Spoiler Warning: Difference between revisions

[[File:SpoilerWarning_8862.jpg|frame|The [[Spoiler Warning]] crew. From the left: Josh/Reginald Cuftbert, You, Shamus, Rutskarn and Mumbles.]]

 

 

 

 

The group (in order of appearance) consists of:

* ''[[Shamus Young]]'': Better known as the author of ''[[DM of the Rings]]'' as well as a contributor for [[The Escapist]]. Tends to serve as [[Mister Exposition]], and also the most opinionated of the group.

* ''Josh Viel'': An anime reviewer for The Escapist. Plays the game, with the others as backseat drivers.

* ''[[Rutskarn]]'': Added to the group for the Fallout 3 LP. The group [[Troll]], [[Pungeon Master]], and hipster.

 

The games LPed so far are:

 

* ''[[Mass Effect]]''

* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''

* ''Trainz 2'' ([[April Fools]] episode)

* ''[[Hitman]]: Blood Money'' (One week "Hitmas" special)

* ''[[Saints Row the Third]]'' (New Year 2012 special livestream).

* ''Season of Mystery: The Cherry Blossom Murders'' (anniversary special)

* ''[[Alan Wake]]''

 

* [[Accentuate the Negative]]: The group, particularly Shamus and Josh are harshly critical and will quickly pick on parts of the game that they find frustrating. Though they do point out the parts they like in the games and note that as harsh as they are, they do actually like the games (though in the case of Fallout 3, it's more because the game is fun).

** They also note that in the first episode of New Vegas that of all the games they've done to that point, New Vegas is definitely better written, if hardly flawless.

*** And again at the end of ''Deus Ex: Human Revolution'', when Shamus admits that the game blew away his expectations, and allowed him to like [[Take Cover]] shooters. (Though he [[Continuity Nod|still disliked]] [[Mass Effect 2]].) Both he and Josh think that they like the game ''more'' after their LP, unlike with most games.

* [[And There Was Much Rejoicing]]: For ''Fallout 3'', {{spoiler|destroying the Citadel at the end of Broken Steel}}.

** {{spoiler|The group's reaction to getting Miranda (who is distinctly [[Plot Armor|Plot Armored]] compared to other characters) killed in the endgame}} of ''Mass Effect 2''.

** At the end of ''New Vegas'', {{spoiler|Shamus' reaction to the incinerator's destruction. }}

* [[Angrish]]: The [[April Fools]] [[Let's Play]] of ''Trainz 2'' reduced Rutskarn to angry, incomprehensible ranting.

** The ''Season of Mystery'' made Josh go into this at the end.

* [[The Alcoholic]]: The original Reginald Cuftbert, during ''Fallout 3'', succeeded at picking up addictions to practically every habit-forming substance in the Capital Wasteland. Appropriately, 'addiction to new substance' became one of the parts of their [[Drinking Game]].

*** It's even sillier than that: due to a quirk of the game's addiction system, you can't actually be addicted to "alcohol". Cuftbert instead gets addicted ''to whiskey specifically''. He later picks up addictions to scotch (a specific type of whiskey!), beer and wine.<ref>It's actually just an interface bug. The addiction is listed as alcohol in the Pip-Boy, and reacts to any alcohol consumed.</ref>

* [[Awesome but Impractical]]

* [[Berserk Button]]:

** Mentions of Little Lamplight.

** The incinerator in ''New Vegas'' that Josh lugs around for no reason whatsoever.

* [[Brick Joke]]: Rutskarn's ''Face/Off'' pun in the ''Amnesia'' episode.

* [[Catch Phrase]]: Most of the team has one.

** Mumbles correcting the pronunciation of Caesar:

** Rutskarn calls someone's name several times sequentially when he's trying to cut in.

** Rutskarn opening with "Okay, so, like, here's the thing..."

** Shamus mentions how "this is what bugs [him] about [game]", then explaining what.

** Someone mentioning a criticism and Shamus going "Euugh, ''yes''!" and elaborating. Often coupled with "This is what bugs me about X/this game-"

** Someone making a suggestion for Josh to do something stupid, to which Shamus responds "Strongly in favor of."

* [[Chaotic Stupid]]: The general playing style, which is both partly to (usually) show contempt for the story and partly for the lulz. This even describes how Josh plays the game (using/carrying weapons he puts no skills into, charging headfirst into battle with a stealth build/in a cover-based shooter) though he usually makes it work somehow (though not without dying multiple times).

* [[Chekhov's Gun]] During the New Vegas playthrough {{spoiler|The Incinerator.}}

* [[Cherry Tapping]]: One fast forward sequence during New Vegas had Reginald Cuftbert beating a Freeside thug to death with his bare hands... over a period of several minutes.

* [[Comedic Sociopathy]]/[[For the Evulz]]: A major part of their humor, especially in Fallout 3. Not only do they nuke Megaton, they blow up [[Dumbass DJ|Three Dog]] and take the chance to kill Brotherhood of Steel members whenever possible. In the Mass Effect series, this takes the form of trying to take Renegade options whenever possible.

** This even lead them to choosing the Paragon option for the endgame of ''Mass Effect 2''.

'''Rutskarn:''' Hold it, hold it. On the other hand, I actually do have a counterpoint: *ahem* {{spoiler|''Fuck the [[Smug Snake|Illusive Man]], blow it up''!}} }}

** In ''New Vegas'', they also "completed" Boone's quest by having him kill the wrong target (specifically his old friend Manny), telling him that they just wanted to see him die and killing him when he [[The Dog Bites Back|retaliates]]. Later on they said that they didn't want to kill Boone, only wanting to "mess with him" and didn't know that he'd actually become hostile afterwards.

* [[Cutting the Knot]]: A (un)surprising amount of quests get solved this way, i.e. by horribly murdering the quest-giver.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: All four of them.

* [[Designated Hero]]: Another sore spot of the group is when a game tells you a person is supposed to be heroic and good, even when what's happened in-universe so far gives no reason to support this. Amongst other things they point out that the accusations against Saren in ''Mass Effect'' objectively come down like nothing but paranoid ramblings with no evidence (and then mocking the flimsiness of the evidence you do find), that the Brotherhood of Steel continues to insist that Reginald Cuftbert is a hero who's supposed to save the Wasteland and not a mercenary even though he's killed half of them, nuked Megaton, killed Three Dog, tried to kill Little Lamplight, and a lot more, and that Ezio is a egotistical revenge-driven spree killer who kills hundreds of guards just doing their job while letting the [[Big Bad]] walk away to cause more mischief because suddenly "it won't bring his family back".

* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: As punishment for throwing a bottle at a Metrocop, Josh gets stuck to a wall by a glitch and is given a thorough thwacking.

* [[Drinking Game]]: Has an official one. Take a shot if (1) The main character dies. (2) If all contributors talk over each other at the same time. (3) Whenever the game they're playing gets compared to whatever game it's a sequel/[[Spiritual Successor]] of (double that if it's by Shamus). (4) Whenever the game crashes on-screen. (5) Whenever Josh mucks up in combat and starts blaming the interface, swears or uses his [[Catch Phrase]]. (6) Whenever said mucking up causes a near-death experience that causes him to spam healing items. Other options depend more on which game is played, such as substance abuse in ''Fallout'' and the 'rogue cell' gag in ''Mass Effect 2''.

** Josh and Mumbles eventually decided to play the game themselves during ''Honest Hearts'' in order to drown their bloodlust for each other.

* [[The Eeyore]]: Shamus will find something to complain about in just about anything going on.

** At the end of the main ''Fallout 3'' campaign, they refused to use the Modified FEV due to the fact that it is tantamount to a slow suicide, with the player not being immune to any of its effects despite what Eden (who is unaware that the Lone Wanderer is born a wastelander) says.

** A better example was their all-rescue streak in ''Bioshock'' (naturally, with Shamus lampshading that the 'gains' of going all-harvest were so minimal so as to render the 'moral choice' pretty much moot).

* [[Evil Laugh]]: Once given permission to do ''Honest Hearts'' after being vetoed against doing so previously and [[Sanity Slippage|tormenting the rest of the cast]] [[Humiliation Conga|for an entire week's worth of episodes]], Josh indulges himself in deliciously vile bouts of laughter in jubilation in [[Karma Houdini|having gotten his way]].

* [[Failed a Spot Check]]: Shamus not spotting things happening on-screen happens semi-regularly. It's even happened to Josh a few times, and he's the one playing. Shamus also admitted to having failed to spot Liberty Prime during his first play-through of ''Fallout 3''. For those not in the know, Liberty Prime is a 50 feet tall [[Humongous Mecha]] and tends to dominate the room it's in, which you visit several times during the course of the game.

** Josh also points out during the [[Mass Effect 2]] series that a large group of Quarians failed a spot check on their ''wost enemy in the middle of their home''

* [[Fission Mailed]]: 'The Great Crash' in ''Fallout: New Vegas''.

* [[Gone Horribly Wrong]]: Rutskarn's attempt at playing Hitman eventually devolves into killing everyone 47 sees.

* [[Grumpy Old Man]]: Shamus. They occasionally mock this by referring to him as a curmudgeon who hates all games.

* [[Highly-Visible Ninja]]: How Cuftbert is played in the Fallout games. As a Stealth and Melee build, his favored assassination technique is to plant explosives in others' pants, commonly uses weapons that he is for all intents and purposes incompetent with and generally favors a [[Leeroy Jenkins]] approach.

** Not to mention his favourite weapon; the perpetually burning Shishkebab. How anyone manages to stay stealthy with a [[Flaming Sword]] is anybody's guess, but Reginald does it somehow.

* [[Hostile Show Takeover]]: The reason for the ''Team Fortress 2'' episode? The Spy ''sapped the Normandy''.

** Shamus at one point gets sick and can't record for a week during ''Alan Wake''. The rest of the crew treat the event as this.

* [[Iconic Item]]: The pre-war bonnet in the ''Fallout'' games

* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]: In ''Fallout: New Vegas'', Mumbles is often urging Josh to take up cannibalism, which he always refuses for the sake of not wanting to waste a perk. Of course, he does at one point absentmindedly eat a piece of human flesh he looted from the Fiends.

** It's pronounced '''Kai'''-'''Sarr''', not Caesar. Mumbles loves pointing this out.

** Shamus was very insistent about referring to ''Mass Effect 2'' as a "[[Take Cover|cover-based shooter]]" instead of an RPG.

* [[Kill Him Already]]: They will usually say this when the protagonist simply stands there and lets the villain talk.

* [[Leeroy Jenkins]]: Cuftbert in all his/her incarnations loves to get into situations that he/she is unequipped/underleveled for for, such as murdering the Brotherhood of Steel within the Citadel, [[Storming the Castle|taking down Fortification Hill]], rushing in with Biotic Charge, punching [[Elite Mooks|Securitrons]], and taking on the [[Mad Bomber|Boomers]] wearing nothing but Benny's fancy suit and a bonnet. Through the power of drugs, spamming attacks and sheer luck he manages to make it through. [[Too Dumb to Live|Eventually.]]

** This is not helped by Josh's tendency to level in certain skills, then pick up powerful, exotic (and usually heavy) weapons that do not benefit for said skills, then to carry said weapon around, refusing to sell it, even when its out of ammo. When the rest of the team invariably points this out, he continues to do so just to [[Troll]] them. Statements to the effect of "[[Sarcasm Mode|Thank goodness you have all those points in energy weapons!]]" are a [[Running Gag]] in both ''Fallout'' games.

** However, they make an exception for Human Revolutions, where Stealth is at least attempted with some success.

** And Mordin. Josh in particular seems to have a lot of respect for him.

** Josh also ends up saving the companions in ''Dead Money'' just because he likes the characters. He also sticks with House for a surprising amount of time before finally killing him (ironically right after House gives the order to exterminate the Brotherhood of Steel, something that Josh would've gladly done out of his own volition).

* [[Railroading]]: The group's arch-nemesis, and one of the quickest things they will point out. The most frustrating example being Shepard being forced to work with Cerberus in ''ME2'' despite the fact that Shepard is a [[Sole Survivor]] of one of their "Rogue Cells".

** A quest in ''New Vegas'' involved going into the headquarters of Caesar's Legion. They killed Caesar and every living human in the camp. Mr. House says while it will hurt the Legion in the long term it's not going to keep them from participating in the final battle, to groans from the quartet. However, as a commenter pointed out, [[Klingon Promotion|this sort of thing]] [[Shown Their Work|was fairly typical]] for the Romans and it's justified and lampshaded in-game by several characters.

* [[Promoted Fanboy]]: Inverted. The regular hosts were self-proclaimed fans of ''Errant Signal'', and thus got its creator to join their merry band.

* [[Obviously Evil]]: One of the things that the group like about Human Revolutions is that despite the fact that Frank Pritchard is consistently a jerk to Adam Jensen and David Sarif is a Cyberpunk CEO, {{spoiler|neither are actually evil nor do they backstab Jensen at any point in the game.}}

** Someone (commonly Shamus) [[Sarcasm Mode|getting upbraided by the others]] for spoiling the plot of the games they play.

** Rutskarn's (under legal drinking) age.

** Reginald Cuftbert the Third starting every episode of ''Bioshock'' by trying to dig his way out of Rapture with his wrench, before quickly becoming distracted by something shiny and/or killable.

** The mockery of Cerberus in ''Mass Effect 2'', where everything questionable was handwaved as being caused by a 'Rogue Cell'. In the end, the crew decided that the Collectors themselves were a 'rogue cell' due to the sheer stupidity of their plan.

*** Also in that game, someone suggesting Josh do X, and Josh responding, with false ignorance, "What's X?" or "I have no idea what you're/you guys are talking about".

*** Mumbles' insistence on taking up cannibalism.

*** Not to mention Josh's playing style.

** DXHR: Josh not taking the "Parachute" augment, no matter how convenient.

* [[Serial Escalation]]: The ''[[Saints Row]]'' episode. Just... The whole episode. Josh finally meets a game where is playstyle is (almost) the norm for expected behaviour. [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* [[Shaggy Dog Story]]: In ''Mass Effect 2'', the story of {{spoiler|Thane}} took this bent (which was lampshaded). He was recruited, never used once, never talked to once, {{spoiler|and then killed by debris in the opening rounds of the Suicide Mission}}. Basically, all that (plot-mandated) ado for absolutely nothing.

* [[Soundtrack Dissonance]]: The opening for ''ME2'', which features Shepard being blown out of the Normandy while a jaunty jazz tune plays.

* [[Stating the Simple Solution]]: Another trademark is to question overly complicated quest proceedings (which they're Railroaded into) with asking why they don't do the obvious, i.e. commonly kill someone.

* [[Stating the Simple Solution]]: Shamus pointed out that the entire reason ''Mass Effect 2'''s plot exist is apparently because ''nobody'' thinks about mining, booby-trapping, disabling or otherwise blockading the Omega 4 relay, since it's the only way the Collectors can enter the rest of the galaxy. Doesn't help that the ''Arrival'' DLC mostly invalidates the point of the relay.

** And, of course, Josh himself. (Or at least his playstyle for the purposes of the LP.)

** Josh's playstyle and Rutskarn's puns occasionally have this effect on the others.

** Alluding to ''Fallout 3'' can have a similar outcome.

'''Shamus:''' Yes. Thank you, Mumbles. Excuse me, I have to throw up blood. }}

* [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]]: The ''Fallout'' Reginalds' favorite kill methods are to put explosives down unsuspecting people's pants. And then there's the time they assassinated the leadership of the Omertas with C4... [[Too Dumb to Live|While sitting in the same room]]<ref>They survive, if only just barely</ref>...

* [[Troll]]: If they're not picking on the game, they're picking on each other. And when they're not doing that, it's the audience's turn.

 

{{reflist}}