like to do something special on April 1st. Since I could hardly delay a Monday update to Friday, I decided to do something completely unrelated which I incidentally have wanted to do for literal years now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2xx8br6OGU

This is amazing :allears:

HR12345
Nov 19, 2012
I'm noticing a trend in your LPs lately that each game is "A Series of X." When did that happen?

Grapplejack
Nov 27, 2007

Spatula City posted:

oh man I'm excited for perpetual Film Corner. I actually took a community college class on noir a long time ago, it was great.
I'm assuming the next one is The Maltese Falcon, but then there's a couple of others that are almost mandatory. Obviously LA Confidential (Bobbin you should also mention the book and Ellroy's work a little bit), but also Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Double Indemnity, and The Big Sleep.

I'm guessing Brick is also going to come up along with Blue Velvet and Chinatown, which i'm super excited for.

Ignatius M. Meen
May 26, 2011

Hello yes I heard there was a lovely trainwreck here and...

HR12345 posted:

I'm noticing a trend in your LPs lately that each game is "A Series of X." When did that happen?

I think it started with Deus Ex, and that was because there were a ton of conspiracies and other subjects worth going into greater depth over in a lecture format after the main videos that are drawn upon within the game. Then came Bioshock Infinite, which drew on some similar but a still different set of subjects, and now we have L.A. Noire which has a third set of subjects it draws upon.

monster on a stick
Apr 29, 2013
Glad to see Bobbin is making an LP of this - it should be excellent as usual. LA Noire is flawed but on the whole I enjoyed it and glad I bought it. I'm tempted to get the PC version just to play through the DLC since I heard it was pretty good. I've heard rumors as to all the cuts that were made, including the Bunco desk. It's one of those "what might have been" games.

Spatula City posted:

oh man I'm excited for perpetual Film Corner. I actually took a community college class on noir a long time ago, it was great.
I'm assuming the next one is The Maltese Falcon, but then there's a couple of others that are almost mandatory. Obviously LA Confidential (Bobbin you should also mention the book and Ellroy's work a little bit), but also Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Double Indemnity, and The Big Sleep.

Also Chinatown and Touch of Evil. Arguably The Big Lebowski which has a classic noir plot but characters who think they are in another type of movie. Maybe he'll also cover The Big Sleep and Bobbin can finally tell us who killed the chauffeur :argh:

(Speaking on Lebowski, the Coens have made a lot of neo-noir. Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, Miller's Crossing, all qualify in my book.)

monster on a stick fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Apr 2, 2016

SubponticatePoster
Aug 9, 2004

Every day takes figurin' out all over again how to fuckin' live.
Slippery Tilde

Jay Rust posted:

What are you going to do about the copious amounts of nudity in the game? To the game's credit, it's always shocking yet never titillating, but it's also kind of exploitative.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

cover my rear end
:v:
I've played this game but haven't beaten it. I got distracted by something else and either this will get me to finish it or I won't have to!

EricFate
Aug 31, 2001

Crumpets. Glorious Crumpets.
Yay! An LP of my favorite hat shooting simulation game.

That is the one thing I remember most about my experience when I played it. Not the cases, not the characters, not the setting. It was making drat sure that my hat was the only true hat in the game and that no other characters would be allowed to keep one upon their heads for any extended length of time.

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost
The hat's always the first thing to go.

SgtSteel91
Oct 21, 2010

I think I own the game but never got around to finishing it. Liked the soundtrack though, especially the title music.

Aishlinn
Mar 31, 2011

This might hurt a bit..


berryjon posted:

The Shadow would make an excellent piece to review, as there were several movies in the 30's to 50's and they fit the 'Noir' dynamic.

Unfortunately the shadow != the spirit.

Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Dabir
Nov 10, 2012

Bit of an Adam West Batman moment at the end of that interview.

Dingwall
Feb 28, 2016
yaaaas, the maltese falcon. one of my favorite movies!

chitoryu12
Apr 24, 2014

EricFate posted:

Yay! An LP of my favorite hat shooting simulation game.

That is the one thing I remember most about my experience when I played it. Not the cases, not the characters, not the setting. It was making drat sure that my hat was the only true hat in the game and that no other characters would be allowed to keep one upon their heads for any extended length of time.

I was very happy to discover that if your hat falls off, you can walk over it to pick it back up.

Manic_Misanthrope
Jul 1, 2010


chitoryu12 posted:

I was very happy to discover that if your hat falls off, you can walk over it to pick it back up.

It's the first instinct whenever you clear out a room "Where's my hat?"

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Spatula City
Oct 21, 2010

LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
yaaaay, The Big Sleep's next! That's really fun to talk about, for ~REASONS~.

but talking about The Maltese Falcon, I think it's only fair to talk about how Dashiell Hammett's writing had a profound effect on the development of film noir, crime stories, and detective fiction in general. Of course The Maltese Falcon was a great film adapted from what was already probably his greatest novel (of the five he wrote). But The Thin Man was also fantastic, and spawned an entire film series, all of which are worth checking out thanks to the magnetic chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy. The second Thin Man film has an utterly fantastic villain reveal, too.
And then two of Hammett's other novels were tremendously influential - The Glass Key and Red Harvest. Although the former was directly adapted into a film starring Alan Ladd, its true influence is in providing sort of a blueprint for other detective stories involving political corruption. So while you may not have read The Glass Key, in essence you've seen or read the story elsewhere. Yojimbo, the classic Kurosawa film, is said to have been inspired by both The Glass Key and Red Harvest, both being about a lone figure caught in between two evil forces who manipulates both of them to bring them down. While some people said Red Harvest was more influential, I think The Glass Key explains Yojimbo better, as it's more positive about there being good people in the world worth protecting. And of course Sergio Leone blatantly ripped off Kurosawa for A Fistful of Dollars.
both novels also strongly influenced the Coens' Miller's Crossing. The title of the Coen Brothers' first film, Blood Simple., is taken from a line in Red Harvest.
Red Harvest is one of two of Hammett's novels and most of his short stories featuring a nameless figure called the Continental Op as the protagonist. The Continental Op was an influential precursor to many other hardboiled detectives, and appeared earlier than any of them, showing up in a short story published in 1923. He is cynical, and deft at manipulating people, but he maintains something of a hope for finding the good in people even as he operates in a dark, corrupt world. In Red Harvest, he finds an entire town seeped in corruption (appropriately named Poisonville) and undertakes to play both warring factions against each other to essentially eviscerate the entire town. There's a strong argument that Red Harvest heavily influenced gangster films, in addition to the effect it had on noir and westerns.

also, Dashiell Hammett himself is a tremendously fascinating person, but I don't have the background to really talk about that in as much detail as I think he deserves, so I hope someone else can step up.

  • Locked thread