Oh, you're supposed to put it in the fire. You're just not supposed to stay in the room while the fuse burns down. If you run and stand in Santa's office until it blows, you won't be killed, and then you can go out and mop up the soot. :)

I blew myself up by lighting some TNT by accident down in the reindeer stables and then not making it to the stairs fast enough when I realized what that hissing sound was. It was a perfect Warner Brothers cartoon accident, and it really was an accident, which was when I realized just how perfect the game really is. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

figured it out! If you stick the dynamite in a bucket of water, and then throw that in, it puts out the fuse. And apparently it's the fuse that blows up dynamite, not, you know, the stick on fire.

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

FWIW, I don't think it's only on Steam (though it looks like the Shadow Warrior and Santa's Rampage modules may be), that's just where I happened to get it.

As an aside, I was a little sad to learn that VCD: Santa's Rampage isn't a tie-in to another game, like VCD: Shadow Warrior is. I was looking forward to tracking down the source game and slaughtering some elves.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That's probably the best strategy for getting the "Bloody Incompetent" achievement in VCD: Santa's Rampage. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"Ahh, reminds me of the old days" - Picking up one of the SMGs. Apparently he used to be a ninja assassin badass.

-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Some of my favorite things:

- The sound effects. Especially when you're carting a bin full of body parts over to the incinerator. *squish squish*
- The physics glitches that result in things like the bin spinning in place, body parts bouncing off the freshly-cleaned walls and each other with great force.
- In the Shadow Warrior level, the janitor whistling to himself as he works.

Yes, the occasional bizarre, huge-mess-inducing physics glitch can be entertaining. I picked up a shell casing once in the Shadow Warrior module and found myself hurled the entire length of the map as though struck by a train. No idea why in the world that happened, but super-ninja janitor was unharmed, so, hey, no foul. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Indeed!

One of the things I've determined is that one can often clear up capacity in a bin by picking it up and shaking it, to get the chunks and debris to settle a bit more nicely, just as one might do in real life. Most of the time, this works just fine.

Sometimes, however, things do not go as planned. In the Shadow Warrior module, the katana, in particular, are prone to levering themselves violently out of the bins when I do this, making me quite glad that they can't actually injure you by flying around.

I remember multiple conversations with friends about survival horror in general, and the Resident Evil/Biohazard franchises in particular, about what day-to-day life in those universes must be like when there isn't a zombie uprising/apocalypse happening. Like, the estate in the first Resident Evil you can sort of shrug off as being the home of a goddamned lunatic (same thing with Code: Veronica), but the Raccoon City PD building has exactly the same sort of bizarre architecture. Going to the restroom would've required three keys (that exploded into dust or something upon use) and someone's help moving a statue, at the least.

Naw, that was just a design feature to cut down on the PD's coffee budget.

Brian

That shouldn't be a problem for the Master of Unlocking.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"Where the key to the bathroom?"

"Well, you need to go over to the locker room on the third floor to get the key to lock-up, where you'll find the key to the records room, and that's where you'll find the key for the bathroom."

"Can't I just go to the records room and get the key?"

"Nope, door to records is locked."

"Why don't I just go to lock-up for the key to records?"

"Because it's also locked up and the key is in the locker room. Oh, and I forgot to mention that getting into the locker room requires solving puzzle."

"You know what, I'm just gonna pee into this bottle at my desk."

--------------------------
CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

I seem to recall an old Penny Arcade comic about this, something about Umbrella Corporation's anonymous suggestion box. I can't link it here since I'm at work and this is...well, Penny Arcade. But still, hilarious.

--------

this world created by the
hands of the gods
everything is false
everything is a LIE
the final days have come
now
let everything be destroyed

--mu

Fair warning: You will find a game on Steam that is actually called Shadow Warrior Redux, but it isn't the new game - it's the one from the '90s modified so it'll run on modern computers. The new game is just called Shadow Warrior.

And for what it's worth, I recommend it highly. This may seem like a strange thing to say about a game whose protagonist is called Lo Wang and who trades heavily on that in his sense of humor, but it's a lot more sophisticated than the old one. The wang jokes in the original game were coarse and aggressively-in-bad-taste (not a surprise, given that the game was, IIRC, from the people who brought us Duke Nukem 3D), and Lo Wang himself was portrayed in the most offensive possible '70s-kung-fu-sploitation-dub style.

He's a lot more relatable in the new game, and while he still makes jokes about his name, they're much more tongue-in-cheek. It's just more intelligent. (Also, the storyline makes a bit of sense, unlike the original's.) They had me from the opening of the first cutscene. If you get the game, you'll know what I mean when it happens. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Tangentially, I have not actually played Shadow Warrior, only watched a playthrough by hysterical Jesse Cox, and this brings me to a thought- is it just me, or is watching someone else play through a game is almost its own separate artform? I'm not entirely sure how to articulate it, it's not the same as say MST3K, and it's not quite schadenfreude, but for some reason I enjoyed watching someone else go through the game more than I would have enjoyed actually playing the game myself, I think.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

"Woo, boy, the party bus came through here. Am I right or am I right?"

>Tangentially, I have not actually played Shadow Warrior, only
>watched a playthrough by hysterical Jesse Cox, and this brings me to a
>thought- is it just me, or is watching someone else play through a
>game is almost its own separate artform?

I don't know about "artform", but it's certainly another route to experiencing the content. I never played either of the Lunar games, I just watched Truss play them. Did the same in high school with the SSI Dungeons & Dragons games (Pool of Radiance, et al.), because I had a friend who had them for his Amiga. (There's always the one guy who has an Amiga.) And Rogue on another friend's CoCo 3. In college mk 1, hours and hours of watching other gweeps play NetHack.

Speaking of old-video-game references, "What's that? You want me to take this? Well, I guess it's dangerous to go alone."

--G.
Killed by kicking a chest (wide keyhole)
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Indeed, my better half has enjoyed a number of games by watching me play them rather than trying to play them herself, since first-person games can make her queasy quite easily (the ones that don't, like Borderlands and its sequel, are the exception, rather than the rule), and she often doesn't have the patience or inclination to play third-person action games. (There are exceptions to this, like the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises, although she's never played ME3, since she lost her old saves to a hard drive crash and could never bring herself to replay them.)

Similarly, most of what I know about some of her favorites, like Final Fantasy XII, SMT: Persona 4, and a fair few other games have come from watching her play. For a number of these (Don't Starve and Dwarf Fortress, for example), it's because the genre doesn't personally engage me, but I love hearing the stories that emerge from them.

Man, how can you not love DF? I literally got up and did a victory dance the first time I got my waterfall powered lava corkscrew (to provide heat for the forges, you see) working. And the lack of saves means that every time I delve too deep (you know...every time I play) I have this "well, fuck me" moment.

--
-Pasha (I should try building a castle to the sky one of these games....)
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

Sadly, I could never get past the UI (or, more precisely, if less accurately, the lack thereof). It also falls into the same category as Minecraft for me -- it's so open a sandbox that I can't get engaged enough to learn the game properly. It's something of a personal failing, because I'd very much like to enjoy those games, but it just doesn't click for me. I need more structure than they provide, personally. (Fun with ADHD.)

My better half did, however, purchase Gnomoria as a gift for my Steam account (since she can't play it on her Mac), and has been playing it intermittently. I might give that a try at some point.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

((Edited to fix link markup.))

That said, the GweepNet version of the game was pretty boss. (Strangely enough, it never seems to have occurred to us to call it GweepNethack.) One of our local shop mods is where "Madman Omar's House of... " comes from. The canonical version was Madman Omar's House of Mimics, a shop where everything on sale is a mimic.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Ye gods, that was... 20 years ago. I kind of doubt it, but I'll ask around.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.