Shadowing Practice: The Cruelest Game You've Never Played - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Lobotomy Corporation might be the closest we'll ever get to a Stockholm Syndrome sequel.

Welcome to the world of Project Mood.

A beautiful apocalyptic hellhole inspired by the mythical country...

...of South Korea.

A utopia on Earth, where capitalism was squared all the way up to nine, and not killing someone by the age of 10 officially qualifies you...

...for handicap parking.

You may have heard of it from its severely neurodiverging community and...

...ro- and Roblox.

In Lobotomy Corp, you are essentially a manager of a 10-story Burger King, located within the Bronx.

Your assistant manager is the newest version of Rock AI, and your deep frar just so happens to be the god from the Bible.

You will need to keep this place running for 50 days without it turning into something that resembles Nagasaki.

Which is a nigh-impossible task if you want to have fun, since this game actually hates you, and it was made for God's worst masochist.

So join me as I enjoy the horrors of retail work and working with mentally ill clankers, one agonizing floor at a time.

The first thing you'll notice upon the start of the game is the... is the ominous box.

Yeah, well that's what we call an abnormality, and these bad boys can power up to at least like two Xbox G60s, if they feel like it.

Abnormalities spawn from the human conscious of the past, present and future.

And because of that, they can be...

Literally anything.

They can embody any concept or any idea that ever came from a human in whatever period of time.

Which means, whatever you're currently thinking about could be an abnormality.

Which also means, whatever your great-great-great-grandfather was thinking about could also be an abnormality

and whatever your future great great great granddaughter is thinking about could also be an abnormality.

The male pattern baldness abnormality is coming for you.

The second thing you'll notice is the epic locked up skull with its own Wikipedia page.

You'll have to research this bad boy in order to make weapons out of the abnormality's vital organs.

And this can be done in four different ways.

Instinct work is done by doing physical tasks like touching, grooming, or feeding the abnormality.

Inside is about filling its room with Funko Pops or something, I don't know.

Attachment is socializing with it, and repression is beating the shit out of it.

To conduct the research and to suppress them, yes, they can indeed breach, you have your employees.

Your facility's workforce is comprised of two different things, agents and clerks.

Agents are the bulk of your forces, since they literally do everything.

And Clerks, on the other hand, are only a grand conspiracy of the top 1% to try and make you kill yourself.

The clerks have no stats, they have no real use, and because of that they kind of only exist to paint the walls red.

Funnily enough, there's also a couple abnormalities that love to breach when clerks are dying.

So have fun trying to keep a dozen suicidal clerks alive from literally everything inside the corporation

and they are such a hindrance, there is an upgrade that lets you execute them, and it is top tier.

If you've done everything correctly, you should be able to meet the shareholders quota for the day, and unfortunately get to expand.

Hello, uh, hello, quick question for Albu, uh, what the fuck?

There are nine possible floors inside the corporation, with a minimum of four Satan's finest on each floor, all increasing in difficulty the farther you get.

And to make everything just a tiny bit worse, every floor is supervised by a bunch of clankers, called the Seraphims.

There's Malkus, the worst one, hated by everyone, a bit deranged.

Yeechud, an unaffectionate nerd, who lowers your bitrate out of spite.

Hard.

Everyone got that one schizophrenic friend?

Rock dealer by accident weaponized incompetence to such a degree, It could rival the US Air Force.

She also killed herself.

Nutsack.

Hod's number one customer.

A f*ing bum.

Only person to outsmoke suit dog.

Take threat.

Manager of Hell.

Locked in Hell due to racism.

Gebov...

Eww...

A warmonger pushing for abnormality genocide.

Ro- Robot LeBron.

Cheese.

Type of motherfucker to say, We live on a floating rock.

My brother in Christ.

You work at the evil ass rape building.

Lock in.

Baina.

And the one no one cares about.

With the crew now described in a questionable manner, they will now do absolutely nothing Since all they do is nag and have mental breakdowns,

which can make them either kill you

Kill you or kill you personally

if you manage to somehow not get lobotomized by the Tosa

rebellion You'll receive a gift equivalent of pure ambrosia sourced straight from Aphrodite's asshole.

And just to make it clear how good some of these are, let me list them off.

More energy yield, more bullets for clerks, insane new agents, healing anywhere within the facility,

more lob points per day, and a higher movement speed for everyone.

Double the possible gear, and a chance to just not die.

These are all great, but the difficulty curve in this game is fucking vertical.

Even the abnormalities range from Dark Souls to.. to grow a garden in Tears of Cancer.

Zanes are the first tier, and they are as useful as my high school degree.

You could use them both as toilet paper.

Tier includes such whores as the vending machine.

Theth and He are next up and uh...

Um...

Webs are the fourth tier, and these things are somehow the worst.

All of these bastards have a gimmick and a twitlonger's worth of things to keep track of.

Here includes those fh sisters.

The Alephs, uh, sh- The Alephs should be shot with a gun.

Good luck taking care of four raging nuclear facilities simultaneously.

Why is nothing there?

Mother f*er, something is there.

Now, forget everything I said about all of them since they all actually f*ing suck.

For example, there is a test that within the right circumstances will summon what I can only call as The Angry Bird.

And for your information, the game hates you so much, they hid an Aleph as a Saiyan.

And it was so funny, they did the f*ing joke twice.

Christ is alive in Korea.

And he happens to hate us.

And to defend myself from his sadistic creations, I'll need gear.

It's something you'll only get after fully researching an abnormality.

And there's three different types of gear.

Ego weapons, Ego armor, and Ego gifts.

Weapons and armor are your main equipment, since, well...

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They're the ones that kill the abnormalities.

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Ego weapons are capable of doing four different types of damage, and Ego suits are either weaker or stronger against those types.

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And, funnily enough, making the gear is just the ethical version of Monster Hunter.

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Instead of violently killing them and taking out their organs, we politely ask for them.

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Examples of Ego gear we can acquire through diplomacy are the slime girl's slime in a jar,

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Grandma's gun and the bee gun you get from the Queen Bee.

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Then there's also the gifts, which are the only type of gear we can obtain randomly.

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And because of that, good luck trying to get Aleph Ego gifts.

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The odds are not in your favor.

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And if I can be for real, these things only exist for our farming.

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And they're practically useless.

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So what you need to know from this is

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that Ego gear is basically one of the most important things for your corporation, since you'll stop valuing human life after a while,

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and unlike agents, your gear is kept even if you reset the game.

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Speaking of which, the memory repo is your greatest friend and a life saviour.

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The minds for a child, League for the mentally ill, Valorant for the people we don't talk about, you get the idea.

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They happen every five days and you can recall to them whenever you feel like it.

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Imagine this scenario, you just made it to day 20 of Lobotomy Corporation.

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But on day 22 you get two abnormalities that single-handedly end your run Well, don't you worry since you can revert time

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and go back to day 20 with everyone still alive

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And you even keep the progress you made in those two days

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But if you happen to get those two abnormalities on day 20 instead of day 22 Well,

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then you're fucked and you're stuck with them But don't fret, since you can exercise the most radical protocol of them all.

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A Day 1 Reset.

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Doing a Day 1 reset feels like excavating your urethrape with a scalpel.

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It'll hurt at the start, but after you do it enough times, you'll eventually begin to like it.

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I think now is also a good time to tell you that I didn't actually finish this game.

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I would've, but Lobotomy Corporation has a very stupid bug, where if several employees die at the same time and the day is reset,

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There's a chance their deaths will be registered into the next day along with all their ego gear, making you lose it all if you restart the day.

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And all of this happened to me exactly on a memory repo day.

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And I lost six pieces of Aleph gear, which I couldn't get back anymore, since I didn't have access to the abnormalities anymore,

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and I wouldn't be able to beat Hukmas and Bina's core suppressions in time without memory repoing again.

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Maybe this was just a Nintendo game mechanic, I don't know, But I'm too much of a pussy to record another 10

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hours of footage for this video whilst putting my mental health on the line Anyways, I think that about does it for the actual explanation part of the video

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and before I let you my dear viewer leave I'd like to give you some of my final thoughts

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and also thank you for making it this far Do you consider subscribing

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if you want more vans

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and slop like this every few months now as a player

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of cruel games I walked into Lobotomy Corp expecting to like the game and just to make it very clear clear.

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Yes, the game is absolutely phenomenal, and I'd highly recommend it if you have issues.

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The gameplay can be extremely hard and painful, due to the game's spaghetti code, but the story Aaba makes up for it with its characters and lore.

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And also, I purposefully left out the story and the lore of the game, since, well, I'm not educated enough for that.

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And I'd still urge you to get the game yourself.

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There's three endings which I won't go into, but all of them require tons of work, such as 100%ing all the abnormalities and suppressing all the Sephirots.

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But all that hard work will lead you straight into the sequel of this game.

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This was my first taste of the Project Moon franchise, and honestly, I can't wait to play more.

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And maybe make a video on either Limbus or Library of Ruina.

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Anyways, that's all for today.

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Let's try and fool YouTube into thinking this was a good video by commenting positive things about the Vagbass experience.

149

Anyhow, bye bye and see you in half a year!

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Cruelest Game You've Never Played”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: gear, ego, abnormalities, abnormality. This video has 149 sentences and 1909 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:57. The speaker talks at a natural 174 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
abnormality noun	/ˌæbˌnɔɹˈmæl.ət.i/	The state or quality of being abnormal; variation; irregularity.
clerk noun	/klɝk/	One who occupationally provides assistance by working with records, accounts, letters, etc.; an office worker.
reset verb	/ɹiːˈsɛt/	To set back to the initial state.
tier noun	/ˈtɪɚ/	A row or range, especially one at a higher or lower level than another.
funnily adverb	/ˈfʌnəli/	In a funny or amusing manner.
repossession noun		The condition of being repossessed.
slime noun	/slaɪm/	Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; viscous mud; any substance of a dirty nature, that is moist, soft, and adhesive; bitumen; mud containing…
lore noun	/loɹ/	All the facts and traditions about a particular subject that have been accumulated over time through education or experience.
suppress verb	/səˈpɹɛs/	To put an end to, especially with force, to crush, do away with; to prohibit, subdue.
armor noun	/ˈɑːɹ.mɚ/	A protective layer over a body, vehicle, or other object intended to deflect or diffuse damaging forces.
sequel noun	/ˈsiːkwəl/	A narrative that is written after another narrative set in the same universe, especially a narrative that is chronologically set after its predecessors, or…
breach noun	/ˈbɹiːt͡ʃ/	A gap or opening made by breaking or battering, as in a wall, fortification or levee / embankment; the space between the parts of a solid body rent by violence.
organ noun	/ˈɔːɡən/	The larger part of an organism, composed of tissues that perform similar functions.
mentally adverb	/ˈmɛntəli/	In a mental manner; an idea thought out in one's mind, as opposed to an idea spoken orally.
agonizing adjective	/ˈæɡ.ə.naɪ.zɪŋ/	Causing physical or mental agony.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
get back verb		Return to where one came from.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
leave out verb		To omit, to not include, to neglect to mention.
lock up verb	/ˌlɒk ˈʌp/	To imprison or incarcerate (someone).
take out verb		To remove.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 33 contractions and reduced forms, such as you'll, don't, I'd. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: mythical /ˈmɪθɪkəl/, ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: ambrosia /æmˈbɹoʊʒə/, socialize /ˈsoʊʃəlaɪz/, repression /ɹəˈpɹɛʃən/, shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/, suppression /səˈpɹɛʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: abnormality /ˌæbˌnɔɹˈmæl.ət.i/, agonizing /ˈæɡ.ə.naɪ.zɪŋ/, apocalyptic /əˈpɒ.kə.lɪp.tɪk/, incompetence /ɪnˈkɒm.pə.təns/, purposefully /ˈpɝ.pəs.fə.li/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like abnormality, clerk, reset.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: The Cruelest Game You've Never Played - Learn English Speaking with Video

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