Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 104 - 05/27/11
It's a short show this week. With Tyler out and Arthur sick, Matt and Anthony do a fair majority of the talking. Still, Arthur finds time to talk about Shadows of the Damned, Alice: Madness Returns and Witcher 2, while I Anthony discusses the horrors of coming under his scrutiny in LA Noire. We close with a few of your letters. Enjoy.
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Rebel FM, episode 104, start eight. I don't know, hey I'm Anthony. With me, is Matt Changerney. - Oh yeah, right. - The Ghost of Tyler Barber, and Arthur Geese. - I'm like you're gonna say the ghost of Arthur Geese too. - Well I could've said the husk of Arthur Geese. - The husk is an apt description at this point. - For people who haven't been following the adventure on Twitter, Arthur was at E3 Judges Week with a virus that made him explode from the inside out. - I think that would've been less awful than what I had. (laughing) - There was definitely some wishing for death. - I'm just hoping that I don't get it since, you know, every time I come over, you make out with me before I leave. - Well we'll know soon enough, if your tongue swells up and gets blisters all over it, then... - That's a sign. - You know, that's a sign. - All right, I'll look out for those. - Games. - So can I clear up something from last week first? - Sure. - So yeah, I am apparently a total fucking idiot because... - What now? - Somebody wrote a letter which was basically a giant metaphor for their connect. And I don't know if it was just me, maybe Tyler and Anthony were playing along, but I totally didn't get it. - No, we all didn't get it, even though it was so obvious in second thought. - Oh my God, like I went back and I looked at it. I'm like, how did I not, oh, face palm, head on desk. It's one of those times where it's like, it's not just me, it's not just me by myself feeling humiliated. It's like, I publicly humiliated myself for how fucking dense I was, but you know, you gotta keep in mind that when we do this show, it's also like, after a long work day and a full meal and when it's like-- - And when I answer relationship letters, I'm taking them all seriously, I don't know. - Well, when he said, like when he said in her names, connect, like, I thought that was a joke. - Well, but he said that she had like dreads and stuff like that, and I was like, okay, she's just some fucking weirdo, like those girls, you know that, my name's Chastity, no, it's not, shut up. - So I guess the moral of the story is, is if you ever wanna fuck with the rebel FM crew, at least when Arthur's not here, just like be subtle. Be as subtle as you can. - Make it about Xbox 'cause we don't play it. (laughing) - What? - That's all I play, so-- - Yeah, just figure me to clear that up. - You gotta bounce it out. - Oh, and another thing, like I need to clear up is 'cause I got a bunch of Twitters from people saying that I was saying that being gay is a choice, and I did not say that. - Why would you say that? You fucking dickhead. - 'Cause I didn't say that. What I did say, and I said it very, very badly, and like Tyler called me on it because of the way that I said, and I thought by the end of the show, I'd said like, you're right, that's actually what I meant. I said this wrong, but-- - I think you're expecting an awful lot of listening comprehension. - I guess so, I was not saying that gay is a choice. I was saying that like, let's say somebody is straight and chooses to live a gay lifestyle, they should still be afforded the same rights as everybody else. - Sure. - How did that come up in conversation? - Someone wrote a letter because he wants to believe that it's a biological choice. - Oh, right. - Uh-huh. - And wants to believe 'cause it would be easier for him to accept. - Let's play devil's advocate psychologically if he can't believe it's biological. - Then they should still be afforded the same consideration if it's a choice, is that-- - There was some biblical concerns for him, is the problem. - Oh, wow. - And so, that was the issue. And you know, it's interesting 'cause we did get a lot of letters writing in response to that. And it is interesting because some of them were from like not even religious people that were just talking about as like biology students and stuff like that, that that guy's study has been kind of critiqued the famous one just because the sample was so shitty and small. - Gotcha. - But most of these people still believed that they're like, there just needs to be more research done and there's never been good research done. - Are we talking about Kenzie or something? - No, no, no, I forget his name. But it was like the one where he basically studied that it was biological because of the association between groups of twins that always ended up getting-- - Oh, that's right. - And that was the one that they were saying, like the sample wasn't large enough to really be considered like really official biological-- - What's the sample taken in Sarah? - I don't know, but it might as well have been, but-- - I'm sorry that's really good. - So these people, what they were saying is not that they don't agree, it's just that there are certain scientists that call into question whether or not should be considered scientific fact at this point because there hasn't been enough research done. - As opposed to a very well-developed theory. - Exactly. - As opposed to like climate change or something. - And I mean, I agree there should be more research done than if for nothing else other than there can be a body of language to point to, to say, one way or the other. - I mean, people, a lot of people get confused about what theory means when it comes to science to like saying something as a theory isn't a pejorative. - Right. - It means it's a pretty well-established. - Yeah, like evolution has never been 100% proven. It's still a theory. It has been empirically, all the science point to it. - But that's the way science works. Is it like if you ask a scientist if they actually know anything, any true scientist will say no. - Right. - Well they say show me it's true rather than tell me. - Right, and at some point, it doesn't matter what it is. In order for science to be science, it has to be falsifiable. - Right. But whatever. - Anyways, do some research about it. It's actually a really interesting topic and everyone should be informed. - Also, if you want your mind blown, you can read about the philosophy of science. - No way. - You should read mistakes were made, but not by me. (laughing) That's a really interesting book that deals with people that fuck up scientific research and stuff all the time. - Nice. - And yeah. Anyways. - I've been making a lot of mistakes. - In games? - In games. In LA Noire in particular. - Really? - I was thinking to myself, you know, there's no like people have been telling me that they like enjoy living with their mistakes in this game though. I'm like okay. - I don't go back. I only went back in the very first one. - Okay, let's just for a second. You don't go back in anything. - No. - You always accept your mistakes in every game you play. - That's true. I remember when we were talking about heavy rain and stuff like that too, yeah. - I don't like to. - Yeah. - 'Cause you're lazy. - No, it has nothing to do with being lazy. I think it's, I think it's lazier in some ways to go back. Or like, why do you want to go back? Why not own it? - It's lazier in the ways except that it takes more work to go back. - Right, but I'm saying, well, to me it's not lazier but it's like a-- - Intellectually lazy perhaps? - Yeah, it's like a cop out. Like except that this is happening. - Well you gotta think about the reasons why a lot of people play games though. They want to play them to relax and have fun. And if-- - And to win. - And to win. - And to win. - They're going after win. - But the thing is you can fuck up and you still win. It still goes on. - Yeah, but I think that's also a, that's a type of play that people aren't used to experiencing. - I think maybe there's just a slightly different way that I play games then. 'Cause I don't necessarily play to win. And I don't think it has anything to do. I know you were joking with being lazy. I just think for me it's like, I just want something else. - That's totally what I was joking. - So what? (laughing) - Lazy. - So what's going on with you and Elaine Wall? - One thing I like about that game is that I realized that they had to set it in the time period they did. Or else it would be, if it was a crime procedural set in nowadays and you arrived on a crime scene, man, that shit would be so boring. (laughing) 'Cause you'd roll up and you'd be like, oh, there's a hair here. Better get a plastic bag to collect it. No, in this, your guy will roll up on the scene. There's blood all over the ground, everything. He's like, I'm just gonna go up here and fucking flop the body around, roll it over. Look at it. Oh, I found the murder weapon. He just holds it up in the air with his bare hands. You know, it's just... - Does that ever work against you when you do something like that? - No, I mean, 'cause... - It's just all about gathering. - This is just how it was back in the day. - How are you with the interrogation scene? 'Cause I hear a lot about this. - So that's where you make mistakes that a lot of people wanna reload. And that's the thing is that you still, it's like heavy rain in that sense that you'll still complete it. It's just whether or not your conviction looks so solid or not. And I think that's interesting 'cause for me, so part of the reason people play games is to win, I agree. - Yeah. - But part of the reason for me is that thrill of, oh fuck, am I about to make the right choice? - Right. - And I totally love that part of it. And... - So are you like not making the right choices? Is that why you're fucking up in games? - Some cases I've been bad-ass. I've been able to feel people out. And sometimes people might as well fucking have a seizure when they're lying to you because it's so obvious in the way that they mocap them, like, oh, that's your live face, you know? 'Cause that's the whole point is when they tell a thing, you're supposed to hear the inflection of their voice either face, try and feel out of what they're saying is true based on the evidence you have. - Well, and of course they have to exaggerate that what it would be in real life 'cause, you know, like, if you're not trained, you're not gonna be able to tell. - Sometimes, and sometimes I swear that they really don't exaggerate it at all. It's just like the most casual eye glance that you're like, fuck, I really don't know if they're telling the truth. And sometimes you really do have to just feel them out and go with the instinct of like, you know, this person seems honest. - Right on, which I think detectives do in real life. I mean, they do. - Oh, I'm sure. - They go with the intuition a lot. - Oh, people do that, I mean. - Well, you have to, I mean, like, you know, your intellectual and emotional reasoning have to work together in those situations 'cause you can't suss it all out. - And so the performances in this are good enough that you could do that with it, which is pretty cool. I do like though that I'm like the world's most deadliest police officer, like all the time you're driving. - 'Cause I like the world's most deadliest police chase. - Basically, anytime you're driving around in LA Noire when you're heading from like point to point to case, you know, you're going to question someone. At any given time over the radio, you might get a call from the dispatcher like, police officer down, blah, blah, blah, we need someone to respond, optional. You can hit X and you can respond to it. I'll hit X, hit on my siren. Just fucking do the most ridiculous spin out turn. - Right. - Maybe smash a mailbox on my way and just take off and go there. - You have to pay damages or anything like that. - So it does affect your overall rating at the end of the case, how much public damage you caused during the course of it. - I find it fun to look at his damage numbers and apply like inflation rates. - In the last case I did, I caused $4,000 of card damage. - Wow. - Yeah, and you should think about that when I tell you that I hit a woman dead on and it was only $50, so that $3,000 in car was like, it was pretty crazy, but what I'm saying about my police officers, like police officers in 47 were apparently gods because I just roll up, I'll smash through a bench, doesn't fucking matter. I'll chase the guy down, he'll get in his car and then I'll just hit his car and make it go flying off the road and it's like, job well done. And there's like four burning cars behind me. You know, I'll roll into a bank and I'll see one guy pull out a gun and everyone's fucking dead after that. I've done everyone down and I don't even wait for the corner, I just make a radio call. We need a body bag and a blah, blah, blah. And I just head on back to my case. - That's awesome. - Yeah. (laughing) - What cost $4,000 in 1947 would cost $38,615 in 2010? - So I hit a lot of cars. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I just love-- - It was $40,000. - I just love playing with this mental idea that my guy Phelps, that's the name of the copy you play is just like almost, he's like Riggs. - He's a loose cannon. - He is, he's lethal weapon Riggs, man. - He's like Riggs. - He's just fucking crazy all the time. - If there's a cliff to drive off of, I just go straight off the cliff. And I love it because it breaks the wall so bad because you know your partners have like a really serious conversation with you and you're just like, "Boom." (laughing) It doesn't even fucking break stride in this conversation. (laughing) But I think the game's really interesting. - How awesome would it be if like when you went off a cliff, he was like, so yeah, then we go, "Wait, what, oh my God!" - Yeah, my guy would basically be screaming the whole time 'cause I just like randomly hit a pedestrian in an accident while peeling out a corner, you know? I will say that game does do a good job just subtly of making you, I mean, you liked your character so much and you can tell he wants to be a good cop to the extent that you really, like, way more than any other rockstar game. You know, this person is so obviously a good guy and probably 'cause the facial animation's so good that you understand that about him that you don't want to hit pedestrians, you don't want to hit cars. - That's just not funny. - Well, that's funny. - That's not funny. - Yeah, and that's what roommate area five, dude, Jay Fresh, he was saying that when he was playing LA Noire, he was driving, he was driving perfectly, basically. He would stop at every single stoplight, he would turn on-- - Well, I don't do that. That's fucking for chumps. - Yeah, that's-- - You're a cop and it's 1947, you drive like you want. - He was like, "I drive perfectly in that game." - Not only do I drive through every red light, but I just turn on my siren if they were getting my way, I'm just like, pull the fuck up. - You also drive the wrong way against traffic. If it calls for it, those suspects will not get interrogated without my help. - Right. - But I do like that in the game, I can't tell for sure, 'cause I haven't played enough of it, but I think you can definitely falsely imprison people. - You think you can definitely? - Well, I think that you can falsely imprison people. - Right. I wouldn't doubt it. - Like, there was one point where it was like, make a conviction or walk away. And I was like, I don't know, convict him. So, you need that clearance, man. - Yeah, exactly. - But I have a feeling that I'm going to find out. There's going to be some-- - Comeuppance. - Yeah, for all the people I've wrongfully imprisoned. - You're the worst cop in the world. - That being said, I still understand why there are a lot of people that have talked about, like a lot of the super gamey parts of it. Like inevitably, in every case, you're going to be interrogating someone. It's going to lead to a point, well, in every case, you do interrogations, that's like a core of the game. - Sure. - You know, someone once wisely said to me, you know, every game is repetitive, if you want to be reductive, but it's the ones that hide that from you that are great. - Right, right. - And in this, the parts where they don't hide it, as well, is like, at some point, you're going to interrogate someone. And they're going to be like, I'm just going to go get my shoes, and they just run. And then there's like a chase scene where they're just like, look at our animations, and look how cool they look when they jump over walls. - So that's one of the more obvious things. - It happens all the time. - 'Cause the interrogation thing, of course, that's going to happen, that's the way cops solve crimes. - Right, and well, in the hole, that's like the crux of the game. That is, I would say, the biggest draw of that game. All the chasing and all that's just-- - Right. And like you said, if you want to be super reductive, and yeah, games are repetitive, but that's kind of the point, because you master skills through repetition. - Right, and the chase scenes and stuff, they're fun. I just love that you, they always give you some choice a lot of times, like where you have to be like, am I going to try and take this guy alive and tackle him? Am I going to pull out my gun and shoot a shot in the air, or am I just going to try and plug him in the leg and hope for the best? I usually-- - Plug him in the leg. - I try to tackle him. (laughs) - That's why you plug him in the leg and usually get the worst, don't you? - Yeah, well, usually when I try and plug someone in the leg, I've almost always shot him in the chest. It just happens all the time, because the auto aim snaps to their chest. - Imagine if you said that in real life. It just happened. - It just happened. - I totally shot him in the leg, but it hit his chest. - You went right through his heart, sir. (laughs) - Yeah. I mean, my guy is, he's a brutal cop, but he gets the job done. He gets a conviction, no matter what. - Good thing. - Well, he gets a job done. - He gets a job done. (laughs) - He gets his part of the job done. - I will say that I'm surprised. - I mean, they kind of deal with it in very subtle parts, but I'm a little surprised they don't deal a little bit more with racism, to be honest. There's parts where you're dealing with black suspects, Mexican suspects, because it's Los Angeles, and they don't ever really touch on it, but there's sometimes like hints of obvious disdain for them. There, I've only seen one character that's been outright racist. - I guess that definitely marks it as not a mainstream rockstar game, considering every other rockstar game they would never miss an opportunity. - Exactly, it's not like in Red Dead, where you go and talk to the store and this guy's like, "I hear Jews charge you twice as much." - You never miss some hand-fisted opportunity to make like a bullshit piece of commentary about American culture and how racist everybody is. - Right, and in this one, they have like such an opportunity to do like, interesting timepiece, like serious things with it, especially because there's like the one part where someone is kind of racist. You can tell it like bothers your cop. You know, he's kind of like, "What the fuck is that about, so?" - Yeah, well, I mean, like, that's one of the things about, it's funny because you can't help but think about Mad Men when you play this game just 'cause they're all in it. - Same casting director. - But the, you know, in Mad Men, they do address, of course, the racism and the sexism and everything. - Sexism is addressed extensively in this. One partner you're dealing with, you know, you deal with a case where there's like a guy that hits his wife and stuff like that and the guy you're with. It's like, well, she was probably like an uppity bitch or something like that. And your guy's like, "Oh, I'm sure you must do really well "with all the women." You know, he makes like a comment about it. And you know, it's obvious that they don't share the same values about women and stuff. They do deal with that in a pretty good way, I think. - Maybe you just haven't got to the racist case yet. - Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting. - Have you played it all in black and white? - Yeah, I don't like it. - Yeah, that's what most people say. They say it's like, well, it's missing film grain and stuff, so it feels right. - It is missing film grain, so it just looks like, like really playing back and white. And honestly, because maybe it doesn't, maybe the contrast in my TV isn't that great or something. I don't know, either way, it's really hard to make out, sometimes find details for me to do like high speed chases and stuff. - Right, right. - So, colors the way to go, but really enjoying it so far. - Cool. - Quick iOS shout out of the week, Casey's contraptions. That's all I'm gonna say. The guy emailed me personally to tell me he wanted me to review it for IGN, and I did, and I liked it. - Casey's contraptions, what is it? - Casey's contraption. - I wanna know what it is. - I've had Game of the Week, it's a-- - It's another puzzle game where you put stuff down, hit a button and help things work out. - Trial and error, you know what I mean? - Right, gotcha. - Yup. - I like those steps again. - It's a real Goldberg machine. - Yeah. - Gotcha. - But well done, I'm cute, art style, and-- - I mean, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm just saying that that's what it is. - Sure. Yeah, I mean, you're not gonna be like, I've never seen this before, but the whole philosophy of the company is like making entertaining games that are non-violent. - Right. - Cool. - That's cool, that's a good philosophy, that's not common. - Yeah. - Panzies. - Outside of that, I've been playing Red Faction, but I won't be able to talk about that until next week. - Right, right, so. How about you, Arthur? You can't really talk about anything that you did at Judges Week yet, I'm sure. - No, I absolutely can't. We're just too bad, because I did play some cool stuff. - I'll bet. I'll ask you about it off the year. - Like for example, I play a (beep) - And then I'll gloat about it, about how you told me about all this stuff. - And right now I'm gonna have to go back and actually bleep out, but I said (beep) and then you're gonna have to bleep that one out too. - So yeah, I mean, and then I saw a bunch of other stuff that I can't really talk about yet. - Right. - But before that, I wrote a preview of Alice, Madness Returns. - Ah, yes. - I played the first of five acts, which goes through the Hatter's domain. - Right. - And that game is fucked up beyond just the sort of stereotypical stuff I think people are expecting. - I had fun with the first one a long time ago. It was kind of-- - That game just not old, but-- - Really? - Oh no, it's really-- - It was nice back in the day, I think, just because it was something so different than everything else that was out. - Yeah, that was the point where I feel like kind of wacky graphics definitely trumped like solid gameplay mechanics 'cause as a platformer, that game is a big piece of crap. But Alice Madness returns, it starts in England, like in legit real world England, that is, in its own way, more fucked up than Wonderland. Like walking around, it opens with Alice receiving this very bizarre form of treatment where she's being conditioned to forget like the stuff that happened to her. - Oh, okay. - And then she has to wander around the city to go to the chemist, which is a pharmacist for Americans, and it's just a city that's populated by really awful people and really degenerate people and like you walk through this area and there are whores that are calling out and like that are swearing and saying fuck and talking about like trying to fuck these dudes and a pimp tries to get Alice to be a prostitute and if there's a body with kids around it and stuff like that, so it's very-- - It was not just a dark view of Wonderland, it's a dark view of real land. - Right, and I mean, it's not like that's necessarily that far off, it's clearly exaggerated, but-- - Yeah. - But meanwhile, it sort of establishes either there's a weird bleed from Wonderland into the real world or Alice is still completely fucking crazy 'cause she sees things and she sees something that triggers her going back into Wonderland. - Oh, okay. - So she lands in the hatters world and that's where you go from there. - So something that it's been hard to get a grasp on from preview like events and from like the time I played it at work is that it's actually a really pretty game. It's extraordinarily colorful and usually it's done in such a way that it's really interesting to look at. - That's what I thought of it when I saw it at GDC. I didn't get to what I thought of it too. I was like wow, look great, like that's such a cool arts though. - Alice as a character is really well animated. - Yeah, definitely. - Like her dress, like her dresses 'cause she's in more than one outfit. Her dress is really well modeled and the cloth moves realistically. She has the most amazing hair I've ever seen on the game character. - That's something you don't think was easy to get across or from preview events? - It's just something that it's easy to overlook. Like not having a good extended chunk of time to really watch how it works. Which I definitely had with this 'cause it's like the first fifth of the game. - Nice. - But her hair is almost like a character in and of itself because of the way that it whips around when you're attacking and moving and the way that it moves in the air when you're floating around and doing triple jumps and stuff like that. - He did some of that with Heavenly Sword but that was still when hair was kind of primitive. - Like her hair is not chunky. - Right, yeah, that's something. - It's stringy and surprisingly full and it behaves pretty realistically. All things considered. It may be the best hair I've seen in the game. (laughs) - Sorry, I'm just thinking about the times that Jeff used to talk about. - Look at the water. - I know, right. (laughs) - And it sounds like such a small thing. But I mean-- - You can't help it. I mean you noticed it when you notice stuff when it makes kind of that technological leap into, 'cause you get so used to seeing characters hair done in a certain way. And then when you see something like this that sounds almost like the kind of hair dynamics that they put in a Pixar movie or something. - And I think part of it is because there's such a sharp focus on Alice being different than everything else in the world because every character, whether an enemy or a friendly character or unknown in Wonderland is very clearly deformed. But even in the real world, everyone else is very clearly deformed and very, very stylized. - Alice is the only person that's pretty. - Yeah, Alice is the only beautiful thing in Wonderland. We're not in Wonderland but Alice is the beautiful thing, like beautiful person. - Everything, everyone else is deformed in very disturbing ways in often very phallic, very sexualized ways. So seeing her, it's hard not to pay attention to the way that her character model looks in comparison to everything else. - I'm sure that contrast was deliberate. - Yeah, I mean, it seems like it's a very clearly modeled game. It's just in the level I played, it fell into the trap later of just very muddy visuals and repeating environmental stuff that made it not as pleasant to look at. And that's when I was having the least fun with the game. So that sort of speaks to what you're gonna get out of Alice, I think, is that it seems like it's very driven by the visual and audio experience you're having. And I think the interview you had with them, Anthony, like at GDC, specified as much that they're like, they're not reinventing the wheel with anything from a gameplay standpoint, because they want people to focus on the story and the visuals. - Yeah, fair enough. - Which is great. - As long as your gameplay systems are solid, that's enough to sell it. - Right, and I mean, for the most part, they are. It's got a pretty sound combat mechanic, like from a character action game kind of thing, like heavy and light attacks, blah, blah, blah. It also has a dodge move that's very reminiscent of the one that was in Bayonetta for which time, like to the point where she actually shoots butterflies out when she does. (both laughing) But between the pepper grinder, which is her gun and the knife attacks, it actually creates a good amount of sort of ranged and melee options that-- - And they get even more along the way when you get like a teapot to do like grenade launchers, stat attacks. - And you have like this clockwork rabbit that you put down that will walk forward. That's a bomb that you can see used to hold down switches and stuff like that. So there's a lot there and it's not super polished. Like it's not gonna compete with the likes of like Bayonetta or gun more in that regard, but it's not, I almost wanna say it's not trying to, like in not in a, oh, it's not that kind of game. I just think that maybe they know that their studio is incapable of doing a game that polished. So they're focusing on other things. - Yeah. - And that's great. When those other things are working, when it's interesting, when things are colorful and vibrant and beautiful but menacing, but there are parts where things just sort of develop into this very samey, muddy looking mess and the game becomes less interesting for it. - But you know, who knows what the rest of the game is like? - Right, exactly, because that's like one level out of five. - And that's pretty much the area that they've only ever showed too. But smaller chunks than what are there at the play. And I'm sure their goal is to make every, all the five worlds vastly different from one another. - Yeah, and I mean, there's, even me who's someone who barely played Alice, like it's clear that there's fan service there for people. I don't know. I think that it's coming out at probably a good time because there's not a ton of comp, there's not a lot like that coming out right now. I mean, there's actually a lot of games coming out this month, but there's nothing quite like that. Another game I played that's coming out this month with Shadows of the Damned. - Oh, yeah. - I actually have the review build and a... - How many can you say about that? - I can talk about the first two chapters out of five. Before I've talked about how the shooting, this isn't very good, how it's kind of stiff, how it doesn't end very well. - Yeah. - Now that has changed in the review build. I actually read a review from a European site, or a preview from a European site, talking about how fantastic we saw it everything is, and I'm really surprised by that. I mean, you played it, right? - Yeah, yeah, I played it. I played it for, I don't know, that at that event, however long that was, it was like a half hour. - 20 minutes, maybe, of game? - Something like that, yeah. - You got to use all the weapons, got to use all the powers and stuff like that. - I mean, what do you think about how that game controls? - Well, maybe this European paper is only comparing it to the previous grasshopper games. - I mean, they do. - I mean, compared to those games, yeah, it is solid. In fact, you know, I would say that the shooting is better than any of the GTA's, except for the most recent one, but that's not saying much. - Damning with fame, praise. - Exactly. I mean, I've had a chance to sort of investigate more like the upgrade mechanic for weapons. - Mm-hmm. - Which, I don't know, I just, the way that it's instituted is it almost seems like if you're not careful with your upgrades and you don't upgrade in the appropriate way at the right time, you could actually fuck yourself into having to play like an entire level all over again. - That's not a good idea. - And I mean, it's just, it seems like that kind of game. - But like, you know, that being said, by the end of it, when I got to the end of my play session, I did find myself, you know, zooming in, headshot, zooming in, headshot with the right guns. I mean, it's not like it's completely unplayable or anything. - No, it's just not very fun to shoot things. - Yeah. - I mean, once you upgrade your gun, you're like blowing off limbs and stuff and it'll give you rewards for killing people in a certain way, like, if you shoot their leg off and they fly into the air and then you shoot them in the head, then that's a special kind of kill. - Man, I can't, it's got skill shots. - I can't say anything as far as, 'cause I didn't watch you play much of it, but sitting opposite cue ball from you, hearing the audio from it, it sounds really repetitive. Like, it sounds like you're fighting something that screams a lot, like, every 10 minutes, it seems like. - There is a lot of screaming. - It does reuse stuff to the point of, you know, it feeling almost absurd. - It's very video gamey. - Oh yeah, totally. - Like, it's super video game. - Like, every suit of '51 game, honestly, like, has just wallowed in the conventions of, like, classic video games, and this in a lot of ways seems that way. It plays a lot like you'd expect, like, an 8-bit game to play. Like, the mechanics are very, very codified. Like, it's very, very cut and dry that this is, this is a switch, and you have to hit that switch when you're in this specific area, et cetera, et cetera. - And, yeah, like, like we talked about before, back when we played it at the event, the animation's like when you have to, like, when you have to, like, blow the torch up, you know? Like, or, what is it, oh, launch a flare. Like, he shoves his torch up into this thing and basically has to masturbate this thing. - Right, and I mean, it's-- - Every single button that you press moves his hand up into the, moves the torch. - You're jerking off into this, like, fireworks thing. - Well, just like, when you were charging up your laser sword in "No More Heroes" and you were jerking off. - I mean, it's orders of magnitude more than that. Like, it's obsessed with Dix. - Oh, it is. The whole-- - The whole thing is-- - It's like, so full of Dix. Like, and some fairly graphic, like, sexual stuff as well. - Oh, yeah, it's all over the place. But, I mean, you know, it also comes from, not that this game isn't violent, but it comes from a country where that stuff isn't as taboo as it is here. - I suppose, it's the kind of violence it is is much more reverential of Western horror movies, for sure, and some of the sex stuff. But, I mean, one thing I will definitely compliment it on is the music. - Mm-hmm. - The music is actually really good. - It's more your taste than mine, so you would know better. - Well, I mean, like, it's really varied, actually. Like, there's a lot of different kinds of music, like some weird jazz tribal shit at certain points and-- - That's cool, 'cause I never got to hear any of it. All the events that I've been at, there's been too much noise around. I haven't been able to hear the music. It's a shame. - They've ever heard of the band, "The Damned"? - I have not. - It's a British bunch of brothers. - Yeah, they recorded a song with "The Damned" and I carry on my Oka for the game. And I have no idea until today when I beat it and the credits played. - Nice. - And I can't really say anything more than I have. I mean, the game, there is more to it than the first two chapters, but I can't really say anything more than that. - Right, there is more to it. (laughing) - I mean, there is. Like, you saw us in the, like, there's some pretty weird shit that happens, like, just from a gameplay perspective. And, well, we'll talk about it later. - Yeah, so. - When you are out loud too. - Yeah. - Yeah. - In public. - And then I played a little bit of the Witcher last night. - How much, just an hour or two, maybe? - Like, maybe an hour. I'm still way in the prologue. - Gotcha. - Yeah. - Oh, there's one other game I played. I played "Moon Diver". - Hmm. Did you know what this is? - No, uh-uh. - It's sort of like Strider meets Castlevania. - Oh. - Oh, you're saying words I like. - You're saying words I like, kid. (laughing) It's interesting. It's like a side-scrolling game with all this weird combat and it's really extraordinarily difficult for me to describe. But it's worth, I would check out the demo of, like, the name Strider and-- - In Castlevania. - Ninja Gaiden in Castlevania, click with you. - Yeah, totally. - You might not want to buy it. But it has four-player co-op. - Whoa, cool. - I know that our reviewer said that once you get towards the later stages, if you're not playing in co-op, it's borderline impossible. - Mm-hmm. - But anyway, the Witcher. - The Witcher. - I did not have any issues getting that game to run. - Neither did I. - And I've seen a ton of people complaining. - Me too. - About it. - Yeah. - How it won't run on their systems, how it's giving them trouble. But I'm getting, like, 30 to 50 frames a second. - I think a lot of the people that did that accidentally downloaded 3D drivers for their NVIDIA card. - That's the only for NVIDIA cards. Like, people with ATI cards have been complaining. - Yeah, and I have an NVIDIA card. And, you know, I could have done that without knowing that I'm sure I didn't. But it sounds like the kind of thing that would happen to me. It's like, oh, wait, I downloaded these drivers. But, no, my, you know, like I've said many times, my PC is over two years old and it ran the Witcher pretty well. - What's in your PC right now? - I'm sorry? - What's in your PC? - I can't remember. I always forget. - Is it a Core 2 Duo or Quad or? - I think it's Quad. - And then you have, like, a GTX 260? - 260, yep. - Yup. - Whereas I'm running a Core i70 with, like, eight gigs of RAM and an HD 5870 and getting really good results at 1920 by 1080. - Nice. I've been playing in 1920 by 1080. And I've turned down a few things. Like, I turned off V-Sync 'cause that's always the biggest-- - That doesn't make sure. - Yeah, that's always the biggest. And it's probably just because I've played so many Xbox and PS3 games, V-Sync just doesn't even bother me anymore. And I turned off, I turned off the anti-aliasing because at 1920, the resolution is so high that, like, I hardly even noticed that either. - See, I turned off an aliasing, but I'm definitely noticing some pretty major aliasing issues. - Really? - Throughout the game. - Oh, I'm totally not. - And I kind of wonder if, like, one thing that console games have been doing for a long time now is that, like, the game might be rendered at 1280 by 720. Like, the scene might be rendered at 720p, but certain effects, like, transparencies and particle effects will be rendered at significantly lower resolutions. Like, the PS3 does this a lot. - Sure. - 'Cause it's got explosions that almost look pixelated or something. - Yeah, well, because they are pixelated. - Yeah. - And the PS3 has this problem because it's got alpha transparency issues and fill rate problems. - Uh-huh. - But, so I'm kind of wondering if they're doing that with the Witcher, actually. - Yeah, maybe. - That they're running it, like, certain things at a lower resolution. - Yeah. - But, man, like, the, I love the, for the most part, I love the character design in the Witcher. I mean, it's like, there are certain things that just, like, look weird. Like, Triss's hair looks really weird. - And any time Gerald's arms are, by the side? - Yeah, that's true, that's true. - I don't know what the fuck it's gonna take for a game company is to actually figure out what a human being looks like with their arms up. - I know, I know, right? It's, well, I know from my animation degree and doing a lot of character modeling and stuff, why that's difficult. - Because they're not modeling a human body, they're modeling the shape of a human body and it doesn't behave correctly. - Well, yeah, and I mean, it's like, whenever you're moving vertices, you're stretching polygons. And so, in order for somebody's arms to be raised and looking for it to look perfect when their arms are raised, you'd have to have a whole bunch of polygons up inside the armpit where people don't see 99% of the time and then those polygons would stretch out as people raise their arms. - Well, I can know one of the reasons why Crisis is in Crisis II's character models looks so fucking good. - Oh, I totally believe that, yeah, yeah. But for the most part, I'll just sit there looking at the details on people's clothing and stuff 'cause it's so high res. - And the faces are really good. The faces are really good. And like, when I was looking and in Dragon Age, I would spend a lot of time looking at the character models too and being like, man, the faces look really good, but boy, do your clothes suck. - Yeah, do you think it looks pretty good now? 'Cause I remember when you saw me playing the early build, you weren't convinced that it looks-- - I think that you have to see certain sections to really be impressed 'cause not every section looks good. Like some sections-- - Oh, it's true. - It just looks like they're throwing a bunch of textures around and the visual design isn't very strong. - I agree, yeah. - But there are certain points where that game is just doing so much and things are running in such high resolution and it's pushing so many effects that it's pretty impressive. - Yeah, definitely. And I really like the moat. I actually find the backgrounds and the surroundings to be almost more impressive than the buildings that are right in your age. - They're very painterly. - They are. And you'll see mountains in the background that feel like mountains not like just a matte box because it seems like they actually might be polygons and the textures on them are high res enough that you can see valleys and you can see like, it feels like, 'cause you know, a lot of times when they put something in the distance and you see this mostly in like fallout and stuff like that, you'll see a mountain in the distance and it'll just look like this mush because the texture is super low res 'cause of the level of detail. And I think the level of detail does a really good job in the Witcher in not making you see that or feel that. And now that being said, I have walked up to things and like, you know, oh, here's a support beam, here's a support buttress on the side of this path and you get closer and it looked like it was just a bunch of vertical slats and then when you get closer, it has horizontal slats as well. You know, and they'll pop in. So there is geometry and texture popping in that game definitely for me. - I mean, it's-- - And that's 'cause I had to turn down my level of detail distance. - Yeah, your draw distance, you mean? - My, sorry, my draw distance, yeah. - So, PC gaming. - Yeah, all PC gaming. - Sliders, and one thing that is annoying, trying to figure out what to turn on and off in this is that all the fucking graphical settings are outside of the game. - Yeah, exactly. - I don't know when that started being a thing again to put all the things-- - I know. - Like score, you load it? - Yeah, it's in the launcher. - In the launcher, yeah. - Like fucking Dragon Age did that with a bunch of its settings too. - Dude, I know, I hate that and it seems to be, like you said, it seems to be the thing with PC games now is to put it all before you launch the game. - Why can't you-- - Yeah, if you're gonna do it, why can't you at least have a quick test thing or something like that? - I don't know, I don't know at all. - It's hard, I guess. It's harder than it seems like it should be. It's the only explanation I can give you. - It's just annoying. And I mean, I hate it when you go into a game and the games that do have them in there, you have to change the settings and it says, you have to restart the whole game for this to take effect. And it's like, how come it can't be pro, and you know, this is, I'm sure any developer who heard this would be like, you idiot, it's because of this, but you know, like for us, we don't know why. - For us, it's the fed or it's the user experience, you know? - Right, and like what I would like is be able to change the graphical settings and when I go out to the menu, you know, you're able to reset the stuff that's in the engine and then like when you load a game, it resets all the stuff. I shouldn't have to go all the way out of the game and relaunch the game every time, but putting it outside the launcher is like even worse outside in the launcher 'cause you can't, you know, 'cause usually there's some settings that you can change on the fly without relauncing an engine, but if all your settings are in the launcher, you have to close the game every time. So it's annoying. - And also like the automatic settings detection thing, set everything for me to low. - Yeah, for me, it's set everything to like, almost the highest level except for anti-aliasing. - What the fuck? - Yeah, exactly. (laughing) - Like I'm not mocking your computer, but Jesus Christ, my computer smokes your computer. - Yeah, no, totally true, totally true. But, you know, whatever. The auto detection stuff almost never works for my machine, I don't know why. - That was one of the few things about two worlds too that I was impressed with. And actually, I think there was another not very good PC game recently that did the same thing where auto-detected my resolution at work correctly 'cause I run a 2560 by 1600 monitor and nothing fucking detects that correctly. - Right, right. - Like there are still some games that don't support that resolution. - Right, I'm sure. - But it's a pretty big monitor. - It is a very large monitor. I need a special monitor cable to use it. - Oh, I'm sure. (laughing) But yeah, other than the, I didn't have any technical problems getting it running though. I had to do a lot of tweaking until I got a frame rate that I was satisfied with, but it still looks gorgeous to me. - Yeah, I think it's a great looking game. I want to play it. - How do you feel it plays? You're playing with a mouse and keyboard. I'm playing with a controller. - I played with the mouse and keyboard when I played as well. - Yeah, and I beat it this last weekend. So I've gone through the entire game. I went down the swordsman upgrade path. I didn't put anything in magic or in traps and poisons. - That's funny to me because like, just starting out like being in the prologue, the magic spell where you toss people back is like a fucking lifesaver. - Yeah, yeah, I know. But like I wanted to see how the sword combat was. And like I liked the idea of him being some kind of like crazy badass swordsman. So for people out there so far with the exception of the fact that you can't switch the Y-axis in the game, which I think is in the patch that came out today. - That's possible. - It passes the comfy couch test for me. Like I'm running it to my television and just sitting back in a chair and playing with a controller and it's a complete experience that way. Minus some minor issues like holding the, like you bring up the quick spell menu with the left trigger and bring up that wheel. It's really weird the way it's detecting the left analog stick as a means to detect everything. - Oh, right. - For the upper left corner I have to hit up on the stick. For the lower left corner I have to hit up. - Well, it's because there's so many things, there's like seven or eight things to choose. You know, you have a lot of directions that you have to choose on the wheel. And that's only on the left hand side, on the right hand side, there's a bunch of different stuff to choose. - It seems like it's just broken. - That's possible. So that's kind of a pain in the ass, but other than that, but what's your experience having beaten it? Like what do you think about it? - So for the sword combat at least, it doesn't feel to me like a game where it has good combat and then it adds cool stuff on top of it. You know, like you jump into a third person action game, like, well, any of them. And if the combat is decent, it's decent with whatever the default weapon is and it still feels good. The Witcher 2 is not like that. I think what they did is it feels to me more like they had some decent combat once you have all of the skills in place and then they just started removing stuff off of it and saying, oh, we'll make this unlockable. We'll make this unlockable instead of starting with something good and building from there. So I mean, like right in the beginning is sort of like what I complained about last week. Well, not sort of like, it is what I complained about last week. You have to unlock the ability to be able to block from all directions, you know? You have to unlock the ability to not take damage while you're blocking, which is okay, but you take a hundred percent of damage while blocking, you know, right when you first start out or if it's not a hundred percent, it's very-- - It's still a lot. - Yeah. - And blocking doesn't prevent all damage. You still take damage. - Right, and you can, but you can choose the ability to do that. And as far as I'm concerned, that breaks the combat and it makes the sword combat in the beginning not fun. They should have started with the ability to block from any direction and then increased from there. And it's like, it's funny because when I'm playing with the sword combat, it feels a lot like they kind of wanted it to feel like Assassin's Creed sword combat. Because you can, if somebody is attacking, if you're blocking and somebody attacks you and you attack right when they're attacking and you go from a block, then you can counter them. But you have to unlock that counter ability. And then you can unlock an ability that will occasionally let you insta-kill if you counter them like that. And you know, when I was looking through the swords through the swordsman tree, I was like, okay, these are all cool abilities that could actually make the sword combat good. And after a while, it does feel okay. And you unlock these adrenaline abilities, which is like you fill up, this third bar gets added to your HUD and it's in a adrenaline bar. And once it's filled up, you can do an execute on an individual or you can unlock an ability to execute multiple individuals if you're finding a group. And then it goes into this canned animation where he does some badass kung fu moves and kills a whole bunch of people. And all that stuff feels pretty good and feels pretty cool. But it still feels like half of an action game instead of a full action game. And for, and it needs, this game clearly wanted to be a capable third person action game. You know, this isn't like fallout where you have vats to compensate for your poor combat system. You just have a poor combat system. And I don't know, maybe the magic stuff and the bombs and poisons and everything, the bombs and oils and everything are more fun. Maybe those are better trees to go down, but I, for the entire game, I was thinking, man, this combat needs to be better. And it just never was. My biggest, biggest pet peeve though, is the fact that he has to be standing and not be engaged in anybody for something like half a second before he can actually bring up the block. So, you know, let's say you attack somebody and then like, oh, I'm gonna be attacked from behind. I can't just go right into block. I'll be stuck in my animation and get hit from behind. And if that person is in a combo, then they hit you several times. And then it's like, I'm holding the block the entire time, but here's another person on the other side who's attacking me at the same time. So you can get like, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit and never have a chance to block. - Is the other option to roll out of the way? I mean. - You can roll out of the way, but the collision detection is really weird and everybody has giant hit boxes. So if you're surrounded-- - I did notice that I get a shot. - Yeah, even when you roll, you get hit. - Even when you roll, you get hit. And when you're trying to roll in between people, he won't roll in between them. - I see I didn't necessarily have that problem. - I found all the time, like if I got surrounded by like, you know, four guys, or if I tried to roll in a direction, usually I was rolling in a direction that I didn't want to roll because the camera had switched to some random, it would lock on to random people. Like I would be fighting somebody and it has an auto lock on, which would work about 60% of the time. But there'd be somebody in front of me. I'm like, attack with a sword, attack with a sword, attack with a sword. And suddenly, he's rolled 180 degrees in the opposite direction to attack somebody else. And I'm like, why did you do that? I didn't turn the camera. You're attacking somebody off screen that there's no possibility that I could have been seen or locked onto. Now the roll and attack moved, looked pretty cool, but it was completely unintentional and it had nothing to do with what I was trying to do. And you know, that's just kind of my evaluation of the combat overall is that I never felt like I was really doing what I wanted to do. - So the thing, and again, the thing for me is that using a controller, actually, it just feels like what seems like a different game. And part of that may be because consoles were considered when making it. I mean, because every indication seems to be that consoles are gonna get the Witcher 2 sooner rather than later. - Yeah, but didn't, I mean, like you're an action, third-person action combat junkie. I mean, it didn't frustrate you. - It, it frustrated me initially because I was trying to play it like other character action games and I just got the shit stabbed out of me. And it sort of quickly re-realigned my expectations of what the character is capable of and what I should be doing and how I should be fighting, which sort of fell back into a much more tactical sort of method of fighting, which like I said, like the hitting on using the controller hitting B is the spell that you have activated. And hitting B to do that throw to separate the enemies is like my number one priority, like to separate them, to pick them off, to keep them isolated is my tactic. And it's hard, like I definitely have to be really careful or I'll get killed, but that doesn't, it sort of feels like the point is that he's not like a Superman or anything. Like he will get the shit kicked out of him if he takes on seven dudes at once because he's surrounded by swords and like in any believable setting whatsoever, like someone would probably get the shit kicked out of them they're surrounded by seven people. - Totally true. But it just, that rolls into the issues that I was talking about earlier, like not being able to roll away from somebody and to lock on, not locking onto the right guy. - Like for me, that's rolling away has been a problem, like rolling away seems to work. I feel nimble, like I don't feel necessarily like the biggest badass on the block, but I feel nimble and the heavy attack wide attack combination using the X and Y buttons on a 360 controller works pretty well. - So if it's a, you know, if it's a console controller versus a mouse and keyboard issue, then that's bad too, because it was a PC game first. - It's true, I just think that there are certain things. - If it doesn't work with a mouse and a keyboard, then you haven't succeeded in your combat for a PC game. - I suppose, yeah. I just think that there are certain things that controllers will always do better than mouse and keyboard and controlling an action game is certainly on that list. - Yeah, I would agree with that. - But I mean, it is their responsibility to figure it out. - Except I played Assassin's Creed on PC and it was great. - I can't imagine playing Assassin's Creed using a mouse and keyboard. - I also played things like Jedi Knight back in the day and those were fun, but it wasn't quite as action tense in the same way, but it was pretty intense. - Yeah, I don't know, I think it can be done. I just think that this game doesn't do it, but. - I mean, I'm not trying to make excuses for it, I'm just saying that. - No, it's like, it probably was designed to work better with a controller. - In some regards, in other regards, I mean, clearly, it's got issues, but I mean, that's sort of this game in a nutshell, is that it's got a lot of charm, but it has fucking issues. - Yeah, it has a lot of issues. - The Witcher in general, this is a franchise. - When I wanna go play the Witcher 2 next, I have to do a fucking Steam update that's nine gigabytes. - Yeah. (laughs) - Which is ridiculous, 'cause even with the fast internet connection, like Steam is gonna take hours to download that. - Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty fucking crazy. Well, my problems with the Witcher just kind of don't end there. I think the story is very inconsistent. At times, it feels like it was written by teenagers. At other times, it feels like it was written, you know, I don't know, maybe by college students who was. - It was incredibly gratuitous from content perspective. - Super gratuitous. - Like, it starts out with like tits and bush. - Right, and within 10 minutes of like booty. - And you know what, actually, I would be okay with that because it's his love interest. You know, it's not like this is just some random Betty that he's betting. That's- - I agree you did there. - It's his love interest from the first game, and the love interest carries out throughout the Witcher 2. - Plenty of games do. - Well, I mean, plenty of movies do that too, where they start, they might start with a nude scene where two people are- - Right. - And, you know, and I'm fine with that, 'cause it's in context. If it's in context, it's not gratuitous, but it's really quick when the gratuitous hits home. Like, it happens right away. - Yeah, it does. - And like, you can keep doing it over and over and over again, and like, yes, you can go to a brothel as much as you want in a lot of RPGs. But it happens at various times too, and there's no consequences for it. It's not like Tris the love interest gets upset that you're going and having sex at the brothel all the time. Maybe she's a fair-minded woman, but, you know, they are a fairer-minded woman, I guess, than a lot of other people should be. But she doesn't get upset with you. Nobody makes a comment on it. It's clearly just there. Not for any sort of like real legitimate gameplay. This is a real world thing. It's there because, hey, we can show some tits. And like, I'm not immune to wanting to see this stuff. I did it, and I went to the brothel. And the place to see tits, like in a video game is a pretty sub-optimal place for them. Yeah. 'Cause first of all, they don't look right. No, they don't. And second of all, you're busy, so what are you gonna be doing when you're watching tits? Because playing with yourself is certainly not that thing. And like, and it's also crazy because like, there's another, there's a place in the game where you were, it's kind of like what we've talked about with open world RPGs, where it's like, hurry up and get there, oh wait, all wall, hurry up and get there 20 hours from now. There's a place in the game where it's like, there are people, there's somebody dying who you're trying to save. You're trying to rescue somebody else. You're like right on the eve of this battle, shit is gonna hit the fan. But you can go to this camp, which is outside of these armed forces where there's a brothel, and you can just have sex over and over and over and over again. You know what though, I mean, I would rather that that thing's where that way is opposed to like putting a major time constraint on me. Because honestly like the last game to really fuck with people that way was fable three and people hated it. - Yeah, no, I'm not worried about the time constraint thing. I mean like, I would rather have the, you know, I think it depends on what's in service to the story, but in general, I don't wanna be pushed through my RPGs arbitrarily. What I'm saying is that like, that just shows how gratuitous the sex was in this particular part of the game because it's like, it actually takes you out of the experience to do this activity in the game. It's like, this is here for pornographic reasons, not for story reasons, not for gameplay reasons. And it's like, you know, at that point, you might as well just turn off the Witcher and go on the internet 'cause it's the exact same thing. The two do not relate to one another. And that was unfortunate. And that kind of ties into my complaints about the story and about how like the story, there's this one part where you go to the dwarf city and it's just loaded with really ridiculous Lord of the Rings references. Like all over the fucking place. - Like intentional? - Intentional, like yeah. And like a one point of dream go, oh, dwarf goes, eh, one ring to rule them all. And you're like, really? And then he says, and in the darkness bind them. And you're like, okay, really. - And in case you weren't sure, it's gonna just fucking me eye saga to that shit. - Yeah. And I think there was like, I don't know, three or four of them during that dwarf city sequence. And that was three or four too many. - Can I just burn the dwarf city down? That's gonna be nice and that bullshit. - And there's, and you know, they would just, they would insert lines that made you feel like, okay, this is something that might be funny if I was 16. But there's this part where you're saving somebody who is poisoned. And the sorceress who's saving this other woman, she puts this rose petal on her lips and then presses that rose petal to the person who's being, to the other woman who's being saved her lips. And that's like part of the spell to like bring her back out of her coma or whatever. And it's supposed to be this tense moment 'cause you spent all this time like trying to make this happen, trying to save this person and everything. And like, if she doesn't live, then everything's gonna go to shit, you know? And then like right in the middle of this scene, one of the dwarves goes, oh, that's my favorite kind of magic, Les Bomancy. And he does like these pelvic thrusts, you know? And like, I think one of the other characters goes like, oh, not now or something like that. But it's like, it felt so out of place. And the only thing that I can think of was how ridiculous that line was right there and how it shouldn't have existed. And at that point, I'm not in your story anymore. I'm not carrying what's happened. You've just totally thrown me out of it. And that's just not smart story, not smart storytelling. And that's kind of my assessment of the Witcher through the whole game. - And that's the Witcher. - I mean, I'll alternate between like this right here, this is badass. - This is the PC RPG you've wanted for a long time. - Right, exactly. - Dude, this is everything that's wrong with RPGs in general. - Yeah. (laughing) Yep. So that's why like, I can't really recommend it to people. You know, I can't go like, oh yeah, you should totally play the Witcher because like, if you don't play the Witcher, you're really not missing much. - Wow. - Like really, it's like, I can't give it a thumbs up. I can't give it a thumbs down. I mean, if I could do like a sort of a meh, that's about what I give the Witcher. - It's not cancer on the map review scale. (laughing) - And it's like, I don't hate it either. I mean, I played for 55 hours or whatever. - Jesus Christ, man. - Clearly there's enough there 'cause I did all the side quests I was enjoying, exploring like, 'cause the maps, I like how they're big and open and how like, there isn't a load every time you open a door, you know? Like if you-- - How can you say you can't recommend a game you spend 55 hours playing? (sighing) - I can recommend it-- - And recommend it with reservations? - Yeah, with reservations. I mean, I guess when I say I can't recommend it, I can't just go to anybody and say like, you should play this. - You need to play this? - You should play this, you should play this, you know? - Okay. - It's like, you know, like friends who I know play who like RPGs, I'm not gonna go like, you have to play this game. I could go like, yeah, you could live without it. You know, you'll probably, you could enjoy it, but you could live without it. - Okay, well that's fair. - Yeah. - On that note, I think we should take a break. - Yeah. - Oh, also a candy train. - Quick shout at the game. - Yeah. - It was a fourth and battery game, huh? - Yeah. - Oh, fine. - And it was free. - And it's fine. - It's a good strategy in my work. - It doesn't work that well on iPhone, it looks a lot better on iPad, the tiles are pretty small. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bad. ♪ As I go, I can't see the fire ♪ ♪ In the way it plays ♪ ♪ I hope we survive ♪ ♪ I feel worthy day ♪ ♪ I see it through ♪ ♪ The way it plays ♪ ♪ In the way it plays ♪ ♪ If we're better than you ♪ ♪ Smells it hard ♪ ♪ All the way ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ - Totally, I'm going to do it. - Uh, the first letter from Sean. He says, "We're all aware of terms like Nube, "which I feel are used as prejoratives towards people, "particularly casual gamer for not appreciating "or playing games at the same level as we do." - That's a sound assessment. - I'm just making generalizations, but I feel there's some mentality, something of mentality among gamers who believe that their taste in gaming's weren't deeming others inferior. Why would anyone care so much if people out there are getting bent out of shape towards, wait, why would anyone care so much if the people they are getting bent out of shape towards are having fun? Oh, okay. - Right, that is a fucked up sentence. - Can you guys make a discussion out of this? So yeah, I think what he's saying is, - Why do you care if you're new or new? - I'm reading a lot lately. Since I've been reading on this iPad thing. And man, there's a lot in that same book, mistakes were made up by me. There's a lot of it that's about the science behind self justification and self justification. We're all doing it all the time, whether we're doing it for like, I'm doing it to say why I think this, like why I've already come to the conclusion of how I feel about this game. I have this sensation, but I'm trying to justify why that exists. People on the other hand, to justify why they think like their own tastes are so good. Will they do do that? They deem other things inferior. - Totally. - Because they want to feel better about their own tastes. Just like the example given in this book was, his friend goes out, buys a $100,000 car when he turns 50. His friend has never given a shit about cars this whole life. - Right. - And all of a sudden he becomes a car snob. And he's always telling his friends like, "Man, you guys really need to get a better car." That thing right there is a piece of crap. And they're like, "What?" It's just it's his own self-justification his brain to make a rationalization. - We're a consumer society now, and we sort of determine our self-worth through our possessions. So like validating yourself through your purchasing decisions is sort of all a lot of people have. - Right. But even in just the scheme of tastes, even people do that as well. - And we do it with everything. You know, it's like that was the first thing I was thinking when I read this is, you know, don't single out gamers in that regard. That's everywhere. So this is a much bigger problem than just a gamer problem. - Gamers are frequently more obnoxious about it. - Well, that's because you come into direct confrontation with people on a regular basis in an empty player setting. - Well, there's that, but I also think that it's like the particular demographics of gaming lend themselves to a particular kind of behavior and engagement with each other. - It's slowly changing, but overall, yeah. That's definitely, I think that was more true in the past than it is now, and hopefully it'll become less true as it goes along, but I agree with you. - I don't think it's less true than it has been in the past. - Really? - I think so. - Especially in this country, like people are even more polarized than they've ever been. And that applies not just to like politics, but also to matters of personal taste and preference. - Yeah, maybe. I guess I don't, I mean, I just, I think about to times when I was younger and it seemed like people actually were, they just weren't aware that other people had different opinions. Now people are. - So Adam writes in, he says, first off, let me say that yes, masturbation is normal. This came up because a guy last week in a letter said his girlfriend was getting pissed 'cause he was masturbating to porn while being married. I think he was married. - No. - Was he, okay, no. And she didn't like it. And he was wondering if this was normal. We obviously told him yes. You should move your foot over and push her way. - I'm sure Anthony heard his voice saying yes. - Since we've been dating, oh, that said my girlfriend and I both prefer if we were the only people to get one another off. Since we've been dating, I've chosen not to masturbate to porn and wait for her each and every time. That's different if she wants you to save it 'cause she wants to have sex with you. - Yeah, that's true. - But again, your girlfriend isn't telling you it's bad to masturbate. - Right. - She just prefers, I guess. - This is why you spill it on the ground. - It's a waste of life. - But yeah, he goes on to say that he doesn't think we should declare someone's girlfriend as a psychological syndrome. Look. - That's fair. - I'm perfectly satisfied saying that that girl has issues if she has problems with him masturbating to porn. - Exactly. I would agree. - She's projecting all over him. - Let's see, I'm trying to skip past all the emails that say you guys are idiots. Which by the way, if you wrote in to tell me you use the words I'm idiots because we got that relationship letter wrong and it didn't realize it was a pun. - Oh, the connect one. - But if you wanna say we're idiots and stuff, fuck you. Fuck you. Don't even listen. Fuck off. I don't know. I need that from you guys. - Yeah, I kinda already felt like an idiot. You didn't need to tell me. - Exactly. - And there are ways to say guys without being-- - Exactly. There were plenty of people that did that. That was really funny. I can't believe were you guys fucking with us? - I know. - 'Cause some people thought we were doing a Charlie Kaufman and just fucking with it. - I know. Some people totally thought we were fucking with him and I like, I so wish we were 'cause that would have been the best joke ever. - I'm not gonna listen on that show. - It's sort of like those YouTube videos that you see where you're like, you're not sure if it's real or not or somebody's just a really good actor. - We weren't good actors. - No. - My great saying and he says I need Arthur's help. Very quick question. Trying to decide on the best configuration. Out of these three, which would do well for me over the next two years? I don't know, we'll see if you know these one of them. Core i5, 2500K with NVIDIA 580, AMD phenom, times six, x six with NVIDIA 580, AMD phenom x six with AMD 6970. So the core, I guess he's saying which processor and graphics card combination. I don't know, why not an i5 and NVIDIA 580? Sounds pretty nice. - The 6970 actually performs better than the 580. The 6970 is the most powerful single video card solution on the market right now. If you're just playing games, then the hexa core AMD with the 6970 is probably your best bet for the next couple of years. If you do other stuff, like productivity stuff, like Intel stuff still smokes AMD stuff, which is why I have a core i7, which is a quad core, but it's got a hyper-threading. So it's an eight threaded processor. - All right, non-video game related, but something that I've dealt with in my life. - Uh oh. - Girlfriend question, girl stash. I've brought this up to all my guy friends and we're all at odds at how best to deal with it. I have a girlfriend who I love. She's cute, dorky, a scientist and makes more Jackie Chan adventure jokes than anyone I've ever known. Everything is so fine so far in our six minutes relationship except one thing. She has a girl stash. Not a little bit of stubble, but almost a full four millimeters of Gayagos glory growing under her nose. (laughing) - It's dating Billie D Williams. - I've done my best to ignore it, but since someone brought it to me, it cannot be unseen. 'Cause am I an asshole because this bothers me. - Yes. - How do I bring it up to her in a proper way? I don't think he's an asshole because he notices it. Like it's a perfectly human thing. - I think he's an asshole because he didn't care until someone brought it up and now it's all he can think about. - Well that doesn't make you an asshole. - No, I don't think it's an asshole. - I'm not saying it's not normal. I'm saying it makes him a little bit of an asshole. (laughing) - But like if you wanted to bring it up. - I am also an asshole who's kind of superficial about the girl that she is. - Yeah, you should feel guilty about it, but also don't think that you're alone because like if that same situation happened to me, I would kind of feel a little bit like, I don't like this mustache on this girl. (laughing) - Humans notice things. It's like it's not even it's a fucking biological fact you will notice things, you will see things, you will find things unattractive. - I mean you're never not gonna unsee it now. - But I don't-- - It's gonna be a splinter in your mind forever. - Yeah, ideally I wouldn't care. - Oh yeah, I mean obviously I don't think this guy, just from the way he described her. In the end I don't think he's gonna care. He's just wondering if maybe there'd be a tax void I think to bring it up to her. Honestly I dated a girl who had the same thing going on, loves a girl. This was in high school. Actually college, college, college, love this girl. But yeah she had a little bit of it going on too, but she was conscious of it. And so she was always like, she was like, you know I think I wanna go, she was totally into the idea of getting a wax, I never brought it up. But I'm just saying she probably is aware of it, I don't know, but I don't know if there's a good way to bring it up. - I don't think there is a good way to bring it up. - There's no good way to bring it up, I mean the only way to bring it up is to say honey, I love you. - Right. - But you've got some stuff going on there. - All right, so what you're gonna do. So you're gonna just have a great night with her, and then when she's asleep, you're gonna wax it. You're gonna go get beard trimmers. (laughing) - I mean basically, you're gonna have to decide if it's worth taking the chance of her breaking up with you, to bring it up, 'cause that's the risk you run, bringing it to her. - Really, you think you're gonna do that bad? - Yes, I think saying honey, you've got a mustache, and I'd really prefer you shaved it, could be enough to end a six month relationship. - Wow, that would suck. That's not a very stable relationship if after six months, that's all it takes. - Boy, if he can't bear to go on in that relationship unless she shaves her mustache. - That doesn't sound like he can't bear. - Well, what I'm saying is that either he deals with it, or he says something, and he has to accept that it could end it. - Yeah, I wouldn't say anything. I mean like, because in the long run, like if you really love this girl and you're really into her, it's gonna bother you less and less and less every single day until it doesn't bother you anymore. - And how about you stick up to your friends who are pointing out. - That too. - Well yeah, of course, just say like, yeah, well, it doesn't matter, she could have a full fucking mustache because she's fucking rad. - Yeah. - She makes Jackie Chan an adventure joke. - That's exactly. - That was awesome when I can feel it on my balls. (laughing) - Dude, I've, I've, I've, I've like honey. - I don't know where this goes. - I was just gonna say, I dated girls that had hairy arms. I dated all these things, like fuck man. Sometimes you're just like, fuck it, everything else is so great. - I mean, we live in a weird society that like sexualizes like infantilized women. - Totally. - It puts a, like a premium on, on a lack of hair. - Yup. - You know? - Yeah, the, like underarms. - Except in my case. - Underarms doesn't bother me so much. It bothers me a little bit. Hairy legs don't bother me at all. But yeah, I would actually prefer it if, if hair didn't bother me at all in any situation just because I think it's kind of ridiculous that I feel that way. I feel like it's not natural, you know? - There, I mean, there, totally there's a societal things informing that, but there are also anthropological things too. And part of that reason that people like women without hair on their faces is from an anthropological way. It's like, okay, they look younger and they look like they're more ready to breed and be good breeders, you know what I mean? - That's the theory. But I mean, like, I, I can't really say how much of that is nature versus nurture, you know? - I'm sure it's both. - Yeah, maybe. - I'm, it's gotta be. - Yeah. - I'm saying it right now. - It's just like, it's just like in societies, you know, where like the female breast isn't overly sexualized. Nobody really thinks anything of it being displayed in public and yet, you know, because of the society that I've grown up in, every time a girl leans over I can't help but like get whiplash. And then like, and then like I'll look, like I'll, like I'll look before I even think about it. I'll look and then I'll go like, what am I doing? And then I'll think about it. - Stariator boobs. - Yup, exactly. - Let's go with it. - Just go with it. - Sorry, I'm trying to, I'm trying to not read too many of the whole straight versus gay letters cause, so 90% of the inbox right now, straight versus gay letters and you guys are idiots about connect. (laughing) That's pretty much 90% of this. - Well, I guess that's, you know, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about it at the beginning of the show is because like yes. - Okay. Tanner writes in and he says, "I have noticed the abundance of games "that use real actors' faces as character models." Excuse me, sorry. - Thank you for sharing that. - And sometimes even the characters themselves. Obviously the most recent example is LA Noir, but I feel that it worked really well in the Force Unleashed games too. This seems to be a pretty recent trend probably because only recently has the technology been available to scan an actor's face and like and probably cause only recently games that budgets to afford actors. - Yeah, exactly. - Other games that come to mind are Halo 3D ODST, which had the likenesses of Nathan Fillion. I don't think it had his voice. - It had him. - Did it have his face? - It was totally his likeness. - Oh yeah, that's right. Dude, there's part with another's mask. That's right. - Yeah, yeah, it was totally him. - And Portal and Half Life 2. Can you guys think of other games that use the faces of actual actors for better or worse? God, there's gotta be some old ones that try. - Heavy metal fact too. - Was that? - That Julie Strand, I guess. Was my client side not too? - Was he? - I think he was. - Celebrity faces actually go way back. They weren't nearly as common as they are now, but yeah, they actually go way back. I'm sure you could find dozens and dozens of them if you dug deeply enough. But like the whole, it's not quite the same, but in Half Life 2, you know, they, in the art book, they show all the, they show a bunch of the real faces of the people that they actually used for the different characters. And one of the dudes was actually like, just some random business guy who was in the same building as they were in time. - PC developers have been using like people's faces as basis for their stuff for a long time. Like Max Payne is someone who works at Remedy, for example. So is Alan Wake. Alan Wake is the face of someone who works at Remedy. And it makes sense because, you know, you just have somebody stand face on. You take a picture, you have them turn sideways, you take another picture. - Map it. - You can map it, build a model. - It's not quite that simple anymore, but yes, that was the basic, just bit of a whole point. - Yeah. - The guy that wrote the connector letter wrote in. And you guys are idiots. - Remember he called himself M Night Shyamalan? - Yeah. - He wrote in as that again. - Is that why someone emailed me saying the M Night Shyamalan video or? - Yeah. - And that's why he named himself that, because he snuck it in the right hand. - I want to apologize. - Don't apologize. - For you, enraging you all with my last letter. - Don't apologize. - You can all collectively remove your heads from your hands with a D so. Well, I think he's apologizing not because he fooled us, but he's apologizing because he didn't mean to make us think 'cause remember we all thought the sky was a dick. That's the way he talked about this girl. We were like, fuck this guy, man. Why is he so fucking judgmental? And now we realize it was about a dumb video game peripheral. - Way to go, assholes. - I know. - Gone for a week and you may get ants of yourselves. - I didn't have any coffee that night. That's what I blame. I usually have coffee when I get here 'cause I'm old and I get tired. - We have coffee in there either. - Real quick question. - Yeah, I did. - Did you? - Yeah, Joe Sider. That says, "What Mass Effect 2 DLC would you guys recommend?" - All of it? - I'm the Shadow Broker. - Shadow Broker is the must have, for sure. - I liked Kasumi, because I like his character, but from a story perspective, it's pretty worthless. - Her playing her little things worth having, but having her on the ship is pretty dumb 'cause you talk to her in between and she's like, "Come back on her." - But if you get her early enough and you take her with you on mission. - I like you took her all the time, she's bad ass. - Yeah, she has a lot, well, she's bad ass, but she has a lot of banter, too, with different party members. So like she is a fully fleshed out character. If you get her early enough, she's just, well, not fully fleshed out like the other ones are, she doesn't have the same death to her loyalty mission and stuff like that. - I think Overlord is ragged in the middle, but the beginning and end and the general payoff is really good. - That's actually really good. - Yeah, totally. - And it gives you a sort of inside-looked Cerberus that might make you less comfortable with who you're working with, and also just some very human sort of story considerations and choices that you need to make. - Yeah, Overlord, I actually didn't play until Shadow Broker came out and I downloaded both of them. - Yeah. Shadow Broker, you absolutely do have to play though. I mean, I feel like if you hop into Mass Effect 3 when you haven't played Shadow Broker, then you will have missed a major connecting point between the two games and it's actually- - Mass Effect 3 presumes that the Shadow Broker happened. I think that DLC occurred. - Well, that makes sense 'cause I don't see how it, yeah, there's no way that it could have happened any other way. But I'm also wondering like there's certain decisions that you can make in Shadow Broker and I'm wondering how they'll play out differently in Mass Effect 3 depending on the decisions that you've made if they'll be major occurrences or if they'll be minor. It'll be interesting to see. - Have any of you guys played the New Vegas DLC? - No, I haven't been really. - So there's DLC- - Actually, New Vegas. - The ending of New Vegas isn't the ending of New Vegas. There's no reason for me to go back. - What do you mean like where it actually rolls credits and you can't keep playing? - Yeah, and then also you get locked in to the ending sequence of New Vegas. - You do. - Which is like not just making every mistake that Fallout 3 made, but making it worse is so unforgivable to me. - But I like how New Vegas, at least the ending, felt like it was based on your actions. - Right, it was after a series of consequences and that was cool, but not letting me explore that world anymore is like extremely counterproductive. - Yep, I don't know why you would do that. - Time. - Yeah, honestly. - No more letters. - We said we got like 40 letters and seriously, 80% of them are all calling us dumb about the connect thing. - Like I'm not saying that you shouldn't call, that you shouldn't tell us they were wrong. And I will say a lot of passionate responses from people that feel both ways about the homosexuality thing. - Oh, I'm sure that's a hot button issue. - Well, even people that again don't care about the rights, they're just talking about it from a science perspective, all that stuff we talked about earlier. But look, I like answering random questions. I like talking about psychology, but I also like video game questions. - You have video game questions. - I think from now on, we need to figure out what games we're gonna talk about ahead of time and then tweet that people should email about them. - And that's a good idea. - And then we can, yeah, then we can-- - Do you wanna stop interrupting me? Send your fucking letters to letters at eat-sleep-game.com. - Could you continue interrupting him? (laughing) - Um, yeah, that's all. I don't know, you can find me on Twitter, chuff money. You can find Matt at Talking Orange. You can find Arthur, A-E-G-I-S. Um, I don't know, is there anything of yours, Arthur, people should go read in this short run? - No. - And this goes up. - No, don't read anything I wrote. I wrote that Alice preview in a fucking fever dream. I don't even remember writing half of it. (laughing) Like I went to Judges Week and someone from EA walked up to me and said, yeah, I read your Alice madness returns for you, I'm like, yeah, I barely remember writing that thing. - Yeah, exactly. I suppose I should mention that we're not doing economics anymore, at least area five isn't it. Tomics will continue, but without area five content. It's stupid business reasons. That's all you need to know. We actually still really like those guys. We have a good relationship with them. This wasn't like a, it wasn't a difficult departure. It wasn't a bad breakup or anything like that. - It's not that I meant us. - Exactly. So, area five needs to make money. So we made the business decision to make money instead of going out of business trying to do automics. - If you're a rich listener who's interested in investing-- - And being a web startup sugar daddy. - Yeah, exactly. - You can always get ahold of Matt on Twitter. (laughing) And sorry for the short episode. Ty was in here, Arthur's half of a man. - Ouch, my penis is intact. (laughing) I have 12 ones. - What your penis is intact with the rest of you is in shambles. - It's true, I lost 17 pounds of Arthur. - Half of a man. And yeah, we'll have more to talk about next week, especially because even more games that we've been playing will become under and off and bar going. And you can hear all what I feel about red faction next week. And from the world of video games. (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, yeah, we'll be there to come ♪ ♪ And down the road, down the door of the car ♪ ♪ Come on, ride out of your car ♪ ♪ Oh, yeah, we'll be there to come ♪ ♪ Oh, yeah, we'll be there to come ♪ ♪ Oh, yeah, we'll be there to come ♪ (dramatic music) [ Silence ]