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 Most Recent Video:  Steamworld Dig was released in 2013, first as a Nintendo 3DS game and then eventually ported to just about anything more powerful than a gen one Blackberry thereafter. There's something of a misconception that this was the start of the Steamworld franchise, which now includes a 2D strategy title, Steamworld Heist and a Card Collection Game Steamworld Quest. The first Steamworld game was the original DS game Steamworld Tower, which was a tower defense game. It's really hard to criticize developer Image and Form for just making the same game over and over considering the breadth of game types they have dabbled in. So far, the Dig games are the only two in the same genre, and the only direct sequels. Dig is a fun, if not somewhat short, vertical scroller where the objective is to go down to the bottom of you uncle's mine while occasionally coming up to the surface to sell the ores and minerals you find and then immediately spend your money on upgrades that let you mine faster, carry more minerals and stay underground longer. Along the way you'll find major upgrades left by your uncle that will give you new abilities, adding something of a Metroidvania element to the game. As you go deeper the enemies and environment get more hazardous, but ores get more valuable. The game has a huge amount of charm, and it's a fun while it lasts. Like I said, you can complete it in just a few hours. While it consists of the same few things happening again and again, it never feels like a drag or overly repetitive. Also, despite being a pretty simple game that even a kid could play I find ways to CONSTANTLY screw myself over, which is what will generate most of the fun here. Steamworld Dig 2 came out in 2017 and I've never played it. Once we finish on SWD1 I'm jumping right in blind for the entertainment of the thread. I assume it is more of what made SWD1 fun and will probably offer even more opportunities for me to drop a rock on my head. If there's some interest I may do something with Steamworld Heist as I just recently picked it up. I am terrible at strategy games, which may be good or bad depending on how you derive entertainment. Table of Contents Steamworld Dig          Steamworld Dig 2                   
Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Dec 31, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 18:23
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Steamworld Dig wastes no time getting you into things. Ten seconds of cutscene and you are in the mine, finding dead uncle robot things and stealing from their corpses like you are in Link to the Past. The opening half hour here is indicative of the rest of the game. You dig, you sell, you buy, you dig. Sometimes there are really nice prizes in the mine to find that the game more or less requires you to get if you want to progress. One thing you'll notice is that I keep saying I want to keep clean lines for the mine, but I never do. The ores are spread out enough and valuable enough at this point that you have to ruin your best plans to go get rich. Or get Tumbleton back on its feet or something. I have no idea how being the only miner somehow is going to revitalize the town, we're not creating any new jobs and our material needs could be met by just one vendor if he expanded his stock. I guess it's best to not think too much about this. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 26, 2019 18:29
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cat_herder posted:I think the vendor dude makes things out of the ores and sells them back to you. it's a very strange micro-capitalism. Ah, it's a Manor system of some nature. I don't want to spend a ton of time theorycrafting how it's all supposed to work, but I did write, uh...six to eight thousand words about mine stuff for posts in the thread. What you are seeing is my second crack at the videos because I spent way too much time overthinking how exploited Rusty is by the merchant class. It led to a lot of rambling and not fun videos.
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Jul 28, 2019 12:56
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Pennfalath posted:I would be extremely down for that, because Heist is a wonderful game. I was thinking Twitch for this, but I may just decide to try and LP it. I would do it totally blind, which usually isn't my style, but you are like the third person today to tell me it is good and fun and so I don't want to ruin me sucking at it for the rest of everyone.
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Jul 28, 2019 23:06
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AltaBrown posted:Lazyfire, I am terrible at strategy/tactics games, and I managed to get through Heist with little serious trouble. You'll do fine. Glad to hear that. Me playing X-Com was like watching a newborn trying to murder itself. The video is encoded and processed for HD. I can look at uploading it again to see if that fixes anything if it turns out YouTube isn't the culprit.
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Jul 30, 2019 09:49
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berryjon posted:Huh. This game has been sitting in my Steam Library for ages now. Interesting to see if it's something I should install. After, you know, you get the video quality issues sorted out. You mean you don't want to watch a video of a game with really good animations and good character/environmental design in glorious 360p? I'm going to have to try to re-load the video tonight and see if that clears it up. I just tried to load it in HD at work and unless the video is so data intense at 720p that our ancient CAT3 wiring can't deal with it things are messed up on the upload.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:18
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I can promise that this one shows correctly. The Ep. 1 link is currently dead as I'm re-uploading it now. Upgrades in Steamworld Dig come in two varieties, there are the purchased ones that I like to think of as passive, you can dig through dirt with fewer hits, your light lasts longer, etc. and then there are the active abilities. Sprinting is a good example just because hey, you can run now and that opens up some traversal opportunities you didn't have before. What's more, these type of skills are given their own little mini-tutorial as Rusty typically has to use his new ability to get out of the puzzle room where he found it. I think it ends up being a really good system, you are locking quality of life upgrades behind money, but exploration is rewarded with stuff you need to progress. You don't really ever have to collect many minerals if you don't want to, just hit all the upgrade stations and you can totally complete the game, it just may take forever and not be entertaining as you hit the same dirt block 100 times. Edit: Episode One links will work now, I can confirm it actually shows up as HD this time. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Jul 31, 2019 |
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Jul 31, 2019 00:50
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Meet Biff. Biff is our second tier merchant and will be selling us stuff for a while yet. Few of the upgrades he offers don't require orbs, which means that cache I missed earlier is going to hurt, but I have a plan. I always have a plan, even when it looks like I screwed up. The way the merchants in the game are set up means that you'll need to interact with all of them through the course of the game. Biff has one really expensive item that you probably won't have the orbs stockpiled for until the endgame, and Cranky sells consumables, which are useful throughout. The third merchant seems to have an endless list of upgrades that I highly doubt I will get all of (and you don't need all of them anyway). Realistically, this just means you need to go to see multiple bots when you get to the surface, but lore-wise you get a bit of flavor text from multiple sources each time you go to get ladders or see if you can get the goddamn 15 orb water seal. While the split locations are slightly inconvenient, it is a nice touch to have a reason to talk to people who have sort of outlived their usefulness.
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Aug 3, 2019 18:14
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C-Euro posted:I actually went back and started a new game on the 3DS version of this, so thanks for the inspiration. Maybe I'll finally pick up #2 once I finish. I think some of the elements are randomized, I was a couple episodes into an abandoned run before I started this one and I still have the files, so I could go check the tapes to see if things change. Shiners and other larger enemies I believe are always in the same locations, but the entombed bugs I believe can have their locations moved from playthrough to playthrough. Orbs and stuff in the caves are all preset so far as I can tell.
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Aug 6, 2019 18:11
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Overall, death isn't that punishing in Steamworld Dig. I don't really have a problem with that because you can make Rusty non-durable if you don't buy upgrades to his armor and if you prioritize steam or pick strength early instead of health you could end up really weak when enemies start getting difficult. One thing I will complain about are the environmental hazards. Not that they are particularly dangerous (yes, that's what I die to, spoiler), but because the game doesn't really incorporate them outside of this area and its immediate environs. I would have loved to see more things like the acid pools and drops, but the game sort of lets them fall by the wayside soon after this. It's not a huge deal, but more stuff like this would have been a nice way to ramp up the difficulty slightly as you progress instead of just throwing more enemies at you.
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Aug 7, 2019 02:22
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Dandy here is our last merchant and so carries the top tier stuff. I haven't tested it out, but it may be totally possible to skip some of the Biff upgrades and go straight to what Dandy offers for capacity and such, but I think the upgrades are incremental instead of total, meaning each builds on the previous instead of automatically setting you to a value. That way you can't lose water capacity or torch time because you hoarded money and bought something from Dandy and then bought an inferior upgrade from Biff by mistake. It would be fun if you could forcibly downgrade yourself for a challenge run or something, but if you wanted to do that you just wouldn't buy stuff. I also find it interesting that merchants show up not because you bought out the previous one, but because you turned enough ore into cash. It's not something I think about often, but usually when games have multiple stores you need to force one into obsolescence before the next one opens up. Here, merchants hear you have money and just show up thinking they'll be able to get a cut, even if what they have in inventory isn't the "next" thing at that very moment.
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Aug 10, 2019 18:27
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C-Euro posted:Ahhhhhhhhh you gotta start going into these challenge rooms and upgrade areas with an empty pack, you're leaving so much dang money behind! A lot of the time I have to decide if I want to make money or keep the video flowing. When I play this without recording I usually do return to town before going into the challenge rooms, but here I have to be a bit more aware that it would disrupt the very little momentum I'm capable of building (or I could edit the trip out, but effort is not the main quality of this LP). AltaBrown posted:Lazyfire, I'm loving your commentary because it sounds like you're just talking to yourself as you play, and only occasionally remembering that you have an audience! I'm trying to be a bit looser than I have been in the past. It's also genuinely difficult to have a bad time playing this game, so I'm maybe a bit more cheerful and can be somewhat absent minded. Nuramor posted:At the beginning of the video you unlocked the Improved Hydraulics, apparently an upgrade for the drill, and ignored it ever since. Is it not that useful or is everything else just more interesting? I love the drill, but I will never not keep an eye on the steam meter to make sure I'm not running out. In truth, I should be drilling everything at this point in the game, but my paranoia about not being able to steam jump or launch a fist is never going away fully.
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Aug 14, 2019 11:17
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There is no end to the advanced techniques I will perform for the rest of the LP. Moving. Jumping. Jumping while moving. Prepare to be blown away.
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Aug 16, 2019 23:55
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Chimera-gui posted:Is there a reason the video is unlisted? I forgot to make it public? Will fix. Typing with an index finger on a giant tablet like a boomer. No reason to mention that, really.
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Aug 17, 2019 02:58
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Well, I sat on this for a week by accident. I swear I thought I posted this last week and the first time I see my computer in a week I have the titlecard above still not even saved. I actually finished the game so I can tell you that this is the last major upgrade we're going to see. The Static Dash, more commonly known as a double jump, is one of the most useful things you'll see in the game because you can chain them together with the wall jumps and they don't use water/steam. This essentially means that as long as you can get to a vertical surface you can probably reach any point you want to. More interestingly, and something the game totally fails to point out, the static dash is a goddamn instakill on most enemies. The electrical wreath that surrounds Rusty when he jumps isn't just for show, it actually causes damage. This is super useful on the turrets that are legion in this final area of the game as you often don't have a good direct damage option. I will harp endlessly on the double jump damage thing for the next two videos. It's seriously great. It's also weird to me that double jump, an upgrade that most games place closer to the start, appears so late in this game. Now, in a lot of games with double jump it is flat required to reach the next area, but this game is all about descending, so double jump is more a lateral and back-to-warp option rather than a progress upgrade, but it is seriously great. Watch me abuse it for the rest of the game and you'll understand why they stuck it at the end, it would break the rest of the game wide open if you knew when/how to use it on all the previous enemies.
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Aug 21, 2019 01:39
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LashLightning posted:It doesn't look like you've found that while Rusty has that electric 'halo' around his body in the double jump, he causes damage to enemies touching him - you can double-jump into those guns and so on to quickly destroy them. I mentioned it works in the post, but if you need video evidence, this is the video for it. Dropping the turrets with the static dash is the easiest and most time saving method of killing the things, though it works a little less well on ground based enemies. One of the things I only noticed on this playthrough is that there are no flying enemies in the game at all. I find that interesting, but as you'll see in this episode, that is probably for the best because you have a really good chance of just falling down on the ground based ones already, adding flying obstacles to the mix would probably have doubled my deathcount in the game in just this last section alone. In other news, I totally misjudged how long it would take to complete the game, so next time for sure we are done. I know this because I already recorded it right after this one.
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Aug 24, 2019 19:20
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C-Euro posted:Started from the I completely miss that he has that in his inventory still. At this point of the game there isn't really a need to pick up more water capacity/efficiency because I don't really need to steam jump anymore and most enemies are either going to blow themselves up or are better handled with the double jump, which really cuts my water consumption. I think I still buy one more upgrade anyway.
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Aug 26, 2019 16:36
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Alright, that's one down, potentially two to go. I've actually already started on Dig 2 and holy hell, everyone saying it was this game but more aren't kidding. I think the first episode is me just wondering at how they introduced more characters in the first ten minutes than this game has total and already had more story in one episode than through nine of this game. Before we get anywhere on that topic though, I have to say this is one of those games where I have just so few complaints. It's short, but it was supposed to be. At the same time it's replayable, this is something like my third time all the way through and I still can't get a gold rating. It's a fun, light game that isn't going to make you frustrated or upset at a fundamental unfairness or difficulty while still posing enough of a challenge and offering you both developer made challenges in the form of puzzles and necessarily forcing you to outsmart yourself in how you reach resources. That last factor is why I really love the game in the first place. There's nothing quite like realizing your own stupidity seconds before you screw yourself over in some way. The narrowing halo of light adds an element of challenge and surprise as you find you may have just blocked yourself off from a potential upgrade or possibly dug yourself into an inescapable hole. I was actually kind of impressed with myself because this was the first playthrough where I managed to not do that consistently. I usually have to pay out the nose for ladders due to my penchant for dumb moves. I feel like the only part of the game that really needed to improve was, oddly enough, the last fight. There aren't other boss battles in the game at all, so it was weird to have one to finish off the game. I would have loved like a chase or escape sequence that made you have to figure out how to best use your various abilities to get to the end instead of the fight, but as far as these things go it isn't exactly terrible, even if I get closer to death than I thought I would. Overall, it's a really fun game and I'm looking forward to digging my teeth further into the sequel.
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Aug 28, 2019 01:50
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Chimera-gui posted:Your video is unlisted again. Alright, but what did you think of the semi-pun where I said "dig" instead of "sink" my teeth into the next game?
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Aug 29, 2019 00:03
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Lulti posted:Let's not bury ourselves in puns this time. Especially not in gravel-y unfunny ones. You need to learn to pick your battles better.
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Aug 29, 2019 13:41
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Really digging deep on that one.
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Aug 29, 2019 14:02
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So while the next video uploads does anyone want to read...roughly 6000 words about Harlan County, Kentucky from about 1930 to 1934? I never finished the full text because of how the idea of the LP changed, but I definitely got paid a lot of money while writing it and it would be a shame if my company's money went to waste.
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Aug 30, 2019 12:29
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The Harlan County Wars Part 1: Background note: I did a ton of research on all this. Oddly enough, some of the sources cite different dates and chains of events, so if I'm vague about something like that it's because I can't get an authoritative answer on it. If you want me to expand on anything I'll be more than happy to. There’s a really good chance that unless you live in Kentucky none of your history books contained a word about the Harlan County War. It sounds like a fight in the colonial era or some sort of offshoot of Bleeding Kansas or a less known Hatfield and McCoy conflict. Instead, it was a long and often violent conflict between miners and mine owners (and the government) that ran for most of the 1930s and earned the county the sobriquet “Bloody Harlan.” By 1931 the Great Depression was hitting every section of the economy hard. Still two years away from the introduction of the New Deal, there were huge numbers of idle workers in both the urban and rural areas of the country competing for what work was available; often on a day-by-day basis. While the New Deal wouldn’t immediately solve the labor crisis, the massive government funded projects like the ones undertaken by the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Civil Works Administration would employ hundreds of thousands during the depths of the Depression and had the dual purpose of both employing people and creating/fixing infrastructure in places that really needed it (there was also corruption, do nothing projects, and efforts to pay people to not farm their land, if we’re being completely fair). The Hoover administration and the Rugged Individualism concept favored by the President led to an administration that did extremely little to help alleviate the crushing poverty felt by many in the first few years of the Depression. Some sections of the economy were a bit more insulated from the Depression than others. Rapid electrification across the country had expanded the coal market in the years before 1929 as it was THE power source for the country. However, coal companies got ahead of themselves and ended up mining too much coal, which drove down the price per ton, which in turn led to lower profit margins and the Depression had made it more difficult to find credit to invest in machines that would have lowered labor costs. This led to the companies being even more sensitive to anything that may increase their cost of doing business. Before we get too much further with this story, the incredible pervasiveness of company power in a place like Harlan needs to be discussed. Starting in the late 1800’s in the US a number of companies would start building residential areas to house their employees, often building entire neighborhoods to house the workers of the mill or mine nearby. This wasn’t done out of the goodness of the company’s heart, but because it was necessary to even have people work in their facilities. In the days before fast personal transit it wasn’t really possible to live more than a couple miles from where you worked. Sometimes this resulted in tent cities a short distance from the mine or other production site as these places were often not located near existing towns or cities. Because of that and the aforementioned lack of personal transit companies had near monopolies on housing, food and consumer goods in their area of influence. By the time we’re discussing here, Harlan County was mostly comprised of company towns, with a small portion of the residents not reliant on the companies for nearly everything. The mining towns in Harlan weren’t just built by the coal companies, they were still owned by them. Miners and their families rented houses from the company, they saw doctors on company payrolls, the schools were company funded and most importantly, the stores were as well. Because the coal companies controlled nearly every part of the economic life of the miners, many companies would introduce something referred to as “company scrip.” Scrip was how companies worked around the issue of the remoteness of the worksites meaning legal currency wasn’t readily available in the large quantities needed for weekly payrolls. Instead of paying miners in real money, miners would get paid in scrip, often only valid for redemption in the town associated to the mine. Scrip was pegged to the dollar somewhat loosely, so if someone wanted to they could exchange Scrip for real money, but if they paid a fee. For a company, there wasn’t much reason to pay in anything but scrip when you think about it. Scrip would circulate back to the company as workers paid rent and bought things from the company run store, and the inability to use the currency elsewhere meant that moving to a different area would be massively unappealing as the miner would lose part of their life savings in fees paid to the company for exchanging the scrip for real money. Scrip was only part of the company domination of a miner’s life. The company would regularly read the mail of the miners, banned distribution of specific newspapers, arbitrarily docked pay for expenses that they may not have incurred and had a host of politicians and law enforcement officials in protecting it. When you think of an oppressive megacorp in some sci-fi novel you are just picturing what these coal companies were. While labor unions have been a thing in the US since around middle of the 1800’s and had been trying to organize workers in various fields ever since, it wasn’t until the Wagner Act passed in 1935 that employees had a guaranteed right to organize in the workplace. Prior to that employers could fire or remove employees who worked to form unions, so when the Harlan County War was getting started being a union member could get you fired and kicked out of your house. By 1931, unionization had become a popular idea among a number of labor sectors: Miners, construction workers, factory employees, shipbuilders, etc. Generally, people in industries where large companies held the power to dictate the terms of employment due to either the large labor pool or captive nature of labor in the companies concerned. The United Mine Workers of America had been attempting to organize the miners in Harlan and neighboring Bell county for some time by the time the situation boiled over. The UMWA had been around before the turn of the century and advocated for fair wages to be paid in real currency in addition to better safety and health considerations in the mines along with non-company controlled law enforcement. All of these would be extremely appealing to Harlan County miners, considering in early 1931 the local mine owner association (effectively an organization colluding on prices and wages, which is illegal today) determined it would decrease the price at which it sold its coal to increase market share (during a time where there was already too much coal in the market) and to subsidize the drop in price by cutting the wages of the miners. This didn’t sit well with people who didn’t make much money for backbreaking and dangerous work and were already underpaid. The cut, dropping the average miner’s wages to the point where they made about $750 a year from $1235. That would be around $12,600 and $21,000 respectively in 2019 money. Many mine bosses attempted to head off union agitation against the starvation level wages they had been reduced to by firing miners they knew had ties to the UMWA. Instead of fixing the problem before it started, they just made it worse as this inspired other miners to go on strike in solidarity. By the spring of 1931 a majority of Harlan’s miners were on strike. This would ultimately kick off the events of the Harlan County War.
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Aug 30, 2019 18:13
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Kacie posted:More history of labor organization in Kentucky mining, please! This is great. Note: I've had the first Dig 2 video ready to upload for almost a week, I'm going to try and actually post it tonight. Part 2: The Shooting Starts The striking miners and those the mine owners had found had union ties were promptly kicked from their mine owned homes and relied on the few non-mine owned settlements for assistance. They usually congregated in large groups outside of these towns, which is partially the cause for the events I'm about to describe. The "war" began on May 5th, 1931 just outside of Evarts, Kentucky. Evarts was one of the few aforementioned towns not owned and operated by the mines in Harlan, and had become a sort of refuge for the striking miners. In what almost seems like an attempt to provoke the striking miners, the Black Mountain Coal Company sent a motorcade of three cars through town. Each car contained armed guards employed by the company and given deputy status by the local sheriff, an extension of power that had essentially become automatic when a guard was hired in Harlan. Thugs is the best way to describe the men in question. Many of them had convictions prior to getting hired and few seem to have had qualms with further violence. The contents of the cars are kind of hard to pin down, outside of the guards. I’ve seen versions of this that don’t sweat the contents, but also versions where the motorcade was transporting a replacement worker (scab) and his belongings, another where there were just supplies and another where there was no scab whatsoever and it was just a scab’s possessions being moved. Likewise, the actual start of the Harlan County War have been obscured by time and spin from both sides. Some sources say the ex-miners were laying in ambush that morning. Others say the cars drove past a collection of miners by coincidence. Either way, all the sources agree a single shot was fired and began the so-called Battle of Evarts, a gunfight that lasted 15 minutes and consumed maybe 1000 rounds. The reason the battle between miners on foot and driving cars became a protracted firefight is that the hired guns made the call to stop their vehicles and return fire rather than driving the hell away. I can’t find a reason for that particular decision, but it seems kind of insane knowing there were more miners than guards and that Harlan’s gun ownership was extremely high and the county itself had once had the highest homicide rate in the country in the 20’s. Both sides were well versed in violence and so assigning blame this long after the fact is not something I can comfortably do. Either way, four thugs and one miner were killed that day. Now, if this were a movie this is the point where the idealistic son of a mine owner finds a way to kick his dad out of the company and starts righting wrongs. He starts paying people a fair wage in real money, he fires all the hired guns, he introduces new safety standards and gives the miners the homes they live in. Everyone is happy and the only people that died were the worst of both sides. Of course, this is real life and there was no mine operator scion waiting in the wings to make things better for anyone. Instead of calling in mediators to get past the labor disputes that had caused the deaths of multiple people the mine owners called in political favors and Kentucky governor Ruby Laffoon sent in 370 National Guardsmen on May 24th. Apparently the majority of the residents of Harlan County weren’t aware that the mine owners had immense political power and believed the NG was called in to help them instead of the mine owners. The joke was on them, though as the NG had/has a history of being sort of a legal strikebusting force over some sort of citizen defense organization (seriously, this is worth looking up, the National Guard as we know it more or less started to help factory/mill/mine owners when the workers started demanding things) . The NG was used to supplement the hired guns at the mines and were supremely disinterested in the plights of the miners, with one guard official telling miners begging for relief that if they were so hungry they should get back to work. By this point something like 6000 miners were on strike and less than 1000 were at work. The Battle of Everts had caused mass walkouts by sympathetic miners.
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Sep 4, 2019 13:53
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I was trying to pick a more modern looking font for Dig 2 videos, I'm not sure I'm happy with this one yet. Anyway, Dig 2 is a delight and I'm super excited for people to experience it with me. Yes, Fen is a bit generic (a small sidekick who loves to destroy vs. a protagonist who is all about order and being good is sort of a trope in a lot of media), but most of the characters are pretty fun and the art and animation is top notch. The game already feels bigger than the first Dig, something that will become more apparent by video 3 and a bunch of quality of life improvements abound. I don't want to spoil too much about the first video and there isn't a ton to really say as it is the tutorial section we see here. In future posts I'll talk a bit more about the overall experience and such.
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Sep 5, 2019 00:11
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:Hello. I worked on this game from pretty much day one, but I was not involved in the first game at all so I've put off posting until now. I was looking forward to these insights. It really feels like the team made every effort to address the stripped down or limited nature of the previous game. The expanded story and art/animation are good examples, but even the things like the more populated town and the speech bubbles that appear over character's heads when they have something new to say are improvements. Were there any upgrades/improvements along those lines that were targeted but you just couldn't make work or feel right?
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Sep 5, 2019 13:31
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:A couple things come to mind, but to avoid spoiling material we haven't seen yet, I think it's better to hold on to some of those things until we get the points where they would've become relevant. Some of them have to do with tools and upgrades that haven't been shown yet, for example. I believe at some point the designers considered the idea of allowing you to invest in/upgrade buildings in El Machino - for example, upgrading the ore smeltery to improve the yield of resources extracted from raw minerals - but this never proceeded beyond the design stage. I think it was considered too clunky, too far detached from the core gameplay loop and not worth the effort. I did like the addition of conversation options in some of the interactions, while not a huge deal it was nice to see Dot isn't just a Rusty stand in. On the refinery: is the inability to make that work where the idea to increase your return on ore sales as you level up came from?
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Sep 5, 2019 14:39
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Good news: I found a better font. Too bad it is absolutely massive and will be a pain to use in the images going forward. It looks really nice, though. We get our first new-to-Dig upgrade in this video, the pressure bomb launcher. Think of it like Rusty's steamfist, but with less range and with a countdown before it does damage. I don't have many complaints about it, partially because I don't need to charge it up to increase range and damage, which was one of the more annoying aspects of the fist when you were suddenly confronted by a few different enemies and needed them to not be alive anymore. The pressure bomb is more a traversal tool than a weapon, especially at the early stage where you only have two shots before needing to refill on steam and when the explosion will damage Dot if she's too close. There is a Cog system upgrade that negates the latter, and I'm sure as we go on tank capacity and efficiency will make using the pressure bombs more freely. I have to say I really like that the fact that we're getting upgraded by a different type of machine and so our upgrades are functionally and thematically different while still being in the same vein as what Rusty got in the previous game. I can imagine the Spark Dash's steambot designed version using a jet of steam to give you a double jump, for instance. It's still the same concept and use, but clearly designed by robots used to steam technology and not electricity.
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Sep 7, 2019 16:18
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I was supposed to have something up yesterday based on the schedule I'm trying to keep but have completely sucked at doing. To tide you over, more minefight.txt: Part 3 Union Action The National Guardsman who had told miners to get back to work eventually had his advice heeded. Kentucky Governor Ruby Laffoon had met with representatives from the UMWA (last mentioned in part 2: the United Mine Workers of America), which had refused to support the strike financially. This was partially because paying the miners during the strike could wipe out the union’s accrued funds (note: this has actually wiped out independent unions in more recent years. Strikes are expensive and can wipe out YEARS of accrued dues in a short time. I worked in a union that got absorbed into the United Auto Workers after the UAW stepped in to help pay striking workers in the 80’s and that union has still not, in the 30 intervening years, paid back the UAW for their support then), to come to an agreement on terms to get the miners back to work. On paper it looked good; no more private armed guards, the state would help those evicted from their houses when fired, no more strikebreakers. So again, this is real life so the governor didn’t actually ever intend to fulfill any of those promises. All he cared about was getting the miners back in the mines, and by June 17th the mines were fully staffed again. The unrest wasn’t over, however. Soon after it was realized that the UMWA had failed to help the miners in Harlan at all union membership began to decline precipitously. The union’s president, John L. Lewis, had not exactly ingratiated himself with the non-members in the county, and the existing members had just watched him collapse like an unregulated mineshaft under pressure. If mine owners were worried about the socialism of unions before, they must have been super worried about the next set of arrivals in Harlan: Straight up Communists. The National Miners’ Union was founded as an arm of the American Communist Party and started making inroads in Harlan the summer of 1931. While their union organizing activities left something to be desired, the NMU began to open up soup kitchens (seven total would be established) for the hungry (union membership wasn’t required to be fed), filling a massive needs gap that the UMW and religious organizations had failed to address. The mine operators took this threat seriously. Miners would serve as guards for some of the kitchens, several would end up beaten by mine thugs, others forced to flee the county or just plain lose their jobs over their involvement with the NMU. These were pretty regular events when the UMW was organizing miners, but there were two standout events in summer 1931 tied to these places: The Evarts soup kitchen would be bombed and two miners in Cloverton were killed at the soup kitchen there. There was a chance at justice for the latter, as the killer was brought to trial. That chance was dashed pretty quickly as the jury spent five minutes deliberating and then acquitted the defendant (note: to serve on a jury in Harlan at the time you needed to pay property taxes. Because miners mostly lived in company owned houses they paid none. You can imagine what this did to the jury pool in the county). These weren’t the only killings tied to the effort to unionize. Harry Simms, a 20 year old Youth Communist League organizer was shot dead by a pair of deputized mine thugs while simply walking between towns along the railroad tracks in February of 1932. The killing of the organizer is now best known because of the song “The Death of Harry Simms” by Aunt Molly Jackson and Jim Garland, and given fresh attention in the ‘60’s when Pete Seeger began covering it. At the time, however, the thugs were so unconcerned about the repercussions that they left an unnamed witness untouched. This would be the downfall for one of the killers; he would be found shot to death months later in what was most likely a murder of revenge. In total, 11 would die through this tense period in Harlan, five of them mine thugs that had been deputized. While Simms became a martyr upon his death, it was as one for a mostly lost cause. The previous month the NMU had attempted a strike that attracted few supporters and little attention. The NMU was never extremely strong in Harlan despite the attempts at providing direct assistance in addition to labor organizing. They had gotten weaker as the mine owners reacted with open violence and the local religious authorities had been alerted to the hostile stance Communists had towards their institutions (note that malnutrition, beatings, lack of worker protections and exploitation of labor didn’t get them to act), causing them to step up and offer assistance to the locals. The Red Cross also finally got itself involved, having come around to the idea that it was more than an industrial matter, the argument the charity had used to keep from sending in relief. From the summer of 1932 to late in 1933, things were fairly calm in Harlan County.
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Sep 11, 2019 13:30
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I have no idea where the black flashing you see at the start of the video comes from, I spent a lot of time trying to eliminate it with no luck (hence why the episode is late). I have to say that I really love the variety of environments the game will throw at you even early on. In Dig 1 you had clean breaks from one area to the next and while that worked OK the first few areas had very much the same character, lighting and challenges. The dark section here to get below the wall is a fun and interesting transition area that hints at something we'll probably end up seeing more of with its own set of enemies and challenges. It's really nice to be surprised by something like that at a point where you didn't really expect that as it was still early in the game and the mine environment hadn't worn out its welcome yet.
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Sep 12, 2019 10:56
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berryjon posted:You skipped a chat with Fen before activating that last tube! Will we ever get to hear his snide or snarky comment to getting out of the fungal cave? Short answer: oops Long answer: yes, I remember eventually.
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Sep 13, 2019 03:27
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One of the things I love about this game (besides the change in how upgrades work so now I look dumb for not realizing cogs can be slotted in and out for like three videos. This was recorded a week ago, so I did figure it out on my own) is that the secrets and optional areas are so much more expansive than in the previous game. I get the distinct feeling that I'm actually going to get lost or confused playing this over Dig 1 where things were kind of linear and side paths and secondary areas were few and far between. There's also a good chance I'll forget about the windblown area I found once I get the super speed boots or whatever I'll find to get me through it. In a lot of ways it feels like Dig 2 is way more of a Metroidvania than Dig 1, but that's not being fair to it as it is clearly its own creature in a number of ways. There was some backtracking in the previous game, but I can already tell there is going to be far more here, which I think is a good thing overall as it gives you a chance to explore and test things out, which really fits with the spirit of the story. I've been playing Link's Awakening in anticipation of the remake and playing that and this at the same time really remind me of how much I love exploring and testing out the limits of games. With a lot of the stuff you have around now you know the rules are kind of set in stone and you are pushed in a specific direction a great deal of the time. In games like Dig 2 I get the sense that if I hit a wall the right way or dash along a path far enough I may be able to get somewhere I shouldn't yet. You are seeing me actively trying to control myself during the LP so I don't spend 30 minutes trying to make a jump just to see if it works. Link's Awakening has a lot of the same elements to it that make me think I can or should be able to do things the developers didn't intend, but I know for a fact you can totally break that game over your knee if you know the right techniques. Dig 2 feels like those opportunities are going to be rare if they exist at all.
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Sep 15, 2019 00:14
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For as much time as I spend digging up random materials in this episode, a lot of things happen. We see a new enemy, we meet new friends and find a hidden depth to the seemingly mindless shiners from the previous game. I'm actually kind of excited to see what happens with that last one, but I'll let you watch it instead of talking about it extensively. One of the things I'm learning about this game is that it does expect you to make use of the fact that you have multiple tools available at any time without having to switch to the right one for the job. Using the pick to kill everything is just not going to work, you need to make use of the pressure bombs and gain some distance if you want to keep surviving. I'm still in the mindset of the previous game where I only had the one weapon/tool button and it shows in this video, especially when I start hitting the weapon change button by mistake. The new enemy here is just not something you could effectively deal with in the first game unless you knew it was coming, and even then you would run a risk if you had to break a wall to get to it and quickly switch to something like the steamfist. It's nice to see the developers didn't just rely on what was done in the previous game when it came to combat, which wasn't nearly as important as exploration and something they could have kept just as simple and been OK in this game.
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Sep 17, 2019 23:02
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If you can't tell by the end of this video, I'm absolutely enamored with the upgrade we get at the start of the episode. I love things that make me feel like I'm breaking the game in some way, and of course I immediately try to use the upgrade to do just that and get somewhere I probably am not meant to go at all. It's fine, next episode I actually follow up on where the game tells me to go. This time I decide to follow my dumb "never make progress" instincts that almost send me back to the start of the game.
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Sep 25, 2019 02:07
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SageNytell posted:That hookshot is rad. Nice work! You and several people on YouTube seem to have taken issue with my hasty retreat from the temple. The fact that I'll have to come back here later should make everyone feel a bit better. The fact that I'm playing for an audience and not by myself is going to force me to occasionally divert from what I want to do to what will be fun to watch, this is one of those cases. Hyper Crab Tank posted:As you can imagine, the Hook Shot went through a lot of iteration to get just right, but I personally do like the end result a lot. You can do some pretty fast movement with precise grappling, as you'll see. I love the hookshot, it starts to become my main method of transportation in the next episode. Getting the momentum and angles right to get to new and different areas, or to more effectively backtrack is just crazy satisfying.
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Sep 25, 2019 15:19
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So I got really busy on Friday and Saturday and didn't post the latest episode. That means the next two weeks will be video free as I am in Spain and then France until mid October.
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Sep 30, 2019 19:46
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I've successfully extracted myself from Europe without accidentally knocking over other tourists or getting run over by an electric scooter. I frankly do not remember a single thing about this video, I recorded it a week before I left, but the switch puzzle room traumatized me to the point where I walk into it in the next episode and near immediately remember what it was and what it required of me. I think that is a hallmark of good design where one off or unique areas stick in a player's memory. It's why you have "best opening levels in games pt. 48: Colecovision only" videos on YouTube as the developers know they need to hook you right at the start and keep you wanting to play on. Putting a sequence that sticks in the player's mind mid game gets a bit harder because skill levels are going to vary and so you could have someone who breezes through something like this and thinks nothing of it or you have someone like me who can barely bumble through it after multiple attempts and it sticks in their head. Maybe if I didn't use the hookshot like it was the only way to get around it would be easier for me, but the thing is too much fun.
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Oct 22, 2019 11:19
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:Well, a certain upgrade I don't want to spoil helps a little bit, but ultimately that room is down to manual dexterity and there is nothing that makes it easy. It's one of my favorites! There is post-game content that unlocks after getting every single artifact in the game, so if you want to cover that... At least it's easy to get back to that puzzle room. The conveyor belts and crusher traps are really different for what we've seen of both the first game and this one up to that point, but they were introduced in an organic enough way that it didn't even occur to me that it was worth remarking upon. I'm surprised by the hacked together nature at play for the crushers. It almost sounds like it was more trouble than it was worth if they only show up in this temple. I get the feeling I should expect a hellrun late in the game featuring all the obstacles.
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Oct 23, 2019 12:52
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I'm really having fun with the cogs in this game. Slapping them in and out to meet the unique hazards of whichever area you find yourself in is pretty simple and adds some depth and either a level of safety or challenge to what you are doing at any given time. I know I'm bad at timing and precision movement, so being able to gain a bit of a reprieve from the dangers of the lava drips is huge for me. I should probably also slap on whatever keeps me from taking fall damage as soon as it shows up... Other cog upgrades aren't as useful, like the thorns thing I put on for a hot minute here. I can see where if you were dueling enemies and trading blows often enough you would benefit from it to run it for a bit, but massive swaths of the game have little to no combat, and most of it can be handled without endangering yourself to the point where you need to deal damage while taking it to win. Ignore my terrible combat skills in the episode while I make that point. I'm really looking forward to where the game goes with them and the blueprints from the archaeologist. I don't think that the game is going to end with Dot dropping nukes on the cultists or anything, but some of the abilities and upgrades I scroll past in the video suggest some serious martial upgrades are in our future.
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Oct 26, 2019 16:59
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This has just been a week from hell, I'm getting back home at like nine at night at best and so while this video has been uploaded since Sunday afternoon for a Monday release this is literally the first time I've sat down in my own home since then. Not a ton more to say about this video without spoiling anything besides what you see in the image. We're fighting a boss this time and get an upgrade. The boss isn't terribly difficult, or wouldn't be if I was competent. You just have to keep an eye on where he's teleporting to and gently caress him up when you can. Maybe remembering you can break stone helps, I don't know. The pick upgrade is nice, at the very least it solves a few puzzles at the end of the episode, though I can't tell if there is a damage or destruction speed boost at play. Next episode: Digging for the first time in a while.
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Oct 31, 2019 00:41
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