Spookin' With Scoops: Penumbra 'n Scratches

@patrickklepek: Its cool man! You learn from your mistakes. One question though is this feature going to be limited to PC games due to your setup? There is a bunch of console only stuff like Fatal Frame or Clocktower 3 that could make for a fun show.

I've seen more ghetto Starcraft streams. It's ok Patrick. I know streaming is hell at first. Once you figure it out things will be great! Looking forward to this series. 
 
@Winsord: It did indeed used to just be the Justin/Twitch player embedded into a news article until they got their own dedicated stuff for archiving videos.

Best thumbnail art ever.

I appreciate Patrick's effort and all, but this is just completely unwatchable due to terrible video quality and framerate

Volume is too low on my laptop, even with my volume at max...so now I have to use headphones.

...Well played, Giant Bomb. Well played.

@coakroach: Yes! That could be premium content by itself!

@EricSmith said:

While we're on the subject of technical issues: Has the crew ever said if they can put up old episodes of TNT onto the site? Like, 2010 TNTs? I was hoping for a higher quality version than what is archived on Justin and Ustream. Pardon my ignorance.

I'm pretty sure for most of those older ones, the Twitch archives are the only archives. If memory serves me correctly, they didn't start archiving them on their own equipment until they decided it could be a subscriber feature to have the videos in a better quality and on the (then) flow player, as the Justin.tv player at the time wasn't great.

As for this video, I very much appreciate the effort Patrick, and for being upfront about the quality. It's nice just to actually have the feature, instead of it falling to the wayside. I'm a good ways into the video now and enjoying it a bunch, even with the technical issues. Most of the streaming stuff is just things you figure out with time and practice anyways, like most things, it takes a bit of practice; you've got to start somewhere, and comparatively speaking, I'd say this is still pretty good.

this is easily the best sega cd game ive ever seen.

When you just treat this as radio, it works pretty well. :D

@patrickklepek: Keep it up man. The only way to truly accomplish anything is to just do it and stumble along the way. Thanks for the content, look forward to more.

Clive Barker's Undying is a nice little forgotten gem that might work in this feature.

@EricSmith said:

While we're on the subject of technical issues: Has the crew ever said if they can put up old episodes of TNT onto the site? Like, 2010 TNTs? I was hoping for a higher quality version than what is archived on Justin and Ustream. Pardon my ignorance.

Jeff said something on it. Not sure if it was during a premium special, his Jar Time thing or on a TNT but he said they thought about it but decided not to. In his words he said that they didn't have the higher quality versions so they would just be using the Justin.tv ones.

A white hood with an 88 on the jersey.

This was completely unexpected!

With sudden and unusual premium content, I don't give a flying duck what the quality is. Sweet, sweet content to take me through the weekend is still sweet, sweet content...

While we're on the subject of technical issues: Has the crew ever said if they can put up old episodes of TNT onto the site? Like, 2010 TNTs? I was hoping for a higher quality version than what is archived on Justin and Ustream. Pardon my ignorance.

I wonder if Lighthouse, the old Sierra game is a good pick for this feature. It freaked me the FUCK out when I played it, but I was a lot younger...

I'm sensing a need for a training montage, with Drew as Mr. Miyagi.

@patrickklepek Love you bro.

@patrickklepek: I am just stoked to see this feature continued for real! Definitely looking forward to the next one.

@thirteenyahs said:

I like this a lot. I'm too much of a pussy to actually play these games and this is a great way for me to experience them.

This times, like, a thousand.

I was in the chat at 1:00 AM. And let me say, I am glad this got posted, because I was laughing my ass off, at the comments about running from blobs, and colors.

Other than the quality issues, I'm just not sure why he decided to start with the second game in the Penumbra series rather than the first. It kind of spoils the entire story of the thing, and that's definitely something Overture did better than Black Plague.

Well, I at least respect Patrick for making the effort in parts of the site sorely lacking, if literally nothing else. 

If you are looking for other games to play, two words: Clock Tower. I really, really hate that game (for all the right reasons)

this may turn into the best feature on the internet. only "complaint" is that it was almost 1 when the livestream started. Cant account for time zones, unfortunately. Id love if this was a friday feature once. That way I could tune in. School and work kick my ass. need any sleep i can get

I enjoyed watching this live, even during the low bitrate chunk. I've always been too big of a pussy to play through any horror games, but they're pretty enjoyable to watch as long as someone else is doing the heavy lifting (of not giving up).

Plus, late night streams are awesome.

@reflex said:

Much respect to Patrick for doing this for us premium members i always appreciate anyone who creates new material on their own time.

yes.

Technical issues are the easiest to fix- just have a sitdown with drew before the next one

I'll check this out over the weekend. Quality issues or not, Chicago still supports you.

I'm actually looking forward to it being played at night alone, because we all love Vinny... but Vinny fucking around ruins the tension. There I said it!!

I like this a lot. I'm too much of a pussy to actually play these games and this is a great way for me to experience them.

Hope to see more! Always great to see someone from the crew put in the time to give us content in their free time!

So this is not perfect? I'm canceling my subscription right now!

No honestly, don't sweat it Patrick (I refuse to call you Scoops though), I enjoyed it anyway.

@patrickklepek: It's cool, man. I can only see this segment getting better.

@patrickklepek: It's okay. The art for this feature makes up everything. Keep Spookin' Scoops!

Dude chill, this is a great new feature even with a bumpy start.

In the beginning i thought patrick said that he would argue PBR as a good beer. I was about to jump out of my skin.

"GHOSTS DON'T CARE" (thats going to be my Halloween costume)

@smitty86 said:

Hmmm. While this quality is off, damned if I'm not interested as hell as to where this is going. This gets a thumb up from me. Also, since this was apparently livestreamed, anybody know the twitch channel for future reference?

The twitch channel Patrick used is the GB premium channel, to which only the staff has direct access. The live stream was advertised in yesterday's schedule.

Technical difficulties or not I'm glad this is being made. I normally don't like scary games but am fine watching them, so this allows me to experience games I would normally avoid.

I am basically incapable of playing horror games myself, but I'm super curious about them, so I really like this.

No worries. Yeah, the quality kind of sucks but we all know the next one will be better.

Great first (not really) try Patrick but this is unwatchable. Can't tell what anything is and with the understandably limited commentary I really have no idea what is going on. Better luck next time. Promising idea and thanks for the premium content!

Don't worry about it, Mr. Klepek. The hardest part about livestreams are always going to be figuring out what settings work, since everybody's hardware and bandwidth capabilities are different. I tried doing livestreams for my friends a while back and couldn't get it to work out. I'm still trying to figure this out, but at least you got to a point where your stream looks OK faster than I have.

No harm done man. A for effort. Can't wait for next week !

@patrickklepek: Please play through all of Penumbra: Black Plague. It is a terrific game; much better than its predecessor.

@Carroway said:

I actually didn't mind the pixelation all that much, it reminded me of a low-rent horror title. It was a fun aesthetic :) If nothing else, its all good now. Look forward to seeing more stuff!

@patrickklepek said:

Hey guys, I want to make a few things clear before the comments dig in.

1. I’m sorry for the quality of the video. Despite my technical test last week, I clearly wasn’t prepared for hosting a livestream, and hadn’t taken into account everything necessary. You guys are paying subscribers, some of you paid up in order to watch this feature, many of you were up very late, and it’s my fault for not being better prepared. Your patience is super appreciated. Thanks to the chat, we did figure out most of the issues, which should make next week’s show much better. For example?

2. I didn’t take bitrate into account. It was set at an astoundingly low 300, despite my 4MB+ upload connection at home capable of spitting out much more. That’s why the video suddenly becomes pretty watchable towards the very end, even if the video is slightly out of alignment at that point.

3. I should have lowered the resolution, rather than maintaining the native resolution of my laptop.

4. I didn’t have my laptop connected over Ethernet, it was over wi-fi. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

5. I didn’t save a local version of the capture, which means the version on Twitch is all we have.

6. I'm going to build a PC eventually! This year probably!

A bunch of excuses? Totally! But I wanted to make sure people knew I’d taken note of everything that now seems perfectly obvious, and to underscore the learning process. Part of the reason I just went ahead and pulled the trigger was to make sure that Spookin’ With Scoops actually happened. Even if I crashed and burned, at least there was progress, right? And you got to watch me flame out!

Again, thanks for your patience, we should have something much better next week, and if you have suggestions for future games, leave ‘em here or send me a PM on the site. Thanks for your support.

its all good duder. :)

Hmmm. While this quality is off, damned if I'm not interested as hell as to where this is going. This gets a thumb up from me. Also, since this was apparently livestreamed, anybody know the twitch channel for future reference?

I actually didn't mind the pixelation all that much, it reminded me of a low-rent horror title. It was a fun aesthetic :) If nothing else, its all good now. Look forward to seeing more stuff!

@Bob_Loblaw said:

It's all good Patrick, it just adds to the lo-fi horror aesthetic.

That's actually a good fucking point. I'm ashamed to not have had that association in the first place. On the other hand that means GB is all scripted and planned. They fooled us all along, aghhhhh.