Our adventures in Resident Evil 2 continue. This is… The Spooky Bois!

One thing I seem to have forgotten from playing the other Resident Evil games is how much time the player spends rearranging and sorting out the items in both the character inventory and the item box. I had flashbacks to RE7 while playing through this section, since I spent so much dumping herbs and ammo for later.

The other big event that happened during this stream was the first appearance of Mr. X. One doesn’t get the full effect of his presence until they encounter him in their game. It’s not just that he’s a constant threat. It’s that he’s a threat that constantly makes his presence known. Even in a safe area, the player can hear him roaming around. As you can see in the footage, this definitely got to me and tripped me up in more than a few ways.

While I did know about both him and the fact that the police station wasn’t safe ahead of time, that did nothing to blunt the impact of a previously “safe” zone being invaded by this foreign entity that is out for my blood.

And lastly, screw that library puzzle, and the section with Sherry. That was some crap.

I don’t talk about them very often here, but I’ve put a fair amount of time into both Player Unknown’s Battle Grounds (aka PUBG), and Fortnite. When I heard that Respawn has come out with their own version of a battle royale game, set in the Titanfall universe, and that it was free, I simply had to try it out.

But more than that, I had to get some friends of mine together and do it on stream. Here is the result.

As I said in the stream, the developers at Respawn have clearly taken notes on the battle royale games that came before Apex. So many features seem tailor made to deal with the biggest problems in the genre.

The biggest one of those is the ping system, which allows one to play entirely without voice chat, while still facilitating vital communication with their teammates. At the press of a button, you can inform the other players on your team that you saw an item they may wish to pick up, spotted an enemy, or wish to travel in a particular direction. For this type of game, that is 95% of what one would want to tell people.

In addition, the game also helpfully informs the player whenever the item they’re looking at is inferior to one they already have equipped, letting them make smart decisions on the fly rather than spend a bunch of time in inventory menus. And when they find another weapon, the UI will point out which mods equipped to the current gun will transfer over to the new one. (Also, the fact that mods auto-equip and don’t stick onto one gun is another huge boon for players.)

The result is a very streamlined experience which tows the line between the more casual approach of Fortnite and the simulated experience of PUBG. There was always a massive audience for something like this (of which I was a part of), and I’m glad they’re finally getting serviced.

If I do another one of these streams, I want to try to talk more about the incredible job Apex Legends does in terms of representation. There’s a lot to unpack there, and it’s worth talking about how important it all is. Respawn has quite a hit on their hands. If they treat it right, they’re certainly going to go places.

Another month, another Elusive Target, thought this time I’m not alone. My friend Andre Doucet is with me this time, as we tackle The Fugitive.

This Elusive Target seems to be another experiment in introducing a random element. The last time they attempted this was during The Revolutionary, where the target could be located in a finite number of locations by the pier in Santa Fortuna. This required the player to readjust their whole strategy with each attempt, and wasn’t all the great in my opinion.

I don’t have that same frustration here. There probably should have been a clause where the other two possible targets can’t be killed, because I suspect there are players who will just re-roll until the one they poison is the actual target, but they’re getting closer to using randomization to curtail the endless retrying one might otherwise see in Elusive Targets.

As for the Sniper Challenge, I think it’s a great idea, and a fun mission. I’m just *bad* at it.

While I feel confident in my ability to play a horror game without aid from another human being, but it would be criminal of me to not invite my friend David, a Resident Evil expert, to join me on the journey.

And Clayton also pitched in. Together, we are… The Spooky Bois.

One of the things I’m most impressed by is the game’s ability to maintain a strong atmosphere throughout my entire stint at the police station. Even with those two yapping in my ear, I had a couple of times where I was genuinely spooked.

Resident Evil 2 also is great at giving the player a very precise ammo count. While I never felt like I was comfortable with the amount of ammo in my clip, I also didn’t feel like I was running too low at any point in time. I still had to consider if/when I would engage each threat, but if I was in a desperate situation then I could dump the resources I had and scavenge to make up for the loss.

While I never played the original version, this updated version feels like the perfect synthesis of the old school and modern game design. I’ve heard tales of what happens in the later parts of the game, so it’ll be exciting to see if expectation meets reality.

Picking up where we last left off, we wrap up our adventures with The Shapeshifting Detective. Were we able to successfully save Ellis Munro from certain death? And were we able to catch the killer and solve the murder of Dorota Shaw? Tune in to find out!

And remember, if you wish to see content like this as it’s recorded live, be sure to check out my Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

I’m more than a little disappointed that I got the same killer a second time, but at least we were able to get the best possible outcome.

From what I gather, my whole speculation about us taking over other people’s bodies is just flat out wrong. In scenes where the player accuses the wrong person, they get a chance you use their shapeshifting powers against the killer to disarm or neutralize them, including the option of impersonating the killer while they’re in the same room. That said, it’s clear that we are a supernatural entity of some kind, so why not a traveler.

I’m always down to play an FMV murder-mystery game, and hopefully stuff like this and Contradiction continue to come out.

Along with the new Elusive Target, IO also included a new mission in Hokkaido to celebrate the upcoming Snow Festival in Japan.

The prizes for this one include a new melee weapon and a new suit, so you better believe I took the time to give it chance.

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First off, I’m really glad I got the freaky incident in the bathroom on camera, because I don’t think anyone would believe it otherwise. It even made it’s way onto Kotaku’s Highlight Reel!

This one is similar to the holiday mission where getting Silent Assassin is notable, but ultimately pointless.  It’s more important to complete the challenges and perform the various kills in the environment to see what kind of possibilities exist.

As I talked about briefly during the stream, these kinds of bonus missions are great for giving new and returning players easier ways to obtain level mastery, and the extra unlockables are a strong incentive to try them out even if you’re already fully mastered.

I hope they add more of this kind of content as they continue to support the game, because it’s great to have reasons to keep coming back.

We’ve waited over 5 years this. At long last, a project I didn’t think would ever get finished… is complete.

(The full Closure Alert playlist can be found here.)

First off, I want to thank Aldowyn and anaphysik for agreeing to come back for this. All of us have mostly grown and moved on, and it was hard to carve out enough time to record, but we somehow managed it despite life tugging us in so many different directions.

In many ways, Endgame is a phenomenal section for all of the many different permutations of it that exist. Even though we went into a lot of detail about how the scenes involving our chosen handler, Scarlet, Mina, and even Yancy/Leland can differ wildly depending on how the rest of the game goes, we barely scratched the surface. You could start looking up different ending possibilities and still not get them all.

That said, in many ways, it’s also a microcosm of Alpha Protocol as a whole, including all of its downsides. Anaphysik was right to point out that a large amount of it, especially once we’re above ground, feels largely like throwaway, filler content. The fights with Darcy and the Helicopter are large unnecessary. In Darcy’s case, his character feels more static and shallow than anyone else, because none of his segments change at all with his reputation (which is pretty much locked in the moment players leave Saudi Arabia, since he isn’t involved with any of the big hub plots even in a background capacity).

The other thing I want to draw attention to has less to do with Alpha Protocol and more to do with me. If there’s anything I have taken away from this experience, going back to finish what the three of us started so long ago, is that I have grown into such a different person than I was back then. It’s reflected not just in my commentary (which anaphysik noticed that Aldowyn and I had wildly different point than we did back in Disclosure Alert), but also in my attitude. The person who joined those two way back in the way feels so alien to me. He didn’t realize how rude he was, or how much he didn’t know. In many ways, I’m glad we didn’t finish back then because it gave me a chance to try again, and partly make up for my past ignorance.

This was more than just another Let’s Play. This was a deeply personal work, and I’m glad to have finally seen it through.

Another Elusive Target, another chance to show off my stuff. This time, we return to the Isle of Sgail to assassinate… “The Appraiser”!

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This was a pretty basic assassination, without a whole lot of frills. All it required was a bit of scouting and forethought to arrange a lethal accident to kill the target. Since the notebook was right next to her, the secondary objective didn’t add much risk.

Remember, during an Elusive Target, the attempt is locked in once the player has completed a single objective. Normally, there’s only one: To kill the target. Here, obtaining her notebook was a secondary objective. The intent is to increase the danger by forcing the player to perform additional tasks once the challenge is complete, but proper planning can mitigate (and, in our case, nearly eliminate) that risk.

That said, having to deal with the security footage afterwards reintroduced that element of danger. There were several close calls that, while probably not big enough to risk a mission failure, could have compromised my Silent Assassin rating. You can see that even with the mission finished, I wasn’t 100% sure I was going to get SA until the challenge unlocked.

It got tense towards the end, but I’m happy with the results.

Over the past few years, there has been an upsurge in FMV games. Though they aren’t as big as they were back in the old days, they’ve begun to carve out a comfortable niche.

The Shapeshifting Detective takes many cues (and a few of the actors) from 2015’s Contradiction: Spot the Liar, and adds in a few new, cool ideas to form a compelling murder mystery experience.

Obviously, being part of the title, the most important mechanic in the game is the protagonist’s ability to change their form and voice to match that of any other character, gaining valuable insight and information by talking to others in their guise.

Not only are players able to ask questions that they couldn’t get away with normally by asking them “as” another character, but they can even play upon established connections to manipulate others to do what they need to in order to help solve the case. We saw a bit of this when he guided Oscar to investigate Browyn’s room, both by encouraging him as Chief Dupont, and using Browyn’s face to get him into position. Playing on, establishing, and or manipulating relationships forms a very important aspect of the game.

But the other, more subtly important, is the ability to throw away questions or responses. One of my viewers on Twitch asked why one would want to do that, since most players are trained to exhaust the question tree before moving on (something that I still do a lot of in this game). The trick is that, just like in real life, it is sometimes better to avoid interrupting someone and just let them keep talking with an uninterrupted train of thought.

Alternatively, if the player suspects a question will do more to hurt their reputation or compromise their investigation than it would to help, then it might also make for sense to throw it away than it would to ask it. This options adds a whole new layer to conversation that is refreshing to see, and breathes new life into the dialogue trees we’re all so familiar with.

I’m glad I was able to show off this game, because it’s one that’s super easy to overlook, but still a great game.

And with that, our adventures in Rome have come to a close and we’ve hit the endgame. This is exactly as far as Aldowyn, anaphysik, and I were able to progress before Disclosure Alert met its untimely demise at the hands of our various schedules.

Thanks to streaming and post-production laziness, we’re now in a place where crossing the finish line is no longer an impossible task.

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While I am disappointed that we weren’t able to goad Marburg into a fatal duel, anaphysik is right in that we were able to do so in the original Disclosure Alert recordings. You may wish to check out those old videos if you want to see that, though I must issue a Content Warning as some of our jokes and comments are very insensitive in a way we didn’t realize they were back in late 2013.

A lot of people will tell you that having a coincidence, especially one of this magnitude, in a plot is bad storytelling. Those people are wrong, especially when coincidences like the ones that pile up around Madison Saint James create very interesting dynamics between important characters. Admittedly, it sucks that she gets killed and/or kidnapped, and later disregarded by the story in order to this work, but there the relationships we get through her provide some excellent setup for the final mission.

• Marburg has been working with Parker and Leland to destabilized global politics and establish a new cold war. To that end, he kidnaps Madison Saint James, who has formed a connection to Thorton, in order to use her as leverage against him so that their operation in Rome goes on successfully.
• As Madison’s father, Alan Parker genuinely cares about her. However, he has no way of knowing that she is working for the VCI/Deus Vult, and isn’t aware that she is being put in danger (and possibly killed, as it happens in our run) as a direct result of the plans he has set in motion. Furthermore, though we didn’t get into it, Parker is the reason why Deus Vult was originally shut down, cutting Marburg loose.