ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: ARMED & DELIRIOUS

[Ross Scott]

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Armed & Delirious! While other games like Battleforge and Bip-Bop 2 emerged to be important episodes for me, this is the episode I most wanted to make for Game Dungeon from the beginning. I've put it off for so long because I knew it would be a lot of work, and wow, it really was. There was simply no making a short episode about this game for me; there would have just been too much to cut out. I actually didn't make as many jokes as I sometimes do because the source material was so nuts there wasn't as much room to compete.

 

Game Dungeon is going to become more sparse for a little while, so I have more time to focus on the movie, but I'll be continuing my plan to try and have monthly Freeman's Mind. This episode took weeks and weeks to make. You wouldn't think it possible, but there were just so many small aspects involved with making this that caused it to drag on a long while past I wanted it to. For this kind of effort, I really want to be working on the movie instead. Things are running behind schedule, but I'm still hoping to have two Freeman's Mind episodes this month. Also, for now, I'm going to have to postpone, possibly cancel tomorrow's UT2004 session for this month, I simply got too backed up in making this video I have to catch up on a lot of other things.

 

Anyway, hope you enjoy the video, this game is certainly an experience.

 

COMMENTS

[GordonFreeman]

Just wondering why split the episode into two parts if it's out on the same day? I can watch long videos xD (haven't seen it yet, intending to.)

 

It's psychological too- seeing an hour long video from you after a bit of a hiatus might've been even cooler xD

[Selfsurprise]

The actual Gordon Freeman is here! We have a celebrity in our midst.

 

:3

[GordonFreeman]

Yeah, I snagged this username back near the beginning of the forums I think.

[ScumCoder]

Just wondering why split the episode into two parts if it's out on the same day? I can watch long videos xD (haven't seen it yet, intending to.)

I second this.

 

Judging by some things Ross said in the past, I think that he vastly underestimates the attention span of his fans. Remember how he made a pause in the middle of "Top 25 Most Anticipated Games" video, which was less than half of an hour long?

[Bindal]

Seems this is a game, where the developers had as primary goal just to stuff in as many weird non-sense they could think of, then a few puzzles that may or may not be related to these weirdnesses, and lastly a plot that also just has "be weird" as it's sole goal instead of making sense.

 

The result is basically a near unplayable mess from what I can see. No wonder nobody heard about this game before.

[cutiepyro]

I have a feeling we're not going to see any comments along the line of "ross, you didn't do X right." My only theory to why some of the content is the way it appears on this game is some higher up or ESRB ratings manager must of seen some of the content thinking "this isn't for kids", and instead of the developers toning down the madness, they changed the plot and added different scenes where granny kills people in cold blood and dances like a stripper on that pole. That would certainly explain the vulgarity to the ending.

 

Also, can anyone post their dreams on this page after watching this video?

[Ross Scott]

Just wondering why split the episode into two parts if it's out on the same day? I can watch long videos xD (haven't seen it yet, intending to.)

 

It's psychological too- seeing an hour long video from you after a bit of a hiatus might've been even cooler xD

I did it for a few reasons:

 

-I was originally going to make it one, but I remembered that when I see an hour+ gaming video, one of my first reactions is to think that it could be a livestream, so I wanted it to be clear to anyone new that more effort when into this than that.

 

-I have heard people say before they appreciate having chunks to watch it at a time, whereas an hour can be more offputting for some psychologically.

 

- I was going to have an intermission anyway

 

-I was thinking this game in particular might be overwhelming having all at once

 

-There is a maybe a small financial advantage of doing it this way for Youtube, though that's irrelevant compared to donations. Fans are easily more important than Youtube metrics now. If a lot of people really want no splitting, I can do it, I was just sort of going with my instincts on this one. Most videos I prefer not to split, this one felt more worthy of it.

 

 

I have a feeling we're not going to see any comments along the line of "ross, you didn't do X right." My only theory to why some of the content is the way it appears on this game is some higher up or ESRB ratings manager must of seen some of the content thinking "this isn't for kids", and instead of the developers toning down the madness, they changed the plot and added different scenes where granny kills people in cold blood and dances like a stripper on that pole. That would certainly explain the vulgarity to the ending.

Granny also says "holy rabbit shit", but there was so much going on I left everything less exotic out just to keep this a more sane length.

[Descriptor]

Holy crap, where was I the last hour? What happened?

 

I gotta say, the insanity present here reminds me a bit of the webcomic Problem Sleuth (a parody of ridiculous point & click adventure games), but somehow this managed to jackknife into a whole higher dimension of crazy. I'm not sure I'll ever be the same after seeing this Ross. I hope you know that.

[rappingrooster8]

I looked this game up on youtube and found a trailer that makes the game seem "normal"

Ross probably saw it when he was researching but if anyone else cares here's a link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_AZjTWJEJc

[cutiepyro]

Granny also says "holy rabbit shit", but there was so much going on I left everything less exotic out just to keep this a more sane length.

 

After editing this, which probably took you a very long time, i'm completely fine with some content being left out. I'm also completely fine with everything being set back, even if you don't meet your monthly 2 freeman's mind quota. You don't have to justify anything, this video is justification in itself.

[Steve the Pocket]

I wish I had any reaction to this game besides "Wat." Because this is by far the most special episode of the series so far and it feels like it ought to elicit equally priceless reactions. But since I don't, let me instead take a moment to describe why I think adventure game puzzles frequently feature what's come to be famously called "moon logic." Not this adventure game, mind you; the reason this one features moon logic is because the designers were clearly literally insane. But others. The ones we consider "normal" by comparison.

 

First off, puzzle design is just hard to begin with. You have to try to think like a player before there's actually a complete puzzle to think about. You can't just create an obstacle, decide what you would use to get around it, and then provide the player with such an object, because that would be too obvious. You have to obfuscate it somehow in order to make it challenging. So what designers tend to do is work out a series of moves that would solve it in a roundabout way. But now, by the very nature of what you're doing, you're no longer thinking logically. You're deliberately thinking illogically in order to arrive at a solution that's different from the obvious one. So you're expecting the player to hop onto that same train of not-logic to reach the same solution you did.

 

And on top of that, many adventure games tend to be comedy games. Which means the solutions are meant to be funny somehow, so "normal" is off the table. But watching a character in a cartoon solve a puzzle in a silly way is very different from expecting a player to figure out that same solution. Because now you're expecting your players to all be as clever as a professional cartoonist. No, it's worse than that; you're expecting them to independently arrive at the same solution as a professional comedy writer already did. That's like sitting two comedians down in separate rooms and telling them they can't get out until they happen to write the same joke. And what's worse, even if they do solve the puzzle, it's still not going to be as funny as if they just saw it play out passively because, to them, it came out of their own mind. Very few comedians laugh as hard at their own jokes as their audiences do.

 

This is why the greatest puzzle games of all time are still the Portal ones. Because Valve had a system in place where they spend 10% of their time actually building the game and 90% watching people playtest it. (Roughly. I'm using Fermi estimation here.) So even if they have no idea what they're doing, eventually they can stumble onto a good design from all the iteration. I seriously wish Valve would start making straight-up old-school adventure games, because I can't think of any studio better suited for it. Anyone else either wouldn't have the resources to do it the way they do or would be under pressure from the bean counters to keep development time minimal.

[Forgot_My_Account]

Oh hey, a game I recognize from my childhood.

 

OK so to set the things straight - the game was developed in Hebrew, so a lot of the puzzles there have pun-logic. Of course this wasn't translated properly, but even if it was - it still had lots of instances of moon logic even in its intended language. The game's instability is not only due to it being intended to run on Windows 95, it's because that the developer (Makhshevet) isn't really a game dev studio - they mostly just translated games to Hebrew. They had maybe 5 games they independently developed, all except one (Master of Dimensions) very short. Going off topic a bit here, but as you can expect they've gone bankrupt immediately after releasing this game, been bought out - and the last I've heard of them they were translating Fable to Hebrew, and as far as I know it didn't release locally.

 

The hidden reason for why this story doesn't really make any sense, is because you've been given the twist ending from the beginning. The game was called locally GrannyX, and at the time adventure games didn't really make any sense and critical thinking regarding the plot wasn't really common place - so players were expected to roll with its batshit plot. The twist ending was, as the title says it - that granny has been doing lots of stuff, dangering both others and herself, but isn't really lucid - she's been suffering from dementia all along, and has been committing some horrible deeds. She is completely detached from reality. If your granny steps into the washing machine thinking it's a spaceship, you might want to place her under supervision.

 

By the way, I'm not a rabbit. I was a hippo all along!

[Jeb_CC]

I'm glad everyone in my house was out busy today whilst I was watching this. It's one of those "I'm just going to swap to the browser tab that has porn in it cause that's easier to explain" videos. XD

Good job on this one Ross, entertaining as always.

[Jakezoroni]

Fuck that was good. I like to imagine that this game actually drove people over the edge with all the gas lighting

 

"I spin and I spin, and this is what happens"

 

Any other thoughts or tidbits of wisdom pertaining to insanity, dementia, and old age that you didn't fit in the video?

[Bindal]

OK so to set the things straight - the game was developed in Hebrew, so a lot of the puzzles there have pun-logic.

That explains a lot - puns usually only work well in their native language and rarely translate well into a different one. Done well, they do work great in their native language but it would be either a very hard to impossible challenge to keep the puns in a translation.

 

I do know of two of those here in Germany (the two Moorhuhn Adventure games) where puns in regards to common phrases are a regular form of 'hint' for a puzzle - but even without, they, to some degree, seem to be solvable normally for the most part. There may be one or two, that don't. And quite a few puzzles that are just a joke in general or work straightup as puzzle.

[Presence]

I am both thrilled and dismayed that this got a Game Dungeon. I'm thrilled that my curiosity has finally been satisfied. Thank you so much for enduring it for us all. I'm dismayed because I am repulsed by...well, everything about it.

 

I will say it wasn't as heavy on what I'd call "bathtub aesthetic" as I had expected. That would be where 'surreal' animation looks like they dumped the contents of their junk drawer and garden into a bathtub and filmed the results. It's definitely there to some extent, but if anything this looked to influenced more by Terry Gilliam than broken staplers.

[Archdeco]

I work in healthcare and can confirm Granny's behavior hits close to home.

 

Hoping someone can dig up a soundtrack!

[Selous Templar]

Maybe this game is just too highly intelligent for mortal humans and the creator is an alien.

 

Forget Helious Ross; if the aliens were wanting to abduct you and testing you with videogames to understand our intelligence, THIS is the kind of game they would force you to play, if they landed on a farm, and based their entire perception of humanity on this one encounter and made this game from that.

 

Only aliens could come up with something this crazy.

Or someone very very insane with a mental disorder...

[Wasted_Hero]

I have a question for you Ross. You touched on it briefly, but you didn't really explain your personal history with this game. When did you first discover this game and how? What was your initial reaction? What stuck with you initially about it that made you want to come back to it?

 

On a slightly related note, do you see yourself as a sort of video gaming historian? You're bringing to light these really interesting, and often times extreme, examples of oddities from the gaming world that very few people have seen and are usually at risk of being lost to the sands of time. It seems to go in line with your frustration towards dead games because not only are the games no longer playable from a fun factor, but they're also no longer observable from a historical one.