Let's Spin Kick Some Ghosts in FEAR 2

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Spin Kick Some Ghosts in FEAR 2

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Blind Sally posted:

Brilliant. Hopin we get more Snakefist before the thread ends.

I've been slacking on that as I haven't had more than two combined hours free time in the last two weeks. I'm hoping to do something different soon.

# ? Jul 21, 2014 23:23

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 7, 2024 13:16

PurpleXVI: Oct 30, 2011; Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Silent protagonists kind of have the same issue that any game with no player agency does: If the players don't get a say in their character's major decisions and anything he says(in those games where he does say something), then what he says and does should be unimpeachable. If he does something stupid, it should be understandably in-character(for instance, doing something foolhardy because of someone it's established he cares about) or otherwise in-character, if it's just "he does it because he does it" or if his personality is grating or whatever, it rapidly becomes loving intolerable.

It can work fine, there's nothing grating about Freeman from Half-Life, for instance, because most of what he does, most of the places he goes, the things he goes along with, make sense.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 00:25

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

In a game where I have the choice between my protagonist being silent or canonically stupid, I'd rather have stupid. If a guy is outright making mistakes (due to character flaws, rather than bad writing), then the actions that the player is forced to go along with make sense on a meta level because it's established that you're following the plot like a movie. With a silent protagonist, the character comes off as an extreme doormat.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 00:41

bassguitarhero: Feb 29, 2008

The silent protagonist works, it's just that you need good writing to make it work. The problem with most games is that they're set piece after set piece and the story is an after-thought geared to tying the pieces together. If you develop your scenarios first and then write something to tie them together, story omissions and crutches really start to show.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 00:52

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

bassguitarhero posted:

The silent protagonist works, it's just that you need good writing to make it work. The problem with most games is that they're set piece after set piece and the story is an after-thought geared to tying the pieces together. If you develop your scenarios first and then write something to tie them together, story omissions and crutches really start to show.

Like I said, Outlast does a good job of it. The protagonist is silent because he has no reason to speak most of the time and when he should speak up, he's usually groggy (either from drugs, pain, or loss of consciousness) or too scared to speak. And he still screams and hyperventilates like he's trying to inflate a rubber raft, and all of his thoughts are kept neatly in a journal where you can see just what his opinion on everything is.

The most ridiculous is probably Call of Duty, because even after Treyarch proved that a fleshed out protagonist could work, Infinity Ward still insists on silence. The worst part is in games like Modern Warfare 2 where Soap basically won't shut up....until you take control of him. As soon as the player is in control, Soap becomes immediately silent and submissive. Same with Captain Price during the two levels you control him in the first Modern Warfare. It's like Infinity Ward has an outright rule that must be followed that denies the ability to let the player character speak, regardless of how they are in other parts of the game.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 01:35

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Part 13: MechWarrior V2

Maybe ChromeHounds would have been a better name for the video that sees us control the powered armor/mech for the second and last time in the game? We pop back out on the streets for much of this video and get to see some more destroyed environments. Also neat: the way the game handles further distances by not only removing polygons from the environment, but also obscuring the polygons with a shader of some nature. Even zooming in with the sniper rifle won't make the environment get more detailed. I guess it isn't something you are supposed to notice, but I like to look around in this game after the last couple levels were packed with weird little things. Sadly, we're abandoning those environments and focusing on generic destroyed streets and military facilities from here on out, so that's kind of sad. The sterile, nearly prefab environments remind me a bit of Mass Effect and because I have been avidly watching and contributing to the thread Mace Griffin which is approximately 90% the same corridor and doorways put in different configurations. It saves a lot of time designing and testing levels to have these kind of pieces together, but making someone traverse those areas isn't always fun. I think that's a large part of why you are given the mech suits for the majority of the street sections in the game, it gets you through quickly and lets you do something different with the scenery (in this case destroy it a bit). I'm not complaining, the mech stuff is pretty fun in this game.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 02:19

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

New from the minds over at the creepypasta factory, Bloody Snakefist!

www.creepypasta.net posted:

Bloody Snakefist

Ok, so I'm a total SnakeFist fanboy, I can't deny it. I love all the movies, new series and old, but my favorite is SnakeFist II: The Tower. It's a classic that everyone should see. One day I was at home playing "SnakeFist's Survival School," That free to play Diablo thing that is way better than Diablo III but a bit under the quality of Diablo II. Then I heard something hit the floor in the living room. I paused the game for the moment and went over to investigate. It seems the mailman had come by and dropped the mail through the slot like he usually does at 4:30 in the afternoon Monday through Saturday. The object that had hit the floor and drawn my attention was a DVD box of SnakeFist II. The box itself was addressed to me and had the stamp right on it, which I didn't know you could do. I was beyond excited. Last year when my dad left he took SnakeFist II, and while I have a torrent of it, you can't beat watching it on your mom's living room TV. As I opened the box and moved to the living room, forgetting about my game for now, a note slipped out.

The note was from my friend Kyle, whom I hadn't seen in a while due to it being the summer and my mom not wanting me to go too far from the house. The note read:

Dear Bobby:
If you are reading this note stop right now and don't do anything with this DVD. It's cursed and I haven't been able to sleep a single minute since I finished it. I'm sending it to you so you can destroy it. Please don't watch this, something is seriously wrong with the DVD, nothing is what it should be, strange things happen to you even after the movie is done. I think it's evil or something, maybe a gypsy curse? I can't repeat enough: destroy this, don't watch a second of it. Don't Watch It. Don't Watch It. Don't Watch It. Don't Watch It. Destroy it now.
-Your Friend, Kyle

This was a weird note to get from Kyle, but he was always a joker so I put the DVD into my player and hit start.

Instead of the normal Warner Brothers screen with Bugs leaning up against the WB seal and eating a carrot I was greated with Bugs leaning up against a giant bloody goat's head. Instead of a carrot he held a premature baby. He took a bite and chewed on the baby, blood running down his lips. With a half full mouth of child he looked directly at me and in a voice far too deep for Bugs simply said "Hail Satan" and then the screen faded to black. I had never seen anything like it, and little did I know it wasn't the only thing different about this copy of the DVD. The next thing I knew the familiar SnakeFist II logo, with the Twin Towers as the II faded into view, but it only held like normal for a moment. Soon the letters started bleeding until the bottom half of the screen was covered in blood. A thick red liquid started seeping through the bottom of the TV onto the entertainment center as well, but I was too struck by what I was seeing to realize mom would be totally mad if she saw that. In a way I'm glad I didn't look away too long because shortly after the TV started bleeding two hyper realistic planes came in and hit the II after SnakeFist's name and I could hear the screams of the dying and smell burning jet fuel. As quickly as the title had warped into such a twisted mockery of the real title screen it was gone, replaced by the credits to the movie. Instead of the normal credits the names were replaced with the likes of John Wayne Gacy, Timothy McVeigh, Jack the Ripper and other murderers. Hitler was listed as the director.

I was starting to think that Kyle's note had been a warning and not a joke. There was something very wrong with just this short part of the movie I had seen. The next part of the movie was strange. Five minutes of SnakeFist stomping on the head of a dead man until he was pounding his foot into powdered bone and thin blood and his glorious mane of hair was flecked with brain matter. I swear I could feel my head pound with each time SnakeFist dropped his boot. This was a scene from the SnakeFist reboot, I realized, but the actor was the original SnakeFist. Something was clearly wrong. It only got worse from there. Instead of reporting for duty at CIA headquarters, the SnakeFist in this movie went cruising through the seedy areas of New York City just randomly firing an uzi out the window whenever he passed a group of kids. I swear one of them looked exactly like me. The movie zoomed in on their faces and you could see the anguish and pain in their eyes after being shot by their hero. Eventually SnakeFist exploded a school bus with kids still on it, when it blew up body parts and still screaming heads went past the camera. Something was very wrong with the movie.

I sat in rapt attention for the next four hours as SnakeFist went around the city doing terrible things to people for seemingly no reason. Every time one of his victims always seemed to look like me. After a few more crimes SnakeFist kept referring to the boy that looked like me as "Bobby Macmillian of West Plainview, Illinois" which is my full name and the town I live in. I was creeped out to say the least, and it didn't help SnakeFist kept feeding me to bears, throwing me in wood chippers and forcing me into cold water so I got hypothermia. After watching myself die after SnakeFist beat me over the head with a beer bottle until I was convulsing uncontrollably I tried to turn the movie off. The only problem is that it wouldn't turn off. I thought that I would just walk away, but once I got to the door out of the living room I saw a figure at the table in the kitchen. It was SnakeFist. Something was wrong, he looked not real, like he had come out of the TV screen instead of being a human. I tried to run but he was on me in a second. He lifted me up and brought me down on his knee in a swift motion, completely breaking my spine. He then began to shout my name and hometown as he forced my head into an oven until I burned to death.

I guess I shouldn't have played that DVD, huh?

# ? Jul 22, 2014 03:01

chiasaur11: Oct 22, 2012

You know, for all the talk about Snakefist, my favorite oddball part of the snakacy is still the little comics that came with the action figures.

The ones that were meant to tie in with the cancelled Snakefist cartoon, back in the 80s.

I mean, they don't have Snakefist's classic catchphrase, and the only things getting gruesomely decapitated are the "Terrorliens" (Terrorist aliens), but they're just so... weird. Even by Snakefist standards.

Since the toyline couldn't just be Snakefist, they added a large supporting cast, including Lt. Holiday. You know, Snakefist's old commanding officer back in 'Nam? The one who died in a flashback in the first Snakefist movie?

And it wasn't like they ignored it. Holiday had a cyborg arm, and Snakefist joked about how he should take it easy, they wouldn't give him another replacement like back in Nha Trang.

Which, if you remember, was where the good L.T. died in Snakefist one, beaten to death with his own arm. Like, all the events of the films happened, but nobody died except terrorists. Also, there was this jerk in Terrorlien armor who kept acting like he was a total badass, and you kept expecting Snakefist to make him eat his words, but no. He just went around being nearly as badass as Snakefist and twice as cocky.

(I've heard rumors that there was a mostly pulped run of the things where half of Snakefist's dialog was "gently caress you!", but I can't find any verification either way. Anyone else have more information on the topic?)

# ? Jul 22, 2014 03:05

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

...so how did he write the story after burning to death?

# ? Jul 22, 2014 03:05

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

chitoryu12 posted:

...so how did he write the story after burning to death?

The same way every creepypasta ends with the writer in a completely impossible position that they somehow found time to write 500 words about.

Alternatively:

"A walrus? He'll be killed for sure!"
"Obviously he wasn't Homer if he wrote the story your reading..."

# ? Jul 22, 2014 03:08

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

But seriously, that really hit every point on the Creepypasta scale.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 03:13

Kadorhal: Jun 3, 2013; Look, just sign the stupid petition. I've got stuff to do.

Looked like one of those newspapers mentioned something about "UCA talks". Isn't that another thing from Shogo?

Also, truth be told, anyone namedropping me in one of their videos was the last thing I expected to ever happen (Pronunciation was good enough :v:

bunch of people have different ways of shortening it down to the first syllable as a nickname so I only really care that they get the last two right, and you did). And, speaking of Replica-talk that brought on that namedrop, and also I guess minor spoilers again, the next level's intel has those excerpts from a Replica brochure that I'm pretty sure I mentioned before.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 06:24

Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

graey alien posted:

EVERY MORNING I WAKE UP AND OPEN PALM SLAM A VHS INTO THE SLOT. IT�S SNAKEFIST III VIPER FANG AND RIGHT THEN AND THERE I START DOING THE MOVES ALONGSIDE WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER, SNAKEFIST. I DO EVERY MOVE AND I DO EVERY MOVE HARD. MAKIN WHOOSHING SOUNDS WHEN I SLAM DOWN SOME ENVENOM BASTARDS OR EVEN WHEN I MESS UP TECHNIQUE. NOT MANY CAN SAY THEY ESCAPED ARIZONAS MOST DANGEROUS PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY. I CAN. I SAY IT AND I SAY IT OUTLOUD EVERYDAY TO PEOPLE IN MY COLLEGE CLASS AND ALL THEY DO IS PROVE PEOPLE IN COLLEGE CLASS CAN STILL BE IMMATURE JEKRS. AND IVE LEARNED ALL THE LINES AND IVE LEARNED HOW TO MAKE MYSELF AND MY APARTMENT LESS LONELY BY SHOUTING EM ALL. 2 HOURS INCLUDING WIND DOWN EVERY MORNIng

# ? Jul 22, 2014 06:29

Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

Destructoid posted:

It only took a few hours for FistCon 2014 to degenerate into the most catastrophic fan convention in recent memory.

Over the course of one weekend, the organizers took $17,000 from conventiongoers as part of an emergency fundraising drive, failed to pay any of their high-profile guests, and attempted to compensate disappointed ticket-holders by offering them an �extra� hour in a children�s ball pit. The ball pit only fit around six people. There was apparently not a very long queue.

FistCon was originally known as SnakeFist-Con USA, a convention aimed specifically at SnakeFist culture enthusiasts from fandoms such as SnakeFisters, Welcome to gently caress You, and SnakeFist's F.I.S.T. If you�re at all familiar with any of these subcultures, you won�t be surprised to hear that many of the eventual conventiongoers were in their teens.

SnakeFist-Con USA raised more than $4,000 in startup funds via Indiegogo, before changing their name to FistCon to avoid implying that they were officially linked with the creator's of SnakeFist itself. �We are not in any way affiliated with or endorsed by Hal Bouchard or Warner Bros.,� reads FistCon�s Twitter account.

Billing itself as SnakeFist�s answer to BronyCon, FistCon easily found volunteers and drummed up donations. Tickets went on sale in summer 2013, with the convention planned for this weekend, July 11-13, in the Schaumburg Renaissance Convention Center in Illinois. A weekend pass was $65, with day passes priced at $30-50, plus typical hotel room rental bills. This was a little on the pricey side for a first-time convention (San Diego Comic Con charges $45 for a day pass on peak days), but not exorbitantly so.

On July 11, with most attendees already on site, FistCon staff members dropped the bombshell that the convention would be thrown out of the hotel unless $17,000 was ponied before 10pm.

With virtually everyone at FistCon being obsessive users of social media, this news was posted all over Something Awful and Twitter within minutes, becoming the weekend�s main source of gossip and schadenfreude among Something Awful fans who weren�t attending the convention. The idea of crowdfunding $17,000 for an emergency hotel payment was also outlandish enough for people to start pointing out that even if this wasn�t a scam, it was certainly an indication of incompetence on the part of convention organizers.

Amazingly, FistCon did manage to raise $17,000 in cash and PayPal donations that evening, an impressive amount when you know that there were only an estimated 1,000 people at the convention on Friday night.

Footage of the fundraising announcement shows convention organizers soliciting donations from a crowded ballroom of Tumblr users, many of whom hand over cash and then break into song while performing the middle-fingered salute from SnakeFist reboot franchise.

In a Something Awful post, which has since been deleted, FistCon staff, Lazyfire, wrote, �The upper management of the hotel is threatening to shut down fistcon, unless we give them $17,000 by 10 p.m. Central Time tonight. Please go to SnakeFistCon.org and click the Donate button and give her anything you can. Unless we get this by tonight everything is cancelled. We suspect it�s due to the fact that upper management doesn�t like the people at the con.�

Many are describing this $17,000 fundraiser as a perfect real-world example of the bad side (or at least the stupid side) of Something Awful culture.

Hundreds of people banded together to support a common cause, spurred on by excitement and camaraderie, without actually stopping to check the facts or find out where their money was going. And whether or not it actually was a scam, it followed an extremely efficient scam formula: separating people from their money as quickly as possible, without giving them a chance to think about it too much.

FistCon's Something Awful thread page has already stated that they will refund all of the donations made via Paypal. However, it�s unclear how they will refund the cash donations because there�s no evidence that they kept a record of who gave cash and how much.

�i donated at least $360 from straight out of my bag and was wondering if i would see any of that ever again,� wrote one attendee in a message, Blind Sally, to the FistCon staff. �They collected money in a bag,� wrote another.

On Saturday, FistCon posted a Something Awful thread titled �The Explanation,� which included a photo of a letter on the hotel's stationary:

�We worked out a plan with the hotel to give them money slowly for the entire course of the weekend, which was more than 100% feasible for us. However, 12 hours later one of our admins was unexpectedly pulled into a meeting with higher-level hotel staff, at which point they were informed that convention management had to procure $20,000 by the end of the night.

It was an extremely sudden change, especially since we had sent them a number of payments before and a considerable sum the night before. This sudden change put us in a place where we would not be allowed to open on the morning of 7/12, unless we had the full amount for them the night of 7/11. Unfortunately, the money we needed to pay that amount would not have been coming in until 7/12 in the form of walk-in attendees, as is customary for conventions.�

This explanation might have worked on people who were having fun at the convention on Friday night, but Something Awful users elsewhere were more doubtful. The now-infamous $17,000 had already set conspiracy theorists wondering whether FistCon's claims were real, including one person proving how easy it is to forge a similar letter on Renaissance hotel stationary.

FistCon originally projected that 3,000-7,000 people would attend the convention, and that it would cost �upwards of $100,000� to host. People at the convention have already reported that there were no more than 1,500 people in attendance on Friday or Saturday, with that number dropping rapidly as the weekend wore on.

One YouTube video sees a convention staffer talking about �containing a riot� of �5,000 people� during the fundraiser, but the footage from the fundraiser itself shows a hall containing approximately 1,000 people, mostly yelling SnakeFist slogans and throwing up the middle-finger.

Aside from the growing concern over FistCon staff asking for so much extra money mid-convention, the main reason for the increase in FistCon conspiracy theories is the implausibility of the hotel fee story. It seems unlikely that a major venue like the Schaumburg Convention Center (which is owned by Marriott) would allow a first-time convention to show up without having paid their fees in advance, and then demand a $20,000 fee at 10pm on a Friday night. At the very least, they would not suddenly change their agreement with the convention halfway through the event itself.

A 2013 post from convention organizer biosterous states that the convention center had already been rented 11 months ago. Referring to the fact that FistCon's was listed on the hotel�s website, they wrote, �They don�t just do that without a legally binding contract and the exchange of money.�

We have contacted Marriott Hotels and the Schaumburg Renaissance regarding their payment policy for conventions of this type, but they had not replied at press time.

FistCon's money problems inevitably led to another level of disaster: major guests pulling out. Welcome to Night Vale were the most famous guests in attendance, taking time out of their U.S. tour to do a live performance and Q&A.

Instead, the WTNV crew showed up to discover that FistCon could not pay their travel and performance costs. Featured speaker Geop also found out that his hotel room had not been paid for, at which point he left the convention to sleep on a sofa bed constructed by one of the Welcome To gently caress You writers. The mere concept of this Something Awful celebrity sleepover already sounded like more fun than the entirety of FistCon.

Something Awful LPers, Goonhouse, were one of the other major guests. Their panel and live recording of Ribbit King on Friday went smoothly, but once they heard about the debacle unfolding around them, they decided to pull out of the convention. At this point they discovered that their hotel rooms were no longer listed under FistCons name, and that they were being asked to foot the bill. They attempted to contact convention organisers Lazyfire, biosterous, and Kaderhol, who ignored their calls.

Since then, FistCon has gotten in touch with GoonHouse and is settling their expense account: possibly the first piece of good news all weekend.

The Geekiary posted footage of the announcement that Welcome To gently caress You wouldn�t be showing up for their panel, but it was FistCon's eventual Something Awful post that really made waves. Why? Well, it thoughtlessly focused on the most evocative detail of this whole disastrous weekend: the ball pit.

�For those of you who had reserved seats,� wrote Lazyfire, referring to the fact that Welcome To gently caress You was a ticketed event, �we are giving you guys an extra hour with the ball pit."

Astonishingly enough, this was not a euphemism or a joke. There was indeed a ball pit at FistCon, and for some reason the convention organizers felt that people would genuinely want to spend an hour inside it, as compensation for missing out on a gently caress You show. Since many people bought tickets to the convention just because gently caress You would be there, this had better be a pretty drat impressive ball pit.

Photos of the tiny, sagging ball pit sitting forlornly in an empty convention hall have since become emblematic of FistCon's public image as a disaster zone. Something Awful users in the GBS subforum quickly set about turning it into a meme, resulting in a kind of schadenfreude glee when convention attendees eventually reported that the ball pit had deflated.

�Jeez,� wrote Something Awful forum user Putty, �if I had a dollar for every ball pit joke being made right now I think I�d have $17,000.�

Aside from major problems like apparent financial chaos, guest cancellations, and the ball pit, plenty of other things at FistCon began to seem strange or unprofessional.

- Only 500 tickets were made available each day, making it well-nigh impossible for the convention to achieve the projected 3,000-7,000 attendees they originally assumed would show up.

- Something Awful forum user nine-gear crow described hotel mints being given away at a panel as competition prizes.

- The so-called �game room� featured a single TV and console.

- The moderator for Geop�s panel never showed up, so he had to moderate it herself. Everyone was banned.

- Several videos making fun of the convention surfaced online, filmed by someone who claimed that they found it easy to just wander in without paying for a day pass.

- The FistCon blog said they were �in partnership� with the charity Random Acts, but the convention does not appear to have been publicly acknowledged by Random Acts.

- A blogger claiming to be a former FistCon volunteer posted a lengthy account of their experiences during the planning stages of the convention, along with what appears to be screencaps of conversations with other organizers, most of whom seemed disorganized or confused throughout. This aligns with other descriptions of FistCon's organizational structure, with �fandom committees� taking control of various aspects of convention fundraising and scheduling.

- None of the main convention organizers appear to have a background in fan conventions or similar events. FistCon owner Lazyfire is an LPer with some Red Faction and Battlefield LPs to their claim.

As it stands, we�re inclined to believe that the situation at FistCon was not the result of malice or an intentional scam, but more a case of the organizers biting off more than they could chew.

Although it�s too early to say precisely what went down at the Schaumburg Convention Center, it seems like the biggest problems were precipitated by a lack of experience on the part of the convention organizers, and an inaccurate estimate of how many people would buy tickets.

Fandom is no stranger to crowdfunding ventures, even from well before the days of Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and even the Internet. But compared to fandom�s many charity fundraisers, artistic and publishing projects, small fan events, and emergency PayPal donation requests, conventions and conferences are by far the most difficult to organize. A small convention of a couple hundred people is potentially doable for a newcomer to the industry, but FistCon was a hugely ambitious undertaking for a group of people who had no prior experience in convention management.

In assuming that 3,000-7,000 people would buy tickets to FistCon, the organizers were effectively expecting their convention to be the same size as (if not bigger than) WorldCon, which typically attracts a crowd of about 4,000-6,000. FistCon 2015 is supposedly expected to attract 4,500-8,500 people, with weekend badges already on sale at $50 each.

A lot of the fandom commentary on the FistCon meltdown has focused either on the naivete of the young SnakeFister audience, or the possibility that the whole thing could be a scam. But as Something Awful forums user slowbeef points out, FistCon is not exactly unique. In fact, disastrous fan conventions are cyclical, like a plague of locusts that comes back to hit a new generation every few years.

The last example was only a year ago: Las Pegasus Unicon, a My Little Pony convention that saw a similar timeline of low attendance followed by financial problems and guest payments failing to go through. However, there isn�t much crossover between bronies and the SnakeFister side of Something Awful fandom, so most of FistCon's audience probably weren�t familiar with the Las Pegasus story.

The closest crossover point would probably be Tentmoot, a disastrous 2003 Lord of the Rings fan convention that lives on in the memory of people who participated in Livejournal fandom, but would be unfamiliar to FistCon's younger audience.

Combine this with the enticing concept of a convention �by Something Awful users, for Something Awful users,� and you have the reason why FistCon managed to raise so much money not just on Friday evening, but on Indiegogo last year and through several fundraising drives since then.

So, all this has happened before, and will happen again. But probably not in SnakeFister fandom next time round.

FistCon's organizers have not yet replied to a request for comment.

Sally fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Jul 22, 2014

# ? Jul 22, 2014 06:50

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Actual photograph from FistCon 2014:

# ? Jul 22, 2014 14:06

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Jesus loving Christ, Sally.

# ? Jul 22, 2014 20:23

bbcisdabomb: Jan 15, 2008; SHEESH

Blind Sally posted:

FistCon

There is something wrong with you in the absolute best possible way.

# ? Jul 23, 2014 02:29

Stabbey_the_Clown: Sep 21, 2002; Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?; Taco Defender

Lazyfire missed a sniper rifle with a ton of ammo shortly before the pit before the theatre. On Hard that mech section is REALLY hard, and I often had to retreat and leap out of the mech to let it heal. For the boss mech, I bailed out at the last possible second and discovered once on foot, that I'd managed to kill it with my last shot, which was a relief.

# ? Jul 23, 2014 15:43

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I think that Soviet-esque mosaic in the subway station is actually ripped directly from a real piece of Soviet artwork.

# ? Jul 23, 2014 15:51

biosterous: Feb 23, 2013

Blind Sally posted:

They attempted to contact convention organisers Lazyfire, biosterous, and Kaderhol, who ignored their calls.

Jokes on everyone who expected me to be able to organize anything! I can't, and I don't even have a phone to ignore your calls on!

# ? Jul 23, 2014 16:30

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Part 14: Tram Ride Fun

Alright, here's the strangest video in the LP. Not only do I survive a gauntlet of a fight on one of the more impressive set piece sections of the game, I do it with a lot fewer deaths than I had anticipated. Hands down, the tram fight in this video is the hardest part of the game in normal mode. Limited resources, constantly spawning enemies, limited useful cover, stupid instructions from the game (or me just not paying enough attention, your call). Yes, this section is really set to frustrate new players. Luckily, I somehow lucked my way through the fight with minor difficulty compared to my test playthrough where I died at least three times on this due to the straight up effectiveness of that auto-shotgun. Also, I ended up missing a spin kick on a ducking Replicant and when he stood back up he just punched me in my feet until I died. I wish I had recorded that test run now because that was unique.

Anyways, just one more video and we're done with the game, so if you have questions/comments or whatever it's time to throw them out there.

Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 09:22 on Jul 24, 2014

# ? Jul 24, 2014 00:17

Sindai: Jan 24, 2007; i want to achieve immortality through not dying

The video won't load for me at any resolution in Firefox and only 360p in Chrome. :wtc:

# ? Jul 24, 2014 02:49

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Video won't load for me at all, either.

# ? Jul 24, 2014 03:00

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Sindai posted:

The video won't load for me at any resolution in Firefox and only 360p in Chrome.

I thought I was going nuts. I'll re-upload as I was getting the same issue.

Edit: This has happened to me in the past where it'll be fine on my computer but YouTube has some issue with it. There's nothing anyone can do but re-upload in this case. Everything else works fine in the LP from what I can tell.

Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Jul 24, 2014

# ? Jul 24, 2014 03:06

PurpleXVI: Oct 30, 2011; Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Honestly, I'd say that the parts of the game that have the best atmosphere and generally function the best are the ones where you aren't fighting anyone, where it just plays on abandoned/destroyed urban areas.

# ? Jul 24, 2014 06:02

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Part 14: Tram Ride Fun is reuploaded without the issues of the video originally linked to. Sorry for any issues this caused.

# ? Jul 24, 2014 09:23

hectorgrey: Oct 14, 2011

You know, immediately after uploading, only the low resolution stuff is actually available, right? That's normal for Youtube, because they re-encode it at the lowest resolution first, and the highest last, regardless of the resolution of the source video. If you find that only 360p is available in future, it might be worth waiting an hour or two to see if that changes.

# ? Jul 24, 2014 12:40

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

hectorgrey posted:

You know, immediately after uploading, only the low resolution stuff is actually available, right? That's normal for Youtube, because they re-encode it at the lowest resolution first, and the highest last, regardless of the resolution of the source video. If you find that only 360p is available in future, it might be worth waiting an hour or two to see if that changes.

Actually, I uploaded 13, 14 and 15 all at the same time last weekend. 13 and 15 are totally fine, but 14 had some random problem. When I did Red Faction 2 there was an episode that was just fine on my computer but the first upload was completely shot and only ran for two minutes no matter what. I had to re-upload that as well.

# ? Jul 24, 2014 13:23

WFGuy: Feb 18, 2011; Press X to jump, then press X again!; Toilet Rascal

It's a pretty common problem in sci-fi, but I'm always annoyed when the "Emergency Braking Systems" fail. Emergency brakes are supposed to be a failsafe mechanism, after all - if your emergency brakes fail, it should be by automatically applying and leaving you stranded in the middle of the system. It's usually considered the less deadly of the two options when the engineer is developing it, since the alternative is... well, that.

# ? Jul 24, 2014 20:06

Samovar: Jun 4, 2011; When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

From what I recall from the first F.E.A.R.'s manual re. the assassins; they were just regular Replica soldiers kitted out in some special army which had the techno gee-whizzery to bend light around THEM, but nothing else (i.e. nothing carried), hence them being unarmed. Besides from that, they weren't in command or nowt.

# ? Jul 24, 2014 21:12

Alavaria: Apr 3, 2009

WFGuy posted:

It's a pretty common problem in sci-fi, but I'm always annoyed when the "Emergency Braking Systems" fail. Emergency brakes are supposed to be a failsafe mechanism, after all - if your emergency brakes fail, it should be by automatically applying and leaving you stranded in the middle of the system. It's usually considered the less deadly of the two options when the engineer is developing it, since the alternative is... well, that.

I'm sure Alma or someone else really had it in for the player character

# ? Jul 24, 2014 22:57

Sindai: Jan 24, 2007; i want to achieve immortality through not dying

hectorgrey posted:

You know, immediately after uploading, only the low resolution stuff is actually available, right? That's normal for Youtube, because they re-encode it at the lowest resolution first, and the highest last, regardless of the resolution of the source video. If you find that only 360p is available in future, it might be worth waiting an hour or two to see if that changes.

If encoding isn't done yet the higher resolutions don't even show up as options. For 14 all the resolutions were showing up but all or most of them would fail to load.

# ? Jul 25, 2014 00:36

your evil twin: Aug 23, 2010; "What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."

"Yay, we've got the pulse gun again! Now let me just put it down for a moment and pick up this sniper rifle..."

:negative:

It seems that the pulse gun always vanishes if dropped. Could be a bug, could be intentional to prevent people from using the ammo glitch. (A bit pointless given there are only two pulse guns in the game. Perhaps it is a bit more relevant in multiplayer.)

Personally, when I played I wouldn't drop a heavy weapon to pick up another heavy weapon; I would drop the assault rifle or the shotgun. Then I would go nuts using the heavy weapons until I ran out of ammo for one of them, and I would pick up an assault rifle or shotgun again. In the last third of the game 3/4 of the enemies are armed with either assault rifles or shotguns so there's no danger of not being able to find one.

And in that particular battle there is plentiful sniper rifle ammo, and it's a one-shot kill, and you are allowed to carry 50 (!) sniper bullets. So could have replaced the assault rifle with the sniper rifle.

Do you plan on doing the FEAR 2 DLC? In the first chapter there is a locked door that requires a keycard. If you try to use the slot, it turns out that you actually already have this keycard and inside there is a pulse gun. I don't think you can take it with you to the next chapter, so you're just supposed to use it to vaporise some easy ATC grunts.

Samovar posted:

From what I recall from the first F.E.A.R.'s manual re. the assassins; they were just regular Replica soldiers kitted out in some special army which had the techno gee-whizzery to bend light around THEM, but nothing else (i.e. nothing carried), hence them being unarmed. Besides from that, they weren't in command or nowt.

Actually, they were the result of Armacham's first secret project, Icarus. Back in the 70s NASA was looking for some way to allow astronauts to be in low gravity for long periods of time without losing bone density. Armacham had just started to produce clone soldiers and so decided to try replacing the skeletons of some with artificial bones made of a special carbon fibre composite. The artificial skeleton was lighter than natural bone, and so a side benefit was that the test subjects could move faster than normal. Armacham decided to give them drugs to enhance their dexterity and speed and turn them into assassins with special cloaking suits.

However replacing someone's entire skeleton is super-expensive, so the project was scrapped in favour of the whole psychic-commander thing. All the assassins were locked up or put in stasis or something, but they were released by Fettel during the first game. They had not been engineered with a psychic link, but they willingly joined up with Fettel to get revenge on ATC.

I assume that at some point it was decided to restart the project - FEAR 2 has a new batch of replica soliders, and it has new assassins with different cloaking technology and an electrical attack; I guess these new assassins were given the same psychic control as the replicas, and so Alma's prescence activated them along with the ordinary replicas.

Apparently, if you use the pulse gun on an assassin, you'll see it has a unique artifical skeleton. Pretty awesome detail. A shame I never tried it myself.

# ? Jul 25, 2014 00:38

Stabbey_the_Clown: Sep 21, 2002; Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?; Taco Defender

That tram sequence is very, very hard on Hard difficulty, since you have very limited health and armor supplies. Those replica assassins are also really

I started trying to kill Keegan at this point, but sadly, the game won't let you. You can put your crosshairs over him, sure, but the gun just will not fire.

# ? Jul 25, 2014 01:45

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

your evil twin posted:

Do you plan on doing the FEAR 2 DLC? In the first chapter there is a locked door that requires a keycard. If you try to use the slot, it turns out that you actually already have this keycard and inside there is a pulse gun. I don't think you can take it with you to the next chapter, so you're just supposed to use it to vaporise some easy ATC grunts.

Nope, I don't have the DLC and I was never intending to cover it for the LP either way. I always saw this as a run of the stand alone game, the DLC sounded like Monolith going one way on something that FEAR 3 invalidated.

# ? Jul 25, 2014 02:00

your evil twin: Aug 23, 2010; "What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."

Yeah, the Reborn DLC is all about Fettel's ghost getting himself reborn in a replica body. In FEAR 3 he's just a ghost. In the same way that FEAR 2 made FEAR 1's expansions non-canon, I guess that FEAR 3 made FEAR 2's expansion non-canon.

That said, I recall the DLC being pretty good gameplay-wise. A lot of FEAR 1 veterans complimented it on feeling more like FEAR 1.

your evil twin fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Jul 25, 2014

# ? Jul 25, 2014 02:04

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

One thing I've noticed with the series is that every game is very noticeably different in gameplay and tone:

* FEAR has a much more restricted setting, being almost entirely a single generic industrial/office complex by the harbor. No iron sights, somewhat outdated graphics, and a generally faster feel to the gunfights that comes off as John Woo mixed with indie horror. There's a lot more emphasis on the horror setting and memorable scares and tricks.

* FEAR 2 has a graphical update, but is given a somewhat blurrier appearance as opposed to the very sharp visuals of the first game. The guns have proper iron sights and gunfights are a little bit slower because of the increased emphasis on proper aiming. More environments and much more expansive ones, but they can get samey after a while. A little less focus on scares and memorable incidents and more on the fighting.

* F3A3R3R3R3 adds a cover system, then adds fast zombie-style enemies that negate it, leaving the player switching between the even slower cover-based shooting and running around dual-wielding machine pistols and blasting off limbs with shotguns. Scares are extremely minimal, the always-first-person gameplay replaced with traditional cutscenes (that still, bizarrely, use a silent protagonist with Fettel always talking for him), and there's heavy emphasis on co-op and arcade style gameplay that even changes the ending depending on which co-op player did better. And the graphics are made even blurrier and with more lighting effects, making it seem like someone smeared Vaseline on the screen before you played.

# ? Jul 25, 2014 03:14

Kadorhal: Jun 3, 2013; Look, just sign the stupid petition. I've got stuff to do.

your evil twin posted:

Yeah, the Reborn DLC is all about Fettel's ghost getting himself reborn in a replica body. In FEAR 3 he's just a ghost. In the same way that FEAR 2 made FEAR 1's expansions non-canon, I guess that FEAR 3 made FEAR 2's expansion non-canon.

That said, I recall the DLC being pretty good gameplay-wise. A lot of FEAR 1 veterans complimented it on feeling more like FEAR 1.

I don't know/remember much about the DLC - my whole experience with it was watching a longplay of it on Youtube a couple years back - but I do remember one thing it does that the other games don't: your character actually talks. It could be just for the part where Fettel makes him go on a bad acid trip and murder his entire squad for all I remember, but still, that's a thing.

EDIT: Connection which struggled to download a four-megabyte update for a game in under ten minutes earlier today was somehow fine with me watching a Youtube video in 480p, so. Intel's updated, finally got those Replica brochures I kept hyping up and also a kinda funny one about those damned trams.

Kadorhal fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Jul 25, 2014

# ? Jul 25, 2014 03:59

Sally: Jan 9, 2007; Don't post Small Dash!

Lazyfire posted:

Anyways, just one more video and we're done with the game, so if you have questions/comments or whatever it's time to throw them out there.

Question: do you promise to give us the SnakeFist Overview Pt. 2 before closing the thread? I'd like to know what the reboot franchise was like.

# ? Jul 25, 2014 06:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 7, 2024 13:16

Lazyfire: Feb 4, 2006; God saves. Satan Invests

Part 15: Still Island

Last level! It would be really great if people could hold off on talking about the very end of the video for a day or so in case people are reading the thread but can't watch the video for a bit. This isn't a particularly combat heavy video, though there is combat, this is more tied up in closing a lot of gaps the story has left us thus far. We also get our second turret section, and while it's better than the first because you don't have to worry about a major plot point walking away on the edge of your vision, you do have to contend with some nu-metal playing over the entire thing. The final battle is always a thing as well, I can never tell if it's very difficult or incredibly easy. I've beaten the game four times now (granted, over the course of five years) and I've gone through it with barely a scratch and then I'll do it and die four or five times. I think it's all about enemy placement and what more than any sort of ability or skill on the player's part.

# ? Jul 26, 2014 11:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Spin Kick Some Ghosts in FEAR 2

«‹›12 »