Let's Watch "Let's Play Dead to Rights"

And he says he's the land shark? That pretty much sells me on the game by itself.

Apparently, the cutscenes are the only good part.

Yeah. Slowbeef actually says that the game itself is terrible later on.

Chapter 4

Jack introduces us to Fat Chow, a gun runner wannabe Triad who probably isn’t even Asian. That last part is to cover up that this is the third and final role for the very white Roger Rose, doing a very embarrassing and rather offensive pseudo generic Asian accent. Though Slowbeef’s description of them as “Jahk Surate” lines is a bit much; he does pronounce the name properly. Here, Chow pays off a cop who’s then gunned down by other gangsters. No point, just an excuse to put some enemies in here.

Chow runs away upon seeing Jack, leaving you surrounded by a huge number of guys with shotguns and automatic weapons. There’s that quickly ramping difficulty again. There’s no other difficulty modes either, by the way. This is just the game, and you can take it or leave it. “You’ll notice his name is a pretty heavily veiled John Woo reference, by the way. (pause while Shadow eviscerates a guy) So there is that.” Slowbeef also introduces “cutscene dickery,” as not only do the cutscenes here show Chow running, but they also have Jack moving to cover that’s probably much worse than whatever you’ve found. The first also has a bug of an enemy you can’t lock on to. The return of Nintendo Hard!

“I’m intent on killing that guy on top of the truck, but it can’t be done.” “Not even Shadow can scale those trucks.” “He’s kind of what would happen if Cujo fucked Lassie.” Okay hands up, who wants to see that movie? Rather poorly timed bullet time dive, which has Jack shooting into a lamppost for most of it. Diabetus speculates that this huge gun battle is to make up for the lack of it in the last level; not a bad theory. Slowbeef runs out of bullets but quickly picks up an assault rifle, and Diabetus mourns the unused melee opportunity. And with two very annoying guys on top of an inaccessible overpass, we’re introduced to the Magnum, which pretty much just kills anything no matter how far away.

Cutscene of cops cornering Jack only to get killed by the Triads, which serves no purpose besides taking away all the guns you’ve collected. This game is certainly persistent in finding new ways to screw you over. Jack reaches the end of the level, but refuses to move on until everyone is dead. “I’m Jack Slate, I must murder every single person I encounter.” “That’s the weird thing. Only a quarter of these people are actual enemies. Everyone else is just a citizen of the town.”

Chow walks into a building like he owns it, which gets Jack to conclude he does. That’s such a funny line that Slowbeef actually foreshadows it before the cutscene starts. It’s an underground gambling den, so of course Jack announces himself to the whole room just to screw you over some more. Who needs stealth missions, this is Jack Slate, bitch! And unlike the times on the street when that happened, there’s nothing to go to wall mode against. “What’s all this illegal activity going on in here?” There are plenty of waist high partitions you can duck behind, but Slowbeef doesn’t use them. “But does he own the place? That hasn’t been established yet.”

Chow locks himself in a cashier’s cage and sics more men on you, and we also get to see why the explosive canisters can be a bad idea when Jack’s helpless against a guy shooting from right next to him. “It’s a good thing Augie Blatz’ clothes fit you perfectly. Christopher Walken only wears one size fits all, is the thing. So does Jack Slate.” Chow eventually tells Jack that Silt can be found at a place called the Black Orchid. Jack also gets away with more weapons as the cops show up, and of course you can’t shoot them on your way out. Construction workers and nightclub staff are still fair game, though.

More street shootout. Jack now has a sniper rifle, but Slowbeef explains that the game’s sniping engine is pretty crappy. “Really? That’s the one flaw?” Fortunately, something like an automatic shotgun will still reach snipers pretty reliably with the help of auto aiming. “I’m really good at it, is the thing.” Lots of things are the thing with Slowbeef, I’m noticing. He shows off a bit of the sniping: there’s only a few automatic zoom settings, and the hit detection is way off. Plus, you’re out in the open whenever you do it. Though it does give a good look at how all the enemies are the same model. “You just really messed up those quintuplets there.” And a really funny bit where the enemies strafe you so they look like shooting gallery targets. “I knew I had to go into Chinatown and win a bear for my niece.” A few more jokes about the cops electing not to interfere in any of this.

As Jack finishes things off, there’s a few funny fights from either side of a dumpster, like something out of Police Squad. Then lock picking with a 20 second limit, while Slowbeef gripes about how you’re given the instructions every time one of these minigames comes up. They’re brief enough that it never bothered me. Then it’s to the oh so necessary two second cutscene of Jack taking a cab to the Black Orchid.

Turns out it’s a massage parlor, where he has to hand over his weapons. Jack tries to say “I’m gonna want this back” like a tough guy, but he really can’t pull it off. His next comment: “Something smelled fishy, and it wasn’t the sushi bar.” Oh, and for some reason the process of Jack getting to this place and then having more goons directed to him keeps cutting to black. “That was like six cutscenes in a row, and they were all horrible.” So more melee fighting, though this time you get to have fun watching the terrible animation that’s meant to indicate prostitutes jonesing for a fix. At least, I hope that’s what we’re supposed to take from it. “What was going on in this room before you came in?” “Well, I find it fishy that there’s no sushi bar at all.” Diabetus once again has to be reminded of what Jack’s doing here, and inexplicably calls Silt “the pew pew pew guy.” Um, okay.

Boss fight with the guy who took your guns, who turns out to be named Horse. It has the same gimmick as the Tattoo fight but with more guys, plus the game tricks you by making them killable, only for another person to join the fight whenever you do. “Jack hears sex in the room, and he’s like, ‘I need a gun.’” Slowbeef also wants to Mind Screw over newbies watching these videos by putting horse’s health bar in the thumbnail to make them think Jack actually fights a horse. Suddenly I’d like to see that original thread to see if he got anyone with that. And then he deadpans that Jack does fight a horse in level 9. Yeah, he’s definitely just screwing with Diabetus now. And there’s some bar stools on the side which are the only objects in the whole game that Jack can physics. “Maybe they had some budget left over for level 4. Got to do something with it.”

Jack gets his guns and heads to Silt, somehow divining what room he’s in. Silt has a comical Cockney accent, and says he was just told to run over anyone besides Tattoo that came out of the tunnel. He got that order from someone named Gopher, but before revealing anymore he’s shot by…Mona Sax? Actually, it’s a woman named Eve, whose shirt is wide open for no reason at all. Like I said, animated nudity does nothing for me. She’s on her own revenge mission against Mayhem Inc, “that assassin’s guild out of Broadway.” Oh my god, we’re in Discworld all of a sudden. She reveals that Patch works for them, then more enemies arrive.

So you guessed it, it’s Escort Mission time! And a rather inconsistent one, as Eve frequently switches between being able to handle herself, and calling for help in the most annoying way possible. And then one of my favorite parts: the instant the cutscene ends, Slowbeef sighs and says “So much to talk about.” As it turns out all the masseuses are shooting at you along with the hitmen, the guys can’t even notice it since they’re so hung up on the idea of an “assassin’s guild” with a fixed address, which is pushing it even for a game this silly. “Like next to the Sbarro’s.” “I’m kind of overloaded with…everything right now.” Jack also can’t use women as human shields, “That is not the Jack Slate way.” We do catch a funny animation fail when Jack bullet time dives and shoots at a person right behind him, though.

Chow’s waiting outside with more goons, as the game reuses the map Jack chased Blats down. Now we have to go the other way, but it really doesn’t help disguise the cheapness. Shadow grabs the worst weapon possible, while Slowbeef complains that the bit of getting Chow’s heavy weaponry was completely pointless. Can’t argue with that; one fight that pretty much forces you to use it all up, and then there’s still more of the level to go. He then says with perfect understatement “So this massage parlor thing was a bust.” “Are there any women who wear a complete shirt, that covers more than 50% of their body?” Especially when the graphics are off enough to put any nudity into Uncanny Valley anyway. The same disarm from level 3, though the camera cheats us out of fully appreciating it. And we still don’t learn the name, as Slowbeef explains the pistol disarm names are all pretty lame and interchangeable. Diabetus calls it The Lumbar Puncture, so that’s something. More Shadow, which lets them note that despite the animation taking a few seconds, only Sickle was evil enough to actually Kick the Dog. But then the best part: Jack says “Think fast, Jack” before…continuing to shoot people. So nonsensical that Slowbeef actually told us to be on the lookout for it. “So no one calls with a noise disturbance complaint or anything?”

Chow comes out with a rocket launcher, and this boss fight is a bit of a Luck-Based Mission as it’s completely random how good he is at leading his shots. You got me how this happened, as he was last seen with the cops busting into his place. Upon dying he shouts “See you in hell” in the same sound clip he introduced himself with. Thanks Roger Rose, I’m sure you had fun but now we’re cutting you off!

Eve has a quasi-romantic moment with Jack, which he responds to by laughing at her name, Eve Adams. He then comments on how many other women have walked out on him, but he can’t be distracted now. “I had a grave to visit. My father’s.” Thanks, never would have figured that out without you, Jack. I’m more convinced with every level that the game thinks we’re idiots.

We’re reminded of the characters who didn’t last past their first chapter and how they died, while the guys are a bit stymied by Eve. “That’s the first time he’s talked to someone for more than a couple seconds before shooting them, or telling his dog to decapitate them.”

edited 2nd Jun '10 10:32:52 AM by Eegah

I love how the assassins guild operates in Broadway. It seems so appropriate somehow.

Chapter 5

Jack visits his father’s grave, where Hildy shows up. What a coincidence, huh? She got fired from the strip club, so now she’s a waitress at “The Oar House.” Aim high, sister! Plus, Frank was working for Gloria Exner digging up dirt on Pinnacle, thanks to a special police force called the GAC squad. Yeah, that doesn’t sound completely stupid or anything. That’s when the bad guys show up, and Jack heads off to fight them with terrible animation on his gun firing that makes it look like a flashlight. The cutscene ends with him dodging a grenade (the only one in the whole game, by the way).

Diabetus seems to be getting lost again, as he thinks Jack threw the grenade. Then, clowns! Jack comments “I’ll be having nightmares about this for months.” “What kind of one-liner was that? ‘Guys with clown masks, looks like I’m about to piss my pants.’” He also brings up hating the circus; “Jack will move on to just unleash all his personal problems on the player.” There’s canisters all over the graveyard, so you’ll probably just accidentally pick them up more often than not. Plus, a bunch of switches that open gates. Why are we in a Castlevania ripoff all of a sudden?

“So where’s Batman?” “Uh, he is in level 6. I wish I were kidding.” Now I’m just enjoying how he’s messing with the newbie. He’s got a perfect deadpan way of saying these things that you would be inclined to believe him. Jack’s next Bond One-Liner attempt is “You boys need to get some sun,” which the guys quite rightly call him out on. “That has nothing to do with being a clown!” “It’s not like you’re fighting albinos, that’s level 8!” Close range canister kill, and “That was kind of fun, I have to admit.”

Helicopter noise, which Slowbeef calls “the bane of this whole fucking level.” He’ll come to regret that statement. Jack continues trying to be witty with “What next, zombies?” Bad writer, bad! “The progression clearly goes zombie, clown.” An unarmed guy jumps off a bridge and tries to fight Jack; bad move against a guy with a shotgun. Thank you, enemy AI. “Shadow is picking up whoopee cushions, that’s the next weapon. Thanks for spoiling the surprise.” More unarmed guys, who we can now see are called “mercenaries.” They have nothing to do with the whole clown thing and are just wearing green ponchos. It’s literally like the designers decided to come up with one last enemy and then throw them in a completely random place.

Slowbeef quite impressively scores a kill that the crosshairs say is impossible, then faces the helicopter. This thing not only drops more enemies but has a gattling gun. Fortunately, it doesn’t hurt you that much. Diabetus seizes on this opportunity, wearing Slowbeef down until he has to apologize for calling it the bane of the level. “So it’s the bane of your existence like mosquitoes are the bane of your existence when barbequing outside?” “I was taking the game seriously until you brought this up.” Slow motion dive where the auto targeting screws up a bit, switching between enemies in nowhere near the order of their distance from Jack. Plus another instance of that blocking bug: “If I cover my eyes, they won’t be there anymore.” “That’s how I make clowns go away in my dreams.”

Slowbeef points out the fog layer a couple inches above the ground, which obscures the camera a bit when you’re aiming at someone above you. “It’s supposed to be like Thriller, I guess.” Another disarm, though a pretty lame one: Jack just punches the guy in the face and then elbows the back of his head. We don’t learn the name, and I don’t really care either. This also comes after a bullet time dive that catches the enemies mid-conversation, so now Diabetus wants to hear slow honking from one of them.

Slowbeef briefly gets pissed at the level’s constant cricket noise (hey, just adds to the realism for me) but then the helicopter’s back. And it’s quite a funny appearance, as a bridge is between it and Jack, yet the guy at the gattling gun just keeps shooting anyway. More canister fun as Slowbeef accidentally picks one up and drops it, then picks it up again, then throws it only for it to bounce off an enemy and roll right next to him, Jack aiming at it the whole time. Diabetus has now commented a few times on Jack shooting his human shields in the spine: “You’re gonna learn in level 9 that Jack wanted to be a chiropractor, and it just didn’t work out.” So would that be before or after he fights the horse?

Jack grabs a human shield but finds there’s no one to protect against, then a pretty dickish game move where the crosshair changes from kill shot to impossible the instant that Slowbeef fires. But all the guys are dead, which triggers the next gate opening. Change it up however you want, that’s still a pretty stupid level gimmick. “The sudden lack of humor in the graveyard opens the gate.” Diabetus comments on the lack of graves besides Frank’s; uh, what do you think all those crypts are for?

Jack heads underground, where a bug leads to the clowns’ laser sights going through the walls and making the room look far more crowded than it is. “You’ve just ruined my immersion in this game.” Slowbeef slips and calls this a sewer; hey, any underground level might as well be. “What we need is Timmy’s help with this.” That’s too good an opening to ignore, so Slowbeef convinces him that Timmy actually does come back. “I think he was thug number 14. We warned him to stay out of trouble.”

There’s one locked off part of the catacombs, so Jack has to go back outside and drop through the ceiling. This involves getting stuck in a grate for a further demonstration of how little damage the helicopter does. Then Slowbeef promptly gets lost trying to get back out again, as everything once again looks the same in this place. “There’s not enough archways in this underground, what are you thinking?” “Clowns in a graveyard, I’m still digesting that.” “I’m still working on the sushi line from chapter 4.” Why don’t you take it up with City Hall? Then Jack uses the handle that was in the catacombs and opens the next gate. One of those level designers really liked Castlevania, didn’t he?

Sniping section, which on top of the problems noted before is dark as hell. So much that Slowbeef actually had to turn up the brightness on the video so we could see what he was doing. Big Take That! to The Phantom Of The Opera out of nowhere, though Slowbeef trips over himself a bit: “Fucking off-Broadway, uh, Broadway bullshit.” Though it does give them a lengthy skit about a musical of Dead To Rights involving Jack shooting anyone who hits a high note, and Shadow killing audience members. I’d see it.

Jack reaches a house in the middle of the graveyard, and Slowbeef chooses now to get upset about the gates being Insurmountable Waist High Fences, which most of them really aren’t, anyway. He goes around the back and narrates that this is the only entrance/exit to the cemetery. Then he just has to do some Tempting Fate that causes more clowns to crash a van through the gate backwards. You do realize this is your fault, right?

So the boss is a bit different this time: clowns come out of the van every so often, but your main objective is the gattling gun in its cargo hatch which can only be damaged with canisters. Fortunately, there are a truly ridiculous number of them just sitting around, even given how many there were before. But just to be a dick some more, the van is on top of a hill so the canisters will often just roll back down after you’ve thrown them. After a really funny bit where a canister bounces off a very short wall right in front of Jack that somehow goes unnoticed, it turns out the canisters also don’t do much damage, “so we’re gonna speed this up with a little trick I like to call more than one canister at a time.” At least Jack has great range and can throw every canister dead on target from wherever he picks it up, so there’s at least one part of the fight where the game goes a little easy on you. Slowbeef still throws a couple from point-blank range just for kicks, apparently.

Jack runs out and a shadowy figure shouts at him to stop. Sharp-eared viewers can tell right here who the Big Bad is, not that it helps make much sense of the story. He calls Eve from a pay phone and whines at her about the attack; at least he gives as good as he gets from her. Though it turns out the clowns weren’t Mayhem, Inc., that assassins guild out of Broadway (as I will now insist on calling them every time they come up)…because they’re preparing to assassinate Gloria Exner at a debate tomorrow. Jack suddenly gets the idea that he needs to keep Exner alive; no idea where that came from. Couldn’t they just play this scene as him doing some good on the side and fortunately stumbling onto a bigger piece of the conspiracy? No credits gag this time, as the post-game talk is a bit longer than usual. Slowbeef once again has to recap the plot for Diabetus, though now it’s getting complicated enough (and that last bit made so little sense) that I’m more sympathetic to him than usual. “’You didn’t tell me they were gonna ambush me!’ That’s kind of the whole point of an ambush.”

edited 3rd Jun '10 8:40:18 PM by Eegah

I always thought it was weird how Silt looked Asian in his license photo, yet he's British. Also, Eve apparently does not know who killed her brother, so she wants to decide to kill everybody from Mayhem Inc to eventually get him. She and Slate are perfect for each other.

NEXT TIME: The stupidest Assassination ever attempted!

Oh, and I uploaded a video on this game. It's a spoiler for the third last chapter, but I think this shows what Jack Slate's true identity is.

edited 11th Jun '10 1:01:08 AM by Emperordaein

Chapter 6

Sorry for the delay; some major computer problems had to be taken care of. Now let’s get back to this thing.

We’re reminded of the plot so far by Kip Waterman, starting to become apparent as Grant City’s only reporter. Jack sneaks into his helicopter in full view of the cameras with guns in each hand, and somehow goes unnoticed until the helicopter actually takes off. We also hear about a subway that Pinnacle’s building; I’m sure that won’t amount to anything. Jack calls Eve, who’s still in her stripper outfit. That’s really sad on the design team’s part. She’s alerted to a guy pointing a gun at her and reacts…oddly. Diabetus: “It’s a guy with a gun, not a mosquito.”

Slowbeef aptly sums up this part of the level as a combination of rail shooting and Escort Mission. Joy. You use a huge machine gun that’s on the news helicopter for reasons I don’t think I want to know, taking out everyone from Mayhem, Inc., that assassin’s guild out of Broadway. Apparently the pilot just telepathically follows Jack’s every whim. And despite Eve having her own gun which she can be seen using, she’ll never take out anyone herself. So this won’t be like Natalya in the jungle and they suck for raising our hopes.

Eve finds a guy with a bomb, and shoots him (with the gunshot sound out of snyc, and trust me, that’s not the video lagging) which Jack gets quite whiny about. And so we’re introduced to bomb disarming, easily the best of the minigames. It’s like a marble labyrinth (which Diabetus notes, though he forgets that’s what they’re called) without having to worry about gravity. Just guide the ball through the narrow path, which also involves rotating the cylinder to move it vertically. There’s time limits that start off easy but get more challenging at a good pace, and also checkpoints along the way that give you five or ten more seconds. It’s utterly ludicrous that anyone would construct a bomb this way, but it’s fun all the same. Slowbeef thinks it’s a throwback to a game called Rally X that I’ve never heard of.

And then that cycle is repeated three more times. Diabetus cracks Slowbeef up by theorizing that sometimes these reporters like to make the news. “They don’t call us Channel 13 for nothing!” Is that just a reference to the number being considered unlucky, or an actual Shout-Out to something? It’s not ringing any bells for me. Another bomb, which the brightness is turned way up on to make it a bit more hard to see the ball. “It’s like you’re staring into the face of god as you disarm it.” More guys instantly appear when it’s done, so Diabetus asks if they were just watching Eve and cheering her on. Fair question.

Slowbeef again recaps what’s going on, just to point out the ludicrous kitchen sink approach taken by Mayhem, Inc., that assassin’s guild out of Broadway. “This is what happens when you get all of your assassins from the dollar store.” They’ve also noticed how all the assassins completely ignore Jack, despite him being the only one doing anything. Eve moves up a floor, so now she’s moving the other way. Variety! Slowbeef points out the dirty yellow windows the building has, just so Jack can visibly break the glass. Both of them are also confused about the timing of this shootout and the debate, given how no one inside seems to notice. “Is it going on within a ten foot concrete wall, soundproof stadium?” Though it’s also noted that Exner now has a convenient point about how bad crime has gotten under Pinnacle.

Bomb three, and Diabetus has noticed that Eve is going into the men’s rooms for all of them. Slowbeef rightly chews him out for it. “The hundreds of people you’re going to kill are people you hired! You’re really just wasting money. And we never would have found the bombs if it wasn’t for one of those guys. This is just a terrible plan.” They’re also still confused about why Jack wants to save Exner; it’s apparently just because she’s slightly less of an evil than Pinnacle, the man who brings a cigar into a prison. “Incompetent mayors in this city?”

On the next shootout, one of the enemies is behind the wall where he can’t be hit; yeah, he does that every time, trust me. Luckily more people come in, and he’s stepped out by the time Jack’s done with them. Slowbeef confirms that the enemies will never shoot at you, so this mission is entirely about protecting Eve. Little as you may want to. Further on, the hot dog stands have been quite conveniently set up for a warzone. “It’s like if you walk down there, you’re forced to buy a hot dog.” Slowbeef claims killing hot dog guys comes in level 7. That level’s sounding pretty packed by now; want to pick another number?

Last bomb, which is another bright one. “It’s lucky that none of these gun guys come when we’re delicately disarming a bomb.” Not that impressed, since you made that same joke a few minutes ago. Though it is built on nicely: “They’re in the men’s room, and I know she can’t be in there!” Kind of lame bathroom sketch I won’t go into. The bomb is disarmed, and bizarrely the game makes you watch for a few more seconds as the helicopter goes higher before starting the next cutscene.

Eve emerges onto the roof, where she’s promptly killed by Patch. So two Escort Missions, and then she dies. Thanks for being in the game, bitch. The animators also completely wimp out on showing how she dies; Patch just vaguely moves his arms around a bit before waving at Jack. After a quite lame Big "NO!", we see Eve lying on the roof, bleeding out of her ass. Lovely.

More rail shooter, thankfully without Eve around to protect anymore. Of course, this means everyone’s shooting at Jack instead, but that just makes it more fun if you ask me. Also, the rail is constantly moving so it doesn’t matter how many people you kill besides their possibly getting a last hit on you as you move out of range. The guys are pretty upset over the vagueness of Eve’s death: “He just starts waving at you. Hi, remember me, seven months ago? I talked about your brain meat? I was that guy!”

After a bit of the roof, the helicopter parks itself over the parking lot for no apparent reason as Jack shoots more guys. And there’s so many, spread over such a wide area, that the fight becomes quite reminiscent of the helicopter boss from The Adventures Of Bayou Billy, where you have no way to avoid getting hit and just have to hope you win the war of attrition. “They all take cover behind stuff even though you’re above them, which is really just a pain in the ass more than anything.” Soon the blood stains start to pile up, so it becomes impossible to ignore how they’re all identical. “All right, everybody arrange themselves. He can’t kill us all at…oh yeah, he can.” “He’s trying to spell ‘Jack Slate rules’ with dead bodies.” That’s where the bodies and blood stains really start to rack up to more than the processor can handle, so they keep disappearing when you look away. “But you’re going to see it, so why bother?”

Patch heads into a limo that immediately busts down into a river basin, where two other cars are already waiting. Um, nice inconspicuous escape plan there. So now you have to follow these three vehicles and shoot them up, all while the camera keeps swooping around completely arbitrarily and more often than not taking you away from the good shooting position you just managed to get a hold of. “Pilot, I want you to get dangerously close to the ground. I want you to do the dumbest thing you can possibly think of when flying this helicopter.” “See, the all-important part of the sedan you have to destroy is the trunk, so they can’t store things in it.”

Patch pulls out a rocket launcher, so now we have rockets that lazily circle around for a few seconds before hitting you, and you have to shoot them before that happens. And by incredible coincidence, he never shoots it when you’re not looking and hence not able to shoot down one of these things that drains half your life. “Forget the rockets, go after the sedans.” Slowbeef points out that the rockets will damage Patch if you shoot them soon enough, something I’ve never been able to pull off. “This is the only news organization that can report on a bank robbery and subsequently stop it. They do it in that order, though, of course.”

The sedans get taken care of, and now Slowbeef notes the rather odd way the game handles this infinite ammo situation: the ammo gauge keeps refilling immediately after each bullet is fired, making this not the best level for epileptics. Pretty good sketch as they randomly assign the helicopter pilot the voice of a March of Time narrator, then Patch is defeated just before Jack himself dies. That was exciting. The car flips over and Patch is killed, so as Emperordaein kindly pointed out, after that memorable introduction Patch doesn’t get any more lines, and is even killed off disappointingly early. Jack mopes about how he can’t get any more information now (maybe you should have been a little more careful, then) but picks up a pager from the body. He also notes that Exner will never know he just saved her. Um, with all that gunfire while she was presumably in the building, plus the bodies from Mayhem, Inc., that assassin’s guild out of Broadway? The guys note the same things, with no credits gag again. Getting sloppy.

edited 17th Jun '10 1:14:45 PM by Eegah

Good to see that you are back!

And I am sorry to say that this is the last we will ever see of Mayhem, Inc., that assassin’s guild out of Broadway. I guess they kinda blew all their men on this single assassination. Mayhem, Inc., that assassin’s guild out of Broadway are not exactly the smartest assassins out there.

It's a shame that there weren't any things on the Limo that could have slowed or stopped it. You know, things that allow it to move, and can easily be shot? Oh well. I guess there was no other way.

Seriously though, why couldn't it be that you simply just shoot out the tires, stop the Limo and have a normal boss fight with Patch on the ground. Then to keep the plot moving, he shoots himself in the head to avoid giving Jack any information, with a "This is my final masterpiece!" line.

Patch could have made a good villain. But since he's dead so early, we will have to rely on the rest of the villains, both now and the future!

Oh Crap.

NEXT TIME: Jack becomes a lazy bastard, as we finally get a look into his twisted mind!

PS: For those of you still wondering who the Killer of Frank Slate is, think of the most boring, anticlimatic reveal you could possibly think of.

I am amazed by how awesomely retarded this game is.

^My friend, we have only reached the tip of the Iceberg. Chapter 14 will show you true madness.

And the next level does give you some handy foreshadowing. "This is how Jack Slate sees the world."

Chapter 7

Jack finds the GAC squad at Exner’s hotel, bringing bombs inside. So the big controversial elite police unit is entirely corrupt and willing to murder people. Boy, I didn’t see that one coming. Henessey even gives a good old Evil Laugh to make sure we get it.

Jack finds blueprints, and even wonders why they’re just lying there, a question that goes completely unanswered as far as I recall. Way to point out your own plot holes, Namco. We see the disarm Twist ‘N’ Shoot, where Jack flips a guy over by the neck with his legs before shooting him. “That one was called Physically Impossible To Actually Do To Somebody.” “Not if you’re Jack Slate.” Funny useless bullet time for one guy, then Slowbeef catches us up on the plot, such as it is: we’re saving Exner again. Not a bit of fat in this game, no sir! There’s a brief explanation of why we haven’t seen more human shields: they’re not too suited for an LP with how they just slow everything down. Still, this video does have a good one coming up.

Shadow is sent to sniff for the bombs, the only time besides the tutorial where you learn to control Shadow that it’s ever used. I get the feeling this game was a bit rushed, though not as much as when we hit a certain level later on. Plus, the bombs are always a very short distance from where Shadow starts and out in the open, so it’s really just padding for the illusion of depth. While disarming the first one, it seems Slowbeef was told he was being too critical, so he reiterates how fun the disarming minigame is, even though it’s a bit dull to watch someone else play. “I can see your fingers crossed, by the way.” “Fuck you.” Damn, that sounded disturbingly serious.

Diabetus suggests going after the hotel staff along with GAC members; hey, it would fit in well with some previous levels. Slowbeef points out how the hotel is filled with identical Exner posters: “It’s the only good picture they could find of her.” He moves on to how the GAC squad are among the hardest enemies in the game due to their body armor and heavy weaponry, while Diabetus brings up what many of us probably thought of as soon as they were introduced: the name is a homophone for Gak, the silly putty-esque toy put out by Nickelodeon. This distracts both of them as they rack their brains for memories of the stuff in a pretty amusing sequence. Though neither remembers the disgusting variety that had odors; I had the apple pie one but hardly ever touched it since the smell was so pungent.

Amazing stroke of luck as Slowbeef is almost killed, then sics Shadow on the last enemy and has the camera reveal a health pack right next to him when control returns. It’s only about an eighth of the health bar, but it’s something. He points out that the last GAC squad killed always has the key to the next part of the level, along with a comical dying groan that Diabetus transforms into a surfer voice. “I think it’s important to give each of the hundreds of people you kill some sort of characterization.” Hey, leave it to Medibot. On Slowbeef’s response, it’s clear that he’s putting a cigarette in his mouth and then you can hear him flicking a lighter. Another reason not to smoke: cravings hit at the oddest times.

More Shadow, during which Diabetus takes issue with Jack saying “Good boy” before he does anything. Slowbeef mentions the Game Spot reviewer loved bomb sniffing, to the point where they doubt he even played the game and just assumed playing as a bomb sniffing dog would be awesome. “As long as I’m not beating up prisoners, I’m happy with whatever you give me.” Slowbeef suggests that the pole dancing was so boring on purpose, to make the rest of the game seem more impressive. Not the worst theory I’ve heard.

After that bomb, Jack walks into a presentation room, where a whole bunch of enemies all announce “Target acquired!” “They’re just trying to one-up each other. ‘I found the target!’ ‘No, I did!’ See, they’re homosexual.” And that means Exner is Sarah Palin, apparently. I’m starting to sense some Sanity Slippage. This is also another area where it’s overly easy to get all the way across the room, meaning you have to keep running backwards to spawn more enemies until you get the next card. Diabetus is still shocked by Jack shooting his human shields: “It’s just rude, really.” The card guy apparently says his dying words over his radio, and also “I like to think he holds the card up as he says that, like ‘Well, I’m defeated.’” Unfortunately, they then kill the joke with an overly long “British accents are funny” bit.

Bomb three is the most pathetically hidden yet: “Shadow doesn’t even need to sniff and search, he just makes a beeline right for it. Like, ‘it’s right here, you fucking moron!’” Slowbeef brings up the problem of how beginners will likely assume the bombs are much farther away and run right past them; that never happened to me, though partly because I found the first couple purely by accident before catching on. That’s how easy it is. Diabetus asks if there’s any variety to the bombs; apparently he forgot about the bright ones.

Slowbeef points out the non-physics-y curtains; he’ll come to take that back. “It’s a good thing no one but Gloria Exner is staying at this hotel, apparently.” “A very private hotel that somehow makes a lot of money.” This is despite Slowbeef knowing full well that other guests will turn up later; I guess he got tired of waiting for Diabetus to question it. Sketch about the GAC squad being the guests, then we get my favorite disarm of the game: Sunny Side Up, where Jack lays on the ground and uses machine gun bullets to juggle the guy in the air for a bit. It makes the laws of physics cry, but it’s so damn awesome. “I was drinking water when you did that.” Then a funny moment where a GAC member punches Jack when Slowbeef takes too much time finding the weapon he wants. “He’s like, get away from me, you jerk!” Then Slowbeef gives a long, tortuous explanation of how he tried to save time killing the hallway’s last enemy, but ended up not saving any. Watch the video if you really want to know. And they see that the curtains do move, though it’s not really for the best as their 2D nature becomes clear.

Jack refuses to move on as they haven’t disarmed the hallway’s bomb yet, Jack apparently telepathically knowing there is one. “Also, I think I have people to kill.” “Jack smells human flesh, can’t resist leaving it untouched.” This bomb is even in a pretty small room, making the use of Shadow even more pointless than before. Jack is even still visible in the shot of Shadow finding it, as Slowbeef delights in pointing out. “Fun fact, Shadow’s not even a bomb sniffing dog. He just has better eyesight than Slate.” “He just has an IQ over 50.” “He is the smartest character in this game, as you will be finding.” Are they going for Memetic Badass here? Because it’s kind of working. Diabetus rather randomly brings up the lousy acting of Jack reacting to Eve’s death, while Slowbeef assures him more romantic interests are on the way. Um, in a sense, I guess. This gets them arguing over whether Eve even counted as a love interest; oh my god, this is me and my brother all of a sudden.

With the last bomb defused, we get a cutscene where Henessey orders the rest of the GAC squad in. And then he sets off other bombs that were in the hotel, making the last 10+ minutes of game play entirely pointless. “I think that is standard SWAT procedure, to just run out and shoot everybody.” “No matter what your mission is.” A new gimmick is introduced, as now the hotel is on fire and Jack has to clear each floor before the temperature rises to the top of a thermometer indicator. There’s actually more to this than the glorified time limit it sounds like, but as we’ll see it’s still not really worth it. “I might need to take my own temperature rectally.” And then one of the video’s two highlights, as Jack takes a human shield to a bed. It looks just as obscene as you’re imagining. Slowbeef also tells us about the rather uninspired “temperature too high” text that happens if you don’t make it in time. I never had the patience to wait around to see what happened, but I’ll definitely take his word for it.

Jack picks up a bright yellow fire extinguisher, and tries to make the line “I can use this” sound sexy. “Wait, Shadow, I need you to find the fire.” See, there’s little patches of fire that you can spray out to lower the temperature and give yourself a little more time, though there’d be a bit more involvement if you didn’t actually have to spray them to continue. And then one of the biggest highlights of the LP with “How Jack Slate sees the world:” Slowbeef enters the first person view and looks at a random woman standing in the hall, with her health bar labeled “Target.” She gives Jack another card, and he advises her to “stay low and get out of here,” a sound bite we’ll be quite familiar with by the end of this level. Oddly, she continues just standing there. The developers got lazy again. Slowbeef also starts a Running Gag about the Target family, though we won’t be seeing the real payoff for some time.

And then the most bizarre part of the fire extinguishing: they effectively have infinite fuel as the level would be Unwinnable if you ran out, which the game tries to compensate for by having them always just happen to run out once you’ve cleared one path. This first time it’s even worse, as the next bit of fire is just ahead so you’re given another extinguisher immediately. “The tension was palpable there for a couple seconds.” Slowbeef shoots the fire for no apparent reason: “Can you sic Shadow on the fire?” “Uh, yes.” He also points out how quickly the fire will drain your health; yeah, I learned that the hard way.

More shooting, then Jack finds a random guy voiced by a particularly unenthusiastic actor. Dude, you were just held hostage in a burning building, put some life into it! “That’s Sheila’s brother, Robert Target.” Slowbeef takes the opportunity to do some enticing Foreshadowing to the payoff of the Target gag. Another extinguisher, and we get the rather amusing sight of Wall Mode with it. “Any fires around here?” “Surprise, fire!” Another human shield, so Slowbeef notes another reason he doesn’t like using them is that to get close enough to a group to take one probably requires killing most of them anyway. “Well, that’s the Jack Slate way.” Then, the Crazy Awesome of bullet time dive extinguishing! “I wish firemen did this. Take out fires in style. Like, do backflips and shit.”

Jack reaches the top floor and declares Exner has to be there. “Why?” “Exner’s got to be up here because I’ve killed everyone else on all the other floors.” A hostage shouts for help while offscreen: “That was the player thinking out loud.” Fun bit where a GAC member shouts for backup while already dead. The hostage is identical to the last guy: “That was the third Target sibling, Jimmy Target.” Diabetus points out that the thermometer gauge is gone, which Slowbeef seems to have never noticed before. “The temperature, ah, who cares at this point?” “Once you’re on the top floor of a burning building, that’s the safest place to be.” “My theory is Jack Slate can only concentrate on one thing for so long.” Cue long sketch about Shadow being the real brains of the outfit, which is pretty good but no way I’m quoting the whole thing.

Jack meets Exner, who’s voiced by Jennifer Griffen, best known as Fred’s mother from Angel. And you know what that means: Escort Mission time! You really might want to ease up on those at this point. Though this isn’t really what people talk about when they say that term with such venom, as Exner will always run and hide when the bullets start flying. And you get to hear more bad acting fun with Exner’s breathless thanks whenever Jack saves her ass. “Maybe I will vote for her.” Slowbeef goes to first person view again just to confirm that they remembered to name Exner on her health bar: “Jack Slate’s liberal tendencies started to kick in there for a second.”

They get to the roof, and the boss music starts rather prematurely. Exner also suddenly runs far ahead of Jack for no reason. The boss is a fellow named Antorcha, who seems to just be a GAC member in better body armor with a flamethrower. There’s also more of the endlessly spawning Mooks that were so much fun while fighting Horse. “The boss is called Action Movie Cliché Lines. Let’s do this! I’ve got your number! It’s just you and me! In a world!” In the middle of that, Jack takes a shotgun blast point blank to the face. Not quite as funny as when he’s just punched, but up there. Antorcha shows off some Offscreen Teleportation, but with circle strafing he can be taken down pretty easily. I miss Patch. Jack’s Bond One-Liner after killing him is “Don’t you boys know it’s not safe to play with matches?” Which is another one that makes no sense as there weren’t any matches here.

Jack and Exner climb down the drain pipe, then have a rather sudden and pointless romantic moment before getting to business. Exner had sent Frank to investigate the subway project; who could have seen this coming? Rather pointless black screen right in the middle of the scene, then Exner goes back to trying to seduce Jack, leading to the funny visual of the character model freaking out while the voice acting doesn’t change at all. He sends Exner to Frank’s cabin, then Patch’s beeper goes off and says something about the pier. And the mystery of where Grant City is continues.

edited 22nd Jun '10 7:13:06 PM by Eegah

Antorcha is the Hobo's Fury

NEXT TIME!: Jack Slate declares war on the fishing industry! But will he be able to defeat their ultimate human weapon, a man bread for death and fish? A man with one of the most hilariously stupid names ever?

Also! We get introduced to more villains! Will these be the ones responsible for everything?

Nope.

edited 22nd Jun '10 11:11:50 PM by Emperordaein

Elsewhere

It never did get any easier, no matter how many times he told himself it would. As he slowly walked up the graveled walkway, he found himself clutching the small white envelope harder and harder until the thin paper almost ripped at the edges. A lawn-gnome leered at him from the edge of a small pond, a rictus grin crudely painted on his mishappen clay face. It made him look immensely sad. "You and me both buddy." Gershwin whispered. The gnome did not deign a response.

The ringing of the doorbell had barely subsided as the door opened. A women in her thirties opened. She was dressed in a blue jumper and khaki pants, and she looked like she had just came from the kitchen, judging by the wooden ladle still in her hands. Gershwin knew her well. "Mrs Antorcha, Caroline..." he said. His face must have been like an open book, because she immediately froze. The ladle clattered against the floor. "It's... it's about Douglas." he continued, even though it was unnecessary. As she fell into his arms sobbing, he caught a glimpse of little Bobby at the top of the stairwell. He began to tremble, quite against his will. He still had more visits to do today. "Damn you Slate... damn you." he whispered.

Gotta love Erenthal.

Chapter 8 Part 1

That page came from Gopher, who you might recall as the one name Silt was able to tell us before being killed by a woman who ended up being completely pointless. The plot thickens, sort of. Gopher has another funny Cockney accent, and after telling him Patch is dead, Jack just stands there and lets him run away. We need to get a level out of this meeting somehow.

Slowbeef points out how all the even numbered levels involve chasing someone; I have no explanation. This being docks and warehouses, the enemies are now fishermen in ponchos, who we got a preview of in the graveyard. New disarm in Rolling Thunder: Jack grabs the gun and rolls across the guy’s back before hitting his chin with it and shooting him. It’s a letdown after the insanity of Sunny Side Up. Slowbeef gives us a good view of the moon; apparently he finds that bit of graphics impressive, then once more sums up the plot for anyone falling behind, even though Jack himself did a pretty good job in his opening narration.

“Fishermen and longshoremen, the worst of all foes.” “Mercenary fishermen! They live by no rules, and they live under their king, a most dangerous fellow!” Is that a reference to something? A catwalk is full of random crates: “Crates are when game designers just run out of ideas. They can’t think of anything, so they just load it full of crates.” “Your greatest adversary yet.” We see the level’s gimmick: instead of just getting keys to doors from the last man killed, you get keys that operate a switch that opens a door. So just an extra bit of pointless busywork, then. Deep! “Jack Slate doesn’t like fishing. He thinks it’s boring. And there’s not enough gunplay involved.” Diabetus compliments the variety of settings, but Slowbeef doesn’t think much of it: “It’s kind of like they shuffled the setting deck, and then were just like, ‘How do I write a story around all this shit?’” I wouldn’t be surprised if that actually is how the game was made. “I still can’t work werewolves into level 11. You’re fired! You go work for Konami or some shit, asshole. This is Namco Home Tech, we don’t fuck around!”

Pointless cutscene of Gopher shooting at Jack: “Apparently he doesn’t have auto targeting.” Now Jack heads across some boats and connecting decks, while Slowbeef decides to give the fishermen pirate accents. “Is there any difference, really?” More rifle sniping: “I’m like fucking Gogo 13 over here.” No idea what he’s talking about, which I’m sure has some of you sneering at me. Another bit of lock picking, where you have to fight more enemies if you fail. “Fishermen take their lock picking very seriously. ‘I sense somebody didn’t pick a lock correctly. That pisses me off.’” Yes, thank you for explaining the joke. “I can’t really imagine Jack doing anything with finesse, either. (Jack shoots a guy point blank with a shotgun) Case in point.”

Out of nowhere, Diabetus comes up with “Jack Crates!” which one of the Viddler commenters had actually predicted when the crates first came up. He’s properly congratulated in another comment. “You blew directly through him and showered the wall, and he still ran towards you. These fishermen are hardy!” Slowbeef takes the time to show off an apparently pointless door in the corner, and is coy about what it means. Diabetus takes issue with his calling the keys “puzzles,” and suddenly it’s me and my brother again.

Back outside, there’s a big cutscene showing an ominous sniper, who’s killed in a few seconds. “Looks like these fishermen are out of water. That’s me as Jack Slate.” Seriously, stop doing that! It seems someone in the forum mentioned an “upgrade” to the game called Kill Switch, which improves the gameplay. I’ve never heard of it outside this video, so I can’t comment. “It’s insane, the lock picking you’ve got to do.”

Another fun targeting glitch as it insists Jack shoot the guys on the catwalk above him rather than the ones right in front of him. “No, you want the ones upstairs. Those guys are assholes. They snubbed me once at a party. Fuck them!” “Those guys are bad bass!” And miraculously he actually leaves it at that. Slowbeef makes a joke about Deadliest Catch, which I’ve never seen. “They’re all war criminals on that show, basically.” The guys get an impressive run out of an enemy simply saying “Come on;” my favorite: “The helicopter in the graveyard shot him twenty times!”

Outside again, for an especially pointless cutscene of a guy on a roof. “That’s not safe, get down from there!” “Jack Slate, chaperone.” “Are you gonna buckle your seat belts on the school bus?” Diabetus must have had safer school buses than l did as a kid. Then, grenade launcher! Unfortunately there’s no disarms for it, and Slowbeef points out a bug that you can’t shoot a human shield with it. I never got stuck like that, but again I’ll definitely buy it. And now’s when the level really starts getting desperate for the appearance of variety, as you pick up wire cutters to disable a burglar alarm. In other words, the exact same thing as the key and switch stuff with different names attached. And you have to traverse this entire rather large area twice more to disable the alarm and then go back to the next door. Seriously, screw you Namco for that one. Though it does let Diabetus start trying to figure out what that mysterious door was about. Unfortunately Slowbeef spoils the fun after a couple guesses, though on the off chance any of you are actually reading this without the video playing for reasons I can’t fathom, I’ll leave it to be revealed.

Instant gunshot when Jack enters the now alarm-less door, which seems unusually loud. Not sure if that’s the game or the recorder. “Don’t interrupt our meeting!” “We’re talking about fish!” Diabetus claims Jack shot first this time, despite that instant gunshot. And the Sanity Slippage continues. Plus a little more when Slowbeef claims the acromyn of the Grant City Fisherman’s Association would be pronounced “gaffa.” Random wall mode against a steel door: “Hey, keep that clean! Read the sign, dude.” First person to show that there’s no way up to the room’s catwalk: “I don’t know why I thought that was interesting.”

The helicopter returns and drops off more clowns. Jack’s response: “Not these clowns again,” which I honestly have no idea whether it’s supposed to be a one-liner or not. “Want to hear my Jack Slate impression? I thought these guys were still on the graveyard shift!” Nice on its own, though the overly long Sarcasm Mode about how good the impression is kills things a bit. There’s finally another canister to throw, though the scenery screws things up as Jack can only throw them in a specific arc depending on how far away the target is. “Just lob it higher, you dickhead!”

The helicopter starts shooting again, completely drowning out Jack’s line about needing a rocket launcher to take it out. “He hinted at that like a Christmas gift.” And what do you know, there just so happens to be one right in the middle of the area. “This wharf has everything!” It takes four rockets to kill the helicopter and the launcher can only hold two, but fortunately it respawns. Plus there’s all kinds of impenetrable cover around so this fight is incredibly easy. “Max Payne this is not.” “At least it’s not like a Steven Segal movie where if you shoot it twice with a pistol, it bursts into flames.” Slowbeef claims that happens in the second game; can anyone confirm this? Now the door is reinforced, but luckily there’s a forklift pointed straight at it, and this time you don’t even have to pick a lock to start it. Ole!

Inside again, where Jack shoots one guy before he can finish his shout “You ain’t so...” “I was gonna say handsome!” They manage to turn this into yet another Overly Long Gag that I’ll skip again. And here the game’s mechanic of giving the last enemy killed the keycard gets a little weird, as it’s the guy who was a shield the whole time. Makes you wonder if they could have just killed him to get the card. “Looks like you were able to fish that out of him. Roof!” Jack needs to find another switch: “It’s like the Resident Evil version of a goddamn wharf. What do they even ship into this city, more guns?” Slowbeef manages to take the longest route possible to the switch, before a great routine of the next enemy just being upset at Jack for flipping it.

The next room starts with Slowbeef teasing a special gimmick. For a certain definition, that’s the truth. “When I think assassins, I think ponchos. Lots and lots of ponchos.” “Well, assassins hate the rain. They’re like witches that way.” Slowbeef makes sure to grab a human shield, and explains this special gimmick: the next door can only be opened with the weight of two people. Diabetus’ sheer disbelief is beautiful. And of all the weird things shoved into this level, this is easily the worst. It’s nothing but a beginner’s trap that makes you fight your way through the whole room over again, hopefully able to hold on to one guy when you’re finished this time. In-universe it makes even less sense, as Jack could easily just dump a couple bodies on the platform. “Thanks for your help, by the way!”

Next is the freezer room, with a quite comical looking set of quickly raising and lowering metal doors. “It’s Jack Slate, close the door!” Graphic glitch where Shadow jumps through a block of ice. “Jesus, they froze some huge fish!” On the catwalk, you can see a huge shark hanging from the ceiling that almost goes unnoticed as the guys are in the middle of speculating what’s in all those ice blocks. The newest gimmick is that Jack has to raise the room’s temperature for a pressurized seal to release on the next door. So you guessed it, another glorified switch hunting puzzle. Jack’s very prissy when he talks about it, too. “Shadow’s like, mm hm, mm hm.” “Jack’s like, if only I still had that thermometer with me, from the hotel.” That line’s in a Southern accent, just because. Pointless shot at the shark, which isn’t fazed: “This is the liquid nitrogen room, is the trick.”

Once Slowbeef gets to the next hallway, you can tell he was really getting tired of this level. There’s no strategy; he just keeps running straight ahead mowing down anyone in his way. “Look, it’s a fisherman’s office. Just full of crates. Of fish!” He has a tendency not to trust his own jokes, I’m noticing. They note the lack of strategy: “It’s like, I get it. There’s fish.” Now he really starts getting frustrated in the comments as well, like he’d forgotten just how long the video was.

“That’s him!” “That’s me.” The graphics get a bit overloaded, giving us an extra slow motion Twist ‘N’ Shoot that Diabetus just laughs at uncontrollably. “I like to think Jack comes up with those himself. What do I call what I just did that looks so awesome?” The music cuts out, building more hope for the boss, but first the game makes you walk through a completely empty room. How does that even happen? Though it does contain fans that can’t hurt you, which Slowbeef takes the time to demonstrate. “I guess that’s my biggest fan. Roof!”

The next room is exactly the same. Well, except for the dead Gopher pinned to a block of ice by a bunch of arrows. Jack attempts a Bond One-Liner about the boss’ outfit, but really it’s just describing it. “I think he realized it wasn’t very good halfway through.” And that’s when Slowbeef points out the boss name: Longshoreman X. Both of them completely lose it, as you'd expect. “He’s not just a long’s whore man!” Um, good one. Slowbeef warns people not to take strategy tips from this fight, though I did pretty much the same thing and won. The big gimmick here is that your armor doesn’t matter, as the arrows will cut into your health no matter how much you have. Though that doesn’t stop them from putting a respawning armor in the room for no reason at all. “Uh, he lived up to his name?”

Jack’s badly hurt when the cutscene starts, so they clearly did expect you to take a few hits. He makes it to the Oarhouse before collapsing, where Hildy takes him inside. Weird little Mind Screw shots of her fixing Jack up, and then he hides in the back room as we meet the newest villain: Rafshoom Diggs. Not making that up even a little bit. He brings up yet another bad guy named Fahook (oh, we’ll get to him later, believe it) before Jack comes out…and Rafshoom (I will never get tired of typing that) takes him out with whacks to the face and groin. Now I’ll be playing that part of the video a few more times, if you don’t mind.

edited 5th Jul '10 12:04:57 PM by Eegah

^Somebody on the thread made a GIF out that last part.

What really gets me about the Longshoreman X fight, is why he killed Gopher for no reason whatsoever. My theory is that Gopher was actually applying for a popular form of acupuncture. Tragically, it was Longshoreman X's first day and he wanted to show off by using his Crossbow for the job. You can see how well it went.

Chapter 8 Part 2

Jack recaps all the questions that now need to be answered, along with a pretty cool POV shot as he’s strung up upside-down over a water tank. We meet Fahook, ruler of a Banana Republic who also has two scantily-clad female minions who just stand silently in the background. All very necessary, I’m sure. He doesn’t quite believe that Jack still doesn’t know what’s going on, leading to our next minigame: drowning.

Yes, it’s called drowning rather than breath-holding, as if that’s what you want to do. And you can bet the guys don’t let this go unnoticed. Pretty simple stuff: mash buttons to stop a notch on a bar from going down three times, for an increasingly long time limit. Rather pointless, too, as Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him? really comes to mind. As far as I can tell knowing what the big conspiracy really is, there’s no incentive at all for any of the villains to keep Jack alive. “This is where you put your speed level four training to use.” And of course Jack makes a lame quip each time he’s pulled out: “Uh, good one, Jack.” Slowbeef claims to have actually held his breath while playing it, which is just crazy enough to be believable. “Shadow’s enjoying this.”

After three times under, Bambi and Thumper get a radio call which the stupid accents and deep voices make unintelligible. “I have never understood a word of that.” Whatever it says, they leave so Shadow can push a button to drop the chain Jack’s hanging from. While his hands are still presumably chained to his sides, which doesn’t seem good for his chances. And the button has a green hit box around it, hinting that there was another Shadow controlling section here that got cut out. You can’t possibly top the bomb sniffing, so why even try?

Somehow we next see Jack free of the chains and thanking Shadow, for which Diabetus’ comment is “The end.” Slowbeef cracks up; yeah, the game is really getting to them. Slowbeef also brings up Jack reading a book on Houdini in the opening cutscene, as this is his best guess on what it has to do with the rest of the game. He starts to talk about the guy Jack fights as well but never gets to finish; anyone have any ideas? Anyway, now we’ve regressed all the way to fighting construction workers again. Slowbeef once again promises this stuff will get good, which sounds a little pathetic now that we’re halfway through the game. “This is that asshole who killed Longshoreman X!” “You’ll never get Supervisor X, not as long as-oh.”

Awesome timing on one Shadow attack, as one of the enemies says “You ain’t so bad” even as the guy right next to him is getting his throat ripped out. “You ain’t so bad, but your dog, Jesus Christ!” Diabetus brings up the Fridge Logic that even unarmed, Jack should be able to pull off the Twist ‘N’ Shoot and simply omit the shot to the head afterward; “You need a gun to fully pull it off, otherwise there’s no flair!” Another Shadow attack with an unfortunate camera angle making it look like the guy’s being attacked by Jack’s crotch. “Um, okay.” Slowbeef again brings up the previous cutscene, which he’s watched several times and still can’t understand a single word. Personally, I find the lines from the radio perfectly clear but can’t understand the twins at all, and I actually suspect they’re speaking some foreign language.

There’s a quite involved discussion about why none of the enemies have guns, which includes Slowbeef saying the construction workers from the first level were in the union. Stand by for Brick Joke. Diabetus gets a real kick out of one guy’s gruff-voiced taunt: “GRR, I’m tough!” They get back onto Longshoreman X, “the best named boss of all fucking time.” And Diabetus wants to give it to his son: “I won’t have my son being a foreman or supervisor!” Now we get the rather bizarre tidbit that a forklift is in the area for no reason, despite it having a clear path to the next locked door. But no, it’s just another case of beating people up until you get the one with the key. “Why doesn’t Jack try the direct approach? You know, ‘Which one of you guys has a key?”

Once back inside, Jack says these guys are giving the union a bad name, and Slowbeef is outraged it took him this long to go there. He thinks they came up with the joke in chapter one; um, just a couple minutes ago, actually. Still, Brick Joke away! This somehow gets them talking like they made the game: “I initially named the character Max Superpayne, but it didn’t quite work out.” More guys with guns, which means a new disarm: Jack just walks up and snaps their necks with rather wimpy animation. “Did you break his neck or slap him?” There’s also quite a few enemies clustered together, so naturally we see them all just stand around while Jack repeatedly does this. “He’s like, wow, that’s really impressive, Jack! Where’d you learn to do that? Ow, my back!” “SHUT UP!” And then a piece of awkwardness where the game spawns the enemy with the key in a rather inconvenient place, forcing Slowbeef to wander around aimlessly for a while. Though as far as I can recall, this isn’t a regular problem with this area. We do get a nice sarcastic run about the Scenery Porn, though. “Seriously, though, where’s Supervisor X?”

“And now, fishermen. Did I mention Chapter 8 was one of the levels I was worried about?” The clowns return, prompting Slowbeef to insist this makes things less dull. Diabetus brings up more Fridge Logic about how they’re wearing the masks even on their own turf: “Maybe they’re just jolly.” Next area features an elevator; variety! They awkwardly banter a bit before Slowbeef just loses it: “Clowns, stupid game, it’s so repetitive!” Diabetus calls Slowbeef on his promise that the game gets better in its second half, which he still sticks to: “It’s tons better! Would you rather be in prison picking up cigarettes?” “I’d rather go actual fishing than…” “Well, it’s fun! And there’s disarms…” Slowbeef then guesses we’ve forgotten about Rafshoom already; yeah, not the best idea to introduce two muscular guys with funny accents right after each other. I know I thought they were the same guy my first time through. “There’s only 63 villains, it’s not hard to keep them all…” The guys are really having trouble finishing their sentences all of a sudden.

Outside again, with a quite cool-looking bullet time dive down a staircase. But Diabetus has to be a buzzkill: “That is NOT safe.” Somehow Slowbeef uses Shadow on a guy right in front of him, and gets a grenade launcher which he promptly fires into the dumpster right in front of his face. There’s more lock-picking to do, but Jack won’t do it until everyone’s dead. To paraphrase him, kind of an odd time to get realistic about that, but hey. The guys are left hilariously speechless at his latest attempt to mock the clowns: “These guys are worse than mimes.” Writers, if you can’t come up with good jokes about a certain kind of enemy, use a different kind of enemy!

Past the lock picking, we’ve reached the room that was reused, in which that mysterious door now works. Diabetus is still a little surprised that this is actually happening; “Maybe they’re just trying to get in Jack’s mind.” “Maybe. I can’t even think of anything; this is so fucking boring.” Diabetus gets upset again over the promise that the game would improve, and Slowbeef doesn’t help himself by saying this level is good seconds after that last quote. “This level’s great, but it’s so fucking horrible!” Just hold on, the plane level isn’t too far now! The mysterious door turns out to be a tiny room with another locked door on the other side. Oh, kill me now. “Are you even making progress in this level?” “No.” “Okay.”

Killing more guys for the key, then Slowbeef teases that there’s another Longshoreman X fight. If I was Diabetus I think I would actually take him at his word at this point. After a limp little Triple-X riff to cover Slowbeef wandering around aimlessly some more, they resort to simply repeating the game’s title. It’s official, we’ve reached Manos levels of desperation. Slowbeef claims the weight pad was the level’s best innovation; oh, I definitely beg to differ. After a threat of another drowning game, Diabetus loses it some more. “I can’t even tell if you’re lying or not. I’m expecting you to go through a door and suddenly Jack Slate is suspended upside-down for no reason.” Slowbeef realizes he forgot one of his plans for the LP to make Diabetus think he was joking about a boss called Longshoreman X. Could have been fun, but that laugh of sheer disbelief definitely makes up for it. It also turns out neither of them know what a longshoreman is; not fans of The Wire, I guess.

We finally get some plot progression when Jack steps outside and sees Hildy being put into a limo. And how does he respond? Shouting her name, then hiding behind a box. Look, either dive into danger to get her, or use the stealth approach. This is just weird. “It’s the beginning of the fucking level!” Huge slam on Halo out of nowhere; apparently Diabetus thinks it’s also too repetitive or something. Slowbeef notes his overreliance on the Rolling Thunder disarm lately; yeah, Sunny Side Up is the only one you can truly never get tired of. Very awkward bit where they discuss Jack’s failure at stealth and say Solid Snake would be “unproud” of him. “Whatever, it’s been 45 minutes!”

Finally a bit more visual variety as Jack goes past some trucks, though Slowbeef is disappointed in the graphics. “What is this, Playstation One? Come on!” One last gunfight, while Diabetus takes comfort in seeing that the progress bar is almost at the end. You’ve got one up on the Sonic ’06 L Pers there. Slowbeef suggests cutting everything between the drowning and the last cutscene; not like anyone would miss it though there are still some good laughs here.

And that cutscene features one of the trucks starting up and going after Jack with its headlights at full blast. And yet somehow Jack still needs Shadow to inform him that he’s about to be run over. He shoots the driver, and the truck fishtails and spills its contents: hundreds of gold bars. Jack’s reaction is so insane it needs to be quoted in full: “The truck spilled its contents like a Biblical revelation. This was all about gold. Money. The root of all evil.” Dammit writer, this isn’t Se7en, and you’re not being deep! Another truck takes off, the driver apparently not concerned at all about what just happened, and Jack and Shadow jump into the back. And that’s it for the game’s longest, dullest level. All glory to the cactus king!

The guys take just as much issue with the whole scene, Diabetus also missing the wimpy little sound effect from the last time Jack almost got run over. So, a major plot twist. Let’s see if it goes anywhere good.

edited 5th Jul '10 12:08:52 PM by Eegah

Chapter 9

The truck stops at a warehouse, where Jack makes what Diabetus aptly calls his most film noir introduction yet. It ends with “The place was pure gold. Literally.” I’m really starting to suspect that English was not this writer’s first language.

Slowbeef makes the rather odd decision to use Shadow during a bullet time dive, then comments that he turned the random disarms on for this chapter. “You’ve just removed Jack’s only sense of inhibition. You don’t know what you’ve turned loose onto the world.” Although as we’ll see, Jack still has a bit of a preference in disarms, shall we say. “I just felt bad about chapter 8. It just went on.” “Oh, you think?” The room’s upper level floods with guys, as Slowbeef puts it much to his regret, including another Cockney guy. There’s another canister available, quite convenient as throwing them onto higher ground is the only real advantage to using them.

A whole bunch of guys are gathered at the top of the stairs, and somehow the grating of the catwalk is bulletproof, so Jack has to get into their range to shoot the handy canister next to them. “Hey guys, just hang tight for a second. Thank you.” Neck snap (One!) followed by a new kind of lame disarm where Jack just pushes the guy down and shoots him. It’s called And F’n Stay Down, which Slowbeef takes care to point out is the actual in-game title. “Is that the proper way to spell that?” I’ve always used “Effin” myself. Lock picking, for which you get a health pack if you fail so it can theoretically go on forever. Of course, Slowbeef takes the opportunity to tease that this will be the whole video.

A cutscene is devoted to Jack simply saying “Time to bring the fight to them.” As opposed to what you were doing last level? Jack has a small machine gun which is just pathetic, with bad accuracy and low power. “It only takes about ten head shots. I hated that box.” Diabetus comments “His head was not so fragile” after a human shield kill. He’s still a little logy from the last level, I think.

Next room is a gold smelting plant, and if you can look at it without thinking of an unfortunate schmelting accident you’re a better person than I. Neck snap (Two!), before Slowbeef makes an ominous statement about how long we’ll be looking at this room. “This is where they melt steel for all the guns produced in Grant City.” “For all the guns produced for Jack Slate to use?” Rather bizarrely, at the next locked door Jack specifies that he needs a “plant key.” I have no idea why they recorded a different sound bite for that instance, but it’ll get worse a bit later. Before heading downstairs, Slowbeef shows off the limits of the engine as it appears there’s no one down there from upstairs.

Slowbeef explains how there are no checkpoints in this rather lengthy room, and the game helpfully demonstrates how tough it can be when an enemy takes an entire machine gun clip and still needs a human shield head shot to make him stay down. Though immediately afterwards he runs into a guy who’s just sitting and doing nothing. “He was just having a cigarette and huh?” “There’s also foremen here, which I’m just gonna say is, yeah.” I really think he needs a break. After Jack gets the key, the madness continues, as the camera pans over to the door. This is the only level where that happens, and as Slowbeef points out it’s pretty much useless as Jack passed the door on his way down. Neck snap (Three!): “I call that the Dumpster Disarm.” “I think there’s a laser light show to keep the workers happy. They could use some more ammo. Uh, Jack Slate has planted all these bizarre Freudian Slips in my head.” The game is nice enough to give you a full health pack on your way up, so it seems the designers did know how hard they were making things.

Though first Jack has to get back up the stairs, made a lot harder than it sounds by one of the more pointless Camera Screws I’ve seen. A couple more disarms, with the simple one from the first level which we finally learn is called the No Brainer. The other is Jack hitting the guy a couple times before shooting him, for which Diabetus suggests The Unnecessary. Another hallway, and Jack comments “Time to take out the trash.” Diabetus audibly runs out of steam in the middle of explaining why this doesn’t make sense; he’s really had a hard time on this. He even wants Jack to have been dunked in the molten gold for the drowning game. Two more neck snaps (Four! Five!), including a video glitch where Jack apparently becomes a Jedi. “Is that called the telekinesis disarm?” Then one more (Six!) and finally they notice how damn much the randomizer likes that disarm. Though next we get to see the much foreshadowed Bullet to the Head, which is actually a lot cooler than it sounds: Jack twists the guy’s arm around his back and makes him blow his own brains out. “That’s called a great trick to show off at parties.” It happens again with a shotgun, and renamed A Perfect Ten, though I have no idea why. One more which is called Hard Boiled, with Jack twisting the arm, kicking the guy, then shooting him. I’ll assume that happens in the movie, though I don’t recall it.

Past the hallway is another smelting plant, with the exact same map as the last one. Good thing Slowbeef warned us. Jack starts to piece things together, but only gets as far as saying the gold supply under Grant City wasn’t actually exhausted during the Gold Rush before we get back to the game. I have no idea why they decided to structure things this way. Slowbeef is nice enough to repeat all that exposition, since the story is really getting complicated now. “So instead of producing gold, the city produced grant money?” Oh, and another neck snap (Seven!). He also reminds us how this ties back to the newspaper articles from the opening cutscene, in the only clear relevance any of it has. And he’s nice enough to take care of the enemies on the lower floor (this time they are visible from above) so some audio clips down there will be more audible. More mocking of Incredibly Lame Puns before Diabetus gets Jack jumping into the gold vats into his head. Unfortunately, those pits from the escape tunnel are the only instant kill obstacle in the game.

Jack: “Hmm, that’s a lot of gold, and I doubt Fort Knox was having a yard sale.” They really weren’t even trying by now. “Now, I need a joke about gold. I’ve got Fort Knox maybe…like, why would Fort Knox be having a yard sale?” And Slowbeef also points out that Jack already knew about the gold, including that nonsensical line from the start of the level. Remarkable how one line can fail in so many ways. Downstairs features the room’s one difference from the last one in a pair of turret guns, with Jack noting it’ll take some smarts to get past them. Like going off to the side and blowing them up from there, which is what Slowbeef does and what I did, and if there’s supposed to be some other really smart way to do it I have no idea what it is. A tank keeps us from seeing a disarm (“It’s called The Clipthrough”) but judging from the sound effect I’m calling another neck snap (Eight!). And another we can see just to make it up (Nine!). It turns out Diabetus hasn’t seen Hard Boiled; dude, you’re seriously missing out. Pretty weird bit where Jack needs a card, he gets a card, but then he still needs to kill one more person on the upper level. “Why doesn’t it just say ‘Too many people alive’?” Two more neck snaps on the way back up, including one in slow motion (Ten! Eleven!). Diabetus declares this level worse than 8, which I can’t agree with just because it’s half as long. Slowbeef teases an upcoming boss that tops Longshoreman X, and I’m pretty sure I know who he’s talking about. Man, level 14 is awesome.

Slowbeef says the game’s repetitiveness is almost over, which Diabetus refuses to believe. Can’t say I blame him. Another hallway, where Jack decides to continue the story: there’s still plenty of gold under Grant City, but so deep that only modern equipment can get to it. “It’s like he was thinking of the story before, but got interrupted by all those guys, and now it’s like, oh, it’s a little quiet. I can continue that thought.” Another Bullet to the Head, so Slowbeef inexplicably says the randomizer really likes it. Luckily he immediately gets the chance to correct himself with another neck snap (Twelve!).

Slowbeef shares a quite interesting theory that this level was actually the first one to be developed, given the involvement of the gold from the intro that was forgotten until now, plus the pans over to the door you’ve picked up the key for. “How are we gonna set this up? What do you mean, you have 20 maps?” A special slow motion neck snap (Thirteen!) as Slowbeef cops to splicing together two playthroughs for this video, because he just knows some insane people are going to notice sudden changes in his health and armor. “You got one extra bullet, Slowbeef. You trying to swindle us out of our Let’s Play money?”

Turns out the next room contains prisoners, and Diabetus is on the verge of tears at the thought of more melee. Luckily these guys have guns. Slowbeef starts to get What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? about the gold, but is sidetracked by a ridiculously tough guard who takes the clips of three different weapons to kill. “Enough with the fucking neck snap! Jesus!” (Fourteen!) More Fridge Logic as the room contains several truck containers deep inside the building. So are they just dragged here and back, or what? Suddenly Tattoo is back, and his introductory audio clip is severely bugged. It apparently took Slowbeef a few tries to get as much as we hear in the video. And this time Tattoo doesn’t even have the two invincible henchmen, so he’s just a guy with a gun. He’s quickly taken down with a extra-slow bullet time dive during which Jack even has time to reload. Tattoo’s final line is perhaps the most bizarrely delivered of all this guy’s stuff, as he seems to turn into a lizard. From the thread, people were fearing another sewer level, which technically isn’t the case: we just go through the same one backwards. This gets Diabetus crying again.

Awkward camera angle makes it look like a guard walks right by. “Hey Jack!” Finally another Sunny Side Up; “Jack is delighted to be back in this level!” This time there’s no map, but enemies only appear in the tunnels you need to follow. Mmm, convenient. Slowbeef promises a superweapon soon, which Diabetus threatens to write for posterity. Though this time it actually is the truth. The level’s too big for the engine to handle, but one point doesn’t feature any cutscene, so the screen just goes black for a second for no reason. It makes up for it afterwards though, as that interminable ledge is suddenly wide enough to just run across. Slowbeef gets a little confused on the timeline, thinking it’s been dug out in seven months, when those seven months actually passed before the first time we saw it. And then the superweapon: for the only time in the game, you get to use a flamethrower. It kills anyone in one hit, and is quite cool to watch too. Flamethrowing rampage down the tunnel; “Jack’s just going ho hum, de dum de dum.” “This is the best day of my life!”

Jack emerges from the tunnels at the construction site where Frank was killed. Which doesn’t even begin to make sense, but we have exposition to get to. Somehow, getting here gives Jack more insight that the subway construction is a front for Pinnacle to get to the gold. Which means, that’s right, Jack’s going to take up his grievances with City Hall! The guys are also confused about this apparent Creek Moment and cook up a great sketch about how Shadow told Jack everything. Slowbeef tries to fanwank that Jack actually got into a subway tunnel at the end of the level and took it all the way to the site, but hey, he also said the game would get awesome by now. “Is City Hall an actual level? Do you get to blow shit up in City Hall?” “Oh, you’ll see.”

edited 8th Jul '10 12:52:20 PM by Eegah

Actually the boss Slowbeef is referring to is in Level 13. It has to be seen to be believed.

NEXT TIME: Jack Slate takes a trip down filler memory lane!

Chapter 10

And so we come to the game’s most pointless level, which at this point is really saying something. Slowbeef even adds on the ending cutscene from the last chapter just to fill it out a bit. Jack now has to fight his way through the construction site again, and despite this level following immediately from the previous one, he’s lost all his weapons. So that means more melee, after which Jack wants more guns before continuing. “I’d better get some guns first. God, I’m an idiot!” Now it’s Slowbeef’s turn to break down crying. “You just had guns, Jack!”

Slowbeef brings up Diabetus’ earlier Halo comment to point out the game is now doing the same thing of playing through earlier levels backwards. He claims this is the last one, but I don’t think he even believes himself now. The fight going on now also has a weird glitch where one of the enemies just stumbles around like he’s drunk. We have to get our jollies where we can in this level. The guys get a bit more pissed, saying that the game would actually have started here if all the filler was taken out. They forgot about chapter 9, though that’s definitely forgivable. “It was kind of a tech demo gone wrong.”

Suddenly, huge influx of enemies. “They were construcing guns, is the idea.” That’s becoming quite the Verbal Tic for Slowbeef. He teases another stripping game with Jack, which somehow leads to “Longshoreman 69, baby.” Jack’s using a silenced gun now, which Slowbeef clarifies has no purpose; the enemies will always notice you. “What was that silenced gun I just heard?” He reaches the spot where Frank was killed and looks at the ground, just to get on record that it’s nothing but smooth concrete. By now Diabetus instantly catches on.

Diabetus needs to be reminded who Pinnacle is; the poor bastard just was not prepared for this game at all, was he? A bullet time dive causes a grenade to bounce right off Jack’s shoulder, with the slow motion smoke trail making sure we can’t possibly miss it. “That’s what you get from doing bench presses." Jack kills a group of guys with a grenade, but turns around before we get to see it. The screams are pretty good, though.

Next area has Jack going across a wide open space with just a few oil drums scattered around it. Slowbeef admits to taking many, many tries to get through it, and I don’t blame him at all. Apparently the message board took him to task for always saying “sniper’s rifle,” even though it is the technically correct term. Just watch From Russia With Love! An entire trailer contains just one health pack: “That’s not even in case of accidents at the construction site, that’s in case of Jack Slates at the construction site.” “You can actually buy Jack Slate insurance in the seven months he’s been gone. It’s quite a lucrative industry.”

Another helicopter shows up, leading to the wonderful line “They’re really dogged to lay me out.” Both the guys are completely baffled, and wonder if the actor just flubbed his line. “Maybe he was looking at Shadow and a Freudian Slip got put in his head somehow.” After a bit of that, it’s time for more sniping fun. The area is loaded with deadly accurate guys, who do at least have a quite comical ragdoll reaction when they’re killed. Plus, you have to move forward into their line of fire before most of them spawn, before going back for a safe place to shoot from. “Bro, you sniped me! What’s up? Dude!” Slowbeef manages to shoot about half an inch above one guy’s head: “Ow, my hat!” Diabetus really earned that one with the crap he’s been put through.

Slowbeef brings up playing the sequel, where Shadow has more to do but it’s not well implemented. Or something like that, because he doesn’t get very far before all Diabetus wants to talk about is what possibly could have led him to play the game. “I went to confession; that’s what my priest recommended, actually.” And of course Slowbeef now has to once again protest that the game is a lot more fun than it might look. “You’re not buying any of that, are you?” “No.” Shadow manages to jump about 20 times his own height to kill a guy on a bridge, so at least the question of whether that’s possible has been answered.

The helicopter returns, causing Jack to say the exact same line about the rocket launcher. So not only are we pointlessly moving through an old map and fighting old enemies, but they even recycled a segment complete with moderately lengthy soundbite from just a couple levels ago. This level was just not thought out well at all. “If you look at my chalkboard, I’ve written other examples of weapons that would be effective. A grenade launcher, perhaps.” Besides the helicopter, Jack’s also in a literal uphill fight against six enemies who all have a perfect shot at him, like this level wasn’t enough of a bird flip to the player. Once again Jack has to shoot twice then wait for the rocket launcher to respawn, but this time there’s far less room so you spend the whole time desperately trying not to get hit. “I think one of the guys down there is just throwing one to you.” And finally, a big visual effect of fail as the helicopter simply disintegrates after being shot down. “That was some Steven Segal stuff right there.”

Jack escapes and follows Pinnacle to the prison, which he somehow divines has been shut down after his escape. Diabetus shows a lot of restraint by not calling Slowbeef out on this, though he does say truthfully that things at least happen in the next level. “Speed level five!”

edited 10th Jul '10 11:27:22 AM by Eegah

Chapter 11

Another replay of the last cutscene. Slowbeef really was desperate to fill up that last video, wasn’t he? “Okay Pinnacle, you rat bastard son of a bitch. Which rock are you hiding under?” “He can’t hear you, you know.” Up first is the showers, because the first Tattoo fight was just that good. There’s a pretty odd moment where a guard refuses to notice Jack, so finally he just shoots from the hip. “This is completely ridiculous in every way.” Now the showers are full of guards, and we get another targeting flub refusing to go to the guy right next to Jack. “So they’re just hanging out in the shower, armed, fully clothed.” Afterwards Jack comments “Pinnacle’s security is all over this place,” and the guys are just as confused as me whether that’s supposed to be a joke.

One door is off its hinges, so Jack comments the place was damaged in the riot that we conveniently never heard about before. He overhears Pinnacle telling his men to clean the place up, for what purpose we’re left to imagine. Our new task is to find a way to open the door he’s behind. After a brief tease about the ghost of Sickle (BUT WHAT OF TIMMY?), Jack heads straight to Cell Block B, which is exactly where he needs to go despite nothing telling you this. Honestly, the prison is confusing enough, they couldn’t help you out a little?

“I think this is the one where we fought a bunch of convicts and lifers.” “Ah yes, that cell block.” We get the same pointless hallway fights as before, then a couple guys helpfully discuss that there’s two burnt-out fuses that need to be replaced. So how many cigarettes are they worth? Somehow the riot brought down the entire lower staircase, and we also have a normal camera this time, demonstrating just how pointless that overhead view really was. “There were just a lot of people who were using it at once.” Jack gets a fuse, and Slowbeef assures us you don’t need to go through the whole prison again. “When is Jack gonna return to the gym and show what he’s got to that punching bag?”

New guys outside, including one who will never notice you until you walk in front of him or into him. After some fun shooting around him, it’s time for a rather lame human shield bit, as Jack’s down to a silenced pistol. “What buffoonery!” Another targeting screw that goes unremarked so Slowbeef can tease the boss of the level. “Convict Leader X?” And a whole bunch of speculation on where Timmy got to, including a Shout-Out to The Shawshank Redemption. I’ll go with that.

Time to go to another cell block, and Slowbeef points out you can’t get into the gym this time. “What’s the point of the level, then?” Slowbeef manages to get a shotgun blast in the face despite taking every precaution: “A plan perfectly executed.” Jack enters the electric chair room, so it’s now official: he has fought his way to his execution. We’re also asked to believe the audience chairs are actually in the same room without even glass between them and the dangerous criminals. “Maybe they want a volunteer from the audience. Maybe it’s like a magic show.” The lack of physics also gets weird since some of the chairs are on their side, making it kind of odd that Jack can’t push them around.

Unfortunate beating the magic show gag to death. Jack finally reaches a point where he can’t carry any more weapons. “I’m shocked ‘can’t carry any more weapons’ is in Jack’s repertoire, there.” Uh, I don’t think that’s the word you want. In the cell block, a plastic trash can provides great cover, then Jack picks up a key for the door. You know, the one he started out looking for before getting distracted by the fuses? Remarkably, the game allows Jack to leave without killing all the enemies, recognizing that there’s no point to it. Remember that for later.

Another neck snap, so Slowbeef notes that the game uses it if Jack already has full ammo on the gun the enemy has. Still, fourteen times? “Do you even care?” “No. Not remotely.” After demonstrating a completely pointless bit of hallway, the second fuse is behind another locked door. “All right, so we needed a key to get another key to get another fuse to combine it with the second fuse to open the door to get to the next area.” How he resisted making a House that Jack Built joke I don’t know.

More confusion over what Pinnacle is doing here. “All right, listen up, guys. The plan is to just kind of meander around the prison and have some guns.” “You can just knock some more stuff over, you know, I guess.” “If you get shot at, that’s fine too.” “Just stay armed, just in case.” Slowbeef manages to get two enemies to fall down in perfect unison: “That’s just great.”

In another cell block, Slowbeef finally brings up the normal camera angle: “They just thought that was a good decision.” And this room is really a Scrappy Level all on its own, since you don’t even get plastic trash cans to hide behind and all three levels are filled with guys. This despite the staircase being gone, meaning there was no way for them to get up there, and also no way to get to them so you just have to try to take them out from the prime killing area. More Fridge Logic to what all these guards are still doing here with the prisoners gone. “Maybe they’re trying to find Wire Boy.” Diabetus finally catches on to Slowbeef trying to lead him on about the cigarettes. One guard just jumps off the balcony, so at least he made things a bit easier. “Fucking clumsy is what it is.” There’s a guard station key to pick up, which gets poor Diabetus all confused again about just what Jack’s trying to do at the moment. And then the ultimate insult: this terribly hard room won’t let you leave until you’ve killed everyone, despite you being allowed to earlier. “Oh, I was right. You do have to kill everyone.”

Slowbeef brings up how some walls have octagon style corners, which stops you from peeking out in wall mode. Because the game didn’t screw you over enough, apparently. “You’d kind of be shocked at how often it comes up. It happened in the level 2 video, even.” After a Hard Boiled: “I’m just gonna do some Cirque du Soleil shit.” Big ambush in the guard station, but luckily Jack has bullet time on his side and almost all of them are killed in one dive. “I killed four guys in one jump. They were all at different things in the room - who cares?” He really needs a break. And finally Jack gets the second fuse: “All I know is that Jack’s got a short fuse.”

In the main lobby, Jack hears two guys saying Pinnacle’s in the gas chamber. Yeah, we’ll see how well that goes. The room has one pretty cool feature in the metal detector, which buzzes and alerts enemies when you go through it. And as we’ll see, it gets even better. And you guessed it, Jack needs to flip a switch to open the gas chamber, and Slowbeef warns us right now how insane this lock system is.

Just like the smelting plant, next we get to a group of offices that are treated like one big room, meaning you have to beat the whole thing in one shot. Jack gets the “east office key;” “That’s the most popular office in this prison.” “It really is, though.” They’re kind of grasping for things to say right now, but never fear, that won’t last. In the east office is a computer that opens the west office, which Jack is oddly impressed by. And he calls the computer a “switch,” so apparently there was some lack of communication between the writer and the design team. “Hey, when I press this key, the corresponding letter appears on the computer screen. That’s wild! I’m gonna shoot it!” Then the west office computer opens the gas chamber. Jack refers to this as “double jeopardy,” which doesn’t make sense on any level.

For some reason, the guys start a sketch about Jack shooting a “J” into his victims. “He is good, I’ll give him that.” Then the other nice use of the metal detector: you can hear it buzzing outside as a new group of enemies arrive. They don’t come into the office, so instead you’re left with a beginner’s trap as they all just aim at the door, and you absolutely will die if you don’t jump out with a bullet time dive. An M-60 is left on the ground, but once again Jack is full on weapons so Slowbeef has to empty his weakest one. “That seems like a Jack Slate way of doing things, honestly.”

The mayor isn’t in the gas chamber, but Rafshoom Diggs is, and I’ll just keep calling him Rafshoom despite the game picking the other name, because it’s just that awesome a name. He completely gets the drop on Jack, but after a complete non-answer on what happened to Hildy, Jack goads him into a fistfight by mocking his never-before-mentioned boxing career that ended when he was caught cheating. That’s…really stupid. “Okay, really?” The guys are quiet a little more so we can hear a sample of Rafshoom’s bizarre taunts. The first stage of the fight is your standard melee, except that Rafshoom dodges almost everything. Fortunately he does little damage in return as otherwise this fight would be unwinnable. Diabetus calls Slowbeef on making such a big deal of picking up the M-60, which he says was misdirection. Um, okay. Rafshoom was also labeled “the cheating boss” by some people on the thread, though IMO that really only applies to the first part.

Stage two occurs when Rafshoom puts on a mask and turns the gas on; now when you land a hit the mask falls off, and you have to run over and put it on to refill your steadily depleting oxygen before Rafshoom gets it again, and vice versa. As well, the room gets blurry as your oxygen gets low, despite not making much sense with the third person view. Fans of The Spoony Experiment will likely be reminded of the final level of The Adventures of Bayou Billy with the bad guys just picking up their guns as soon as they’re disarmed, but it works better here as it’s just one guy, which makes getting to the fallen mask a lot simpler. It’s a pretty cool boss gimmick, and one of the best parts of the game. “If you want to cheat like a pro, just use your gun, that you had!” “You’re it! No, you’re it! Give me the mask, you jerk!” Slowbeef demonstrates the handy trick of diving backwards out of Rafshoom’s range, though he’s fast enough that it doesn’t make much difference. Diabetus refuses to say this is a good fight just because of both of them forgetting their guns; I think he’s just had it with the game by now and doesn’t want to see anything good in it. Nice little routine mocking Rafshoom’s accent, then the fight comes to a rather awkward end when a throw takes off the last of the health bar, meaning he’s standing up when he “dies.”

Slowbeef prepares us for the ultimate action movie line, the music swells, and Jack…mutters “Dumb son of a bitch!” and walks away. Diabetus laughs just as much as he did at Longshoreman X. Nice that he’s having fun again; he was getting a little too aggressive there. Jack himself is almost dead, but there’s a handy full health pack in the next room. Nice of the designers to think of you like that. “He was flipping through his book of lines, there’s got to be something here! Uh, dumb son of a bitch!” “Think goddammit, think!” Slowbeef points out that there ended up being no point to going in the gas chamber besides eliminating one of the more pointless named villains, as Jack just goes right back to the office for his meeting with Pinnacle.

Pinnacle denies being involved with Frank’s death, despite Frank having drawn his company’s logo in the cement as he died. Or not, as we know from last chapter. That clue really is stunningly pointless, as Jack had plenty good reason to go after Pinnacle without it. But moving on, Pinnacle lays out the whole story: Hennessey also took kickbacks from the gold scheme, and killed Frank to keep it secret. He was also the one who framed Frank in the first place, in that bit of backstory that was barely mentioned in level one. It’s a decent twist, but the execution is all wrong: the fact that Hennessey showed up first to the construction site despite working across town is presented as the big clue that ties it together, except that we didn’t know until now that he’d arrived first or that he worked across town. James Ellroy, this writer is not. Also, Jack is completely surprised that Hennessey is capable of this, despite having seen him giggling over sending his men to blow up Exner. And finally, he has plenty of blackmail material against Pinnacle, so Pinnacle offers to give Jack a pardon if he helps bring Hennessey down.

Slowbeef takes the time to remind everyone who Hennessey is, including being the guy Jack hands the bomb to at the end of the introduction cutscene. “Everything comes back to the library!” Diabetus once again shows that he’s been watching the game too long when he accuses Slowbeef of spoilers. “It’s not spoiling anything, they just revealed it! All right, I’ll cut this out so everybody in the thread can go back and watch chapters one through ten, and figure out exactly where this conspiracy’s going.” We end with more mocking of Rafshoom’s accent, including a Shout-Out to Electrical Beast. Diabetus really nails Slowbeef with that one.

edited 15th Jul '10 1:42:47 PM by Eegah

Chapter 12

Pinnacle has called Hennessey with a phony story about Jack’s whereabouts, leaving Jack free to sneak into the police station and get the blackmail material. So of course he immediately gets spotted, then just stands there as the guy runs across the vehicle park to the radio room. So for this section you have to stop people using the radio before the frequency bars all change from red to green, and unlike the thermometer this really is just a glorified time limit. They’re actually going backwards here. As the gunfight starts, Jack exposits about all the radios he’ll have to keep people off of. “I like to think he was talking out loud while he did all that.” The radio room is locked, so Jack has to shoot through the window. Somehow this prevents the guy from being targeted, so you need to aim manually. Luckily he won’t move at all as you’re shooting him to pieces. Now that’s dedication.

Next up is getting the key to that room, so it’s more killing everyone so the last guy coughs it up. Diabetus still isn’t over Rafshoom’s accent. “Dumb son of a bitch, all of you.” “That was clever!” New disarm with Moving Violation: Jack hits the guy, then spins around and hits him again. Diabetus aptly describes it as a ballet move. Slowbeef is oddly fascinated that there’s a bus in the park; hasn’t he seen Death Note? “You’d think the bus for this squad would be a lot shorter. Because they’re retarded.” He then briefly misses that the key has appeared, which somehow gets Diabetus talking like the gameplay is live.

Inside the radio room, Jack needs another key to shut the radio down. But the designers seem to have realized that’s a bit too repetitive, so now the enemies start using the radios in the squad cars. Though it doesn’t help much: “I just love it when levels are artificially increased in length.” “If only they could find the dial that increased frequency.” Slowbeef points out how Jack is just going to move on after this, so the radios will presumably still be available. “Oh, who cares?” More Running Gag as they theorize Shadow had the whole plot figured out from the start, and tried to stop Jack from going after Blats. Slowbeef questions why using the card in the radio unlocks a door far away from it; seems he wasn’t paying much attention as Jack only wanted to shut the radio down before he used that door. He gets upset a bit at how long this first room takes before we finally get out. Though first he has to fight more guys, so they have to fill the time with more of the Shadow gag.

In the halls, Jack makes the odd statement that he has to get out before Hennessey’s “crew” gets back…while he’s in the middle of a shootout. “His crew is there! What, are they gonna throw 400 more guys at you?” The game teases you with a sign for the shooting range, which you can’t go into. How did they resist the temptation for that minigame? “To be fair, when Jack goes into public, he considers that a shooting range.”He follows the signs to storage, first showing off a weird little sketch of cops on the wall. Hello Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, as much as that can happen in a game like this. But first he has to shut down the power to get past the door’s electronic lock. And Jack brags that he’d warned the other cops about someone being able to do this, but no one listened to him. Because god forbid our hero be less than perfect in any way. And then the room with the fuse box is locked, and oddly enough Jack gives the same soundbite even if you check that door first.

Pretty awesome moment when Slowbeef unleashes Shadow immediately upon entering the office with the key. And once you pick up that key, an infinite number of enemies start pouring in so you just have to run. I’m not really complaining, as we’re now far enough in the game that this is a good way to increase the difficulty. And Slowbeef actually left in the error of him forgetting to shut down the power first; that’ll teach you to mock the cigarette system. “I imagine Jack being this know-it-all asshole, like, ‘If we ever have a power outage, we could, uh, so we could get in here.’” And now he’s right in Jack’s shoes, realizing halfway through his joke that it wasn’t much good. “Good thing they listened to me when I said it should be real easy for the doors to swing open.”

“Storage is fucking huge, by the way.” And it has lasers that you’re forced to run through, which don’t even trip an alarm and just slowly cut away at your health. “They’re literally like sci-fi burning lasers!” Slowbeef demonstrates you can’t even dive past them; “It’s like the laser’s filled with the light of mosquitoes.” I’ll chalk that up to Sanity Slippage again. Two more neck snaps in rapid succession: “That offends me that you broke my friend’s neck like that.” “This is all they’re storing in storage is guys and health and lasers.” Yeah, these really are a lot of hallways for no apparent purpose. Nice routine on a James Bond inventor designing the place: “No one will be able to get past these laser guards, unless they walk somewhat briskly!”

We finally get to the actual storage room, where Jack says completely out of nowhere, “You know civilization is collapsing when there’s nobody policing the police.” The writer had a political point to make, and dammit, he was going to shove it in somewhere! It’s revealed that the clowns are GAC squad, which is incredibly anti-climactic since we’ve been fighting undisguised squad members for a while now. Jack also takes the opportunity to double-cross Pinnacle, as he calls Exner about the blackmail files. You’d think this would go somewhere good, right?

“Now we’ve got to fight our way out of storage!” Diabetus thinks this counts as another duplicated level; he is a bitter, bitter man. We get two new disarms in a row; first is Make a Wish, where Jack breaks the guy’s arm before shooting him. Presumably the name has something to do with wishbones, but I have no idea what. And then the much better Keep Your Chin Up, where Jack does an insane Matrix flip over the guy’s head, before the guy quite nicely positions his head for Jack to blow it off. Diabetus is mighty amused by both. “Maybe that was Jack’s wish.”

Thankfully the level ends once you’re out of that one hallway system. Jack meets Exner, who’s still trying to get touchy-feely. And then it turns out Pinnacle’s convinced her to steal the files from Jack and pull out, because she’s too much of a Dirty Coward to go through with it. She pulls a gun on Jack, and a gunshot rings out. A rather dark ending for the game or…the shot came from Hildy, and Exner’s dead. Aren’t you glad we spent all that time protecting her? Except that she’s now working for Fahook, who wants the files to make his own deal with Pinnacle. Seems she was just in it for the money all along, while a random shot of Frank’s tombstone is cut in as some vague attempt to be deep. Jack follows her to an abandoned air force base…where he’s planning to save her, even as he mulls over how much she played him. What An Idiot.

Since that call going through in the beginning is the one mission failure with a special cutscene, Slowbeef lets us see it: Hennessey orders his driver to turn around, then gets four men to stand in a perfect diamond formation around Jack before gunning him down, somehow not harming each other. Totally worth it. Diabetus is more lost than ever, with even a full reminder of Fahook’s first scene not really getting through. “You did not expect this game to get this complicated, did you?” “No! God!” “It’s like eight Die Hards in one.” “I thought I was gonna fall asleep from boredom, not trying to figure out what was going on. I wish I was Jack Slate.” Keep reaching for that rainbow.

edited 19th Jul '10 7:50:41 AM by Eegah

^Who was expecting Hilde to be shot in the back by another person, who is then shot in the back by another, and so on.

NEXT TIME: Jack fights a bear and we see his true linage! (Refer back to my video)