Quick Look: FTL: Advanced Edition

The music in this game is so good.

FYI for new players: For times such as 8:40, you can open the interior doors of your ship to allow oxygen into the room with the hull breach so your crew does not suffocate while repairing a hull breach.

Been playing the advanced stuff today and it's added a lot more variety. I'm a pretty lousy spaceship captain, but boy is this game interesting to play even if you never make it to the end.

@baka_shinji17: If you don't mind roguelikes, I woult totally recommend it!

The best part of this quick look is drew talking about all those movies. I would listen to a 2 hr podcast of drew talking about bad but good movies

great ql, i love this game

"Captain! We're receiving a sub-space transmission from the entity known as Jah'Redd. He claims his wares, priced affordably at five scraps and roughly three-tenths of a meter apiece, are not only delicious but simultaneouslynutritious."

Zoltan gives you free power, having him in the camera room is a total waste!

@drewbert With the Dude Where's My Car knowledge. As soon as they said ZOLTAN, I made the stupid hand symbol, like I am want to do :D

@dannyodwyer was the best part of this Quick Look.

Hahaha, don't make me laugh!

Great to see Drew thinking of the same things i am with the movie references. :D

Very frustrating to watch. Why did you put the Zoltan in the sensors room? You're out of missiles! You're wasting upgrades by not upgrading power! Uuuuuggghhh Brad!

Such a great game.

"How to open all doors? It's working in the iPad version!" Just hit that "door button" that's right next to your damn mouse pointer! Omg how blind can a single person be? *slamming head against desk*

It's all love and fun, you only get emotional about things you actually care about, so i seem to care a lot about GB, FTL or Brad.. maybe even all of them :D

Im pretty glad that the brad QLs are usually games that I have not already played extensively because it was endlessly infuriating all the incorrect facts and assumptions he was dropping about the game lol. Also it stressed me out so much how he would never pause but I'm sure it was to keep the quick look moving. Surprised at how far he made it on normal without even pausing

Haven't played this game in a very long time...feels good coming back. My god, that music!

@pyromagnestir: It's unlocked after you get 4 other ships, I believe. You start with it if you already had 4 ships unlocked.

Brad and Drew, an unexpected and infrequent, yet completely welcome combo! :D

That motherfucking Rebel Flagship. I can have the most killer combo and I can't beat it. I was so bummed when I found out it had 3 stages. I've gotten the 3rd stage to about 5 bars of health but nope! I'm also pretty sure I'm not good at FTL, but that hasn't stopped me from putting 40 hours into it. Did I mention I only play on easy?

Also I could listen to all of that music forever. I image thats what space sounds like.

I often feel like I'm the only one who still gives a shit about The Mask. Thanks Drew, that was comforting.

@brad Battlestar Galactica is well worth watching. If you watch the 2-part miniseries that kicks it off and don't want more I'd be really surprised. Maybe it doesn't end that well, but the highs are extremely high, probably the best sci-fi ever on TV.

Young Brad-san, you still have much to learn.

Seriously though, I'm guessing a lot of people's complaints in this Quick Look are just Brad getting too wrapped up in chatting with Drew and just pressing buttons without thinking, like the "whoops spent all my scrap right before a store". Mistakes happen.

However, it's one thing to skip the flavour text once you've seen most of it, but Brad skipping a standard "they're jamming your engines" explanation and then not understanding why he can't fully use his engines was a little frustrating. Also, sometimes the "we surrender" option is worth more than the scrap you get if you destroy them; in early sectors, if they offer you like 5-6 missiles (and a drone part or two or some fuel), that is quite valuable compared to the 10-25 scrap you'll get for blowing them up.

It's a pity that they had a fresh save on the PC, because it would've been cool to show some of the new ships and systems. Luckily they found that abandoned sector! There are so many cool new features in the game, I really recommend the game to just about everybody.

Reading is fundamental, Bradley!

FTL does have very good tool tips and explains everything just fine.

I like how Brad asked "so it doesn't leave you wanting more?"

Oh, it does, Brad. It does. But that's not what the show gives you. It gives you something else entirely. The miniseries and first 2 seasons are great; after that, hold on loosely and try to embrace all the horrible and hilarious decisions. I particularly liked the fat-suit story arc.

The new ship is unlocked by simply by having any other 4 ships unlocked, there's no random event for it. They added alternative unlocking methods for all the other ships as well so you don't have to rely on BS random encounters anymore.

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The new content was fun to play around with.

Protip: The Chain Vulcan laser is amazing, do not pass up an opportunity to get it. It only fires 1 shot and starts with an 11 second cool down, but the cool down decreases with every shot until it's 1 second (base). With a crew member manning weapons it's well below the refresh time of any shield. After the initial warmup period you cut through shields like butter.

I actually beat the flagship using weapons only (no teleport, cloak, drones, or hacking) with just one of those lasers and a basic missile launcher. I've done that only once before with an extraordinarily lucky set of weapon drops (basically 3 x Burst Laser II and teleport bombs).

What I do find a little disappointing is that, while you now have a few more ways to do it, the key to beating the flagship is still seems just to take out the missile battery ASAP.

I actually felt stressed watching this quick look. FTL is surprisingly difficult to play when not paying full attention. It requires a lot of pausing at that point which can get boring during a quick look. All that to say I'm sure Brad is fine at this game when playing on his own but my God that was some of the worst FTL play I have ever seen.

@drewscanlon @Brad Shoemaker

Thanks for the stream!!! Not too shabby on the controls even when you're talking Brad. Can see that you have been playing!!!

Man, I love FTL

"The dream is dead!" - Brad Shoemaker.

@development: i think people are too hard on the later seasons. yeah i admit there's a decline but there's still some compelling stuff, and i actually felt besides one hammy deus ex machina element the series finale wrapped up things well and was a fitting send off.

Yeah I actually enjoyed the whole thing, but probably would have preferred if it was kept in line with the first 2 seasons. Then again, I think a lot of people just failed to recognize that the series was always going towards weird religious directions from the very start. It wasn't ever really about science or anything like that. As dumb as the twists and turns got, I enjoyed them.

An example of how my feelings wavered up and down in the final seasons: !!!HUGE BATTLESTAR GALACTICA SPOILERS!!! What's-Her-Name's suicide and Chief's apathy towards the end were interesting turns for me. Chief strangling the fellow old-Cylon that killed his wife on the gooey Cylon-rigged bridge of the Galactica was pretty stupid.

@fontelroy: oh god, watching the weapons be armed for 30 seconds and not get fired!

I can only imagine how hard it is to play a game and talk about it's qualities at the same time, but I had to stop watching to stop myself yelling at the screen.

Wait, why is there another quick look for this scheduled to be published tomorrow?

The Quick Look isn't over until Giant Bomb New York says it's over! Navarro is dropping a second opinion on this FTL:AE (due to Brad beating him to the punch the first time around) to get the final word.

Maaan, this came out back in 2012 already? Where has the time gone...

Did they add more backrounds to this game? I really get tired of seeing the same gamma ray burst image over and over again.

These improvements are quite good & make the game fun, still would want one thing that they need to do which is when you finish the game (or die) you get a text story of all that happened.

This might sound condescending but I'm just really tired of the comments about Brad being bad.

Instead of pointing out something negative that will not change anything for anyone, why didn't you use that time to ask yourself why someone else playing video games stresses you out? It would be the more healthy and productive thing to do. More importantly, you wouldn't be one of the people that is constantly poking Brad over something he can't (easily) change.

@adaptor: I think you misunderstood the stressing out. I wasn't stressing out because of Brad's poor play but because FTL can be a surprisingly intense game, and towards the end there where he really needed a shop it was just a pretty intense moment.

Also I literally said, "I'm sure Brad is fine at this game," in my comment and defended his poor play as being due to the difficulty of playing a game of this sort during a quick look yet you decide to call out my comment instead of a dozen other comments not giving him the benefit of the doubt? Like I understand the desire to try to lower some of the negativity surrounding Brad's onscreen playing ability, but why choose my comment out of all of the vastly more insulting comments here? I didn't say Brad was bad at this game anywhere in my comment. Playing poorly and being bad at a game are two very different things. If Brad managed to beat the Rebel Flagship even on Easy than he is not bad at the game. FTL just requires a lot more concentration than one would expect. I know I've made similarly dumb choices during FTL runs while having a conversation while trying to play. It's just not an easy game to play quickly. So I guess I agree with your desire to lower some of the negativity associated with Brad quick looks but the very fact that I agree means that I don't think I'm the one who deserves to be called out for causing it.

yes a lot unless you dont like punishing rouge likes

I would easily watch a 2 hour stream of the giantbomb crew playing FTL. What a game!

Rival Quick Looks United By Fate!

I'm sorry that I singled out your comment. It's just that the constant 'Brad is bad' comments in combination with you writing 'my God that was some of the worst FTL play I have ever seen.' rubbed me the wrong way.

Posting a guy on the sensors or doors upgrades them to the next level for free while they're stationed there.