Chilly and Meh Sunday
Sep. 8th, 2024 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickVery fall-like weather today -- actually had to crack out a hoodie and long pants! Though it's supposed to get back into the 80s later in the week, so it doesn't look like Summer's quite done with us yet... As for the "meh" part, my parents are still testing positive for COVID (I'm not THAT surprised, since it lingered in me for over a week), and I didn't sleep great last night. Mostly because I chugged a bunch of water before going to bed (I was really thirsty) and then woke up at ass o'clock needing to pee -- only to have to wait because one of my parents was in the bathroom. It wasn't great! But I did get most of what I intended to get done today done, at least --
Tumblr: Had a busy day over here, despite a slow start this morning –
Victor Luvs Alice – Did a LOT of stuff over here today:
I. I posted the link to the final chapter of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” (see below)
II. I reblogged a post on commenting on fics/reblogging stuff and how it’s supposed to build a sense of community/allow us to share the joy (as a reminder to myself to do that more often)
III. I reblogged a post on how you haven’t found all the things that will make you happy yet (because it made me think about how I’ve been stumbling across stuff that interests me during the last four years – Fallout 4, The Smiler, Blades In The Dark and now “Severance” have definitely helped me out this whole stupid decade)
IV. I answered an anon ask where they told me Alice in their Tomodachi Life game asked Victor out, but he said no (I went “letting us down, Tomodachi Life!”)
V. I took a “what type of BTTF fan are you” quiz that popped up on my dash from Knickyknoo and reblogged with my result (fan of Doc and Marty’s friendship, not surprising)
VI. And I did a post for a “WIP Word Game” thing I was tagged in by Newt (where you get a word and have to go through your WIP looking for sentences/excerpts starting with each letter of the word – I got BITES and did chunks from both “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” (Chapter 3) and ““Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” (whole fic)) and tagged a few other friends in it.
Hilariously, the one thing I did not do was get my intended Wednesday post (showing off my Tiny Town lot) sorted in my drafts. However, that’ll probably be a short post, so maybe I can get that done tomorrow. We’ll see.
Valice Multiverse – Over here, things were much simpler – I had one more reblog from Toonsisters on the “making Cuddlepile!Victor play the Cat Mario troll game” (as per her, it took poor Victor two hours and 50 more deaths to finish – I had Victor just glare at her once he won), and a follow-up ask from Satirical Demon where he tried to introduce Victor to Inscryption (Victor was like “NO NOT UNTIL SMILER VETS THIS FIRST” XD). So that was nice!
Writing: Welp, it took a little more of my morning than I anticipated (mostly because I had to fix a couple more errors and do a LOT of end-of-chapter “here are all the things I referenced and stuff that may need explaining” notes), but I did get up the final chapter of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” right before my lunch! You may read it here, if you are so inclined. Feels good to get this story completed, that’s for sure!
YouTube: Marathon Day went pretty well, despite me having a bout of distracted exhaustion this afternoon, and just generally being tired most of the day –
A) Started with the Josh Way video I didn’t get to last night – “RAW TAKE: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review!” Yes, Josh went and saw the sequel to the 1988 classic, and his thoughts were “it’s good! It’s not going to win any awards, and it’s got a little too much going on, and the ending doesn’t FULLY come together, but it is a LOT of fun and is true to the spirit of the original, which is what you want in one of these movies.” Which, hey, is great! I’ve never seen the original myself (though I suppose at some point I should), but if you have and you’re a fan, you can rest assured that there’s a good chance you’ll like this new one. *thumbs up*
B) Then it was over to the latest OXBox list so I could get all caught up on that too – “7 Genius Loophole Solutions To Tricky Problems!” Andy and Jane talking about those times in games where a clever player might be able to figure out an alternate solution other than the “intended” one. Need a bunch of momentum to get onto a certain platform to exit a room in Portal 2? You could spray conversion gel everywhere to climb a tower to fling yourself off of...or you could use portals to jump from a smaller height, then quickly keep shooting portals to keep yourself going and constantly gaining just a little bit of momentum until you can fling yourself onto the platform! Need to kill miniboss Dror Ragzlin, one of the leaders of the goblins opposing you, in Baldur’s Gate III? Well, you could fight him in fair combat...or you could get him near a hole in his boss arena and then get a high-Strength character to shove him down it, no sweat! And if you need to kill a certain visionary at his wolf-themed party in Deathloop, but aren’t sure which one of the masked guests he is (other than not one of the obvious women), you could skulk around gathering clues on how to identify him...or you could go Full Mike and just kill everyone. XD Which in fact actually gets you THREE visionaries for the price of one, meaning – in this one instance – Full Mike might in fact be the way to go! Even ANDY seemed in favor, which was just downright bizarre. XD
C) After that, it was time to start catching up on Jon of Many A True Nerd’s Fallout-flavored videos, starting with “Fallout: London - Part 7 - The Millennium Doom!” Featuring the adventures of Lady Aria and her new companion Archie as they attempted to go sight-seeing along their way to catching up with the Vagabonds that Aria found after her escape from her secret lab, only to realize “oh right, everything in this game is HARD AS BALLS.” XD Specifically –
I. They hit up Thameshaven to see what job the Ferryman wanted Aria to do – only to discover he wasn’t there (apparently this is a known bug and Jon just needs to update to the latest version of the mod), so instead Aria just took a moment to sort through her guns – upgrading the service rifle and the police revolver she got last time, and getting a new fun zap gun off the gun merchant to play with! And also regretting her decision to send Churchill the bulldog away in favor of Archie, as apparently she left a bunch of her junk on him, oh dear. XD
II. They visited Greenwich (with Aria starting from that laundromat she found before) and stumbled across the DLR platform, which had a train car hanging from it (as the particular part of London they were in has no actual Tube access – the ground is unsuited for tunneling, and when it was first built, there weren’t enough people there to justify even trying to cover it – so it’s all elevated trains I guess) – Aria attempted to find a way up top to it so she could check it out, but no dice. The best she could do was explore the exterior and the nearby Greenwich Station, which didn’t yield anything except some bloodbugs outside, some feral ghouls inside, and the revelation that Archie, being a child who doesn’t like guns, is kind of useless in a fight as he just runs from trouble screaming. Aria decided she really missed Churchill and his bite attack. XD
III. They worked their way around to an abandoned restaurant (as Jon wanted to find out if a certain symbol on Aria’s compass was a chef’s hat or a nuclear explosion – fortunately the former), which contained a few nice goodies, including a collectible cigarette card and a safe full of ammo. Aria also learned at this point that Archie was, as previously claimed, very good at opening locked doors and safes – which is good because she’s barely competent at lockpicking herself right now. Meaning her regret over trading Churchill for him went down a bit. XD
IV. They found their way over to the body of “Tricky” Rick (a dead Vagabond Aria apparently looted in an earlier bit), then from there found a massive wall with a military checkpoint in it that they couldn’t get through (though, uh, according to the comments, the button to open it was in fact right there, Jon just didn’t see it); a facility surrounded by a fence with “radiation danger” signs all over it (Aria TRIED to infiltrate it without walking through the possibly highly-radioactive puddle in the front, but was unable to fit herself through the gap in the fence); and a churchyard that was absolutely teaming with feral ghouls (which featured Aria attempting to throw a molotov at them as they charged her, only to blow herself up – fortunately her second attempt at clearing the place went a LOT smoother). You know, all the usual shit you find in downtown London. XD
V. They then went into the church attached to the churchyard and discovered not just one, but TWO Legendary Black Bloatflies within. Once again Aria died and Jon had to reload a save. XD She took them out in the end, though (with the help of the police pistol, which as it turns out has absolutely RIDICULOUS range for a handgun), and manage to get a Hunter’s Leather Right Leg and an Assassin’s Hooligan’s Left Leg off the corpses (Jon was much happier about the latter, which reduces damage from humans by 15%, than the former, which increases damage against animals by 15%). Not too shabby!
VI. They found the Greenwich Pindar while trying to find the best route over to the location Jon REALLY wanted them to visit (Pindars being kind-of-sort-of the equivalent of vaults in London in this game – underground bunkers where people waited out the radiation and where weird shit MIGHT have been going on) and discovered a bunch of Hooligans inside; a Legendary Radroach with a modified hooked wrench that was good against “Gehenna” – as the Legendary effect was “Mutant Slayer,” I’m guessing those are the local equivalent of super mutants; a couple of terminals from some soldiers stationed there that suggested the scientists in the Pindar were acting a bit weird and obsessing over the Prime Meridian for some reason; a safe with a note that urged all comers to try cracking it, as the note-teller hadn’t been able to open it with a sledgehammer (and indeed, it proved to be beyond Archie’s capabilities); a terminal for one of the scientists indicating they’d been given VERY unclear instructions about what they were supposed to do in the Pindar and documenting their descent into boredom-induced madness (culminating in a teddy bear slaughter that ended with the scientist realizing they had actual blood on their hands); and the discovery of another Cutethulhu doll brimming with eldritch power (concerning!). So yeah – maybe the experiments weren’t quite as explicit as the ones in the vaults, but it does seem like there was some worrying stuff happening in the pindars. We’ll have to see what future ones are like when Lady Aria stumbles across them!
VI. They fought SOOO many Jack Tar on their way along to their chosen location because the faction’s headquarters was basically blocking their way and the ones hanging out outside couldn’t resist picking a fight – Aria was like “I don’t even WANT to kill you, I’ve already got your good gun and your excellent hats.” XD At least Archie showed off his usefulness as a distraction in combat, even if he himself can’t fight!
VII. They finally found their way to the area Aria wanted to visit – namely, the neighborhood that would lead them to the infamous Millennium Dome, a ridiculous bit of architecture celebrating the new millennium that was FINALLY repurposed into the O2 stadium when the government sold it to a telephone company – only to discovered that it was the local equivalent of the GLOWING SEA. Like, it was MASSIVELY radioactive, and had creepy Lamphrey Floaters in it full of teeth, and the map had a big ass CRATER on it right nearby where they were going (which Jon actually mistook for the bombed Dome at first glance, before realizing “no, wait, it’s up higher, but still”), and Aria’s one attempt to make it over the A102 bridge to the actual dome resulted in her falling in the water at one point and taking a MASSIVE amount of rads, then finding an area covered in giant mushrooms and guarded by the fucking police shooting at her and wiping out what little health she had left. Is it any wonder Jon reloaded a coward’s save by the Golden Elm near the start of the neighborhood and had her and Archie book it out of there??
VIII. They got out of the radiation-heavy areas and finally back on their way to the Vagabonds, only to stop briefly to clear out a small hideout of Hooligans (where Aria took the opportunity to improve her new Assassin’s Left Leg), and then to kill a Legendary Radroach, which dropped a Sprinter’s Leather Left Leg (causing Aria to immediately toss the armor she’d just improved as Jon absolutely prioritizes movement speed over everything else in Fallout games XD).
IX. And the episode ended with the pair finally finding their way to Vagabond headquarters, where they found the gang in conflict with one of the other local outfits, the Syndicate (whom Aria admired for their very snazzy suits) – Aria was tasked with helping defend their tavern, the Swan & Mitre, and eagerly got out her zap gun to assist, only for the Vagabonds to take out all the enemies before she could fire a single shot. XD (To be fair, she COULD have helped, but then she got distracted by the snazzy suits).
So – yeah. Kind of the episode of “nothing goes the way Jon, and by extension Lady Aria, expects it to.” XD Next week, we’ll see what’s actually going on with the Vagabonds as Lady Aria chats with member (and possibly leader) Yvette! Should be interesting!
D) Then, this evening after supper, it was time for the GrayStillPlays video of the day – “When you get paid to crush the universe,” aka Gray plays Crusher Clicker! As you might guess, this is a clicker game centered around crushing chunks of rock between two grindy wheels – you can click on the rocks to cause them to break up faster, or you can spend all your time upgrading the speed, the power, the gravity, and the price of the finished rock cubes. And buying nuclear bombs to help crush everything in one go. XD You also earn levels the more rocks you crush, which unlocks new types of ore for you to crush (up to a point, then they start repeating), and you can complete tasks, which gets you absolutely BUCKETLOADS of money for simple stuff like earning a level and making lots of money. Oh, and you can earn new skins for your crusher wheels, like hypnotic spirals and diamond wheels, by doing specific things, like getting to a specific level, or clicking on enough bombs. Gray of course loves these types of “spend lots of money to make UNGODLY amounts of money” games, and had a lot of fun blowing through all the tasks, getting as many upgrades as possible, and using as many nukes as possible to make sure he could unlock all of the skins on offer. XD He ended the game having gone through all the ores on offer, made his wheels spin at terrifying speeds, and earned like 4.7 trillion dollars. Nice. Now if only jobs like this existed in real life!
E) And finally, we returned to Jon for the Sunday Fallout Offering – “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 51 - Absent Without Leave!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Mayor Bob as he worked to make his army ever stronger and take out the hostile Gunners! How did that go this episode? Well –
I. While making his way back to HQ after taking Scrap Palace for Lupe, Bob discovered that the nearby Somerville Place settlement was full of Gunners – who were bizarrely neutral to his presence. Maybe they simply didn’t recognize Bob as the God-Emperor of the Commonwealth who had been giving them so many problems. :p Anyway, he marked that down as a “place I should think about taking later” and continued on –
Only to run into a couple of Legendary mirelurks along the way! Because of course he did. XD The Killclaw only had a Blazing Meat Hook, which was ridiculous – but the King had a Martyr’s Synth Right Leg, which Jon was like “YES” about. This baby slows time in combat for you for a bit if you get below 20% health, meaning if you’re about to die, it is probably a literal lifesaver. One of the few things he will give up a Sprinter leg for! So he took that home and modded it up before slapping it on. *nods* It’s always nice when the game gives Jon a good Legendary!
II. Anyway, once that was all done, Bob returned to HQ and talked to Salvador, who told him that decoding the intel was slow going, but he’d determined that the final location they had to take out to ground the Stingray bombers was deep in the Glowing Sea. Which meant they DEFINITELY had to start preparing their troops to undertake such an arduous journey! Specifically, this meant building a special Loadout Lab to design special loadouts for the more experienced soldiers to carry (like the combat medic kits Cassandra mentioned in the last video); getting training facilities in Outposts so troops could train to rank up (Salvador warned it wouldn’t be a substitute for real battle, but it would definitely help give them an edge); building mess halls to help with troop morale and ensure they were getting filling meals (which could translate to buffs on the battlefield); and building watchtowers to help guards hold their captured territory better while they were off in the radioactive hellhole (Bob was like “okay, uh, we already have a bunch of those in the Marina, but thanks for telling me”). Bob was fine with all this and set about making it happen so he could end the Stingray threat faster –
And then, right after setting up the lab in the basement and figuring out what he needed to start researching Combat Medics (more experienced soldiers at base to help out Salvador, basically), Bob went upstairs and found the others fighting off a surprise molerat infestation. O.o What is this, Fallout Shelter? XD Bob initially tried to blame Aiden for this, but immediately stepped back when he realized he’d said “you’d taken your eye off the ball” to a dude wearing an eyepatch. XD Yeah, uh, not cool, Bob, not cool. :p
III. Anyway – Bob needed more experienced soldiers to get his military power at HQ up, and needed to level up a conscript to Rank 3 for the main quest, so it was time to start another offensive! He thus headed back to the Marina to get a mess hall and a training facility set up; use the power of his desk to set the standard uniform as “road leathers” (only to see it on a settler, go “no, not loving this” and instead set it to “Vault 111 jumpsuits” so everyone would be bright blue and thus easy to spot XD); and read a note someone sent him about coming to meet them at a blue-doored house north of Bunker Hill to talk about getting supplies to outposts (Bob was like “Charlotte?? Come on, we’ve already met, you don’t have to be this secretive”) – before finally setting up an attack to “subdue” Somerville place and bring it under Commonwealth Curator control! Bob thus ran back through the mirelurk territory to meet up with his troops by the house –
Only to discover the Gunners running away from the settlement. And then pausing and running back again. As if they weren’t sure what the hell it was that they were supposed to be doing. XD I guess this will happen sometimes when the AI gets a little confused about what the hell it’s supposed to be doing! Anyway, Bob joined up with his troops, the Gunners realized “oh wait a second you’re the guy we hate and want to kill” and turned red –
And cue a large, explody fight with Bob and his troops slaughtering loads of Gunners while utterly destroying all the cars around the settlement, along with the corn field. As you might imagine, the settlers there got a bit pissy, and Bob had to shoot one of them right before the end of the battle to stop them trying to kill him. :( But the place was successfully subdued and defended, and Bob got an S rank on the battle, so that was good. But even better –
IV. He discovered that one of his conscripts had indeed leveled up to rank 3, yay! :D Bob promptly sent them and a guy at Rank 2 over to HQ to help research combat medics. Once that was sorted, his next objective was to actually turn a Rank 3 soldier into a combat medic with the specialized loadout. Bob had a specific person in mind for the honor – a ghoul who happened to be wielding his explosive minigun – but he couldn’t find her at the Marina. What do?
Why, set up another assault on the nearby WRVR radio tower to lure into the field so he could promote her! Except, uh, despite a good number of soldiers showing up to the offense (including good old Strong), she never did. Worse yet, the troops spawned in on the wrong side of the bridge to reach the radio tower (it’s one of those bridges that splits in the middle and raises to let boats through, and it’s stuck partly open with one side higher than the other, meaning it’s pretty much impossible to climb over to that side). Bob was like “my life” and jumped into the water to start the assault, hoping his troops would just teleport to him once he began taking out the enemies. Fortunately they did, and the troops easily took out the raiders which had occupied the place (with Bob very happily showing off his Gun-Fu skills). The game then told him that he had to sit tight and help defend the place from arriving reinforcements –
V. Except. Uh. Turns out Sim Settlements 2 has a known issue where the reinforcements for an enemy faction whose territory you’re trying to take will bug out and spawn a long, LONG way away, forcing your character and their army to sit around twiddling their thumbs while they wait for them to arrive. Bob killed some time hunting Legendary mongrels nearby – which netted him a VATS Enhanced Leather Right Arm, which he appreciated since he didn’t have any Legendary gear on that arm – then tried stepping into the tower itself and waiting for eight hours on a chair to see if that would get the reinforcements there any faster. Nope – all that happened was one raider showed up. Bob decided “oh, screw this” and decided to go and find a Rank 3 Conscript at another location that he could field promote to a Medic while he was waiting –
And discovered that, while Somerville Place had in fact TWO Rank 3 Conscripts (including the ghoul he was trying to find earlier), he couldn’t change them to combat medics there because there was no armory there. So he sent them back to the Marina for later reassignment, then headed back to the WRVR radio tower to see if the reinforcements had shown up yet. He got excited when the tower came under attack by some raiders, only for his hopes to be dashed when killing them didn’t complete the quest. So he decided to continue onward to try and find these damn lost reinforcements –
And, uh, you know how, above, I mentioned that his army had spawned in on the wrong side of the bridge to actually path to the tower? Yeah, turns out that was the case with the raider reinforcements too. *facepalm* Oh SS2, why do you have to be like this… At least Bob found them and was able to kill them to finally complete the damn mission!
VI. Anyway – having finally taken the radio tower properly, Bob headed back to the Marina, designated a Combat Medic, then hit the sack. The next morning, he got a message from Salvador, telling him that he’d worked out the location the Gunners were using to help supply their Stingrays in the Glowing Sea – the Federal Cache – and that he felt their army was up to the challenge of taking it. Bob was a little less sure (because, well, he’d had to dump a LOT of soldiers around the map to guard various outposts), but he was ready to get the show on the road regardless, so he headed over to the Glowing Sea with his Rad-X in hand! He made it over to the Cache (murdering a scorpion along the way), marked some Gunners with his binoculars, called in the troops via flare gun –
And then pulled out his Lorenzo Artifact Gamma Gun and started WAILING on the Gunners that he could see. XD He and his troops took out the initial wave of Gunners pretty easily (and that was WITH being distracted by a Legendary Deathskull Radscorpion joining the fight – nothing good on it, though) –
But then the game informed Bob that reinforcements were coming in. And once again, Bob found himself having to wait around while the enemy slowly worked their way toward his location – only this time he was being slowly and steadily irradiated for his trouble. And the thing about the Federal Cache is, it doesn’t have a separate interior – it’s a fully-in-the-exterior-world building. So there was absolutely nowhere for Bob to hide from the rads! He managed to survive (though he did have to do some Rad-Away, which Jon hates in Survival because it suppresses the immune system), and the reinforcements DID eventually show up to get killed, but – yeah. Jon is VERY KEEN on this bug being fixed, mod creators! And maybe this whole part of the game getting tweaked a bit, as it is rather fiddly.
VII. And so the episode ended with Bob, having successfully secured the Cache, getting the hell out of Dodge via Institute teleport and starting the long walk back to HQ from the CIT Ruins, with Jon noting that while he’d definitely wrapped up the latest quest pretty well, it was definitely time to start thinking of building another base in order to bulk up his stretched-thin army. All while ignoring that Bob leveled up TWICE this video. XD Oh Jon, never change. But looking forward to seeing what happens when he checks in with HQ!
Workout: Back on the bike this evening, and back to the GrayStillPlays compilations with “Horror games to keep you up at night!” Though whether that’s from actual terror or incredulous laughter is still up for debate. XD I got through his two videos on The Toilet Chronicles (where you are someone trapped in a restroom and must find a way to escape – first video focused on the restroom itself, while the second focused on a new chunk of the game where you can brave the Staff Only area) today, with Gray deliberately electrocuting himself with a hand dryer; handing a half-naked gnome to the guy in the other stall until said guy crushed his pelvis; blowing himself up by accident with a hidden grenade; slipping on a banana peel (multiple times); and turning himself into a mouse to get past Backrooms Squidward. It’s a weird game. XD We’ll see what other games got included in the compilation tomorrow – I know The Baby In Yellow is in there somewhere!
*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose. And now I have to get to bed so I can try and get some actual sleep tonight (though I'm pretty sure at least some of this tiredness is just my period creeping up on me). Night all!
Tumblr: Had a busy day over here, despite a slow start this morning –
Victor Luvs Alice – Did a LOT of stuff over here today:
I. I posted the link to the final chapter of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” (see below)
II. I reblogged a post on commenting on fics/reblogging stuff and how it’s supposed to build a sense of community/allow us to share the joy (as a reminder to myself to do that more often)
III. I reblogged a post on how you haven’t found all the things that will make you happy yet (because it made me think about how I’ve been stumbling across stuff that interests me during the last four years – Fallout 4, The Smiler, Blades In The Dark and now “Severance” have definitely helped me out this whole stupid decade)
IV. I answered an anon ask where they told me Alice in their Tomodachi Life game asked Victor out, but he said no (I went “letting us down, Tomodachi Life!”)
V. I took a “what type of BTTF fan are you” quiz that popped up on my dash from Knickyknoo and reblogged with my result (fan of Doc and Marty’s friendship, not surprising)
VI. And I did a post for a “WIP Word Game” thing I was tagged in by Newt (where you get a word and have to go through your WIP looking for sentences/excerpts starting with each letter of the word – I got BITES and did chunks from both “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” (Chapter 3) and ““Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” (whole fic)) and tagged a few other friends in it.
Hilariously, the one thing I did not do was get my intended Wednesday post (showing off my Tiny Town lot) sorted in my drafts. However, that’ll probably be a short post, so maybe I can get that done tomorrow. We’ll see.
Valice Multiverse – Over here, things were much simpler – I had one more reblog from Toonsisters on the “making Cuddlepile!Victor play the Cat Mario troll game” (as per her, it took poor Victor two hours and 50 more deaths to finish – I had Victor just glare at her once he won), and a follow-up ask from Satirical Demon where he tried to introduce Victor to Inscryption (Victor was like “NO NOT UNTIL SMILER VETS THIS FIRST” XD). So that was nice!
Writing: Welp, it took a little more of my morning than I anticipated (mostly because I had to fix a couple more errors and do a LOT of end-of-chapter “here are all the things I referenced and stuff that may need explaining” notes), but I did get up the final chapter of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” right before my lunch! You may read it here, if you are so inclined. Feels good to get this story completed, that’s for sure!
YouTube: Marathon Day went pretty well, despite me having a bout of distracted exhaustion this afternoon, and just generally being tired most of the day –
A) Started with the Josh Way video I didn’t get to last night – “RAW TAKE: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review!” Yes, Josh went and saw the sequel to the 1988 classic, and his thoughts were “it’s good! It’s not going to win any awards, and it’s got a little too much going on, and the ending doesn’t FULLY come together, but it is a LOT of fun and is true to the spirit of the original, which is what you want in one of these movies.” Which, hey, is great! I’ve never seen the original myself (though I suppose at some point I should), but if you have and you’re a fan, you can rest assured that there’s a good chance you’ll like this new one. *thumbs up*
B) Then it was over to the latest OXBox list so I could get all caught up on that too – “7 Genius Loophole Solutions To Tricky Problems!” Andy and Jane talking about those times in games where a clever player might be able to figure out an alternate solution other than the “intended” one. Need a bunch of momentum to get onto a certain platform to exit a room in Portal 2? You could spray conversion gel everywhere to climb a tower to fling yourself off of...or you could use portals to jump from a smaller height, then quickly keep shooting portals to keep yourself going and constantly gaining just a little bit of momentum until you can fling yourself onto the platform! Need to kill miniboss Dror Ragzlin, one of the leaders of the goblins opposing you, in Baldur’s Gate III? Well, you could fight him in fair combat...or you could get him near a hole in his boss arena and then get a high-Strength character to shove him down it, no sweat! And if you need to kill a certain visionary at his wolf-themed party in Deathloop, but aren’t sure which one of the masked guests he is (other than not one of the obvious women), you could skulk around gathering clues on how to identify him...or you could go Full Mike and just kill everyone. XD Which in fact actually gets you THREE visionaries for the price of one, meaning – in this one instance – Full Mike might in fact be the way to go! Even ANDY seemed in favor, which was just downright bizarre. XD
C) After that, it was time to start catching up on Jon of Many A True Nerd’s Fallout-flavored videos, starting with “Fallout: London - Part 7 - The Millennium Doom!” Featuring the adventures of Lady Aria and her new companion Archie as they attempted to go sight-seeing along their way to catching up with the Vagabonds that Aria found after her escape from her secret lab, only to realize “oh right, everything in this game is HARD AS BALLS.” XD Specifically –
I. They hit up Thameshaven to see what job the Ferryman wanted Aria to do – only to discover he wasn’t there (apparently this is a known bug and Jon just needs to update to the latest version of the mod), so instead Aria just took a moment to sort through her guns – upgrading the service rifle and the police revolver she got last time, and getting a new fun zap gun off the gun merchant to play with! And also regretting her decision to send Churchill the bulldog away in favor of Archie, as apparently she left a bunch of her junk on him, oh dear. XD
II. They visited Greenwich (with Aria starting from that laundromat she found before) and stumbled across the DLR platform, which had a train car hanging from it (as the particular part of London they were in has no actual Tube access – the ground is unsuited for tunneling, and when it was first built, there weren’t enough people there to justify even trying to cover it – so it’s all elevated trains I guess) – Aria attempted to find a way up top to it so she could check it out, but no dice. The best she could do was explore the exterior and the nearby Greenwich Station, which didn’t yield anything except some bloodbugs outside, some feral ghouls inside, and the revelation that Archie, being a child who doesn’t like guns, is kind of useless in a fight as he just runs from trouble screaming. Aria decided she really missed Churchill and his bite attack. XD
III. They worked their way around to an abandoned restaurant (as Jon wanted to find out if a certain symbol on Aria’s compass was a chef’s hat or a nuclear explosion – fortunately the former), which contained a few nice goodies, including a collectible cigarette card and a safe full of ammo. Aria also learned at this point that Archie was, as previously claimed, very good at opening locked doors and safes – which is good because she’s barely competent at lockpicking herself right now. Meaning her regret over trading Churchill for him went down a bit. XD
IV. They found their way over to the body of “Tricky” Rick (a dead Vagabond Aria apparently looted in an earlier bit), then from there found a massive wall with a military checkpoint in it that they couldn’t get through (though, uh, according to the comments, the button to open it was in fact right there, Jon just didn’t see it); a facility surrounded by a fence with “radiation danger” signs all over it (Aria TRIED to infiltrate it without walking through the possibly highly-radioactive puddle in the front, but was unable to fit herself through the gap in the fence); and a churchyard that was absolutely teaming with feral ghouls (which featured Aria attempting to throw a molotov at them as they charged her, only to blow herself up – fortunately her second attempt at clearing the place went a LOT smoother). You know, all the usual shit you find in downtown London. XD
V. They then went into the church attached to the churchyard and discovered not just one, but TWO Legendary Black Bloatflies within. Once again Aria died and Jon had to reload a save. XD She took them out in the end, though (with the help of the police pistol, which as it turns out has absolutely RIDICULOUS range for a handgun), and manage to get a Hunter’s Leather Right Leg and an Assassin’s Hooligan’s Left Leg off the corpses (Jon was much happier about the latter, which reduces damage from humans by 15%, than the former, which increases damage against animals by 15%). Not too shabby!
VI. They found the Greenwich Pindar while trying to find the best route over to the location Jon REALLY wanted them to visit (Pindars being kind-of-sort-of the equivalent of vaults in London in this game – underground bunkers where people waited out the radiation and where weird shit MIGHT have been going on) and discovered a bunch of Hooligans inside; a Legendary Radroach with a modified hooked wrench that was good against “Gehenna” – as the Legendary effect was “Mutant Slayer,” I’m guessing those are the local equivalent of super mutants; a couple of terminals from some soldiers stationed there that suggested the scientists in the Pindar were acting a bit weird and obsessing over the Prime Meridian for some reason; a safe with a note that urged all comers to try cracking it, as the note-teller hadn’t been able to open it with a sledgehammer (and indeed, it proved to be beyond Archie’s capabilities); a terminal for one of the scientists indicating they’d been given VERY unclear instructions about what they were supposed to do in the Pindar and documenting their descent into boredom-induced madness (culminating in a teddy bear slaughter that ended with the scientist realizing they had actual blood on their hands); and the discovery of another Cutethulhu doll brimming with eldritch power (concerning!). So yeah – maybe the experiments weren’t quite as explicit as the ones in the vaults, but it does seem like there was some worrying stuff happening in the pindars. We’ll have to see what future ones are like when Lady Aria stumbles across them!
VI. They fought SOOO many Jack Tar on their way along to their chosen location because the faction’s headquarters was basically blocking their way and the ones hanging out outside couldn’t resist picking a fight – Aria was like “I don’t even WANT to kill you, I’ve already got your good gun and your excellent hats.” XD At least Archie showed off his usefulness as a distraction in combat, even if he himself can’t fight!
VII. They finally found their way to the area Aria wanted to visit – namely, the neighborhood that would lead them to the infamous Millennium Dome, a ridiculous bit of architecture celebrating the new millennium that was FINALLY repurposed into the O2 stadium when the government sold it to a telephone company – only to discovered that it was the local equivalent of the GLOWING SEA. Like, it was MASSIVELY radioactive, and had creepy Lamphrey Floaters in it full of teeth, and the map had a big ass CRATER on it right nearby where they were going (which Jon actually mistook for the bombed Dome at first glance, before realizing “no, wait, it’s up higher, but still”), and Aria’s one attempt to make it over the A102 bridge to the actual dome resulted in her falling in the water at one point and taking a MASSIVE amount of rads, then finding an area covered in giant mushrooms and guarded by the fucking police shooting at her and wiping out what little health she had left. Is it any wonder Jon reloaded a coward’s save by the Golden Elm near the start of the neighborhood and had her and Archie book it out of there??
VIII. They got out of the radiation-heavy areas and finally back on their way to the Vagabonds, only to stop briefly to clear out a small hideout of Hooligans (where Aria took the opportunity to improve her new Assassin’s Left Leg), and then to kill a Legendary Radroach, which dropped a Sprinter’s Leather Left Leg (causing Aria to immediately toss the armor she’d just improved as Jon absolutely prioritizes movement speed over everything else in Fallout games XD).
IX. And the episode ended with the pair finally finding their way to Vagabond headquarters, where they found the gang in conflict with one of the other local outfits, the Syndicate (whom Aria admired for their very snazzy suits) – Aria was tasked with helping defend their tavern, the Swan & Mitre, and eagerly got out her zap gun to assist, only for the Vagabonds to take out all the enemies before she could fire a single shot. XD (To be fair, she COULD have helped, but then she got distracted by the snazzy suits).
So – yeah. Kind of the episode of “nothing goes the way Jon, and by extension Lady Aria, expects it to.” XD Next week, we’ll see what’s actually going on with the Vagabonds as Lady Aria chats with member (and possibly leader) Yvette! Should be interesting!
D) Then, this evening after supper, it was time for the GrayStillPlays video of the day – “When you get paid to crush the universe,” aka Gray plays Crusher Clicker! As you might guess, this is a clicker game centered around crushing chunks of rock between two grindy wheels – you can click on the rocks to cause them to break up faster, or you can spend all your time upgrading the speed, the power, the gravity, and the price of the finished rock cubes. And buying nuclear bombs to help crush everything in one go. XD You also earn levels the more rocks you crush, which unlocks new types of ore for you to crush (up to a point, then they start repeating), and you can complete tasks, which gets you absolutely BUCKETLOADS of money for simple stuff like earning a level and making lots of money. Oh, and you can earn new skins for your crusher wheels, like hypnotic spirals and diamond wheels, by doing specific things, like getting to a specific level, or clicking on enough bombs. Gray of course loves these types of “spend lots of money to make UNGODLY amounts of money” games, and had a lot of fun blowing through all the tasks, getting as many upgrades as possible, and using as many nukes as possible to make sure he could unlock all of the skins on offer. XD He ended the game having gone through all the ores on offer, made his wheels spin at terrifying speeds, and earned like 4.7 trillion dollars. Nice. Now if only jobs like this existed in real life!
E) And finally, we returned to Jon for the Sunday Fallout Offering – “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 51 - Absent Without Leave!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Mayor Bob as he worked to make his army ever stronger and take out the hostile Gunners! How did that go this episode? Well –
I. While making his way back to HQ after taking Scrap Palace for Lupe, Bob discovered that the nearby Somerville Place settlement was full of Gunners – who were bizarrely neutral to his presence. Maybe they simply didn’t recognize Bob as the God-Emperor of the Commonwealth who had been giving them so many problems. :p Anyway, he marked that down as a “place I should think about taking later” and continued on –
Only to run into a couple of Legendary mirelurks along the way! Because of course he did. XD The Killclaw only had a Blazing Meat Hook, which was ridiculous – but the King had a Martyr’s Synth Right Leg, which Jon was like “YES” about. This baby slows time in combat for you for a bit if you get below 20% health, meaning if you’re about to die, it is probably a literal lifesaver. One of the few things he will give up a Sprinter leg for! So he took that home and modded it up before slapping it on. *nods* It’s always nice when the game gives Jon a good Legendary!
II. Anyway, once that was all done, Bob returned to HQ and talked to Salvador, who told him that decoding the intel was slow going, but he’d determined that the final location they had to take out to ground the Stingray bombers was deep in the Glowing Sea. Which meant they DEFINITELY had to start preparing their troops to undertake such an arduous journey! Specifically, this meant building a special Loadout Lab to design special loadouts for the more experienced soldiers to carry (like the combat medic kits Cassandra mentioned in the last video); getting training facilities in Outposts so troops could train to rank up (Salvador warned it wouldn’t be a substitute for real battle, but it would definitely help give them an edge); building mess halls to help with troop morale and ensure they were getting filling meals (which could translate to buffs on the battlefield); and building watchtowers to help guards hold their captured territory better while they were off in the radioactive hellhole (Bob was like “okay, uh, we already have a bunch of those in the Marina, but thanks for telling me”). Bob was fine with all this and set about making it happen so he could end the Stingray threat faster –
And then, right after setting up the lab in the basement and figuring out what he needed to start researching Combat Medics (more experienced soldiers at base to help out Salvador, basically), Bob went upstairs and found the others fighting off a surprise molerat infestation. O.o What is this, Fallout Shelter? XD Bob initially tried to blame Aiden for this, but immediately stepped back when he realized he’d said “you’d taken your eye off the ball” to a dude wearing an eyepatch. XD Yeah, uh, not cool, Bob, not cool. :p
III. Anyway – Bob needed more experienced soldiers to get his military power at HQ up, and needed to level up a conscript to Rank 3 for the main quest, so it was time to start another offensive! He thus headed back to the Marina to get a mess hall and a training facility set up; use the power of his desk to set the standard uniform as “road leathers” (only to see it on a settler, go “no, not loving this” and instead set it to “Vault 111 jumpsuits” so everyone would be bright blue and thus easy to spot XD); and read a note someone sent him about coming to meet them at a blue-doored house north of Bunker Hill to talk about getting supplies to outposts (Bob was like “Charlotte?? Come on, we’ve already met, you don’t have to be this secretive”) – before finally setting up an attack to “subdue” Somerville place and bring it under Commonwealth Curator control! Bob thus ran back through the mirelurk territory to meet up with his troops by the house –
Only to discover the Gunners running away from the settlement. And then pausing and running back again. As if they weren’t sure what the hell it was that they were supposed to be doing. XD I guess this will happen sometimes when the AI gets a little confused about what the hell it’s supposed to be doing! Anyway, Bob joined up with his troops, the Gunners realized “oh wait a second you’re the guy we hate and want to kill” and turned red –
And cue a large, explody fight with Bob and his troops slaughtering loads of Gunners while utterly destroying all the cars around the settlement, along with the corn field. As you might imagine, the settlers there got a bit pissy, and Bob had to shoot one of them right before the end of the battle to stop them trying to kill him. :( But the place was successfully subdued and defended, and Bob got an S rank on the battle, so that was good. But even better –
IV. He discovered that one of his conscripts had indeed leveled up to rank 3, yay! :D Bob promptly sent them and a guy at Rank 2 over to HQ to help research combat medics. Once that was sorted, his next objective was to actually turn a Rank 3 soldier into a combat medic with the specialized loadout. Bob had a specific person in mind for the honor – a ghoul who happened to be wielding his explosive minigun – but he couldn’t find her at the Marina. What do?
Why, set up another assault on the nearby WRVR radio tower to lure into the field so he could promote her! Except, uh, despite a good number of soldiers showing up to the offense (including good old Strong), she never did. Worse yet, the troops spawned in on the wrong side of the bridge to reach the radio tower (it’s one of those bridges that splits in the middle and raises to let boats through, and it’s stuck partly open with one side higher than the other, meaning it’s pretty much impossible to climb over to that side). Bob was like “my life” and jumped into the water to start the assault, hoping his troops would just teleport to him once he began taking out the enemies. Fortunately they did, and the troops easily took out the raiders which had occupied the place (with Bob very happily showing off his Gun-Fu skills). The game then told him that he had to sit tight and help defend the place from arriving reinforcements –
V. Except. Uh. Turns out Sim Settlements 2 has a known issue where the reinforcements for an enemy faction whose territory you’re trying to take will bug out and spawn a long, LONG way away, forcing your character and their army to sit around twiddling their thumbs while they wait for them to arrive. Bob killed some time hunting Legendary mongrels nearby – which netted him a VATS Enhanced Leather Right Arm, which he appreciated since he didn’t have any Legendary gear on that arm – then tried stepping into the tower itself and waiting for eight hours on a chair to see if that would get the reinforcements there any faster. Nope – all that happened was one raider showed up. Bob decided “oh, screw this” and decided to go and find a Rank 3 Conscript at another location that he could field promote to a Medic while he was waiting –
And discovered that, while Somerville Place had in fact TWO Rank 3 Conscripts (including the ghoul he was trying to find earlier), he couldn’t change them to combat medics there because there was no armory there. So he sent them back to the Marina for later reassignment, then headed back to the WRVR radio tower to see if the reinforcements had shown up yet. He got excited when the tower came under attack by some raiders, only for his hopes to be dashed when killing them didn’t complete the quest. So he decided to continue onward to try and find these damn lost reinforcements –
And, uh, you know how, above, I mentioned that his army had spawned in on the wrong side of the bridge to actually path to the tower? Yeah, turns out that was the case with the raider reinforcements too. *facepalm* Oh SS2, why do you have to be like this… At least Bob found them and was able to kill them to finally complete the damn mission!
VI. Anyway – having finally taken the radio tower properly, Bob headed back to the Marina, designated a Combat Medic, then hit the sack. The next morning, he got a message from Salvador, telling him that he’d worked out the location the Gunners were using to help supply their Stingrays in the Glowing Sea – the Federal Cache – and that he felt their army was up to the challenge of taking it. Bob was a little less sure (because, well, he’d had to dump a LOT of soldiers around the map to guard various outposts), but he was ready to get the show on the road regardless, so he headed over to the Glowing Sea with his Rad-X in hand! He made it over to the Cache (murdering a scorpion along the way), marked some Gunners with his binoculars, called in the troops via flare gun –
And then pulled out his Lorenzo Artifact Gamma Gun and started WAILING on the Gunners that he could see. XD He and his troops took out the initial wave of Gunners pretty easily (and that was WITH being distracted by a Legendary Deathskull Radscorpion joining the fight – nothing good on it, though) –
But then the game informed Bob that reinforcements were coming in. And once again, Bob found himself having to wait around while the enemy slowly worked their way toward his location – only this time he was being slowly and steadily irradiated for his trouble. And the thing about the Federal Cache is, it doesn’t have a separate interior – it’s a fully-in-the-exterior-world building. So there was absolutely nowhere for Bob to hide from the rads! He managed to survive (though he did have to do some Rad-Away, which Jon hates in Survival because it suppresses the immune system), and the reinforcements DID eventually show up to get killed, but – yeah. Jon is VERY KEEN on this bug being fixed, mod creators! And maybe this whole part of the game getting tweaked a bit, as it is rather fiddly.
VII. And so the episode ended with Bob, having successfully secured the Cache, getting the hell out of Dodge via Institute teleport and starting the long walk back to HQ from the CIT Ruins, with Jon noting that while he’d definitely wrapped up the latest quest pretty well, it was definitely time to start thinking of building another base in order to bulk up his stretched-thin army. All while ignoring that Bob leveled up TWICE this video. XD Oh Jon, never change. But looking forward to seeing what happens when he checks in with HQ!
Workout: Back on the bike this evening, and back to the GrayStillPlays compilations with “Horror games to keep you up at night!” Though whether that’s from actual terror or incredulous laughter is still up for debate. XD I got through his two videos on The Toilet Chronicles (where you are someone trapped in a restroom and must find a way to escape – first video focused on the restroom itself, while the second focused on a new chunk of the game where you can brave the Staff Only area) today, with Gray deliberately electrocuting himself with a hand dryer; handing a half-naked gnome to the guy in the other stall until said guy crushed his pelvis; blowing himself up by accident with a hidden grenade; slipping on a banana peel (multiple times); and turning himself into a mouse to get past Backrooms Squidward. It’s a weird game. XD We’ll see what other games got included in the compilation tomorrow – I know The Baby In Yellow is in there somewhere!
*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose. And now I have to get to bed so I can try and get some actual sleep tonight (though I'm pretty sure at least some of this tiredness is just my period creeping up on me). Night all!
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Date: 2024-09-11 01:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-12 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-13 03:10 pm (UTC)You're good with descriptions. I can handle it. :)
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Date: 2024-09-14 03:12 am (UTC)Aww, thank you -- I'm doing my best!