Waffle Christmas 2019 - Part 1

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Players

Squidge

Jay

G

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Content Warning

At the 43:40 mark, Squidge describes the intro to a PSP game called Infected. The description of the intro, and the discussion that follows, is pretty gruesome so I’d recommend avoiding it if you have little ones listening with you. The entire discussion lasts until the 44:39 mark.

Please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

The end of 2019 is nigh, and we invited G back so that we could discuss the end of the year with him. He was most recently on an episode with us and UK video gaming legend Stoo “Sensible Software” Cambridge

check that episode out here

and not just because of G’s legendary questions

seriously if you haven’t listened to that episode, go back and give it a listen

it was a lot of fun, and Squidge even wrote a skit for the intro.

Anyway, we start our final episode of the year with a discussion as to whether G needs to be rebooted, or whether he is the rockstar of D&D

a.k.a a Bard

G tells us that he has been re-visiting some older games, what with the festive period being upon us and all. This includes going back to an old favourite of his: the entire Batman: Arkham (main) series of games

there are a lot more than I remember, apparently

He also tells us about how the driving sections of Arkham Knight was seen, by the community, as the real boss of the game… right up until they patched it. We also talk about how this one scene was the single greatest “gotcha” in video gaming ever:

For those who don’t quite get it: the game locks up and appears to crash - if playing on Windows you actually get pretty convincing BSOD - before appearing to restart from the very beginning, with the roles reversed (you play as The Joker, and he is bringing Batman into Arkham).

G also attempted to play Ori and the Blind Forest, but it seems that it’s too heavy with the feels - similar to The Last Of Us - and he just can’t do it, yet. Also it suffers from what Squidge calls “The Bethesda Gambit” which is essentially:

I don’t remember how to play this game, so I’ll just restart it

or

I don’t remember what to do next, so I’ll just restart it

both are pretty dangerous moves, if I’m honest.

G has also done some DIY repairs on his PlayStation 3 - it seems that the laser was out of line, and when he’d originally put it back together he’d trapped the ribbon cable slightly, which lead to some grinding noises when playing games. Although, I have to applaud his debugging technique:

G

I took it apart; put it back together again; still didn’t work. So I done it again; took it apart again; put it together again.

Obviously by this point, I implemented ‘Dad Mode’ and swore a bit; got up and walked about; sat back down

That’s pretty much how I debug my programs

except there’s a lot more coffee involved

I then try for a joke when Squidge prompts me to talk about a new gadget that I have… the problem is that the joke doesn’t land, because I’m not very good at telling them. And after much discussion about chasing chickens, I mention that I really dislike sliding picture puzzles - which was one of the very few reasons why I eventually gave up on Evoland 2. The other reason I gave up on it was that it tried to do too much, but seemed to lose the spirit of the original

which was a cleaned up version of something that was originally submitted during a game jam

And Squidge interrupts us all with a Google Assistant keyword, so I’ll apologise for him if your digital assistant was triggered whilst listening to this episode.

I then talk about the nifty little gadget that I bought: the RG350. It’s a cute little device which runs an OS called OpenDignux

which is a Linux distro built specifically for the CPU in this device

and has a tonne of applications, games, and emulators. Here are a few shots of it from our twitter account:

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

It really is a nifty little gadget with a very long battery life (it took a couple of days of use to drain the battery), a really light base OS, and some excellent FOSS

Free Open Source Software

games on installed out of the box.

Whilst I’ve been playing games on handhelds (both the Switch and the RG350), Squidge has been focussing on playing games on the Turbo Hamster

the name of his new, super powerful computer

which looks like this:

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

He’s apparently been chased about by the goose from Untitled Goose Game in the remake of Resident Evil 2 - having installed the following mod:

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

still too spoopy for me, though

Squidge has a long history of installing mods for his PC games, in order to get more fun out of them.

We then talk about the Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and how Microsoft/Bungie seem to be releasing them one at a time rather than all together. I wonder whether they’re forcing a storyline, or having compatibility issues.

another though struck me when creating these show notes:

what if they don’t want to overload the servers?

I then ask about the games coming out just before the festive period that both Squidge and G might be purchasing, but it seems like a pretty dry period for games. Which is a little weird, because I always remember there being a big release shortly before the end of the year, in an effort to push sales

I worked for UK VIDEO-GAME RETAILER whilst at college and uni

and Squidge blindsides me with the obvious news that Shenmue 3 is out - which is surprising since I sent him my download key for it

I was one of the many backers of it on Kickstarter

and had completely forgotten about it. And Squidge compares the time that Shenmue 3 spent in development to the length of time that Duke Nukem Forever spent in development hell

I know that Duke Nukem took longer to make, but I feel like that award goes to Shenmue 3

G them tells us the story of how he received a punch in the face from his brother for Christmas

…

I’m not going to embellish in the show notes, you’ll have to listen to find out what happened.

Anyway, we reached out to folks over on twitter for questions and decided to answer them on air. The first question we received was:

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Squidge laments that he can’t use his desktop PC to hide away from family members during the festive period

although I’m sure that he does

The only logical step from that discussion is for G to drop this nugget of knowledge on us:

G

I don’t know. I mean, it does stick to the Die Hard theory:

"Murder makes you better"

I then tell the story of one New Year’s Eve…

And our second question was:

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

G wins the question with his answer:

The answer that Squidge gives is from a lesser known title:

Whilst Squidge is discussing the intro sequence for Infected, I come up with the idea of “Jodie the Roadie” and posit that, were Santa swapped for Jodie, there would be riots. I also regale everyone with a discussion I had with a friend a few days before we recorded: I’d recently re-read the Discworld novel “Hogfather”, and how if Christmas was cancelled it would be like the purge.

Squidge then brings up two more Santas from games:

and

even though that last one isn’t really Santa, just a psychopath dressed up as him

Whereas the only one that I could think of was the Santa in Shenmue:

apparently, he’s called Santa Maeno

G then talks us through some of the recent happenings on Destiny 2, including the potential return of a fan favourite character: Saint 14. There’s also talk of the following scene:

which contains Nathan Fillion being… well Nathan Fillion.

G then drops this video on us:

Then suddenly Unaffiliated JZ asks a question:

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

G comes up with an amazing response: Lego Resident Evil. Luckily someone has created a video of what that might be like:

Squidge’s suggestion is to have a mod for Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator which would have you control hoards of the undead BOWs on the battlefield

kind of how the Umbrella folks originally wanted them

with the player taking the role of the antagonist. Kind of like how Project Resistance plays. Whereas my idea is a series of educational games featuring Rebecca Chambers - what with her being a genius of a certain calibre and seems to be able to solve whatever problem she is presented with via the practical application of biology.

Squidge then talks us through why he bought the RG350. Not only does it ship with a bunch of freeware Linux games and emulators, it also has a 32 GB SD card with tonnes of ROMs on there. Obviously, if you don’t own physical copies of the games then I’d recommend that you delete them from the SD card.

but it’s your SD card, and you can do what you like with it

Gs Recent Games

• Batman: Arkham
• Ori and the Blind Forest
• Red Dead Revolver
• Destiny 2

Jays Recent Games

• Super Mario Odyssey
• Resident Evil: Revelations 2
• Evoland
• Streets of Rage Remake

Squidges Recent Games

• Resident Evil 2 (2019)
• Halo: Reach
• Two Point Hospital
• Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet

External Links of Interest

• Support us on Ko-Fi
• Our Facebook page
• Us on Twitter
• Batman Arkham on Wikipedia
• Big McLargeHuge on Bungie
• Big McLargeHuge on the MST3K wiki
• RG350
• OpenDignux
• Hogfather
  • Hogfather on a project I created a few years back
• Santa Maeno
• Saint 14

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

• Intro music is Behind the Lines by Ian Sutherland
• Spoiler Break music is Spectrum (Subdiffusion Mix) by Foniqz (BandCamp)
• Pallet Cleanser music is Breath Deep Breath Clear (Wu Chi) by Siobhan Dakay
• Outro Music is I N e e d Y o u 私の側て by G.H (removed from BandCamp)