SHODAN is back! System Shock 2 leads Children of Doom: 1999!

new errant signal is a national holiday

If you listen carefully to the "Why do you go so slowly...?" message "Polito" sends you on deck three (as heard at 6:49), you can hear just a little taste of the electronic distortion that SHODAN's later speech is swimming in. It's a nice touch that SHODAN is getting so impatient with you that the mask slips a little.

Ken Levine is so on the fence about everything that he's become one with the fence

In this house, we stan Orbb.

I'm certain someone has already mentioned this, but people have made their own master servers for dedicated Unreal Tournament servers even before the delisting, so that torch is still being kept alive, just, in a bit more of an unofficial capacity. Also I'm reminded of how there's probably a ton of people who think the Unreal Tournament callouts originated from Counter-Strike or even DOTA 2 of all games.

1:14:07 "there are a lot of proper nouns that the game expects you to just know, and i do not." yup, sounds accurate to the books.

Children of doom is my favorite ongoing series on all of youtube. You're on my personal Mt. Rushmore of content creators alongside Noah, Hbomb, and Dan Olson. Thank you for the upload!

Y'know, mechanically BioShock Infinite IS kind of a Halo game. Though admittedly closer to Combat Evolved, since while you're stuck with the two-weapon limit, your health is regenerating shields and static health. As for the soldier just going "nah" in SS2, I thought it was hilarious. Admittedly it would've worked a little better if this was Space Quest, with the "nah" coming from the likes of Roger Wilco, but blowing off a would-be god with the same tone you'd use for turning down the offer of a cigarette? That's still pretty fun.

Epic, transcendent, introspective, existential nightmare of a game that all culminates to: "Nah 😏" Sending off the 90s exactly as it should.

The late 2000s is gone be hell to make.

I didn't expect Medal of Honor to have such an interesting history! If the idea was to educate teens on World War II, it at least made sure everybody knows how to reload an M1 Garand.

My parents were huge wheel of time fans so I’ve read the first nine books and we owned the game. It was solid, all of the places, fluff, and mechanics pull straight from the source material. The game takes the setting and invents a plot and characters to create its own story in it so things like angreal, the ways, and the white tower all exist in the setting fairly close to how it’s represented, but almost all major characters and events only exist in the game to let it explore many of the most interesting locations.

OH DAMN! NEXT ONE IS DEUS EX BBY!

RE: Alien Versus Predator being a "labour of love" - if the fact that all the Marines are British didn't already give it away, they didn't have any actors... all those video calls are literally the game's developers having a root through the fancy-dress bin and playing soldiers themselves!

Honestly: yeah, the ending of System Shock 2 is silly, but it's not that much of a letdown. The whole game is pretty silly, with it's telepathic monkeys, clunky robots that go clank and 3D printed ninjas. It's cyberpunk, but it's cyberpunk by way of 1950s pulp (the transatlantic english accent in the intro is a dead giveaway). It's kinda like how Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers goes from political manifesto to talking dogs and jetpacks.

I love the read on the Shock games as "you're not really fighting for anything, you're just fighting against everything." Bioshock Infinite is definitely the biggest offender, where even people who don't normally participate in media criticism were still going "wait, are you saying the racists are right?"

I think the hybrids are those who, like the player, fought against the many, and suffered the fate it threatened. They have been absorbed by the mass but kept mentally separate. Unwillingly controlled and without the rapturous bliss promised.

For me, what helps to mitigate the "both sides are bad" element is that Shodan (more or less) created the Many. I've always seen them as somewhat of a victim. Shodan created them and lost control, because she's a narcissist who thinks she can't fail, just like she created you the player and eventually loses control of you. Shodan's failing is that she underestimates other beings. When the Many aren't trying to kill or subdue you, I feel like they do see some kinship with our shared predicaments. Whereas Shodan is a liar, I think the Many were being honest. For that reason, I don't see the player as being the mediator at all. The Many were a tragic consequence of Shodan's hubris, and they're also really dangerous. Those aren't incompatible to me.

Fun fact is that Kingpin was very popular in 90s Russia for its aesthetics and fun translation. After you analysis of its violent nihilism, I kinda understand why it clicked at a more deeper level with many Russians constantly living in the nihilist environment the game was dipicting.

I had to take a double take on that ending cut scene for when you defeat SHODAN, cus I almost thought it was a gag about a meme made by someone in like the early 2000s as a shit post... and not the real cut scene cus oh boy that feels like a shit post animation