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 Shadowrun? Isn't that a PnP/Genesis game? It is! Both the SNES and Genesis versions are based off the pencil and paper version. The Genesis version is a lot closer to the mechanics of the PnP game, while the SNES version treats itself as more of a straight adventure game. There's an archived LP of the Genesis version here if you're curious about it. Wait, what the heck HAPPENED to our world? So yeah, things got REALLY out of hand on planet earth. Remember the whole mayan apocalypse thing in 2012? Well that happened, but instead of just a straight up rapture or what have you, a bunch of dragons and aboriginal gods resurrected. Here's a bit of a run down on what's different. -All the Aboriginal religions in the Americas were right. -Magic is real. -Dragons are real, but instead of flying around being assholes, they're CEOs of megacorporations... and assholes. -Speaking of megacorporations, they have militaries and own nations now, also everything got crazy and now a lot of countries are just gone. If you're curious, Here's a map of North America nowadays. -A lot of people are cyborgs now, and it's awesome. -A lot of magical creatures exist now too, when poo poo went down, a lot of people turned into Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Trolls. They're about what you'd expect. What exactly does "Shadowrun" mean? So basically, in this crapsack world, Shadowrunners are freelance mercenaries. If you're a megacorp, and you want to deliver a package, sabotage a computer system, or straight out assassinate a dude, you hire yourself a Shadowrunner. Shadowrunners talk big, but really, any dickhole with a handgun and a cell phone can be a Shadowrunner. The more expensive the runner, the less likely you are to just be paying to mess up your rival company's floor. Most runs are coordinated by a Mister Johnson, a handle for anyone who sets up runs. You talk to Mister Johnson, who talks to the runner, who gets your poo poo done. Being a Johnson also loving sucks because any well paying job might also make the megacorp want to shut you up, and unfortunately you're in a field of work that's full of greedy gun-toting sociopaths. Aside from being able to hire runners as party members, none of this comes up as a game mechanic. I just thought it was neat.  Hey wait a minute! You got X detail wrong! Okay so let me be honest. As much as I love the Shadowrun universe and all the video games, I never got to play a single game of the pen and paper version. I had the book, but somehow I was apparently the one person in my town who wanted to play. In any case, I might get a detail or two wrong when I bring it up. Feel free to correct me on it. What's the deal with spoilers? The big plot of the game is the fact that we're trying to piece together our past, so let's try to keep the spoilers to the minimum. Spoiler tags are okay if you REALLY need to talk about something. Honestly even if you start talking about the second half, no one would understand anyway, but even so, let's keep it as spoiler-free as possible.  Updates!Update 1: Auspicious Beginnings Update 2: Grind of Thrones. Bonus Update: The Amazing Zip Gun! Update 3: Champion of the Thunderdome Update Four: Ahead of the Game Update 5: What Kind of Name is "Rust Stiletto" Anyway? Update 6: This Subplot Would Be Moot If This Were Canada Update 7: We Get Ditched Danaru fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jun 17, 2014 22:13
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Update 1: Auspicious Beginnings Come on everyone! Let's start our Shadowrun adventure!    Welp!   Well, we may not be off to the best start, but at least we have an animal friend!  er, wait   Well that got wierdly anime for a second.  And here comes one of the morgue guys already. These guys work FAST.  Seattle is the central area that a lot of the Shadowrun stories take place in. It's sort of like how there's always some superpowered rear end in a top hat attacking Gotham city, except in this case the entire city is populated with superpowered assholes. Also no The Matrix jokes. Shadowrun did it first.     I wasn't kidding by the way, that was one of the morticians. Our hero apparently got the really cheap version of the Docwagon bracelet, where instead of calling a mercenary ambulance, it just tells the clean-up crew where to find most of your corpse  You get what you pay for, people.  I'm going to be straight up with you guys, I work hospital security for the biggest hospitals in the province, and every time I go into the morgue I think of this scene. Other people get nervous because there's dead people, my first thought is "hope a shadowrunner doesn't pop out  "  Turns out being gunned down in the streets is bad for our memory. In any case, we get control of the character here, and our health bar appears in the top right corner. If it doesn't look like much, that's because it isn't. Fortunately Shadowrun is an RPG, so by the end of the game we'll get that health bar going halfway across the screen. It's also an adventure game, so let's collect some items!  So the giant hand there in front of our hero's face is the cursor for examining stuff. We get a couple other cursors later on, but this is the one you'll be using most often. With this you can examine and screw around with stuff. Let's check out our slab.  J. Armitage, eh? Well at least we have our last name. (Which is a reference to Neuromancer, for what it's worth.) Also a thing fell out, so let's read it.  This memo won't be relevant for roughly half the game, and even then it won't be all that relevant. I don't think I even picked it up. A lot of items like this you don't need to keep with you, they're just there to give you plot fluff or keywords for dialogue. But enough of this, let's loot some actually useful items!  In the fridge we find a slap patch, apparently bandages need to be kept cool in the future. The left fridge is empty. We also find a scalpel (which isn't a weapon unfortunately  ) on one of the tables at the bottom of the screen. You can tell because it's clearly a sprite and doesn't mesh with the table at all. Don't think I'm complaining by the way. There's a couple items that would be pure pixel hunts if they didn't look off like that. I'm almost willing to chalk it up as a purposeful design decision. In any case, with their workspace freshly looted, let's go ask these two fine gentlemen if they can tell us what the rest of our name is.  Pictured: Exactly how I would react. Well the two morgue dudes locked themselves in the closet. Any time you enter this room they'll do the same thing, so it looks like we'll have to go elsewhere for info.  Shadowrun has some great music by the way. This is also one of my favourite tracks in the game. Sadly it only plays in the morgue, and in another area that we rarely need to go to.   Upon making it outside, some dude starts yelling at us.   "Ahh! A dead dude!" "Ahh! A red dude!"So here's how dialogue works. You'll notice that the word "Hitmen" is bolded. That means that "Hitmen" is something we can ask about. The dialogue system is pretty great, although it can be a pain if you miss a keyword and you're not sure how to ask about something. "Wait, Hitmen? What hitmen?" "You're crazy showing your face around here again. You'd better get smart like me and pack a Firearm, or you'll wind up dead!" "Erh, too late for that I suppose, although I don't really want to make this place my permanent residence. Where'd you get your Firearm anyway?" "I aint got time to talk to a corpse. If those guys find out I was with you, I'll get creamed too!" "But you called to ME!"In any case, Red bails on us. The game wants us to follow him, but right now there's more important things to check out.  If we hang out by the fountain for a second...  "Doggie!" No really  Mister Armitage is a dog person apparently. Let's open the gate so we can pat the pup.   Well uh... "..." Well in any case, this is an adventure game, and that's an item, so let's take it. By the way, we can totally talk to all the people milling about here.  They're all jerks and no one says anything interesting, but you can talk to all of them.  Speaking of jerks let's go see what Red was up to. He ran off to our left and down an alley.  Oh poo poo.  The second the screen loads, we hear a scream. Apparently Red wasn't kidding, we are in DEEP poo poo. Well, alright, the game is pretty lenient given that this is the first combat in the game. For reference, we have 30 HP. The fact that we don't have a firearm is a really bad thing though. Wait, didn't Red say he had a firearm?  Sweet! Sorry Red, we hardly knew ye. Hopefully your gun serves me a little better than it did you. Yoink!  Orc dude over there is constantly firing at us, by the way. Fortunately he's sorta garbage at his job. Remember when I said any dickhole with a gun and a cell phone could be a shadowrunner?   Like I said, you get what you pay for, people. Every human enemy turns into the giant purple blob, then into the generic corpse sprite. It looks nicer in motion. Either way, we looted one corpse, why not go for two?    Our first weapon AND our first piece of armour! The Leather Jacket provides one point of armour, which isn't much, but it's extremely noticeable when you forget to equip it. In any case, this alley is clearly full of loot, so let's go see what else is here. Doggie!  (Click for music, you should listen to this) "Uhh"  "...Uhhhhhhh" "..." "...Starting to think my brain might have been more than just burnt."...Right, anyway let's get the hell out of this alley. It's wierd now. By the way, that music is used for a few conversations. It tends to be reserved for more plot heavy conversations, or just unsettling encounters in general. It played when Red confronted us as well. There's another conversation theme that I'll bring up when it's more relevant.  Now that we have the Beretta, the game takes off the kid gloves. Assassins will randomly spawn in certain areas to try to take you out. We apparently REALLY made someone mad on our brain-burning business bender.  At this point we're not really given a lot of direction. The game just kinda says "go explore ya crazy kid". A sentiment I miss about old adventure games.  In any case, new buildings usually means new items, so let's check it out!  gently caress. Well let's rifle through his stuff I guess. Maybe he's someone who's connected to our past.  Oh hey, he totally was! Well that means we probably got him killed. At least we're learning a bit more, apparently we were supposed to be taking something to Matrix Systems. Also apparently we were only getting a 30% cut, totally not worth waking up in a morgue.   Well, we looted the last two, it would be unfair NOT to loot this one too.  Yoink!  So let's take a look at our stats screen here. Here you can see what we have equipped  Our body skill directly correlates to our HP, at 10 HP per body. Magic means nothing to us since we're neither a mage or a shaman. This is important to Shadowrunners we can hire though as it's the 'body' of MP. One magic = 10 MP. Strength is important later on, since better equipment needs higher strength. We won't be seeing any of it for a while though. Charisma dictates how many Shadowrunners we can have at a time. 3 means one runner, 4 and 5 is two runners, and 6 is three runners. 6 is also the charisma cap. If you're planning a solo run, you can ignore Charisma completely. We aren't because that's boring We're also broke and have no karma. Karma is how you level up skills, but I'll talk more about it next update.  We can also examine inventory items! In this case we examine the matchbook, which we started the game with. "Wastelands club" is apparently a place we've been to.  We also check out the key we jacked from the stiff. Not very helpful a tip though.  We looted all we can in this room, let's check behind door number two!  "GAHH rear end in a top hat"There are a number of places around the game which are just enemy spawners In this case, the shooter is just slightly off screen, you can see his gun in the top left.These rooms are mostly just there to make you feel the heat of whoever is hiring swathes of assassins. It works fairly well. An important thing to note is that our only means of making money is by cracking down the would-be assassins.  "God DAMMIT."Although sometimes they can pop shots at you while they're even further off screen  No one can stop whatsit Armitage   Alright apparently this is an apartment building, so maybe we-- hey wait a second.  Apartment number six, eh? I got a key with your number on it.  Nailed it! Well, we broke into a tiny apartment. The phone on the wall is beeping.  So let's ignore it. We've got files to rifle through!  Well great, if we knew what the hell a Sassie was, we'd be able to call it.  We also loot twenty bucks from whatever rear end in a top hat owns this place Alright let's check that phone.   Well poo poo. Whoever this Jake guy is must be having a terrible... ...Waaaiiiit a minute Cancel the run, that means this guy was a Shadowrunner. Hand over the files, that means the run was a courier job. We mean business, so this Drake guy was willing to kill the dude if he didn't comply. That means... "...God dammit I'M Jake!"Well at least we have the name of the dude who's out for blood and our own name for that matter. Also it turns out that was our 20 bucks anyway. "Also wait why the hell did that guy have the key to my apartment? Maybe it's a good thing he got ganked."By the way, we can't use our own phone to call Sassie. It turns out all the phones in the future are payphones.  Also the only cell phone we can get was dummied out and can only be obtained if I use a game shark. At least we can get some sweet shades though   Let's just pop these on here, and...   "Eeyyyy"Now that we have the sunglasses, we can... look cooler I guess. Let's take what small victories we can.   Speaking of small victories, let's go the hell to bed. Maybe we can sleep this day off like a bad hangover.  "...Seattle loving sucks."
Danaru fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jul 19, 2014 |
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Jun 17, 2014 22:14
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It is kind of amazing just how many assassins will ultimately come after you, even ignoring the fact that they respawn. Sometimes half those windows will have guns sticking out of them. (Although it's nice of those guys to keep their money in their shirt pockets so it falls out the window when you kill them.)
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Jun 17, 2014 23:34
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Shadowrun was a game I'd always meant to play but never found the time to. Also: Danaru posted:By the way, we can't use our own phone to call Sassie. It turns out all the phones in the future are payphones. You hit the limit for smilies there. You can just copy the image for them and post it like any other image, if it's not animated.
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Jun 18, 2014 00:14
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My brother has played the poo poo out of this game when we were kids. Me? I was too scared of the dog's piercing red eyes. They're still unnerving. 
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Jun 18, 2014 01:15
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The weird echoing bark doesn't help, either.
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Jun 18, 2014 01:17
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I'm glad someone has finally decided to do an LP of this on here.  The only one I could find that was any decent was some obnoxious youtube lp that the guy didn't even finish it, because of some video gently caress up in the last area. And naturally he didn't do anything to correct the gently caress up.
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Jun 18, 2014 10:10
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Am I right in thinking/remembering that this game is adventurey in a very old-school, Sierra-era way? Like, you can easily miss a lot of what you showed off in the first update (like the dog giving you a conversational keyword), only to be boned much later in the game?
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Jun 18, 2014 11:16
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This game is good and ghost dog is the best friend a guy could wish for.FredMSloniker posted:Am I right in thinking/remembering that this game is adventurey in a very old-school, Sierra-era way? Like, you can easily miss a lot of what you showed off in the first update (like the dog giving you a conversational keyword), only to be boned much later in the game?
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Jun 18, 2014 12:31
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The game is actually pretty good at avoiding unwinnable states; there might be one, but I can't think of it off the top of my head. It helps that most of the areas are relatively open and you can revisit places you've been to before - if you miss a keyword, you can generally go back to get it, although talking to every single person in the game with every keyword to check on this can get a bit wearing. There's even one super-rare situation that the devs accounted for, but that would be a spoiler to talk about now. (Will mention it when we get there if Danaru doesn't.)
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Jun 18, 2014 12:57
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FredMSloniker posted:Am I right in thinking/remembering that this game is adventurey in a very old-school, Sierra-era way? Like, you can easily miss a lot of what you showed off in the first update (like the dog giving you a conversational keyword), only to be boned much later in the game? It's really hard to make the game unwinnable, but it's really easy to get stuck for a long time because you forgot to ask some random drek about boots or something. For instance, if you don't "Talk" to Dog (So his dialogue starts, and you immediately exit without using the talk option), the Dog encounter will happen again and again until you get the Dog keyword. Actually, there's a fun thing we can do later on regarding triggers based on keywords, but that won't be for quite some time. idonotlikepeas posted:There's even one super-rare situation that the devs accounted for, but that would be a spoiler to talk about now. (Will mention it when we get there if Danaru doesn't.) If it's the stupidly difficult to do by accident thing that happens before we go to the next area, yeah I'm going to do it  It's just such a ridiculous resolution to a ridiculous problem, I love it.Also I fixed the smilie issue with the post. I'm a smilie addict, I know I have a problem 
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Jun 18, 2014 13:10
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This game is very well-made, even to the point where that if you get to a certain point, somehow, without a gun, which requires some heavy sequence breaking, the game will give you big flat spoiler And it also happens to be the worst Spoilering just in case. Well gee, never mind.
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Jun 18, 2014 13:11
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Danaru posted:If it's the stupidly difficult to do by accident thing that happens before we go to the next area, yeah I'm going to do it That is exactly what I'm talking about, yes. I'm glad you're going to show it off, because I would bet that most of the people that played through this game have never seen it.
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Jun 18, 2014 13:14
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There is a game called Decker which is inspired by Shadowrun and there is a LP of the game in the archive.
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Jun 18, 2014 13:20
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That dog face... 
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Jun 18, 2014 13:46
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This is a nice game. It's pretty rough around the edges but not too bad for a point and click action game. And yeah, it's REALLY hard to screw yourself. I recall in my first playthrough having to go through a place that took me about an hour and a half because it was my first time through, only to get to the end and be laughed at for missing a keyword. It was a pain but I could still go back and get that keyword despite the place looking like a point of no return, even though the circumstances ended up a bit silly when I thought about it.
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Jun 18, 2014 14:15
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Shadowrun was the best 48 hours of my teenage years.
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Jun 18, 2014 14:17
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I got utterly stuck as a kid because I could never find Sassie's number. I got everything else in the room (and every other pixel hunt in the game for that matter), but utterly missed that for some reason.
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Jun 18, 2014 15:37
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Nice LP so far! I played a bunch of hours of the new-ish PC game and now I'm trying to find a PnP group too. This should be fun to watch.
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Jun 18, 2014 17:35
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I never played this as a kid and it always seemed like it'd be really cool, but whenever I've tried to play it later on I just can't deal with the controls. It'd be perfect with a mouse, but a d-pad cursor is just terrible. So, I guess I'll finally be getting my Snes Shadowrun on with this LP.
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Jun 18, 2014 18:10
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Veib posted:I never played this as a kid and it always seemed like it'd be really cool, but whenever I've tried to play it later on I just can't deal with the controls. It'd be perfect with a mouse, but a d-pad cursor is just terrible. So, I guess I'll finally be getting my Snes Shadowrun on with this LP. Some people are working on porting it over to the new Shadowrun game which works with both tablets and mouse and keyboard. It already has Jake as a character so it's just a bit of adjustment to get him to work right away. It's fairly simplified compared to the PnP ruleset after all.
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Jun 19, 2014 08:11
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I hope this one is played to completion. I remember an old 2007 era Shadowrun VLP that was lost to the ages/archives. There's also a thing I am curious about but am patient enough to wait for it to become relevant. That said I played the poo poo out of this as a kid, there was one part I got stuck on for a long, long, long time until I broke down and began to talk to literally everyone in the game and scrolling down all the possible hot topics until I finally found what I was looking for.
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Jun 19, 2014 09:38
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Update 2: Grind of Thrones. So let's talk a bit about the level system. The level system is fairly simple in Shadowrun. each enemy is worth a certain amount of EXP, an invisible stat. 8 EXP = 1 Karma, no matter what, all throughout the game. This'll make sense in a second.  Every time you sleep, you get the option to use karma, let's go ahead and do that now.  So right now our body stat is at 7. In order to level up a stat, you need the same amount of karma as your current level.  So now we have eight! That's all there is to it. Simple but effective. The only real problem is you'll get to points where you have to grind a bit of karma. That's what all those random rooms with jerks in them are for.  By the way, uh, so in preparation for this update, I did a bunch of grinding off screen. Basically while I was watching the Game of Thrones finale, I just absentmindedly kept swinging through mook rooms and slaughtering the goons inside, then running to bed when I got hurt and doing it again. We have Computer and Charisma fully maxed out at 6. Firearms maxes out at a much higher level, but after level seven, there's no benefit since the Beretta never misses at seven, and every other weapon has better accuracy with one exception...  You guys really aren't missing anything by not seeing Jake level up more organically, This just makes my life easier, and your lp more awesome. I also turned off Bilinear filtering on the screenshots. Maybe Jake's shades have corrective lenses  In any case, we've got no memory, we've got a computer in our head we have no idea about, thousands of men are trying to kill us because some douche named Drake wants some package we lost a while back, what would you do in this situation?    Well I don't have a matchbook for this place, but I think it'll do just fine. This place has some pretty great music too. Let's hit up the bartender and see what he's got.  "Wait, you know who I am?" "Kinda hard to miss the blonde dude who never wears anything but a trenchcoat. One iced tea, comin' right up!" "That better be slang for something powerful." Barkeep is off to get us a drink, so let's chat up some of the others.  "Well, I'm pretty sure I was dead for a while, if you call that 'wrong'. That and the hordes of gunmen." "You'd best be prepared. I've had to heal enough men who thought they were safe running in the shadows." "If you know someone who could heal a burnt brain, I'd be happy to hear any suggestions." "Forget all that talk of magic, you're better off leaving yourself in the hands of a skilled street doc." "Might not be a bad idea, it's not like a check-up could hurt. Maybe a street doc could give me some answers." "Pity I'm retired, but there are some good ones around. Most can handle tech like that datajack of yours." Doc's got some good advice, but our drink is ready. "Wait, this is seriously just an iced tea." "Sorry Jake, it's a Nintendo game. Best I can do is iced tea and grape juice." "I bet Joshua doesn't have to deal with this crap." "So what's been happening with you? Last I heard, some Mr. Johnson had you lined up for a run." "You'd know better than I do." "Something wrong? Last time I saw you, you didn't have that datajack. Can't you remember even having it fitted?" "This thing? No idea. I assumed I always had it. Woke up at the morgue with no memories. Had to find out my name from a threatening voicemail. Fortunately the guy left his name at the end of it too. And that's not even mentioning the hundreds of hitmen I've been fighting off" "Someone after you? Maybe you should hire some Shadowrunners to watch your back!" "That's not a bad idea, I'm kinda swimming in cash right now. Where can I find these shadowrunners?" "There's a few who are regulars. Deckers mostly. Why, you thinking of hiring?" "I will be. A guy needs friends after all." "No better friend to have than a shadowrunner when you've got guys like that after you. Good luck out there, Jake." We still have a couple of folks to talk to. We're apparently a regular at this place, so someone might know us.  "Believe me, chum. I know the feeling." "Look, I just want to relax and unwind."Looks like our new friend is giving us a hint that he wants to be left alone. This is, in fact, a puzzle.  I got stuck on this forever. You have to actually give this guy your iced tea. You can't actually drink it yourself. "Cheers chummer. My favourite too..." "Null sweat. Actually I had a questi--" "I almost had them, I had the tickets in my hand! *SOB*SOB*" No really, the "*SOB*SOB*" is in there. This guy is really broken up over it. "Tickets, right, but I wanted to know if--" "Tickets to the Maria Mercurial concert. They were almost mine. I even gave Grinder the money!" "The hell kind of name is Grinder?" "Poor Grinder. He got wasted by Lone Star. The morgue guys carried off what was left of him." "Probably snatched him before he hit the ground. Those guys are like rocket vultures." The fellow with the cape won't talk to us since he's on the phone, so let's talk to this guy.  "Uh, alright, so are you a shadowrunner or something?" "You think I'm dumb! Done a hundred runs and I haven't lost one neuron yet!" "Well you WERE referring to yourself in the third person..." "English not Hamfist's first language. Shame on you for making assumptions." "Anyway, you said you were a Decker?" "Hamfist chop up cyberspace real good. Been in the grid more times than I care to remember." Fortunately we have 4520 nuyen right now, so we can more than afford to hire Hamfist. Generally Hamfist is just an introduction to the fact that you CAN hire shadowrunners, but let's take him on anyway.  Shadowrunners can be great, one of their biggest advantages is that they work on similar AI to the enemy. NPC combatants will instantly lock on to their opponent instead of having to manually aim like we do. That means Hamfist here started unloading on the rear end in a top hat in the window the second he appeared. "...Hamfist notices we've killed three people and only been on the job for twenty seconds." "Welcome to my life now, Hamfist." Hey this guy looks sufficiently sketchy! What do you have to say?  "Errrr what" "You don't seem to know what I mean! Are you a shadowrunner?" "Oh, yeah, totally. Apparently I've been a Shadowrunner for a while." "If you're hiring, they have almost any skill you want." "The hiring process seems simple enough" "You're going to need plenty of money... at least 500 Nuyen. If you're a fast talker you might negotiate your way to something better." THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET THE "NEGOTIATE" KEYWORD FOR AN OPTIONAL AND VERY MISSABLE SIDEQUEST  By the way, if we mention Lone Star to this guy, he'll set us up with a falsified Lone Star badge.   BY THE WAY CAN YOU SPOT WHICH WINDOW A GUNMAN POPPED OUT OF?  A bit tougher, but can you spot the item we're grabbing in this room?  This one's a bit less obvious since it's a black item, but you can still see the outline in the first image. Also don't worry, this is an optional item. this is an adventure game, but it's not full on King's Quest.  This office is a bit less violent. Let's ask the lady here what's up.   "I'm sure I didn't have you scheduled in anyway!" Well that's all she'll give us. Despite telling us that, she doesn't actually care enough to do anything about us busting into her boss' office.  oh MY yes, now that we have a cyberdeck, we can enter The Matrix! Let's jack in to this computer here  "Ow, gently caress" "Great, so I wake up with a datajack, and the drat thing is broken." "...Ahem" Fortunately we just so happen to have someone who DIDN'T wake up as a corpse in the party. Maybe Hamfist will have better luck.   Much better!  The Matrix plays differently from the rest. It plays as a sort of minesweeper-esque game.  When you enter a tile, it'll say whether any IC is detected around you, but not where the IC is. If you step into a tile with IC on it, you'll take damage. You can use the information to get around the IC though.  Or you can just attack the IC outright.  Either way, once we make it to those glass cube looking things, we can take the delicious, delicious data. We can also jack out at any time. By the way, Hamfist got wrecked by the IC, as you can see from the top bar. The bottom bar is how much data you can store. I... don't think there's any part of the game where you can't take everything from a matrix section  So let's see what we got!  We jacked a bunch of bitcoins Suck on that, Glutman! We also found a file called DF_BADNEWS A bit more information, maybe if we can find this Glutman guy, we can find out what the hell's going on.  By the way, Hamfist got REALLY messed up by the IC. Fortunately a nap at Jake's place fixes us both up.  "Scared of the morgue?" "Why on earth would you want to go to the morgue?" "I dunno, the only lead I have are those Maria Mercurial tickets, so why not?" "..." Now that we're wearing shades, the morticians no longer run away from us. Seriously.   "Nice shades! Do you always wear them indoors?" "Hee hee, but seriously, I'm looking for a dude named Grinder"   We find the tickets in Grinder's file, but also...  We find this! This means we can finally use our phone!   We only have the one number, so let's give it a ring.  "Not entirely incorrect, are you alright? Why are you posing like that?" "I got myself a new boyfriend and everything. The last of your stuff was just thrown out. You're still getting calls. Tell your buddies to stop calling us!" "What?! I was dead for like an hour tops! What the hell do you mean you threw out all my stuff?! And who's calls?" "Some Glutman guy keeps calling. His number is 934-782." "Glutman? This is really important, what did he tell you?" "Bye Jake!" Well whatever, let's just call Glutman directly.  This is actually opens a dialogue directly to the secretary character we met before. We could have also just gone to her in person now that we have the Glutman keyword. "Yo, I'm looking for Mr. Glutman" "Mr. Glutman is out at the moment. He was going to The Cage club. Maybe you can find him there..."So THAT'S why we were so desparate to get Grinder's tickets! Seriously though, you can't call Sassie at any point before you get Grinder's tickets and the credstick. You can get into The Cage before calling Sassie and the secretary, but Glutman won't be there until you have "The Cage" as a keyword. We have it now, so let's hit the club!  Located scenically beside the graveyard We could go in there, but it's better that we save that for later. "Oh yeah, Hamfist." "What?" "Hold my gun for a bit." The bouncer will block your way until he gets your tickets. Not really someone we'd want to deal with   So this is The Cage! It has it's own musical theme! I think one other place uses this, but most clubs use the same song as the Wasteland. This is also the only club where no shadowrunners are available for hire, so this place blows.   You can talk to most people who aren't dancing in here, but no one really provides any good info. Let's just go right to Glutman.  "No poo poo, Glutman. Listen, I need some answers. Someone is trying to kill me, and succeeded once. I'd rather not go back to the morgue in a body bag again." "Go now, my men hide you. No charge. Glutman owe you favor, ya! I fix everything! We hide you real good, you betcha![/img] "You're going to clean this up? Alright good, once we're safe I have some questions about what happened." "All in good time, Armitage! First things first, this a dangerous place for ya. Come with my men and I."  "By the way Jake, You wouldn't know nothin' about a grand goin' missing from one of my accounts, would ya?" "Huh?" "Nevermind, nevermind. Enjoy yer stay, Armitage!" ...the hell is this place.  "Oh you've got to be loving kidding me! GLUTMAN!"Well, you know what they say, out of the frying pan, into the caryards "Seattle loving SUCKS!"
Danaru fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 19, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 20:31
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Bonus Update: The Amazing Zip Gun! So you might be wondering "Danaru, why the gently caress would you give away your gun?". First of all, I don't like your tone. Second of all, the game noticed we had somehow managed to get to this point and not have a gun. Glutman graciously gives us the Zip Gun! The Zip Gun is a failsafe, after this point you can't get the Beretta from Red's still warm corpse, and you will be stuck in an area where you can't even get to a weapon shop without having to fight first. The only possible way you could get in this situation is: -You sell it to this guy: for a cool 200 nuyen. He will not sell it back to you.-You give it to Hamfist, who already has a way better weapon anyway. -If you somehow don't get the Beretta at all To this effect, let's talk about gun stats for a second. The two most important things about a gun are their attack power and accuracy. The beretta for instance has an attack of 3 and an accuracy of 1. The accuracy adds on to your firearm skill, so if you have a firearms skill of 3, and a beretta, you have an effective accuracy of 6. An effective accuracy of 8 means you never miss. The eagle eyed among you may remember we have 7 Firearms skill. That means that as long as we have even a single accuracy point with our weapon, we'll never miss. The Zip Gun has an attack of three, like the beretta, and an accuracy of zero. The Zip Gun is the only gun in the game that we can use and still miss a shot. EDIT: Crystalgate posted:A small correction on accuracy, the chance to hit is actually (1 + Firearms + Accuracy)/8, so you cannot miss even with the Zip gun with a Firearms skill of 7. 6 will guarantee a hit with any other weapon. Even better, we're good enough to maintain 100% accuracy even with this thing! Frankly I love the zip gun, it's a way of saying "here, you need a gun for the next section, but also you're a loving idiot, so we're giving you the only thing worse than your starter gun. You somehow lost your beretta, so you don't DESERVE it."  We don't need good guns anyway. We'll bust out of these caryards with our broken rear end weapon that might actually just be a pellet gun. gently caress you Glutman. Also hey I finally remembered to equip this thing The blood is probably dry now so we don't even need to clean it
Danaru fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 20:35
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Ah, the Zip Gun. Honestly the first time I came across it after selling the Beretta I was amazed I wasn't stuck in an unwinnable situation and the game had a fail-safe in place already. Also wow did you go nuts on the grinding. Ok so people who haven't played might not realize it but you'd be lucky to find 50 nuyen on a thug, heck he might not drop anything at all. So 4.5k? Yeah that's pretty rich for this early on. Not that that I'm complaining but that finale episode must have lasted quite a while for you to get so much. Actually, couldn't you buy something else from the Lone Star guy? I can't recall what it was but it wasn't too expensive either. Liking the self-insert dialogue. This isn't something I usually remark on but the way sentences flow with your keywords can get kinda weird at times so this helps a bunch.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:06
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Lol, I never knew about the Zip Gun so thanks for showing it. That's a pretty neat failsafe! And tbh, this game is kinda amazingly complex for its time.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:08
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HGH posted:Actually, couldn't you buy something else from the Lone Star guy? I can't recall what it was but it wasn't too expensive either. You can buy grenades for 150 each by asking about firearms, I've never been a huge fan of them though.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:14
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I'm still not sure if Glutman put you in the scrapyard to keep you safe from hitmen, or because he caught you stealing from him. Also, you may want to check your resolution, it's a bit (3-4 pixels) too small, a few lines aren't getting rescaled properly.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:29
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A small correction on accuracy, the chance to hit is actually (1 + Firearms + Accuracy)/8, so you cannot miss even with the Zip gun with a Firearms skill of 7. 6 will guarantee a hit with any other weapon.
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Jun 20, 2014 21:41
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Crystalgate posted:A small correction on accuracy, the chance to hit is actually (1 + Firearms + Accuracy)/8, so you cannot miss even with the Zip gun with a Firearms skill of 7. 6 will guarantee a hit with any other weapon. Oh hey, I thought it was just (firearms + accuracy)/8. I'll add that into the post, thanks!
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Jun 20, 2014 21:57
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The grenades are basically only useful for one thing (beating the troll decker in the arena), and at the price they aren't really worth it.
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Jun 20, 2014 22:29
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Hoi chummer, always room for a true LPer! You're handling the game mighty fine. I never did beat this game, so I'm looking forward to this LP. Is there more to combat than just stand still blasting away until someone drops dead? You should drop by TG, there's games of Shadowrun every once in a while, in addition to endless bitching about the latest version.
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Jun 27, 2014 18:22
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idonotlikepeas posted:The grenades are basically only useful for one thing (beating the troll decker in the arena), and at the price they aren't really worth it. Hell yes they're worth it. I always did about 500-600 nuyen worth of initial grinding so that I could get a full stack of grenades to cheese the next area with, which basically ensured that I'd never have to do any grinding again.
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Jun 27, 2014 21:00
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Update 3: Champion of the Thunderdome Well, we've been in worse situations I guess. At least we know what our name is. Anyway, let's find some information about this place, and try to avoid getting a shiv in the ribs. By the way, get used to recycled portraits. There are actually a ton of portraits, but there's also a ton of NPCs to talk to. As of right now I have 18 portraits uploaded to lpix, excluding both of Jake's. "I'm starting to suspect that Glutman was being sarcastic." "None of us are here by choice... things just turn out this way sometimes." "I'm more interested in getting out than why I'm in. How well do you know the Caryards? Want to be the Sean Connery to my Nic Cage?" "Didn't they break INTO a prison?" "...erh, right, brain burnt and all that." "The King is your only way out of here!" "...I can already see where this is going." "I don't think the King would like it if he saw me talking to you." Well that's just plain rude. Let's go talk to someone else.  "Hey pal! Why so blue? " "I used to be the best there was in the Matrix" "Probably not much access to the Matrix in this kind of place, is there?" "No IC could stop me. My Datajack and my cyberdeck allowed me to do as I wanted in the Matrix. I could open any door or grab any data you needed. I was the best!" "You wouldn't happen to know a street doc who could check out a Datajack, would you?" "I don't know... I guess I've been here too long..." The caryards aren't quite a jaunty romp. Below the decker is a guy with the same sprite as the "Heavy Dude" enemy. "Hahaha oh god you're serious, I've killed well over a hundred of guys like you, and it was so uneventful it was done between updates." "...admittedly I thought the others were making that up." "Nope. I pretty much put those Mortician guys' kids through college and we're only on update three. Drake is probably going to have a job fair soon." "Now that I've seen ya, I can't see what he's getting all worked up about. You don't look that dangerous!" "What the hell, disembodied voice?! He just outright said he'd try to kill me!"So this is what happens if you try to kill a semi-important NPC. The game is a little wierd on who you can shoot and who you can't. Those NPCs that were hanging out in that little square where the doggie was can be killed with impunity, but Drake's goon here can't. Also if you continue to shoot one of these NPCs, the game will reset your karma to zero.  "Yeah, apparently Glutman's real scared of the world's worst assassins trying to chase me down." "Hey!" "Quiet you, the only reason you're alive is because God or whoever will wipe out my experience if I keep shooting you." "The King don't allow just anybody in here. He don't want the heat coming down on this place!" "I'm hearing quite a bit about this King fellow. What's his deal?" "Most of us here are hiding from someone. The King makes sure no one can get at you... for a price!"The game is actually fairly vague on some plot points, and leaves it more to your own interperatation. The Caryards are actually a fairly safe place for people in Jake's situation, where some rear end in a top hat has a billion dudes looking for them, but at the same time we're stuck here until either Glutman pays, or we pay. Did Glutman set us up in here to protect us while he tries to sort out the problem? Or was Glutman paid off to 'dispose' of us in a place like this? Glutman never shows up again, by the way. Either he got taken out by Drake like the nameless Johnson who set up the run, or he took a pay from Drake and got the hell out of dodge. Or the writers just kinda forgot about him since he's intensely irrelevant at this point in the plot.   "Everyone's hiding from someone or something. Just don't ask too many questions!"I really only posted this because I don't remember this portrait being used anywhere else in the game. Most of the hirable and named Shadowrunners don't even get unique portraits, but this guy with two lines does.   Case in point "So uh, you run the place, eh?" "Sure do! If you wanna leave, you gotta pay me!" "And if I don't have the money?" "You ask that as if it was my problem." We actually have more than enough to pay off the King, but Jake is a cheapskate, so let's wander around a bit more.  "How the heck did YOU get in here?" "Had a run that went south, turns out the guy I fragged was the son of some Renraku big-shot. Johnson turned on me, and now Renraku's out for revenge." "drat, that's messed up, kid." "I blame the public school system."The kid will sell you slap patches if you need them, which you might if you're not a pro like me*  "Someone heavy must be after you for that big fixer dude to bring you here." "Someone named Drake who apparently never heard of "Quality over Quantity"." "You pissed off Drake? Haha I thought I was hosed!" "Yeah yeah, anyway what's up with this shithole?" "People come here to hide. The King get's paid by the fixers sometimes. Otherwise, you have to pay him to leave. Most guys though don't make it. They usually die trying to get the money together by fighting in the arena." "That sounds like the opposite of protecting people. I'm starting to think the King might not be the sharpest tool in the shed." "How much is the King asking to let you leave! He wants 100 nuyen before he let's me go! I guess I'll be here for a while!" "Wow, you butchered those exclamation marks, kid. Maybe you were right about that school system." "This might be the first good thing to happen to me in recent memory." So this is the RPG mandated arena! The combat may not be the biggest drawing point of the game, but this is one of the best ways to make a ton of money early on.  Talk to this guy here, and he'll ask if you want to fight, but before we do that...  Let's finish that little sidequest.  A thousand bucks seems pretty steep, but wait until you see the amount of money we'll get from fighting. Plus, by learning negotiation, we can lower our escape price from 4000 to 2000, netting a 1000 nuyen savings! If we were losers, anyway. More on that later.  "Wait, is that it?" "Yup" "You made me pay a thousand nuyen for THAT?" "That's the power of Negotiation." "...You know, I think I get it now."And now for the moment you've all been waiting for! Let's kill people for the glory we deserve! BATTLE ONE: GANG MEMBER  Dude's got a knife and he runs like a psycho. He'll usually just run up to you and stab you in the face repeatedly.  Gang Member also... has pathing issues.  In any case, we get him stuck on a barrel and shoot him until he drops. We also got three karma for it. I have to kill four of drake's goons for a single karma point, for reference. "You good fighter. We like good fight. Here's 300 nuyen. Money better if fight again."And fight again we will! BATTLE TWO: HEAVY DUDE   It's just one of Drake's goons. I think he has a little more HP. He was somehow easier than the idiot who got stuck on the barrel. "You good fighter. We like good fight. Here's 700 nuyen. Money better if fight again."There, that's the negotiation skill paid off. But we're not done yet! BATTLE THREE: HEAVY DUDE 2   Aside from looking like he put his gun on my shoulder and shot behind me, nothing to talk about here. He had a little more attack power and got a couple good shots in, but you could survive this fight with your base stats. "You good fighter. We like good fight. Here's 1000 nuyen. Money better if fight again."BATTLE FOUR: MAGE  "The hell does that even MEAN?"Mage is a bit tough, he has the same attack power as Heavy 2, and a bit more health.  If you didn't do any grinding, this fight might be rough, but since we literally can't miss, we're alright. "You good fighter. We like good fight. Here's 2000 nuyen. Money better if fight again."For those not counting, that's 4000 in total arena earnings. Unless you somehow managed to waste a ton of money on slap patches, you can get out now. BATTLE FIVE: MAGE 2   Same fight, higher damage.  "You good fighter. We like good fight. Here's 3000 nuyen. Money better if fight again."BATTLE SIX: SAMURAI WARRIOR  Alright so this battle is probably the first legitimately difficult one. Samurai Warrior is a bit hectic, but there's a way to exploit his attack pattern.  Samurai Warrior's first attack is to run up and slash you with wolverine claws. This does a lot of 1s and 2s of damage, and might look scary at first.  Samurai Warrior's second attack is to run away and start shooting at you.  This hurts. A lot. The best tactic is to keep running up to Samurai Warrior so he keeps trying to use his claws. Eventually he'll drop like the rest.  "You good fighter. We like good fight. Here's 4000 nuyen. Money better if fight again."BATTLE SEVEN: FEROCIOUS ORC  Hey Ferocious Orc! How the hell are ya? Ferocious Orc likes to smack talk, but he's not very good at it. No tactics here, just keep shooting the giant green man.  "You good fighter. We like good fight. Here's 5000 nuyen. Money better if fight again."BATTLE EIGHT: GANG LEADER So here's the thing about Gang Leader.  Gang Leader doesn't gently caress around. This is literally the first frame that isn't the game loading and he's already hit me for three damage  He also runs around in circles and sometimes shrugs off your shooting cursor. Gang Leader is a MESS. Gang Leader is the second hardest fight in the arena, and it shows. The best part about doing an SSLP is that I can use save states all I want, and no one will ever know .So that's the end of our arena stint for now, we'll be back for Samurai Warrior another time. I guess we can just pay our way and head out.  OR WE CAN JUST KILL THE KING OURSELVES The King can be an annoying fight, mainly because he likes to run around a lot. Usually he'll run to one side, shoot at you, then run to the other side, and shoot at you again.  Other times he'll run off screen This means you have to run over, at which point he'll shoot at you while you're getting your attack icon up again. Overall, the King is a pain, but once again, you can exploit his AI a bit.  When he's off screen, he'll just stand around and wait for you to come chase him. If you're lucky, you can just slightly get him on screen without him noticing, and unload on him. If you're unlucky, he THINKS he's on screen when he isn't, and he gets a ton of free shots on you.  But if you can get the screen juuuuuuust right...  Not only do we not pay 4000, or even 3000, we GET nuyen! "I don't believe it. You beat the King! Here's 3000 nuyen!"And with that, we're free to leave the caryards! CARYARDS EPILOGUE Ended up moving back to Tenth Street with her twin sister, who was fired from her job as a secretary because her boss got gunned down by a bunch of really terrible assassins. Got really confused from spending so long in the caryards, and became a carpenter who specializes in building decks. Best decker you've ever seen. Still too scared to leave the caryards after watching Jake kill most of the arena combatants. Got killed in a carpenter gang war because the rival gang thought he was that other blue dude. Seriously, who the gently caress is this guy. Moves out east and becomes the Terror From the West. Eventually hits puberty and has an irritating teenage on-again-off-again relationship that no one cares about. Some say he never left the arena, waiting for the next good fight. Some still hear the faint whisper of "money better if fight again" when they walk by. Really, really dead.*May not actually be a pro at all.
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Jul 2, 2014 01:10
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Ha, that was pretty good. I always liked the arena because really, you just took down almost the entire thing with the damned Zipgun. And even if you're not too hot at fighting, the game gives you multiple outs too, so there's something for everyone here. Although I'll have to admit I bought Slap Patches from that little kid for like, the next 3 hours of the game. What can I say, I was young and awful at strategy.
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Jul 2, 2014 09:34
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This game is great, I remember buying it for 70 bucks of my own money when I was 15, it was a pretty rare SNES cart I guess. I like that you're linking the music, it was pretty good for the time.
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Jul 2, 2014 19:32
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Really enjoying this LP. The music especially is bringing back a ton of memories.
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Jul 2, 2014 22:27
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Oh, man. I've been waiting to see a Shadowrun LP since Returns came out. I have spent an entirely unreasonable amount of time on Returns. Interesting that Jake doesn't have any magic in this one, though, given how he plays in his cameo. I look forward to seeing how this story ends.
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Jul 3, 2014 17:51
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NAME REDACTED posted:Oh, man. I've been waiting to see a Shadowrun LP since Returns came out. I have spent an entirely unreasonable amount of time on Returns. You'll understand after the next couple updates  Shadowrun Returns is absolutely fantastic. I was actually one of the $500 backers back when I had a great job, I was thinking of doing a bonus update to show all the neat stuff that came with that tier.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:40
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Just found this thread after having picked up Shadowrun Returns during the Steam sale. Been playing the poo poo out of that. What an amazing game. I never played this one though so I didn't even know the character in Returns is a cameo, complete with waking up in a morgue and all. Gonna be following this LP, for one because you're doing a great job showing off the game and also because I want to see if I missed any other references. Keksen fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Jul 4, 2014 |
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Jul 4, 2014 12:41
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