Then the game gets interesting again as you will be back to trains.
March 18, 2014 3:55 PM   Subscribe

 
Neato! Particularly like the food link - punch mailbox, get chicken! Surprised not to see Crates and Barrels, though.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 4:12 PM on March 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


The toilets one reminded me of a fanfic I read once that turned a random object with magic light around it that served no purpose into a teleporter to a bathroom. Because there are no bathrooms in that entire game.
posted by NoraReed at 4:23 PM on March 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


I've mentioned this before, but the original Start To Crate article at Old Man Murray was written by Erik Wolpaw.

Erik went on to become the lead writer for Portal, in which you romance a crate.
posted by justkevin at 4:44 PM on March 18, 2014 [5 favorites]


I wonder what the Trains in Games person would think of The Last Express aka the Greatest Game Never Played.
posted by Paragon at 5:05 PM on March 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


Start-to-crate is one of my favorite metrics ever.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 5:10 PM on March 18, 2014


The review of the Dunwall rail system in Dishonored is definitely the best thing I've read today.
posted by figurant at 5:16 PM on March 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


"Romance" means "carry around for a while and then incinerate"? I been doin' it wrong.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:21 PM on March 18, 2014


"carry around for a while and then incinerate" is at least as effective a romance as "become infatuated with a dude and then kill yourself because he faked his death without telling you."
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:55 PM on March 18, 2014 [3 favorites]


The Fallout games have the best toilets...because you can get radiation sickness from drinking out of them and sometimes there's cherry bombs :D
posted by sexyrobot at 7:21 PM on March 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


"In one scene, there was a clearly american diesel locomotive to be seen, in a game that is set in a former Soviet Republic."

Gotta love the railroad guy.
posted by zompist at 7:24 PM on March 18, 2014


Is it just me or would the door to this room not actually work?
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 7:39 PM on March 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


Is it just me or would the door to this room not actually work?

No, it just opens the other way to give you a crotchful of counter corner.
posted by sexyrobot at 8:13 PM on March 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


The railroad guy really gets into what is accurate or inaccurate which isn't the focus of the other blogs listed here.

I am subscribed to the foliage one, because I like is how much it's about finding clever ways to make it look good while still being relatively simple shapes.
posted by RobotHero at 8:21 PM on March 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


I thought the door was actually already open, and that the doorway is coplanar with the wall that the toilet/vanity are on. Looking at it again though there is a fleur-de-lis that appears to be totally part of that same wall but is where the opening *would* be if that were the case. Looking at the bottom of the door it would appear that Our ship of the imagination! is correct as the door appears to be ajar and there is about 1 floor tile of space available.

Based on this one can assume that the protagonist has been living in the bathroom since he was small child and has been having food and fresh clothing passed to him through the door opening. He is only able to see himself by looking directly into the toilet as every other reflective surface in the room has been removed or is coated in soap scum. Also there is no toilet paper or towels, which are provided on a strictly as-needed basis. His tormentors have made him partially renovate the room several times, as can be seen by the non-matching tile and wallpaper, as well as the fact that the wall where the partially functioning door is has been stripped to the slats. He would like to end it all, but the gun they provided him with is completely jammed. He is occasionally made to rub lotion on his skin. I imagine this is why the game has a metascore of only 39 and is unavailable on steam.
posted by mcrandello at 9:45 PM on March 18, 2014 [2 favorites]


I am happy for all the other links in this post but I was honestly through the roof and done already the moment I understood that someone had started a Start To Crate tumblr. The years that passed between the original OMM review and the creation of that blog strike me now as a dizzying confusion, an inexplicable lacuna.

Of course there's a tumblr. Of course there is.
posted by cortex at 10:39 PM on March 18, 2014 [4 favorites]


Is it just me or would the door to this room not actually work?

In their defense, I have been in a house that pretty much has that bathroom. The room is like 8 feet wide with tons of wasted space, but the door opens directly into the vanity giving you about a foot of clearance to get inside.

They don't have any fat friends, I guess.
posted by sonic meat machine at 4:39 AM on March 19, 2014


Clearly Dishonored is not a good train simulator. It never claimed to be, but then, a game with hideously deformed people wouldn’t get away with saying it’s not a people simulator. Still, the rest of the game is excellent.

Someone put this up on Metacritic.
posted by ersatz at 6:44 AM on March 19, 2014


These are hilarious!

I loved the toilets one. Let me add Shitters Of Skyrim, a painstaking and meticulous catalog of all the buckets in Skyrim which are obviously meant for the NPCs to be using as indoor toilets.
posted by ErikaB at 4:49 PM on March 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


The start-to-crate one seems to consider any container whatsoever a “crate,” which misses the point of the original Old Man Murray column altogether. It’s perfectly reasonable to have a dumpster in an alley, or shipping containers on a wharf, or a chest at the foot of a bed; what OMM was highlighting is the absurdity of having enormous unpalletized wooden crates (and their cylindrical brethren, the barrels) randomly scattered throughout hallways and dining rooms and other places you would not expect to find such things. Plus the additional layer of the crates being either empty, invulnerable, or containing a single small item. (And barrels being full of unstable explosive substances.)
posted by El Mariachi at 1:17 AM on March 20, 2014 [2 favorites]


What I find hilarious about the gripping about crates is how many of them there are randomly sitting in hallways in Simon Frasers chem department. It seems we got a lot of Merk's Montreal sites chemistry gear when it closed down, and a lot of that still lives in crates in back hallways. They are a more modern design then I've seen in any game though.

Also, am I the only one who finds those toilets from Dead Space REALLY uncomfortable looking? Not to mention that one from STALKER, YEESH.

Does anyone else notice games always use western-style toilets, no matter where in the world or what part of the future they are set?
posted by Canageek at 11:45 PM on March 21, 2014


OH man, I forgot about the terrible toilets in Mass Effect 2. How are you supposed to sit on those things? They are so narrow, it is silly.

Hard reset also looks pretty bad.
posted by Canageek at 12:47 AM on March 22, 2014


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