What's that? XP on the hoof!

(after another interminable cut scene with action in it) I SHOULD BE DOING THIS

Sora! Sora! Sora? SORA!!! Sora. SORA! (Yes, I named the cat after the main character of Kingdom Hearts. He's hiding in our bedroom, probably wondering why Toby's screaming his name all the time.)

Eee. Ah. Uh. Hit the chest.

🎶 Stealing your stuff. 🎶

(Donald: Do we have to go there?) YES. WE DO. BECAUSE YOU COMPLAINED.

I LOVE INVISIBLE WALLS said nobody ever.

This smells like a cut scene.

(Hitting an unskippable minigame) Seriously? You gonna make me do this right now? Well, I'm gonna smash your shit. Fuck your town. Fuck your sewers.

There's a kid, a duck, and a dog running around smashing everything in town. Why is no one panicking?

(upon finding YET ANOTHER MINIGAME) Oh jeezus it's Cooking Mama.

I don't know why I'm picking the controller up. There's going to be another cut scene. You can quote me on that. (spoiler: it wasn't a cut scene, but it went to the Design the Gummiship minigame instead of plot.)

-------

We have both been sick and are now just starting to feel human again. More later. Maybe.

So Toby has finished playing Wolfenstein: The New Order and its DLC, and has started playing Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. If you don't remember, Toby and I had taken to calling the Wolfenstein game Captain Manpain Punches Nazis. He almost didn't get through the first one because of the manpain monologing by the hero, but he enjoyed the actual gameplay enough--and has heard enough good things about the gameplay--that he was willing to at least start it.

There's still plenty of monologuing--a thing that occasionally occurred in the previous game and has occurred at least once in this one is the hero dreaming of lazing on a lawn chair at a suburban cookout in a war-free world, while his voiceover says "In my dreams, I smell a barbecue. I see children, a dog, and I see someone. I think I see someone. These things, none of it for me. I move by roarin' engines, among warriors. We come from the night." Other quotes include "Death at the gates again. Howling my name. Can't greet you today. I have a war to win." and "I was a kid, we had a monster in our basement. My father said if I'd done wrong it would creep out at night and come for me. I tried to do no wrong, but the monster came all the same."

He also does things like (SPOILER FOR THE NEW ORDER IF YOU CARE) OKs a nuclear strike on his location while he's still there because DEATH COMES FOR ME etc.

Anyway, I figure it might entertain us if I come up with a Manpain Bingo card, so now I'm looking for examples of manpain to put on it. It won't work if I come up with all of them because I'll just come up with all the examples I've seen him do in the game so far and get a bingo before even starting. :)

If it's at all germane, the games are set in an alternate early 1960s where the Nazis won WWII and have taken over the US (presumably the second game is about liberating the US, given what we've seen so far) along with some super-science so there's things like robot attack dogs (PANZERHUNDS!) and mecha suits. The hero is part of an underground resistance group. (As is his (MINOR SPOILER) pregnant girlfriend so I fully expect some fridging in that arena, although they did surprisingly manage to avoid fridging her in the first game.)

Anyway, we basically think he superheroes through the game fueled by the power of his WAAAAANGST and need to come up with a way to tolerate it enough that Toby can enjoy the actual gameplay parts and so I can enjoy Toby enjoying them as he's so entertaining to watch game. :)

For the two of you on my f-list who play Love Nikki, you'll share my excitement when I logged in and saw this this morning. For the rest of you...you won't know what's going on. XD

( cut for pic and context )
If you play and want to friend me, my ID is 104422404 and my in-game name is Alina Zohar (I opted for one of the randomly generated ones).

In lieu of an adventure writeup, because I'm at a point in the game where I'm trying to min/max all of Murderface's perks and equipment which leads less to hilarious adventure and more to picking quests because of the loot or XP they'll bring, here's a bunch of photos he's taken and commentary.

Well, maybe a story or two. And not that many selfies.

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So the remastered version of Skyrim is now out on the PS4. We bought it yesterday and let it download and install last night so I could play it today. It's also out on the PC, for free if you bought all the DLC previously, and Toby discovered it unlocked early so he started his FOURTH run. This time his character is specializing in one-handed weapons, but I predict she's going to end up a sneaky character doing one-handed because he always goes sneaky.

Anyway, I can't port my PS3 saves over, so it's bye-bye Murderface, alas. But given that I hadn't been playing him much because almost every time he went out he was attacked by an ancient dragon that was above his pay grade that killed him horribly, perhaps not much of a loss. Ah well.

The big question now is: what sort of character am I going to build for my new run? I shall not be writing it up because it was getting rather tedious to make notes while I was playing, so you're all spared that (unless something particularly funny happens). But do I go really sneaky, or go full tank? Do I play a paladin or an ass? Murderface's twin brother or someone completely opposite him? Let me know your opinions!

(Also I stopped playing Skyrim quite so much because I started a replay of Kingdom Hearts II in preparation for the release of KHIII, but hey.)

I’m going to do something different for this look into Murderface’s life, by which I mean skipping ahead a couple of play sessions because I wanted to get this down while this extremely frustrating and hideously glitchy play session was still bright in my head.

Bonus: there are videos! Not-so-bonus: they’re filmed with my phone because I’m stuck on the PS3. FINGERS CROSSED I can port a PS3 save to the PS4 when the remastered version comes out, but I’m not holding my breath.

Anyway! Last time Murderface got married to the beauteous Sylgja because she didn’t run screaming from him at first sight, didn’t actively insult him, and seemed happy in his presence, which pretty much ruled out most of the rest of Skyrim’s population. Marriages have been made on worse grounds before. They’ve been settling in together, with a few hiccups here and there, until this, their first enormous challenge as a couple.

If you would like a portrait that perfectly encapsulates Murderface McKenzie’s (and my) rageface during this whole shebang, you can do no better than have a look at @ninjamonkeystudios’ Murderface marker portrait below the cut/jump/what-have-you:

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Last time, I promised that Murderface was going to make a momentous decision. He’s been doing a lot of deep thinking.

He’s always out running around Skyrim making money, hardly ever home, because dungeons just don’t loot themselves. He got his family out of Whiterun after overhearing Jarl Asshat’s plans for invasion, but the lakeside manor keeps getting attacked by giants and bandits. He’s on his third horse already, thanks to bandits! (I note that the coachman and the coachman’s horse sit placidly by and never get attacked...Murderface should probably consider what that may mean.)

Housecarl Valdimar’s pretty good at defending the place and Murderface’s daughters are charmingly bloodthirsty, but still there’s only so much one housecarl can do to protect two girls, three chickens, a cow, and a horse when multiple bandits attack. And what of times when Valdimar has to go into town for supplies? And once the girls get a little older, there’s maybe going to be...girl stuff, right? Women’s mysteries? Murderface is pretty sure that there’s a whole world there he’s unfamiliar with and doesn’t understand and maybe he should really outsource that particular education. And finally, he hasn’t been getting a whole lot of action with his current setup, despite trying his best. Women of Skyrim historically haven’t responded well to his signature moves of bumping into them and trapping them against counters, staring at them mutely, jumping up and down on their tables, and reverse-pickpocketing items into their inventories.

So Murderface has finally looked facts squarely in the face, and made what might be the toughest, scariest decision of his life.

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Come on, I'm shooting a laser! You gotta know where I'm at!

Why am I carrying around the Massachusetts Medical Journal?

Ooh a fisherman's hat with lures on it!

You lose some of the creepiness of the fog with that weird horizontal artifact. Oh, wait, it's the ocean.

[when an event fails to trigger so the characters stand around in a tableau instead of conversing] Anyone? Hello? Can I stand on the Child of Atom? Not for lack of trying! See my hair? Admire it! Are you admiring it?

[to a fussy robot] You sound like my grandmother.

Shoot him in the butt! And it launches him! He gets air!

It's your own fault for falling down that I get to shoot you in the head.

I'll make you carry this shit, Nick. I'll shove it into your inventory.

Last time we encountered Murderface he’d interrupted a ritual intended to resurrect the evil Wolf Queen, Potema, and received a whole 1000 septims for saving the free world yet again.

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