ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: HALLOWEEN SAMPLER #2

[Ross Scott]

Here is the Halloween-Sampler-Pack-turned-Halloween-episode!  My plans got VERY derailed this year, but this is actually a very solid stand-in.  The number of small edits I had to do on this one were a bit boggling, possibly a record for the series, but I'm quite pleased with how this came out.  Anyway, while this is all I have for Halloween, since it's going to be over soon, I have something else planned coming before too long. Check back in a few days!

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

[Watterson]

dope

[TB]

HALLOWEEN DOUBLE FEATURE

[reverendjoe]

I watched a couple of my friends play Death Road to Canada, hooked up to a TV, in a bar. It was pretty fun to watch while I was sitting in a bar getting drunk, but novelty factor aside it didn't look like much fun to play.

And about the intro, Ross, you shouldn't sweat it. It's a five second intro on a video that's almost never less than fifteen minutes long. I think it would take most people more time to try to skip it than to just let it play.

[BTGBullseye]

Ok, so I got DR2C since it looked vaguely interesting... If you get the money, BUY IT!!! My starting characters are Jake and Elwood, with appropriate attire, and 2 extras to recruit along the way are Weird Al and Stanley Spadowski. (UHF if you don't recognize it) Stanley gets the "Oblivious" trait, and the reactions are absolutely perfect for him. Just listen to some Blues Brothers while playing as the Blues Brothers, and it's perfect.

 

A bit of a grind, but fun nevertheless. Also, if you find yourself low on gas a lot, keep an eye out for the UFO encounter... You get a car that uses no gas when you beat it, and the car is an invincible barricade you can shoot through during the encounter.

Edited November 2, 2018 by BTGBullseye (see edit history)

[Icebox]

Interesting to hear about obscure castlevania games.

[Veyrdite]

Disclaimer: harsh criticism.

 

This episode feels lower quality compared to the usual Game Dungeons:

• Very long audio sections of "reaction" style commentary whilst playing Castlevania clones.
• Lack of digging into games that Ross can no longer play.  Where are the attempts to harass the devs with emails?  What are their personal points of view?  Can old versions still be found?

In a nutshell: too much game and play, not enough digging into the paradoxial timeline of music releases.  Game Dungeon has traditionally presented what Ross thinks a game means and does, with less emphasis on normal gameplay than other video producers.  There's still of lot of that here, but the density is noticeably lower.

 

 

Edited November 2, 2018 by Veyrdite (see edit history)

[Veyrdite]

4 hours ago, Icebox said:

Interesting to hear about obscure castlevania games.

Agreed.  Very interesting to find out about these.

 

I used to play a fan-made mario game (some permutation of 'super mario brothers') for Windows.  It was available free download and I even remember contacting the developer by email at one point because all released versions were debug builds (where pressing 'a' would win the game and holding 1+5 would make you fly).  Amazing fun, and it has either been killed or lost to my modern keyword knowledge.

 

A copy of that game would be like a forbidden scroll.  An artwork forgotten, a book that has been banned (hey, my country still does this!).

Edited November 2, 2018 by Veyrdite (see edit history)

[rocketwerks]

Keep the Ross's Game Dungeon intro! The four-note theme is an essential ingredient in putting me in a Game Dungeon mind-set. I get that changing the title cards is more work than it looks like, but when you binge-watch a set of these, it's actually cool to note the ones that are standard titles versus custom titles.

[Professor von Kriplespac]

Glad to have you making gaming videos again Ross. Hope you like your new place.

[Kaiosama TLJ]

I can't think of anything meaningful to say about the first 3 games, but I can comment something on the last one. Death Road to Canada is a game that I've heard a lot about, especially since I'm subscribed to Projared and PBG on Youtube. And in all honesty, from all the footage I saw, it's not a game that I fell I would like, and I think that's because I've played Organ Trail first, and that game spoiled it a bit for me.

 

This makes it sound that the reason why is that I've played OT and hated it, and I don't want to play another similar game again, but it's quite the opposite: I think Organ Trail is a really good game, but I think it's WAY better than Death Road to Canada for various reasons. The main reason being that DR2C for me falls into a trap that grabbed many "rogue-lites": Too much dice-rolls. OT also has a lot of random occurences that can screw you over, but also some that can help you. And some of the nasty ones, like a bandit making a member of your party hostage, can be averted by simply aiming your gun at the right place (but one chance only or your friend dies, OR you end up shotting him/her by accident), while in DR2C that would be just a choice that has a high chance to fail. The point where I'm coming at is that DR2C is a game of mostly luck, and that's bad for a survival game in my opinion, while OT has a balance between luck, skill, and managment of resources. Can't blame Ross for cheating if luck is the only factor you have to scale "difficulty".

 

And the soundtrack, ohh boy... It's like comparing day & night. DR2C has nice tracks, but I don't think they fit the game theme much, to me it sounds like "hey! I have this ost because I'm a indie game", it could be on any game except this one. OT soundtrack on the other hand... You guys better hear it for themselves: https://bencrossbones.bandcamp.com/album/organ-trail-directors-cut-original-soundtrack

 

Death Road to Canada is not without ideas though, I really like the concept behind special survivors and party customization, while Organ Trail is bare-bones on that, and OT is not without it's nuances, like the leader/player character only being able to recover health with medkits (but still he/she's immune to diseases so I can't complain much I guess), and aiming is awkward at first. But overall, I think OT is a better experience for me to recommend to anyone, but then again, I didn't played DR2C so it can be just bias.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Kaiosama TLJ (see edit history)

[Ross Scott]

I still haven't figure out the quote system.  I clicked on "quote" and it did nothing.

 

BTGBullseye: Those are awesome choices.  Jake and Elwood especially would be fantastic choices for a zombie survival story.

 

Veyrdite: I had a similar feel making it, it was originally intended to lead up to a bigger episode, instead it had to serve as its own.  I think DR2C helped tie it off, but it could be a bit of a warning for me to be more choosy about which games I cover, because the less there is of a hook for me to latch onto, the more it can turn out like this.  As for the dead game aspect, I figure I cover that on DGN, so I didn't want to hammer it as hard on RGD anymore (I almost had a line like that in the episode, but it was just a death march getting all this done.  I do have more coming along those lines however.

[Kaiosama TLJ]

2 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

I still haven't figure out the quote system.  I clicked on "quote" and it did nothing.

That's odd... Cause I clicked on it and it worked just fine, as you can see it right now. Maybe it's a glitch.

[BTGBullseye]

10 hours ago, Ross Scott said:

I still haven't figure out the quote system.  I clicked on "quote" and it did nothing.

If you're clicking on the word itself, it should put the entire post in the reply box, and scroll you down to it. If you're clicking on the + then you're multiquoting, and there is a "popup" in the lower right of the screen with a button to press to insert the quotes in the reply box.

 

At least that's how it works for regular users by default.

[Steve the Pocket]

On 11/2/2018 at 5:31 PM, Veyrdite said:

Agreed.  Very interesting to find out about these.

 

I used to play a fan-made mario game (some permutation of 'super mario brothers') for Windows.  It was available free download and I even remember contacting the developer by email at one point because all released versions were debug builds (where pressing 'a' would win the game and holding 1+5 would make you fly).  Amazing fun, and it has either been killed or lost to my modern keyword knowledge.

 

A copy of that game would be like a forbidden scroll.  An artwork forgotten, a book that has been banned (hey, my country still does this!).

You might have some luck hitting up the Vinesauce community. Vinny plays a lot of unofficial Mario games, from fan-games to parodies to knockoffs, so it's possible he's played this one at some point and someone from his audience remembers it.

[Veyrdite]

Now I too shall break the quoting system, for it hath angered my ability to split a quote up into multiple parts.

 

> @Ross: it could be a bit of a warning for me to be more choosy about which games I cover, because the less there is of a hook for me to latch onto, the more it can turn out like this

 

Possibly.  If you feel a game does not have as much to talk about then embrace this, review it the way you want it to be viewed.  Each game review is unique, some don't want to fit the same mould.

 

 

> @Ross: As for the dead game aspect, I figure I cover that on DGN, so I didn't want to hammer it as hard on RGD anymore (I almost had a line like that in the episode, but it was just a death march getting all this done.  I do have more coming along those lines however.

 

Ah, we're probably talking about two different things:

 

  (1) General discussion of DGN and DGs.

 

  (2) Chasing the problems and history of one particular dying/zombie'd game.

 

It sounds like you are afraid of talking about item (1) too much.  But number (2) is something that has previously formed interesting parts of various dungeon videos.  I'll be vague here because you have taken things many different directions before.  Sometimes even technical adventures.

 

 

 

 

[BTGBullseye]

On 11/7/2018 at 8:19 AM, Veyrdite said:

Now I too shall break the quoting system,

Just do like I do and

On 11/7/2018 at 8:19 AM, Veyrdite said:

for it hath angered my ability to split a quote up into multiple parts.

Click "quote" a couple of times.

[ekket]

You can just press enter twice inside a quote and it'll split the quote in twain.

[Veyrdite]

I also tried hitting enter and had the same problem.  Thankyou for the solutions.

 

The other difficult thing to do is delete quotes:

4 hours ago, RaTcHeT302 said:

You cannot select them like a region of text and then hit backspace.  Instead you have to click on their titlebar and then hit backspace, or manually tap backspace through them. 

 

There are many things in plain old [bbcode] that we take for granted [/bbcode].  We only realise how good they are when the difficulties of more complex systems arise.

[ekket]

I think I know why the quote splitting doesn't work, it's because of it only allowing splitting quotes between tags (i.e. in the end of a paragraph).