{"id":1789,"date":"2010-03-14T00:41:38","date_gmt":"2010-03-14T08:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/?p=1789"},"modified":"2026-06-15T17:07:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T01:07:23","slug":"clod-of-cthulhu-lamprey-and-hutch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/?p=1789","title":{"rendered":"Clod of Cthulhu: Lamprey and Hutch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three cheers for another special fun-sized finals week post!<\/em><\/p>\n

So far, Jack\u2019s master plan of breaking a shop clerk out of jail in the hopes that maybe he\u2019d<\/em> have a clue has backfired on him, to the shock of everyone involved. In this case, \u201ceveryone\u201d extends to Jack and Jack alone. Burnham isn\u2019t doing jack shiz, and I refuse to associate myself with anything he does.<\/p>\n

Really, that\u2019s the game\u2019s biggest issue. All of these quibbles about how logical his actions are aren\u2019t academic, they\u2019re genuine roadblocks in my attempt to empathize with the character and immerse myself in the game. First-person videogames must work to establish a bond between the protagonist and the player. When the player\u2019s screen goes red, they need to think, Crap! I\u2019ve been shot! If they\u2019re not immersed, they think\u2026well, okay, syntactically, they think the exact same thing, because it\u2019s awkward to phrase it any other way, but what they\u2019re really thinking is that the mook they\u2019re playing as got shot. Not nearly as much impact in that, is there? It\u2019s the difference between playing paintball and watching an eight-year-old get hit in the face with one on YouTube.<\/p>\n

Personally, the best way for a game to ruin my immersion is to have the protagonist do something baffling or say something stupid, and Jack Walters is a nonstop buffet of this kind of behavior. It genuinely impacts the game for me to be piloting a stooge of this caliber.<\/p>\n

Anyway, sorry, back to the summary. After dodging the guards some more, I find a grate, and after overcoming the functional fixation of Crowbar=Murder Weapon I figure out that I\u2019m supposed to grab it out of my inventory and pry the grate up. We slip down into a medium-length sewer tunnel of some sort, I see some more evil visions, and we finally surface inside the garage, for some reason. I don\u2019t know why this tunnel connects directly to the garage. Who cares, let\u2019s blow this fishstick stand.
\n
\nThere\u2019s a large automobile in here. It looks fine to me, but my companion gives it one glance and automatically diagnoses that it\u2019s broken and needs fixing. He says he\u2019ll get to work on it immediately\u2026but that he has something for me to do for him. Apparently, this locket for his girlfriend is in a safe back at the police station, and he wants me to be a dear and go get it for him.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Jack has enough sense to object, not wanting to put his life on the line to go get a bit of jewelry for this schmuck\u2019s girlfriend. He does not have the presence of mind to point out that they were just inside the police station<\/em>, and Burnham didn\u2019t mention it at all<\/em>. He saved it as a sort of surprise, like, yay, guess what, Jack? You get to go back and wade through some more fishmen in a quest to get jewelry from a room we passed on our way here! Happy Birthday!<\/p>\n

The kid absolutely refuses to leave without the jewelry. This, despite the fact that we\u2019re wanted by fish people, we both need to escape, neither of us actually know the safe combination, and I\u2019ve got a gun that I am currently pointing at his stupid <\/em>head. He just can\u2019t leave without his bauble. Fine, you know what? Whatever. I don\u2019t even care anymore. Maybe we should stop by the grocery store on our way out, you know? Pick up some jerky<\/em>. You feel like jerky? Me, I\u2019m jonesing jerky. Totally worth risking our lives for, amirte?<\/p>\n

I leave, go back to the police station, kill some fishmen on the way, get the combination from a book in one of the cells, and open the safe. Yeah, yeah, creepy vision of a fish-hand either putting it in or taking it out. Real scary. You know, these visions lose their punch when I get one every five minutes<\/em>. They\u2019re all pretty much the same, too. The effect is less like a window into a world beyond my ken and more like a commercial that pops up every single break, on every single station, until you\u2019re ready to overthrow capitalism entirely if it means the suit responsible for the ad is the first against the wall.<\/p>\n

When I get back, Burnham\u2019s finished fixing the car. I guess I should call it a truck: it\u2019s a two-seater automobile with a three-walled flatbed attached, kind of like they backed a wagon up against it and then bolted it on. Burnham suggests a fairly simple division of labor: he drives, I shoot. Works for me. Just promise me you\u2019re not going to swerve and crash the thing halfway through.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlright, Jack,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have to go. Get in the back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The back? You mean the passenger\u2019s seat, right? The one right next to you? Shotgun<\/em>? That\u2019s where you want me? I mean, there is no back seat on this truck, so I don\u2019t get what else you….wait a minute.<\/p>\n

Are you seriously suggesting I ride on the flatbed?<\/p>\n

Are you high<\/em>? There\u2019s nowhere to sit. There\u2019s no seatbelts, nothing to hold on to, nothing to stop me from sliding right off the truck onto the road. I\u2019m completely exposed to gunfire, I\u2019m all alone, and I can\u2019t shoot any targets on the road up ahead, leaving you totally exposed. And if for some ass-backwards reason someone <\/em>has to ride on the murderbed, shouldn\u2019t it be you<\/em>, considering I just went through considerable effort to rescue you and secure your jewelry?<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t get over this. Why should I ride back here? This is beyond insanity. There\u2019s no good cover back here! I am a complete sitting duck. And even if there weren\u2019t dozens of cultists shooting at us and we were just riding down a civilized street to get a quart of milk, you know what would happen? We\u2019d get arrested five feet down the road for reckless behavior. Alternately, ten feet down the road, you\u2019d hit a bump and I\u2019d go flying headfirst into traffic.<\/p>\n

Unbelievable.<\/p>\n

It causes me great pain to actually climb into the back of the truck. I felt genuinely angry at the developers as I did so. Why, developers? Why was this a good idea? Did you even think <\/em>about\u2026<\/p>\n

Hey, wait, hold on, Burnham, you left the garage doors shut. And they\u2019re barred, too, remember? We couldn\u2019t get through. Let me get out and\u2026hey, stop revving the engine, we need to open the doors! They\u2019re like two feet away, you\u2019re just going to\u2026wait\u2026WAIT!<\/p>\n

He slams down the pedal, tires squealing as he rams directly into the closed, barred double-doors, breaking them both into clouds of inexplicable splinters.<\/p>\n

Okay, Jack? Everything bad I\u2019ve ever said about you?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t take any of it back, but I would like to add a qualifier to all of it: as stupid as you are, you are not Burnham.<\/p>\n

I hope you’re not waiting for a cookie, because I sure as hell am not offering you one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three cheers for another special fun-sized finals week post! So far, Jack\u2019s master plan of breaking a shop clerk out of jail in the hopes that maybe he\u2019d have a clue has backfired on...<\/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-1789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play","tag-clod-of-cthulhu","tag-lets-play"],"yoast_head":"\nClod of Cthulhu: Lamprey and Hutch -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chocolatehammer.org\/?p=1789\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Clod of Cthulhu: Lamprey and Hutch -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Three cheers for another special fun-sized finals week post! 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