Unprofessional Fridays: 04/12/2013

Guys - I said if the "lan party setup" content continues in the future and if they don't find a way to remove the clicking noise. These videos are literally unwatchable for me, maybe it doesn't set you off the same way it does me, but for me it's like watching a video with someone scraping their nails on a blackboard the entire time. You'd agree there's not much point in paying for videos I can't watch yes? So how exactly is it stupid to want to not pay for content I can't consume - if it's going to continue as I said?

Do I honestly expect the "lan party setup" to feature heavily in the future? No, of course not, but I wanted to make a point and if I'm being a little over-dramatic on the internet, well sorry I'm not perfect. And besides, don't call the kettle black, pot; you have surely seen a stupider complaint ;)

@homelessbird: Regarding the hell comment, I agree :)

Vinny is the best at everything, from dota to backflippin'.

Best opening in awhile. Jeffs expressions, duders on PC's, and loved the quick shot of Vinny. I'm only 2:17 deep and have a feeling it's going to get even better.

It has...

Serious Sam tells the truth about the darling family update.

Oh by the way, just for giggles, regarding Bioforge and anyone thinking about buying it, I'm going to cut and paste a review I posted on GoG. I bought and replayed the game when it hit GoG a few months ago, as you will see, I'm kind of sorry I did.

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I played Bioforge when it was new and remembered it quite fondly like others here. However, time sugar coats memory and I suspect many of the reviews here aren't based on recent playthroughs. Having bought and played the GoG release, I can unfortunately say that this is one game I should have left as an old memory instead of a recent one.

Just to get it out of the way: The technical quality of the GoG version is fine. This is a DOS game and like every other DOS game on GoG it comes with Dosbox pre-configured to run it. As such, it's pretty much trouble free on any Windows machine. However, if there's one technical caveat, it's that cursor movement is oddly laggy in the save and load menu screens, yet is fine when using in-game control consoles and log books. I'm not sure if that's a problem that was in the game originally or if it's due to the emulation, but given the amount of saving and loading you need to do in the game, it becomes a little annoying.

That segues into my main beef with the game: death greets you seemingly every 10 steps. Player progression in Bioforge is mostly about trial-and-error. You advance through the game by going into dangerous situations essentially blind and dying a bunch of times before you eventually stumble upon the solution. An example from the early game is that you walk to the end of a tunnel and there are 3 paths you can take. 2 of these lead to an instant death - which the game doesn't really give you any way to know until you try them. That's endemic of the overall design philosophy. Every so often you'll have a vague idea of the goal you're trying to accomplish, but more often you'll just be trying things out until you find the option that doesn't get you killed. All adventure games have trial-and-error at some point, but usually not in such a punishing manner. It leads to saving every other step you take just so you don't end up repeating significant chunks of the game, and that has a devastating effect on flow and immersion, as do the deaths and subsequent loads themselves. From a modern perspective it feels frustrating and clunky - a game where, at least it me, it seemed especially prevalent that I was just jumping through the developer's hoops.

Then there's the combat - quite simply, it's atrocious. You've got Resident Evil style character-relative controls (some call these "tank controls") with fixed camera angles, most of them poor for fighting, and an incredibly slow responding and cumbersome attack system. Simply getting lined up with an enemy is a chore with the low resolution, poor angles, and ponderous movement speed. After that you've got to wrangle with the game's fighting system where both attack and reaction animations are slow and uninterruptable; consequently both the player and enemies can get trapped in hit animation loops and never have a chance to react. The overly complex fighting system (where 1-9 on the numpad combined with either Ctrl or Alt perform various attacks) is largely wasted as a result, since the safest option in such an awkward system is often to simply spam fast kicks or punches and trap enemies in animation loops. A 3 button (punch, kick, guard) system that rolled through a few different animations would have been more than sufficient for the game.

There are some redeeming qualities, namely that the game's story remains interesting and reasonably original even today, but even that relies on much of the world building and backstory occurring outside of the game in the "Field Personnel File" companion fiction.

In the end, while I regret having a sugar coated memory turned sour when reexamined, I do enjoy the appreciation that playing an old game like this, which hasn't stood the test of time, gives me for modern games and older games that DO hold up. In any case, approach this one with caution. I wouldn't recommend it to those who've never played it, and for those who have and are looking to recapture and old feeling like I was, be prepared for the possibility that the only thing you'll come away with is a renewed appreciation for modern games :)

Truly this was the most unprofessional Friday

This whole feature was amazing up until the point you all started playing DOTA 2. Even understanding it, it's still terrible to watch. Don't use it to kill an hour or two anymore on these shows...... please?

This was great.

@icantbestopped: I'd usually agree with you, but I thought watching Jeff etc play without any idea of what was happening, was really funny. Exactly how I would play a MOBA

Patrick really surprised me with Dota 2, in a good way.

Oh god Brad blaming the team when he got killed for running in on his own was terrible. That's exactly the (or one of) reason Jeff and the others aren't interested in Dota.

And yeah, the other team was trying too hard tbh.

[During 'BioForge']

Brad: "asdf, asdf", really?! Lame. Also, the genuine frustration on Brad, Jeff and even Patrick's face are why I don't like them as much on funnier segments, it kind of ruins half the fun if you are trying to 'win' all the time. I'm all for helping and there is definitely a limit to how funny something is after 10 fails, but still. But thank god Ryan wasn't there (whew), it would be constant loud instructions on what to do every five seconds.

Yes!

The official GB game is in development?! Finally, Lincoln Force will become a reality!

Dota2 might be the most boring game to watch other people play.

I'd rather watch Patrick double rotisserie some meat in Monster Hunter 3U. Seriously - bring in some MH3 next friday.

Man, the GB gaming community are dicks lol. The stream sniping is a real dick move, especially considering 4 of the 5 of them have never played the game and barely seen any gameplay. Either way, very entertaining UPF.

So what you're saying is you want a a Random PC Game of it with Vinny, Drew, and Dave? If so, then you got the right idea, son.

Although I've only played Dota 2 once, I'm glad these guys gave it a shot. It always makes me warm and fuzzy when they seem to actually be enjoying games.

The transition of PBR over the last decade is one of the weirdest things I've seen. From cheap, gross college beer, to ironic hipster beer sold in hipster bars, to an actually popular beer people drink as their cheap beer of choice. Branding is a strange strange thing.

Giantbomb: Your videos are so slow they can't stream without buffering for a decent amount of your subscribers. I try to download them and they download at 30 to 150kb/s whereas I can download videos from other sources at over 2mb a second.

I will seriously be reconsidering my decision to resubscribe if nothing is done about this. Surely if your own servers can't handle it, you can find a way to host them elsewhere?

I really, really want a Bioforge endurance run now. Holy crap that was the best segment on any of these shows.

I've had more luck in Chrome than in FF, give that a go.

Though downloading works fine for me.

I like that the first bookmark on that computer is Brodyquest for 10 hours.

"Let's close this window." - Brad

"Yeah, lets fucking hotbox this shit." - Vinny

This was hilarious as always.

jurassic heart ... yep just like Hatoful boyfriend {8

Just subscribed after being a no-good freeloader for years. My only regret is not doing it sooner.

Also, I sort of blame my fellow fans in the dota match. Sort of bad form not to play your most off-heroes when facing total beginners (Brad excl). It should be meepo, puck, wisp (had patrick not picked it), etc etc. Or all carries without stuns/disables. You shouldn't be a try-hard when playing for fun.

"What if you're a car?"

Brad, you sicko!

goty

I loved Jeff's reaction during the Bioforge part because it was basically exactly what I was thinking. Great stuff.

A guest who looks a lot like a college friend of mine was sitting on the couch.

Then the guest spoke and it was Vinny.

My brain is having difficulty assimilating that info.

Only now I caught up with this episode of Unprofessional Fridays and I don't really know what happened or how or why, but I laughed so hard in that log book section. I mean, I laughed, like, life-threatening hard. Seriously, when Vinny starts scrolling I started laughing so uncontrollably that I couldn't follow what was going on, so I would rewind back to the start of that scene and I would laugh again so hard that I had to go back yet again. This went on for half an hour, no joke. The combination of Vinny's "Holy shit" with the sound of text scrolling and with Vinny & Brad joined reaction as the scrolling went by proved to be too much for me. My god, I hadn't laugh like this in... probably ever.

Also, Brad's laugh when Jeff says "Serious games are big right now" is priceless.

I had to come back and comment again. I have seen all these UF's, I am an expert and this is the best.

"My left is your to the right" That about sums it up I guess.

a fork

\

We should *not* be enemies! We should work *together*!

Watching this again. Jeff's CAG... reference was pretty great

This is it. This is where the Bioforge endurance run begins.

Note to potential viewers: if you are looking for "the one where they start Bioforge," you have come to the right place. It starts around the 30-minute mark.

@itwastuesday: You are a gentleman and a scholar. That is exactly why I came here. Thanks duder!

@itwastuesday: You already know.

Thank you.

I just can't get enough of Bioforge.

@dijon: Thank you, from the future!

Jeff playing DOTA? What heresy is this?

vinny's hair.............................................

like if vinny sent you here

A fork

Best UPF ever?

I came here to watch the beginning of the BioForge playthrough, and ended up stumbling upon a fuckin' wild UPF. They played Dota 2, and it was more than just Brad?! Seeing Jeff and Vinny play Dota... it felt wrong.