Lockdown 2020: Jeff Plays Some Receiver 2 and Pong Quest

You can chart the lockdown by the length of Jeff's (and my) hair!

Looking fabulous!

Love wolfire!

Receiver 2 is such a bummer. That first game had all of these interesting gun mechanics, yet all you did was run around and collect tapes, but it felt kind of excusable since the game was a sparse proof of concept. But this game? It's 20 dollars and years after the second one, and it's almost the exact same game with practically the same environments and weapons, just made to look a little nicer. Why are the weapon mechanics so robust yet there's only two kinds of enemies in the whole game and you're barely even supposed to be fighting them as opposed to playing the world's shittiest scavenger hunt of trying to find these tapes? Like what is this game, man. Why not just take the weapons out and put in more mechanics around finding tapes if that's all they want you to do?

My favorite part about Receiver 2 is seeing people get salty about the glock in the reviews and forums.

EDIT: I can't believe the first tape Jeff found was a threat echo and also jeff knew to empty his gun. Lol, dang it.

I imagine this is sort of kind of what it must be like trying to play a very realistic vr gun oriented game on m+kb

Hotdogs, Horseshoes & Handgrenades VR is pretty much Receiver 1-level complexity with over a hundred different weapons of all types and plenty of different game modes. It's only in VR though and instead of different keys for all the actions you perform most of them with your own hand movements.

I think Receiver 2 works the way it does because its message is that guns aren't cool. Guns are an accident waiting to happen and they're not supposed to be cool or fun, they're supposed to be serious lethal instruments that must be approached with respect. Taking a gun is a serious action with serious consequences to every little decision, most of which will result in people getting hurt or killed whether you want to or not.

@kdr_11k:I could totally hear that about the message Receiver 2 might have, but the alternative to the gunplay is playing a mediocre scavenger hunt in recycled environments from the previous game, dodging almost literally the exact same enemies -- but you pay 20 dollars to do it all again with a minor coat of paint and the same glaring design flaws. Like I totally hear that message they might be going for, but it doesn't change how boring and empty this game is.

Havent watched this yet, nor did I play the first one, but I was impressed by what I saw on the quick look. If i recall correctly they made 1 in 7days for a jam with a 2 person team.

I've tried to not be a complainer, but the constantly flashing "Police can see through your walls" and 50 cent gifs have made Jeff's last few streams completely unwatchable for me.

Receiver seemed fine up until I figured out what it's about and then I became significantly less interested in it.

Receiver 2 seems like a very strange game. I thought it was about detailed gun mechanics, but it just seems to be about a stealthy scavenger hunt in a repetitive environment. Are there any other guns or enemies? Jeff didn't find them after playing for over an hour.

Breaking through the glass is cool though!

Six bullets, more than enough to kill anything that moves

I really like Receiver 2, but I 100% get why it's not something that most people would (or should). I don't think it's even something like Dark Souls, where people just needed to "get it" for it to become popular.

As a note to @jeff, the "self help" stuff is pretty much straight from the first game, where the developer postmortem said it's explicitly designed to emulate cult induction rhetoric. So yeah. If it makes you feel better, there are red "secret" floppies that you can find pretty early that make the "hey this is pretty suspect" stuff very clear. Including an encrypted message: to shoot the tapes, that makes it seem like the ending you describe would be more like the bad end. I wouldn't know yet, this game is way harder than the first!

That said, if anyone is curious, in my experience of finishing the first game a few times and 11 hours in this one: the actual game in Receiver isn't finding the tapes and shooting robots (but there are at least two more types later on, for those asking, and so far I'm only consistently up to 3 of at least 5 levels) - the actual game is keeping focus and planning each room out to reduce the chances you'll get shot whole doing that. It took me something like about 2 or 3 hours to get good enough to consistently get to the second, and at this point I can normally get to the third, but only a couple of times to the fourth. This is not because the levels are mechanically that much more difficult (though they are more difficult!), but because when you're being paranoid about drones being around every corner, you go so slowly that you can't keep the focus you need to actually deal with them up (or you accidentally shoot yourself 😄). So the larger scale loop is getting good enough at the small loop that you don't stress out and die, I guess?

Clearly not an experience everyone would enjoy, but the design seems to be quite deliberate!

In case it is applicable for anyone here - but just a content warning for suicide at about the 40:12 mark that goes all the way to 41:00.

Slice the Pie!

Pong Quest begins about 1h 21m in, as I know the vast majority of people who will watch this will want to know, and of course, skip to. I know I did, naked and oiled up as I am.