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Way back when I first started doing LPs on Something Awful, I started with an LP of Gobliiins, a quirky, nonsensical, and very difficult game, intending to go through all three games in the series. Technical limitations got in the way, and I burned out at the end of the second game. I didn't have it in me to do a bonus video for that LP, let alone take on the third game. Now that technology has caught up to my needs and I've got a lot more experience at making videos of games, what say we take it from the top and revisit the games, doing them a bit more justice this time? Welcome to the Gobliiins series by Coktel Vision Software, the French developer who brought us Woodruff and the Schnibble, Lost in Time, and Urban Runner, among many other adventure games. Coktel's games all share a similar type of logic which can be summed up thus: Whatever you think makes sense, fuhgeddaboutit. The correct answer is always the last thing you try, and even when you've solved a puzzle, it's not always obvious what you've accomplished or why you've done it. At least this series doesn't have us wearing a Poohsmurgl and eating Boozouioli while chanting around a Chprotznog in the center of Vlrxtrznbnaxl. (A sentence that actually makes sense in another context.) Instead, we go to a variety of distant places and do equally strange things.  The Gobliiins series features a somewhat unique gameplay element, at least for its time - multiple controllable characters, each with his own skills and abilities that will be needed to complete the game's objectives. Sometimes, that adds to the complexity of the puzzles by forcing you to think about which character is best suited for a particular action. At other times, it just means they had to shoehorn in more reasons for punching to be the solution to life's problems. Not that I mind, exactly.  So, in the spirit of sharing puzzle-solving duties between two or more characters, I've decided to do this LP in two distinct styles, concurrently. In one set of videos, I'll be going through the CD versions of the games in my usual style, which will be familiar to anyone who's watched any of my adventure game LPs before. (If you haven't, my biased opinion is that you should, but you don't need to do that before starting this one.) In the other set, a guest commentator will be trying to solve the puzzles in the floppy versions with me as their mostly benevolent but also aloof guide, keeping them on track without providing more direction than they need, so you can get the proper outsider's perspective on how difficult the games are when you don't know what you're doing. You can watch either set of videos, or both, or even neither, although if you don't watch any of the videos, you're probably just wasting your time even reading this thread at this point.  Updates are likely to be pretty slow because I'll need to coordinate with my guest to record the guest videos, but I'll try to keep on top of things enough to keep a steady pace and post the videos for future updates as I finish them rather than waiting to release a batch all at once. I'll also correlate the videos in each set so you can switch back and forth if you want without missing any of the game content. There will almost always be more videos with a guest to cover the same amount of the game, since I know the quickest way to get through everything while the guest will have to figure them out as they go. You'll see what I mean. So sit back, grab a can of Kindness Elixir, pull on your shaded sunglasses, and watch us present all four - yes, FOUR - Gobliiins games. Gobliiins Guest videos with Leavemywife: Part 1-1: "I know I shouldn't, but I feel so stupid right now." Polsy Youtube Part 1-2: "So were there certain puzzles you were thinking, 'He's never gonna figure this poo poo out'?" Polsy Youtube Part 2-1: "There's gotta be some poor gently caress out there who understands this. He's sitting in a cave, eating his own feces, works at Wal-Mart, and he's got cicada husks for shoes, and I am not that level of batshit crazy." Polsy Youtube Part 2-2: "You've gotta be loving kidding me. How the he- oh, all right, whatever." Polsy Youtube Part 3-1: "Okay, we found a buttplug." Polsy Youtube Part 3-2: "Can we, like, light his pants on fire to wake him up?" Polsy Youtube Part 3-3: "I feel so accomplished... What the friggedy-gently caress is this?" Polsy Youtube Part 4-1: "You have no idea how badly I just want to Google these puzzle solutions." Polsy Youtube Part 4-2: "What is this, the final boss fight? What the hell's going on?" Polsy Youtube Solo videos: Part 1: Helping the wrong side Polsy Youtube Part 2: A surprising number of skeletons Polsy Youtube Part 3: Rip van Shadwinkle Polsy Youtube Part 4: I've had tacos more supreme than this weapon Polsy Youtube Gobliins 2 Guest videos with Leavemywife: Part 1-1: "All right, this is gonna sound strange, but stick your sausage in the hole." Polsy Youtube Part 1-2: "I loving quit." Polsy Youtube Part 2-1: "It looks like he's got that string coming out of his rear end. I don't know if I'm comfortable with that." Polsy Youtube Part 2-2: "Hey! Are you always nekkid? Fantastic." Polsy Youtube Part 2-3: "I should've guessed we were using the mushroom to make drugs." Polsy Youtube Part 3-1: "Let's go offer Focus some mayonnaise for his meat. I really wish I had that phrased better." Polsy Youtube Part 3-2: "I will kill your family." Polsy Youtube Part 4: "All right, go through that convoluted series of events again." Polsy Youtube Guest videos with The Splash: Part 5-1: "We were gonna get salty at some point, I'm sure." Polsy Youtube Part 5-2: "So now we can stick our head freely into orifices without fear." Polsy Youtube Part 5-3: "C'mon Winkle! I always cheer him on because I expect him to do the worst possible thing." Polsy Youtube Part 6-1: "I'm getting P.E. flashbacks." Polsy Youtube Part 6-2: "So we've got a bowl, and we need mushrooms... is this California?" Polsy Youtube Part 6-3: "I'm gonna turn this into a drinking game." Polsy Youtube Part 7-1: "Attack the demon with a projectile Winkle. Can you think of anything scarier than that?" Polsy Youtube Part 7-2: "This level's going to be the DEATH of me." Polsy Youtube Solo videos: Part 1: Okay, EVERYBODY gets to starve but the giant Polsy Youtube Part 2: Trenches and Trees, Music and Mushrooms Polsy Youtube Part 3: The Key to the Chest with the Carved Fish Polsy Youtube Part 4: Fools of Ships Polsy Youtube Part 5: Some Kind of Elixir Polsy Youtube Part 6: Two and a Half Kidnappings Polsy Youtube Bonus video: The Epic Quest for Water Polsy Youtube Part 7: The Land of Gloom and Doom Polsy Youtube Goblins 3 Guest videos with The Splash: Part 1-1: "Even with a coin, there's no change." Polsy Youtube Part 1-2: "Of all things I expect to be a thing, I expect that thing to still be a thing." Polsy Youtube Part 2-1: "Finally, something goes the way I was thinking it should go!" Polsy Youtube Part 2-2: "I need to look through these videos and take a tally on how many seesaws have been made or utilized in some way in this series." Polsy Youtube Part 2-3: "What am I gonna put my ukulele on now?" Polsy Youtube Part 3-1: "That's not a doinamoite! THIS is a doinamoite!" Polsy Youtube Part 3-2: "There are limits to curiosity. Spaghetti on the ground? Don't do it." Polsy Youtube Part 3-3: "It's like cooking with Rayman." Polsy Youtube Part 4-1: "It's the father of Master Hand from Super Smash Bros! In that case, I'm glad we're on Normal difficulty." Polsy Youtube Part 4-2: "Don't drop the soap! Trust me." Polsy Youtube Part 5-1: "Can we give the giant a growth elixir?" Polsy Youtube Part 5-2: "I can't stop looking at the absurdity of the whole thing. It's hard to make a comment. Everything is silly. It's great. We knocked out a goat." Polsy Youtube Part 5-3: "I want this exact screen, subtitle and everything, just plastered on the side of a van." Polsy Youtube Part 6-1: "I'm never entirely sure when we're talking about a group of eight pixels." Polsy Youtube Part 6-2: "Should we shoot the kid?" Polsy Youtube Part 6-3: "This is why you don't let QA do a Let's Play." Polsy Youtube Part 7-1: "I think tiny books are the epitome. Just really obscenely tiny books are probably the most ridiculous things in existence." Polsy Youtube Part 7-2: "If you tell me I can't shove a horse into things, the first thing I want to do is shove a horse into things." Polsy Youtube Part 7-3: "Am I making this too exciting?" Polsy Youtube Part 8-1: "I'm getting some Twin Peaks flashbacks." Polsy Youtube Part 8-2: "If I was stuck on a cliff because I rode a magical flying crygoldfish across a castle and the only thing I could do was either hop off, jump down into, I'm guessing, a giant orifice in the corner there, or grab a dragon pickle, I would grab the dragon pickle." Polsy Youtube Part 8-3: "I can't imagine what playing this game would be like if I had to drink every time I made a wrong decision." Polsy Youtube Part 9: "Everything is quacking in this last level. Stage. Area." Polsy Youtube Solo videos: Part 1: Blount's covering a war, you know Polsy Youtube Part 2: Bat and Dragon and Mouse Polsy Youtube Part 3: Consequences always come back to bite someone Polsy Youtube Part 4: Faster than a speeding bullet, yet unable to leap small gaps between buildings Polsy Youtube Part 5: Blount and Ooya's Magical Adventure Polsy Youtube Part 5-2: The Shadow of Colossus Polsy Youtube Part 6: Headgear and Footwear Polsy Youtube Part 7: How about a messed-up game of chess? Polsy Youtube Part 8: Scrambled Egg Polsy Youtube Part 9: Hate to spring this ending on you Polsy Youtube Gobliiins 4 Guest videos with The Splash: Part 1-1: "Please don't make me take the gherkin out of the bird." Polsy Youtube Part 1-2: "Take that, game! I've solved your second-screen mystery puzzle!" Polsy Youtube Part 1-3: "Man, I love that this level is just making skeletons vomit. That's the whole level." Polsy Youtube Part 2-1: "So the one thing we haven't figured out is how to also get Stucco to the other side. And also everything else." Polsy Youtube Part 2-2: "I apologize to any feet people that may be watching this video." Polsy Youtube Part 2-3: "Use stick plus bear's navel is probably the way that somebody has died in the past." Polsy Youtube Part 2-4: "Don't worry. At this pace, we'll have this done... probably by about four in the morning." Polsy Youtube Part 3-1: "There's something wrong with this old man. I'm sending him back. Get a new one." Polsy Youtube Part 3-2: "Get in there. Get in your hell pit." Polsy Youtube Part 3-3: "All right, let's do it! Let's put - let's just... pea everywhere." Polsy Youtube Bonus video: "If I ever die, make sure no one eats my sandwiches." Polsy Youtube Part 4-1: "This has to be the only game where I want to do something, but I don't actually know if I want it to work or not." Polsy Youtube Part 4-2: "(unintelligible whining)" Polsy Youtube Part 4-3: "Is this the level?" Polsy Youtube Interlude: "It doesn't even have a line to it! It's just a bump!" Polsy Youtube Part 5-1: "Did I just kill a vegetable?" Polsy Youtube Part 5-2: "If you ever want to introduce someone to this game, just show them the last five seconds." Polsy Youtube Part 5-3: "I'm saying all kinds of sentences for the first time in my life, every time we do a recording." Polsy Youtube Part 5-4: "It just hit me, these guys have some serious thigh gap." Polsy Youtube Part 6-1: "Man, this reminds me of back when I did tech support." Polsy Youtube Part 6-2: "Probably should do something besides trying to grab everything in space." Polsy Youtube Part 6-3: "Oh, this is a piece of cake." Polsy Youtube Solo videos: Part 1: Detective Tchoup gathers his friends Polsy Youtube Part 2: Riri ranran Polsy Youtube Part 3: Hey, Vern! It's Gobliiins! Polsy Youtube Part 4: It's about this point when I realized that we could probably just keep riding these animals and never stop Polsy Youtube Part 5: I've Found the Weed; You Can't Fool Me Polsy Youtube Part 6: Well, that takes the cake. Polsy Youtube Nidoking fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jan 8, 2021 |
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Jan 31, 2016 22:29
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Grabbing the second post in case I need it later...
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Jan 31, 2016 22:29
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Air is lava! posted:Awesome. I liked those games a kid. In hindsight they are kind of bullshit sometimes. Don't worry. Now that I'm playing the games for you, you can shed the blinders of hindsight and see that they are in fact kind of bullshit all the time. But still fun and interesting for that.
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Jan 31, 2016 23:14
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I will be sure to point out where, in the first two games, I had to resort to hint books to proceed. In the third game, it will be much faster to mention the screens where I DIDN'T have to use hints. I think there were three of them. And I mean three individual screens, not three parts of the game. I did a lot of uninstalling and reinstalling back in the day. The fourth game I completed without any outside help. The last level took absolutely forever, but most of the rest wasn't too bad. It's pretty much the first game again, but with no health bar.
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Feb 1, 2016 02:13
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Leavemywife posted:I don't want to even imagine how much editing you did to get past all of the sitting around and thinking that I did. Honestly, the only thing I had to do editing-wise was compensate for a recording issue where the game audio got time-distorted, likely because it was silent for too long near the end of that recording segment. From now on, I'll probably idly move the characters every so often just to have footsteps to keep the timing, at least until we get to the second game and there's music. It probably feels longer when you're the one trying to solve the puzzles.
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Feb 1, 2016 11:43
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MartianAgitator posted:But holy poo poo, there's a Goblins 4?! Why isn't it on Steam or Gog? I don't even know how to buy video games that aren't on one of those platforms anymore. I got mine from the unfortunately named Gamersgate, where it comes with the first three games as an extra. You just can't install both the original trilogy and 4 at the same time, for whatever reason. I think there are a couple of other sites that have it, but I don't know offhand what those are. If you get your copy from Gamersgate, be aware that the license key they give you only covers one installation, but you can get another key by E-mailing support. Acne Rain posted:so shouldn't the fourth be "goblns 4" No, it's Gobliiins 4 because you have three characters again, basically the same three as in the original game but with different names. Or maybe the original names before the English-language version changed them. I don't know which is the case. I'll talk a bit more about the details of later games when we get there, but they're Gobliiins, Gobliins 2, Goblins 3 (or "Goblin's Quest 3" in the U.S. both to fit with Sierra's other titles and because a single character isn't usually referred to in the plural), and Gobliiins 4.
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Feb 2, 2016 02:27
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I hate to do this so early in the LP, but obviously, there's been a delay in new videos and it's going to continue for a while. Leavemywife's schedule was pretty full until this weekend, and my mom was involved in a car accident yesterday that's left her too functional for a hospital stay, but not really able to do much on her own. I'm taking care of her this week and can't do any LP work until she's able to handle herself. I've got something else in the works that should help bridge the gap, but obviously, that's out too until I'm back home.
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Feb 13, 2016 23:02
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Leavemywife posted:I think my head is threatening to explode from some of the applications of logic. Head explosion is much more of a Goblins 3 thing. They go for more slapstick humor in that one.
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Feb 21, 2016 22:18
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Welcome back, everyone, and thanks for your patience. We're back for the thrilling dungeon escape and our continued campaign to get into the wizard's house, now that we know he's a bad guy. It's just a bit more complicated than that, like every other thing in this game. We're going to have to take a side trip and climb a tree. Why? We'll find out eventually. Part 2-1: "There's gotta be some poor gently caress out there who understands this. He's sitting in a cave, eating his own feces, works at Wal-Mart, and he's got cicada husks for shoes, and I am not that level of batshit crazy." Polsy Youtube
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Feb 26, 2016 02:47
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Anime Reference posted:You aren't. It was the early 90s, death was expected. But death wasn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days, to borrow a phrase. Sierra games from the very start had save files that you were expected to use, and death was an instant end to the game that forced you to reload, ideally to a state immediately before the death from which you could continue seamlessly. In Gobliiins, the only way to restore is to restart the level, which is simply inefficient if you don't know how to complete the rest of the puzzles. So the pattern is stumble through the level, figure out everything you need to do, use a full-health password from earlier when your health gets low enough to be frustrating, and replay the levels with the known solutions so you can continue. There are plenty of jokes about mathematicians not wanting to repeat problems they've already solved*, and this game is the antithesis to that idea. There's no challenge in a repeat playthrough (if you remember your first playthrough well enough) and most of the potential for fun is removed as I'll get to shortly. Replaying this game simply isn't fun, and I honestly have no idea why I did it so many times when I was a kid. There are two fundamental principles of game design that almost nobody does correctly - "What are the strengths of my game, and how can I bring those to the forefront? What are the weaknesses of my game, and what can I do to mitigate them?" The health bar violates both of those principles. The main strength of the game is the humorous animations for failure states, and the health bar turns those into an annoyance and a penalty. The weakness is that you have to experiment almost randomly to solve the puzzles, and the health bar makes that a chore and repetitive. Perhaps someone thought that a game requires failure states - even Lucasfilm Games/Lucasarts were still making games where you could die at that time. I think The Secret of Monkey Island was a relative contemporary of the first Gobliiins, and I don't think LOOM would have made enough of an impact to be a big influence on this game's development. * Here's my favorite: An engineer and a mathematician are hired to work at a company full of pranksters with low safety standards. One day, while they're at lunch, their officemates set fire to their trash cans. The engineer comes back from lunch, sees the fire, grabs the fire extinguisher, and puts out the fire. The mathematician returns shortly after that, grabs the fire extinguisher, and puts out the fire. The next day, the pranksters set another fire, but hide the fire extinguisher in a closet. The engineer gets back from lunch, sees the fire, searches the building, finds the fire extinguisher, and puts out the fire. The pranksters naturally hide the fire extinguisher again before the mathematician returns. The mathematician gets back from lunch, sees the fire, searches the building, finds the fire extinguisher, puts it back where it belongs, says "This is a known state," and sits down to work next to the burning trash can.
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Feb 26, 2016 12:09
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Bruceski posted:The physicist covers his cubicle with extinguisher foam, but it's within an order of magnitude of the right amount so it's good enough. The physicist is confused because fire is a chemical reaction, and that's a completely different branch of science.
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Feb 27, 2016 01:16
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Hmmm... that's weird, but I confirmed that it's not available through any of the purchase links at the official page for the game, including Gamersgate. They've got what appears to be a "Coming Soon" page for it that has a checkbox to alert you when the game is released, but no purchase option. Welp. If anyone decides to look into this and find out what's happened to the digital distribution, feel free to post any answer you get here. If not, I may contact Gamersgate myself and ask if anyone there can tell me why they're not selling it anymore. They, at least, have been helpful, while the publisher's support only seems to be able to send me a form response in Russian even though my E-mails are clearly in English.
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Feb 27, 2016 15:08
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Lord Malfegor posted:What was the point in the dog? We didn't need to walk past him, we wandered off to a random tree.... because? We need a nut? If you were paying attention, there was no nut involved. There was actually a bird, which we will need to deal with the dog. If you're expecting the game to make any more sense than that, then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Look, it'll probably be easier if I just show you, okay?  Part 2-2: "You've gotta be loving kidding me. How the he- oh, all right, whatever." Polsy Youtube Some of this is, admittedly, my fault - after processing the audio liberally to raise the volumes, I realized that Leave told me to pick up the elixir much earlier than I actually heard it, and I completely missed that. With that said, this is where the game really ramps up in difficulty, I think. Now we have to use items as they are AND turn them into other useful things with magic. It only gets more annoying from here, folks. On the bright side, I think we're about halfway through the game at this point.
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Feb 28, 2016 01:07
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pokie posted:Too bad that 4 is nowhere to be found, but it's probably worse than the old ones since they at least have nostalgia and cute art going for them. It definitely loses a bit of the charm of the earlier games, particularly because of the less cartoony feel of the 3D graphics. The return to three characters with distinct abilities means that the game plays something like a more streamlined version of the first one, but there are so many puzzles that use the same item over and over that it gets a bit tiresome, and having to coordinate timing between the characters is a bit trickier when you have three of them. It's mainly the music from the floppy versions of 2 and 3 that I miss in 4, though.
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Feb 29, 2016 03:51
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There will be a slight delay in the release of my second solo video because Leavemywife is a real trooper and marathoned the rest of the game tonight while his wife patiently waited in the wings. Look forward to some head-scratching, head-banging, and other forms of head-mangling to follow.
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Mar 3, 2016 03:45
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Leavemywife posted:The high point of this recording session, I felt, was when I had trouble with a simple puzzle because I was thinking with too much Gobliiins logic. Episode 1 Leave: "I need to get through a door? Well, let's try doing everything I can to the door. No good? Okay, what else can I do?" Episode 6-ish Leave: "I need to get through a door? Well, which of the random objects in the room will I have to throw magic at to open it?" shwa posted:I feel like this playthrough might benefit from some sort of light music in the background of the floppy version, It might make this a bit more watchable. Funny you should say that... because it turns out that the game audio for the last half hour or so of our recording session either wasn't playing, wasn't recorded, or got corrupted. My plan is to attempt to recreate the game soundtrack manually using a separate capture of that portion of the game, but I may just have to use something else or leave it silent. Light music, on the other hand, is not an option on Youtube, as I'm sure you know. I have an idea that, while funny, probably wouldn't be in the spirit I intend for this LP. I may do it anyway. I may even skip the idea of using a game recording and just do the funny thing. We'll see. I really don't want to make a fundamental change to the game experience, though. The first game is frustrating as hell, and the floppy version offers absolutely nothing to offset that. It probably put a lot of people off the floppy versions of later games (particularly the second), which is a shame, because they're much better and arguably superior to the CD versions. The third one definitely is.
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Mar 4, 2016 13:45
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More good news - it looks like the audio from the last recording session wasn't actually corrupted after all. It just didn't play when I played the MP4 in VLC. When I imported the files into Avisynth, the audio seems just fine, so it's entirely a matter of splitting the final session into three or four videos and getting them cleaned up and posted. Oh, and the good news - I finally got the next solo video ready to go. Part 2: A surprising number of skeletons Polsy Youtube
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Mar 6, 2016 20:58
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Leavemywife and I have escaped the wizard's house, but now the wizard himself stands in our way. We'll need to sneak past him so we can find our way to Shadwin the Wise. Or SHADWIN the Wise, as the game puts it. I think this is one wise man who had one too many salesmen visit him and decided to do something about it. Very wise indeed. But on the way there, we'll get into some intimidating but fairly racy situations. This episode is probably no less safe for work than any other, but it's more suggestive than most. Part 3-1: "Okay, we found a buttplug." Polsy Youtube
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Mar 10, 2016 02:51
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I think Leave may be at a disadvantage since I don't know how much he's listened to his own recorded voice. I've been told I sound exactly like Jamesman, actually, and I can definitely hear that. But what you're going to hear next is Leave's introduction to the most annoying part of Gobliiins, and probably the second worst part of the series overall. (I'm still working my way through a second playthrough of 4 to refresh my memory - that may have some contenders as well. Probably many of them.) The entire video covers only one screen, and even then, I was tempted to cut out some of the repetition, but it doesn't take very long and the conversation covers it pretty well. There will be edits later. Part 3-2: "Can we, like, light his pants on fire to wake him up?" Polsy Youtube
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Mar 13, 2016 00:28
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HotAndColdAF posted:My only familiarity with Gobliiins is the third in the series, and, man, I thought some of its puzzles were pretty loving obtuse and difficult, but drat. drat. They're obtuse and difficult, but not this annoying for the most part. 3 is by far the least annoying game in the series, particularly the floppy version. I don't think there are any puzzles that require this level of repetition when you know how to solve them. Just some very tricky timing puzzles. Felinoid posted:So, I found a weird coincidence about the number of I's in the titles of the games: there's always exactly four, if it were written with roman numerals. Gobliiins I, Gobliins II, Goblins III, & Gobliiins IV all fit the pattern. Obviously the next one in the pattern would be Gobliiiins 5, and I guess you would have four characters to control? That could be interesting. Absolutely a coincidence, particularly since I've never seen any of them written in Roman numerals, and the first game wasn't called Gobliiins 1.
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Mar 14, 2016 01:36
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Every game needs some kind of imposing antagonist, and a wizard just isn't monstrously inhuman enough to qualify for that job. It's time to take on a dragon. Why? Because we need its fire to transcend a statue to break a curse. Whatever that means. At this point, the average player is probably just clicking everywhere to see what happens. Leavemywife spends a good portion of this video being average in that regard. Part 3-3: "I feel so accomplished... What the friggedy-gently caress is this?" Polsy Youtube
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Mar 25, 2016 22:47
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Jim Flatline posted:You just gotta....uh...search the bay era telephone book. It's sandwiched in with 3 other numbers for similar sounding places. Gobliiins 4 Cash? Gobliiin Golf? The Fourth Gobble Inn?
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Mar 28, 2016 00:21
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I've been sitting on this video partly because it was more effort than I usually bother with, and partly because I have no idea whether the results will turn out to have been worth it. But I said at the start that I was looking to do things right this time, and one of the biggest (and entirely legitimate) complaints from the original LP was that portions of this game are incredibly boring, and there's no reason the LP itself should be correspondingly boring. Those who have watched the videos with Leavemywife already know which part of this game I utterly hate, and I decided to do something a little more fun to make it less boring and more entertaining. I've probably raised your expectations too much, so let me assure you that the result will not live up to your hopes. But it's shorter. Part 3: Rip van Shadwinkle Polsy Youtube
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Mar 31, 2016 02:37
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Gah! I uploaded this last night but didn't have time to make the post because I got wrapped up in a Hyrule Warriors mission that took much longer than expected, and when I finished it, I learned that Midna's Majora's Mask mask isn't even a thing from Majora's Mask at all! What's up with that? So I left it private overnight and intended to post this morning, but now lpix appears to be down, so I can't upload a screenshot to go with the update. But that's actually pretty much perfect, because this video is also a celebration of taking way too long to accomplish nothing at all. As I hinted at earlier, Leavemywife spent quite a long time banging his head against what turned out to be one of the simplest puzzles in the game, and I think it just goes to show you how much the warped logic in this game can mess with your mind. So, enjoy some further dragon-fighting antics followed by over five minutes of Leave not making any actual progress as we make our way inevitably toward the end of the game. EDIT: Lpix is back, so here's the screenshot.  Part 4-1: "Okay, we've made it this far..." Polsy Youtube Nidoking fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Apr 1, 2016 |
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Apr 1, 2016 11:16
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Major_JF posted:Sorry Gobliiins with a Guest part 4-1 was not some of your best work. I admit that my quality control was lacking - I usually edit out more of the background noise than I did this time.
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Apr 1, 2016 23:06
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Okay, the joke's run its course. I hope everyone enjoyed at least the idea of the annual April Fools' video, particularly since I haven't been able to bring my ideas to life for the past few years and it's been really frustrating. This time around, the last video left off right at a big block of silence that was otherwise just taking up space on my hard drive, it was episode 4-1... it was just too perfect. I wasn't kidding, however, when I said that Leave would spend over five minutes failing to make any progress in the next video. The problem really just comes down to being trained to think outside the box so much that sometimes, the most obvious solution just doesn't seem wacky enough to work anymore. It's also about the only thing in this video that I think should have been obvious - about the first time you see the Statue of Serenity, everything in the game stops making even the kind of sense it did at the start. Don't worry, though - Leave's intuition makes short work of pretty much everything after this point. You'll be sad today, but proud whenever I get around to posting the final video of this set. Part 4-1: "You have no idea how badly I just want to Google these puzzle solutions." Polsy Youtube
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Apr 2, 2016 02:20
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Oh, the lever does something all right. But you can't get to it until you come back to this screen. Like the statue, it's just there to distract you from the actual puzzle the first time.
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Apr 2, 2016 12:28
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It's time for the end of the first game! At least, from Leavemywife's perspective. I still need to finish the final solo video, and then there may be a bit of a hiatus because I don't know when we'll have time to start recording the next game. In this video, Leavemywife finds the supreme weapon and turns it on its intended target - fruit. And the evil wizard, but mainly fruit. The wizard actually has a few tricks up his sleeve, although probably not tricks he intended to use, and the resulting mechanic turns out to be pretty interesting, almost a Lost Vikings scenario where different combinations of characters can accomplish different parts of the entire solution. And then the game just sort of ends, although it's probably the least silly ending in the series. The end of the video probably seems a bit abrupt, but the video sharing program crashed when the game exited and we lost the call, so I just edited together Leave's solo thoughts on the end of the game and freeze-framed the last frame of video rather than trying to make it loop or something like that. Part 4-2: "What is this, the final boss fight? What the hell's going on?" Polsy Youtube
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Apr 14, 2016 02:37
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Deathwind posted:Wow, even for the time this game was lacking. Total moonlogic, threadbare story, a pointlessly punishing life system, and a lack of any real payoff in the end. This is the same wizard that would kill you on sight a few screens back, what's stopping him from zapping you? What keeps him trapped in the bag? I want to post a picture of that "aliens" guy meme with the caption "Coktel", but that would probably get me probated, so just pretend I did if you're not a mod. If you are a mod, you saw no such thing. Really, what stops the wizard from killing you when he turns back to his normal form is just that the puzzle resets, rather than reloading the level. It's a lot simpler to program that way, and a bit less tedious for the people who had slow computers that took a long time to load each screen. I don't know what computers it might have been released on in France. But this sort of thing was typical of the Coktel games I played, as well as other games from French developers. Anyone remember the Alone in the Dark series? That was full of puzzles that only sort of made sense once you knew the solutions and situations that required randomly poking things with other things or prescience (or dying and using the information gained from that to solve the puzzle). I don't know that I can necessarily distill any given culture down to a certain style of adventure game, given my limited exposure to most of them, but it seems from that limited experience that some countries tend to produce games that American audiences will find inscrutable and terrible and to be quite proud of them. I point to Next Life and Limbo of the Lost as about all the examples I have and all I could ever need. There will be a particular puzzle in Goblins 3 that will likely prompt further discussion of this concept, including why I think it might happen, and perhaps the answer to a question I've had for a very long time.
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Apr 14, 2016 12:03
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At last, I've finished the first game. There was a weird audio glitch when I was recording, but you may not be able to hear it in the video because I turned the volume way down for fear of blowing out the eardrums of anyone using headphones. Otherwise, the last stretch of the game is pretty straightforward, with only one instant death condition that I know of and puzzles that are mostly pretty simple, aside from the screen with the giant. I really think I've heard a legend about a monster dissolving when drenched with tears or something like it, but I can't find any evidence of it on the Internet, which means the only place I've probably actually read about it was in the hint book for this game. In any case, this finishes the LP of the first game, and after a delay to get together with Leavemywife to record some, the second game will begin. Part 4: I've had tacos more supreme than this weapon Polsy Youtube
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Apr 21, 2016 02:19
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I was thinking of tears more specifically, but that makes sense too.
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Apr 21, 2016 03:57
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Miacis posted:Some of the more confusing items interactions did remind me of "classic jokes" I used to see in kid comics, so I guess the bottom line is... if something seems incredibly obtuse, it might just be a French humor thing. I need you in this thread. I need explanations for so many things. I need to know what the hell is up with sneezing! But we can wait until those things show up in the LP.
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Apr 22, 2016 12:42
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Thanks for your patience, everyone. It's time for the start of Gobliins 2! This game introduces numerous quality of life improvements over the first game, particularly the removal of the health mechanic and the addition of an unlimited inventory, both of which will remain in place for the rest of the series. Also improving our experience a bit are people to talk to and the ability to have both characters acting simultaneously, rather than having to wait until one finishes what he's doing to issue a command to the other. That last upgrade, of course, comes with an increase in the difficulty of the puzzles - since we now have the ability to have one character set up a situation for the other character to act upon, that will come into play many times throughout the game. We'll see a few examples of it in this first video, and while it may seem at times that Leavemywife is missing something obvious, this mechanic really represents a completely new way of thinking compared to anything in the first game, and it takes some getting used to. It's not the only thing that will cause problems, either. But perhaps the most disconcerting new mechanic in this game is the ability to move from room to room rather than being told to advance once you've accomplished the (generally unannounced) objective. The areas still aren't all that large, but it's a little more difficult to solve puzzles when you can't necessarily see all the components of them at once. There's probably more I could say, but you'll see it all for yourselves eventually, so let's just get on with the game! Part 1-1: "All right, this is gonna sound strange, but stick your sausage in the hole." Polsy Youtube In answer to Leave's question at the start of the video, the first game came out in 1991, this one in 1992, and the third in 1993. The fourth one came out much later, and that will show, but I'll get into that later.
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May 21, 2016 19:44
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Son Ryo posted:I gotta say, I don't know how much you've recorded already but given how much more detailed the backgrounds are now you might wanna consider pointing out to Leave which important objects are interactable in advance-- one of the first things I did in this game was basically mouse over the entire screen to see which things popped up. If he'd known the hole was there earlier we might have gotten a few more entertaining failed solutions, and I don't know how long it's going to take him to figure out what he needs to do with one of the items you can get in this area since what you need to use it on basically looks like nothing until you mouse over it. I'm not going to let him get too stuck on anything amounting to a pixel hunt, but at the same time, I'm not going to deprive him of the opportunity to surprise me by coming up with non-obvious solutions that turn out to be correct. As for more failed solutions, I have no idea what more you expected him to do other than throw objects into it - there's nothing entertaining about using an item in the wrong place, and it wasn't until later in the session that Leave really got the message about trying to interact with things not using items. Like I said, it's a real change from a game where your entire list of actions was punch, cast magic, and use item. There actually is a reason to randomly click on things now just to see what happens, because you don't choose what action the characters will take. I'm still trying to decide whether doing Gobliiins 4 in this way is even feasible, given how much of the game is pixel hunting, but at least the pixels for the non-optional objectives are usually visible. The hole was visible, all of the things I can think of that you could possibly be talking about are visible, and as long as it's visible, Leave will probably see it and attempt to stick a sausage into it.
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May 22, 2016 15:00
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Leavemywife posted:This has me concerned for the latter half of the game. I'm going to have to have Google ready. Or possibly someone who's familiar with the game at the controls. Either or. pokie posted:Hey, at least Gob 3 mostly makes sense (I have not finished it yet). Clearly not. While there are a couple of parts in 2 where even I, a person who hates drug-related humor, have to concede that drugs were likely involved in the creation of those areas, the entire final act of 3 is a succession of those. Although it does contain one of the three rooms in the game where I DIDN'T use a joker. But to curb the discussion of future parts of the series that Leavemywife hasn't seen yet, here's the conclusion of the first chapter of the one we're playing now, containing the solutions to all of the puzzles in the first part and a few we didn't even see earlier.  Part 1-2: "I loving quit." Polsy Youtube
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May 28, 2016 00:23
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So let's talk a bit about the differences between the CD and floppy versions for just a second. It was fairly obvious in the first game, since the floppy version had no music at all, but the music is the main difference between the two. The sound effects are identical in both versions, but the CD version uses audio tracks on the CD to play the music. Back in the DOS days, most CD-ROM drives had a direct audio connection to the motherboard or sound card, so you could just put in an audio CD, hit the Play button, and hear the music directly through the computer's sound system. Nobody actually used this, but the creators of some CD games used software controls to play their audio this way, including the Gobliiins titles. (Incidentally, this was the technical problem I mentioned in the OP that made me give up on completing the original LP of the series.) The music in these games is a single track, which also includes all of the dialogue. In the first game, there was no dialogue when music was playing; the only speech was in the cutscenes between levels. In Gobliins 2, the music cuts away to dialogue frequently, then restarts at the beginning of the song. The chapter marks tend to be imprecise, so you'll often hear bits of dialogue from before and after the conversation you're listening to, or miss a bit of speech at the beginning. (Funnily enough, the game I remember most having this problem was Woodruff and the Schnibble, which didn't even use CD audio.) The CD version music is almost identical between the first two games, with very few unique tracks. That will change when we get to the third game. I think the second game is the hardest to choose a favorite version - the CD version of the first game is superior in almost every respect due to being the only version with any music, and we'll get to the third eventually. I rather like the twangy sound of the floppy version music in the games that have any, while the music here is just the same as we had before. On the other hand, the floppy version's "voices" are pretty annoying, while the voices in the CD version... may be slightly less so. I'll let you judge for yourself. My playthrough will be focusing on the shortest path through the game, mainly minimizing screen transitions while still doing as much as I can. Part 1: Okay, EVERYBODY gets to starve but the giant Polsy Youtube
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Jun 12, 2016 17:19
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Good news! If anyone's frustrated with the slow pace of the LP, the Gobliiins trilogy is a buck and a half at GOG through the weekend, so it will probably never be cheaper to check the games out for yourself. They come with both the floppy and CD versions, plus the hint books. It's good timing, because I'm going to have to slow down releases yet again due to personal reasons. I've got the entire second session with Leavemywife recorded, so I'll spread out those and any solo videos I can get published before my hiatus begins over the intervening time - you may not even notice I'd stopped. For now, we're trying to get into a well-guarded castle. Clearly, entering through the door is out, but the actual method for entering is a bit... involved. This video will cover the part of the quest that sort of makes some sense. Our final objective, which we'll spend the rest of the chapter trying to tackle, is the sort of thing that may leave you wondering whether it can even be done. Well, of course it can. This is Gobliins 2, and we're taking our ball and going home. Part 2-1: "It looks like he's got that string coming out of his rear end. I don't know if I'm comfortable with that." Polsy Youtube
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Jul 2, 2016 00:10
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As you can probably guess from the long gap between videos, I didn't manage to get any solo ones done before taking my break - everything from unhelpful officials to a dead washing machine conspired to eat up all my free time, and there's still most of that left to deal with. The good news is that I'm having a pretty good time, which may or may not come to an end next week. But we still have a couple of videos left in chapter 2, and the infamous part is yet to come. This video illustrates one of the biggest problems with the game - sometimes, there's an opportunity to make it pretty clear what you need to do, but the game doesn't bother. There are more items in this game than there were in the first game, and twice as many characters who can use those items, so it takes a long time to rule out everything you're carrying in a given situation, and if you're too quick to dismiss something because it didn't work for one character, you might miss the correct solution. (I think, at least, that if one character performs his idle animation with an item, the other one will too - if you're using the wrong character, you'll get a finger-wag.) On the other hand, plants liking water seems fairly intuitive to me. Part 2-2: "Hey! Are you always nekkid? Fantastic." Polsy Youtube
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Jul 23, 2016 18:50
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At last, my exile to California is nearly over, and soon I will be back at my recording equipment and merely too busy to work on the LP instead of too busy AND nowhere near the computer. My brother's getting married next weekend, and I've got a lot to do before then, largely relating to not having been at home for nearly a month. Hopefully, I'll get some new videos up before too long, but I don't think there's much of a rush. Leavemywife is now a father, and also LPing FFVI Advance, so I expect he'll have less free time than he used to. We'll continue to record whenever we've got the time, of course, but until then, here's the final bit of our last session. This is where the game really gets weird. Most of it is our characters doing strange things in relatively mundane places, if you think about it. The first game had a dragon cave, a floating statue, a dungeon, a mummy scaring a troll... this one's been mostly tame countryside so far. Then you drink the dream potion and you get... Part 2-3: "I should've guessed we were using the mushroom to make drugs." Polsy Youtube
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Aug 5, 2016 03:50
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Don't worry; I didn't forget that I was doing an LP. There's a lot in chapter 2, so it took a couple tries to get a good recording. Once I had that, though, it was easy enough to get the commentary in and get it posted. I may not have time to do another session with Leave until mid to late September, but once I do, the videos usually don't take very long to produce. This episode might be worth watching even if you watched the guest videos, since I took the time to show a few animations that didn't come up while he was playing, but as usual, you won't be missing anything vital. Also, Polsy's site seems to be having some problems tonight, so if the link doesn't work, it might be better to go directly to Youtube. Part 2: Trenches and Trees, Music and Mushrooms Polsy Youtube
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Aug 29, 2016 01:06
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