I hope you’ll save Vern soon.
By a strange coincidence, we finally managed to line up our schedules to record earlier this week. I still have to figure out how to make videos out of the cluster of technical difficulties we endured, but I will be doing that very soon.
Whoops. I didn’t realize quite how long it had been. It’s been an interesting couple of months, what with my recording equipment failing on me (I sent it back to the manufacturer, and they’ve mailed it back to me without a reply - I’m assuming there will be some paper in the package that explains their findings, but it would be nice to know what to expect, exactly), and scheduling difficulties with The Splash. Fortunately, we found the time for another recording session, but the new setup I’ve had to use to work around the hardware problems caused other technical difficulties, and then I accidentally put in the wrong password and jumped a level too far ahead. We got it sorted out, though, and then got off on a tangent discussing Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. I barely managed to get to the recap of last session when we had to fiddle with more setup, but the rest was a bit too funny not to use. So here’s another bonus look behind the scenes of what we talk about when we’re not expecting the rest of the world to listen in, in a video whose first line will leave you wondering how I could possibly not have used that for the title quote.
Bonus video: “If I ever die, make sure no one eats my sandwiches.” Polsy Youtube
Additional bonus viewing of note:
The Jojo theme piano medley I used to test the audio before we started recording
So This is Basically Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, which is still good because I promise the parts I misquoted weren’t the funniest parts. The list of alternate titles for each part really stands out, although I still stand by John Dies at the End for part one and Joe vs. the Volcano for part two. The best thing is to watch it as someone who isn’t an expert on Jojo, then get into the series and realize that every last part of that video is completely serious.
We’re finally back in business, and right back into the hunt for magic lettuce. It’s guarded by a gigantic vegetarian monster with bad eyesight. The absurdity is just going to keep growing, and we’re only about halfway through the game.
Part 4-1: “This has to be the only game where I want to do something, but I don’t actually know if I want it to work or not.” Polsy Youtube
So we’ve been eaten by a giant lettuce monster, but not to worry. This, too, is the path Riri took. We’ll just have to dentist our way out.
We’ve finally been noticed! No, the LP hasn’t suddenly experienced a surge in popularity or anything like that, but our characters have been featured on the front page of… “Gobliiins” the newspaper. It’s an interesting enough gimmick, I suppose, but they don’t really do anything meaningful with it. There’s so much possibility in a setup like this for things like interactions between panels, or manipulating the sequence of events by moving forward and backward in the time represented by the panels. Instead, they just split the level into smaller chunks that take too long to move between for no actual benefit.
Sorry that updates have been so spread out recently; life has been kicking my butt in all kinds of ways and we haven’t been able to schedule another recording. Looking back, it seems like almost every post I’ve made here has started the same way. Fortunately, I’m stuck at home with side effects from an anti-depressant, so let’s get back to the solo version of the quest. This time, we’re finishing our worm journey by giving our worm some magic lettuce, then picking up Riri’s trail again from a turnip juice barman with a bad case of the hiccups. I really think I need to spend the time to make one of those “Jojo but really fast” videos that accurately explains the plot while making no sense to anyone who doesn’t already know the plot, but about this game. I don’t know how that would differ from the actual game.
Part 4: It’s about this point when I realized that we could probably just keep riding these animals and never stop Polsy Youtube
That newspaper level has got to be the weirdest one yet.
Bet you forgot this thread was down here, didn’t you? Surprise! The Splash and I cleared out our schedules for the week and got together for two more recording sessions. That’s right - we’ve finished the game, and with it, the series. I still need to finish getting the videos together, but the only thing standing in the way of the end of this series is my own free time. For starters, I’m sure everyone remembers that we missed a gold tooth in the last session, so we started things off by going back for it. I could probably just have combined this with the first part of the next session, but in the interest of having some content as soon as possible, here’s that part of it on its own.
Interlude: “It doesn’t even have a line to it! It’s just a bump!” Polsy Youtube
We’re in the final stretch of the game. There’s only one gold tooth left to find, and then we’ll get to find out what they’re for. But first, we’ve found the farm where Riri said he was heading long, long ago, and now we need to pick up the trail again. I apologize for the abrupt end of the video - I forgot to disable my computer’s night mode, and you might notice near the end of this part that the colors were starting to fade. I had to hop out of the program to fix it, and that seemed like the most sensible place to put a split. It has been almost a year since I did this, after all.
Don’t worry. The rest of the level doesn’t make any more sense than the first part, but at least we’re mostly done with hunting for tiny objects.
Part 5-2: “If you ever want to introduce someone to this game, just show them the last five seconds.” Polsy Youtube
The descent from relative sanity begins here. Cerviss the elf has sent us straight to the end of Riri’s trail, where we find a smelly sock next to a temple of feet. But we’re not going in the temple of feet. We’re going to the one place Gobliiins hasn’t yet managed to defile… SPACE! Where there are singing ducks. Also, we finally get to see why we’ve been collecting all these gold teeth.
Part 5-3: “I’m saying all kinds of sentences for the first time in my life, every time we do a recording.” Polsy Youtube
Did you ever have one of those moments where you spend an entire video trying to find one off-the-wall action to advance something? Well, that’s Simon the Sorcerer II for you. But in Gobliiins 4, that’s more like every video. I think The Splash’s mind may have been elsewhere during this process. But hey! At least we did rescue AN aardvark. Just not that one. And finally, the whole plot of the game is revealed. I don’t think even the characters really care at this point.
Part 5-4: “It just hit me, these guys have some serious thigh gap.” Polsy Youtube
Things are winding down at last, but we’ve still got to cover the same ground in the solo playthrough. Let’s join Who, What, and I Don’t Know for a rollicking adventure on the farm and the world’s most pointless whodunit starring characters you probably don’t even remember existed.
Part 5: I’ve Found the Weed; You Can’t Fool Me Polsy Youtube
The final session begins with a trip to the world of the Creator, where we will learn the meaning of our quest, bring harmony to something or other, and come up with ideas for the bonus screen.
Part 6-1: “Man, this reminds me of back when I did tech support.” Polsy Youtube
I’m going to be very busy for the next month or so, so the end of the LP is unlikely to come out until 2021. But for now, let’s explore a planet where nothing makes sense and everything has a strange name. I can only assume that someone played through Woodruff and the Schnibble and thought “This is a neat idea, but the names are too easy to pronounce and remember. We need something properly weird for the grand finale of Gobliiins!” They don’t appear to have thought much about the nature of cause and effect. But Riri is here, and all we need to do is come up with a recipe. We made potions in a lab with disembodied hands! We can do this!
Part 6-2: “Probably should do something besides trying to grab everything in space.” Polsy Youtube
It’s still Christmas where I am, and thanks to circumstances, I’m sitting at home cooking my own meals and fielding calls from distant family members. I hope this year has managed to be not terrible for you in some way. In any case, whether you celebrate a holiday where gift-giving is a thing or not, you can consider this a gift. We’ve reached the end of the final Gobliiins game, and despite a hint in the credits that there could be a Gobliiins 5 in the future, I don’t expect it any time soon. While there is still the final solo video yet to come, I assume many of you will stop watching here, and if that includes you, thanks for joining us. It’s time for this series to end in the only way that could possibly provide the conclusion it deserves: baking.
Well, this is it. The actual end of the LP. I feel like I didn’t really give it my all for this one in some respects, but I think the inventory management would have been impossible to recreate effectively if I wanted to do a second take. The high point of this, for me, is another one of those things The Splash didn’t try, but which I think is worth seeing. The low point is pretty much everything else. For all the effort it takes to get to the bonus screen, the actual reward leaves a lot to be desired. A fourth wall break is definitely different, but making jokes about how few ideas you have rarely substitutes well for actually having ideas. The actual finale is about what we’ve come to expect, I think. We’ve gone from fighting a shape-changing wizard to escaping from the dimension of pain, to playing a tune, to baking a cake. The credits (which I didn’t record) rather ominously say of Gobliiins 5 “We’re working on it!” Well, it’s been twelve years, and not only has there not been a fifth game, but the fourth has disappeared from every digital storefront I’m aware of it ever having been on. That’s negative progress. Honestly, I think the series ran its course. There’s a lot you can do with character-swapping mechanics, but the level of absurdism gets to be too much. I may just go replay The Lost Vikings.
