This is the most realistic depiction of being a maintenance man I've ever seen. Every problem you try to solve is confusing, the solution is arbitrary and ridiculous, and your coworkers screw you over just for the hell of it.
Common, always a situation of fear, you dont know how long the rescue squad arrives to go trough the puzzles themselves, often times they too get trapped
Seriously, I’ll have someone ask me to fix something. That’s no problem. The moment I ask for clarification beyond “this is difficult, it could be better” it’s like I’m talking quantum physics about how many life jackets need to fit on the rack when it’s done.
@@valletasyes. Installing something that's fine for a bit and then completely blocks you off from something later on, and then having to go back and redo something you've already done is as close to as soft lock as I can imagine without needing time travel
Yeah, I knew he sounded familiar at first. After a while I realized it was Dave. That's really cool. Maybe it's what Dave was doing before joining the CP...
"The logic is broken now" "The game revels in letting you know you did something the wrong way" "no consistency, no pattern, just stumbling around in the dark" I work at a box factory, and I have never seen so faithful a portrayal of my job. Especially the coworkers. Thank you, Ross, for making my day.
Have any of your workers ever had their hands cut off by the machinery? And then the hand started crawling around and try to strangle everybody? Any popped eyeballs?
The switch you have to flip 7 times is because the spikes are a representation of a positive whole number in binary and the switch increments the "number" by 1. The leftmost spikes are 2^0, the middle ones 2^1 and the rightmost are 2^2. The spikes being up is a 0 and the spikes being down is a 1. Thus you have to gradually increment it until you get 7, which is 111 in binary. Presumably if you flip it one more time the spikes all go back up and you all over again, because 8 is 0001 but we don't have that 4th digit. I dunno how much of their audience they expected to understand it, but it does fit the engineering theme.
Wouldn't an easier way of saying that be "the leftmost spikes alternate up and down with every switch flip, the middle ones with every two switch flips, and the rightmost spikes with every four switch flips"? Obviously the game should have done something to make people flip the switch more, but realizing that some spikes require four flips to go down or up would be a cool gameplay moment in theory.
This is what I'm talking about, a game no one has ever ever possibly heard of. Seriously Ross you're the bomb with this shit. I could listen to you talk about bizarre PC games from the 80's and 90's all day
Oh this is nothing, Contraption Zack was semi-well known at the time for what it was. I just picked it because I wanted something lighter after the last batch. Don't worry, I'll have some serious oddities people are unlikely to have heard of later on.
CD probably. There were DOS releases until 99 I think. I know DOOM being played on DOS was a massive reason for gamers to not update to windows and that port didn´t happen until late 90´s.
Huh? Windows ran on top of DOS until Windows 2000, there was no one who didn't "update to windows" because they wanted to play DOS games. They just booted into DOS instead of Windows if they wanted to play a game.
mrbitbot Oh, really? I readed something like that on "Masters of Doom" so I might have misinterpreted it. Also according to the credits the ones doing the voices are the friends of Ross
@@mrbitbot what?? I had windows 95 and all you did was put in an msdos game and the prompt for it would come up. No need to start it any other way, but in windows
Contraption Zac works at Black Mesa apparently. The box smashing room, the pistons that don't do anything, all would be right at home at Zac's company.
@@acoolerhandle MTM-8 seems like a fairly rugged multi-purpose robot, given the implications of it repairing the radioactive waste leak (when you pass this place in Half-Life, the leak is ongoing and robot is entering the puddle. When you do so in the Opposing Force, the leak is repaired).
Matthew Kelley BFG 9000 based Portal Guns that run on depleted uranium 235, a punishing rarity of handrails, a useless steam vent, gerbil maze air vents, crazy O metres, snakes & ladders based fire escapes in lift shafts, Charlie & the Chocolate factory coolant tanks plus a coolant swimming pool, raves in the programming department, giant meat grinders at the bottom of large inclinators and both teleporter generators & exotic matter scanning lasers vaguely shaped like willies and squids. (And I don't mean the sea creature)
I've only just realised the part of the ending where Plant #4 goes into space is a sneaky pun: at the start when Zack's co-workers steal his tools and he realises what they're doing, he says "we'll see who comes out on top". Beat the game and he literally does. This is further reinforced by Zack having become Employee of the Month by the final scene.
Can't believe "Milking the job." is shown in a game. Well it's shown in plenty of games but this one is a bit more in-depth and realistic. Classic in this field. Especially in construction. You do as little work as possible so you can collect that overtime. Walk don't run to where you need to be. Make it look like you're doing work. Do as little as possible so that your boss doesn't yell at you. But you don't get the job done too quickly. If you're a smoker that's great cause now you have at least 10 - 15 minutes every hour or so you can waste. You ever wonder why that street is still blocked off by construction 6 months to a year+ later? Why the new wing of the place you work at still isn't functioning? Why your car is still in the repair shop and you're sitting there drinking the possibly free coffee, looking for a place to waste time at? Yeah this is likely the reason 80% of the time. But it's not just the workers bull shitting around. Even the contractors, the delivery guys, or the guy that inspects everything to give the okay takes his or her time getting there will do this. And if you happen to be one of those hard workers that gets the job done quick. Yeah you're either a target to have certain other people make you lose your job or people don't like you. Or both. You see this from co-workers a lot. Especially when they know that they're close to finishing there job and once they finish then they're getting laid off. There's a job position where all these guys do is simple math and turn a bolt. Seriously they're the human embodiment of Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank. Even have an oversized wrench to go along with the job. And they were paid 3 times the amount I was. All I did was pick up trash, sweep floors, carry heavy stuff, watch a confined space, and make sure I don't die from a stupid accident (add in frustration of not knowing what your work schedule is till the day before you get a day off). And I made $13 bucks an hour plus overtime. So yeah you can see why these people milk there job.
Landlord had a guy come and fix the fence of a place we were staying at. Despite us actually having more than enough leftover materials from when the fence went up, he still insisted on going to get the wood he needed, taking two hours to go to home depot about 5 min away... The wood he had to get was also the same stuff we had. He then took a good 3 hours to patch a quarter of the fence. XD No joke, they're legit that bad. I could have done the same job in about 1 hour.
and in some places if you are too good at your job either you dont get promoted because you are borderline essential or they give you twice the amount of work with no recognition
@@henryfleischer404 It happens. I mean you have to be lucky not to find someone like that at any job imo. The worst ones are the ones that will try and injure themselves and want to claim Workman's Comp.
One thing we must give this game is that it spared no expense on the ending. Animating that entire sequence must have been _a lot_ of work! And it provides a nice character arc and a satisfying resolution to the hazing plot.
Watching this video I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. Lost in a massive industrial complex, the new guy on the job who doesn't know anything, whose coworkers are conspiring against him with their sweaty, crazed eyes bulging out of their sockets. Blood in the locker. 6 66. Spikes popping out of the floor, elevators lowering into lava. I'm suffering from lethargy. Limbs move but they do so stiffly and running is impossible. Color coded systems designed to mislead me into making decisions that will have me stuck in the bowels of the facility, likely doomed to die of dehydration over the course of several days, having to drink my own urine and eat captured rats and drink their blood to survive just another day, hoping I will be found. Removing pipes from the wall which for all I know, could cause a catastrophic failure, killing everyone. Metal grates flinging me across bottomless chasms with enough force to break my bones. On top of all that my hair is awful.
At first, I thought the factory might become inconsistent because it was an enormous engineering project, and the engineers eventually started throwing whatever in to get the project done. In the early levels, everything was running on schedule, and they had a theme they were sticking to. But as the work dragged on, more and more concessions needed to be made to the gods of "Good Enough". Until all the old patterns were abandoned, and they just figured that, so long as the engineers who built the thing were kept on after the fact, they could just use their in-depth knowledge to fix any problems. But then time passed, and all the old engineers died or were replaced, so now no one actually understands how this factory functions. Just getting it running again after it breaks down is a matter of trial and error, through the original designer's arcane bullshit. Kind of like programming. I thought that at first, but then Ross pointed out that everyone in this game is insane. So my theory holds a bit less water. Unless, of course, we assume that Zack's coworkers were the ones who built this place, and they went mad during the process of finishing it. None of this even comes close to figuring out what the factory even does (besides creating spam mail, apparently). Although from the fact that the "Suits" are coming, we can assume that whatever these machines do is of great importance to the government. You know it just occurred to me while writing this comment, but this game is a lot like Paranoia. A huge complex with machines that make no sense, superiors who expect unreasonable things from their underlings, and workers constantly scheming against one another. All that's missing is the color coded uniforms, clones, and Friend Computer.
Earlier today, I'd say about 6 hours ago, I found this video. Now, 6 hours later, I've not spent a minute not watching one of your videos. I've never felt so sure about subscribing to a newly found channel before. Because your videos are just so damn well constructed! Things I love: -A lot of gameplay. You never repeat stuff and with most things you tell us about you have gameplay that fits with it. -You make funny jokes, I laugh my ass of when I watch your videos. A very nice sense of humour. -Your ideas and theories for games are entertaining to listen to and also very interesting. -you sound like you're having fun well making the video, you sound very enthousiastic. -Interesting information and more.. Keep going man, I'll definitely be watching your videos!
I found him when I was still in highschool back in 2007... but I forgot about him for another 7 years. Was kinda surreal remembering "hey, wasn't there that Freeman's mind thing I watched as a kid, I wonder if there were ever more episodes" only to then rediscover the channel on the last episode coming out literally '1 day ago' at the time :P Ross is the best.
If every video-game to movie adaptation has ever taught me anything it's that video-game to movie adaptations suck, all the time. I don't really have high hopes for any Half Life film. Especially since they're going to likely give Freeman's character lines.
+*Lt. Voss* J.J Abrams will be involved (possibly to direct) And plus, it's Valve. Valve doesn't let their stuff be bad (unless it's Ricochet, but we don't talk about that)
The thing is, freeman doesn't have a character because that helps with immersion, but that's bad practice in film. So that said I am guessing that they won't focus on freeman but instead a rebel, or mix it up with a civil protection redemption story, or maybe do something experimental like the adventures of D0G during all the times Alyx says "Go do this while me and Gordon go this way."
I feel like this could be a horror game. You're maintaining this massive machine, the size of a small city. Your boss sends you down there, it needs to be working before "the suits" arrive. You don't know who the suits are, you don't want to know whey your boss is so antsy to get it fixed for them. Your coworkers are caricatures of your typical moderate-skill factory worker, looking like anti-immigrant cartoons made by Thomas Nast and obsessed with hazing. You're not sure they always were like that. Descending into the bowels of the machine, you must navigate a network of buttons, switches, and pipes, always wary that one wrong move or too slow reaction time means you could be trapped in a corner for who knows how long, and looking at your coworkers you're not hopeful they'll come looking for you in any timely fashion, they only appear to steal your tools yet again. Yet you still step with care, one false move and the machinery surrounding you might crush you. Is that lava? Molten metal? What purpose does it serve? Why is there so much of it? No matter how deep you go and how far your maintenance progresses, you have no clue how it works or what it actually does. You flip switches and push buttons, and you're still not sure what anything actually does or why. You recognize individual bits of machinery, but have no clue what they contribute to the overall goal of the plant, or what that goal is. After what feels like days of wandering the bowels of plant #4, it comes to life, seemingly just there to print out span mail, while the seemingly human suits celebrate your achievement with your coworkers and boss. You know that's not all it does. You saw too much down there. Your boss congratulates you and sends your coworkers on some other maintenance task. It's your lunch break, and no matter who you ask, you can't get a straight answer on anything about this place. You see your coworkers left their tools unattended. Well, if they won't help you or tell anything, and actively sabotage your work, well, turnabout is fair play after all. Welcome to Gadget Co., new employee. Just gotta get through 89 days more of probation and you'll get the health AND dental.
When a company uses Adelson's checkerboard as its lobby, that's a warning. And sure enough, there are enough mfing triple spikes in here to make Michael Jones' head explode. The switch-flipping and backtracking remind me a lot of some Marathon levels. All you need is some chip-insertion and a sarcastic AI to turn this into a sci-fi FPS.
I respect a game that allows you to put your chesspiece "on the line", but that should be reserved for finding easter eggs or alternate solves. Do the wires leading to/from the switches ever hint at their function or is that always a bluff?
Hey Ross, I know that this is not really the right place to be asking but did you get my email inquiring as to what you charge for voice acting and whether or not a lack of budget influences your rates? I will reiterate that I am in no hurry for a response, I just want to make sure that you got it.
Zack looks a helluva lot like Weird Al... so *that's* why he was so excited about the Hardware Store...! Heh heh... even the Save Game feature has traps!
The voice acting you and your buddies did for this is so good, it took me a minute to realize it isn't part of the game. Even the sound quality kind of matches up with the rest of the game's tone.
Oh god I played (read: was traumatized by) this game as a kid. I just haven't thought of it in about 25 years, and would've _never_ remembered its name or anything if not for coming across this. Thank you. Bloody surreal nightmare this thing was, and I never did beat it.
According to _MST3K: The Revival_ (the 2017 Netflix series), Gizmonic also has an asteroid-mining division (which the latest victim of the Mads was working for when he got a fake distress call, leading to him being trapped on the dark side of the moon). Obviously, this episode came out long before that aired, but it's still kind of an answer to the question...
You know, after watching this video and witnessing this game in all of its frustrating glory, I have to give major props to Ross for doing this game again for the sake of the show, especially at that one part that gave him painful memories. That is what I call determination and dedication.
You know, at first i misread the title as "Constipation Zack".. but now that i think about it, it might actually explain the madness behind the game. If the entire in-game plant is taken as a metaphor for someone's malfunctioning intestine, then perhaps the madening puzzles are a metaphor for how uncertian and complicated a working fix for it might actually be. In which case, Zack might be an anology for a medicine that eventually actually worked, while his co-workers are just cheap half-baked one's that didn't really get to fix the problem but were still in the system and thus just ended up getting in Zack's way while he was trying to do his job. This also might explain the "Happy" wibe to it. Constipation might make a person think in a crazy way, but not enough to actually make them "mentaly disturbed". Heck, the plant itself doesn't even do anything but spew random crap at the end of the game.
***** Well zack fixed a whole weird ass paper cutter machine completely safely if slowly, and bob died multiple time trying to put together trees. TREES.
***** Oh! I didn't even think of that. But is he really committing suicide or is he just starving to death? Either way, plenty of smart people have died trapped tired and alone, but few smart people have died willingly assembling things using trampoline based propulsion.
I would like to congratulate you ross, this is my 5000'th liked video. Thank you for releasing a video in this crucial time, because this important milestone could have gone to any myriad of videos. But as my favorite content creator, you deserve it!
fantastic contraption is another one like that. it's a 2D puzzle game where you use various tools and objects (walls, animals, gears, motors, rockets, explosives) to solve puzzles. it's really fun and allows for you to create you own contraption for others to solve. can't help but feel like you've mentioned it before though....
xD this reminds me of my old job. Especially with the random color coding. Like we were electrical department and at one point in that navy training thing we did. The trainers gave our sergeant a cable to repair. And it had 9 Lines that were all grey and each of them integrated another 12 lines Which were also all grey. So on basis he would've needed to check each of them seperately before finding out where to put which. He was like "You are fucking joking. I ain't doing that. This would take a bare minimum of 3 days not 2 hours"
Also on the ship itself was other weird shit going on. For example something was wrong with one of the shore powerlines. And if you ever deactivated it, even though you didn't run on shore powerlines currently, it would trigger some weird safety measures and all the electrical generators would shut down. There was other weird stuff as well. For example if you wanted to use the Breathable Air Compressor you needed to check oil before. But the check would give you the wrong height if you didn't open the refill flap in beforehand and wait for 15 seconds. Or one of the transformers would be cooled by the same water used in the firefight water line. And it had a pressure minimizer before it. But sometimes it would for some reason give you false pressure and the fix was simply to close the line and open it up again and again until it worked.
The faces scared the hell out of me. This was a great show, there's something ever so fascinating about hearing obscure old games and even more when they are absolute pain.
I really enjoy these game dungeon video of yours, Ross, these old games interest me a lot. Thank you for putting all that effort into making such quality videos :)
God damn I fucking love Ross's caveman-like screams, that ladder gag in the Invisible War video was amazing, I may have to use it as a ringtone for texts I never receive on my phone I always have on silent.
Glad you're still doing these Ross. Love you and your channel. Keep at it man, you got a good thing going. Insert other cliche feel-good text here. Blank. Blank. Blank.
I'm probably reading into it too much but I couldn't help but notice the locker before the bloody one and the number 6 while the bloody one had 66. NIce video as always!
This game's engine was re-used for a game called D/Generation, which apparently was popular enough to be ported to the Switch, I remember people complaining that the engine was turned 3D and looked clearly worse because of that.
Ross, you have the soothing beriton of a voice that brings back memories deeply repressed that make me relive things I once blocked out. Keep up the good work!
I think Lemmings was the game that popularized this weird tone. It's about trying (and usually failing) to prevent the cute little lemmings from dying violently while upbeat music plays, like maybe you accidentally steer them off a cliff and they all go splat as they hit the ground, for example. Occasionally you might even see machines that seem like they were designed purely to kill lemmings in the most horrific ways imaginable, sometimes they even appear out of nowhere.
How about "Darkest of Days"? Time travel first person shooter. Has some things going for it, that make it very interesting and slightly unique. Also a lot of things that ruin the potential it had. But its simply fun to play. The sound and the feel of the weapons and the combat can be really enjoyable.
I don't know Ross' Protocol on suggestions is, but I just remember a game I think would be a PERFECT fit for Game Dungeon: Relentless: Little Big Adventure. Ross, if you see this post, seriously check it out. Even if you don't end up doing a GD on it, you yourself would probably still get a kick out of it.
To put it in terms Ross would find apprpriate. Relentless Little Big Adventure is what you'd get if you took the gameplay of Revenant, a satire of 1984, and made it look like the kid's show Arthur the Ardvark. It was also made in the late '90s and has some pretty bizarre looking pre-rendered cutscenes.
LBA is not obscure at all, it was a big name in it's day, but mostly 90% of the adventure games are not remembered by anyone other than adventure games fans.
What you don't see after the post-credits scene is Zack beating each coworker to death with the corresponding tool they borrowed from him earlier. The wrench and hammer guys were met with a swift end, but the tape Guy's suffering was drawn out. The weird guy with the pupils and no eyeballs was spared; his only crime was having shitty hearing.
I can only think of one other game with grid-based movement where you're expected to go in-between spaces, which is Adventures of Lolo 3, which was basically designed like an expert-level ROM hack of the previous games where they expect you to know every little quirk of the engine.
Ah sorry... the credits were not from the game but from the video itself :) And I also wondered how much voice recording was on a pre-CD area game. That answers it.
Are just being a goof or are you serious? Because he just had these guys voice the lines just to make it more interesting and funny. Otherwise it'd just be silent.
Why so hostile? I wrote exactly how I meant it: I missed the switch from game footage to Ross' video footage and thought the credits were from the game. Then I wondered how old Ross might be and rewatched the end to discover that the voice overs are not original. I was happy to explain it again.
NoneG3 Eh I didn't really mean to sound so hostile but reading back what I said I sounded pretty dickish. Sorry for my rudeness I guess in my mind it was really obvious.
Yeah. The voice acting is pretty good, but it is for the sake of this video. It's a testament to how good the voice acting is that it can be mistaken as an actual part of the game.
Hey Ross, I'm not sure if you're taking requests, but I'd love to see a Game Dungeon on Fuel, that racing game you played in the first recap episode. I've recently got my hands on a copy, which was a total pain in the neck to get since it was taken off Steam, and I think it's something of a forgotten gem of that era of games, especially for racing games. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
do you think contraption zack and construction bob are related? considering how similar their names and games are, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine them existing in the same universe
Holy shit, this is one of my all time favorite games! My brother linked this to me in an IM and I'm so sad that I am in the middle of an SSD install and will have to wait to watch. Thanks for the video Ross, I'm super excited about this one.
As it turns out SSDs finish installing windows incredibly fast, and so I'm already watching now. Thanks again for this video, just knowing somebody else remembers this game makes my week.
This is the most realistic depiction of being a maintenance man I've ever seen. Every problem you try to solve is confusing, the solution is arbitrary and ridiculous, and your coworkers screw you over just for the hell of it.
Do valves randomly soft lock you in real life as well?
Common, always a situation of fear, you dont know how long the rescue squad arrives to go trough the puzzles themselves, often times they too get trapped
Seriously, I’ll have someone ask me to fix something. That’s no problem. The moment I ask for clarification beyond “this is difficult, it could be better” it’s like I’m talking quantum physics about how many life jackets need to fit on the rack when it’s done.
@@valletas if shower valves are anything to go by in my experience, probably.
@@valletasyes. Installing something that's fine for a bit and then completely blocks you off from something later on, and then having to go back and redo something you've already done is as close to as soft lock as I can imagine without needing time travel
I didn't realise the voice-acting was done by Ross and his friends until the credits. I thought it was in-game.
omg your right it was bugging me that jacks voice was so familiar, its dave from civil protection!
Yeah, I knew he sounded familiar at first. After a while I realized it was Dave. That's really cool. Maybe it's what Dave was doing before joining the CP...
I noticed as soon as zack started talking like a civil protection.
I knew that voice was familiar...
Same here. Zack's voice was SO familiar to me, though. It finally dawned on me it was Dave's voice from Civil Protection.
"The logic is broken now"
"The game revels in letting you know you did something the wrong way"
"no consistency, no pattern, just stumbling around in the dark"
I work at a box factory, and I have never seen so faithful a portrayal of my job. Especially the coworkers. Thank you, Ross, for making my day.
Hey, what would i'd have to do to get hired for a job like that? I mean, what things do executives look favorly upon?
Have any of your workers ever had their hands cut off by the machinery? And then the hand started crawling around and try to strangle everybody?
Any popped eyeballs?
My boy's a box! Damn you! A box!
That's what happens when an intelligent person is thrown into a monotonous job...
Your coworkers look like they were drawn by Thomas Nast?
The switch you have to flip 7 times is because the spikes are a representation of a positive whole number in binary and the switch increments the "number" by 1. The leftmost spikes are 2^0, the middle ones 2^1 and the rightmost are 2^2. The spikes being up is a 0 and the spikes being down is a 1.
Thus you have to gradually increment it until you get 7, which is 111 in binary. Presumably if you flip it one more time the spikes all go back up and you all over again, because 8 is 0001 but we don't have that 4th digit.
I dunno how much of their audience they expected to understand it, but it does fit the engineering theme.
I understand binary and I wouldn't have even thought about it that way.
Or in other words, the puzzle is shit.
Wouldn't an easier way of saying that be "the leftmost spikes alternate up and down with every switch flip, the middle ones with every two switch flips, and the rightmost spikes with every four switch flips"? Obviously the game should have done something to make people flip the switch more, but realizing that some spikes require four flips to go down or up would be a cool gameplay moment in theory.
Cue the screenshot of Ross staring, absolutely dumbfounded and exasperated simultaneously
wow, this game was made by NERDS...
This is what I'm talking about, a game no one has ever ever possibly heard of.
Seriously Ross you're the bomb with this shit. I could listen to you talk about bizarre PC games from the 80's and 90's all day
Oh this is nothing, Contraption Zack was semi-well known at the time for what it was. I just picked it because I wanted something lighter after the last batch. Don't worry, I'll have some serious oddities people are unlikely to have heard of later on.
awwwww yeah
You should rename this series Game Archaeologist.
Zero-logic logic puzzler.
"Something lighter."
The great service you provide us with these game dungeons cannot be overstated. Doing God's work here.
Oh, I know of it. I actually had a copy.
gadget co only sends spam mail. the rest is budget padding, like black mesa. i bet they have a box-smashing room
CatalystEXE
Why does the government fund spammers?
Does it have anything to do with that wealthy Nigerian prince?
@@noahwilliams8996 wealthy Nigerian princes account for 37%~ of the American economy, fun fact.
Every good warehouse has a box smashing room
I was a little confused at first how an old DOS game had such clear voice samples...
CD probably. There were DOS releases until 99 I think. I know DOOM being played on DOS was a massive reason for gamers to not update to windows and that port didn´t happen until late 90´s.
Huh? Windows ran on top of DOS until Windows 2000, there was no one who didn't "update to windows" because they wanted to play DOS games. They just booted into DOS instead of Windows if they wanted to play a game.
mrbitbot Oh, really? I readed something like that on "Masters of Doom" so I might have misinterpreted it. Also according to the credits the ones doing the voices are the friends of Ross
Had me fooled, on both accounts
@@mrbitbot what?? I had windows 95 and all you did was put in an msdos game and the prompt for it would come up. No need to start it any other way, but in windows
Time to watch this again... Ross has to win an award himself.
_Most rewatchable youtuber_
Damn straight
Damn straight
30th time at least
Damn straight
Damn straight
Contraption Zac works at Black Mesa apparently. The box smashing room, the pistons that don't do anything, all would be right at home at Zac's company.
Giant robot that moves a crate to the other side of a smallish room...
@@acoolerhandle MTM-8 seems like a fairly rugged multi-purpose robot, given the implications of it repairing the radioactive waste leak (when you pass this place in Half-Life, the leak is ongoing and robot is entering the puddle. When you do so in the Opposing Force, the leak is repaired).
Matthew Kelley BFG 9000 based Portal Guns that run on depleted uranium 235, a punishing rarity of handrails, a useless steam vent, gerbil maze air vents, crazy O metres, snakes & ladders based fire escapes in lift shafts, Charlie & the Chocolate factory coolant tanks plus a coolant swimming pool, raves in the programming department, giant meat grinders at the bottom of large inclinators and both teleporter generators & exotic matter scanning lasers vaguely shaped like willies and squids. (And I don't mean the sea creature)
I've only just realised the part of the ending where Plant #4 goes into space is a sneaky pun: at the start when Zack's co-workers steal his tools and he realises what they're doing, he says "we'll see who comes out on top". Beat the game and he literally does. This is further reinforced by Zack having become Employee of the Month by the final scene.
Can't believe "Milking the job." is shown in a game. Well it's shown in plenty of games but this one is a bit more in-depth and realistic.
Classic in this field. Especially in construction. You do as little work as possible so you can collect that overtime. Walk don't run to where you need to be. Make it look like you're doing work. Do as little as possible so that your boss doesn't yell at you. But you don't get the job done too quickly. If you're a smoker that's great cause now you have at least 10 - 15 minutes every hour or so you can waste. You ever wonder why that street is still blocked off by construction 6 months to a year+ later? Why the new wing of the place you work at still isn't functioning? Why your car is still in the repair shop and you're sitting there drinking the possibly free coffee, looking for a place to waste time at? Yeah this is likely the reason 80% of the time.
But it's not just the workers bull shitting around. Even the contractors, the delivery guys, or the guy that inspects everything to give the okay takes his or her time getting there will do this.
And if you happen to be one of those hard workers that gets the job done quick. Yeah you're either a target to have certain other people make you lose your job or people don't like you. Or both.
You see this from co-workers a lot. Especially when they know that they're close to finishing there job and once they finish then they're getting laid off. There's a job position where all these guys do is simple math and turn a bolt. Seriously they're the human embodiment of Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank. Even have an oversized wrench to go along with the job. And they were paid 3 times the amount I was. All I did was pick up trash, sweep floors, carry heavy stuff, watch a confined space, and make sure I don't die from a stupid accident (add in frustration of not knowing what your work schedule is till the day before you get a day off). And I made $13 bucks an hour plus overtime. So yeah you can see why these people milk there job.
The Gaming Mole: Brad_Ry I know a plumber that was kicked off a job for getting things done too quickly
Landlord had a guy come and fix the fence of a place we were staying at. Despite us actually having more than enough leftover materials from when the fence went up, he still insisted on going to get the wood he needed, taking two hours to go to home depot about 5 min away... The wood he had to get was also the same stuff we had. He then took a good 3 hours to patch a quarter of the fence. XD
No joke, they're legit that bad. I could have done the same job in about 1 hour.
and in some places if you are too good at your job either you dont get promoted because you are borderline essential or they give you twice the amount of work with no recognition
Maybe these people should be given salaries and some sort of job security.
@@henryfleischer404 It happens. I mean you have to be lucky not to find someone like that at any job imo. The worst ones are the ones that will try and injure themselves and want to claim Workman's Comp.
One thing we must give this game is that it spared no expense on the ending. Animating that entire sequence must have been _a lot_ of work! And it provides a nice character arc and a satisfying resolution to the hazing plot.
To its credit, this game has ludonarrative harmony. The story opens with a cruel prank, and the gameplay keeps it going.
Watching this video I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. Lost in a massive industrial complex, the new guy on the job who doesn't know anything, whose coworkers are conspiring against him with their sweaty, crazed eyes bulging out of their sockets. Blood in the locker. 6 66. Spikes popping out of the floor, elevators lowering into lava. I'm suffering from lethargy. Limbs move but they do so stiffly and running is impossible. Color coded systems designed to mislead me into making decisions that will have me stuck in the bowels of the facility, likely doomed to die of dehydration over the course of several days, having to drink my own urine and eat captured rats and drink their blood to survive just another day, hoping I will be found. Removing pipes from the wall which for all I know, could cause a catastrophic failure, killing everyone. Metal grates flinging me across bottomless chasms with enough force to break my bones.
On top of all that my hair is awful.
At first, I thought the factory might become inconsistent because it was an enormous engineering project, and the engineers eventually started throwing whatever in to get the project done. In the early levels, everything was running on schedule, and they had a theme they were sticking to. But as the work dragged on, more and more concessions needed to be made to the gods of "Good Enough". Until all the old patterns were abandoned, and they just figured that, so long as the engineers who built the thing were kept on after the fact, they could just use their in-depth knowledge to fix any problems. But then time passed, and all the old engineers died or were replaced, so now no one actually understands how this factory functions. Just getting it running again after it breaks down is a matter of trial and error, through the original designer's arcane bullshit. Kind of like programming.
I thought that at first, but then Ross pointed out that everyone in this game is insane. So my theory holds a bit less water. Unless, of course, we assume that Zack's coworkers were the ones who built this place, and they went mad during the process of finishing it.
None of this even comes close to figuring out what the factory even does (besides creating spam mail, apparently). Although from the fact that the "Suits" are coming, we can assume that whatever these machines do is of great importance to the government.
You know it just occurred to me while writing this comment, but this game is a lot like Paranoia. A huge complex with machines that make no sense, superiors who expect unreasonable things from their underlings, and workers constantly scheming against one another. All that's missing is the color coded uniforms, clones, and Friend Computer.
Earlier today, I'd say about 6 hours ago, I found this video. Now, 6 hours later, I've not spent a minute not watching one of your videos. I've never felt so sure about subscribing to a newly found channel before.
Because your videos are just so damn well constructed!
Things I love:
-A lot of gameplay. You never repeat stuff and with most things you tell us about you have gameplay that fits with it.
-You make funny jokes, I laugh my ass of when I watch your videos. A very nice sense of humour.
-Your ideas and theories for games are entertaining to listen to and also very interesting.
-you sound like you're having fun well making the video, you sound very enthousiastic.
-Interesting information
and more..
Keep going man, I'll definitely be watching your videos!
Make sure you watch all of Freeman's Mind; it's a classic.
I found him when I was still in highschool back in 2007... but I forgot about him for another 7 years.
Was kinda surreal remembering "hey, wasn't there that Freeman's mind thing I watched as a kid, I wonder if there were ever more episodes" only to then rediscover the channel on the last episode coming out literally '1 day ago' at the time :P
Ross is the best.
6:06 "a few tracks are annoying"
*insert dying elephant playing a banged-up trombone*
Last time I heard of "plant #4" malfunctioning and "the suits", it was at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Contraption Zack is an AU where Zack prevents the Chernobyl incident.
Game dungeon has such high rewatchability. Thanks for all of this Ross
You heard about the Half Life film right? We should petition to have Ross play as freeman.
I actually hadn't heard about that. It's going to be bad isn't it?
Maybe
If every video-game to movie adaptation has ever taught me anything it's that video-game to movie adaptations suck, all the time.
I don't really have high hopes for any Half Life film. Especially since they're going to likely give Freeman's character lines.
+*Lt. Voss* J.J Abrams will be involved (possibly to direct)
And plus, it's Valve. Valve doesn't let their stuff be bad (unless it's Ricochet, but we don't talk about that)
The thing is, freeman doesn't have a character because that helps with immersion, but that's bad practice in film. So that said I am guessing that they won't focus on freeman but instead a rebel, or mix it up with a civil protection redemption story, or maybe do something experimental like the adventures of D0G during all the times Alyx says "Go do this while me and Gordon go this way."
I KNEW you and your friends were voice acting this! I instantly thought of civil protection and then I realised haha
I feel like this could be a horror game. You're maintaining this massive machine, the size of a small city. Your boss sends you down there, it needs to be working before "the suits" arrive. You don't know who the suits are, you don't want to know whey your boss is so antsy to get it fixed for them. Your coworkers are caricatures of your typical moderate-skill factory worker, looking like anti-immigrant cartoons made by Thomas Nast and obsessed with hazing. You're not sure they always were like that. Descending into the bowels of the machine, you must navigate a network of buttons, switches, and pipes, always wary that one wrong move or too slow reaction time means you could be trapped in a corner for who knows how long, and looking at your coworkers you're not hopeful they'll come looking for you in any timely fashion, they only appear to steal your tools yet again. Yet you still step with care, one false move and the machinery surrounding you might crush you. Is that lava? Molten metal? What purpose does it serve? Why is there so much of it? No matter how deep you go and how far your maintenance progresses, you have no clue how it works or what it actually does. You flip switches and push buttons, and you're still not sure what anything actually does or why. You recognize individual bits of machinery, but have no clue what they contribute to the overall goal of the plant, or what that goal is. After what feels like days of wandering the bowels of plant #4, it comes to life, seemingly just there to print out span mail, while the seemingly human suits celebrate your achievement with your coworkers and boss. You know that's not all it does. You saw too much down there. Your boss congratulates you and sends your coworkers on some other maintenance task. It's your lunch break, and no matter who you ask, you can't get a straight answer on anything about this place. You see your coworkers left their tools unattended. Well, if they won't help you or tell anything, and actively sabotage your work, well, turnabout is fair play after all. Welcome to Gadget Co., new employee. Just gotta get through 89 days more of probation and you'll get the health AND dental.
Ah that takes me back to the movie metropolis… good times…
Hmm… contraption Zack and moloch machine…
When a company uses Adelson's checkerboard as its lobby, that's a warning. And sure enough, there are enough mfing triple spikes in here to make Michael Jones' head explode.
The switch-flipping and backtracking remind me a lot of some Marathon levels. All you need is some chip-insertion and a sarcastic AI to turn this into a sci-fi FPS.
I respect a game that allows you to put your chesspiece "on the line", but that should be reserved for finding easter eggs or alternate solves.
Do the wires leading to/from the switches ever hint at their function or is that always a bluff?
Sometimes.
ask them to adopt you
Hey Ross, I know that this is not really the right place to be asking but did you get my email inquiring as to what you charge for voice acting and whether or not a lack of budget influences your rates? I will reiterate that I am in no hurry for a response, I just want to make sure that you got it.
hes not taking freelance jobs right now.
wait... Ross, did you add voice-acting to the game?
DUH,,
And what voice-acting it was! I liked it.
At 22:53 you get to see everyone that voiced. I kinda thought that Zack sounded like the guy who did Barney's mind, but I didn't recognize the name.
+Javier Hurtado
Back then, it certainly wasn't. Still, the sound quality makes you wonder if the game had voices before this video...
Check out the Bip Bop episode if you haven't. That also has some added voice acting.
Zack looks a helluva lot like Weird Al... so *that's* why he was so excited about the Hardware Store...!
Heh heh... even the Save Game feature has traps!
The voice acting you and your buddies did for this is so good, it took me a minute to realize it isn't part of the game. Even the sound quality kind of matches up with the rest of the game's tone.
So much damn respect for you completing games like this.
I always find myself coming back to this one
Oh god I played (read: was traumatized by) this game as a kid. I just haven't thought of it in about 25 years, and would've _never_ remembered its name or anything if not for coming across this. Thank you. Bloody surreal nightmare this thing was, and I never did beat it.
The voice acting in this video was stellar.
"Everything you do, you do in the longest way possible"
So, Zack must be a union shop then.🤑
According to _MST3K: The Revival_ (the 2017 Netflix series), Gizmonic also has an asteroid-mining division (which the latest victim of the Mads was working for when he got a fake distress call, leading to him being trapped on the dark side of the moon). Obviously, this episode came out long before that aired, but it's still kind of an answer to the question...
I got this game with my kit multimedia in 1996 and I hate it SO MUCH, man... I completely forgot it even exist... Damn
I got it in some pack that had Pushover, Paperboy 2, Epic, D-Generation and some others in a gigantic white box
Ah, I see. You're repairing a printer!
I couldn't tell until the end, because this game makes printers look straightforward and logical.
You know, after watching this video and witnessing this game in all of its frustrating glory, I have to give major props to Ross for doing this game again for the sake of the show, especially at that one part that gave him painful memories. That is what I call determination and dedication.
You know, at first i misread the title as "Constipation Zack".. but now that i think about it, it might actually explain the madness behind the game.
If the entire in-game plant is taken as a metaphor for someone's malfunctioning intestine, then perhaps the madening puzzles are a metaphor for how uncertian and complicated a working fix for it might actually be.
In which case, Zack might be an anology for a medicine that eventually actually worked, while his co-workers are just cheap half-baked one's that didn't really get to fix the problem but were still in the system and thus just ended up getting in Zack's way while he was trying to do his job.
This also might explain the "Happy" wibe to it. Constipation might make a person think in a crazy way, but not enough to actually make them "mentaly disturbed".
Heck, the plant itself doesn't even do anything but spew random crap at the end of the game.
So how much did you smoke before writing this one. Not throwing shade at you for doing so, bud damn.
always a pleasure seeing a new upload Ross.. you the man..with the plan... to make the fricking movie... .:)
Ross is one of the only youtubers who can make me fully invested in a video about a subject I would otherwise have absolutely zero interest in.
So is Contraption Zack like Construction Bob's idiot nephew or something?
Oh yeah, Construction "Let's jump down literally a bottomless pit" Bob is the smart one for sure.
But that was for television...
*****
I didn't see a god damn safety cable did you?
*****
Well zack fixed a whole weird ass paper cutter machine completely safely if slowly, and bob died multiple time trying to put together trees. TREES.
*****
Oh! I didn't even think of that. But is he really committing suicide or is he just starving to death? Either way, plenty of smart people have died trapped tired and alone, but few smart people have died willingly assembling things using trampoline based propulsion.
I would like to congratulate you ross, this is my 5000'th liked video. Thank you for releasing a video in this crucial time, because this important milestone could have gone to any myriad of videos. But as my favorite content creator, you deserve it!
16:25 is... Is that the silhouette of a skeleton in locker 4? Yeah, those co-workers have definitely killed before, and they will kill again.
Dude
You’re probably the coolest guy I’ve ever heard of
Can you imagine greeting someone by saying, "Hey Zack COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARK."
LOL
I love getting on YT and seeing a new game dungeon episode.
Duuude, you should play Factorio. You build the complicated factory puzzles.
I plan to check it out eventually, I usually like to wait for early access games to be finished first.
Accursed Farms Same here, but I'm a sucker for sci-fi survival games with some indepth mechanic in play.
fantastic contraption is another one like that. it's a 2D puzzle game where you use various tools and objects (walls, animals, gears, motors, rockets, explosives) to solve puzzles. it's really fun and allows for you to create you own contraption for others to solve. can't help but feel like you've mentioned it before though....
I think you should do a short one now, then a whole one after it comes out in like 2040
^
i really love the visual style of the dialog boxes
xD this reminds me of my old job.
Especially with the random color coding. Like we were electrical department and at one point in that navy training thing we did. The trainers gave our sergeant a cable to repair. And it had 9 Lines that were all grey and each of them integrated another 12 lines Which were also all grey. So on basis he would've needed to check each of them seperately before finding out where to put which. He was like "You are fucking joking. I ain't doing that. This would take a bare minimum of 3 days not 2 hours"
Also on the ship itself was other weird shit going on. For example something was wrong with one of the shore powerlines. And if you ever deactivated it, even though you didn't run on shore powerlines currently, it would trigger some weird safety measures and all the electrical generators would shut down.
There was other weird stuff as well. For example if you wanted to use the Breathable Air Compressor you needed to check oil before. But the check would give you the wrong height if you didn't open the refill flap in beforehand and wait for 15 seconds.
Or one of the transformers would be cooled by the same water used in the firefight water line. And it had a pressure minimizer before it. But sometimes it would for some reason give you false pressure and the fix was simply to close the line and open it up again and again until it worked.
damn, those are some oddly specific malfunctions :D
You'd think the most well funded military in the world could afford working equipment.
The faces scared the hell out of me.
This was a great show, there's something ever so fascinating about hearing obscure old games and even more when they are absolute pain.
10,000 views and 0 dislikes, that says something about Ross
you had to jinx it
You had to say it......
just to clarify, i just pointed out that there was a dislike
Ok so now we're at 40,000 views and 9 dislikes. 9 people out of 40,000 is pretty damn good.
I really enjoy these game dungeon video of yours, Ross, these old games interest me a lot. Thank you for putting all that effort into making such quality videos :)
*_Chips Challenge next?!??!_*
*_I HAVE TO MAKE THIS MOVIE!_*
*HE HAS TO MAKE THE MOVIE!*
Is Chip's Challenge spooky?
It could be, if interpreted right.
CHIP'S CHALLENGE YEAH!
I love you Ross! Please continue to make these awesome game dungeons.
Seriously addictive. I super appreciate your work! xxx
God damn I fucking love Ross's caveman-like screams, that ladder gag in the Invisible War video was amazing, I may have to use it as a ringtone for texts I never receive on my phone I always have on silent.
“Off to a riveting start” Ive seen this episode dozens of times and I just now got that joke.
Is it me, or does Zack sound exactly like Dave from Civil Protection?
I'm pretty sure it is him. I don't actually think the game is voiced. I think Ross and friends did all the voices.
Ah nevermind, didnt realize til the end that those voices are part of the video. I had assumed they were actually part of the game.
Looks like Dave got a new job!
They really did a GREAT job! If it wasn't for Ross' voice and the ending, I'd never have figured that out
Tyler McVicker from VNN also did one of the voices.
It feels like I am in a time warp going back to the Construction Bob episode! Great job Ross
Perhaps the locker with the blood leaking out was just a locker owned by a guy who REALLY likes ketchup.
Oh my God, I just realized how much I would love SOMA for the Halloween Game Dungeon.
I could not press the notification fast enough
I keep coming back to watch this one solely for Dave's voice actor
Wasn't sure if the voice acting was added in or not, then I heard Ross read a line.
I kinda like the goofy gadget setting. They could take this setting and make a kid-friendly action/adventure game with gizmo/tech themed puzzles.
Notice how the bloody locker is 66 and the one before it is 6
I’ve had that timed quiz where the teacher rips it out of my hand. It’s called “every math quiz from 7th grade to graduation”
also, the SAT
I thought this said Contraception Zack
Concentration Camp Zack.
We have a trilogy
Conquistador Zack
"No fucking in the lobby!"
Conception Dave
Glad you're still doing these Ross. Love you and your channel. Keep at it man, you got a good thing going. Insert other cliche feel-good text here. Blank. Blank. Blank.
Gizmonic Institute made gizmos, hence the Invention Exchange segment at the beginning of the original shows.
On the job training, always fun. "First day? Here, read this SOP. Done? You sure? Ok, get on the assembly line. Remember, you mess up, you're fired!"
I'm probably reading into it too much but I couldn't help but notice the locker before the bloody one and the number 6 while the bloody one had 66.
NIce video as always!
IKR? I wonder if it's coincidence...
That's where they keep what's left of Construction Bob after his trip to hell.
This game's engine was re-used for a game called D/Generation, which apparently was popular enough to be ported to the Switch, I remember people complaining that the engine was turned 3D and looked clearly worse because of that.
ZACK DUBBED BY DAVE FROM Civil protection ? OOOH!
Ross, you have the soothing beriton of a voice that brings back memories deeply repressed that make me relive things I once blocked out. Keep up the good work!
Dave is a perfect fit for Zack
Haven't even started watching, and the thumbnail alone has already made my day
This game really puts the TRAP in Contraption
I just like your videos as soon as i click on them lol and then watch them because I know I'm in for a gaming treat.
0:39
Please Ross, we all know that is a chemtrail cloud.
I think Lemmings was the game that popularized this weird tone. It's about trying (and usually failing) to prevent the cute little lemmings from dying violently while upbeat music plays, like maybe you accidentally steer them off a cliff and they all go splat as they hit the ground, for example. Occasionally you might even see machines that seem like they were designed purely to kill lemmings in the most horrific ways imaginable, sometimes they even appear out of nowhere.
How about "Darkest of Days"?
Time travel first person shooter.
Has some things going for it, that make it very interesting and slightly unique.
Also a lot of things that ruin the potential it had.
But its simply fun to play.
The sound and the feel of the weapons and the combat can be really enjoyable.
2:59 Woah! Easy on the eyebrow movements. Im not ready for such epicness
I don't know Ross' Protocol on suggestions is, but I just remember a game I think would be a PERFECT fit for Game Dungeon:
Relentless: Little Big Adventure.
Ross, if you see this post, seriously check it out. Even if you don't end up doing a GD on it, you yourself would probably still get a kick out of it.
To put it in terms Ross would find apprpriate.
Relentless Little Big Adventure is what you'd get if you took the gameplay of Revenant, a satire of 1984, and made it look like the kid's show Arthur the Ardvark.
It was also made in the late '90s and has some pretty bizarre looking pre-rendered cutscenes.
LBA is not obscure at all, it was a big name in it's day, but mostly 90% of the adventure games are not remembered by anyone other than adventure games fans.
been thinking this for a while.
What you don't see after the post-credits scene is Zack beating each coworker to death with the corresponding tool they borrowed from him earlier.
The wrench and hammer guys were met with a swift end, but the tape Guy's suffering was drawn out.
The weird guy with the pupils and no eyeballs was spared; his only crime was having shitty hearing.
0:53 me when I noticed this upload.
GadgetCo, a wholly owned subsidiary of Aperture Science.
'member when you had to type commands to boot a game?
Remember Member Berries?
Nope. Used Norton Commander ^_^
yeah I 'member!
ooohhhh I 'member
'member when you had to read the manual to know how to play the game?
I can only think of one other game with grid-based movement where you're expected to go in-between spaces, which is Adventures of Lolo 3, which was basically designed like an expert-level ROM hack of the previous games where they expect you to know every little quirk of the engine.
Those co-corkers are unsettling as hell. It's like a Primus music video.
I've been looking for this game for years, I LOVE YOU ROSS!
If fictional Characters were able to step over Spikes, or inbetween them, many Puzzles would loose their Job
you know it's a good episode when Ross says "more on that later"
Did I see that right? You did voice acting (Ross Scott - Wild-Eyed Worker) in a game from 1992? That does not sound possible.
Ah sorry... the credits were not from the game but from the video itself :) And I also wondered how much voice recording was on a pre-CD area game. That answers it.
Are just being a goof or are you serious? Because he just had these guys voice the lines just to make it more interesting and funny. Otherwise it'd just be silent.
Why so hostile? I wrote exactly how I meant it: I missed the switch from game footage to Ross' video footage and thought the credits were from the game. Then I wondered how old Ross might be and rewatched the end to discover that the voice overs are not original. I was happy to explain it again.
NoneG3 Eh I didn't really mean to sound so hostile but reading back what I said I sounded pretty dickish. Sorry for my rudeness I guess in my mind it was really obvious.
Yeah. The voice acting is pretty good, but it is for the sake of this video. It's a testament to how good the voice acting is that it can be mistaken as an actual part of the game.
Still watching game dungeon episodes on a weekly basis, gordan freeman is making great game reviews, so nice this Scott guy is editing his vids
Hey Ross, I'm not sure if you're taking requests, but I'd love to see a Game Dungeon on Fuel, that racing game you played in the first recap episode. I've recently got my hands on a copy, which was a total pain in the neck to get since it was taken off Steam, and I think it's something of a forgotten gem of that era of games, especially for racing games. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
When RGD comes out, I'm happy :D This was a great episode as always :D
do you think contraption zack and construction bob are related? considering how similar their names and games are, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine them existing in the same universe
HOLY CRAP I remember this game, I've been trying to think of the name for years. Thank you!
"Oh yeah, My uncle has it" Must be referring to a STD
Holy shit, this is one of my all time favorite games! My brother linked this to me in an IM and I'm so sad that I am in the middle of an SSD install and will have to wait to watch.
Thanks for the video Ross, I'm super excited about this one.
As it turns out SSDs finish installing windows incredibly fast, and so I'm already watching now. Thanks again for this video, just knowing somebody else remembers this game makes my week.
DAVE!? IT IS DAVE!! :O! OMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!
I am ninja!
McFlubberpants What the fuck is this about Dave?
Sponge Diabetes 2
Dave is a character from another one of Ross's series voiced by the guy who read Zack's dialogue.
Thank you for making these Ross, they really brighten my days