Homicidal Evil Space Chicken Report Vol. 3: Boing Boing Boing

[camwyn]

I watched "Galaxy Quest" with Danii a few days ago. There's a section involving a chase through the ship and things that go SMASH SMASH SQUISH SPLAT SMASH a lot. The Sigourney Weaver character spends most of that part of the movie screaming about 'why do we even HAVE that on the ship' and 'this was a badly written episode' and threatening to kill the writer with fire.

Somewhere in the Half-Life universe there is a team of architects and engineers who've earned the same level of ire from Gordon Freeman, and they were responsible for designing the waste processing section of Black Mesa.

Oh, sure, the incident with DEAR LACK OF GOD IT'S A SEA MONSTER eating a scientist was impressive, but let's face it. I'm a Lovecraft fan. Being solemnly informed by a terrified scientist that 'they say it was hauled out of the Challenger Deep' is the fastest way to set off my RL warning signals vis-a-vis a monster. Adding anything about how you don't think it was ever in Earth's oceans before last week just sharpens it. Upon seeing that it was a reasonably rationally shaped sea monster with ordinary teeth and limbs and stuff it became a matter of 'peg it with the crossbow' and that was that. I was relieved at that point. It's like Stephen King says- yes, the door has opened to reveal a GIGANTIC TWENTY FOOT TALL SPIDER coming for you, but hey! At least it's not a hundred foot tall spider! I can deal with a hostile alien fish thing.

Playing hoppity-skip across rising and falling mashers of toxic waste (it's not radioactive, it's just toxic waste, so you start taking damage right away instead of waiting for it to get through your suit)? That's another story. Very much another story. That was a lot of AUGH AUGH AUGH because I suck at the aiming and the jumping. And there was the bit with the conveyor belts! Not only do you have to do the jumping and the not falling (you get knocked down in health far enough that you drain the health dispenser on the ground entirely), but then you have to place the satchel charge right to blow up both the lasers without the first laser's blowback hurting you... geh. Just lovely.

I got through that, though. That was something. It was what came next...

Finding the xenobiology labs was the first genuinely creepy moment of the game, for me. I mean, yeah, the AUGH SLICETY TENTACLES OF DEATH moment in the silo was a scare- but it was a scare of the 'you want me to do what?' variety. I have a habit of creeping up the ladders in this game a keypress or two at a time if I can't see where they open to, so the first thing I saw of the next room was a sliver of a waiting Houndeye. I poked up a little more and saw there were a bunch of them, so I threw my only explosive left in their general direction, slid down the ladder fast as I could, and set it off. Once the chunks stopped flying I went back up the ladder again...

And saw the dog carriers. One for every recognizable set of Houndeye remains.

They knew. They knew. They'd been studying these things long enough to know about the monsters. They knew.

I mean, yeah, I'd read enough Wikistuff to know that the IC reason for the guns being on the hazard course was just in case the monsters broke out, employees should be able to deal with them, even if they didn't know that monsters were on hand that COULD break out. But I'd pushed that out of my mind. The sight of the dog kennels in the room full of dead houndeyes creeped me the hell out. (Especially since I'd sort of jokingly wondered if you could tame one and keep it as a pet, since they were kind of cute in a disturbing way.) The room with the headcrab cage in it? Just made it worse. And then there was the grunt in the tank... but dear Lord, I don't think I've ever been more creeped out by the implications of a perfectly mundane object in a video game. Well played, Valve, well played.

Anyway, I managed to get through that section (I like the snarks, they're kind of entertaining) and up to the surface. Right now, the game is saved at a point where I'm apparently supposed to have Gordon slide down a concrete pipe and NO NO NO NO NO tends to take over the mental dialogue at that point, as, well, there's cliffs involved, long drops, and phrases like 'major fracture detected'. My whole experience with cliffs in RL is confined to climbing Granddad Bluff in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and to a mountain path in Denali National Park that at one point dwindled down to a section only marginally larger than my own feet. I made a point of not looking away from the ground in front of me when I did that. I'm not acrophobic, but I'm also not good enough at mind-body coordination to keep my course accurate if I'm also looking at several hundred feet of DOWN. I'll try getting Gordon down the pipe later. I tried several times last night and I think he just fell- I'm not sure how to slow down his sliding so he doesn't get knocked down to 20% health when he lands.

Comments

[lienne.livejournal.com]

*munches popcorn* Dude, this is better'n Penny Arcade.

:D

[camwyn]

*bows* I do my best. Growing up, video games were a spectator sport for me. Other people had consoles, and other people had more quarters, so it was generally me watching them more than I ever got to play. I've since taken to feeling that most video games are best when they're either watched, or shared with people.

(Civilization is an exception. My style of play- and my commentary on it- tends to unnerve spectators. I speak from experience.)

[lienne.livejournal.com]

Unnerve me! :D I wanna know the seeecret.

This from the woman who played the expansion to Age of Empires II by massing the buildings that produced a specific cheap, fast unit, and pouring a neverending stream of them into the enemy camp. *nostalgic sigh* Those were the days.

[camwyn]

In Civilization 3 and 4, your civilization's borders aren't limited to the area worked by your cities. It's a matter of cultural influence. Different buildings expand your specific cultural influence, and you can acquire territory simply by enough culture accumulating. If you're generating enough, you can acquire enemy territory by overwhelming their cultural influence in an area. If you're truly impressive you can get cities this way as your enemy's cities revolt, which is why you'd better be careful to keep your own cities culturally strong or they'll do it to you too.

What tends to creep people out is my attitude towards conquered cities. As soon as I take a city by force, the first thing I do is start building cultural buildings. I bring in plenty of soldier to pin the city down, but it's more important to crank up the culture output in the city. If there's even the slightest trace of surplus workers being available, I put them to work as artists or entertainers. Because once I do that? They're putting out my culture, not the one they used to be. Mine. Yes, I took your city away from you, foreign civilization, but by the time I'm done the people who live there won't even remember you. The language spoken in your city will be mine as your people die off or get packed into settler units to go and build cities for my civilization somewhere else. Every population point added to the city, every child born, will be a child born into my culture. My people will overwhelm yours and overwrite yours until all of your land is so firmly mine that you won't even recognize it. Your children will be born to me and know no other ruler, no other way.

And you won't be able to do a damn thing about it. Their souls will be mine.


I don't do the Red Rider of the Apocalypse. I do the White's work; and the White Rider is not Pestilence, as so many would have you believe, but Conquest.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

*stares*

*indulges in some evil glee*

[camwyn]

Oh, for that you want this icon. It's Aaron Sorkin.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

And... impressively... evil. o_O

[camwyn]

Wish I could take credit for it, but it's from a series of macros on ihasatardis. Russell T. Davies had just threatened the cast with having Sorkin write all their dialogue if they didn't shut up, and that icon was the next macro in the series.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

Here's my maniacal glee icon.

And I think I saw that series.

D:

[skyshark.livejournal.com]

Stay good, Cam! Stay good!

Re: D:

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

You're years too late.

Re: D:

[skyshark.livejournal.com]

*weeps*

Who will save us noooow?

Re: D:

[camwyn]

I still will.

For my own purposes, of course.

Re: D:

[skyshark.livejournal.com]

. . . okay, but remember, in order to be truly pacified into placid obedience, I need a weekly ration of peanut butter cups and plenty of space to write.

And not too much surveillance.

Which you won't need anyway. :3

Re: D:

[camwyn]

I'm a benevolent dictator. That's the whole point of my conquests. I make the people I've conquered want to stay mine. First I pacify them, then I make them genuinely happy, then I make them productive parts of my empire. I can totally do that, with the peanutbutter cups and a two-bedroom apartment with a southern exposure and central a/c and heat.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

One of the first thing I did when I figured Youtube worked for me was watch Gordon Freeman run around Black Mesa shooting the bejeebers out of the scientists.

[blackjack-svr.livejournal.com]

Okay, so, yes, you've met the big chompity fish. I don't know why but that thing scares the crap out of me. I distinctly remember emptying at least three guns worth of ammo trying to kill one without entering the water one time. Seriously, I was that freaked out, and did not want to get in and fight it on its terms. I just opened fire whenever the thing broke the surface, y'know, like the shark-born-from-satan's-arse that it is. It worked. But it left me to crowbar my way through everything else. I kinda pictured Gordon wide eyed and crazy, cuddling the crowbar like a child at that point, mumbling about how only it would never fail him, and that the bullets all belonged to the fish-monster and he had to be sure to give them all back.

And now that I'm playing through HL1 again (I just got to the chompity fish area myself nngngngngnnggngngnngngngn) I can TOTALLY see what you mean about the headcrabs looking like raw plucked chickens.

So. When you're done with this, what's next? HL1 expansions? Or jumping right into HL2?

[camwyn]

Can't say I blame you. My initial response to seeing it was a definite GAAH and jumping back in my chair. But that was pure shock on my part more than anything else. I tried shooting at it a couple of times with the Manstopper (my private name for the .357), but at that point I was too worried about running out of ammo to take the chance on shooting more. At that point I was picturing Gordon thinking 'okay, okay, it's a fricking SEA MONSTER in the middle of the BUILDING, I have no grenades, I have no boom at all, my only hope is to run like a fricking rabbit and hope it doesn't catch me'.

As far as the expansions go, I'm not sure. I'm considering it. I didn't download them from Valve originally, but I might do that just to see. Got HL2 and the Episodes when I bought the Orange Box, though, so that's available whenever.

[blackjack-svr.livejournal.com]

Do yourself a favor when you play HL2: take the time to explore the setting in the part of the game before you start getting shot at. There's so much to absorb. Look at the grafitti on the walls. Listen to the PSAs. Talk to the NPCs. Just do it.

The game is probably one of my favorites in terms of storytelling and art direction. Valve really knows how to nail that stuff. And it doesn't need a state-of-the-art PC to make it beautiful either. It looked great on the computer I had three years ago. ... crap, is it that old?

... Wikipedia says yes. Wow. I still gush about a game that was released just over 3 years ago. .. actually, yeah, that's par for the course. I still go on about Final Fantasy 3 and Xenogears too.

[camwyn]

Fine with me. Setting exploration is fun. I probably would've done more in the pre-experiment stages at Black Mesa if the scientists hadn't been such pricks- of course, that was probably just the programming trying to get me to move into the active stages of the game, but still.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Perfect Dark 64 has the scientists be horrible to the rookie female agent. It's mind-boggling.

Of course, it makes it all the more sweeter to shoot them dead with a Magnum see them fall to terrorists in the hostage level.

[midnightlurker.livejournal.com]

"WHOEVER WROTE THIS EPISODE SHOULD DIE!"

[batyatoon]

"There is no REASON for there to be a bunch of chompy crushy things in the middle of the ship!"

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

Hehe. I can't play HL. I DON'T do well with FPS. For one, I lack the coordination required for most, and two, I get motion sick.

However, I would like to laugh at the Galaxy Quest comment. I LOVED Galaxy Quest.

[skyshark.livejournal.com]

And saw the dog carriers. One for every recognizable set of Houndeye remains.

And now you know the major impact of Resident Evil. :D With an extra touch of pathos because omgpeople. D:

You know what my least favorite room in REmake (the first one, updated) is? When you walk your little person into the computer room and clicky about, and then you turn and go into a walk-in freezer. The camera angles, which suck throughout the game, are even worse--you can't see all the bodies clearly, and it's like you KNOW that one's about to fall and you'll have to shoot it a lot.

Only one never does, and your little onscreen shootyperson is looting the shelves with its back sensibly turned to all these frozen bodies. It's like, when they're frozen, harmless maybe-zombies, they get to exist in a sort of Schroedinger's Zombie "people?/not?" state. And that's where the horror is: because you can't help but try to make out a few details in a sort of mourning mode for the people who were killed, bagged, tagged and stuck on ice. Then you also know that as soon as one falls over, it's just time to go into pure "kill the monster" mode.

It's kinda meta, but I think it makes it more of a horror game. Especially since, in REmake, one never falls.

[skyshark.livejournal.com]

. . . okay actually the major impact is "WHO THE HELL DESIGNED THIS FACILITY, AND HOW DID THEY TURN A PROFIT" but still!

[camwyn]

After the initial creep-out the next rather horrible feeling that came up was a severe case of 'my God, who do I work for?' on Gordon's part. Because honestly... once you've seen stuff like that, and you realize that it's been going on for a very long time... how can you not wonder just how much of that is going to be on your head?

... and then the marines start shooting at you and the world narrows down to I DO NOT WANT TO DIE and the ethical questions all go away until after the stench of the cordite is out of your nostrils and the grey-yellow-greeny ichor is off your glasses.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

... and then the marines start shooting at you and the world narrows down to I DO NOT WANT TO DIE and the ethical questions all go away until after the stench of the cordite is out of your nostrils and the grey-yellow-greeny ichor is off your glasses.

One good point about life in a foxhole: It's simpler. Not as much fun, perhaps, but it is simpler.

[aberrantangels]

And, being who I recently am, I'm reminded by that question of Yahtzee pointing out that "in any sane world, [Umbrella's upper management layer] would've been sectioned under the Mental Health Act before they could even finish presenting their proposal to murder 90% of their research staff."

(Pointing out. In the words of Sacharissa, "Ing, ing, ing!")

[skyshark.livejournal.com]

...who were you before? :p

Governments in the REverse seem happy to buy monsters to send roaming across the landscape after their enemies, including zombie monkeys and giant scorpions. It isn't until 2004 that we actually see a successful intelligent bioweapon working for anyone, and that one, coincidentally enough, is still completely bonkers.

*fetches green gem and blue gem necessary to hit "post comment"*

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

YOUR ICON.

*flails*

(Yep, I'm late to the party by over a year. But ICON LOVE TRANSCENDS TIME.)

[lots42.livejournal.com]

I was playing Resident Evil 2 and I eagerly made my way into the morgue to get the next key and I was all 'YAY KEY' then OMG FUCK.

[tundra-no-caps.livejournal.com]

I have to say, before your posts, I didn't know there were Half Life 1 expansions, I mean, who knew?

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, they're called "Blue Shift" where you play a security guard (who later becomes Barney Calhoun the NPC in HL2) and "Opposing Force" in which you play one of the Marines sent in to wipe the place clean.

[blackjack-svr.livejournal.com]

That was me. No idea why it logged me out.

[tundra-no-caps.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I checked.

[avram]

At some point the spider would be large enough that it'd no longer perceive you as viable prey.

[camwyn]

I'm not the one who came up with the spider metaphor, but yeah. OTOH, very few people confronted with a HUNDRED FOOT GIANT SPIDER would retain the presence of mind to think that way, I think.

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

The ledge level? You think that's bad?

Wait'll you get a load of Xen.

And yes, the giant alien dunkleosteus is indeed one of the major OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT moments of the original Half Life.

Ravenholme is worse, though.

[camwyn]

Yeeeah, when I get to that stage of the game I'll be setting aside extra hard drive space for all the save files. Because I save after every *!(&@)$&!()$%!@ successful jump, just so I don't have to go back and do it again from the start.