I went back to re-record the first part of the LP, with everyone’s suggestions, and I noticed something.
: Excuse the shift in image size. I had to bring the game down to a window because otherwise, stuff got cut off and it caused all kinds of graphical glitches. Anyway, you’ll notice that after pressing a button to bring up the load menu, there’s a little tiny thing in the corner that says “References”. I didn’t even notice this when I went to record for the first update, but I looked back at my screenshots and it was in fact there.
: They must’ve patched this in at some point between May and now, but the game now has a bibliography that sounds like it was written by someone who was incredibly bitter about having their plagiarism discovered. I looked back on Steam to see if the developers had said anything about adding this, and as far as I know they did not and have not.
: Also, what the shit is up with that guy in the speedo? Is this their way of saying “I’m genuinely mad that someone would dare to discover the fact that I plagiarized large portions of Haruki Murakami’s work?”
: GrandmaParty, you crafty dog! I didn’t know it had a response for stuff like this, but it doesn’t surprise me. I bet it also has one for if you put in the default names for Earthbound, but I didn’t feel like going back and testing that theory.
: I wound up messing up a couple of the names, so Jorts got moved to a different one, “nerdiest person” got renamed to Hifumi (keeping the Danganronpa reference) and for “friend who is always there” I put Depression.
: So, this time I figured I’d actually try and explore the town, since the first attempt I kind of just ran into the cat without knowing it was there.
: The house next door to Douchenozzle’s has a chest hidden behind some trees. This is sort of the equivalent to the secret clubhouse in Earthbound, but I’m not going to call this a direct Earthbound reference.
: The Camo Jacket has better stats all around than Douchenozzle’s default equipment, so I made sure to equip that.
: South of that is a basketball court, where Douchenozzle can pick up a basketball extremely awkwardly and not throw it - the best he can do is just drop it.
: Next to the court is a house with… a rope bridge leading to some boxes. The game kind of insinuates that we’re going to have Pokemon-style HMs at some point, which would actually be more like Anachronox, but whatever. We can’t get this stuff yet.
: On the way to look for more crap to pick up, I tried to get Douchenozzle hit by a car. The game’s uh.. amazing car pathfinding caused this car to simply crash into a tree and sit there even once I left. Great job there, game.
: Behind Douchenozzle’s house are a bunch of mystery rocks we can’t do anything with yet.
: If we jump off the side though, there’s a nonsensical hole in the.. log palisade that is perfectly normal for a suburban home.. that leads to another chest.
: There’s also two trash cans with money inside - this one and one other.
: This will give us enough to pay off that moron with the zine stand. I’m going to do that because I have a feeling it’s going to end up like that merchant in Final Fantasy 10 where he has better items later on depending on how much you gave him in the earlygame.
: The “zine sticker” is a key item.
: Last, I went upstairs in Douchenozzle’s house. Lots of quality stock photography that does not at all clash with the low-polycount models, no sir.
: This is Douchenozzle’s room.
: …What. You.. you said you got the record for it in a bargain bin! That’s completely contradictory to.. you know what, fuck it. Not even going to think about it.
: Gotta love those posters on his walls that I bet the texture artist ripped from Deviantart.
: Blatant advertising! Also, this isn’t very accurate - most consumer-grade CRTs that size only had enough room for one composite input at a time.
: I then went to look at Douchenozzle’s parents room, and this is where I managed to somehow softlock the game. I tried to examine this cabinet to see if there were items inside. There aren’t, but when I reloaded the game I came back in here and there’s $20 in the right-side nightstand.
: This is what pops up - this is the shelf in Douchenozzle’s room. Something tells me that unless that black belt is in competitive whining, it’s not real. Also, why is this popping up here?
: Anyway, let’s go grab the letter and..
: Wait, what the fuck?
: Maybe I tried hitting something wrong. Let’s get RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT and try again.
: Yep. The game would do this every time I interacted with ANYTHING, including save points.
: Past the cat from last update is a little spot with some healing items in it. The game will drown us in them going up to the first dungeon, but there are a ton of spots where you can just get free healing so they’re kinda useless.
: Here’s the other half of Frankton, which we saw in the intro. There’s.. no grocery store here, and most of these places are selling stuff we can’t afford.
: This town has a surprising number of people hanging out by dumpsters, including these two NPCs.
: Yikes! Or more accurately, Yiikes! There’s more healing items in chests to the right of where these two NPCs are.
: We can also find our first water fountain here. Water fountains are heal points that restore all of your HP/MP. The park sign is a reference to some bullshit with the dev, I don’t know exactly what.
: We do get a slight lead from this guy, offering to sell us drugs in the park at night.
: There’s also this old lady who clearly forgot that HMOs had been around since the 1970s.
: We can also try the record store, which has a record with.. all of one better attack stat.. for a whopping $75. People on the Steam forums have said you want to buy these because the yellow/red zones get bigger, allowing you to get more hits in.
: We’ll have that kind of money by the end of the first dungeon, which is coming up.
: There’s a pawn shop that sells a hat we can afford, so I bought it. It’s an extra 2 defense over not having it.
: Just outside are.. more people hanging around near a dumpster. I don’t remember doing this at all in 1999. There’s chests out behind the pawn shop, but we can’t get them.
: I got into a second random battle on purpose to show this off. Every time an enemy attacks, we get to use the “defense gauge”. Hitting the yellow-ish area cuts damage in half, while hitting the thin red area dodges it completely.
: This is what’s in that abandoned building where the cat ran off to.
: Welcome to what the game simply refers to as “The Factory Hotel”.
: That little purple gremlin thing is a random encounter. Occasionally, they’ll spawn out of nowhere and will.. kinda chase after you ineffectively.
: In the back are three trash cans with healing items, some money, and a collectible pog.
: This is the weird lady we saw in the establishing shot. God dammit, of course she’s blue.
: I should mention that this entire area has music is that is suspiciously similar to Earthbound’s.. I’m not sure what the name of the track is, but it’s the one that plays in the zombie lair underneath Threed.
: Oh, and of course she disappears when we talk to her.
: There’s two chests with weird blue hooded people (Earthbound Reference Counter: 4, 5 if you count the hamburger we found in one of the trash cans) who disappear when we go near them. They both have healing items, but this one has an Ambrosia, which is this game’s version of an elixir.
: We could try to go in through the front door, but it’s locked.
: Instead, we want to go to the right, and cross the boards to reach the ladder. Stepping in the purple shit makes you take a single point of damage every few frames.
: Any time Sir Doucheington touches a ladder, we get a cutscene of him climbing it. This does not at all get extremely annoying in say.. about ten minutes.
: The cat knows how to use an elevator. Why am I not surprised?
: “I scanned the dark floor and found nothing.”
: “I sighed as the elevator began to shake, vibrating with motion.”
: “The elevator came to a smooth, but unexpected stop.”
: So wait, did he press a button, or did it move by itself? If he did, why? The cat can’t push buttons.
: “Please don’t die, please don’t die..”
: “I pleaded with the mechanical gods to keep the power on. My prayers weren’t answered.”
: Welcome to the first dungeon! There’s a trash can with.. you guessed it, a healing item and some cash in it.. to the right.
: The circuit breaker doesn’t do anything, and to the north is a puzzle we can’t solve.
: Next to that is a locked door with a monster in front of it. I figured this was going to be a boss, but..
: Nope, it’s just one of those smile things and a rat. Rats have about twice the HP smiles do, but that’s about the only difference between them. I figured out here that the highest combo you can get on this record is 11 - four hits on the first yellow section, one more on the thin one, hitting the red for +1 combo and resetting the record, then doing it all over again. Unfortunately you can only hit the red spot once - the record will end automatically once you hit that spot if you’ve hit it once before.
: It took me a minute to find this side area. It’s located just south of the circuit breaker, but you can’t see it unless you’re going along the bottom edge of the screen. This is required to progress. The sign will inform us that we can hold Enter to speed up combat, but you still have to hit all the meters.
: The random encounter was just another rat, and the key is just leaning against one of the like, twenty or so clones of this same shelf we’ll see throughout this dungeon. I like how they didn’t even bother making them slightly different.
: I feel like all of these healing items are kind of an insult, given that there has been a water fountain in every single room we’ve been in so far.
: He’s a black belt in complaining loudly!
: … what. Anyway, this thing has way too much dialogue, so I’m going to cut it down to the salient points.
: So yeah, we now have our first.. the game calls it a tool, so why not. There’s a voiceover for this and the panda’s voice is both godawful and highly annoying. They also voice the “PRESS L TO SUMMON ME” part only they use “Circle Button” in the VO. Since there’s no re-bindable controls on PC, this is just pure laziness.
: The trash can in this room brings us up to over $60. The blue dresser also has some MP restoration items in it. Why there’s a dresser with a Game Boy on it in an abandoned building, I have no idea.
: Finally, the desk has an accessory that boosts luck by 1 point. I think the only thing this effects is how often you crit.
: The northern room has a pyramid in it. The eyes are supposed to follow you, but uh.. that left one looks like it’s a little broken. Can you solve this stupid puzzle?
: The panda, by the way, has a really confusing UI element. It has an arrow that extends outward, making it seem like you can place it anywhere along that arrow, but really it just always drops in front of you.
Next time, we’ll go through that door and witness our first instance of the game plagiarizing.