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your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."
☢ LATEST UPDATE ☢



While making our way to the Hydro Generator we encounter the Fatty Zek mini-boss, that revives dead Zeks by giving them fresh Soul Leeches. Once we've got the generator online we then have to deal with a massive assault by Demichev's forces!

-------------------------------------



TIME IS YOUR WEAPON. TIME IS YOUR ENEMY. TIME IS COLLAPSING.

It's 2010. On a clandestine mission deep into Russian territory, an American black ops team crash lands on Katorga-12, an island research base off the coast of Siberia. The island was the site of Soviet experimentation in the 1950s that led to a catastrophic, Chernobyl-style accident that fractured time itself.

Cut off from any help and under attack by an army of nightmarish creatures, Captain Nathaniel Renko is thrown back and forth across time, making choices that will alter the course of world history. Armed with powerful, advanced weaponry and the experimental Time Manipulation Device, Renko must fight enemies from the past, the present, and abominations caught somewhere in between.

FIGHT THE PAST TO SAVE THE FUTURE. STOP THE SINGULARITY.



Singularity is a sci-fi FPS developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. Raven made a name for themselves with violent but innovative first-person shooters such as Heretic, Hexen and Soldier of Fortune, but then spent a decade making games based on movie, TV and comic licenses, such as Voyager: Elite Force, Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy, X-Men Legends and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Raven also worked with id Software; in 2005 they released Quake 4, and in 2009 they released Wolfenstein, a sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein that rebooted the franchise. Wolfenstein (2009) was the subject of my first LP.

Singularity was Raven's first original IP since Soldier of Fortune, and it was the only original IP in development at any Activision studio. Activision showed the game off at E3 and did the the usual trailers and previews, but they also made a short prequel comic book, and they did a truly amazing viral marketing campaign. It was all geared towards a release in 2009... but there was a problem. The deadline was approaching, but the game was only half done!

Rather than cancelling the project, Activision postponed the release by 10 months, a very short extension for a game so unfinished. Raven modified the story, pulling out technically challenging scenes while salvaging plot points and voice acting wherever possible. The resulting gaps were filled with Bioshock-style audio logs. Raven unashamedly borrowed gameplay mechanics and design ideas from other games. If it worked well in another game, and it was easy to implement, they shoved it into Singularity.

Activision were unwilling to spend any more money. In June 2010 Singularity was dumped on store shelves without fanfare or advertisements, and the game sold poorly. Most gamers were unaware of its existence unless they read a review, and those reviews were pretty mixed, with critics scoring it anywhere between 6 and 9 out of 10.

The harsher critics mocked how Raven's first "original IP" in ages was severely lacking in originality. Other critics were impressed at how Raven had created a "best of" compilation of cool game ideas, and put them together in a way that was satisfying, coherent and kept the experience varied and interesting. Many criticised the similarities to Bioshock, but some suggested that it was a better Bioshock sequel than Bioshock 2. There were obvious similarities to Valve's Half-Life franchise, but Raven had also mastered the excellent pacing of Valve's games. In an age of modern military shooters, Singularity was a breath of fresh air, with its ridiculous Cold War experiments and fun arsenal of crazy guns and special powers. The sci-fi B-movie plot was surprisingly interesting, and that sums up Singularity as a whole: like a really good B-movie.

Singularity is a blend of Wolfenstein, Bioshock, Half-Life, Portal, TimeShift, Dead Space, F.E.A.R, Call of Duty, C&C Red Alert, S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl, Metro 2033, Cold Fear, Dark Sector, and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. And it works. It really, really works.



:siren: NO SPOILERS, Even Tagged :siren:

Singularity has an entertaining story. A few of the 'twists' are so obvious that many would not consider them to be twists, but that is all just a cunning plan so that you will not expect the REAL cunning plot twists, which can be pretty startling. The game also surprises the player by keeping the experience varied: throughout the game you get new weapons, new enemies, new powers, new environments and new types of gameplay. For this reason I am enforcing a strict NO SPOILER policy regarding both the plot and upcoming weapons, powers, enemies, locations etc. If you are one of the few people that played this game (or previously watched Niggurath's LP of it), please keep quiet and just chuckle to yourself as the newcomers try to figure things out.

☢ THE LET'S PLAY ☢

I am doing a thorough playthrough in which I shall endeavour to find everything that there is to find and show off everything that there is to show off. I am playing the game in the Hard difficulty setting.

Raven did not have time to implement subtitles, but I have added my own subtitles for all in-game dialogue.

☢ VIDEOS ☢

Worker's District





Workers District Bonus Videos



Research Facility







Research Facility Bonus Videos



Rail Line







Central Docks



Central Docks Bonus Videos



E99 Processing Complex

your evil twin fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Dec 29, 2016

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your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."


In 2009 there was a brilliant viral marketing campaign for Singularity. The ARG (Alternate Reality Game) began with a video of a failed assassination posted on YouTube. In the short clip - supposedly recorded from GBNC's news program - a woman shoots at Russian scientist Nikolai Demichev before being killed by a security agent. According to GBNC, the scientist was injured but survived, and the would-be assassin was identified as Russian citizen Natasha Norvikov. Before Demichev was shot he said: "Благодаря этому открытию, мы можем с уверенностью заявить, что Россия станет мировым лидером по производству экологически чистых..." Which means something along the lines of "Thanks to this discovery we can without doubts claim that Russia will be leader in the production of the ecologically clean..." Before he could finish Natasha shouted: "Ложь, Николай, ложь!" or in English: "Lies, Nikolai, lies!". The newsreader revealed that she had connections to a shadowy group known as MIR-12, and at that point the clip ended.

Leaked assassination footage from Russia


The video gained more than 600,000 views on YouTube in less than a week, was featured on hundreds of blogs and drove over 40,000 people to MIR-12's website. For two months, people interacted with conspiracy theorists on the MIR-12.com blog. They read blog posts, watched videos and pieced together clues to reveal Russian efforts to cover up the death and disease that resulted from experiments on a mysterious island.



There were active Facebook profiles, Picasa and Flickr photostreams, Twitter accounts, fake Russian government websites that MIR-12 helped people hack into, and a dozen email addresses and working 1-800 numbers. Most if it has gone now, but Natasha's Flickr account still exists.



Rather than everything being solved by MIR-12, many of the mysteries were deciphered by ordinary people playing along and investigating secrets hidden in various websites. They gradually uncovered memos, personnel files, crime-scene photos, newspaper articles, weapon diagrams, security camera footage, hidden messages, and hand-written letters. And then one of the regular characters on the MIR-12 blog was suddenly killed!



The final video announced the game title and release date, and was shortly followed by the first real trailer for the game.

When Raven overhauled Singularity between 2009 and 2010 the story was altered so that scientist Nikolai Demichev was killed in 1955. This meant that it would be rather difficult for him to send emails or for someone to try and assassinate him in 2009. Since the websites and videos were no longer consistent with the game, they were taken down. (Or perhaps... the Russians were covering up the truth! :tinfoil:)

Fortunately I have been able obtain the original videos. (I already posted them to my YouTube channel a couple of months ago, as a sort of teaser before starting this LP.) The only real inconsistency is Demichev being alive in the fourth video; if you replace his name with something else then they still serve as a valid backstory to the game.

Katorga-12 Conspiracy: 01

Katorga-12 Conspiracy: 02

Katorga-12 Conspiracy: 03

Katorga-12 Conspiracy: 04

your evil twin fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 27, 2016

your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."


In this introductory video I give some background info, show off a cool trailer, delve into the options menu and play the opening cutscenes.

--------------------------------------



Welcome to Katorga-12!

your evil twin fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Apr 17, 2014

Cryohazard
Feb 5, 2010
This game was actually really good, Metro 2033 good. And yet I remember very little about it...

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I enjoy games about Russians and time travel shenanigans, as evidenced by still being a die-hard fan of Original War, so it would stand to reason I would enjoy this game very much. I did, when I bought it. Looking forward to you showing this off.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

This game is awesome and everyone should have bought it. Since that's no longer an option, everyone should instead watch this LP and give YET all your money.

I love your science lesson at the end.

discworld is all I read
Apr 7, 2009

DAIJOUBU!! ... Daijoubu ?? ?

Speedball posted:

This game is awesome and everyone should have bought it. Since that's no longer an option, everyone should instead watch this LP and give YET all your money.

I love your science lesson at the end.
You can still get the game on Steam (though it's Activision, so it's a bit overpriced), but yeah, it and Wolfenstein were both great Raven games that sadly got overlooked. I know your evil twin will be able to show all you guys just how amazing of a game it can be.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice
Ah yes, this game. I wanted to like it, but I get to the second level and struggle on an area and find out I can't lower the difficulty without restarting the whole game. Having literally started the same day I didn't feel like replaying everything again so I put the game away and never touched it again.

Damegane
May 7, 2013
Raven's really good at making shooters that feel good to play. Guns feel great to shoot, enemies have good reactions to getting hit, and there's a lot of variation in guns and enemies. Too bad all the work they're getting these days is as one of Activision's many COD map pack sweatshops.

Seraphic Neoman
Jul 19, 2011


I hate it when people substitute Cyrillic letters for English ones. Like here:



That's not an R that's a Я (Pronounce as "ya"). And the As are actually Ds. Even weirder is that the slogan at the bottom of the sign is in proper Russian :argh:
(It says "through science we shall triumph!" for those who are curious)

EDIT: That stone sign has with the red lights has "All for victory" and "new era" (which doesn't sound right to me...it's not...I dunno, soviet-esque, I guess?)

EDIT 2: Oh boy that Office Building translation :allears:

Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Apr 7, 2014

Toadsniff
Apr 10, 2006

Fire Down Below: Crab Company 2
Truly the last great single player doom/quake style game ever made. RIP Raven. I'm also probably one of the only people to have actually played the multiplayer. Not even sure it's still up or if there is even a player base anymore but I had a blast with it.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Toadsniff posted:

Truly the last great single player doom/quake style game ever made.

I wouldn't go that far but it's definitely a very good game in a stagnating genre. It also deserves some praise in doing much more interesting stuff with time shenanigans than just slowing/stopping it.

ViggyNash
Oct 9, 2012
This seems really neat so far. I can't wait to see what sort of time-fuckery you get to pull off.

Kaboom Dragoon
May 7, 2010

The greatest of feasts

The only thing I remember hearing about this game around the time of its release was 'it wants to be Bioshock, only it's crap'. Which is horribly unfair, to say the least. I picked it up dirt cheap about 8 months later and was absolutely blown away by it. There's a few sections that drag on, and some of the enemies are more trouble than they're worth, but it's easily one of the most solid shooters I've played. Also one of the few games I've played of late where the weapons feel satisfyingly meaty. You shoot someone with a shotgun, you feel it and the enemies show it. More devs could stand to take notes from Raven.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

ViggyNash posted:

This seems really neat so far. I can't wait to see what sort of time-fuckery you get to pull off.

It's completely different from what you may expect. You actually get some pretty creative powers. Sadly the weapons aren't all that special.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Speedball posted:

Sadly the weapons aren't all that special.

Oh, I'd argue that one. I especially love this game's grenade launcher. Please tell me the existence of a grenade launcher is not a spoiler.

Sel Nar
Dec 19, 2013

I got this game around 8 months ago and simply blazed through it on the hardest difficulty as a challenge because, at first blush, I thought it was going to have bioshock-style difficulty, where one or two weapons were hilariously overpowered given roughly 5 minutes of hunting for item bits.

I proceeded to get my poo poo shoved in for the entire game, and loved it because it made me utilize every weapon I had at my disposal, and always played with expectations in ways that made the whole far better than the parts.

Also, some of the weapons are goddamn insane and really need to be shown off. YET's promo vid at the end of his last LP showcased probably the most entertaining of the lot, but there's something for everyone.

IronSaber
Feb 24, 2009

:roboluv: oh yes oh god yes form the head FORM THE HEAD unghhhh...:fap:
Gonna echo what others have said and say that Singularity is a solid shooter that feels really good to play.

I really wish I could see what Raven had planned before they had to carve out large portions of the game to meet deadlines.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

IronSaber posted:

Gonna echo what others have said and say that Singularity is a solid shooter that feels really good to play.

I really wish I could see what Raven had planned before they had to carve out large portions of the game to meet deadlines.

Most likely, something even crazier than what we got. Like the Dead Sea from Chrono Cross crazy.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Sel Nar posted:

I got this game around 8 months ago and simply blazed through it on the hardest difficulty as a challenge because, at first blush, I thought it was going to have bioshock-style difficulty, where one or two weapons were hilariously overpowered given roughly 5 minutes of hunting for item bits.

I proceeded to get my poo poo shoved in for the entire game, and loved it because it made me utilize every weapon I had at my disposal, and always played with expectations in ways that made the whole far better than the parts.

This could be true if the game gave you ammo more often at the start. I had gotten stuck behind a checkpoint with no way to return refill my ammo and had to fight my way through a timed room or something.

God drat this game still pisses me off because of that.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.


I can see why people were annoyed with the propaganda in the game - I mean, I am not against the use of propaganda used as way to direct stories of games; that's perfectly fine. What really rubs me the wrong way is that the propaganda doesn't seem to have a Soviet aesthetic going for it. It's too... well, Westernized. It looks out-of-place; like, I dunno, Kanji woodblocks in a Norman Rockwell painting.

Edit: I do like the add-on at the end of the video. I appreciate the work in such things, and a bit of idea of the physics behind space-time is something I'd welcome.

On that note, since I'm not a physicist, I can understand how a dense object can attract other objects to it, and even light as well, since light is composed of actual... well, quanta - actual consitituent components. But how would it affect time? And why would it affect time? Also, could a singularity as described in that video, e.g. a structure of minimum volume:maximum mass, ever exist without developing an event horizon that is effectively infinte in area?

Samovar fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Apr 7, 2014

your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."

anilEhilated posted:

Oh, I'd argue that one. I especially love this game's grenade launcher. Please tell me the existence of a grenade launcher is not a spoiler.

I'll let that slide. :)

A thing to note about this game is that if you play the game with the 'best', most efficient weapons, then the shoot-em-up action is good but nothing particularly unusual. Good, solid, standard FPS stuff. But this game also has an arsenal of interesting gimmick weapons that are less efficient but make killing enemies much more hilarious.

JGBeagle posted:

This could be true if the game gave you ammo more often at the start. I had gotten stuck behind a checkpoint with no way to return refill my ammo and had to fight my way through a timed room or something.

God drat this game still pisses me off because of that.

I remember reading a number of people complaining because they got stuck with just the pistol and no ammo. They had skipped past the tutorial popup hint text that said that the weapon lockers aren't just for upgrading weapons, they also allow you to swap out your weapon loadout, and buy ammo. Or perhaps they read it, but they didn't realise that that they NEEDED to do it, and assumed that the game would naturally give them some guns and ammo. Nope. In that section of the game there are no guns lying around, so you have to grab some from the weapon locker. By the time you realise you are screwed, there is no way to go back.

Of course, if there had been any time for playtesting, Raven would have realised the flaw there and put in a few guns or forced the player to use the weapon locker before progressing. With or without tutorial pop-ups, it is not a good idea to have an area with no return, no weapon pickups, and a save system that uses a single save that overwrites itself at every checkpoint.

Samovar posted:

I can see why people were annoyed with the propaganda in the game - I mean, I am not against the use of propaganda used as way to direct stories of games; that's perfectly fine. What really rubs me the wrong way is that the propaganda doesn't seem to have a Soviet aesthetic going for it. It's too... well, Westernized. It looks out-of-place; like, I dunno, Kanji woodblocks in a Norman Rockwell painting.

Yeah stuff like the cartoon film on the projector is just 1950s American propaganda given a Russian accent, rather than a genuine attempt at a Soviet propaganda film. (The artwork on posters seems rather more genuine, though, as that artwork was done earlier in the game's development when they were actually taking their time with stuff.) I don't think any of the critics complained about the fact that the Russian stuff wasn't authentic though, they just complained because Bioshock and the Fallout games had already done cartoon propaganda stuff like that.

Samovar posted:

Edit: I do like the add-on at the end of the video. I appreciate the work in such things, and a bit of idea of the physics behind space-time is something I'd welcome.

On that note, since I'm not a physicist, I can understand how a dense object can attract other objects to it, and even light as well, since light is composed of actual... well, quanta - actual consitituent components. But how would it affect time? And why would it affect time? Also, could a singularity as described in that video, e.g. a structure of minimum volume:maximum mass, ever exist without developing an event horizon that is effectively infinte in area?

The clue is in the name Spacetime Continuum: time is just another dimension of space. And spacetime is an actual physical thing; the vacuum of space is empty of air, but it isn't empty of spacetime, it's like an invisible jelly-like substance that permeates the universe. What we experience as gravity is this spacetime stuff being stretched and bent by things with mass. And time is just a dimension of this: we are moving through space on the Earth, which is going round the sun, etc, but we are also moving through space in another direction, the direction of time. Gravity stretches and bends time, the same as it does space. If you are in a very strong gravity field time is slowed down. A Singularity bends spacetime into very bizarre shapes where it may be possible to go back in time and meet yourself, but you would only be able to do such things while trapped within the confines of a black hole.

As for the infinite area thing... an object collapsing to a Singularity doesn't extend the range of the gravity at all. It has the same range as the original object before it collapsed, but the region of spacetime within that range is ridiculously stretched more and more until it becomes almost infinite at the centre. You can actually safely orbit a black hole, the same as you could a star or a planet. But if you fly towards it... the gravity gets stronger the closer you get, and it just keeps on getting stronger, and before you know it the gravity becomes ludicrously strong.

If our Sun were to collapse and become a black hole, the Earth would continue to orbit around it in exactly the same path that it does now. But instead of there being a gigantic ball of yellow burning gas in the middle of the solar system, there would seemingly be nothing at all. The Sun would be crushed until all the particles are compressed together into one particle, the Singularity. A single particle with the mass of the original Sun, and a gravitational field with the same range as the original Sun. This particle is hidden within a black sphere a couple of miles across, the event horizon, the region where the speed required to escape is higher than the speed of light. Around the event horizon you get a sort of glowing ring of distorted starlight, caused by the light rays that have been curved around the hole without actually falling in.

John Lee
Mar 2, 2013

A time traveling adventure everyone can enjoy

It's also wrong, in a way, to think of a black hole as having 'stronger' gravity; you've surely seen the images of a black hole/singularity as a spindle with an infinitely long point? It doesn't suck you in like a vacuum, it just has a much higher (theoretically infinite) 'slope' that you slide down.

Although, of course, the slope is so heavy that at one point parts of your body would be thousands of times heavier than the other parts and you'd tear apart, if you didn't die of the heat caused by <ed: insert Physics Reasons here>.

DatonKallandor
Aug 21, 2009

"I can no longer sit back and allow nationalist shitposting, nationalist indoctrination, nationalist subversion, and the German nationalist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious game balance."
Raven games are just so good it's crazy. They put more work into generic licensed games than other devs put into their flagship IPs. Everything from Star Trek to X-Men by Raven are incredible games and they'd still be incredible games if they didn't have the license assets on top.

Singularity might be the weakest Raven game I know from a pure gameplay perspective (I'd say Wolfenstein has better shooting and Elite Force has better non-combat stuff), but the setting and story certainly add a lot.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger
I think they missed an opportunity with that "shoot off the padlock" segment. With how much they've been playing up E99, the crusader really should have blown a chunk off the door along with the lock. Which would have been a great "holy balls this handgun is really powerful" moment.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Has there been an LP of this game before? I don't own it, but I swear I remember it for some reason. :psyduck: gently caress my reading ability, its mentioned in the OP. :doh:

Either way, looking forward to another Evil Twin LP.

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Keeshhound posted:

I think they missed an opportunity with that "shoot off the padlock" segment. With how much they've been playing up E99, the crusader really should have blown a chunk off the door along with the lock. Which would have been a great "holy balls this handgun is really powerful" moment.

I'd love that but then we'd get complaints about why we can't blow holes in walls all the time, Red Faction style.

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)
The science chat seems like a good fit for this LP, good job. I also like the different types of subtitle.

EDIT: As a grammar fascist, I must point out that the Russian scientist man that you saved is called Demichev, not Demechev.

Philippe fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Apr 9, 2014

Sloober
Apr 1, 2011
This game was good fun; not particularly long is my only gripe. The graphics were good and as mentioned the weapons all have a really good feel to them which makes it fun to use pretty much all of them.

Lazyfire
Feb 4, 2006

God saves. Satan Invests

Speedball posted:

I'd love that but then we'd get complaints about why we can't blow holes in walls all the time, Red Faction style.

Do you mean in the sense that people wouldn't like that it only appears that once or in the sense that Red Faction's level deforming disappeared about two hours in?

Speedball
Apr 15, 2008

Lazyfire posted:

Do you mean in the sense that people wouldn't like that it only appears that once or in the sense that Red Faction's level deforming disappeared about two hours in?

Heh, either!

A lot of this game got edited down into what we have today, apparently Raven had more ambitious ideas in mind but had to cut them. I wonder what we'd have gotten if we'd had everything they'd envisioned.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



SSNeoman posted:

EDIT: That stone sign has with the red lights has "All for victory" and "new era" (which doesn't sound right to me...it's not...I dunno, soviet-esque, I guess?)

EDIT 2: Oh boy that Office Building translation :allears:
"All for victory" is an actual WWII slogan, and "a new era" is also a perfectly good 30's/40's buzz-phrase.

"Office building" is a thing, yeah (for those interested, Russian uses "office" as a loan-word - now, not in the 1950's). Still, gotta admire the effort - most game companies would have been perfectly happy dropping a script into babelfish and pasting the result into the game.

I do find the propaganda... off. Yes, it takes more from Fallout and Bioshock than it does from actual Soviet Propaganda, yes there's an overreliance on notes, audiologs, films and environmental designs which outright bombard you with exposition dumps - but more importantly, it's propaganda made by bad guys who can't even be bothered to pretend they have some convictions or ideals they consider good (beyond generic pap like "stand for the Motherland"). All the statues look like as though designed for the Dark Overlord, as he contemplates sending his orcs out to pillage The United States Elfland.

Seraphic Neoman
Jul 19, 2011


Xander77 posted:

"All for victory" is an actual WWII slogan, and "a new era" is also a perfectly good 30's/40's buzz-phrase.

Yeah, that parenthesis stuff was aimed at "new era". "All for victory" is fine.
I just can't really see Soviet propoganda use "new era". They typically tried to make it seem like communism will last forever and that the current era is here to stay. But then again, they are talking about revolutionary scientific research, so hmmm.

Lazyfire
Feb 4, 2006

God saves. Satan Invests

Speedball posted:

Heh, either!

A lot of this game got edited down into what we have today, apparently Raven had more ambitious ideas in mind but had to cut them. I wonder what we'd have gotten if we'd had everything they'd envisioned.

It should be pointed out that this was Raven's last release, since then they've been relegated to making Call of Duty maps. Activision in general seems really disinterested in new franchises or for allowing extra development time. Maybe if a company like 2K had published Raven could have put a lot more in the game and had extra time to do it...and then get dissolved when the game didn't sell beyond reasonable amounts.

Keeshhound
Jan 14, 2010

Mad Duck Swagger

Lazyfire posted:

It should be pointed out that this was Raven's last release, since then they've been relegated to making Call of Duty maps. Activision in general seems really disinterested in new franchises or for allowing extra development time. Maybe if a company like 2K had published Raven could have put a lot more in the game and had extra time to do it...and then get dissolved when the game didn't sell beyond reasonable amounts.

Hey, Activision's interested in one new IP. So maybe Raven'll get some new work designing DLC content for Borderlands: the MMO!

Of course, it's far more likely that it'll end up being a decent game that collapses under the astronomic weight of it's own hype, crashe and burn spectacularly, and Raven will continue it's steady, unfortunate fade into obscurity.

Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Apr 9, 2014

Catsworth
Sep 30, 2009

Who doesn't wanna be Johnny Cat?

I got this game a couple years ago on sale and is one of the few that I immediately played to completion. I loving love this game. The atmosphere is so good. Really neat to see the ARG stuff too.

Megillah Gorilla
Sep 22, 2003

If only all of life's problems could be solved by smoking a professor of ancient evil texts.



Bread Liar
Not only are you doing your own subtitles, you stick in Space: 1999 footage :allears:

If only everyone was so dedicated. Can't wait to see what hilariously overpowered superweapon you go on a rampage with.

Kopijeger
Feb 14, 2010
The designation "Katorga-12" would indicate that the entire facility was a closed settlement associated with a nearby city named Katorga. Not that there actually has ever been such a place, the term refers to a system of pre-revolutionary forced labour that was the predecessor to the Gulag. In other words, the developers clearly did some research, but couldn't be bothered to create a believeable name.

Also, the consistent use of "Russian" instead of "Soviet" seems like it would be anachronistic.

Kopijeger fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Apr 11, 2014

your evil twin
Aug 23, 2010

"What we're dealing with...
is us! Those things look just like us!"

"Speak for yourself, I couldn't look that bad on a bet."

Kopijeger posted:

The designation "Katorga-12" would indicate that the entire facility was a closed settlement associated with a nearby city named Katorga. Not that there actually has ever been such a place, the term refers to a system of pre-revolutionary forced labour that was the predecessor to the Gulag. In other words, the developers clearly did some research, but couldn't be bothered to create a believeable name.

Also, the consistent use of "Russian" instead of "Soviet" seems like it would be anachronistic.

You're probably right about the Russian/Soviet thing. But Raven actually chose the name Katorga-12 intentionally.

Although the gulags replaced the katorgas, if they REALLY wanted to punish you they still had "katorga works", which meant being sentenced to hard labour at an especially harsh and remote location. Raven explained in some interviews and previews that they called the place Katorga because they wanted to infer that Element 99 was discovered at a remote labour camp (according to the intro they were mining for uranium), and that the facilities were built by the inmates. It makes sense that they would use the name 'Katorga' for this closed settlement since it is on a remote island and nowhere near any cities for it to be named after. The only thing there was the gulag... and what better way to avoid Western spies than by pretending their Soviet version of Black Mesa is actually a prison camp!

The prison camp history was actually quite relevant in an earlier version of the game's storyline; in the final game it is pretty much just backstory. I'll be talking about that in a future video.

Thanks to that wikipedia article I just learned that the numbers were meaningless - it gave the example of Arzamas-16, which was actually 75 km from Arzamas. (So there weren't eleven other katorgas or something.)

Gorilla Salad posted:

Not only are you doing your own subtitles, you stick in Space: 1999 footage :allears:

If only everyone was so dedicated. Can't wait to see what hilariously overpowered superweapon you go on a rampage with.

I'm doing a pistol-only gimmick run.

:cawg:

Actually one of the small flaws with this game is that they didn't have time to test it well for balance. Some of the most interesting weapons are tricky to use and only become really effective if you use the right combination of upgrades, while some of the more typical weapons start off very effective and become ridiculously overpowered with upgrades. Since you're familiar with my LPs, you'll know I like to kill enemies in the most entertaining ways, which will not necessarily be the most overpowered... ;)

Night10194 posted:

I enjoy games about Russians and time travel shenanigans, as evidenced by still being a die-hard fan of Original War, so it would stand to reason I would enjoy this game very much. I did, when I bought it. Looking forward to you showing this off.

I had never heard of Original War. Checked it out on wikipedia, intriguing. A cross between an RTS and an RPG, where you control forces battling for resources in prehistoric times in order to change the future to benefit the country you come from.

(Also it is on Steam, and the description of the game is hilariously useless, just a description of a small part of the game's plot!)

SSNeoman posted:

Yeah, that parenthesis stuff was aimed at "new era". "All for victory" is fine.
I just can't really see Soviet propoganda use "new era". They typically tried to make it seem like communism will last forever and that the current era is here to stay. But then again, they are talking about revolutionary scientific research, so hmmm.

There are several propaganda posters that use the same "new era" phrase, and those posters also talk about the scientific advances that they are making. Like a Soviet Union powered by a man-made black hole. So you're right in your second thought, they aren't talking about a new era of communism, they're talking about a new era of free energy and superweapons.

your evil twin fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 11, 2014

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anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

your evil twin posted:

I had never heard of Original War. Checked it out on wikipedia, intriguing. A cross between an RTS and an RPG, where you control forces battling for resources in prehistoric times in order to change the future to benefit the country you come from.

The idea is neat, the execution kinda fails. RPG elements are next to nonexistant, it fails to explain even the most basic game mechanics and achieving anything takes forever. Basically only get it if you're a fan of Total Annihilation and think its pacing works on a squad-size scale.

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