Tom Driveimpossiblyquicklyer

May 6, 2024 9:37 AM

Tom Walker tries desperately, with halting success, to complete some very basic missions in Grand Theft Auto 4 while all the cars on the map lose their fucking minds. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Come for the comedy car deaths, stay for the slow evolution of a "this is a horror stealth game" playstyle that makes it at all possible to make progress.
posted by cortex (26 comments total)

Objectively that shouldn’t be funny but tell that to my rib cage.

Years ago my friend hosted a CS/DOD server, and one thing that was always funny was setting the gravity to zero for a few minutes, just long enough for the players to get accustomed to zero G gaming, and then setting it to 999 (or whatever the max was). Splat (splat splat splat).

I’m laughing even now.
posted by notyou at 9:55 AM on May 6 [2 favorites]

"Survivor's Log, Day 1. No one knows what made them angry, what set them off. Instantly, every vehicle on the planet turned itself into a flesh-smashing missile. They shouldn't have nearly enough kinetic energy in their gas tanks for this, a violation of thermodynamics worthy of study if anyone could get close enough to one of these death machines to investigate. I saw a police officer try to pull one over and get bounced around like a pinball. I'm amazed the buildings are still standing. Anyone getting into a vehicle causes it to take off at speeds approaching escape velocity, yet they keep getting into them, thinking, I can do it, I'll be the first. Come to think of it, I'm out of bread. Shit.

Day 2. I see now that Cars was a horror movie."

I'm reminded of the two poonikins videos of GTA ridiculousness.
posted by JHarris at 10:37 AM on May 6 [3 favorites]

Honestly this is such an accurate depiction if what it’s like to be a pedestrian in america.
posted by congen at 10:58 AM on May 6 [15 favorites]

Honestly this is such an accurate depiction if what it’s like to be a pedestrian in america.

Yeah the video has some nice synergy with this wonderful article on bollards recently posted to (a somewhat confused) HN.
posted by ropeladder at 11:26 AM on May 6 [2 favorites]

Yeah really I see very little difference between this and my daily life as a non-car-owner.
posted by egypturnash at 12:11 PM on May 6

Life skills through gaming; GTA-IV division. My SiL was disconcerted to overhear her barely teenaged son explaining to a pal "Naa, you have to throw the whore out of the car-door as you go round the corner . . .".
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:25 PM on May 6 [2 favorites]

"the cars are flying east for winter"
posted by pyramid termite at 12:28 PM on May 6 [7 favorites]

I have been working through Walker's videos the past week or so and I can also recommend "hitting my brother with a hammer over and over again," (a satisfying immediate payoff in a video game tutorial segment leads to ... addictively staying in the tutorial) "Street Cleaning Simulator (2011) lets you face God," (bug ridden game becomes beatific) and "91 minutes of suffering," (very difficult platformer) for a start.
posted by user92371 at 12:40 PM on May 6

MetaFilter: "I didn't think we were going to get this off-track this fast."
posted by Phssthpok at 12:55 PM on May 6 [2 favorites]

So it's BeamNG.drive, but with more guns. Cool.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:57 PM on May 6

For a minute I got Tom Walker confused with Tom Scott and I was like "Oh, he's getting into GTA videos now?"
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:11 PM on May 6 [1 favorite]

Tom Walker, in addition to streaming, does stand-up (he has an hour long special on Amazon Prime, I think) and hosts the challenging-to-recommend podcast "bigsofttitty.png" with his wife Demi Lardner, and is a frequent guest on the podcast Free to a Good Home
posted by dismas at 1:13 PM on May 6

These are fun videos. They remind me of this great little game on Steam called Decimate Drive, where you're dodging killer cars out to get you. It's short and surprisingly engaging, especially on the second playthrough when the difficulty meter is set way up. Along with an intense backstory that adds extra layers of menace and pathos to the whole experience, I highly recommend it.
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 2:57 PM on May 6

"We're going to have to take some time to learn the city FWOAH!!!"
posted by dirigibleman at 5:48 PM on May 6

Honestly, this looks more interesting than the normal game.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:07 PM on May 6 [1 favorite]

Tom Walker... that name sounds familiar. Indeed, he was on the infamous TrashFuture podcast "lagoon" episode.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:21 PM on May 6 [2 favorites]

So it's BeamNG.drive , but with more guns. Cool.

No, it's quite different from that.
posted by Sebmojo at 11:33 PM on May 6

Tom Walker... that name sounds familiar. Indeed, he was on the infamous TrashFuture podcast "lagoon" episode.

why is it infamous?
posted by Sebmojo at 11:34 PM on May 6

why is it infamous

Due to the challenging nature of any attempt to create a more equitable society.
posted by MarchHare at 12:30 AM on May 7 [4 favorites]

Due to the challenging nature of any attempt to create a more equitable society.

cocks head at u like a puzzled labrador
u wot m8
posted by Sebmojo at 5:48 AM on May 7

Let me just take a healthy swig of my coffee before opening up this video . . .

(content warning: spit takes)
posted by whuppy at 7:15 AM on May 7

This was one of those watching experiences that took double the runtime because I had to keep pausing and letting the crying-laughter subside. I assume this was hours and hours of footage cut down to the distilled perfect reactions and timing and I appreciate the editing so much on this.
posted by Molesome at 7:25 AM on May 7

One of my favorite GTA 3 activities is to turn on ITSALLGOINGMAAAD and/or WEAPONSFORALL and watch the fracas from the safety of an elevated train station.
posted by credulous at 12:04 PM on May 7 [1 favorite]

Very funny.

It reminds me of when I used to play GTA3 with the player's vehicle mass set to a very high number in one of the config files, then you could drive around at top speed and every vehicle you collided with would be launched into the sky.
posted by mokey at 4:51 AM on May 8

I assume this was hours and hours of footage cut down to the distilled perfect reactions and timing and I appreciate the editing so much on this.

You can watch most if not all of the full streams as VODs on Twitch, and while the editing is fantastic, the whole streams are pretty great as well.

I also recommend the video of Tom and his wife Demi opening 400 USD worth of weird trading cards. Stay until the end.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:33 AM on May 10

Part 4: A lift for Jermaine
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:03 PM on May 16 [2 favorites]