Pretty Productive Sunday

The to-do list has been very satisfyingly completed:

1. Keep up with the FoD Playthrough Progression; Free Writing Day otherwise: Check – got the Playthrough Progression write-up of today’s FO4 session done right after writing up the one for this list (see below). Doing my best to keep on top of that!

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, watch OXBox Hitman VR video, Jon's F:NV "Utter Chaos" video: Check, made easier by the sad discovery that Call Me Kevin, thanks to a stressful day and not having a video ready, didn’t upload today. Ah well – he deserves time off, and the Rust video yesterday was basically a double-size video for him, so that’s fine. And in the meantime –

A) Started before my workout with the OXBox Hitman VR video – “Hitman VR on PC: MIKE'S ICA EXAM feat. INVIGILATOR ANDY - HITMAN VR GAMEPLAY!” AKA, Mike plays the opening “Hawke’s Bay” level of Hitman 2 on VR with Andy acting as Diana/examiner, pretending that this is Mike’s final exam to become a full-fledged ICA agent. It was quite the trip to see the level in first person – the lack of the usual UI was rather disorientating! You don’t even get proper Hitman Vision – just a little targeting mark over your target, wherever they may be. Mike did well, though – skulking around the house without being spotted by the cameras; finding a screwdriver in the pool to pop open the garage; finding the secret room to get the password dongle for the target’s computer to get her info on the “Shadow Client,” and finally eliminating his target without being seen!

He did so by whipping a frag grenade stolen from her secret weapons stash over the balcony (to where he’d previously left a propane canister) and then legging it through the garage and into the tall grass, before exploding another truck full of fireworks and whatnot to cause a distraction to clear the guards away from his little boat. XD To be fair, the second one is required by the game, I think – or at least suggested – but the first one was all Mike. How the hell this guy keeps managing to pull off explosion kills without being detected is AMAZING. XD Andy had to deduct a few points for him continually stabbing himself with things as he tried to put them into his “ghost basketball” inventory, but I think he secretly added points whenever Mike flailed his hands above a computer or a piano keyboard, or did his little dance with the new hand controls. XD He did require that Mike get a score of three stars or above to join the ranks, though – and Mike, having successfully sneaked with the help of some expired cans of spaghetti sauce, got FOUR and the “Stealth ICA Assassin” rating. So Andy, good sport that he is, handed over the ID card and told him about Taco Tuesday. XD I think Mike’s found his Hitman niche! XD

B) Then this evening, we popped over to the Subs for GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! Gray’s challenges this evening included a bottle flip with a frankly shocking number of increasingly impossible platforms (and he ended up flipping his character’s helmet into the thing he wanted, MLG YEET); a “flying hobo” board where you had to figure out how to fly the hobo to the top layer of the stack (hint – don’t aim directly down with the rocket, but instead at an angle); a harpoon dodge where Gray was unable to use the cheaty “mine rocket” trick because the board creator put an invisible wall in front of it, but still did the whole thing in ONE GO (avoiding both the MEGA harpoon lasers AND the spike wall at the end!); a pogo fight up a set of stairs (which, naturally, ended with a sword in Pogo Guy’s groin, as these things so often do); another pogo harpoon dodge where you not only had to dodge the harpoons, but defeat Pogo Guy’s evil twin at the end (took Gray a couple of tries, but he did it); a dark rainbow trip down freeze wall lane – into freeze wall DROP (this one had so many times where the dad or the bike got stuck – also, included a special area for Tom to bounce around in and win all the coins!); an epic journey across Florida for soft-serve ice cream (including passing by Wally World and the Sylabus Playground); and a trip through a pair of classic games for Pogo Guy, bouncing through both Super Mario Bros and Pac-Man (made by now-regular Dylan Snider, who made sure that the goombas would get properly stomped, and the pipe flower was appropriately bitey). :D Good times all around!

C) And of course, to close out the weekend, we had Jon and F:NV series “Utter Chaos!” Today was a little harder to follow, plot-wise (trying to figure out what the various factions want – seems like both Caesar and House want Random Jon to find them a certain secret bunker? Which, of course, isn’t behind its door anymore. . .), but in terms of chaos. . .well. When in the first five minutes of the game, Jon accidentally gets himself teleported into a soft-lock (he was trying to pass by a Legion camp, got himself teleported to where the camp’s commander was, and found that the only door in or out led to a home where there was only one door in or out). . .yeah. Follow that up with locating what I assume is generally a hard-to-find quest item in a super-easy way thanks to a door into an abandoned bunker leading into the back way into Vault 22; nearly softlocking himself again after ending up in an area of Big MT (where they made the nightstalkers) where the only door he can get through on the bottom level is locked with a key, and it looked for a minute that he couldn’t get back up to the top level (he managed to glitch his way back up, keeping the good armor he found to trade for ammo); going alien hunting near the edge of the map, only to find the aliens are now robots and Nightkin; searching the sewers for goodies, only to run into an angry bear (and being unable to use his sniper rifle effectively against it because RIGHT in his face) and an unkillable Super Ego robot in the form of a tiny bloatfly (which used up A LOT of his ammo); getting jumpscared by the world’s scariest Cazador (the worst insect in all of Fallout history, apparently) during his FIRST attempt to get into the Dead Money areas; then managing to find his way to the starting point and actually kick off the DLC properly (getting himself an admittedly explosive collar that still protects his neck a bit better), only to have to face down TWO extra-giant ant queens, a nightstalker, a plasma-spewing bloatfly, ghost hologram people, and two robots he managed to accidentally drag in while trying to find an exit into another area (Searchlight is apparently NOT friendly) – yeah, there was a lot going on this episode. XD On the plus side, if you ever wanted to see Jon clip into an ant queen to kill her with a Ripper chainsaw, this here is your episode. XD And Jon was nice enough to sum up his plans for next episode – go door-hunting in Honest Hearts while also trying to regain some of his fame with the NCR so he can try and do a proper ending, instead of having to rely on the Yes-Man one (which doesn’t have the level of complication Jon wants from this series). We’ll see how that goes – there was quite a lot of exploding and poisoning and rad damage in this episode, after all! (At least it isn’t a YOLO run. . .)

3. Play Fallout 4and check out the Slocum Joe's basement: Check! Started a little after lunch and ended up playing for about two hours. After one quick reload right at the start because Victor turned out to need the toilet after entering the basement, and I accidentally wedged his port-a-potty into the corner by the stairs on its side (it needs to be on a flat surface or else you can’t use it – after the reload I went back upstairs into the coffee shop itself and had him use it there), Victor and Codsworth descended into the basement, which looked to be a kitchen. With cake pans, and cans, and hot plates, and –

A secret bookcase door! Behind which was a non-functioning elevator. I was confuzzled for a second – and then I realized “this is the Switchboard! The old Railroad HQ Deacon takes you to so you guys can do a fancy mission together and convince Desdemona to make you a real RR agent if you find them before killing the courser!” Meaning that I was going to come here later, and wasn’t likely to get anywhere with it just yet, so I had Victor head back upstairs and out. The rain had cleared up by this point in-game, so I had him do a bit of exploring – finding the Super-Duper Mart got his level up to 10 at last, allowing me to grab the “Scrounger” perk to find more ammo in containers. A check of my carry capacity showed I was nearly at my limit, so I decided to prioritize getting back to Tenpines and finishing “The First Step” for that delicious, delicious quest XP. After giving some stuff to Codsworth to pick up some more random junk along the road, I set out, killing a bunch of squirrels along the way for their bits and finding some train tracks. I had Victor hop on top of the stalled train cars to follow the tracks where he needed to go –

And straight into Bedford Station. Home of the feral ghouls! Fortunately Victor and Codsworth didn’t get overrun – only a handful ended up spotting and attacking, and a few blasts from the old double-barreled shotgun took care of them. Also found the body of “Dutchman,” who apparently was some sort of courier? There was a holotape in the Stationmaster’s terminal detailing how he basically gave himself to the ghouls to try and save the buddy he was working with, but I’m unsure what group he was working with. Also, one of the train cars contained a skeleton and a TON of Nuka-Cola bottles, sooo, that’s a thing. XD

Anyway, as Victor was starting to feel the tiredness set in again, and I only had a limited amount of Nuka-Cola to give him to perk him up, I had him skirt around one of the remaining ferals, then trek his way back up to Tenpines. The settlers thanked him for his help and agreed to join the Minutemen, and Victor talked to the visiting armor trader Lucas Miller and traded some of his raider armor for some nicer combat armor (specifically both arms and one leg – and one of the arms was Lightweight and Shadowed already, nice). Then he built some turrets to provide Tenpines some defense, before making a little camp in the remains of the house on the edge of their property and sleeping 12 hours, straight through from 6:17 PM to 6:17 AM the next day!

. . .and then a radstorm hit and I ended up having him wait inside their shack for another two hours for it to change to regular rain. I built them an outhouse and a shower stall, took a few tatos, and headed back toward Sanctuary. Along the way, Victor and Codsworth found a little junkyard with some stashes and a small pack of feral mongrels – including one Legendary, who had a Ghoul Slayer’s Raider Left Arm on it! Not really an improvement over the stuff Victor just bought, but still – can probably sell that later. Victor also spotted one of those mined molerats over by Olivia before it could spot him and managed to kill it without issue, yay. There was also a random dead settler by a campsite, and a random guy in a patched suit wandering around with a brahmin. *shrug* Okay then. Finally made it back to Sanctuary by late afternoon, where Victor ended up having a chat with Mama about his energy being tied to the place and hemming-and-hawing over giving her any Jet before planting some of the new crops he’d found (extra tato plant, razorgrain, corn, and mutfruit), storing away a bunch of junk, breaking down a bunch of guns and armor, and cooking up a bunch of food before finding Preston and turning in “The First Step!” Preston, naturally, told him about the Quincy Massacre and offered Victor a place in the Minutemen (though I think the conversation was glitched out a bit – Preston skipped over at least one sentence that I could see) – Victor accepted, and he is now officially the General, to both Preston and Codsworth’s approval. :) He also has his first radiant quest – “Taking Point: Starlight Drive-In!” I’ve never gotten it as a “clear out and make a settlement” location before (mostly because I’ve always FOUND it before Preston gives me the job), so that’ll be fun. :) This also got Victor up to Level 11, where I decided “he has been carrying around ALL the heavy shit and I want more carry capacity,” so I upped his strength to four. He turned in shortly thereafter at 9:30, and when I left off, he’d woken up at 6:30 on 11/6/2287 to use the outhouse and take a ridiculously long shower (seriously, showers take FOREVER with CWSS – I know Victor gets dirty, but DAMN). Next time, I’m swapping Codsworth for Preston and starting to work my way down to Diamond City – though we’ll definitely do Starlight along the way! Also have to hit the Abernathys and see about getting them more defense. So much to do, so much to do. . .

4. Work on tumblr queues/drafts: Check – got the pictures and some starter text for the Wednesday Chill Save update drafted on Victor Luvs Alice; one reblog of some Kent Connelly fanart from FO4 for Valice Multiverse. It’s something!

5. Get in a workout: Check – got on the treadmill today and did a little over two miles while watching more of Jon’s Unpacking livestream! Having finished up the “sad post-breakup move back home” level, he and Claire have moved onto the “picking myself back up and renting my own place” level! Naturally, unpacking is occurring, and Jon is being something of a troll about it. XD Notably, he has (very briefly) put the all-important diploma back under the bed because screw the Protagonist’s accomplishments; complained mightily about having to put the bras into a cheap closet storage drawer that are too deep for them (needing Claire to remind him that he could probably put the socks AND underwear into the same shallow drawer to make room for the bras in the other shallow drawer – also, Jon is very keen to demonstrate he knows the difference between the socks and the underwear now); revealed he’s actually slightly color-blind and thus the big cardigan doesn’t look the same to him as it does to most of us (he can’t see that it’s a light brown/gray, only the gray – but it’s that weird shade that lets him know that it’s not ACTUALLY gray); put the BUG KILLER next to the MOUTHWASH in the bathroom medicine cabinet (please call him out for that game); and insisted on putting the cooking oil and whatnot on the shelf on the OPPOSITE side of the stove, because what if it falls over and causes a fire and burns the protagonist’s face off? XD Also apparently he’s never heard of “Crockpot” being used for a slow cooker (they don’t have the brand in his and Claire’s neck of the woods) and insisted on looking it up to see if it had anything to do with cooking crocodiles. And, uh, apparently you CAN slow-cook crocodile meat! Two hours and it gets a nice consistency like chicken breast. *shrug* Also, the game will accept “1 + 3 = Koala” as a legitimate answer to the fridge magnet equation, so we all learned multiple things today. XD I look forward to seeing him continue to irritate Claire with some of his odd placement choices in the rooms!

Yeah, can't complain about getting all that done! Now I just have to remember to get an online birthday card for Mom tomorrow. . .looked at a few options today, but I wanted to have more of a think about it before committing. Should try to get that done right after work (ugh). Also need to decide if I'm doing a day of "Learn to Love Again" tomorrow, or just diving straight into Chapter 5 of "Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica's Vale of Tears. . ." I'll figure it out. Right now, bed. Night all!