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[PA Comic] Monday, March 11, 2013 - Job Fair
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Posts
Did you really need a context beyond 'videogames' for this one? I'd say all the required information is neatly packaged within the strip and the exact game in question is not part of that information.
Here's your context:
A guy is carrying volatile explosives.
Because in an machete vs Molotov cocktail arena death match, I wouldn't count out the Molotov.
Presumably you were somehow unaware that you were reading Penny Arcade
What the fuck is Penny Arcade?
Unfortunately, when you have to have the joke explained it isn't as funny.
Nevermind that he is the most physically fit of all the mooks, you have to just pick up his dynamite and toss it in the door and watch him get sad from behind the window.
It does help to know exactly what the comic is specifically about, it does make it funnier.
Also, Mike and those damn noses. The rest of his art is so beautiful and then you get to the noses...
Molotov/Dynamite mooks were my favorite. My own little mobile red barrels. One of my favorite moments during a shootout was when I nailed a Dynamite guy just as two more guys dropped down off a ledge. Dude dropped his stick of TNT and *BABOOM* all three assholes were blown to hell.
It never seems to work out very well for them and they never learn.
yea, very few games make exploding instant death guys not be the brightest and most obvious dudes on the battlefield.
Looks like they might need to revoke double machete guy's machete privileges.
kingworkscreative.com
kingworkscreative.blogspot.com
I don't think games usually color code the different enemy types. Some do, but usually devs differentiate their enemy types by costume design.
Yeah, color-coding was more a low-rez solution when enemies' pixels could be counted on two hands. However, red (backpacks, barrels, etc.) usually still means something will explode if you shoot it.
Red barrels I can understand, because you want everyone to know that shit is serious. Red backpacks seems like some hilarious oversight on the part of henchmen management. Like they could have gotten the inconspicuous brown backpacks, but there was a deal on wholesale red backpacks that they just couldn't pass up!
Well I look at it as a more kaplowdy version of the Star Trek Red Shirt thing. See a guy with a red backpack/shirt/thong on, shoot him, he go kahboom!
Well gosh, I suppose I might as well settle in for a nice cuppa ...... this is gonna be good!
kingworkscreative.com
kingworkscreative.blogspot.com
If only he knew how much higher his chances of getting stabbed in the knee or head with an arrow were because of his job assignment...
That said, Jerry is so right about how difficult it would be to choose just one joke to make about Tomb Raider. The game honestly feels like it could be at the center of every joke made about implausible video game scenarios ever made. Not only do they overload on the ridiculous, they draw attention to it at every turn.
For example, you get a pick axe made from a knife tied to a stick with some string, and use that to pry open a metal door. This is absurd, but oh well, it's a video game. Then, 20 minutes later, they make you upgrade the pickaxe so it's strong enough to pry something bigger. It's like, "Now you're just fucking with me, right?"
This happens over and over. You rip open doors by shooting them with a rope tied to an arrow and yanking really hard so they burst into splinters. Later you run into similar doors that you can't do this to, because they are made of rebar reinforced concrete rubble. Worry not, though! You get a makeshift winch that when held in your hand somehow gives you the leverage and power to rip that door down too.
It isn't limited to just the mechanics either. The story falls victim to it as well. There are plenty of moments where I was thinking "Why are we doing this like this? This is the worst way to do this!" There's one moment in particular in the plot that was so laden with trope and a lack of internal consistency, that it even made me a little mad, and I'm pretty unflappable when it comes to that stuff.
So yeah, if you're the type of person that get's their blood boiling at exposure to the absurd, then I think you might have an issue with Tomb Raider. If you're like me and those things just kinda bounce off you or make you laugh, Tomb Raider is a lot of fun.
The big problem Tomb Raider faces is that ludonarrative shit where she falls on a metal bar at the start (this was the preview material, not a spoiler), but then she's fine for the rest of the game like it never happened, despite the blood stain being present and thus acknowledging it happened. This is the part of video game habits that I'm getting sick of.
Something "shitting the bed" usually refers to somebody fucking up, however the Kickstarter has been a great success. I'm not sure whether Tycho is stating the Kickstarter is shitting on money or shitting out money - I assume shitting out. In this case he thinks that raising $2.5million is some sort of failure? Maybe he thinks that raising so much money puts a lot of pressure on the developers? I wouldn't say so, it still hasn't made as much as Wasteland 2.
I can't work out what that passage is supposed to mean.
Though who knows, as far as I know the entire internet has been salivating for a sequel to Planescape:Torment (that's what this thing is right?) so I don't know who would set themselves against it.
I think I'm the exact opposite, honestly. To me, the pry bar thing is so easily rectified. I mean, the climbing axe you get only a little while later is at least a little bit more reasonable. I'm not sure why they didn't just have her find that one right off the bat and skip the whole implausibility of the crappy one which they obviously knew was ridiculous, because they have you address the problem in game.
Like I said, this kind of thing doesn't "bother" me really, it's just silly. It honestly feels a little lazy, but I don't really care.
On the other hand, I feel better about the scenario you describe. Obviously the game is going to have us doing things that a human being in the peak of physical condition couldn't do. It's the main conceit of the game. Hell, it's the main conceit of games in general. Once you accept that, you really only have two options.
Either you try to ground the story a bit with injury and chaos with the understanding that you can't plausibly translate that over to gameplay, or you go ahead and show a hero that emerges from these situations pristine and unscathed time and time again. You can't really have Lara get wounded and have it hamper her movement in the game, that would ruin the high concept of the gameplay. So you either have to just accept that, or never have her show the wear of her adventure and completely scrap the idea that she's making it through this by the skin of her teeth.
I frankly enjoyed that they scuffed Lara up so bad throughout the course of the game. I liked that she was scarred and bloody. They kept her an attractive, sexy character, but I think her wounds gave her a bit of humanity. I like that my action heroine has scars and wounds, it gives her character. I wouldn't like it if those wounds held me back in the game though. I think Tomb Raider handled it well, with a bit of acknowledgement of the dangers of her adventure, a short impact on the gameplay as she wanders around holding her side, but then letting you get back into the gameplay you bought the game for.
A better example, for me, of the unecessarily absurd in this game is when you (medium strength spoiler ahead)
Still, that's generic action fiction, and it still doesn't cause me any undue angst. The biggest offender for me was (this one is a bigger spoiler)
For a game that's trying to portray a more progressive version of Lara Croft, a game written by a female writer, Lara is damsel-ed quite a bit. It's kind of distressing, and that was the worst example in my mind. It's an origin story, so the vulnerability is understandable, and she does get stronger through her experiences. Still, even with the big breasts and bikinis, I feel like the old school Lara was a much stronger representation of an empowered female character. I don't remember old Lara being damsel-ed so much.
I was thrown for a moment too, but I assume that he must be speaking sarcastically. The bit about the developers listlessly wondering how their life went so bad is probably just a jab at just how amazingly everything actually went for them.
I would totally want the backpack full of explosives to be all "LOOK AT ME! I HAVE EXPLOSIVES IN ME!" I wanna know which backpacks it's safe to take a smoke break near, or set on the ground next to me when I sit down by a campfire.
I don't wanna be like "Hey, this is my bag, right? Goddamn it is dark as shit out here. Bring that torch over here, I'm gonna dig out the granola bars I brOH SHI-"
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
Could you target them in VATS like you can with grenades? Loved blowing up grenades off Super Mutie's belts.
More like Job unFair!
do ho ho ho
Proof positive that written sarcasm is hard to recognize.