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 Shadowrun? That SNES game with the PC remakes? Any good? No, no, no. This is Shadowgrounds, a PC top-down shooter developed by Frozenbyte, released in 2005. We play Wesley It plays like every other top-down shooter, with 10 weapons, 3 upgrades per weapon including an alt-fire for every weapon, roughly 10 kinds of enemies and a few bosses. The game got middling reviews, but it has fast, fun and challenging gameplay, its voice acting is decent though cheesy, and while the story isn’t good, it is enjoyable. The music is way better than you’d expect, composed by Ari Pulkkinen and featuring some guitar riffs by the Finnish guitarist Amen. Anything else? All weapon and upgrade descriptions as we get them. We’ll also find a bunch of computer notes, mostly complaining about broken poo poo and signs of alien trouble. Finally, if I find something that can do with some creative input, that might also be in the books. Technical stuff This will be available in glorious 1080p! Well, faux-1080p really, my monitor is 1680x1050 and I’m resizing to 1728x1080 to trigger youtube 1080p. The alternative is recording in 1600x900, upscaling 20% instead of just 3%, but I think it's preferable to have better quality with left/right bars than more blurry without bars. Shoot me some feedback on whether this looks ok on a proper 1080p monitor, it will influence how I do future videos. Where can I get this? GOG and Steam. In fact, until March 14th Steam has a sale of everything Frozenbyte, including Shadowgrounds for €0.74 or whatever your local equivalent is. But if you have bought Trine at some point you might already own this game because it came bundled together on Steam as well as in a Humble Indie Bundle. It’s one of those ‘why the hell do I own this’-games that you easily forget about. Fleve, what the gently caress, weren’t you going for Dungeon Siege 3/Severance/Gothic/That Game From the Year 19XX? Yes, yes, yes, and I’m still going to do (some of) that, I just wanted a short break from an edit-heavy project and Shadowgrounds is perfect for a quick, fun, run. No depth, daft acting, fast kills. Introduction, From the Manual posted:Mankind’s longest dream – to reach out to the stars – started to become reality in the 2050s, when technology research reached a point where a planet could be terraformed into a suitable home for man. Nine unmanned spaceships were launched with the purpose of starting a chainreaction of life on Ganymede, the third moon of the Jupiter system. Episodes           Tech babble - Logs, Part 1              Tech babble - Weapons and Upgrades, Part 1     
Fleve fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Mar 21, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 21:11
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anilEhilated posted:I love this game to the point where I was thinking of LPing it myself. It's pretty much the textbook definition of underappreciated. I discovered it after a friend gifted me a Frozenbyte bundle so we could co-op Trine. We had some fun hours with Trine but somehow never ended up completing it. Months later I saw Shadowgrounds in my steam list and didn't know how it got there or what it was and installed it on a whim. I went in expecting nothing and instead got roughly 7 hours of great and sometimes surprisingly difficult combat. I really wish that Frozenbyte had released Shadowgrounds with multiplayer like they did Trine. Local co-op doesn't cut it, especially because that doesn't refer to LAN, but you and me on the same keyboard. I haven't done that since... oh poo poo. Now I'm aching for some really silly ancient dirt racing game with guns and explosives that I can't remember the name of...
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Mar 9, 2015 21:47
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Spudd posted:I wish I was more smarter when it came to recording software and stuff because I would've love to LP this as well. OwlFancier posted:I also wanted to one day LP this but couldn't due to lack of equipment/knowledge. The whole technical stuff for making LP’s isn’t that challenging. FRAPS, avisynth and Megui make for a very powerful combo and the SA LP wiki explains the basics well. But it’s silly how time-demanding it is. Something seems to always want to gently caress up for me and…well then I get these weird ideas that take half a day to produce half a minute… anilEhilated posted:Oh, and here's the explanation for the shotgun comment. My lack of knowledge on 80's music comes back to haunt me again. I always listened to what my brothers played back then and never cared to ask for names/titles. I’m a bit sad that developers no longer seem to care about their old games. I tried to find some concept art but had very little luck there. On the official Shadowgrounds website, there are some nice snippets of information (under Story & Characters), but unless it’s Chrome showing things weird, I think they hosed up their own site by placing a huge persistent Humble Widget in the upper left corner that tries to sell you the game for $9.99. While their site says that the official soundtrack is no longer sold, and they only offer 30 second snippets as downloads, Ari Pulkkinen graciously provides the world with all his music on soundcloud. Of those, I particularly like the boss music from last episode. The other track that played prominently was Run Like Hell.
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Mar 10, 2015 14:49
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Now that we’ve escaped immediate danger, we quickly find out that Jane can’t drive, that Lieutenant Dan Baxter is black and will thus most likely die, and that nobody apart from Wesley Tyler actually gets anything done, like a proper protagonist. This episode is a bit shorter. The game doesn’t have much story, but each map works better shown whole and I didn't want to spread the next area out over different episodes. I'm not quite sure how to order the logs/weapons/upgrades. I could put them all in the OP, but that'd be a bit of a spoiler for anyone who comes here later. I think I'll keep them separated for now, with each new update/post showing the info that we get during that part. Tech babble – Logs    [timg]http://i.imgur.com/buXnk1z.jpg][/timg]Tech babble – Weapons and Upgrades    Music It’s a bit difficult to properly find the right tracks, but I think during this episode we get, for the action, I Need a Minigun, followed by FMJ. Fleve fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 20:13
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Scalding Coffee posted:This game is great and oddly enough, your use of guns really mattered. I did get annoyed with how some guns seemed weak until that one enemy showed up and went to town on it. Survivor is such trash though. I've been replaying areas a lot because of re-recording and you can get strangely good at the game once you know your weapons and enemies. Not saying that I'm good, but a lot better than when I first played it. There's a boss in the next area that can be somewhat difficult when all you do is shoot at it, but it just melts away with the right combination of weaponry. Once we get to meet enemies with shields, weapon type is going to be even more important. I keep reading how Survivor is the pits, so I never even installed that. From what I'm gathering it's not even fun bad but just the plain bad bad kind. Night10194 posted:Whatever problems this game might have, it's so much goddamn fun that who would care? The fighting is absolutely great, the level design is good, the weapons are fun. What more could someone want? Definitely. Sometimes games seem to forget that just being fun is way more important than being cinematic or whatever. I also love the pacing, levels take about 15-40 minutes, and usually every area brings new enemies, new weapons, more music. I can't wait to show off New Atlantis. Tin Tim posted:Diggin this. I wanted to buy a Shadowgrounds game several times now, but never did end up doing it. May pick this up anyway now, and it's good to know that Survivor is apparently trash. If you sell a bunch of trading cards you can get the game for virtually 'free' at this point. It's totally worth it.
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Mar 11, 2015 21:46
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Leavemywife posted:The music is so totally rockin' in this game. Ari Pulkkinen composes some pretty drat good music, but I love that he also relied on Amen's skills for the guitar riffs. Sometimes, though, the guitar track sounds like it's a bit too....busy? Like it's out-efforting the rest of the music. Scalding Coffee posted:I think they gave away Survivor last year or two. The only good thing about it was the big gimmick you wish was in this game. You are left with even more low budget cinematics and a terrible combination of broken character mechanics and storytelling. Ah, that's a pitty. I'll definitely give it a try, though. I'm curious how they managed to gently caress up from such a solid basis. If I enjoy it I might LP it, but no guarantees. Edit: ↓ poo poo, yeah I can see how that can tank the game. Fleve fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 22:17
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While the rest of the gang goes with Lt. Baxter, Jane and Wesley head to the Comm centre to issue a distress call. Of course, nothing works, Jane gives bad directions, and I make a bad pun in the title of this episode. Since the last episode was a bit short, I thought I’d throw in the next one already. Tech babble – Logs           Tech babble – Weapons   Music babble; babble babble, I like that word The music this time starts off with the peaceful Request Adagio Part I, followed by some new music to go with new enemies around the 13 minute mark, Protectors. And because we only heard like 10 seconds of the boss music before the boss blew up, here’s the track Mech The Destroyer. I particularly like the second of these three. Fleve fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 18:39
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Nuramor posted:I've never found that minigun there. I guess I never explored in that direction. But yes, having that robot die like a chump instead of being the pain like it normally would be is quite the advantage. Will you also show datafiles of the upgrades you *won't* pick for the guns? Oh yeah, definitely. I forgot that we likely won't be seeing all of them because some upgrades are just way better than others. I'll try to get and show all the alt-fire modes once we got some spare parts, the early ones are pretty cheap anyway. Of the normal upgrades, there's a whole series of magazine extensions that I'll post-pone as long as possible, they're not crucial. Of the weapons we already have, that would be the following upgrades:     The shotgun upgrade I'd actually avoid at all costs. Shotgun ammo gets pretty rare later on and if your burst-firing mode shoots 12 instead of 7 bullets you're probably only wasting more ammo. The normal 7-shot burst already is an overkill for a lot of situations.
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Mar 13, 2015 15:53
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 I'm on a roll.Being responsible for the final evacuation of New Atlantis, we go and enjoy some disco music, break a lot of glass, and set everything on fire. If nothing else, go and check out the music below this time. It surprised the hell out of me the first time I heard it. Tech babble – Logs          Tech babble – Weapons     Music babble We start off peaceful again, with Valley of Shadows, but quickly proceed to the Super Cool Disco. This time that’s a youtube link because the version on soundcloud doesn’t sound like the one in the game, but there’s also a remix on soundcloud that is arguably better. We finish with a repeat from last episode, Protectors, which I still think is a good track. Fleve fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 13, 2015 18:55
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anilEhilated posted:Come on, not even a disco inferno joke? poo poo, that would've been the perfect combo of elements, for once I even knew that song! If the flamethrower wouldn't slow you down while using it, it'd be pretty much the best weapon too. I tried the other two alts the first time around but back then I found them a bit lacking, the rifle had a huge cooldown. The shield guys are real bastards though, if the assault rifle alt helps I'll definitely give that a shot. The big guys return to their patrol route when they lose sight of you and you can shoot them in the back then, but drat, that's way too boring and I won't allow myself to do that.
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Mar 13, 2015 20:34
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SirDifferential posted:It's pretty cool how the enemies come in different sizes and colors, at least the most common type. Does it actually influence their speed or hitpoints though? Yeah, I try to go through the areas as fast and as thoroughly as possible, but sometimes there's just not much happening apart from travelling while killing 2-3 types. The level design does a lot to keep things fresh, like with the disco. You got the right games, but the wrong name. The music in 'Starfight VI' was Ari Pulkkinen's first game music album, but after that he's done quite a lot of work. Mostly for Frozenbyte, with Shadowgrounds and the Trine series, and a whole bunch of games I don't know, but he also did the music for 'Angry Birds'. Edit: Oh and the different colours actually do change things. I'm not sure whether they deal more damage, but the bigger, red melee enemies do have more health. Cythereal posted:I'm surprised, I thought that landing zone screamed "boss arena." Come to think of it, I'm surprised there hasn't been a boss battle since the sewer monster. Weeeellll....there was the robot in episode 2 at the end. That was, sortof, a (mini)boss. Usually his two mini-guns and lots of health make that a longer fight, but the combo of mini-gun + auto-shotgun is just too powerful. There should've been more real boss battles I feel. The little arenas against streams of enemies (radar dish, landing zone) are fun, but real bosses would be more fun. We'll get a new enemy type next episode, at least. Fleve fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Mar 14, 2015 |
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Mar 14, 2015 11:24
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Tin Tim posted:The wackiest thing about this game is that the janitor is the biggest bad-rear end, while the people with actual military training mostly flail about. Yeah I know Wes also had combat training, but with a bunch of marines you'd figure one of them would be like "Get out civie, it is I who kicks alien butt!" anilEhilated posted:Tyler being a badass becomes even better when you take Survivor into account - two of the three characters are in the military and they all achieve gently caress all compared to him. Not to mention being able to lug around considerably less guns. This gave me an idea so I’ve thrown in a bonus minute at the start, with a button you can press to skip if you’re a heartless bastard. So…euh…  In this part Wesley shoots some aliens, burns some aliens, then gasses more aliens, and lasers a few more. I think there were also a few explosions. That's all part of Janitor Class 101: Lethal Solutions to Common Problems. Tech babble – Logs       Tech babble – Weapons      This includes two upgrades we’ll be skipping for a while, namely the autoloader and the assault extension. I totally forgot about the rocket launcher this episode. Music babble Once again, a new enemy comes with a new track, Prey on This. Later on in the Greenhouses we are joined by Request Part II. I think we’ve already heard the other tracks but I’m not sure. Fleve fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 14, 2015 20:47
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Ulvirich posted:Fleve, thank you for showing this game off, and your voice over commentary is making me Thanks. Sounding genuinely enthusiastic is pretty difficult I’ve noticed, requires a bit of acting too. It’s one of the things I’d love to improve on. And euhm...we're gonna get a few shots of 'Ganymede' from space later on, and it isn't just 'mostly arid', there's oceans on the drat thing, at first I thought, oh hey, this is earth, how did that happen  After the last episode I noticed that I’ve been skipping the loading screens because of technical reasons (sometimes they make the recording crash). Not only do they provide a bit more story, they’re also nice pieces of art, so I’ve retroactively added them to the previous updates, and for convenience all current screens are below as well.
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Mar 15, 2015 12:40
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what with your lovely accent. Not quite as rambunctious as Your Evil Twin's, but terrific all the same.
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Nuramor posted:So yeah, as we have seen during the assault at the and, the flamethrower can and will damage the deployed minigun. I guess this is why it always fell so soonwhenever you used this combination earlier. This whole "dead bodies block projectiles", which apparently includes the flamethrower, makes defending against entire waves of enemies a rather tricky in general. Not only that, I also forgot that the minigun won't even shoot at things that are invisible. I thought once I'd light them up, both with actual light as well as with gunfire, the minigun would decide to join the party, but no fun there. For groups we're probably best off using the grenade launcher, especially with cluster grenades. The alt-fire laser is also drat great against groups, for about 5 seconds and then it runs out of ammo. The rocket launcher can be tricky, not so much because of the explosion, but because we'll have to upgrade it before being able to shoot and move with it. I'll want to have it fully upgraded before the end though, first time I met the final boss and didn't have all rocket upgrades was a terrible pain. I'll shoot some rockets next time, I think I'm at the max stockpile anyway 
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Mar 15, 2015 13:28
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azren posted:Regarding flamethrowers in video games, I've had two in particular I can think of that I've really liked: the first was the one in Resistance; not because of its regular fire, but the secondary let you make a cloud of gas, and ignite it in a fairly amusing explosion. Scalding Coffee posted:The one in Deadly Premonition is drat funny to use. Enemies warp to you while flailing around at 10X speed and weakly slap you for burning them. That sounds a ton better than what we’ve got going here. So far the flamethrower worked out ok, but the lack of stopping power and limited mobility get me hurt a few times in this part. Enemies just shrug off a sea of flames and jump through it. The military fails yet again by crash landing their space ship and needs the expert help of Wesley Tyler, janitor extraordinaire. Wesley takes the opportunity to test the effects of his growing arsenal on alien life-forms. Tech babble – Logs      Tech babble – Weapons       That finishes up the assault rifle and the minigun. Music babble There isn’t a whole lot of music in this part, but I think Request Part I is new. Apart from that we mostly get a lot of ambience.
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Mar 15, 2015 20:55
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until they die. It made me smile.
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While Jane, Dr. Weiss and Colonel Smith chill out in their airplane, Wesley is send out into the mines to retrieve Lieutenant Baxter – sending a lone mechanic against heavy resistance has obviously become standard military operating procedure. Had to re-record this because the microphone had automatically defaulted way too loud after a voice chat and I forgot to tune it down again  Tech babble – Logs      Tech babble – Weapons   Music babble Request Part I and Request Part II make their return, but we also finally get some new tracks, the first during the boss fight, Against All Odds, which is a pretty good track, and we’ll also finally get to hear Requiem for Baxter, of which the Adagio version also plays I believe.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:00
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Nuramor posted:It may be faster than you, but you could see how the dodgeroll gives you a short speedburst than can keep you ahead. I also never knew about getting the boss in the grinder, I just assumed it was part of the background. After a roll you're also stuck in a tiny stand up animation but I still think rolling helps a bit. The fight gets a lot easier if you draw him into that middle part because he gets stuck in the railing. The first time I found out about the grinder was completely by accident. I was fleeing and actually got stuck myself on top of the grinder, which luckily doesn't kill you. I had already died 2 times and was expecting another death any moment when the boss suddenly dove into the grinder. It's a neat little thing that you're likely to miss, the only online walkthrough doesn't even mention it.
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Mar 17, 2015 15:06
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I'm a bit ambiguous on the railgun. Without the upgrade the reload time is huge and one shot often doesn't kill, but upgraded and with bouncing bullets it can (accidentally) kill a whole room. I'm upgrading it in the next episode so I can start using it comfortably, but there are mostly strong and shielded enemies in the next part and I still prefer other weapons for that. Edit: And heck I didn't know that about the flashlight, we should be seeing more of those little guys so I'll give that a try. As a consolation, have a gif of the next part, it should be online later today.  Wesley wields his assault rifle with the fine gunplay of a janitor, sweeping through the area.
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Mar 18, 2015 13:26
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Ulvirich posted:Well, that's what he has to do when he starts dusting the aliens. He was obviously taught by the best the military had to offer, Colonel Roger ‘The Vacuum’ Smith, an expert at cleaning house.  But before I accidentally turn this into a SSLP, let me get to the update first. The band heads to the Emicron research base to fire some missiles, but quickly finds out they have to go with plan B. Plan B of course means everyone has some cake and coffee in the command centre while Wesley goes around and fixes everything. With bullets. We finally get to meet enemies with shields. They’re an enormous nuisance if you just want to shoot things, and they’re a ton of fun if you tackle them carefully. I didn’t get to toy with the new gun here yet, but it’s better than I remembered and I’ll be using it a lot after this. Only two more episodes to go, and you can already notice that they had to cram a bunch of last-minute lore and story into this section, what with there being almost 20 lore items. Because there were so many images, I had to start batch-processing them, so they’re not cropped individually; actually, I think this looks better anyway. Tech babble – Logs                   Tech babble – Weapons      I’ve also put the poison grenades upgrade here. I’m not sure whether we’ll be getting that, because it’s pretty expensive and, while useful, really boring to watch. It's just a green cloud of gas and things slowly die when they enter it. Music babble The music is mostly repeats from earlier tracks at this point, like FMJ, Valley of Shadows and Request Part I.
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Mar 18, 2015 15:33
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Nuramor posted:Why would you diss the Lightning gun? That thing is awesome. Because I never actually tried it thoroughly and in my first playthrough never had enough points to upgrade it. In a test of the next part I bought the more beams upgrade and by god that thing tears through everything. The stun-effect makes it insane because all you need to do is get within range and zap. Needless to say, I'll be relying a lot on it and the railgun during the next parts. Also, I've noticed that getting upgrade parts is incredibly random. Before recording proper, I often do a test-run through a level to time it, find the hot spots and prepare strategies. Sometimes I get 10 parts, then during the recording, I suddenly end up with 40. I feel like In the LP we've been very lucky so far, but perhaps that's also because I'm prioritizing a lot more.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:35
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For 15 parts, the additional damage on the flamethrower isn't that bad, just not great either.It also sucks that you need to start burning even more fuel because you have to keep a continuous stream going or lose the double damage. I kinda like it though, because it gives just that little bit of extra speed to kill melee enemies before they close in on you,. And there's definitely worse, like most of the magazine extensions. Also, some general stuff. I’ve been updating one episode a day for a while, but I’m working on a few ideas and projects, so for the last parts I’m slowing down to one episode every other day. Next part will be online tomorrow. If I’m reading my analytics right, once a day might also be too fast and I don’t want to be spamming updates.
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Mar 19, 2015 18:08
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Well, I don't mind posting a lot as long as I've got something to say or add, but with 30 minutes everyday that might be faster than some people like to watch. I've had that happen myself with Beagle's Xcom videos. He used to update once every few days, then daily and sometimes faster with 30-60 minute videos. I like his videos, but a few hour-long episodes in a row was too much for me to comfortably keep up with. There are some very decent TV shows that also need my attention, like The Flash. Edit: Hey actually, let me add some content or rather...well, comment on the lack of it. I've been looking around for concept art, but it appears to be nonexistent. The only thing around is a bunch of wallpapers on the official site. I've twitter..ed? twat? Frozenbyte whether they had some fun titbits to share but they referred me to their official site and a press kit which has a decent trailer but otherwise is mostly screenshots. One interesting thing I found however, is the different covers the game used. Most countries used the same cover as the original Finnish release:  But for some reason, from left to right, the German and Polish covers are completely different. I don't much like the German version, apart from the art at the top everything else is barely intelligible. The Polish version is ok, but it could've done without or better placement of all the blood.  
Fleve fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 00:09
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Tonight! Jane is actually somewhat useful. Wesley is incredibly snarky. And I shoot pools of aliens by bouncing bullets. I won’t blame you if you don’t get what I’m referencing with the way I wrote that. After last episode, we’re officially out of tech babble logs, the last two episodes will only have loading screens. Tech babble – Loading Screen  Tech babble – Weapons  Music babble Like with the logs, there’s also no new music here. But!, there’s music you haven’t heard yet because I accidentally forgot to add it earlier. During the mines and at other locations, the game played more ambient tracks like Apocalyspe I and Apocalypse II. There was also a kind of intro music for New Atlantis that I honestly couldn’t locate during New Atlantis itself. Finally, there’s one track you simply won’t hear during my Let’s Play because it plays in the Main Menu. Edit: Pierzak posted:Bear in mind that the bottom 40% would be obscured by another row of games one shelf down. It's a perfectly appropriate layout Hah. I totally forgot that a 'cover' means that those things are actually meant for physical boxes. Been so long I've bought a physical copy I don't even know how they look anymore. Fleve fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 18:59
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I wish they made Wesley say more cynical and sarcastic stuff earlier on in the game. 'Yeah, the ship loves you', and the deadpan way of reacting to disaster is wonderful. They stuffed a few more of those moments in the last part of the game. That last room was definitely bugged. I've always been able to kill everything just before the next cutscene, when the room mysteriously fills up again, but usually it doesn't take 20 seconds of walking around in an empty room before the game realizes that it needed to let me go on. I've actually once died during that final cutscene. Wesley was being all heroic with his party-line, but he does get damaged during cutscenes, and one alien fired a full salvo straight at him. Wesley sank to the ground in a death animation, but because the cutscene required it he still moved towards the exit. One loading screen further, and I was alive again. And I'm a total sucker for crisp lighting effects. Back when the first Neverwinter Nights was in development and they showed a trailer with similarly sharp light and shadows it got me weirdly enthusiastic for the game, even though I hardly knew anything else about it. Sure, shadows that look like they're cut with a knife aren't very realistic, but I like them, they fit the game. Fleve fucked around with this message at 10:35 on Mar 21, 2015 |
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Mar 21, 2015 10:32
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With half the ship out of commission, the aliens have set up a final line of defence consisting of lukewarm beams of light and a guy in a comfy chair. Wesley, however, got up this morning with a plasma rifle. And that’s the final episode, with a tiny technical surprise. I’ve bought a new monitor, so this episode is in true and glorious 1920x1080. No more black bars! Well, not unless the game creates them. I’m still not getting bored of making these, so I’ll probably have a new LP up in a few days. I’ve been working on a Dungeon Siege 3 OP, but I want to play a bit more to see how well it works and how much editing I’ll have to do. Shadowgrounds turned out to be a whole lot less work than Revenant, with usually only a handful of avisynth lines. Revenant…well, here’s a pastebin of episode 15 for example  There’s one other project I want to look into that’d also require a ton of work, which would be an absurdly heavily edited LP of Skyrim. Usually I’d say that works better as an SSLP, but I’ve got a few ideas bouncing around that might make a VLP possible and fun. Gotta see it in motion first though. Eh, there’s so much I want to do it’s silly. Tech babble – Loading Screen  Tech babble – Weapons    Music babble Two final tracks. The Main Theme, and the End Credits.
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Mar 21, 2015 21:39
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This was Frozenbyte’s first game and I think, or at least it feels like, they didn’t quite know where to go with the story. Except for the last level, with the info-dump at the end, the game revolves around pocket stories of alien trouble. Trouble with the water-plant, in the mines, evacuation of New Atlantis, and so forth. All the logs are generally related to the level you find them in as well. The ending largely seems to be there because they didn't just want to go with everything explodes. And that’s some pretty amazing Hitchhikers Guide type stuff with the teleporters. Sometimes the subtitles are unintentionally spot-on, like ‘big news’ instead of Wesley’s ‘figures’ at the start. Finally, I’ve had a look through the credits to figure out who the voice actors were. For some reason, nobody has ever made a list that joins characters to actors. This makes it close to loving impossible to know for certain who is who. So far, I’m only certain on one character. Corporal Jane Arwyn was voiced by Lani Minella, a pretty successful voice actress with a silly broad range of voices. Because it’s from the same year, you can hear the resemblance in Call of Cthulhu, where she’s Rebecca Lawrence, but in a lot of other games you really wouldn’t know it’s the same actress. She’s also done Galadriel in various Lord of the Rings games, Commander Steele in Borderlands, Silitha in Darksiders, Eve in Mass Effect 3, and the Mistress of Pain in Diablo III.
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Mar 22, 2015 14:48
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anilEhilated posted:So, no Survivor? If I remember correctly it's really short. Still, wouldn't blame you for skipping it, it's not very good. Hell, it's not even more Shadowgrounds because of the brilliant idea to limit the guns your character can access so you can't even choose your own style. Oh I totally forgot about Survivor until Pierzak mentioned both games. I just installed Survivor and played it for about half an hour, finishing the first section with the marine. I might LP it as well, but I want to play it first. So far....it's like they sacked the entire creative team. Apart from limiting your guns, technically the game is an upgrade in every direction. It's still got the old upgrade system, but also character-based upgrades, and stuff like grenades. It looks great, plays great, the physics are a nice touch. But...well, if the first 30 minutes had been a demo I'd gotten to play on an E3-type of event or something, I'd have said "Great tech demo! I'm really looking forward to when you come up with the story and replace the placeholders with some real characters"  It's not as if Shadowgrounds did a lot with the story, characters, lore and such. But strangely, that little bit of cheese, the 10% of text and acting, gave the other 90% much needed coherence, character and soul. If you'd have said that I'd miss the acting and tech babble from the first game I'd have nodded sagely but wouldn't have truly believed it, but without those things the game just feels so...empty. The game doesn't even try to do anything narratively. I don't even know what the areas I'm walking through are, I don't know where I'm going, why I'm going there. Enemies aren't introduced, just thrown out there, bosses you just stumble upon. Heck I didn't know I was fighting a boss until one big dude apparently didn't fall over and then I noticed the big health bar at the top... Fleve fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Mar 22, 2015 |
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Mar 22, 2015 16:15
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azren posted:I... I really don't like that ending. I get a major bug up my rear end when endings basically invalidate the entire story. It just feels really cheap, the way it does this "oh, no, we're really peaceful. Thanks for sacrificing so much to bring us exactly what we wanted from you in the first place. I'm so glad we eradicated your entire settlement, including innocent people who had nothing to do with this project, instead of mounting a more directed strike. kthx, It's not 100% out-of-nowhere, but pretty much 99% and enough to be jarring I feel. The logs we found didn't really hint at the aliens trying to help us, but in retrospect you can interpret for example the communication and radar dish logs as signs of them trying to communicate. On the other hand, the aliens have a terribly peculiar way of communication, involving slaughtering everyone, sending a giant sewer-beast into the water treatment plant, a giant reptile-thing into the mines, and a huge army of grunts everywhere. Perhaps they wanted the game to be longer or go elsewhere but just didn't have enough time to complete it. There were a lot of logs talking about some kind of armor that went nowhere. Leavemywife posted:I'm more surprised the game is over. I wasn't expecting a thirty hour adventure with tons of sidequests or anything, and it's a top-down shooter, but I didn't think it would end that quickly. It's a short game, yeah, but it's even shorter because I've cut down a lot on the taffing about, searching for loot, waiting for conversations to play out, etc. Steam tells me I've played the game for 24 hours, but I've only got 4 hours on youtube. I don't think I've rushed the game, but I really wanted to keep the pace up to keep things interesting. I've discarded a lot of recorded runs where I screwed up too much or died (too much). Oh, and when I mentioned I was playing Shadowgrounds: Survivor two days ago, 2 hours later I had, sadly, already finished the game. According to Steam, that took me 3 hours but I think it's a bit longer. Still, that was a first-time playthrough. In Shadowgrounds that can easily take you 7-8 hours. It's...not a bad game, quite gorgeous to be honest, but I don't think I'll LP it, it just doesn't feel interesting enough. The beginning is especially unimaginative, and while it gets better later on it's still not great. A lot of time the game blocks your route with force fields until you've murdered a large number of enemies. The environments are fairly varied but also small. Every character is limited to 2, later 3 weapons, and after 2 hours I got pretty bored with the marine's assault rifle.
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Mar 24, 2015 19:04
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." Or at least, that's how I felt.
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VKing posted:Well, that went fast (this thread is only two pages, wow). With a pretty obscure title like this and little to talk about other than the enemies and weapons, thread'll be small. But it's also a small game, even if you've never played it it'll only take you about 6-8 hours, or in this case, 10 episodes. The gameplay is pretty solid, the game is worth it just for that (or, perhaps, only for that). Frozenbyte should've really gone and added multiplayer to their games way earlier, they all beg for it (same with Trine). Shadowgrounds would've been great fragging hordes of aliens with friends. Tin Tim posted:lol at the ending That'd be Shadowgrounds: Survivor, but trust me, it doesn't improve the game. One thing Shadowgrounds has that I like about it versus other top-down shooters is varied level designs and pretty large, open levels. Survivor, on the other hand, throws you into these tiny arenas with forcefielded exits that only open after you've beaten a few waves. Arenas like that work splendidly in zombie murder simulators, but the Shadowgrounds combat system feels more...methodical, and I love planning and executing room clearing exercises like a one-man SWAT team. When poo poo is spawning all over the place the only thing that counts is how much of it I can kill per second, not how elegantly I can do it. But perhaps I've played too much Raven Shield back in the day... ----------- Anyway, as I wrote earlier, I was working on a Dungeon Siege III LP and that'll still come, it just got delayed because I found out Payday 2 exists. Whenever I find a good (co-op) game like that, I initiate a kind of time-travelling maneuver where I lose multiple days until I come to my senses. I'll be back to LP'ing this week.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:00
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 20:39 |
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RPGs are terrible time vortexes. First time I played Baldur's Gate 2 probably had a direct impact on my grades, but drat it was fun. I also didn't have internet back then and had no guide or gamefaq to follow, which in some cases was frustrating, but in others really added to the game's tension and replayability. Oh, before I forget, I did some further digging into the voice actors, tweeted around a bit. Found out that Brook Chalmers was Mr. Wallace, the guy who yells at you at the beginning of the game. Just like a lot of other voice actors for Shadowgrounds, he also did some work for Call of Chtulhu, playing Officer Winter and Sebastian Marsh. Nowadays he's a story/editorial supervisor on Dreamworks Dragons and also does the voice of a ton of vikings. And after having found out that Chalmers played Sebastian Marsh, that means that the only other guy with a similar voice who played Robert Marsh in Call of Chtulhu must've also been the voice of Colonel Smith, which is Max McGill. He didn't do a whole lot of work for games after Shadowgrounds, but instead became a pretty prominent voice for commercials, documentaries and such. It's a lot more difficult to find out who played Wesley because he's so much more generic.
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Apr 1, 2015 11:07
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