Busy Sunday Night
Oct. 9th, 2022 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickIt's a good thing that I don't have work tomorrow, as I have heavily backloaded this Sunday night -- time management! *shakes fist* Why do I always underestimate the time it'll take me to get through my YouTube stuff. . . I did do pretty well on the to-do list, though:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – typed that up after my playthrough below, as per usual! Not much different from what actually happened – Victor, Alice, and Piper clearing out a little Gunner camp set up in the Joe’s Spuckies in Postal Square, with Victor taking advantage of the opportunity to upgrade his sniper rifle a bit; the trio working their way around one of the on-ramps onto the now-busted highways and taking on some mole rats, some raiders (on the on-ramp), and some super mutants (under the on-ramp); finding their way onto the on-ramp itself, with Victor then improving his chestpiece with more scavenged leather; camping there for the night; Victor leading the way back to Goodneighbor in the morning, doing some shopping with KLE0 and Daisy, and reporting back to Hancock about Pickman and his demise; and Victor briefly going the wrong way by the Old Corner Bookstore before taking the girls back around to the Mass Fusion building and killing the Gunners outside there when the group starts shooting at them (ready for violence after killing a raider). Just another day in the Commonwealth, really!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel LP: Check, though it took much longer than anticipated. . .granted, I had a roughly hour-and-a-half video, a roughly half-hour video, and a roughly-hour video to get through, PLUS my write-ups. . . If I’m honest, starting to think those are the problem. They DO get long, don’t they? Gotta find a way to become more concise with my video descriptions. . .but for now –
A) Started before my workout with the Call Me Kevin video I couldn’t fit in yesterday because LONG: “Picking every bad option in The Walking Dead: Michonne!” If you’re wondering what that is, apparently it’s a tie-in game from 2016 (made by Telltale before they crashed and burned) with the Walking Dead comics (I say specifically the comics because the lead character’s child situation is different in the TV show apparently) that shows what happened during the period when the titular “Michonne” was away from the main group. Turns out she was with a bunch of other survivors on a boat! And then got pulled into a sort of ongoing feud between a family of survivors (plus a couple others), as “led” by Sam and her father John, and the “evil empire” flotilla (I think that’s the right word? Bunch of boats all hooked together to form a floating community) they were stealing supplies from, led by brother and sister Norma and Randall. The idea was that Norma and Randall were evil and happily slaughtering people for minor crimes to keep their own base safe, and you were supposed to help Sam in any way you could against them – but. Well, look at the title of the video. XD Kevin ended up playing Michonne as a tight-lipped bitch who snapped at all of her friends, spent most of her time glaring at people, refused to keep Sam from killing the man who accidentally killed her brother, tried her damndest NOT to be helpful to anyone, announced people’s deaths to their loved ones in the bluntest manner possible, tortured Randall when he followed them to Sam and her family’s house by squeezing his hands in a vise, smashed his skull in, tried to hand him over to his sister as a zombie, and then let Norma get torn apart by zombies without a single tear. She was so nasty that she kind of made Norma look reasonable! XD It was a funny video, though Kevin constantly picking the “say nothing” option ended up making me twitch as it felt like were skipping over SOOO much plot. But then the game got him back by refusing to respond to him trying to complete the “knock your dislocated arm back in” quick-time events, forcing him to watch the same cutscene again over and over almost to the point of insanity, so. . . :P I’ll take it!
B) Then, after supper, it was time for GrayStillPlays and “Everything I shoot becomes money in GTA 5!” Which was true, but did not get into the true pain inherent in the video. To whit: Alex had designed a new torture board for Gray, which featured a moving wall ride (as in, you had to ride onto the wall and then keep riding it as it MOVED IN AN ARC THROUGH BUILDINGS), onto a more traditional wall ride covered in billboard spikes, into a canister that you had to shoot yourself out of at just the right height and angle to get the checkpoint, which led into the twisty-turny spinning multicolored curlicue of death that you had to go around to get to the tube which had the teleporter, which led to ANOTHER wall ride with no obstacles but DID have the ends of the Curlicue of Death clipping through it regularly, which led via teleporter to a FINAL wall ride where you had to ride the OUTSIDE CURVE of a road while being regularly attacked by “bees” (yellow and black blocks popping out of the ground) before finally being teleported poolside to get the win. This torture board, to start, had no special props on it to make things harder – but Gray could BUY these props to shove onto the board and make things harder in order to afford the cars he needed to actually complete the board. And since Gray didn’t know off the bat what the perfect car would be. . . Basically, he bought the joke car at the start without realizing it wouldn’t be fast enough to keep up with the moving wall ride; got a nicer car good for wall rides that was a little too big to fit through the bottom of one of the sign props he’d bought to get it; bought a bunch of trees and shit to afford a faster, smaller car that ALMOST made it around the entire board, but was stymied by the bees on their bulging curve, and finally chucked out the big money and ended up dodging giant beer bottles, an alien spaceship, various signs, breakable walls, and punchy fists in a racecar that had been programmed to stick to basically any wall like Spider-Man so he could finally get past the bees and make it to the win. Poor bastard. XD It was a delight. Alex, we are so proud of your GTA V board-making and Gray-torturing skills. XD
C) And finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel - Grand Finale - Life's A Glitch!” Jon has completed the noted Worst Fallout Game, which involved a lot of “hold down A and just hope your enemy stays still so you can keep hammering it.” To go through it in a bit more detail –
I. First part involved Cain going around the vault to disable the life support enough for an auxilary vent to open that the remaining residents could escape through, escorting a technican (who can die, but if he does they just send another one – at least until he dies for PLOT reasons, but by then your part of the quest is done) through the parts of the vault that are full of murderous robots, lasers, and force fields, with Cain having to open passageways and deal with all the deadly bots. Fortunately Jon kept finding better and better weapons for this, like a Telsa Cutter and a Shredder gun! Plus one of the scientists back in the “Garden” area was your one-stop weapons and armor shop for the area, allowing Jon to buy lots of ammo and, eventually, the Power Armor set (which was a little too steampunk for his liking, but whatever).
II. Second part involved Cain proceeding deeper into the ruins on his own, looking for the lab key card that he needed to enter the lab and stop the mutants, notably Attius, from getting what they wanted (which Jon correctly guessed wasn’t some sort of super weapon, but rather the ability to breed – the point of the vault was to fix damage caused by radiation and mutation, and increase fertility after all). This involved quite a few sections done in damn near absolute darkness, and Cain facing off against this world’s version of deathclaws, which come in a variety of sizes and colors, from tiny brown babies to big purple monsters with retractable claws to a weird Xenomorph-like mama deathclaw that you have to kill to get your keycard. That being said, they’re really not that tough – the Tesla Cutter swept through the bigger ones doing multiple hits, and the Shredder and Continuous Laser Rifle just tore through Mama. Honestly, the worst part about the level is that it had no “Skyrim door” back to the start – Jon had to backtrack through the dark bits, this time doing platforming and facing off against occasionally-INVISIBLE deathclaws. 0/5 stars, would not recommend.
III. Third part involved Cain finally making it into the lab itself and chasing down Attius, killing a bunch of super mutants and an “adolescent deathclaw” in the middle of a massive mutated growth spurt. There was one “control this turret to clear your way” section to help break up the murder monotony, but other than that, it was just slaughter slaughter slaughter all the way to the end, where he found Attius had injected himself with the treatments and was slowly mutating – though not in the way he wanted. He just got bigger and bigger during the boss fight for a while – then EXPLODED into meat moss all over the damn vault! With tentacles and eyes and – basically this game went from Fallout to Resident Evil. Cain fought his way through the goo until he found security officer Patty, unfortunately caught by the gunk and being slowly eaten, who told him how to set the vault up to self-destruct and that there was a monorail he could use to escape into the mountains. Cain gave her a mercy kill at her request, found the console he could use to activate the vault’s reactor, then ran around in a panic trying to find the monorail because there was no indication which way he needed to go. Fortunately Jon found the train almost at the last second, and Cain monorailed out of there as the vault, and pretty much all of Los, went up in a nuclear fireball.
And – that was it! No “where are they now” epilogue, no further ending slides, no nothing. Just right back to the title screen. *shrug* Jon was – unimpressed. Though his real takeaway for the game was that it was just completely unnoteworthy – not exactly the worst thing on the planet, but nothing interesting. Most of the game is just a continual slog of fighting waves upon waves of identical enemies, and it’s just so – tonally OFF from the rest of the series. Jon did enjoy playing with all the weapons (they were fun and felt like they were doing real damage), and those occasional bits of non-combat-focused gameplay that were sprinkled in (especially in the Vault section), but. . .I think this sums it up best – the game is, at best, a ten-hour campaign – and even that feels padded all to hell. So yeah, Jon’s happy enough to just stop thinking about it again. Next week, it seems like we’re going back to Fallout 3 after a long absence – we’ll see what he’s got planned for that game then!
3. Play Fallout 4 and get Victor and Piper back to Goodneighbor to report to Hancock on Pickman: Check – took a bit of wandering and a bit of murder, but that’s the way things always got in Fallout 4 –
-->Picked up with Victor and Piper having camped out near Faneuil Hall after I attempted to find my way over to Goodneighbor on a dark rainy night and ended up going in a complete loop. This time, I determined to just go straight on instead of to the right. This necessitated taking out a turret that was facing us – and then, as Piper and Victor sneaked forward, a grenade bouquet (fortunately Piper did not either walk into it or force Victor into it, as I was fearing when I spotted it). There was also a spotlight to kill. I wasn’t sure if this was a raider camp or not. . .
-->Nope, it was Postal Square, home to a couple of Gunners! They weren’t immediately hostile, so I tried to have Victor and Piper just ease their way around – but then one of them took a dislike to Piper’s face and started firing, and Piper and Victor ended up killing them. Ah well. While looting the corpses, I found an accessible interior in Joe’s Spuckies and decided to check it out. . .
-->More Gunners! What a surprise. Victor and his Two-Shot and Piper and her Burning Laser were able to make short work of the lot – which is good, as when I looted the corpses, I found that one of them had a MISSILE LAUNCHER. Now THAT would have been a hell of a mess! Victor got all the useful junk he could off them, and grabbed their cap stash in the bathroom after disabling a tension trap for another grenade bouquet. He scrapped down a whole bunch of leather armor for just plain old leather, and then gathered aluminum cans until he had enough aluminum to bring his Mighty Sniper Rifle up from “Calibrated Powerful” to a “.50” receiver – little more damage on Victor’s longest-range option!
-->With that sorted, it was back into the Financial District, taking out the other spotlight and turret on the other side of the Gunner mini-base, and wading through the rain to try and find Goodneighbor. After reorienting, I had Victor and Piper sneak through some side streets and over some rubble – they managed to make it past a Super Mutant Skirmisher without being fully detected, but then Victor hopped a wall to go under a highway on-ramp and ended up disturbing a nest of rabid mole rats! Which were easily taken out, but Piper insisted there were more enemies above them – and indeed, there was a small contingent of raiders on the bridge above, in JUST awkward enough a spot that hitting them was impossible. And then Piper and Victor’s attempts to kill THEM ended up bringing in more super mutants, and – yeah, by the time I realized I was in a fight I couldn’t win, Victor’s health was so low it seemed more reasonable to just let the super mutant kill him.
-->Okay, take two of that encounter – this time, Victor started by taking out the Skirmisher in the building they were sneaking past (asshole finally got into a good position for me to shoot him); then went around and over the wall to kill the mole rats; then kept going through the little gap to the OTHER side of the building they were up against, where they actually had a good shot at the raiders AND were able to kill them and the super mutants camping out under the on-ramp nearby separately, murderlating them all with the Two-Shot. (Seriously, that combat rifle is the BEST.) Victor looted all the corpses he could and had a toilet break as I determined from the quest marker that I was probably BEHIND Goodneighbor and just had to find a way around to the actual front door. After a little futzing, I found a gap in the fence near the mutants’ cookpot and was able to use that to loop around onto the main streets and find how to actually ACCESS the on-ramp – Victor went up it to finish looting the raider corpses, use his portable workbench to scrap down more leather armor, and then use THAT to bring his chest piece all the way up to Polymer-level, nice. By that point, though, he was exhausted, and there were no enemies in the immediate vicinity, so I had him and Piper pitch the tent up there and get some sleep.
-->Next morning, I had Victor do a bit of exploring on the bridge/on-ramp (looks like it leads up to another possible raider camp?), then head back down, skirting around some super-mutants to finally reach Goodneighbor’s front door! As it was quite early yet in the game (he got up shortly before 7 AM), I had him hit up KLE0 and Daisy for goodies – he sold KLE0 some weapons he wasn’t using (spare, non-Legendary combat rifle, plasma gun, the Poisoner’s Rolling Pin) and some ammo he DEFINITELY wasn’t using for ammo he WAS using, and Daisy a bunch of food in response for purified water and useful junk. (I WAS tempted to get the Destroyer leg piece she was offering for better movement speed, but I don’t know what exactly it is and how much it can be upgraded. . .hmm. Have to look some stuff up, I think!)
-->And with all that sorted and the hour in-game reasonable, Victor headed into the Old State House and met up with Hancock, who asked him what he’d seen – I had Victor tell him it was utterly horrific, and Hancock promised he’d tell people to avoid the area and gave Victor 200 caps. Nice.
-->With that done, I figured it was time to find my way back to Diamond City and Nick! Having heard some dangerous-sounding robots to the left of me when I went out the door, I had Victor and Piper instead go right, taking out some dogs in the rubble and then shooting some ghouls from atop a truck in said rubble by the Old Corner Bookstore. A look at my map then made me realize I was actually heading the wrong way, though, so once the coast was clear, I had Piper and Victor go back to the left and around the Mass Fusion Building. . .
-->Where the Gunners got agitated and started firing on something. And when Victor got close to see what it was (turned out to be a raider), they started firing on him. Victor and Piper took them out very easily, and I started thinking – hmm. Isn’t this the location of the Strength Bobblehead? Something I very much want because it gives Victor a free Strength point and thus allows me to get my modified Strong Back perk (which halves, and then entirely eliminates, the weight of worn clothing, meaning Victor will have even more carryweight space free)? Hmmmm. . .
So yeah – I’ve left it parked outside that building for now. Next time, there’s a good chance that we will be going to clear out a bunch of Gunners to get that bobblehead! And then maybe swing back to see Daisy to get the Destroyer’s leg she sells. To Nick after that though!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Eh, check enough – while I did a dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning, I never did do anything in the drafts for that blog. I’m calling it “check enough” because I DID have two ask replies that I put into the queue for Valice Multiverse, which has to count. Gonna try to get the pictures for the next Chill Save update sorted before I go to bed though, so I can get that done tomorrow morning!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today to start the next Oxventure Orbpocalypse episode, “Wrangle in the Tangle!” Having been cornered by the Thief Queen’s guards after buying conditioner for Corazon’s hair, the gang were forced at spearpoint to head up into her palace, into her very dramatically lit throne room (one light on the throne itself, the rest of the room in shadow – though Egbert pointed out that this gave your enemies plenty of places to hide too. Corazon argued it was for the AESTHETIC, man, and Egbert was like “well, maybe you should just have one shadow you can sneak around in?” Corazon: “Egbert, that’s a pitch-black room”). The Queen herself shortly appeared from the shadows, dressed dramatically in boiled leather armor, a long black cloak. . .
And a paper mâché pearl covering her entire head. Cue Luke getting super-excited because this is the return of Katy the thief from all the way back in – I wanna say “A Fishmas Carol?” I’m pretty sure that’s the one where they had to return a missing pearl to its fish-people owners and ended up killing their leader and converting them all to Cthulhu worship. XD But yeah, this is a MASSIVE callback. Katy wasn’t exactly pleased to see the Oxventurers, especially since Dob and Egbert in particular wouldn’t stop calling her Katy, Katy Pearlhead, Her Majesty Katy Pearlhead, Katy Pearlhead of State. . .yeah, it took a guard butting them with his spear to make them stop. XD It seems that, after the whole incident with the pearl, she went down to the thieves’ market where they learned her name and killed a bunch of people (starting with the guy who dropped said name), then proceeded to gain the loyalty of every remaining rogue in Tanner’s Folly, slowly but surely spreading her influence through all the towns of Geth before finally claiming the title of Thief Queen. Dob tried to argue that them shoving the pearl on her head was probably the best thing that had ever happened to her then, but she wasn’t exactly buying it. XD
She also wasn’t buying that they were there on a friendly visit – especially with, you know, Dob having just blurted out something about her having a “legendary shard” in her treasure haul. Corazon desperately tried to claim it was cursed and they’d be doing her a favor by taking it off her hands – and fortunately rolled well on the Charisma check to convince her of that fact. Katy dismissed the guards so she could talk to them privately without the pearl on her head (Dob was surprised it came off), and said that she was willing to hand over the shard if they did something for her – namely, kill her traitorous captain Tinniswood, who had run off with a dozen loyal men and her library of scrolls, containing maps to a bunch of the wealthiest and hardest-to-get-into places in Geth. She was pretty sure his intent was to pull off some daring heists to gain more followers and eventually challenge her for her crown. Nobody knew that he was disloyal yet, though, so if the Oxventurers were willing to kill the lot of them, get her scrolls back, and keep the whole incident on the down-low, she would happily hand over the shard. The gang, not really having any choice in this, agreed, though Dob was the first to ask “uh, do we really have to kill them all?” (Katy’s response being, “Yes, don’t you get squeamish on me.”) She promised them some canoes to get them to the camp and back, and the gang headed off on their quest (Corazon copying Katy’s skillful step back into the shadows as they exited, while Dob tried to copy Corazon and ended up just falling down all 2,000 steps of the palace like a Slinky, with Prudence watching and keeping pace the whole way)!
The gang ended up taking the large “party boat” canoe down the river, discussing plans on how to deal with Tinniswood and company – and, in Corazon’s case, smearing himself with as much mud as he possibly could to blend in with the gunk on the river. (As a bonus, that meant he didn’t have to help row. XD) They eventually happened upon the camp (sorting the boat safely under some mangrove roots) and took a look to determine what was happening and entrances and exits – what was happening was dinner, mainly, with a pot of SOMETHING on the fire. Corazon suggested the best thing to do would probably be to poison that so everyone would get really sick and they’d be easier to tie up or something – yeah, even he was feeling weird about killing thirteen people at Katy’s behest. (Dob asked if it was because thirteen was an unlucky number, and Corazon happily seized upon the excuse.) Merilwen used her Speak With Animals spell to find an animal to help, and got Christian the rather scruffy hornbill. Merilwen initially tried to trick Christian into putting the poison in the stew by saying it was a “secret ingredient,” but Christian called her out on that – and agreed to help anyway, because he loves chaos. Everyone immediately became Team Christian. XD She poisoned up a bunch of grapes she had on her and had Christian fly over to drop them in the stewpot (after crushing them up and then giving him some rather-less-poisoned grapes so he wouldn’t eat the poisoned ones – I say “rather-less-poisoned” as everyone pointed out she was handling them with the same hands she’d just Poison Sprayed with XD). Christian then urged his new friends up a tree to help them avoid the attentions of a rather terrible creature in the water nearby (it’s a sort of squid thing with a horrible mouth full of sharp teeth, the ability to give you a nasty disease just by touching you, AND the ability to enthrall people, so yeah – wanna avoid that!). Most of the group followed Christian up the tree, though Corazon crawled into the camp Rambo-style in his mud accouterments, getting a nat 20 in the process! So he’s in the thick of it, listening to these rogues say things about how, if they ruled the world, they’d make sure water wasn’t a natural human right, and how they’re gonna love stealing from these orphans. Corazon is slowly getting more okay with killing them now. XD We’ll see how the plan goes down tomorrow!
Whew -- now I have to hope that Kevin doesn't upload yet another long video tomorrow, and I'll be all set for a bit. XD Currently bouncing around between a few different social things, so let me just get my holiday weekend to-dos up:
1. Continue writing "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and clear more videos from the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and do some building (either more Chill Save house upgrades or a separate project)
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Hopefully all doable -- oh, and I have that stuff to answer from Moose too. . .I'll do my best to get to that tomorrow! In the meantime good night!
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – typed that up after my playthrough below, as per usual! Not much different from what actually happened – Victor, Alice, and Piper clearing out a little Gunner camp set up in the Joe’s Spuckies in Postal Square, with Victor taking advantage of the opportunity to upgrade his sniper rifle a bit; the trio working their way around one of the on-ramps onto the now-busted highways and taking on some mole rats, some raiders (on the on-ramp), and some super mutants (under the on-ramp); finding their way onto the on-ramp itself, with Victor then improving his chestpiece with more scavenged leather; camping there for the night; Victor leading the way back to Goodneighbor in the morning, doing some shopping with KLE0 and Daisy, and reporting back to Hancock about Pickman and his demise; and Victor briefly going the wrong way by the Old Corner Bookstore before taking the girls back around to the Mass Fusion building and killing the Gunners outside there when the group starts shooting at them (ready for violence after killing a raider). Just another day in the Commonwealth, really!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel LP: Check, though it took much longer than anticipated. . .granted, I had a roughly hour-and-a-half video, a roughly half-hour video, and a roughly-hour video to get through, PLUS my write-ups. . . If I’m honest, starting to think those are the problem. They DO get long, don’t they? Gotta find a way to become more concise with my video descriptions. . .but for now –
A) Started before my workout with the Call Me Kevin video I couldn’t fit in yesterday because LONG: “Picking every bad option in The Walking Dead: Michonne!” If you’re wondering what that is, apparently it’s a tie-in game from 2016 (made by Telltale before they crashed and burned) with the Walking Dead comics (I say specifically the comics because the lead character’s child situation is different in the TV show apparently) that shows what happened during the period when the titular “Michonne” was away from the main group. Turns out she was with a bunch of other survivors on a boat! And then got pulled into a sort of ongoing feud between a family of survivors (plus a couple others), as “led” by Sam and her father John, and the “evil empire” flotilla (I think that’s the right word? Bunch of boats all hooked together to form a floating community) they were stealing supplies from, led by brother and sister Norma and Randall. The idea was that Norma and Randall were evil and happily slaughtering people for minor crimes to keep their own base safe, and you were supposed to help Sam in any way you could against them – but. Well, look at the title of the video. XD Kevin ended up playing Michonne as a tight-lipped bitch who snapped at all of her friends, spent most of her time glaring at people, refused to keep Sam from killing the man who accidentally killed her brother, tried her damndest NOT to be helpful to anyone, announced people’s deaths to their loved ones in the bluntest manner possible, tortured Randall when he followed them to Sam and her family’s house by squeezing his hands in a vise, smashed his skull in, tried to hand him over to his sister as a zombie, and then let Norma get torn apart by zombies without a single tear. She was so nasty that she kind of made Norma look reasonable! XD It was a funny video, though Kevin constantly picking the “say nothing” option ended up making me twitch as it felt like were skipping over SOOO much plot. But then the game got him back by refusing to respond to him trying to complete the “knock your dislocated arm back in” quick-time events, forcing him to watch the same cutscene again over and over almost to the point of insanity, so. . . :P I’ll take it!
B) Then, after supper, it was time for GrayStillPlays and “Everything I shoot becomes money in GTA 5!” Which was true, but did not get into the true pain inherent in the video. To whit: Alex had designed a new torture board for Gray, which featured a moving wall ride (as in, you had to ride onto the wall and then keep riding it as it MOVED IN AN ARC THROUGH BUILDINGS), onto a more traditional wall ride covered in billboard spikes, into a canister that you had to shoot yourself out of at just the right height and angle to get the checkpoint, which led into the twisty-turny spinning multicolored curlicue of death that you had to go around to get to the tube which had the teleporter, which led to ANOTHER wall ride with no obstacles but DID have the ends of the Curlicue of Death clipping through it regularly, which led via teleporter to a FINAL wall ride where you had to ride the OUTSIDE CURVE of a road while being regularly attacked by “bees” (yellow and black blocks popping out of the ground) before finally being teleported poolside to get the win. This torture board, to start, had no special props on it to make things harder – but Gray could BUY these props to shove onto the board and make things harder in order to afford the cars he needed to actually complete the board. And since Gray didn’t know off the bat what the perfect car would be. . . Basically, he bought the joke car at the start without realizing it wouldn’t be fast enough to keep up with the moving wall ride; got a nicer car good for wall rides that was a little too big to fit through the bottom of one of the sign props he’d bought to get it; bought a bunch of trees and shit to afford a faster, smaller car that ALMOST made it around the entire board, but was stymied by the bees on their bulging curve, and finally chucked out the big money and ended up dodging giant beer bottles, an alien spaceship, various signs, breakable walls, and punchy fists in a racecar that had been programmed to stick to basically any wall like Spider-Man so he could finally get past the bees and make it to the win. Poor bastard. XD It was a delight. Alex, we are so proud of your GTA V board-making and Gray-torturing skills. XD
C) And finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel - Grand Finale - Life's A Glitch!” Jon has completed the noted Worst Fallout Game, which involved a lot of “hold down A and just hope your enemy stays still so you can keep hammering it.” To go through it in a bit more detail –
I. First part involved Cain going around the vault to disable the life support enough for an auxilary vent to open that the remaining residents could escape through, escorting a technican (who can die, but if he does they just send another one – at least until he dies for PLOT reasons, but by then your part of the quest is done) through the parts of the vault that are full of murderous robots, lasers, and force fields, with Cain having to open passageways and deal with all the deadly bots. Fortunately Jon kept finding better and better weapons for this, like a Telsa Cutter and a Shredder gun! Plus one of the scientists back in the “Garden” area was your one-stop weapons and armor shop for the area, allowing Jon to buy lots of ammo and, eventually, the Power Armor set (which was a little too steampunk for his liking, but whatever).
II. Second part involved Cain proceeding deeper into the ruins on his own, looking for the lab key card that he needed to enter the lab and stop the mutants, notably Attius, from getting what they wanted (which Jon correctly guessed wasn’t some sort of super weapon, but rather the ability to breed – the point of the vault was to fix damage caused by radiation and mutation, and increase fertility after all). This involved quite a few sections done in damn near absolute darkness, and Cain facing off against this world’s version of deathclaws, which come in a variety of sizes and colors, from tiny brown babies to big purple monsters with retractable claws to a weird Xenomorph-like mama deathclaw that you have to kill to get your keycard. That being said, they’re really not that tough – the Tesla Cutter swept through the bigger ones doing multiple hits, and the Shredder and Continuous Laser Rifle just tore through Mama. Honestly, the worst part about the level is that it had no “Skyrim door” back to the start – Jon had to backtrack through the dark bits, this time doing platforming and facing off against occasionally-INVISIBLE deathclaws. 0/5 stars, would not recommend.
III. Third part involved Cain finally making it into the lab itself and chasing down Attius, killing a bunch of super mutants and an “adolescent deathclaw” in the middle of a massive mutated growth spurt. There was one “control this turret to clear your way” section to help break up the murder monotony, but other than that, it was just slaughter slaughter slaughter all the way to the end, where he found Attius had injected himself with the treatments and was slowly mutating – though not in the way he wanted. He just got bigger and bigger during the boss fight for a while – then EXPLODED into meat moss all over the damn vault! With tentacles and eyes and – basically this game went from Fallout to Resident Evil. Cain fought his way through the goo until he found security officer Patty, unfortunately caught by the gunk and being slowly eaten, who told him how to set the vault up to self-destruct and that there was a monorail he could use to escape into the mountains. Cain gave her a mercy kill at her request, found the console he could use to activate the vault’s reactor, then ran around in a panic trying to find the monorail because there was no indication which way he needed to go. Fortunately Jon found the train almost at the last second, and Cain monorailed out of there as the vault, and pretty much all of Los, went up in a nuclear fireball.
And – that was it! No “where are they now” epilogue, no further ending slides, no nothing. Just right back to the title screen. *shrug* Jon was – unimpressed. Though his real takeaway for the game was that it was just completely unnoteworthy – not exactly the worst thing on the planet, but nothing interesting. Most of the game is just a continual slog of fighting waves upon waves of identical enemies, and it’s just so – tonally OFF from the rest of the series. Jon did enjoy playing with all the weapons (they were fun and felt like they were doing real damage), and those occasional bits of non-combat-focused gameplay that were sprinkled in (especially in the Vault section), but. . .I think this sums it up best – the game is, at best, a ten-hour campaign – and even that feels padded all to hell. So yeah, Jon’s happy enough to just stop thinking about it again. Next week, it seems like we’re going back to Fallout 3 after a long absence – we’ll see what he’s got planned for that game then!
3. Play Fallout 4 and get Victor and Piper back to Goodneighbor to report to Hancock on Pickman: Check – took a bit of wandering and a bit of murder, but that’s the way things always got in Fallout 4 –
-->Picked up with Victor and Piper having camped out near Faneuil Hall after I attempted to find my way over to Goodneighbor on a dark rainy night and ended up going in a complete loop. This time, I determined to just go straight on instead of to the right. This necessitated taking out a turret that was facing us – and then, as Piper and Victor sneaked forward, a grenade bouquet (fortunately Piper did not either walk into it or force Victor into it, as I was fearing when I spotted it). There was also a spotlight to kill. I wasn’t sure if this was a raider camp or not. . .
-->Nope, it was Postal Square, home to a couple of Gunners! They weren’t immediately hostile, so I tried to have Victor and Piper just ease their way around – but then one of them took a dislike to Piper’s face and started firing, and Piper and Victor ended up killing them. Ah well. While looting the corpses, I found an accessible interior in Joe’s Spuckies and decided to check it out. . .
-->More Gunners! What a surprise. Victor and his Two-Shot and Piper and her Burning Laser were able to make short work of the lot – which is good, as when I looted the corpses, I found that one of them had a MISSILE LAUNCHER. Now THAT would have been a hell of a mess! Victor got all the useful junk he could off them, and grabbed their cap stash in the bathroom after disabling a tension trap for another grenade bouquet. He scrapped down a whole bunch of leather armor for just plain old leather, and then gathered aluminum cans until he had enough aluminum to bring his Mighty Sniper Rifle up from “Calibrated Powerful” to a “.50” receiver – little more damage on Victor’s longest-range option!
-->With that sorted, it was back into the Financial District, taking out the other spotlight and turret on the other side of the Gunner mini-base, and wading through the rain to try and find Goodneighbor. After reorienting, I had Victor and Piper sneak through some side streets and over some rubble – they managed to make it past a Super Mutant Skirmisher without being fully detected, but then Victor hopped a wall to go under a highway on-ramp and ended up disturbing a nest of rabid mole rats! Which were easily taken out, but Piper insisted there were more enemies above them – and indeed, there was a small contingent of raiders on the bridge above, in JUST awkward enough a spot that hitting them was impossible. And then Piper and Victor’s attempts to kill THEM ended up bringing in more super mutants, and – yeah, by the time I realized I was in a fight I couldn’t win, Victor’s health was so low it seemed more reasonable to just let the super mutant kill him.
-->Okay, take two of that encounter – this time, Victor started by taking out the Skirmisher in the building they were sneaking past (asshole finally got into a good position for me to shoot him); then went around and over the wall to kill the mole rats; then kept going through the little gap to the OTHER side of the building they were up against, where they actually had a good shot at the raiders AND were able to kill them and the super mutants camping out under the on-ramp nearby separately, murderlating them all with the Two-Shot. (Seriously, that combat rifle is the BEST.) Victor looted all the corpses he could and had a toilet break as I determined from the quest marker that I was probably BEHIND Goodneighbor and just had to find a way around to the actual front door. After a little futzing, I found a gap in the fence near the mutants’ cookpot and was able to use that to loop around onto the main streets and find how to actually ACCESS the on-ramp – Victor went up it to finish looting the raider corpses, use his portable workbench to scrap down more leather armor, and then use THAT to bring his chest piece all the way up to Polymer-level, nice. By that point, though, he was exhausted, and there were no enemies in the immediate vicinity, so I had him and Piper pitch the tent up there and get some sleep.
-->Next morning, I had Victor do a bit of exploring on the bridge/on-ramp (looks like it leads up to another possible raider camp?), then head back down, skirting around some super-mutants to finally reach Goodneighbor’s front door! As it was quite early yet in the game (he got up shortly before 7 AM), I had him hit up KLE0 and Daisy for goodies – he sold KLE0 some weapons he wasn’t using (spare, non-Legendary combat rifle, plasma gun, the Poisoner’s Rolling Pin) and some ammo he DEFINITELY wasn’t using for ammo he WAS using, and Daisy a bunch of food in response for purified water and useful junk. (I WAS tempted to get the Destroyer leg piece she was offering for better movement speed, but I don’t know what exactly it is and how much it can be upgraded. . .hmm. Have to look some stuff up, I think!)
-->And with all that sorted and the hour in-game reasonable, Victor headed into the Old State House and met up with Hancock, who asked him what he’d seen – I had Victor tell him it was utterly horrific, and Hancock promised he’d tell people to avoid the area and gave Victor 200 caps. Nice.
-->With that done, I figured it was time to find my way back to Diamond City and Nick! Having heard some dangerous-sounding robots to the left of me when I went out the door, I had Victor and Piper instead go right, taking out some dogs in the rubble and then shooting some ghouls from atop a truck in said rubble by the Old Corner Bookstore. A look at my map then made me realize I was actually heading the wrong way, though, so once the coast was clear, I had Piper and Victor go back to the left and around the Mass Fusion Building. . .
-->Where the Gunners got agitated and started firing on something. And when Victor got close to see what it was (turned out to be a raider), they started firing on him. Victor and Piper took them out very easily, and I started thinking – hmm. Isn’t this the location of the Strength Bobblehead? Something I very much want because it gives Victor a free Strength point and thus allows me to get my modified Strong Back perk (which halves, and then entirely eliminates, the weight of worn clothing, meaning Victor will have even more carryweight space free)? Hmmmm. . .
So yeah – I’ve left it parked outside that building for now. Next time, there’s a good chance that we will be going to clear out a bunch of Gunners to get that bobblehead! And then maybe swing back to see Daisy to get the Destroyer’s leg she sells. To Nick after that though!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Eh, check enough – while I did a dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning, I never did do anything in the drafts for that blog. I’m calling it “check enough” because I DID have two ask replies that I put into the queue for Valice Multiverse, which has to count. Gonna try to get the pictures for the next Chill Save update sorted before I go to bed though, so I can get that done tomorrow morning!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today to start the next Oxventure Orbpocalypse episode, “Wrangle in the Tangle!” Having been cornered by the Thief Queen’s guards after buying conditioner for Corazon’s hair, the gang were forced at spearpoint to head up into her palace, into her very dramatically lit throne room (one light on the throne itself, the rest of the room in shadow – though Egbert pointed out that this gave your enemies plenty of places to hide too. Corazon argued it was for the AESTHETIC, man, and Egbert was like “well, maybe you should just have one shadow you can sneak around in?” Corazon: “Egbert, that’s a pitch-black room”). The Queen herself shortly appeared from the shadows, dressed dramatically in boiled leather armor, a long black cloak. . .
And a paper mâché pearl covering her entire head. Cue Luke getting super-excited because this is the return of Katy the thief from all the way back in – I wanna say “A Fishmas Carol?” I’m pretty sure that’s the one where they had to return a missing pearl to its fish-people owners and ended up killing their leader and converting them all to Cthulhu worship. XD But yeah, this is a MASSIVE callback. Katy wasn’t exactly pleased to see the Oxventurers, especially since Dob and Egbert in particular wouldn’t stop calling her Katy, Katy Pearlhead, Her Majesty Katy Pearlhead, Katy Pearlhead of State. . .yeah, it took a guard butting them with his spear to make them stop. XD It seems that, after the whole incident with the pearl, she went down to the thieves’ market where they learned her name and killed a bunch of people (starting with the guy who dropped said name), then proceeded to gain the loyalty of every remaining rogue in Tanner’s Folly, slowly but surely spreading her influence through all the towns of Geth before finally claiming the title of Thief Queen. Dob tried to argue that them shoving the pearl on her head was probably the best thing that had ever happened to her then, but she wasn’t exactly buying it. XD
She also wasn’t buying that they were there on a friendly visit – especially with, you know, Dob having just blurted out something about her having a “legendary shard” in her treasure haul. Corazon desperately tried to claim it was cursed and they’d be doing her a favor by taking it off her hands – and fortunately rolled well on the Charisma check to convince her of that fact. Katy dismissed the guards so she could talk to them privately without the pearl on her head (Dob was surprised it came off), and said that she was willing to hand over the shard if they did something for her – namely, kill her traitorous captain Tinniswood, who had run off with a dozen loyal men and her library of scrolls, containing maps to a bunch of the wealthiest and hardest-to-get-into places in Geth. She was pretty sure his intent was to pull off some daring heists to gain more followers and eventually challenge her for her crown. Nobody knew that he was disloyal yet, though, so if the Oxventurers were willing to kill the lot of them, get her scrolls back, and keep the whole incident on the down-low, she would happily hand over the shard. The gang, not really having any choice in this, agreed, though Dob was the first to ask “uh, do we really have to kill them all?” (Katy’s response being, “Yes, don’t you get squeamish on me.”) She promised them some canoes to get them to the camp and back, and the gang headed off on their quest (Corazon copying Katy’s skillful step back into the shadows as they exited, while Dob tried to copy Corazon and ended up just falling down all 2,000 steps of the palace like a Slinky, with Prudence watching and keeping pace the whole way)!
The gang ended up taking the large “party boat” canoe down the river, discussing plans on how to deal with Tinniswood and company – and, in Corazon’s case, smearing himself with as much mud as he possibly could to blend in with the gunk on the river. (As a bonus, that meant he didn’t have to help row. XD) They eventually happened upon the camp (sorting the boat safely under some mangrove roots) and took a look to determine what was happening and entrances and exits – what was happening was dinner, mainly, with a pot of SOMETHING on the fire. Corazon suggested the best thing to do would probably be to poison that so everyone would get really sick and they’d be easier to tie up or something – yeah, even he was feeling weird about killing thirteen people at Katy’s behest. (Dob asked if it was because thirteen was an unlucky number, and Corazon happily seized upon the excuse.) Merilwen used her Speak With Animals spell to find an animal to help, and got Christian the rather scruffy hornbill. Merilwen initially tried to trick Christian into putting the poison in the stew by saying it was a “secret ingredient,” but Christian called her out on that – and agreed to help anyway, because he loves chaos. Everyone immediately became Team Christian. XD She poisoned up a bunch of grapes she had on her and had Christian fly over to drop them in the stewpot (after crushing them up and then giving him some rather-less-poisoned grapes so he wouldn’t eat the poisoned ones – I say “rather-less-poisoned” as everyone pointed out she was handling them with the same hands she’d just Poison Sprayed with XD). Christian then urged his new friends up a tree to help them avoid the attentions of a rather terrible creature in the water nearby (it’s a sort of squid thing with a horrible mouth full of sharp teeth, the ability to give you a nasty disease just by touching you, AND the ability to enthrall people, so yeah – wanna avoid that!). Most of the group followed Christian up the tree, though Corazon crawled into the camp Rambo-style in his mud accouterments, getting a nat 20 in the process! So he’s in the thick of it, listening to these rogues say things about how, if they ruled the world, they’d make sure water wasn’t a natural human right, and how they’re gonna love stealing from these orphans. Corazon is slowly getting more okay with killing them now. XD We’ll see how the plan goes down tomorrow!
Whew -- now I have to hope that Kevin doesn't upload yet another long video tomorrow, and I'll be all set for a bit. XD Currently bouncing around between a few different social things, so let me just get my holiday weekend to-dos up:
1. Continue writing "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and clear more videos from the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and do some building (either more Chill Save house upgrades or a separate project)
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Hopefully all doable -- oh, and I have that stuff to answer from Moose too. . .I'll do my best to get to that tomorrow! In the meantime good night!
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Date: 2022-10-10 08:58 pm (UTC)Tho I did want to tell you I found a Clip Studio Paint (the art program I use) brush that makes shapes like the Doc Ock tentacles so I may one day give OckDoc a go.
Also, the Cold Stone in town had Emily and Victor painted on one of their windows for Halloween (the town goes all out for Halloween probably because Charles Addams was born and raised here). I tried to get a picture of it but we were in the car moving. Next time Ruby wants to take a walk I'll pass by it.
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Date: 2022-10-11 03:47 am (UTC)Hah, that's cool! Hopefully if you do give it a go, he doesn't give you too much trouble. :p
Nice! (And LOL, really? That's neat. :D I know Providence does some cool stuff due to the association with HP Lovecraft. . .) I look forward to seeing that! :)
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Date: 2022-10-11 10:56 pm (UTC)http://www.planetalnilam.com/images/phonecam/20221011_180844.jpg
http://www.planetalnilam.com/images/phonecam/20221011_180848.jpg
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Date: 2022-10-12 03:53 am (UTC)