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Mightypeon posted:Concerning CaF, I have some relatives in Russia who were in the police force during the 90s. It's kind of amazing what people will say just can't be real because they just don't want it to be. CAF is one of those things that people who say "if you don't do anything wrong the police won't bother you" cannot accept is real or prevalent. I knew CAF was bad in some areas, but it wasn't until I started doing the research for the post before I found that, yes, some departments are literally extortion rings that exist only because they are really good at taking people's property. There are also some municipalities that are so strapped for cash that they set the fines for things like double parking and rolling stops at hundreds of dollars and basically use the cops to make up for the lack of tax revenue. I thought that was an insane idea as well, but it didn't fit into the discussion. Maybe ACAB is actually All Cities Are Bad? Worth looking into.
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Aug 7, 2020 02:15
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These were people who served in the Russian police force during the 90s. Like, they didnt believe it because it was too stupid (not because it was too heinous or too corrupt) to be something that the "Glavni Protivnik" (main adversary) could be doing. Some/most/all of them were "on the take" themselfs in various points of their career (definitions for being on the take vary, extortion =! protection money =! non interference money). As a bit of a Russian cop in the 90s thing regarding a carstop: 1: Straight Extortion= "Nice car, would be a shame if something, like getting impounded and then lost, would happen to it. Pay me money or else.". 2: Extortion with protection="Nice car, would be a shame if something, like getting impounded, would happen to it. Pay me money and not only are you going to keep it, I will also get off my not so far because I am starving cops arse to find it in case it as stolen." 3: Protection money without extortion = "Nice Car, would be a shame if someone would steal it, pay me money and I get of my arse to find it in case in got stolen." (The cop in this case will not steal/impound the car himself, or incite anyone to else to steal it, if the offer is refused, so it doesnt have the extortion component). 4: Non interference money, real crime ="Nice car, which also went 50km/h over the local speed limit, would be a shame if it would get impounded and maybe lost. Pay me money and I forget the speed limit thing". 5: Non interference money, faked crime= "Nice dashcam-less car, which, according to my totally not fraudolent speedometer was also 50 lightyears/second over the speed limit. Pay me money or I impound the car and then jail you for stealing Roskosmos rocket propulsion secrets." In a normal society, all of these would be "on the take". In 90s Russia, cops that only/mostly did 3 and 4 would be the "fairly decent" ones.
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Aug 7, 2020 14:59
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 Ironically enough, a storm is the reason I didn't update on time. There was a tropical storm in the area and I ended up hosting some family members while they waited for their utilities to be restored. I couldn't get near my PC for a most of last week as they took our extra room. Hey, did you know that large corporate monopolies are not good for the consumer? This LP is mostly about the cops being bad, but man, putting utilities on a profit motive is a bad idea. Anyway, this is the twist episode. From here things go in a completely different direction story-wise and it actually gets interesting. We break from the "cops are the good guys" thing pretty hard and to be frank, the game was never super committed to that idea. You can see it in the conversations between the characters where they get mad at judges for not approving no-knock warrants and also all the lines about how the cops shouldn't be doing the things they are doing. In a lot of ways it feels like the game was trying to get to the twist simply so they could drop the police story facade and go full vigilante. Everyone loves Batman, but no one questions his methods. That is what happens here.
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Aug 10, 2020 19:48
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Well, all I see now are Boss Fights #1, 2, and 3. And how many levels are left? 5? Pretty short game, all things considered. But then again, Battlefield did tend to focus more on the multiplayer and let the Single Player be a side project for a few games.
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Aug 10, 2020 21:38
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 Welcome to the game's sole stealth mission, and one I gently caress up so bad that I was pretty sure I couldn't recover from it. So we're through the plot twist/time skip now; it turns out Nick is TOTALLY OK with just dishing out what you may know as STREET JUSTICE when it comes to getting back at some of the people who sent him to jail for three years. I say at the end that the game is a revenge story from here on out, but that isn't totally accurate, it becomes a weird heist/buddy felon game while still allowing you to arrest people and do investigations on criminal activity. Something REALLY notable about this game is that this is the single area where police officers are targetable enemies, but you are limited to non-lethal methods of taking them down. They won't get anywhere explosions or cliff edges or anything. I find it kind of weird that there is literally no punishment for Nick or any other officer for going all Judge Dredd on street thugs, but there's a line with law enforcement. It's not like being able to kill police officers is a new idea for games; the multiplayer for this game is based on cops and criminals killing each other, for gently caress's sake, but I think there was a line that Visceral wasn't willing to cross in the story less they be accused of encouraging violence against police. Those police unions would be all over this like it was a Qanon post.
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Aug 14, 2020 01:03
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I get why "crash the bus" is always the option used but everyone also makes it look like the worst crash possible that no one would be walking away from.
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Aug 15, 2020 22:46
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Because of movies. Like realistically you just want to take out the rear tires or something, but flipping the bus is way more dramatic.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:05
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 Good news, everyone. Because we're now criminals we need to put together a gang. Better news: we only need one other member because this game is not overly long. Boomer's a fun character and is supposed to provide a lot of the comic relief in this half of the game, though he is only really around for a few things because he's not the "frontline" type of guy. He's the hacker in every heist movie, essentially. If Dawes' new organization, Preferred Outcomes, sounds familiar, you may be aware of a mercenary organization/criminal enterprise that operated in various theaters in Africa through the 70's and 80's called Executive Outcomes. It was basically a war profiteering company that got a lot of people killed. Turning the police private is one of those things that sounds like it isn't far off at times. The fact that we already did that with prisons and have started to see states do things like sell highways and state capitol buildings to private entities who then start issuing tolls on previously untolled roads or charging the state rent to use the previously fully paid for state house suggests some people are willing to sell public services out to the highest bidder. The mechanism that this would probably function under is the deputation system a lot of sheriff's offices and some municipal police forces use. Back in the early 1900's this was used to give employees of the last generation of private police, such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency and their ilk, something akin to the same level of authority as the local law enforcement, but without any liability, training or knowledge of the local situation. Basically, they were hired guns mostly used to break up strikes. We already have private law enforcement showing up in places like Portland (where government officials admitted not all of the people deployed to break up protests were actual DHS or related agency employees). If he gets in at the right time Dawes could make a lot of money.
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Aug 18, 2020 21:20
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You and that fence... 
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Aug 18, 2020 22:48
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berryjon posted:You and that fence... Look, things are hard sometimes. I can't homing missile my way through problems like you can.
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Aug 19, 2020 01:52
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Lazyfire posted:Look, things are hard sometimes. I can't FIFY. But yeah, none of these guns have any sort of 'oomph' to them, an they're pretty much interchangeable aren't they?
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Aug 19, 2020 02:37
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berryjon posted:FIFY. But yeah, none of these guns have any sort of 'oomph' to them, an they're pretty much interchangeable aren't they? I have seen so many missiles go down so many right angles... Yeah, guns are largely interchangeable in the campaign. The fact you only had access to a subset per class in multiplayer made the types of weapons more distinct. It still wasn't great, but being forced to select a less than perfect set up no matter your class worked better than the system in single player.
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Aug 19, 2020 03:11
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Lazyfire posted:see states do things like sell highways and state capitol buildings to private entities who then start issuing tolls on previously untolled roads or charging the state rent Ok, I get the idea of selling a road and allowing a corporation to collect tolls, you need cash and get rid of maintenance and stuff. But selling a historic (well, as historic as someting in 'murica gets) building and then being charged rent? How is that helping you with anything aside from providing an instant amount of cash? Your new landlords won't exactly charge you less than you would pay for operating your freaking capitol yourself and now you might get booted out for pretty much any reason. US-states can't really be that strapped for cash, can't they? Sorry, but being from Europe I'm baffled by the mere idea of selling your seat of gouvernment.
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Aug 19, 2020 19:02
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Kodos666 posted:Ok, I get the idea of selling a road and allowing a corporation to collect tolls, you need cash and get rid of maintenance and stuff. But selling a historic (well, as historic as someting in 'murica gets) building and then being charged rent? How is that helping you with anything aside from providing an instant amount of cash? Your new landlords won't exactly charge you less than you would pay for operating your freaking capitol yourself and now you might get booted out for pretty much any reason. US-states can't really be that strapped for cash, can't they? Arizona sold the state capitol building and a few other offices, legislative buildings and a maximum security prison in 2009 and just bought them back this year. A lot of the decision to sell public buildings or infrastructure was related to the 2008 crash and an attempt to balance budgets immediately (many states have a balanced budget requirement), but they essentially reverse mortgaged these facilities because the sales documents required the buyers to lease the buildings back to the state government. This was considered a dumb move by a lot of people both in and out of Az. just because any benefit they got from selling the building and then leasing it out would be gone in a couple years. The thing about policing in the US that I didn't mention that would prevent complete privatization would be the very powerful police unions we have. Yes, sometimes they unintentionally let on they believe in insane right wing conspiracies and show up to events in "I CAN Breathe" shirts after their officers choke people to death (NYPD union for both, by the way), but they have a lot of sway at both a local and national level and they would need to be completely busted before privatization of police could become a thing. Weirdly, they are the one union that conservatives who like to break unions will not touch, probably because they overwhelmingly support conservative politicians.
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Aug 19, 2020 21:07
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 Sometimes you need to lock a boomer in a trunk. it happens. don't feel bad about it.
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Aug 22, 2020 23:06
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Can he stay in the trunk? Please?
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Aug 23, 2020 01:29
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You can't have a level in LA without driving through the river! e: I knew Tyson looked and sounded familiar, that's Roy Earle from LA Noire! StupidSexyMothman fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Aug 23, 2020 |
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Aug 23, 2020 04:34
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oldskool posted:You can't have a level in LA without driving through the river! You know who else was in LA Noire? That's right, the actor who plays Ted's Father in Bill & Ted. That has nothing to do with Hardline, but its true!
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Aug 31, 2020 09:00
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 This LP fell right into the two weeks of birthdays in August that led me to not playing any games between the last video being recorded and this past weekend. It's always ugly and for some reason I thought the, you know, pandemic, would maybe curtail some of the usual obligations, but no such luck. On the plus side, I got four free meals by virtue of being married to my wife and my parents, her dad and her mom all wanting to either cook for her or take her out for dinner. Anyway, now that we're back on track, we can finally finish this mission. Like I've said before, some of the levels in the game are massive time commitments. Even if you know what you are doing you can spend an hour in this level alone, and later missions are going to be an hour and a half to and hour and 45 minutes. The campaign looks short with only ten missions, but as the game goes on there is a pattern of regular length mission (30 or so minutes), long mission (over an hour), regular mission. You can cut a lot of time out of any of them by just killing everything instead of trying to sneak around, but only if you are able to kill everything. Dying repeatedly isn't exactly the ticket to fast mission clearance because you often get sent back fairly far if you die. Thankfully, this goes off pretty well and it's a short video. The next one is going to be a single mission and then that gets followed by one that is going to be multiple parts. Like I said, there's a pattern being developed.
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Aug 31, 2020 21:05
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That "disable alarm, whoops opened the garage door" almost assuredly came up in testing and somebody said "gently caress it, leave it in, added challenge" 
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Aug 31, 2020 22:29
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oldskool posted:That "disable alarm, whoops opened the garage door" almost assuredly came up in testing and somebody said "gently caress it, leave it in, added challenge" One of the weird things in the game that doesn't come across in the videos is how...imprecise, I guess is the word, a lot of aiming and interaction is in the game. It's one of those "realism" things where you can't just swing 90 degrees, there's a slight lag to going from point A to point B. It's been like that in Battlefield for a long time now. The problem with interacting with things is that the prompt "sticks" and "unsticks" unpredictably because of this. Sometimes if follows the camera, sometimes the behind-the-scenes pointer is the focal. You can never really tell what will happen. If this came up in playtesting they saw it as working as intended. That said, BFH is still one of the better programmed games I've LP'd recently. I've never fallen through the world, the AI mostly sticks to the realm of the possible (though I have solid evidence of that not always being the case to show off later), the options don't revert to whatever the game feels like at random and it runs relatively well despite its age. The biggest problem is the launcher. Even for single player when you click the Play button in Origin it launches a web browser tab/window for Battlelog and you need to navigate to the single player area and launch the campaign from there. It's a weird decision that thankfully died with Hardline.
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Sep 1, 2020 12:00
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Lazyfire posted:On the plus side, I got four free meals by virtue of being married to my wife and my parents, her dad and her mom all wanting to either cook for her or take her out for dinner. That must have been a nightmare on the certificate.
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Sep 1, 2020 14:45
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I feel like parking a forklift in front of a moving train would result in more than just a humorous cloud of cocaine, particularly if you were standing right beside said train, but then again I also thought this about bus crashes so never mind.
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Sep 2, 2020 19:56
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 One of the things I kind of like about Hardline is that the episodic format lets you have disposable villains of the week like in this episode. They move the story along while also giving you a reason to dislike them and want them to suffer consequences for being the way they are. Most story modes in multiplayer focused FPS games really just give you the major bad guy coalition and send you out after them while Hardline isn't afraid to introduce and discard scumbags helping the big bad. Because of that Dawes becomes some sort of unseen force for most of the game, which gives him an air of invincibility that makes it look like Nick's revenge mission is a Herculean task rather than a series of break-ins and murders. I'm probably giving the game too much credit, but even when you are up against some evil empire in other games the emperor shows up to taunt you and dispatch some roadblock enemy to deal with you a few times, no so here.
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Sep 4, 2020 21:06
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This is like a Hitman level without anything that makes it a Hitman level. Or a Splinter Cell level without any interesting movement options. The guards were just practicing for a real party later on I suppose.
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Sep 7, 2020 07:03
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 So we go from the glitz of the Hollywood Hills to a decommissioned missile silo in the desert. I really like setting here, creeping through a prepper tunnel system with a bunch of old soda machines, vacuum tube technology and mounds of canned food make me think of exploring vaults in Fallout games. The fact that the community using the bunker used to be a bunch of hippies that were driven off in the last few years is a nice, if not a little weird touch that is made creepy by the graffiti scrawled everywhere. I'm a little concerned that Boomer knew these people well enough to know some of the hardware they had, how the leaders made money (more on that next time) and such, but never thought that maybe things would get a little more right wing eventually. Like, there was no chance he didn't know EXACTLY who Tony was back then and didn't think this was going to go sideways for the peace and love types. Also how did he get let in if they were opposed to things he stands for? Dunno. That's really the job of the writers to explain. I guess they really wanted to make it seem like the kind of place a sympathetic character (Boomer) would find welcoming. Maybe they want to imply Tony had a sudden change of heart and decided guns were super cool. Also, check this out. One of Tony's guys from his introductory scene is sporting the below. In 2015 this may have seemed like a poor choice by some designer or another, but today it's like every third truck in the south: 
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Sep 9, 2020 01:46
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 Well, this poo poo goes right off the rails. If you recall, this game started out with you playing as a detective and now you're using a grounded gunship to take out a survivalist militia's attack helicopters. I just do not loving know anymore. Luckily, we get back to "reality" for the last couple levels, but Nick and company are going to remain action movie heroes throughout, this is such a weird departure from the rest of the game you have to watch it to understand how out there it is.
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Sep 12, 2020 00:08
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Kibayasu posted:I feel like parking a forklift in front of a moving train would result in more than just a humorous cloud of cocaine, particularly if you were standing right beside said train, but then again I also thought this about bus crashes so never mind. I dunno. I was on a passenger train that hit an (unoccupied) car once. It was like 3 AM, I was trying to get some sleep and then gradually realized that the train wasn't moving. After a bit there was an announcement that we'd hit a car and we had to stop so the train personnel could talk to the cops. The car was totalled, and it was leaking fluids, so at first I thought someone had been in it. Nope, just transmission fluid or gas or something. Some drunk idiot had tried to drive across the tracks, got stuck, and bailed. We got to see them get cuffed and hauled off before we finally got going about an hour later. We made it into Chicago pretty much just that hour late - apparently the engine did get a bit dinged up but not so bad they couldn't get to the main station before stopping for repairs. My point being, the forklift and the cocaine would be hosed, but the train could probably tank it just fine.
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Sep 12, 2020 00:55
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Did the make the game, then realize they forgot to check off the "Obligatory Turret Section" box?
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Sep 12, 2020 03:24
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ha, of course they did!
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Sep 12, 2020 04:06
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Sally posted:ha, of course they did! Even Dash Rendar had to endure turret sections.
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Sep 13, 2020 02:52
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man I hesitate to say that a tank battle was anti-climactic, but I must admit I was hoping for a more grisly fate for Tony than that.
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Sep 14, 2020 02:55
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They even made the bad tank a Russian tank.malkav11 posted:I dunno. I was on a passenger train that hit an (unoccupied) car once. It was like 3 AM, I was trying to get some sleep and then gradually realized that the train wasn't moving. After a bit there was an announcement that we'd hit a car and we had to stop so the train personnel could talk to the cops. The car was totalled, and it was leaking fluids, so at first I thought someone had been in it. Nope, just transmission fluid or gas or something. Some drunk idiot had tried to drive across the tracks, got stuck, and bailed. We got to see them get cuffed and hauled off before we finally got going about an hour later. We made it into Chicago pretty much just that hour late - apparently the engine did get a bit dinged up but not so bad they couldn't get to the main station before stopping for repairs. I'm no train/forklift collision expert but while a car is heavy a forklift is heavy. Also most of its weight is just in one solid mass behind the forks, not a spread out collection of parts held together by welds and bolts. In any case Tyson was still right beside the forklift when the train hit it so he'd be pulverized no matter what else happened 
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Sep 14, 2020 21:11
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Kibayasu posted:They even made the bad tank a Russian tank. I completely missed that there was a difference. You would think that Tony would refuse to drive a SOCIALIST tank. Anyone near that forklift should probably have been a red stain. The speed/power of a modern cargo train is mindboggling. The shrapnel from the destruction of the lift should have perforated all of them.
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Sep 15, 2020 00:53
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 We're finally into the "revenge" part of the revenge arc that started in the sixth episode of the game (episode 7 of the LP). The plan: blow something up, steal money and get out. The execution? Not great, my scene in the lobby here looks like a true big-brain mode idea in comparison to how this turns out. But we'll see that in the next episode. The title card for this episode is just because I found it odd that there were bottles of Champagne scattered around this high rise office building in the cubicle areas. One of those really weird things to see. It makes me wonder if the level was like, half designed thinking that they were going to have it take place on January 1st instead of July 4th so they could write the fireworks into the story before someone decided Independence Day was a better fit. My reasoning being that you see people drinking sparkling wine on New Year's and maybe they were going to have this take place after an office party or something? Why are the guards drinking from a cooler of beers? Who got that up there? Only the developers can answer these questions. Lazyfire fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 16, 2020 02:28
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Seems to be a bit of desync on Episode 14, otherwise really enjoying the LP so far!
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Sep 16, 2020 05:00
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Some offices are just full of drunks man.
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Sep 16, 2020 05:26
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NuminaXLT posted:Seems to be a bit of desync on Episode 14, otherwise really enjoying the LP so far! Glad you're enjoying it. I think I know what the issue is there and am working to have that fixed today. It also means I'll have the next episode fixed at the same time if I do this right. That's a big if, though. paragon1 posted:Some offices are just full of drunks man. You don't need to tell me about that. I used to work with a guy who had his wife drop him off and pick him up at least once a week, and you knew which day that was because he was just completely drunk when he walked in at 6 and stayed like that until sometime in the afternoon. Another guy was once given the option of AA or losing his license sometime in the 90's and decided taking a taxi to work every day was preferable to not drinking. Third guy (and the union rep) got blackout during a snowstorm and tried to drive to work the next day wearing a bathrobe, one slipper and no pants. He promptly crashed his car into a telephone pole and tried to walk the rest of the way to work. They sent him to rehab for a month; his fourth stint. All of these people, at some point, were able to get Secret level security clearance.
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Sep 16, 2020 16:34
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 In this video you really feel the action movie inspiration in a lot of ways. Extended shootout in a fancy apartment? We've got that. Explosions? Yep. Surprises? Assuredly. Revenge fantasy fulfilled? Need to wait on that one. If you haven't played a recent Battlefield game you may not understand my dislike of the shooting mechanics at play. Battlefield is a more methodical shooter when compared to something like CoD, part of that is that the number of bullets you need to kill someone in a multiplayer game is a little bit higher, to the point where if you use some weapons you start to think your opponents are just bullet sponges. There's also more recoil and inaccuracy with sustained fire in BF than in a lot of other "arcade" FPS games, so you can just let guns "walk" up to headshots sometimes. That's fine in a one on one fight sometimes, but when fighting a half dozen AI opponents who absorb an insane amount of damage while dealing more than you could ever hope to...well, it doesn't feel great. Playing this game stealth is almost a requirement just because of how the BF mechanics play out in single player.
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Sep 18, 2020 02:06
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Ah, the joys of trying to balance Multi-player and Single-player, and you can see how much Battlefield wants to be an MP game in things like that.
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Sep 18, 2020 02:55
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