Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 110 - 08/12/1981
We're back after a week with, well, absolutely nothing to talk about. This week though, we go on for a while about Insanely Twisted Shadown Planet, Anthony gets trapped in a minecraft, and we give a tease of a glimpse at Toy Soldiers: Cold War and more. Then we talk about clone murder machines.
This week's music, in order of appearance:
The Do - Gonna Be Sick;
Death From Above 1979 - If We Don't Make It We'll Fake It
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Well, welcome to episode 110, a Rebel of Home. I made three games. - Oh, I see what you did there. - Oh, I didn't even realize it right. So you said that you pointed out. - Let's not make any sudden movements on the carpet like banging on it 'cause you never know what might happen with this like. - Episode 110 and the Apple product we have is slowly shitting out. I mean, I think it's with me is Tyler Barber. Hey, what's up? Matt Shandrony. (sings) - And Arthur Gees. - It just works. It just works, except when it doesn't. - Video games. Man, I've been playing-- - More little back book. - A lot of indie stuff. That has like been-- - I'm so sorry. - Is that how you refer to Minecraft now? - Well, indie games suck. - Minecraft as well, but no, but I've also been playing a lot of indie games. I played it before, but I couldn't talk about it on the show, which was Jonathan Blow's next game. - The Witness. - The Witness. - Nice. - This is his. - When you played it, did it have just programmer art? Like the first time that people played it right? - Yeah, it's still placeholder art. Like the game is like kind of like content complete. Like he has all the puzzles laid out the way he wants and stuff. But like graphically right now it looks like, if you've ever tinkered with the Unity engine, which I barely have, it looks like kind of the stock, like graphics you get when you place like a tree in Unity or something. - Gotcha. - Super basic, but it's like first person, right? - It's first person. You know, there's like no, and that's the reason he's kind of waited on doing this is because you know, first person games take a lot more effort, especially when it's in 3D like that. You know, it's a lot more effort than I think he was prepared to do just by himself. - Yeah. - So it's him and two other full time people that work on it. And then they do contractors. They actually have a very small studio in Berkeley. And you know, it was really interesting. I just walked in there. You'll read this in all the previews. You know, that's one thing everyone kind of pointed out is that, you know, everyone just kind of walked in. The OPR person, just you and him, and he's like, this is my game, so you're in like three hours. And he's kind of walked away. And it's a really, the whole game is just about exploration. You know, you start out and there's basically, it was all played in the controller. And you basically only have to be able to hit A to interact with things and the left bumper I think to run. That's like the only two controls, like beyond sticks. - Wow, cool. - The whole game revolves around drawing lines through mazes, basically. - So do you draw the lines with the stick? - You draw the lines with the stick. - And the most basic one, obviously, is just drawing a line from the entrance to the exit, right? But then later on, it throws in a lot of variables to make them actually really hard. And it never tells you exactly what you're supposed to do. It just assumes that you're going to figure it out through a few errors. - And try it in true, Jonathan Blow fashion. - Yes, so like the first time I encountered a line puzzle where there was like red and black or like black and white dots on it. I was like, well, what does this have to do with anything? Well, it turns out what you're supposed to do is draw the line so that it segregates the black and the white dots and the grids where they aren't in the same area as black and white. Like they have to be in their own separate areas. So if there's like a gap at all, it won't work. And not only that, but you still have to reach the exit, right? And the lines can't draw over themselves. - Right. - So it's like segregating. - I'm gonna pretend that I understand what you just said. - I'm saying you're drawing the line from the entrance to the exit of the maze, right? - No, I mean about the grid thing. It's tough for me to pitch my head. - So imagine if you had like a tic-tac-toe thing or like a bunch of squares, but in between you could draw the line anywhere. You just have to draw the line so it makes sure the dots are like, like if we were to walk to the open space, we would not be able to make the black and white dots touch it. - Right. - Like sharing air. - Right. - If like the line you're drawing is like a vacuum. - Now I get it. - And so you have to do that while also getting the exit and never crossing over your own line. And then there's a lot of variables on that. And there are seven areas to the island. You come out in the island and you're free to go wherever you want immediately. You can go to any of the seven areas, except there are all kinds of what he calls checks in place that are almost like in the way like, wow, has like gear checks, like you can't do this. - Right, right. - This has like puzzle checks, like it'll be like the entry puzzle to the area is like really hard if you've never encountered that type of puzzle to get over that initial like, this is how you handle it. So like, and they all have themes. So one area's theme was color. And when I walked into it, one room had like a toggle switch for instance, where I could change the color of the light bulb in the room. And that would change the color of the dots on the grid. And so from there, I could like, when I first walked in the room, if it was like with a white light, it looked like there's like nine different colors for me to try and segregate, which is like impossible with the drawing line. You can't segregate that many things and also get to exit. But when you flick it into like a green light, that primary color changes it a lot of the colors into just black and white. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, wow, I can go on the line. - Yeah, yeah. - But again, it never tells you that you're just kind of like flicking and seeing if things change things, right? - Sure. From a visual standpoint, this is where it kind of touches on some interesting things that I read about the game several months ago, they were talking about the lighting technology that they were developing for this game specifically. And it sounds like a lot of the stuff that they want to develop the lighting for is exactly this where you're using it to solve the puzzles. - Yeah, it's changing the way things look in the environment. And the only way that you kind of pick up that that's happening at first is like there are paintings in the room and like ones of field of roses. And you notice like, oh, when I put on the red light, both green and red are now green. It's like, you know, it's, or like, that's a bad example, but I'm saying it changes things. And because you know intuitively like, oh, roses are naturally often portrayed red, therefore I can kind of see the combination of things. And, you know, and there's other areas where it just does stuff with shadows where you might have to stand in a certain way that like, now you, like, it just looks like an empty puzzle, no dots or anything, all right? I draw a line from the entry to the exit, but it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong? Oh, well, it's because if you paid attention, the shadow of the branches on the thing, you're actually supposed to draw a line around the shadows to get to the exit. And that's the specific path. But in every, like I said, it's basically-- - It doesn't tell you anything, yeah. - To know telling you anything. You know, I'm not even confident at the end of this game. Like when you beat it, you'll get an explanation of what's going on. - Well, it makes you, well, after solving braid, the whole purpose behinds its puzzles came to me long after the fact. You know, there's, Jonathan blows the kind of guy that embeds metaphor on every level of his game design. So, I mean, it's the kind of thing that you, that I don't think you really can get unless you beat the game a couple times or had ample time to go back and think about it. You know, you won't get it in a preview session. You'll understand the mechanics fine, but you're not gonna understand like the full metaphor and meaning behind what all of the levels and the dots and the shapes. - Yeah, I mean, like the most basic thing, the thing might take away when I played it was like, this game is like telling a tale of exploration, not only exploration of like, like what you trying to figure out why you're there, but also just like touching upon like that natural sort of instinct we have to explore. Like just like, it never indicates where you're supposed to go, but that might just be this tiny little bit of cable sticking out of the ground and about 50 feet further up, another tiny chunk of cable. And it's just like really subtle cues to just pull you in that direction. - It was fun, like I played it for three hours and the time just flew by. - It's interesting that a lot, you know, there's sort of a suite of games like this. Like there's the popular Half-Life mod, The Dear Escher. I think where it's kind of like, have you guys heard of that one, right? - No, I haven't. - I came out like a year, it came out over a year ago. It's actually pretty old, but just a lot of people liked it because it was just kind of like one of these things you just kind of like walk through and experience and there's an overhead narration. And then I played another mod that just came out and got a lot of press recently, it's called Stanley's, oh fuck, Lament, I think is what's called Stanley's Lament. And it's really interesting and it plays, it touches on a lot of these themes and it also touches on some of the themes present and like games like Bioshock, where there's a lot of the ideas of player free will versus the programmers, you know, pre-set path. But the whole thing is is, you know, it's you're being narrated to the entire time you're playing and it's all really well written. It's very much inspired by a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. - Right on. - It's like all that kind of writing. - I think it'll be a cool game when it comes out, but you know, for now it's PC for sure. - Right. - And then when I told him, he was like, it's for sure gonna come out on at least one console. But he doesn't know which. But his point really comes down to the fact that like, you know, if it comes out in Xbox, he just needs a publisher. - Yeah, exactly. So maybe he's trying to get enough press for his game that people will be like, I will publish it. So. - I think he's responsible for one of the best-selling Xbox Live Arcade games. - Yeah, I doubt he's gonna have that hard of a time. - Yeah, exactly. - But it's just a matter of him getting publishing terms that are agreeable to him. - Right. - As the all tour. - And then I also played a Half-Life 2 mod, which a lot of people have been talking about and liking, I did not enjoy it all. - Really? - Well, it's a salt mod, mind you. It's a source mod. - Uh-huh. - It's called I. - Oh, E-Y-E. - Oh, E-Y-E. - Oh, I need divine cyber-mancy. - Really, it's a source mod? - Yeah, I keep seeing that popping up and I just haven't got a chance to play it yet. - It's on your press account. - I would try it, man, if I was you. But honestly, like, when I played it, I thought it was, it was trying to do so much and it did nothing very well. Like, the shooting is actually pretty fun because it's like shooting in Half-Life. - It's a source game, yeah. - But outside of that, it's one of those games. Like, you know, okay, so the people in Diablo kind of nailed it the other day when they talked about how they were getting rid of the traditional skill trees for Diablo 3. And they said it's because people are making decisions before they're ready to, to like know the full ramifications of their choices. - Right. - And that's exactly the problem with I. It's like, right off the bat, you're picking like four different genetic codes your character's made up from and you're like, I guess. - I don't know what these mean. - And then before you know it, you're putting points into leveling things and trying to figure out where to spend your money on abilities. And it takes like almost like a play through the entire game before you even have a good grasp. - Wow. - I mean, there are 22 tutorial videos. - Jesus Christ. - There's no tutorial really. It's just like here, watch these 22 videos. - And you don't get to respect your skills or revert or anything like that. - No. - What kind of game is it? - So okay, so that's the cool thing is that it's like, this really weird blend of like, you know, people describe it as cyberpunk. It's like, it's very much like kind of like, you know, dystopian future sort of thing, except it also mixes in like crazy magic religious cults. - Yeah, I was gonna ask you about it because to me, just on a completely superficial level, it looks like they're sort of like ripping off like the Warhammer, that one race in Warhammer, the Donald War II, like they're like black armor. - Wait, wait, wait, wait, maybe. - Elder? I don't know what to know. - I don't know. - Chaos maybe. - They don't make chaos marines. - Yeah, the chaos marines. - Yeah, they look like chaos marines. - They remind me of course. - But yeah, they have that kind of like, very much like gothic aesthetic too. And, you know, it's pretty interesting like some of the abilities you get and you really can make your characters very unique. Like you can make it to where like, you can be an invisible guy using a sword and ship, but to do that, you kind of have to know from the outset what you're doing. - Yeah, exactly. - And like, I spent so much time with my character and none of his abilities ever felt that viable either because the AI is like omniscient, like the second you appear, they're shooting at you, you know, unless you're invisible. - Yeah. - But that's if you remember to buy the invisibility thing. But me, I was like trying to be like not an invisible guy. I wanted to be like a run up. I put all my points in like tanking and like I wanted to just be a beefy sword wielder. But dude, when they see you from like a mile away, you're just taking so much damage. There's no feeling over time. You have to like research a med kit that you can then apply to yourself but it has like a recharge time. - Right. - It's just like, it is a very, very super hardcore game but not in all the ways that are good. - Right. (laughing) - That being said, I think of the reason it's doing really well with a lot of people is the lot of people get really caught up in the fact that this is like a team of like 12 dudes that made this. And the technical achievement of it, I would acknowledge it's crazy that 12 dudes took that but quite frankly, they shouldn't. (laughing) It's just like not that, it's just kind of-- - So is it the kind of thing that has solid ideas and it just needs some polish or does it sort of just-- - Yeah, maybe if they all-- - If they figure it, like I like the world, like kind of the religious background drop they're setting. And I think the idea of having like characters that you jump in and you can make into like crazy cyborgs or crazy magic wielders, like oh, that's really cool. It's just that it's explained so poorly and the interface is so bad that it's just not worth it. - That's a big problem with people who have never done UI before or people that don't really have a good grasp of what good UI is, you can actually ruin a really solid game just with bad UI. Makes me wonder if that's the problem with I or if there's something more fundamental going on. - It seems more like it's a case of people who knew what they liked in games, but it's like they were trying to cook without knowing how much of each ingredient they were supposed to use, how they were supposed to mix them together and how long they were supposed to-- - Yeah, it feels like game design by committee or something. - And not only that, just like throwing things at the wall like that they liked another game. - It's true. Yeah, you know what else would be cool? This type of skill tree. Okay, well we'll put that on top of this other skill tree. Okay, cool. No, game design systems design is incredibly complicated and it's as much of an art as it is a science and I think that there are a lot of people in the mod community that don't understand that. - Well, that's why there's so many mods out there that fail is because everybody wants to make the biggest, most awesome, baddest-ass game ever. - And they just don't understand what that takes. - Right. - They know what it takes to be big. They don't understand what it's like to be sophisticated rather than complicated. - Right, and that's why you see the indie games that do really well are the ones that just have the super solid execution of just a couple key ideas. - Yeah, exactly. They focus on doing certain things well. - Like if you have a team of 12, make something like that game we've all talked about. Frozen Synapse or something, right? Like not like something that's trying to do, like use a source engine, it's very ambitious. You know, all of this original assets and stuff like that, like, I don't know. - Well, I mean, but you have games. - Sorry, go ahead. - Well, no, I mean, like, that's a good example of taking a bunch of stuff out of the equation. It's like, well, real-time strategy, like sort of making it turn-based takes out a lot of the necessity of a real-time, adaptive, artificial intelligence or like trying to approximate that, trying to anticipate what the player is gonna do, all this other shit. And it focuses on like building level design around what's there, you know? - Well, the problem is is that you can get away, you could have gotten away with omniscient AI in like 2003 or something. - Sure, that's what I'm saying. It just feels dated right out the gate, right? And I understand, like I said, it's cool for these 12 guys, but I just don't think it's worth paying the money for. Like, is it full retail price? - No, it's like, I think it's like $29. - That's not bad. - I definitely need to check it out because I'm always just curious what small teams can do. And, you know, if it's successful enough for them, maybe they'll do an update or maybe the next version or their next project or something like that will be something that's more focused 'cause I'm sure they learned an awful lot while making it. - Yeah, I mean, as far as cool indie games on Steam that I want you to check out, like I didn't think it was like great or anything. - Yeah, demo. - Of I? - Yeah. - I don't know, that's a good question. - That is a good question. - There's not a demo, I don't know. - But you should all, if you guys have seven bucks and you want to try something kind of weird, there's a game that just came out finally, it was like an IGF game two years ago at GDC 2009. It's called Trauma. - Wow, yeah. - It's really interesting. You know, it's like one of those games that almost doesn't feel like a game in a lot of ways because it's a point and click adventure but it's told through like 1,000 photographs, this guy took with the digital camera. So whenever you click to like an area, you can explore, it goes to another digital picture. And it does some really cool things with like, okay, so I'm not a photographer. So I don't understand like certain photo effects, like the way he streaks a person across the screen and stuff like that. But anytime there's an effect like that on a photo, it's actually purposefully part of the story. - Right, well so, yeah. - It might be a ghost that you can't capture because it's moving and you have to find a perspective where you can capture it. - And the way that you do that is the same way that you would capture, you know, like those pictures of streets at night. - That's all streaky. - It looks like just a bunch of lights going out. It's just because you leave the shutter open exposure. - Okay, so yeah. - So that she does a lot of stuff with exposure and stuff to change the visual effects. And it's kind of interesting playing through these adventures. You know, the crux of the, like the story of the game is that you're playing through the dreams of this girl who's in recovery, who like killed her parents in a car accident. - Oh wow. - And so you're kind of, it touches very lightly or heavily depending on how you look at on these ideas of loss and guilt. But the thing I kind of got turned off about it is like, I know it's only $7, but you can finish the entire thing in as few as 10 minutes. Like really? You can go through all four adventures. There are a bunch of different endings for them all. There are four different endings for each one. - Yeah. - But I'm saying if you just wanted to, you could just click through it if you're not really being that even with all the time I put into it, like finding every ending and stuff, less than two hours. - Wow. - You know, it's very, very, very short. - That really surprises me. - And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that like, I didn't feel like any of the themes that they wanted to touch upon in death and stuff were ever really explored deeply. Like, it's interesting though, 'cause this is a typical game that you, like almost like a book club thing. You wanna like just talk about it with other people, like because it takes these photos and it also blends in really weird visual effects. Like you might find the way to create drains by swirling the mouse around on the picture. And so that might create a drain that will then like suck a wall away and make a new part of the picture appear. It's just a really interesting visual experiment. There's nothing quite else that I've played like it. - Yeah. - And I think if you wanna get something and see something cool with seven bucks, isn't that bad? - Yeah. - But I don't know. - It is kind of crazy that it's that short though. I mean, like, you were always talking about how short doesn't necessarily make the game or length doesn't necessarily make the game, but sometimes, especially in an adventure game, you know, when something is super, super short like that, it borders on feeling incomplete. Did this actually feel incomplete? Or does it feel like-- - Yeah, I don't know, I just, I didn't feel like satisfied by the time I got done. I wasn't like, you know, you can play something like-- - That's an incomplete experience then. - You can play something like Limbo and you could beat it. Even if I'd beat that in like two hours, I would have been like, fuck, that was awesome. - Or like playing passage, you know, passage feels complete. - Correct. - Yeah. - Or even like one chance, that game one chance, that flash game that-- - I haven't played that. - And that's one where you only get one chance to play through, it saves into your cookies. That only takes like 20 minutes, but by the time you're done, you're like, fuck, that was great. That just didn't walk away necessarily with that. I still enjoyed it and I still think it's a really cool visual experiment, but-- - Mm-hmm. - Yeah. - Yeah. (laughing) - Anything else? - I don't know, it's been like a-- (laughing) - Claws, he's been playing claws. - He's been playing cat claw up his leg. - Yeah, not a whole lot outside of that and I tried Minecraft, that's all I'm gonna say. I tried Minecraft finally. Tyler, you know, Tyler put a call last week for people to bug me about trying Minecraft and quite honestly, people did bug this shit. (laughing) You know, on my Twitter, everyone was like, try Minecraft. - Did you start talking about Minecraft? I'm gonna stop the recording. - Try Minecraft. Ours, there's a hater. (laughing) So yeah, so I tried it and it's fun. I concede that I understand why so many people would-- - Gotcha. - It was a fantastic experience. But yeah, that's really it. And a quick IOS game shout out of the week. Good zoo type, go get it. - Gazoon height? - It's been too tight. That's it, go try it, buy it. It's one of the better games Konami's published in a long time. - Nice, it looks really good. - Someone else. - Tyler. - I've not played anything new at all. - Minecraft. - I've finished from dust. - Oh yeah? - Which I, yeah. - How did it wrap up for you? - I liked it. The last level sort of turns, you know, it kind of gives you all brand new mechanics to mess with, and that's a lot of fun. - Do you feel that that's a game that's like worth seeing through to the end? - Yeah. - Okay. 'Cause yeah, I kind of got to a point where I was slowing down with it and I was like eh, eh, eh. - Yeah, there's the level, the level before the last one is really the sort of the last level. I mean, it's really the toughest challenge. The last, the very last level is sort of a, I mean, I did have to restart it once 'cause it's funny. You know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna give it away, but anyone who's played the last level may have, may understand what I say when I accidentally fucked that one up. (laughing) I don't know what I mean. (laughing) - It seems like it's really quite possible in that game to accidentally fuck something. - Oh yeah. - 'Cause I mean, like, the river will one one way or the lava will run another way that you didn't even anticipate it. - Yeah, on this little complete watch. - Later on, they also give you like, not only do you have the ability to pick up elements, but you also get plants that can like, put out bursts of fire and water. And you'll like have the best intentions of like, I'm gonna put this plant here and here, all of a sudden you like, walk away and go do something else and your village is like, "We're on fire!" It's like, "No, what happened?" You know, it was 'cause you placed the dumb plant in the wrong spot. - It'd be really cool if the village. - It'd be really cool if that game had a replay function that you could fast forward and rewind through just to see how you screwed things up. - Yeah. The good thing is, I will say from dust, if you screw up, you can almost always recover. Like it's very rarely did I ever have a screw up where I was like, "And that's game over." And it was like, "Oh, well, you'll just have to restow us "at village and burn it down like seven more times "as you learn." - I don't understand why those people put up with me as a god, but Matt, you've been playing insanely twisted shadow planet. - I did, yeah, speaking of indie games and when it's actually good. - The game is really good. - It is really, really good. And I've played about four and a half hours and I'd say I'm slightly more than halfway through. - Really? - At least just by looking at the map, it looks like I'm a little more than halfway through. - But there's like a percentage thing that says campaign completion percent. - Oh, I don't know, I've just been playing it and then like when I hit a save point, I turned it off. - I'm just gonna throw this out there. I've been told that it ends when you don't expect it to. - Oh, really? - And that it's not that long. So you may be near the end of insanely twisted shadow. - Maybe, 'cause there's only, yeah, looking at the map, there's only three more areas that I haven't been to and I've already been to in like four other areas or five other areas or something like that. I can't remember how many there are. But the game is a lot more Metroidvania than I thought it was gonna be. And that was a pleasant surprise because looking at the game, it seemed to me kind of like, oh, Tyler and I were talking about this earlier. - It's like Maturmo. - It's what? - Maturmo. - Oh, not like that. It totally looked like it was more of a linear kind of game and it does have stages that are linear. There are some stages where you move through it and you'll never have to or want to go back even though you can. But there are definitely areas where it does the whole Metroid thing where you gotta have the right weapon to get to the right place. And I really like all of the weapons that I've gotten so far. They're all like super different from one another and I'm constantly reassigning the face buttons to different weapons for different areas because it has a whole menu wheel of weapons full once you collect them all. And then normally you hold, you can hold the R button and then use the right stick to choose a weapon. So it has that really quick, you know. - Snap. - They really quick snap menu design. - And you can also assign them to face buttons. - Exactly, so I said. So that's what I've been doing is like, I'll go into an area and I'll realize which four weapons I need and face button assign them really, really quick. And the interface is just really clean and, but the first thing- - The interface is functionally non-existent. - Yeah, which is good 'cause the game doesn't need it. - No. - And you can tell just by looking at your ship how damaged you are. And the art style and the animation is just unbelievably consistent and great. And they had like three logos at the beginning, some animation, I can't even remember who they were right now, but like I wanna send those guys just a fan mail and be like, you have some of the best animation I've ever seen. - It's so good. - Oh, that's the one summer of our kid game. So far that I haven't really put any time into. So that's good. - Definitely do it. - I've been definitely debating whether I was gonna get that one or not. - It's absolutely worth it. - Yeah, that's definitely awesome. I mean, I don't know, maybe that will be the one that you don't play. - Yeah. - Because like for me, it's definitely gonna end up being from dust 'cause just listening to you guys talk about it, my eyes are rolling into the back of my head, but in something like just a shadow planet, like the pacing is so good. Like even backtracking that even when you die, like it doesn't feel particularly punitive 'cause it doesn't-- - Has a lot of savory. - Yeah. And it's actually kind of easy to die in certain spots. - It is. - But it's that total thing where you're playing through it and you might get stuck on something and then you'll have that aha moment that makes you feel smart and a little dumb at the same time. - Like there's a drill boss, like early on. - Yeah. - And I half beat it and didn't realize it and then it took me a while to realize what I needed to do to finish beating it. - Yeah, I kept, there's those like bat creatures which follow the-- - The flower. - The flower whatever's lit and you can hold, you can use the claw from the UFO and grab a rock and hold a rock in front of what looks like a, looks like a blowtorch flame and heat up the rock and if the rock glows and the bats will follow whatever the hot thing on the screen is. - Which you can then throw. - Which you can then throw. And so for the longest time with that drill boss, I thought that was the mechanic that I was supposed to exploit 'cause that seemed to be the thing, but it was totally unrelated. - Yep, not that at all. - Yeah, not that at all. - Fucking red herrings. - Yeah. And the game does have some red herrings definitely. But I'm just so impressed with some of the weapon mechanics. You know, there's this thing that works kind of like a grappling hook, it's a magnetic ray and but it works as both attractive and repulsive. So if there's a metal box on the ground, you can pull it towards you or you can push it away. You can just sort of loosely control it with the right thumb stick. And but if there are metal objects, like these metal boxes that are just attached to the environment, you can actually pull them towards you, then it works that way on your ship. And you can use them to sort of slingshot your area, slingshot your way past these areas where there's like a current of wind blowing against you that you can't fly through normally. You don't have enough power to fly through. And that's just one example. All of the weapons really are that creative. And well, except for the saw blade, but the saw blade's just fun. So yeah, good game. I would say if you haven't bought any of the summer of arcade games yet, that's a really good one to start with. And I haven't played Bastion or From Dust, so I can't say whether it's better or worse than those. - We're playing fucking Bastion? - No, I'm waiting for it to come out on PC next week. - Isn't it now already? - No, since I was 16. - Not since next week. - Okay. - Yep. - I'm gonna play it on PC. - Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm. - Well, it's a helpful thing. - Was it a controller or with a mouse? - I'm actually thinking about getting a controller, but I have to go buy a wired Xbox controller. - I can own it. - You're telling me in your house, there's not a wired Xbox controller? - There is one, but Ryan hasn't. He uses it all the time. - I can help you with that. - Sweet. - If you had said something before today, I actually could have brought you one. - Yeah, oh well. Next week. - Yep. - And then the only other thing I did is I finished out the new Vegas DLC. I finished Honest Hearts, and then I beat Old World Blues. - And then they delayed the DLC, the last DLC pack. - They did, but I didn't know that today. - They said reasons beyond their control, which is strange to me because I can't think of a lot of reasons beyond their control. - Well, I imagine that the reason Bethesda is delaying is reasons beyond their control, is that it's not them making it. It's what's their face, like this. - That is a hell of a technicality for reasons beyond our control. - Well, I'd be willing to bet, while it's certainly not bugginess that keeps them from launching these. - No, exactly, like how fucked up does a DLC pack for a fallen, you Vegas have to be for them, not to release it. - Exactly, 'cause it hasn't gotten any better. I've gone through all three available DLCs now, and the last one is just as buggy as the other two. There are scripts that don't execute, there are crashes to desktop. It is nasty, nasty shit, but I still stick with it because obsidian are damn good storytellers. They're really good storytellers. They're just not good at making not buggy games. They're not good at making quality gameplay. Looking back, I still followed three or more, and I almost restarted it last weekend, but then I realized, I was gonna do it on PC because it's a clean slate. And for me, the achievements in that game helped guide me through the game, and Oblivion was definitely that way. But then I realized that I don't have any of the DLC for the PC version, and actually buying all the DLC would cost the same as buying the game of the year version that comes with all the DLC. (laughing) - So, no reason to do it. - No. - I don't know. I was thinking again about New Vegas' story compared to Fallout 3's story, and I think New Vegas has a better story. It's tighter, and it's better told. - You think it's tighter? - Oh yeah, I totally think so. Because everything that you're doing in New Vegas, it ends up, instead of being a whole bunch of little minor things that happen elsewhere, and there's only one major story thread that's a limited number of missions. It feels like everything that you're doing in New Vegas ties into the overall story, and I didn't feel that way at all in Fallout 3. I didn't feel that way in Oblivion either. But the New Vegas DLC doesn't even better job of that, obviously, 'cause DLC, it's a smaller experience, there's only one story to tell, instead of a whole bunch of threads. But there's little things, like there's an honest heart through these caves that you can go in, and you can find these computers, and it doesn't really matter what order you find them in. You find these log entries from this guy who escaped and was living in these, surviving in these caves after the Great War, just after the bombs fell. And it is a heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching story, even though it's like a short story about this guy who essentially lost two families, both during the war and after the war, and he keeps talking about how today is the day he's finally gonna commit suicide, and I was like, man, that was almost better than the honest heart story itself. In fact, it probably would've been. But then I got into Old World Blues, and it is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. - Intentionally. - Intentionally. - I guess as funny as the fact that they still haven't fixed the fucking ending. - For Old World Blues? - No, for fall on New Vegas. - Oh, I know, yeah. Yeah, you still can't play all the way through the ending. You have to load a save before you get to the last, before you get to the Hoover Dam mission. - For the last, like, hour and a half of the game, basically. - Yeah, so if you only had, like, one save through the whole game, you're screwed. - If you only had one save through fall on New Vegas, you deserve what's coming. - Yes, agreed, lesson learned. - Unless that's the first fucking, like, game from Bethesda you've ever played, I zero sympathy. - I still think it's really just terrible, terrible game design to not have a post-game save and just let the DLC go from there. - And they made the same mistake that followed three-made. - Yeah. - How does that happen? - I don't know. I really don't know. But there are mods out there. See, this is how I know it's possible because there are mods out there that give you a post-game save. And then I was reading in the forums, I don't know if it works with Old World Blues, but at least for Honest Hearts and Dead Money, it actually works with those two DLC. So it's possible, just for some reason, Obsidian hasn't done it. Obsidian, sliced Bethesda, whatever. I don't know. - Assholes. - It's very, very strange. - Over the weekend, Fallout Vegas was $10 on Steam. - Was it? - Whoa. - Yeah, but I passed it up, I did not buy. Did I make a mistake? - I'd say it's worth $10. - It's totally worth $10. - Yeah, I definitely, I haven't even finished it and I got more than $10 out of it. - So yes, you made a mistake tower way to go. - I made a big mistake. - But the business is, in a couple of months it'll go on sale again. - It will. - The Skyrim will be out and that will be there in your bread and butter. - It'll go on sale, well I'll go on sale probably when, and I'm sure there will be like a game of the year edition with all the deal. - Well that's what we'll be doing. - All that kind of stuff. - When's Memorial Day? - Yeah. - You know I don't know. - Soon? - Soonish. - September? - They'll have a sale for Memorial Day and I would bet a small amount of money that Fallout New Vegas will be part of it. - That would make sense to me. - But other than that, my tiny tower is 47 stories and that's about that. - That's ridiculous. - That does not sound like a tiny tower. Mine is 18 and it's still over one. - No yours is 14. - Oh. - Oh. - Oh. - 'Cause in game-- - His dick is four towers. - 'Cause in game center you can check how you're progressing as opposed to me. - And like something I just figured out, I don't know if this is a recent add-on or whatever but if you click on somebody's tower you can totally see their tower like all the floors and their biddosons running around and everything. - Hmm. I've been neglecting that game because the new Kyrosoft game came out. So I'm playing Academy Story and Mega Mall Story and that's a lot of stories. - Yeah, Matt you show me tiny tower on the train last week and the game looks really, really fun. - It is and it's like we said before, it's the smartest marketed game ever, you know? Even today I loaded it up and it was like, check out this free video on iTunes and we'll give you five of the bucks you have to pay for. - Right. - And I was like, I don't want to but I don't know what you're trying to do. - Yeah. (laughing) - And I approve. - Yeah, it's very smart. It's a very smartly made game like as far as like the various ways they're getting money for it. - I really dig it. I haven't actually done any of the microtransactions yet but now that I'm like almost a 50 stories or whatever, I'm totally going to just because I believe they deserve my money. - That's what I said, I give them three bucks. - Yeah, there you go. - Yeah, that's like what I would have paid for it if I had bought it. - Well, and at this point also, if I want to fast build a floor, it takes like 20 tower bucks too. 'Cause you know, each tower that you build takes longer than the last one. - And so now I'm up to like 20 hours for a floor to finish building. - I will also say if you like rhythm games, everyone was talking about it a couple weeks ago but grew up here. - Grew coaster. - Yep. - Everyone's been right. Just get that game. It's from the Space Invaders Infinity Gene team. - Yep. - And it's really good. - Yep. - So. - Agreed. - You. - Now that we're done boring Arthur. (laughing) - My iPhone game. - My iPhone game is in-- - Fucking Minecraft. - And my iPhone game. - He just, he just dies. - I mean, part of the problem is that like, I, at this point, I have played big chunks of probably two of the most anticipated games for everyone if you have an Xbox 360 for the rest of the year. - And you can't talk about-- - And I can't talk about Gears of War 3 until next week. And I can't talk about Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary until After Packs. But I-- - Halo, new graphics. - More, more, more graphics. - Yes, it exists. - That's as much as I can say. (laughing) Also, I can say stop whining. That's as, as cryptically as I can put it, just stop whining. - People are whining? - Oh, people are definitely whining about-- - You're getting this game, man. - People are whining that, that the multiplayer for Combat Evolved Anniversary is-- - Reach. - Reach's multiplayer with old Halo maps remade, stop whining. - Stop whining. - Even, even you and I, when we first heard that, we're like, oh, we were kind of looking forward to the overpowered pistol and shit like that. And I'm just gonna say, stop whining. - All right. - Stop whining. (laughing) - The thing is that I hear about games like Gears and Halo and stuff all the time anyway. - Yeah. - Stuff like that's so easy to find. - If you're listening to this show, you've probably heard about those games already. - Right, but for Gears, I played the entire first act. - Cool. - So I played that game for almost two hours. - Where did that? - So to get ready for playing Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary, stuff I was playing Firefight and Reach on Friday and goddamn that's fun and I need to do more of that. - Yeah, me too. Every now and then it just occurs to me that I haven't played Firefight in a long time. - You can't do match, can you do matchmaking for Firefight and Reach? - I think there is matchmaking for Firefight. - I hated that no DST. - I would rather play with friends though. - That's fine, the fact that it didn't have it at all was like-- - Right, it was stupid. - Barely excusable. - Not excusable, this is the same team that made matchmaking like, (laughing) not excusable. - In excusable. - In excusable. (laughing) - Unexcusable. I played a little bit of Toy Commander Cold War today. - Toy Soldiers. - Toy Soldiers. Cold War. - Might as well be Toy Commander. - Toy Commander was the Dreamcast game where you piloted toys and it was awesome. (laughing) Toy Soldiers Cold War is also awesome. - And you do pilot toys. - You do pilot toys. There's a lot of third person action in Toy Soldiers Cold War. It wasn't there in the last one. - Well, there were some you did with tanks and stuff, but they've added a way more. - Yeah, it's just like, it's a regular thing now. - Unless you just figured out that people really enjoyed that part of the game. - Exactly, well, any level where there was a tank or something, I spent the whole level doing that. Whereas now it's, you know, and then other levels I'd just spend like constantly looking at my towers. Now there's always something. - I mean, there's not much I can say about Toy Soldiers because it comes out next week. But honestly, like if you have any interest whatsoever in that game, I can't say anything other than it. - It seems like a no brainer too, if you enjoyed the original. - Like the streak of Xbox Live Arcade, of the summer of Arcade being awesome continues next week. It really is turning into the summer of Arcade for me. Like those are the games that I'm playing. - Yeah. - It's so nice to like, while we're ramping up for the fall season, it's good to have these nice little games. - That's why they do it. - Today, I played Rayman Origins. And that is a platformer. (laughing) That is a new Super Mario Brothers translated into French and back to English again. And maybe back to French and back to English again. It's very French and very wacky and you definitely spend a lot of time fucking over your friends. (laughing) But there is one kind of major issue with that game that New Super Mario Brothers avoided, which is that in New Super Mario Brothers, you had Mario, Luigi, and two toads. But the two toads look different enough that you could sort of keep track of what was going on. - Well, I think that the worlds, they look way different enough from the world to the series. And I feel like the color palette and when I watch Rayman, I'm like, things are hard to find. - So here's the thing, Rayman and his fat blue friend are easy to tell from the background in Rayman Origins. - Sure. - The third and fourth players look almost identical. One has a dark green cape and the other has a black cape. - Oh, wow. A dark green and black man should have been like pink and black. (laughing) - And it's really, really difficult to tell them apart to the point where I would often be looking at one when I was the other. - Yeah, definitely. That's not smart. - That said really, really clever level design. Really smart, intuitive level design. Like you go to an ice level and you can run along. But if you crouch on like inclines, you'll slide. - Cool. - And if you're running and jumping, like and you duck at just the right point, you can totally like just zoom off ramps and shit. - Nice. - Which is good because there are parts with the difficulty in that game gets brutal. - I feel like, and maybe I'm missing a couple games or something, but I feel like New Super Mario Brothers sort of made it okay again for larger developers to try out platformers. - Maybe. - 'Cause you know, we have-- - Or we need 2D platformers. - Yeah, that's what I mean. 'Cause we have New Super Mario Brothers and there was the new, you know, Diddy Kong, which had really amazing level design. And now there's-- - Did it? - Oh yeah. - I don't know. - I thought this level design was super cool. - Wait, you don't have the new Donkey Kong? - Watching people fucking country turns. - That's what I mean. - It wasn't really cool, that was just really hard. - Yeah, but there was so much variation in the levels and they were really, really clever. I mean, anyway, that's what I thought. - Rayman Origins just to me has always seemed like Ubisoft's big experiment, which is like, let's have a tiny team with these cool tools throw something together and try to use their chops as designers rather than like brute forcing tech and enormous asset creation teams to get it done. And it seems like it's working. Like it's really charming in a French way. It's like Gerard Depardieu giving you a shoulder massage. - A little bit creepy, but not altogether unpleasant. - Right, exactly, exactly. So it's a lot of fun. I'm trying to think of anything else that I might have been playing. - Android games. - Yeah. - I could barely use my Android phone functions, much less fucking games. That shit lost my exchange stuff again today. - If you had a Sony Ericsson Android phone, you could play Minecraft. - Wow. - Great. - Have any of you guys played the new Deus Ex that's coming out? Is like in one week or two weeks? - It comes out in two, it's the same week as PAX. It's another high profile game coming out the same week as PAX. - Wow. - This is weird. - The third game I can think of off the top I had in the last four years. 'Cause Bioshock came out the same week as PAX. I don't remember if something did in 2008, but 2009, it was Batman. - Fucked up my mic. - Last year, what came out- - He was Dragon H2. Well, no, it was PAX E's, never mind. - What came out last year during August? - So do they actually do their high profile games? Do they end up riding the press wave, or do they end up getting buried from the event happening? - Yeah, maybe I don't think PAX is big enough to bury much anything honestly. - No, that's true. I just don't know, I'm really gonna be curious to see how Deus Ex does. First of all, I'm curious to see how Deus Ex is, because it's like nine days before it comes out, and we still don't have review code, which is weird for a game that big. - Yeah, definitely. - Not like from a release perspective. - Well, it's the kind of game size perspective. - Yeah, and it has multiple endings and multiple ways to play. Like, and no online outlet has gotten that game yet. Like, I've talked to other people with other online outlets, and they haven't gotten it. - And it's interesting how, you know, we talked a little bit about this earlier, about how the review scores that have come out, you know, and all we've seen are the scores, you know, and no text. - No text, yeah. Well, I mean, some subscribers to those magazines who've seen text. - Yeah. - So it's frustrating to us, like seeing like scores be out there weeks in advance of us ever even getting the game. But I should be getting it in the next couple of days, and I'm reviewing that. And I'm looking forward to it. Fingers crossed. - Yeah. - Hey, you should make me an illegal copy of it, so that I can play it early. - I don't know if we're getting you like a retail. - That was a joke. - Yes. - We do not condone illegal copies of games. - Although people, illegal copies of my music are totally fine. The game is-- - Oh yeah, exactly. - Pay for your games. - Don't know if your movies are either family, exactly. Have you tried Spotify? - No, is it good? - I am either. - That's time for free. - All right. ♪ He was brave and rescued me ♪ ♪ A jump in oceans, raging seas ♪ ♪ Filled my lungs with oxygen ♪ ♪ I was such a wreck back then ♪ ♪ He warned me back upon my feet ♪ ♪ Taught me how to walk and speak ♪ ♪ When I got the chance to think ♪ ♪ There was just so shadow left there ♪ ♪ I'm gonna go, go, go, go, go, go, go ♪ ♪ I'm gonna go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go ♪ - Okay, first letter is from Spencer. And he says, "You can read my name." It's good that I read your name. - That's good, yeah. - I have a girlfriend, she likes to play Sims. Despite my best effort, that's about all she likes to play. She did over-enjoy watching me play heavy rain last year, and she enjoyed helping me make decisions in it. If you would, I'd like some suggestions of games that are in the same line as heavy rain, and that they are interesting to watch and interactive for those that are watching. I know there aren't many others like heavy rain. I've played Indigo Proficy and don't wanna play it again. So it's okay to stray from that specific genre, that specific company. - Yeah, exactly. - To point and click adventures and the like. Basically, I'm looking for anything that has a decent narrative with decision-making that isn't too boring to watch. - Easy. - I own a PS3 and a Wii. So, and he has an OKPC. - Oh, okay. - It's LA Noir. - LA Noir is a fun one to watch, actually. I had a great time. - It's murder, crimes, and stuff. - And you have to make calls about how to interrogate people all the time. - Nice. - Way into it. - PS3, done. - I understand that Dreamfall, the last journey is an amazing game with an amazing story. - It is. - It is, it's that on PC. That's an awesome thing to do. - It's super cheap. If you had an Xbox, I mean, it's on the Xbox right now, too. - Right, but since you at least have a PC, that's a good one, too. - Dreamfall is fantastic. - PC could definitely play it. - Dreamfall, and LA Noir, that's like 30 hours right there. - No, exactly. - We've hooked you up. - I'm a good one that my girlfriend isn't even the gamer that yours is, but she really liked watching me play stacking. Because there's lots of puzzles to solve, and it's the kind of thing that two brains are better than one when you're trying to solve a lot of these puzzles. - I even know plenty of people who have enjoyed watching Uncharted 2, even though it's not. - It's 'cause that's like watching a movie. - Yeah, I mean, it's got action parts and stuff that'll probably be more boring for it, but there's just enough. - Yeah, I'd enjoy it. - I think I've brought it up before about how we would play Uncharted 2 and all of our non-gaming roommates would just stop and watch us play, because it really is like watching a movie. - So Ian wrote in and he says, "He just discovered Trials HD, and he loves it, "and says that we were totally right "when the way we talk about it." He says that, "Do you know if the developers "have any new games coming out, "and could you tell me about them?" They do, right? - They're working on another Trials game right now. - Yeah, Trials, and they have a car one, I think, too, I wanna say. - Yeah, yeah, the car one they're doing, isn't it like it's like a nod to that fucking arcade game, the old four-player, I think it was called Off-Road or some shit. - Yeah, it was like overheads. - Overheads and four steering wheels. Yeah, that's coming out for iPhone and iPad, I think. - Am I, oh man, yeah, and you draw the lines. - You do, you draw the lines at that job. - That's right, yeah, yeah, and it's, I don't know. - I played, it was really fun. It's being published by Chillingo. - Oh, wow. - And EA. - Yeah, they published good shit. Yeah, isn't it, does that game use physics in a lot of fun ways, too, I mean? - No, it's mainly, it's mainly about like your only thing, your only control is that you draw all the lines for the laps real quick, and then after that, your only interface is when you use your boost, which changes how your character rides those lines. - Oh, okay. - So you have to use the boost at really key moments to like overtake someone in a tight turn where you drew the line in a certain way, 'cause you know, oh he's gonna do this turn really tight, I need a boost right now to get past that, dude. - Okay. - It's fun, I mean, it's nothing like as like, addicting as trials. - Right. - You know, there is any trials in the way. - Yes. With multiplayer tracks behind other tracks. - Really good. - I've still never played trials. - So. - It's like the epitome of the game where you will find yourself rocking back and forth in your chair to try to make things happen on screen. (laughing) - They should make trials connect. - Yes. - So it does something. - Yes. - The next letter is from Reed, Anissa's. I used to really be into PC gaming, as many of us did. I built my own gaming rigs until about halfway through university when I bought a MacBook Pro. - Oh, so it is from the UK. - I switched over, or Canada. I switched over to OSX, but I used bootcamp to play PC games for quite a while, and it worked just fine. - Yeah. - So he said, you know, basically the games that are coming out like Battlefield, and some of the other ones like Crisis and stuff, that it's really taking its toll on them, right? - Yeah. - So he's saying, you know, he really wants to play things like Deus Ex, Human Revolution, Elder Scrolls V, Skyrim. - Yeah. - So my question is, do you think that I should build a dedicated gaming rig, or games like Rage in Battlefield, be just as much fun on my 360? - I think. - Rage, yes. Battlefield will be a somewhat different experience multiple hours. - But it will still be fun. All these games are very much so designed with consoles and mind enough nowadays that like, I don't think-- - They'll still be good. I mean, I would say if you have the money to do a PC gaming rig-- - Wait, for fuck's sake, just wait. - Yeah, first of all, wait. - Until the end of October, because there are going to be new cards launched for Battlefield. - Yeah, 'cause he said he, if he does want to build a rig, he wants to do it for like 700 bucks. - Just wait. - Which you could, which you could. I mean, you wouldn't have top of the line everything, but you could totally build a dedicated box for that. - Battlefield 3 multiplayer, like the alpha, actually scaled remarkably well. Like playing it on a single 6970, which is an insane card. At 2560 by 1600, I was getting 30 frames a second with everything maxed out. And that is double the pixel density of 1080p. - Right, which most people won't have anyway. - No, you won't. - And how much will that card be? Like let's say in a month, the new cards are launched. How much do you think that'll be? - I think you'll probably get an equivalent card for like 200. - Yeah. - Like it's, that was a $350 card earlier this year. - Yeah. - And also like the GI or the TI 560 or whatever, the Nvidia card is a really, really capable budget conscience, conscious video card. - Yeah, if you guys are really interested in how the cards performed with the Battlefield alpha, there's quite a few sites that have like compiled, like spec readouts, you know, like how, how they performed on all the different cards. - It ran a lot better than I was expecting. - Yeah. - Cool. - So, but basically we all agree though that he could get him on 360 and it's not gonna be so bad. - Like, you know, it's not gonna be bad at all. - I have a question kind of along these lines. I mean, you know, it's kind of like a geared towards you guys. - Do you think Battlefield 3 will run pretty well on max when it comes out, like current level max? - I don't. - Or would someone have to get like a max? - Are they making a max? - Are you saying like if they're running like boot camp? - If they're running boot camp. - Oh, but I mean, if it's like one of the 17 inch MacBook Pros probably. - Or maybe if it's a tower max. - No, I mean like a tower. - You think they'll do that? - It's just like, well these days it's just like a PC. You have to look at the hardware you're running. - Yeah. - Because like it's not like you're running a virtual version of Windows on top of OS 10. You're running Windows. And so it's like you just look at the hardware that you've got in your Mac and you would have, it's if a PC is running that hardware, how will it perform? - I mean, the problem is compatible video cards for Mac Pros are outrageously overpriced. - It's true. - And you can get hacked drivers, but it's just like, it makes PC gaming even more of a pain in the ass. - And that's impressive, really. - So CoE writes in, and he says I have a friend. - Uh-huh, sure you do. - And he says, well, he even names his friend, but my friend wants to buy a new HDTV for his Xbox 360. And I said get a 1080p television. He then came back and said that the Xbox 360 said it 1080p and Xbox 360 games can only output a 720p signal even with HDMI cables. Is this true? Can you confirm if this is a myth or not? - It's not true. - It's not true at all. - Okay, there you go. - A lot of games run at sub 720p even, but the Xbox itself is technically capable of putting out a 1080p signal. - It has a decent scalar. I mean, the 360 is capable of outputting a lot of resolutions, like especially after a couple of updates ago, they added a ton of PC monitor resolutions, like 1440 by 900 and shit like that. - And a lot of indie games actually will run at 1080p 'cause they're not so processor intensive. But a lot of the big AAA titles like a battlefield or something like that will run at sub 720 HD. - All right. So I'm gonna bring up the email that I originally said I was not going to 'cause thought it was weird, but you guys- - 'Cause we're really in the 32nd thing. - Oh yeah, yeah, do it. - Zach writes in and he says, hey, how are you doing? I was just wondering what your stance was on the idea of teleportation. I was thinking about the other day. - I'm against it. - I bet you this came up because they put Star Trek the next generation Netflix. It's not like it just because he describes Star Trek teleportation. It's not like it just picks you up and moves you. In theory, it breaks down your molecules and moves them and then reconstructs them at the end location. - And that's the modern theory of how teleportation- - Right, but I'm saying it's also how they do in Star Trek. So I'm just saying, why is this coming up now? Probably because he's reading Star Trek. - Right, reading. - So, okay, so to me, this basically makes the teleporter a murdering clone machine to keep up the teleporter to teleport a technology author. - I mean, it's been used in a lot of sci-fi. - The person who comes out the other end isn't the exact same person who went in it. They have the same memories and the same mannerisms, but it's not 100% you. The idea seems weird to me and scary. I wanna know your two cents. (laughing) - Well, I totally disagree because I believe that all we really are, and the only thing that you can guarantee that we are, is our collection of atoms, and, or if you wanna go even smaller than that, the way that our strings vibrate in our individual atoms. So if you have a complete duplicate of that, then that duplicate is as much you as you are. - I mean, I don't understand if it takes your molecules, breaks them down and reconstructs them, how that isn't you. If you are, like you said, made up of your molecules, if it's not including any new molecules, it's the same molecule. - It hasn't left any out. - How is it not you? (laughing) I don't get it. Am I wrong? - I'm not, I'm not sure if that technicality is correct in terms, in the terms of, it's taking like molecules from point A, and then bringing them to point B. - I think that's what it's doing. It's not, it's not. - It's not, no, it's not. - According to Star Trek, they're like teleporters, yeah. But the way that they think teleportation would actually work would be based off of. - Like the quantum states of the molecules in your domain. - The quantum states of molecules, yeah. - The information. - Yeah, exactly. - I think what it boils down to, I've actually heard a lot of physicists discuss this very question, because it's like, it's something they talk about a lot, because actually if you look at things like, if like, like fields like identity, like, you know, this comes up, because what it boils down to is, you know, what is the self, you know, and how much is it located in the brain, and this is magic. - But again, I'm saying, if it's taking your molecules, breaking them down and reconstructing them out of the same materials previously. - It's not, but it's not reconstructing them out of the same pieces of material. - It's taking what molecules from the area where you're transporting to, is that what you imagine? - Yeah, imagine that a particle is like quantum entangled, so that like-- - Right, so I'm saying it would basically be taking the molecules and stuff out of the air of the point where I'm going and creating me from that, based off of the imprint of where I left. - Yes. - That's what you're saying. - No, basically what you're doing is, you're creating a molecule that exists simultaneously in two places at once, and then you're defining that it only exists in this place instead of the place that it was before. So it like, it is the same molecule, but it's a different one. - Is it, 'cause you can't make matter out of nothing. - What's the name of the guy who you know? - I think it's more along the lines of Zack's clone murder machine theory. - This is the particular case he's talking about. - Because if in theory where I left off, those molecules are just now there, but now the molecule has been taken out of where I'm going and brought to make me, then I kind of am freaked out by it. - I think if it is a clone murder machine, then it honestly doesn't matter, to the universe doesn't care. - Yeah, you are still here. You also think about it, you know, the whole situation where you're constantly shedding your skin and everything, you know, by the time you're grown, it's not like you're the same organic matter, you know. There's a lot of interesting things. - It just doesn't happen all at once. Have a solid, solid. - I think it's okay. - I swear I've heard like Lawrence Krauss or Neil DeGreece Tyson talk about this somewhere online. - Yeah, so as Brian Green talked about it on an episode of Radio Lab, it was really cool. - Yeah, yeah, me was Brian. - Yeah. - Yeah, they've all talked about it. - Yeah. - That was a fun one. - Clone murder machine. - Yeah, yeah, the way that he describes it, yeah, it's kind of a clone murder machine. - I love that phrase. I mean, it's sort of a Descartes thing, right? It's like, I think they're four I am, and then-- - You know, even when you watch them, I start to take a pisses me off all the time, transport technology. We were like, we lost them. Like, do you have an imprint of everything that made him up in all his memories? Just recreate him. - Right. - But they never do that shit. Also, why do they even still do surgery in the start-check universe? Why don't they just fucking lock onto my liver and transport it out of me? That'll be fun. - Why don't they beam in a new liver once mine dies? - I love that show. Let's see. I recently built myself a new PC, John says, that is actually capable of playing most modern games. - Good for you, John. - I have not been paying attention, though, to which PC games are worthwhile, you know, 'cause you just finally sacked up and built one. Could you all please give me some must-have PC games that I should pick up so I can put my new spiffy hardware to use? - He sort of leaves our nuts in a sling by not telling us what he's into. - Yeah. - Right. - I mean, it's free to play, so you should definitely get Team Fortress 2. - You know the real bitch of PC gaming right now, like all these people building these awesome rigs, like these games coming out later this year? - More people are like, let's make them accessible. - Well, yeah, well, it's not just that. It's like the most interesting stuff happening on PC right now is like indie games that take comparatively little in the games. - Or some of the cooler games are like Age of Empires Online, which is like made to run on real hardware. - I really need to play that. - It is really, I've watched our co-worker Nick playing it. It is pretty fucking cool looking. - It is a fucking Age of Empires. - Exactly, and I love the aesthetic of it. I think it is such cool. - It looks cool, yeah. I love it, too. - I guess if PC games of... - Crisis 2, Team Fortress 2. - And Portal 2 just got knocked down to $30. - And it permanently. - If you pay 35, I think you get it with Portal 1 too. - Portal 1, yeah. - Yeah. - So the orange box, actually. - Basically. - It's a no-brainer. - I guess. - I mean, like there's basically any of the console games, if you haven't played them on console and you were thinking about getting them on console, a lot of them are out on PC. - I mean, yeah. That's the thing, right? Like they're so old. - You know, like Dragon Age or Dragon Age 2, the Witcher. - I mean, if he's got a beast, yeah, I was gonna say why not get the Witcher 2. - The Witcher actually runs better on middling hardware than I think it got a wrap for at the beginning. But yes, the Witcher got pushed back on 360, so. - The Witcher's a great looking game, too, when you have everything, all the bells and whistles going. - It looks like a PC game, whereas Dragon Age 2 does not. - I think Dragon Age 2 looks great. - I think the characters look really good, but you'll still see a lot of things in the Witcher 2, like they'll have every little belt buckle and everything rendered in the Dragon Age 2. - Right, doesn't repeat shit as often. - There's, yeah. - Well, the environments, well, I talked about that a lot. Anyway, there are a lot, basically just download Steam and you're good to go. - So Marcus writes in and he says, "I was hoping I might be able to get your recommendations "for a good co-op game for at least three, "because he says his best friend from elementary school, "his brother and himself stay connected "by playing games online together, on Xbox 360s. "They've already burned through cold duties, "borderlands, Left for Deads, Halos, and Rainbow Sixes. "So they're looking for good co-op experiences. "We really enjoyed Castle Crashers and Daggerfell." - Well, that really, that game was busted as how I thought. - Yeah, it was, but I think that that's how desperate they are to play games together. - Is Dungeon Siege 3 a co-op or is it single player only? - It's co-op, but I think it might be only two player co-op. - Oh, right, it's a fucked up co-op. Like you don't want to carry a character over. - It's fun, but we're kind of getting burnt out on that experience, so we really want co-op. - And they're playing console, right? - Yeah, I would say Earth the Fence Force. - Oh, there you go. - That's three player co-op through the campaign. And it's silly fun and not all that expensive. - And if they're open to live arcade games, - Oh, there. - You know, Tran? - Tran, you can play co-op through multiplayer. - You can, four player. - Yeah, I mean, that's the way to play. - Yeah, I agree. - Yeah, totally. - I think there's only two player co-op. - Is it up on the co-op? - And it's two player co-op. - Whoa. - I don't know, I think you really can get a lot of mileage out of anything with a horde mode, survival mode, whatever you want to call it. - Ms. Splosionman has co-op, doesn't it? - Yeah, it does. I think even like multiple, like-- - It might be up to four. - Yeah. - But yeah, you should definitely, the two, the biggest two, I think, that we've said were Earth the Fence Force entrenched. - Good on you for playing Rainbow Six Vegas though. - Yeah, those are some great co-op games. - Yeah, really great co-op. - The first one is, the second one is-- - Yeah, the second one's just all around. - They didn't even fix terrorists on those fucking assholes. - Boo. - Mike Broden said to the dude that lumped autistic people in with bronies, fuck you. (laughing) - That would be you, wouldn't it, Anthony? - Probably, I got more than one email about-- - There were some angry bronies out there. - There were a lot, a lot. - They winnie denaid their way near inbox. (laughing) - Because they got mad that I wrote off bronies based off of the bronie remix thing we watched. - The my way. - And it wasn't that I was writing them off based on the remix. It was just that I'm writing them off to based on that it looks like a dumb show. I'm not saying that it probably isn't something I would enjoy, because I'll be the first to-- - It probably isn't something you'd enjoy. - I used to watch Powerpuff Girls, like-- - Powerpuff Girls is great. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, right? I've seen shows that were clearly not necessarily specifically for me, that I still really thought. - So is the new My Little Ponies or whatever, is it really supposed to be as good as Powerpuff Girls, but it's just My Little Ponies? - Well, Angelo wrote in and said believe it or not, there are normal people who enjoy this stuff, and it seems to be big in the video games industry, which is why I was surprised you hadn't heard more about it. There are several game companies who have featured funny stuff on their website, Blizzard and Riot Games come to mind, and recently Jacob Minkoff, lead the game designer, Naughty Dog admitted he was a bronie. (laughing) Also, we got a shout out from Stephen Colbert too. - This shit, this shit. - Is it really a good thing if people are admitting to it? No one admits to things that they're proud of. - Bronie's got it. - People just say it. - Bronie's got a shout out from Stephen Colbert. Most, the Stephen Colbert writers latch on to anything that's become a meme, and that's definitely become a meme. - It has, I'm saying, you don't admit to things you're proud of. - It's true. - You just say you're proud of them. - But yeah, I mean, whatever, I'm not saying that it isn't gonna be great. I like a lot of things that are terrible in life. (laughing) I do say things sometimes that are fucked up to get a rise out of people. And I did. - The fact is, it really works. - It also works every time I say it, I don't like the Witcher 2. So I'm saying that again, just to get a rise out of people. - So. - I don't like Japan, or Japanese games, in fact, I'd fuck them. - So all I'm gonna say is that a lot of you wrote in when I said I would play Minecraft if I could do all this multiplayer stuff. I'm just gonna say that Andrew let me know that it's all possible at a website called bukikit.org. They have all the mods you need to do it. So if that all sounded interesting to you too, I know now that I was wrong. And there are any abundance of mods to do all this crazy shit. Thank you for letting me know. You can stop writing. (laughing) - Dude, do we wanna talk about like a server, a multiplayer server? - I will say, if you guys want to start a server, I'd be interested in joining, send some information. You can send that information, as well as, and preferably, more letters for us to answer about anything from teleportation to whatever two. Letters@eat-sleep-game.com. - Or are we done? - Yeah, I've now reached the letters from last week. But those were actually some, I thought we had some good ones. - Some solid letters this week, for sure. - Yeah, and you know, teleportation, as much as I thought, what the fuck, why would you write that to us? That ended up being a good one. (laughing) - That's a good one. - I'm glad that a lot of people on Twitter have been telling me they're enjoying the laundry books that I recommended. Those are the Cthulhu technology books. - Nice. - I got some good-- - That's good enough. - I got some good recommendations for when I went to Alaska this last week and via the Twitterverse. I read the Leviathan Wakes, which is pretty good space opera type thing. It's the first in the series, evidently. Can't wait for the next one. So I started reading Nightwatch. - I am reading so many books right now. Too many books. - I only saw Nightwatch. - I was. - Never saw it. - Was it good? - Yeah. - Did you ever end up reading that book? The still remains. The Richard Morgan fantasy book. - No, not yet. - People always ask about books. We're naming off titles right here. - I actually have a galley-like proof of the sequel to that book now. - Oh, sweet. - What I got. - If you've ever wanted to get into reading Warhammer books, which people have asked me about, which I'm not saying you should. (laughing) 'Cause I read them, but I admit that it's like the equivalent of reading a gossip rag. - He admits. (laughing) - It's, yeah. - I admit that I read them. You can try, if you wanna try 40K, get the Ultra Marines omnibus. If you wanna try fantasy, get the go trick and Felix omnibus. And that's all I'm ever gonna tell you about that shit. (laughing) - Whenever admits they feed the homeless. (laughing) Unless they feed them other homeless. - No one ever admits that they fostered a kitten. (laughing) - But yeah. - If anyone wants a good neurology book, I'm reading, reading on the brain. - Cool. - It's the neurology of reading. - I'm only just now reading "Snow Crash." - Good one. - I'd never read it before. It's not at all about what I thought it was gonna be about. - No. - In fact, you should read "Snow Crash." - It is classic. - Because it treats, it runs on a thesis that religion is essentially a venereal disease at a genetic level. - Sounds like a Tyler book. - So you can find me on Twitter at chuffmoney. You can find Matt on Twitter at Talking Orange. You can find Tyler on Twitter at dirtyt. - Like the drink. - And you can find Arthur on Twitter at AEG IES. - Oh, hey. - So. You should go to Kickstarter and check out the comedy button project. - That's a podcast that the old "Game Spider Briefings" crew is attempting to put together. - Oh! - To keep a non-gaming related silly podcast going. - I don't think they're attempting anymore in their first hour that the comedy button has made $7,000. - Bad fucking ass. - Good for those guys. - So guess what, Anthony? You get to keep doing it. - Yay. - Big excited. - Yay. - My pimp at Twitter address. - Do it. - 'Cause we always talk about bad company too on here and my clan too legit to quit, we always play and we always put on Twitter when we're playing. So if you follow at two, the number two, L, two, Q, two legit, two quit, should be like a little dancing MC Hammer gift. We always post when we're playing. So if you want to play on Xbox Live, follow us. - Sexy time. - Well, that's it. We've wasted time with this. We're here, we've done it, and we're leaving. Thanks kid, have a good week. 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