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 What is this? Normality is a 3D adventure game set in a dystopian future. It was originally released in 1996 by Gremlin Interactive. The story revolves around Kent Knutson, a rebellious teenager in the city of Neutropolis. Neutropolis was once a thriving and vibrant city but it's now a dark and polluted police state in which any kind of fun is prohibited. Despite being in 3D, this game plays out similarly to traditional adventure games. The game was originally released in the UK and this will be the version that I will be using in this LP. When the game was released in the US, they decided to replace the entire cast with American voice actors. The cast included actors who already had an impressive list of credentials to their name, but it's also worth noting that they cast Corey Feldman as the voice of the main character. A full list of the voice actors and who they play is available to see here: https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/video-games/Normality/. I will be playing the UK version as that's the version that I came to know and love originally. Normality is cheap and available to buy on Steam and GOG. If you do want to play through the game with the American voice actors you can find instructions and a link to a fan-made patch here: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/voices_selector_for_the_game_normality LP Details This will be a VLP and I will be recording commentary live and unscripted. I don't have a schedule, it all depends on when I have free time around work and child care but I will aim to have at least one video up a week. Let's Play: Normality         Bonus Video- Prison Guard Route   
Rocket Baby Dolls fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Aug 28, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 13:04
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| # ? May 9, 2024 05:07 |
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Oh my god this was the first PC game I ever played. It came for free with my Tiny PC in 1997 and a very very young Nat was very very confused about basically everything.
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Jul 19, 2023 14:15
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Natural 20 posted:Oh my god this was the first PC game I ever played. My first experience with this game was in 1997 when I moved to the area and started at the local school. I made a new friend who was into computer games as much as I was but we both had different preferences for genres. As soon as he found out that I liked adventure games he practically shoved the game into my hand and never asked for it back. I had a lot of fun playing this game back then but didn't really get much further than the first few areas for the first couple of years that I played it. I still have the CD-ROM somewhere, he lost my copy of Sim Tower so I'll call it even.
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Jul 19, 2023 17:34
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I got this for free with some gaming magazine in the late nineties. Never got too far in it. All in all I think the most notable thing about this game is that its engine was used for Realms of the Haunting. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Jul 19, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 18:43
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anilEhilated posted:I got this for free with some gaming magazine in the late nineties. Never got too far in it. Realms of the Haunting is definitely the game I think of when I saw this fps adventure game. Except RotH definitely had the “shooter” part of fps, while Normality just had the “first person”.
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Jul 20, 2023 11:29
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This video is all about exploring the game world as we know it so far. We begin with a tour around Kent's neighbourhood and then jump to the Plush Rest Factory to scout around the outside of the building. The next video will definitely contain more meat, but right now we get to understand Kent's world a little better.
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Jul 21, 2023 23:59
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Natural 20 posted:Oh my god this was the first PC game I ever played.
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Jul 23, 2023 22:26
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Natural 20 posted:Oh my god this was the first PC game I ever played. If it's any consideration, I'm pretty sure "confused about everything" is the general reaction to this game. I played it years ago, and enjoyed it, and the puzzles (usually) made sense, but everything about the actual plot is just a long line of "What? What? ... WHAT?".
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Jul 24, 2023 00:04
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In this video, Kent applies for a job at the Plush Rest Factory. But with Kent's job history, he needs to find a way to impress in big guy upstairs in other ways. I recorded the whole of this section in one go, but as there isn't a natural halfway point in this area I cut the video in two about halfway through this recording. I'll post the second halfway within the next few days.
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Jul 28, 2023 09:22
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Never heard of this game and it seems like I really missed out, this looks like exactly my family's sense of humor. Looking forward to more. 
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Jul 30, 2023 07:06
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This is the second half of our time at the Plush Rest Factory. We finish off our tour by meeting one of the workers in the canteen, seeing another worker in action and we also get to see where the broken furniture is disposed of. Randalor posted:If it's any consideration, I'm pretty sure "confused about everything" is the general reaction to this game. I played it years ago, and enjoyed it, and the puzzles (usually) made sense, but everything about the actual plot is just a long line of "What? What? ... WHAT?". It's been at least a decade since I last played this and even though I know the plot in general, most of the details are very hazy to me. It's going to be a trip playing through this again. Ayin posted:Never heard of this game and it seems like I really missed out, this looks like exactly my family's sense of humor. Looking forward to more. It's available on GOG and Steam if you're wanting to play through it yourself and it's pretty cheap. I've just finished a test run for another video, I'll try to record another video within the next few days. I hope that you like puns!
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Jul 30, 2023 23:43
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I believe I first heard of this game in a now very old PC Gamer magazine, that may or may not have featured how to build an optimum pc at the time.
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Jul 31, 2023 00:30
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There’s a real charm to these 90s point and click games which seem to be lost in some of the newer games - maybe it’s the quirky unpopular loser protagonist which helps. Compare this to the Mozart game, where everyone seemed to love him, even though he’s clearly shown as a lovely egocentric who sleeps with married(?) women.
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Jul 31, 2023 00:54
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I usually play the video back as I'm updating but I didn't play back far enough as I missed some audio skips near the end of the video. I've unlisted the video for now as I'm unavailable to fix anything at the moment. I'll re-record the hideout dialogue later and then upload a fixed video tonight
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Jul 31, 2023 19:46
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This game is a real gem. I can see how the humor probably wouldn’t fly as well with a younger crowd but it’s got a lot of incredible late 90s charm via all the effort that was put into it and the way they work around the 2.5D engine limitations. Everything is modeled and textured pretty well, given the novelty of the engine technology. 1996! For MS-DOS! I guess they thought 3D animation and first person perspective games would really take off. But I guess the modern frogware Sherlock was a more popular approach. Probably helps a lot with motion sickness. I imagine that the primary audience for these games are not accustomed to a first-person view.
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Jul 31, 2023 19:54
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This is a replacement video with a re-recorded segment to replace the previous one with the audio glitches. There isn't any new content so you can skip this video if you have already seen the previous one. Gilgamesh255 posted:I believe I first heard of this game in a now very old PC Gamer magazine, that may or may not have featured how to build an optimum pc at the time. What would have been optimum in 1996? I think my family bought our first PC around this time and that was a P133 and far from optimised. Zaroff posted:There’s a real charm to these 90s point and click games which seem to be lost in some of the newer games - maybe it’s the quirky unpopular loser protagonist which helps. I think it helps that Kent is fairly inoffensive and the NPCs so far have been colourful in nature. 90s point and clicks were definitely a good age of quirky adventure games. It was a good age for some terrible ones too but I'm working may way around to some of those. The woman that Mozart was shagging was definitely married. sb hermit posted:This game is a real gem. I can see how the humor probably wouldn’t fly as well with a younger crowd but it’s got a lot of incredible late 90s charm via all the effort that was put into it and the way they work around the 2.5D engine limitations. Everything is modeled and textured pretty well, given the novelty of the engine technology. The humour has been relatively in-check so far apart from a few iffy lines that would end up on the cutting room floor these days. First-person 3D games had already taken off with shooters so it was only time before something was made in the adventure category. It's getting late now but I need to take a look around to see what others were made in a similar manner.
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Aug 1, 2023 00:03
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:What would have been optimum in 1996? I think my family bought our first PC around this time and that was a P133 and far from optimised. Good question; unfortunately, I can't look that up, as I unfortunately had to purge that amongst many other magazines while moving. I can, however, after a quick search, provide a link to the image of the cover of the aforementioned magazine. https://mocagh.org/miscmags/pcgamer-jul96.jpg
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Aug 1, 2023 00:23
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I think the first 3D adventure game I played was Atlantis: the Lost Tales but IIRC that came out at least a year later.
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Aug 1, 2023 00:33
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Gilgamesh255 posted:Good question; unfortunately, I can't look that up, as I unfortunately had to purge that amongst many other magazines while moving. In 1996, Quake would have been released. It required a pentium at a minimum and famously (of course) did not need a 3d acceleration card. Probably a more resource friendly contemporary would have been Descent. So, my guess at a system that would be able to run most games at the time without breaking the bank would be a computer with a Pentium processor, 16 MB SIMM RAM, a Sound Blaster, and probably a hard drive with a couple hundred MB of capacity. You would also likely have a single speed CD-ROM drive and a modem (the latter of which you could use to access a BBS or the Internet). This would all be running, of course, Windows 95, although it would not be unheard of for people to boot into ms-dos to play older PC games.
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Aug 1, 2023 02:08
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A 486 would also be plenty decent as well, even a 33 MHZ, but it would not have the specific processor improvements to play Quake (even if you have a 100 MHZ DX4, I think).
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Aug 1, 2023 02:09
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Oh man, I loved Normality as a kid. It's amazing how much unique details there are in the texture work everywhere.
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Aug 3, 2023 23:41
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This video is the mall segment in its entirety. We may be on a mission but we can still try to make some friends along the way, although no one seems to be that interested in taking us up on the offer. I did record an update last night but it seems like XSplit is back to its usual tricks with the audio glitches. That may have been for the best as I was needing to adjust the volume settings as there were times when the game's audio was drowning me out somewhat. It could probably do with a little more tweaking, or I could just talk louder.
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Aug 4, 2023 00:34
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Such a weird, interesting game..but everytime I started it I got stuck after 2 hours and gave up 
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Aug 4, 2023 00:37
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Yes... people to help.... like a hospital!
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Aug 4, 2023 04:31
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I hope that you like puns!  Meanwhile, a Norm discovers paint huffing and Kent just loving dies
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Aug 7, 2023 23:25
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In this episode, Kent carries out the second of his sub This was my third attempt at recording this update and even though my commentary could be a little louder I'm just happy this one went by without a hitch. My kid is staying with me for a couple of more nights so I've had to keep my voice down a few more notches than normal so as not to wake her up. In my first attempt, there was a bug with one of the characters where it wouldn't let me examine them. It's not a game-breaking thing but the description of this person does give us a clue to a puzzle. The main issue with this recording arose when I got to one of the final puzzles of the area and examined the wrong inventory item, got myself confused but blustered through anyway. I only realised my mistake when I was uploading the video and typing out the update. The second recording was an attempt at re-recording this section to make it look like I knew what I was doing, but in doing so I had to replay the whole section again. Which was fine and I managed to edit together a seamless video, but during playback, I encountered the dreaded XSplit audio glitches. Vitamin Me posted:Such a weird, interesting game..but everytime I started it I got stuck after 2 hours and gave up I always got stuck in the Plush Rest Factory and could never work out how to get into the hideout. I will freely admit that I used a guide extensively to complete my first playthrough of this game.
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Aug 8, 2023 23:22
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I just watched the mall episode, and I did have one question. Is there an alternate solution to the mall, or do you have to go with the "Barking dogs" distraction? Ive only seen the barking dogs way, but they imply you could also get him sick. Is that an actual solution or just some flavor added in as a red herring?
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Aug 11, 2023 13:57
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Randalor posted:I just watched the mall episode, and I did have one question. Is there an alternate solution to the mall, or do you have to go with the "Barking dogs" distraction? Ive only seen the barking dogs way, but they imply you could also get him sick. Is that an actual solution or just some flavor added in as a red herring? It's just flavour added in as the contents of the fire extinguisher are what made the Norm wake up from his stupor. I'm hoping to have another update up over the weekend which will let us take a closer look at our handiwork.
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Aug 11, 2023 16:13
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:It's just flavour added in as the contents of the fire extinguisher are what made the Norm wake up from his stupor. I'm hoping to have another update up over the weekend which will let us take a closer look at our handiwork. For some reason I had a vague recollection of Kent sneezing on the guard and him rushing to the washroom to wash himself off before lighting the book on fire, but considering how long it's been, there's also a good chance thats something that happens later on and I'm just confusing the two. I know I solved the puzzle with the dogs, and it's been so long that I'm probably just outright wrong and misremembering.
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Aug 11, 2023 16:27
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Randalor posted:For some reason I had a vague recollection of Kent sneezing on the guard and him rushing to the washroom to wash himself off before lighting the book on fire, but considering how long it's been, there's also a good chance thats something that happens later on and I'm just confusing the two. I know I solved the puzzle with the dogs, and it's been so long that I'm probably just outright wrong and misremembering. I went back in the game to look around but I couldn't find any way to make this happen. I also found a video on Youtube where someone has found a way to enable a dev console to view all of the cutscenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8N7sXaeAyE. GameFAQS posted:Simply type in WENDY during the game.  It's possible that this may be a later encounter in the game, we're nearing the halfway point and there's still lots left to do.
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Aug 11, 2023 16:56
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After skimming the other LP of this game and checking TCRF in case it was a cut puzzle, I think I was just remembering parts of later puzzles and conflating them with the Norm's comment on the sniffles.
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Aug 11, 2023 18:50
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IIRC you can wrap up some frozen *FOOD* in the towel, and use it to smash the washing machine, instead of using the sharkpoon.
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Aug 11, 2023 19:20
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Rectus posted:IIRC you can wrap up some frozen *FOOD* in the towel, and use it to smash the washing machine, instead of using the sharkpoon. You can also use the screwdriver.
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Aug 11, 2023 19:29
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Kent infiltrates the Ordinary Outpost in an effort to find Saul and carry on his trail of destruction.
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Aug 12, 2023 10:03
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I can't help but contrast this to escape from monkey island, which suffered from the transition to 3d - keyboard tank controls instead of point-and-click, and generally worse visuals than Curse. However, by using a first-person view here, it actually feels like it adds something to the game rather than just being 3d for the sake of it.
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Aug 15, 2023 10:21
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Aug 15, 2023 20:03
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Just a quick update. I was hoping to have another video up long before now but I've come down with another case of the Corona. I've had it since Wednesday and even though I'm on the mend I'm still feeling pretty shite. I'll have something up soon, hopefully.
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Aug 18, 2023 08:56
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Just a quick update. I was hoping to have another video up long before now but I've come down with another case of the Corona. I've had it since Wednesday and even though I'm on the mend I'm still feeling pretty shite. I'll have something up soon, hopefully. Hey, don't feel the need to rush things, just focus on getting better. Corona is literally no joke. Again, just focus on getting better. We'll still be here when you get back and upload your update.
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Aug 18, 2023 13:53
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Get well and stay normal!
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Aug 18, 2023 20:16
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| # ? May 9, 2024 05:07 |
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Thank you! I'm going to try and having something up tomorrow. I did attempt to record something this morning but it ended up in a coughing fit. The next update is going to be a double feature as it can be completed in two different ways. You saw that Kent was arrested and thrown in prison at the end of the last video, but there is a way where we can avoid becoming a prisoner.
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Aug 19, 2023 11:32
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