I just want you guys to know that you stole all of my fish puns in the comment section to the last article. Cretins! This space is for ME to make the funny. You’re going to use up all my funny if you keep this sort of thing up! Just for that, this article is 100% free of any terrible, eye-gouging, tooth-gnashing puns involving aquatic life. Let this be a lesson for you! (In reality, this wasn\u2019t so much because I couldn\u2019t come up with any more, it\u2019s really just that I didn\u2019t want to encourage you guys to make even MORE puns. I thought I was capable of some truly brainbreaking punnage, but you guys kept pace. A mixture of respect, fear, and loathing is in order. Myself, I\u2019m mostly gonna go with those last two.)<\/p>\n
Moving on.
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\nI\u2019m not sure I can adequately summarize the mind-blowing stupidity of what Jack Walters just did in one paragraph. Even if I could, compressing that much moron into that small a space might actually damage my screen, and will most certainly damage my brain. Alright: because I love you guys, I\u2019ll give it a shot.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see\u2026you walk into a building in a town where everyone seems to want to kill you,\u00a0 overhear a conversation where a guy says that he wants to kill you, overhear another conversation where an innkeeper plans to kill you, find evidence that the innkeeper has killed lots of people, go to your room, have a vision of the innkeeper killing someone\u2026then you go to bed. You go to sleep<\/em>. You crawl under the covers with your blankie and just sort of knock off for the night.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t even\u2026where do you begin, here? Okay, let\u2019s start off with: why <\/em>would you go to sleep? And even if you wanted to, perhaps because you thought the overheard conversations, rooms full of organs, and skull-splitting visions were all part of the world\u2019s most elaborate prank show, how <\/em>could you go to sleep? When I think forebodings of ritualistic torture-murder in a filthy room, far from anyone who cares whether I live or die,<\/em> I don\u2019t think top-notch insomnia cure<\/em>. This isn\u2019t a quaint fish-smelling bed and breakfast, it\u2019s the Bates Motel mixed with Wicker Man mixed with, if Jack\u2019s behavior is any indication, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken<\/em>.<\/p>\n Naturally, Jack doesn\u2019t have pleasant dreams. He has visions of a strange room, filled with odd creatures that look a lot like the thing that menaced us from the portal. Also, he gets little dream-snippets of activity going on outside.<\/p>\n For example: oh, hey, look, it\u2019s a bunch of swarthy Innsmouth types, here to come up to my hotel room and gut me with a hook. Ho, hum, looks like some of them have shotguns. I\u2019d get up, but I\u2019m in the middle of this really pleasant dream involving creatures man was never meant to comprehend.<\/p>\n Oh, and now they\u2019re coming upstairs. On the one hand, maybe I should wake up before they burst in and kill me. On the other hand, I did <\/em>hang up the Do Not Disturb sign, so maybe they\u2019ll go away.<\/p>\n Hm, looks like they\u2019re trying the lock. Good thing I remembered to bolt it, I suppose.<\/p>\n I wonder if I should get up now?<\/p>\n Looks like they\u2019re about to break it down\u2026<\/p>\n Yeah, okay, I\u2019ll get up. Man, it\u2019s gonna be one of those mornings, huh? I sure hope there\u2019s a coffee shop somewhere in town that serves fugitives. Alternately: I hope there\u2019s coffee in Hell<\/em>.<\/p>\n A new chapter has begun: we’ve moved from the strictly noncombat poking around part to our first real taste of danger, a chapter called Attack of the Fishmen. Its first sequence is, frankly, amazing.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not sarcasm, or even a syntactically correct (yet damning) indictment of the game\u2019s storytelling or gameplay. The sequence that follows is an intense thrill-ride the likes of which is promised in every game or movie\u2019s tagline, but is very rarely delivered. It\u2019s pulse-pounding excitement of the highest caliber, some of the most intense moments I\u2019ve actually had with a videogame.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how the scene goes down. They\u2019re breaking down your door, so you have to run into the adjoining room\u2014fast. They will <\/em>break in and kill you if you don\u2019t absolutely scramble, so you better get the lead out, fast. Then you have to shut the door behind you and bolt it. Now you\u2019ve got bolted doors on either wall, which they\u2019re about to start breaking down, and the door to the next room is blocked with a wardrobe. Got to move it\u2026wardrobe\u2019s scraping along the floor at an agonizing rate, the sound of breaking wood is growing louder\u2026finally, you grope for the doorknob, stumbling into the next room. You throw the door behind you and lock it, just as you hear the doors behind you breaking. Someone shouts something like, \u201cGet through the hall door! It won\u2019t be locked!\u201d S***,\u00a0 it isn\u2019t! You run towards it, bolting it just in time. Man, these guys are chewing through doors like nobody\u2019s business. Who pays for these? No time to think, got to keep focused\u2026wow, maybe that\u2019s how Jack feels all the time<\/em>. That would explain a lot\u2026dammit, move! You proceed\u2026oh, crap, you\u2019re trapped now. They\u2019re coming in either door, and there\u2019s nowhere to run to. No way out except\u2026the window! Oh, damn, it\u2019s blocked! You have to barricade the hall door first, then push away the obstruction at the window, slowly, slowly\u2026you hear wood breaking behind you, and the door opens\u2026you throw the window open, leading out onto a ledge. You can leap across\u2026<\/p>\n You land on the other side as they begin firing at you. You have to flee through a door into a hallway, in which they start shooting through the windows\u2026one shot hits me in the leg, and my vision goes blurry. No time to fix it here, got to keep moving! I hit a stairwell, but crap\u2014there are more waiting for me on the stairwell! Bleary, vision getting so bad I could barely tell where I was going, I ran through rooms, one of which was occupied\u2014their screams brought the mob after me. Oh god, oh god, which way am I going? Have I already gone that way? God dammit! I wish I could go back to provoking fishfaced constables and stealing rum!<\/p>\n You get the picture. If I have a criticism of the whole affair, it\u2019s that it requires a bit too much precision. I died a few too many times, which sent me back to the start of the sequence–that killed a bit of the tension for me, but luckily, the scene had some to spare. Once I cleared the window, I managed until the next checkpoint, but it took a little trial-and-error to figure out exactly what I was supposed to do to survive up to that point.<\/p>\n Still, this part was great, and almost worth putting up with the gross stupidity that necessitated such heroics in the first place. Actually, know what? This is a game, and that was good gameplay, so it actually was <\/em>worth putting up with the gross stupidty that necessitated such heroics in the first place. Rarely do I say, \u201cWow, this story is competent!\u201d when I\u2019m frustrated or bored, but I\u2019m happy to say a story sucks as long as I\u2019m having fun. And for the rest of Innsmouth, I generally am.<\/p>\n The next chunk of gameplay is spent sneaking around. Stealth in this game is tense, and often more than a little bit terror-inducing, but I have one bone to pick with it: it\u2019s hands-down the most unrealistic stealth system I\u2019ve ever seen in a video game. Didn\u2019t these guys do any research? Let me give a few actual game examples, contrasting what should happen in real life with what actually happens.<\/p>\n Situation: I am squatting in mild shadow. There are several bright lights behind me, but I\u2019m kind of sort of in the dark. A guard is patrolling fifteen feet in front of me, and there are no objects between me and him.<\/p>\n Obviously, in real life, the guard wouldn\u2019t notice me at all, and would go about his patrolling with a spring in his step and a song in his heart. I could then crawl across the well-lit area into another, similar patch of lukewarm shadow. In this game, the guard will instead immediately spot me and begin shooting at me. It\u2019s obvious that the developers didn\u2019t bother to check elementary treatises on stealth and infiltration, like Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid.<\/p>\n Situation: I am sneaking around behind some crates. At some point, I accidentally edge into the view of a guard. He says, \u201cI thought I saw something!\u201d<\/p>\n In real life, you\u2019d expect the guard to wait exactly three seconds without moving, blinking, or consulting his comrades. Then he\u2019d say something like, \u201cI guess it was just the merry prank of a fairy queen,\u201d and resume his business. In this game, the AI is just slipshod\u2014the guard will instead run over to check the spot where he\u2019d seen an enemy a second before, not returning until he\u2019s found and killed the infiltrator he\u2019d clearly seen from about fifteen feet away.<\/p>\n Situation: There\u2019s a guard in a warehouse. I want to get past him.<\/p>\n In real life, you\u2019d expect him to walk around in circles like an obsessive-compulsive, patrolling a five-foot square of floor space in lockstep without glancing to the sides or trying to keep his lines of sight open, simultaneously ensuring that a.) an infiltrator with any pattern recognition skills can rumble them and b.) they\u2019ll be dog-tired if something actually does happen. In this game, they only do that like half of the time, tops. Otherwise, they\u2019re just gonna stand there and look over the parts of the building you would logically be in.<\/p>\n Jerks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I just want you guys to know that you stole all of my fish puns in the comment section to the last article. Cretins! This space is for ME to make the funny. You’re...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[220,300],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play","tag-clod-of-cthulhu","tag-lets-play"],"yoast_head":"\n