Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 101 - 04/29/11
Greetings! We return after a week off to talk about Portal 2. A lot. But no spoilers at all! Then we talk at length about Shadows of the Damned, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, and more, then move on to letters.
This week's music, in order of appearance:
Foo Fighters - Dear Rosemary;
Muse - Plug In Baby
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to Rebel FM, episode 101. I'm Anthony Gagos with me is Mesh Engineer. - Hi. - Tyler Barber. - Rebel FM Basics. - And Arthur Keith. - Let's see what you did there. - I don't. - Oh, 101, I get it. (laughing) - Yeah, sometimes I say the dumbest shit. - No, no, no, no, it needs to be punched. - Basics. - It's all me. It's all me. It like, most joke grenades take five seconds to go off. That's just how it is. - Do you throw yourself on top of a joke, right? (laughing) - It's the only way I can make myself understand. - I don't think we should do a spoiler cast, like a new lease now right now, Portal 2. - Yeah. - But we all played it. - Yeah. - And we all loved it. - Might as well talk about it. - But I mean, I think like the gameplay stuff isn't really spoiler- - That's what I'm saying. - That you go, yeah. - Let's just avoid story stuff. - Okay. - And, you know, specifics. - Sounds good. - Yeah, so how do we talk about Portal 2 without story, without saying just the puzzles are fucking crazy? - Well, I have kind of a jumping off point that I can say that I hate loading screens. - Yeah, okay, so that's a good negative thing to bring up about Portal, is that it really shoots itself in the foot, pacing-wise. - Especially considering when you play again, like Half-Life that hardly ever loads. - That's not true. - It loads a lot. - Half-Life loads all the time. - It loads all the time. - Oh, yeah, it's true. - It's just what it is. - It's just everything that's involved on the screen. - Exactly, that's what my mistake is, is that it doesn't go to a loading screen. It just freezes the game while it's. - But I mean, there's the thing with the source engine is that's just the way it works. And I had hoped that when Portal 2 came out, it would be updated so that it occluded the loads a little bit better. - And it does not. - And it does not at all. And they try to add in a little bit of character into the loading screens. Like they change as you go throughout that. And when you play the game, you understand why the loading screen looks as it does to pin it on the phone. - And at least they're animated. - You're in. - Sort of. - I mean, they transition from one image. - Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, it's not just a stay. - And it's just, but yeah, it totally, it totally changes up the experience because in, especially in aperture science, you're in this monolithic, incredibly giant facility. And when it's broken up through loading screens, it feels almost like it's more manageable, like it's less threatening. Yeah, it's bite sized. It makes a. - Because in point of fact, it is. - Right. (laughs) - And instead of it, and you know, that's kind of the thing about aperture, right, is that they're supposed to represent the kind of apathy that scientists used to direct their research toward. And that's part of what made it feel kind of comically oppressive because of that apathy that's expressed both in the voice over work, but also just in the level design and the signage that you see and everything. And that apathy seems less apathetic and less oppressive when it's broken up through loading screens. And you know, like if this was like five years ago, I wouldn't really even notice the loading screens, but now I've seen so many games and Dead Space is the first one that comes to mind where even though there is loading, you know, does the Metroid Prime thing where it'll take a while for a door to open or an elevator ride is a little long, yeah. - Or in a train car. - Right, but it never takes you totally out of the game or almost never takes you totally out of the game. And that harms Portal's experience. Portal's experience. - Wow, it's, you know, I never once thought of the loading screens as being an issue. But for me, I think a big part of it was like the whole that they put the loading screens in the elevator. So for me, it was kind of like sort of a conclusion where I knew a load was coming at least. I mean, they happen naturally, yeah. - I think the problem is that by the time you finish some of the more complicated puzzles in Portal 2, you feel like you're on this roll, like your mind is in this zone and you rush in and you want to solve another puzzle. And it does it for a while. Like because there'll be puzzle after puzzle in one specific level. But then once you hit the elevator, it's like, oh, so all that momentum I felt like all that, like kick ass and take names from a Portal throwing perspective is dissipates between load screens. - The funny thing is, is like this sounds really nitpicky and it is-- - It loads a lot. - But it does load a lot. I mean, it loads a lot, but regardless, the game is still excellent. - I know, and that's why I'm saying it's nitpicky is because it's actually kind of difficult to find things to badmouth about this game. - Yeah. - So I figured I might as well start out with the one thing that I noticed. - But how do you guys feel about like, you know, sometimes when I play like a third person action game or first person game and like, you know, every time I walk into the quote unquote load hallway, I'm always aware that it's the load hallway. - Yeah, exactly, like you can see the-- - You can see the-- - Yeah. - Yeah, but I mean, like I can also see like the, in Portal, you know, the elevators between test chambers, of course, make perfect sense for how things are broken up 'cause that's built into the story of the game. But there are definitely times in the game later on where it's, oh, here's a, you know, you're not really in a test chamber, you know, you're going through puzzles, but not in the same way. And then it'll be something that kind of looks a little bit like an airlock and you're like, well, here comes the loading screen. Walk, walk, walk, bloop, load, okay. You know, it's like you can see it coming. It like, and Valve is so good about not pulling you out from the experience. You know, you're constantly in first person and they're so good about that through all of their games that this is the one left over from the way that Valve does things that's too old school for the rest of the modern game design. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That's, I mean, you're an interesting point to discuss. - I'm pretty sure we're all, we all played it on PC, right? - I did, yeah. - Yeah. - I did as well. - Actually, I played it on PC, half on PC and half on PS3. My little brother had good timing for when he was in town. - Yeah, it was excellent, actually. Yeah, my little brother here was last week, was here last week and I bought the PS3 version so that he could take it home with him. And we just alternated between who was on PC and who was on PS3. And honestly, couldn't tell the difference. Didn't really matter. - Yeah, I mean, I used a 360 controller to play it on PC. - Oh, yeah, cool. It's the perfect game, it's the perfect game for a controller. I think it's actually the perfect game for anybody that's new to FPS in general because of the way that it's paced. - Definitely. - I mean, there's very few cases where you have to make a speedy, well aimed shot. - Yeah, especially in Portal 2. I mean, there are lots. - There are lots. - There are lots. - There are lots. - Compared to like most shooters. - And there's a lot less than in Portal 1 in Portal 1. - Yeah, there's a lot less Twitch shooting and a lot more quick thinking. - Well, quick thinking, yes, but that's I'm saying Twitch. - Yeah, that's an excellent first person shooter person. - Yeah, you don't have to have kung fu like reflexes in order to hit most of the portals. - No. - It's weird and well, you know, we'll get to this later but I've, last week I'm also playing Crisis 2 and you know, we'll get to this in a bit but it's interesting, like I have-- - No, Tyler, get to it now. - I felt completely proficient with mouse and keyboard on Portal 2 'cause I use mouse and keyboard but man, with Crisis I'm like a fucking-- - Were you playing one or two? - Two. - Crisis 2 is designed for a controller. - Yeah, I feel like I should play it before. - I don't care what any PC gamer says, that game was designed for a controller. - Although I do have to say, man, like I'm really experiencing like what people say with like the quick gaming of mouse, like dude, it's so fucking fast. - It feels good. - This is shit. - Whereas with a controller, like it's the quick movement and switching between suit modes. - Yeah, that becomes really valuable. - You know, it's a big stickler for me that it's not really a problem with Portal because the pace that you move at, I don't know if I've ordered that correctly. - Yeah, yeah. - It's pretty slow. - Right. - It's not like as fast as like a Call of Duty or-- - Right, it's meant to be kind of a cerebral, you need to think about this before you move forward kind of pace. I mean, it's a puzzle game and that's how puzzles are. Puzzles are, you know, you stop and you think and then you act. It's not like think act, think act, think act. Like most FPS games are. - What did you guys, did you guys compare the, you know, 'cause I came right off of playing Portal 1. Did any of you guys go back and look, just to the graphical comparison? - No. - It's pretty staggering. - Really? - Yeah, I mean-- - Nice. - Like, you know, even just look at the Portal gun and like even just the effects of the little light-- - The effects of the Portal is like really fucking-- - I mean, they made some pretty enormous additions to Source. - I should hope so. - And apparently not loading screens though. - I mean, I do kind of wonder if there's just, the nature of Portal means that they're pushing everything to the absolute breaking point by having all that geometry available at all times, like being able to render multiple angles of it, I mean, essentially being able to render three scenes at once, you know, because you see different things through each Portal. - Right. - And then they had, I mean, I loved it when there, this happens right in the beginning of the game, so it's not a spoiler, you know? I loved it when there's like levels moving around and running into each other. - Oh my God, the physics-- - And like the levels-- - Yeah, the levels fall apart. - When the environment destructs. - So good looking. Like the way the pieces all shatter and move around it, it's so like-- - Is that, I have a question. - Wonderful. - Is that stuff canned or is it like actual physics? Like, a tile falls off the wall and it's gonna fall. - No, that's, it falls, however it falls. I mean, that was the big thing when they first announced Source with Half-Life 2, was it had all this real physics in it. - Yeah. - They could use 'em in the beginning. - See, that's what I thought. Okay, cool. - And it's like, it wasn't until episode three where they started doing like large-scale destruction where buildings would fall apart into thousands of pieces. - Yeah, like the train tracks that fall on episode two or something. - Yeah, that's what I meant, episode two. And like at the end of the, at the end of episode two, when the striders are walking through and they're destroying the buildings, you just see them like explode into pieces, you know, into shrapnel. And that was used to great, great effect in Portal 2. And this is also the first time where I really, like you sort of get the sense in Portal 1 about how the levels are put together through the panels and everything, but in this one, they really, really played it up. So like, oh, okay, now I really get how all this works 'cause you see the outside of the rooms too. - Yeah. - So you see how like, oh, this is how the test chambers can all form and they all make kind of a logical, mechanical vocabulary when you're really paying attention to it all. - Right, well, and that transfers to gameplay. - Yeah, and totally. - Which is the greatest improvement between Portal and Portal 2 is that you, if you're paying attention, you should never be at a loss as to where you can shoot portals just first of all. I mean, clearly you're gonna be at a loss, trying to figure out what the fuck you're supposed to be doing sometimes. That's sort of the point. - Yeah. - Otherwise there'd be no sense of triumph when you solve it. - Right. - But there's never a guess of the variables. - Yeah. - I mean, and talk about a fucking environment that is a character, the Aputure Science Facility is so alive. It oozes personality. - Still alive, you might say. (laughing) - Whoa! Done, done. (laughing) - That is the ultimate pun of the evening. - But in a few weeks, we should revisit Portal 2 and just spoil the shit out of the hell. - Spoil the shit out, totally spoil it. - Okay, so here's the, we were beaten to the punch. - By a spoiler cast? - Yeah. - What do you mean? - I don't care, it doesn't mean we can't do ours. - Right, well, why be fair enough? Giant Bomb did a full spoiler cast. - You're not giant on awesome. Giant Bomb's awesome. Everybody should go listen to that one, then they should listen to the one that we do. - Yeah. - Go home, Matt. (laughing) - Just because I would like to talk about that game without having to worry about some of the things - Right, just to talk a little bit more about some gameplay things, I didn't notice like, and like some of the, you know, seeing some talk about the message board, like in some of the trailers, they had tubes that would suck things, like a suction tube. - Yeah, okay, a pneumatic tube. - Yes, pneumatic tube. I'm curious if we might see some of these in DLC in the future, possibly, or at least I'm hopeful. - Well, I mean, Valve said today that there could be Portal DLC this summer. - Yeah, that's exciting. - Playing on PC though, you can always there, in Portal 1, there was some really good user-created missions and levels as well. So if you want and are willing to try and find them, there might be some really excellent Portal mods. - Well, they said-- - They might not have any story, just crazy test chambers. - Well, they said they're gonna, the PS3 version will have user-created DLC as well. It'll have anything that releases your Steam. - Right, that's what I meant, yeah. - So, any updates will go through Steam, I guess. - But didn't, I don't know, maybe I'm tripping, but wasn't there something about like, user-created DLC, Valve approved and released obviously, but will be available on the PS3 version as well as on the PC version? - I don't know, I think that the problem there is the tech constraints of the PS3 and the much more open field available to the PC. - Right. - And with the only other game that's ever done that was Unreal Tournament 3. And there was a very specific thing that you had to do to bake PS3 mods and levels, so. - Yep, that makes sense to me. - Can you guys try out the co-op? - I don't know how to chance it. - Either, I haven't played it, Matt, you did. - Yeah, I've also played the co-op. I haven't played the whole thing, but like the first like third. - Yeah, yeah. - So, can you give us any advice on that? - Fun? - I don't understand. - I mean, it's much more puzzle. - It's much more like of a puzzle than a story thing, 'cause it really is just test chambers that you're doing just to get to the end. There isn't any sort of like, you don't ever feel like, oh, I'm doing this because I'm trying to escape or I'm doing this because it's. - Right, but you do feel like every, so there's kind of like a hub world area that you go into and then you can go into and from there, you know, you can start, I think there's five sequences, five test chambers. - Right, you're still making a progression in the world. - Right, but it's like, I get the, the story is definitely that you go through a progression and that one, like the world one or whatever sequence of test chambers is to train you in a specific task that Glados then sends both the robots into a different part of the facility because you're getting pieces of something that she needs. And I don't wanna tell any more of that 'cause there is, but there is kind of a story that goes along within it sort of makes a logical sense once you go through the goal. Otherwise they do some really smart things too, like it crashed on me like four different times while I was playing multiplayer. - Which is weird because otherwise it's on PC, it feels like a PC game despite what some form kids are bitching about. First of all, it defaults to the maximum resolution of your monitor. Second of all, it totally reads your hardware and sets itself to what it should be at. So that's not something you really need to change. I would have appreciated if it had detected the 7.1 system I was running instead of making me change it and also Steam Cloud remembered my audio settings. So when I would go, when I play at home, I'd be playing at 5.1 and go to work. And when I went to work, going through my computer at work was only 2.1 and it would basically get rid of three channels worth of sound because it was still a set to 5.1. - Right, weird. - But other than that, Steam Cloud also works mostly okay. - I didn't try to, no, there's supposed to be like Steam Cloud between PS3 and PC. - No. - No, okay. 'Cause I tried saving some games and that didn't work and I was like, all right, maybe this doesn't work the way that I thought it worked. - As far as I know, as far as I know, that's not that. - But I love the way that even if it crashes and stuff, it always remembers where you're at. And then like as the robots, you can tab through which test chamber you wanna jump into. - Oh, I didn't know that, that's awesome. - Yeah, so when you go to like the introduction, like that main hub world and you roll into the zone, you're currently working on, even if you go back, you can be like, you know what, I wanna redo test chamber seven, you can like push up to test chamber seven, jump back in. - I did not know this, that's great. But I love the in-game interface options 'cause I don't have a microphone on my PC. - Oh yeah, I mean, just like left or wrong, they do great ability for players to communicate even without talking. - Exactly, yep. It's so cool, like you can point it in area and on the PS3 it's a little bit awkward, it's actually easier on the PC, I think. But you bring up a little wheel for wherever you're pointing and it's context sensitive. So if you're pointing at a button and then you move your mouse to the left or you move your stick to the left, it'll put an icon on the user's screen that's telling them to press the button and then of course it'll appear off to the side of your screen if you're not facing it so that you can roll over and face it. - And then when they run over, you can set a timer and be like three, two, one, it'll count down. Or like, if they, you know, and of course they have the silly things like really great, animated high five. - Yeah, and hug, hug, hug. - And I love it too, because not this, I mean, you know, I'll just say that Gladys doesn't always appreciate every interaction you guys have. - It's hilarious, so she's still funny and finds reasons to talk shit. - Yeah, and in the single player, I mean, Gladys evolves, which is interesting, like as a character of Gladys, she's not just the same, she's pretty one note in Portal. I mean, granted, she goes from antagonistic to homicidal but that's not really much of a shift whereas there is a definite arc for her. - Absolutely. - An arc that you never get. Like, Chell has no character at all. - Right, exactly. - Like the only thing you understand about Chell is through the lens of Gladys. - Yep, or the comic. - Or the comic and that kind of stuff. - That said that she was very tenacious. - Yeah, basically her number one characteristic is that she's endlessly stubborn and will never give up. - Yeah. I also recently played through it, well, I didn't play through it incomplete but I reviewed the Prince Persia trilogy, which I will be the first one to admit. I did not complete all three Prince Persia games because I've beaten them all at least once on PS2. - I just couldn't get into any of it. Like, I barely remember playing the second one and the third one I played for like an hour. - There's some sound issues on it. I didn't experience any sound issues and I played like the first couple of hours of all three games. But I will say that they don't look like, there's only so much they can do with the old engine but they actually look pretty good on the PS3 one. Like the high-res textures, there are still moments in that game that are actually really impressive. But man, I still love those games. You know, and honestly, for me, it's just a value thing. Like, I would like to own that at some point and just get rid of my PS2 ones just because it's 40 bucks and you get all three. Oh yeah. - That's a good deal. - I played them in 3D briefly too. - Really? (laughing) - Yeah. - I don't know. But we have the tech at IGN so we'll make use of it if we want to. - Yeah, totally. - Yeah, the 3D TV we have at IGN. - It's very expensive, but not that great. - That's a bummer. - I've also saw Alice since the last time we recorded, I believe. - Did you, have you gotten any hands-on with that one? - Yeah, I played it. - Yeah. - I mean, it, you know, we all thought, you know, this looks like a dark setter or a god of war and when you play it, you're like, okay, like immediately, no one had to tell me how to play. I knew like, right stick was how I did my dodge to dodge attacks, you know, and it does the very, god of war-esque, like, oh, you barely dodge and it has that brief, like, stop timer. You do really hard hit and it has the brief, like, you know, stop, stop, stop, and I still think it's, it has a lot of potential to be fun. I think it's really weird that they basically have showed us, like two areas that all it is is combat, but when they showed it at GDC and now that they showed it again. And this is the, these were the last times we're gonna see it before we review it. And we've never seen any of the story element they've talked about. You know, I don't know, I find that game, I would like to be optimistic 'cause the combat is indeed fun, but I don't know that that's going to be enough to like carry that game into anything. - Sure. - Anything out of like, oh, okay, it was okay. - Yeah. - I don't know. - Yeah. - And then, I don't know about you guys, but I mean, I've played some, and not as much as Arthur, but I've been playing the Gears beta off and on. - I haven't had a chance to play it yet. I mean, I played some over the weekend too. Wall Arthur was gone. Man, I could only play for like 20 minutes at a time before I'd be like, fuck this, stop, yeah. - Well, the dedicated servers aren't up yet, are they? - No. - It's been often on like Microsoft quote, underestimated the demand for dedicated servers, so they've been bringing them on like over time. - Right. - And I hope that that doesn't bode poorly for when the game launches. - Right, 'cause that's the big complaint about from my area five cohorts that are playing a lot is that the lag is just as bad as it was in Gears of War 2. - I don't think that's the case. - Really? - Yeah, I'm even hosted matches aren't performing badly. - If this was-- - But we also have-- - If this was Jason saying this-- - Much more of a motherfucker of internet connection than you do, I think. - I'm going to take Jason's opinion though, only 'cause Jason is one of the most like, gear nerds I've ever met, he's the same. - Yeah. - And I actually, lucky you got into a game with him one time just randomly matched, and it was awesome 'cause he kicks ass. (laughing) - I mean, there are certain things that are still a problem in hosted matches like shotguns are still too powerful. I mean, shotguns in general are more powerful than they should be given that it's a fucking lancer on the cover of Gears and not a shotgun. - Yes, I always make a joke on a white, it just constantly thinks my head in a world where only shotguns exist, every player, that's the first thing they did, you're like, oh, we started-- - They're just too effective for long range and there are certain matches where shotguns are much more effective than other matches and it seems like it relates to hosted versus dedicated servers. - Oh yeah, definitely. - But yeah, it just seems like if someone runs it, you straight up with a shotgun and you're shooting with a lancer, it seems like nine times out of 10, you lose, even if you're pouring fire on him. - Yeah, I've watched over Jason's shoulder while he's played a lot and he says the same thing, you know, the shotguns are definitely still overpowered but he feels like they're not as overpowered, yeah, exactly. - I mean, the lancer is a much more effective weapon than it's ever been in Gears multiplayer. - That's good. - 'Cause for one thing, that clip goes on for ever. - Ever. - I know it's ridiculous. - Like if you're fast at the active reload, you can almost fire lancer nonstop for a good 90 seconds. - That's awesome. - That's like what that gun needed though. I mean, it was such a pain in the ass to use otherwise. - I mean, it's my favorite weapon, easily. - It's my favorite too, it just pisses me out that it's not as effective. - In some matches, in some matches, it's really effective. It just depends. They nerfed grenades from the first time we played Gears 3 though, like the smoke grenades. - Right, with their concussion damage. - Yeah, 'cause we totally killed people with smoke grenades when we played the beta in February, right? - March, I think, wasn't it? - I think it was very, very end February. - Very end February, that makes sense. - We definitely blew people up with smoke grenades that we did not stick them with. Whereas in this, that never happens, ever. And I kind of feel like should. - I don't know. - I mean, if they're right next to it, maybe. I don't know that it should blow 'em up, but I don't see why it couldn't down them. - Well, it definitely still damages people. I mean, I would think-- - You know what, I don't think it does. Like, I've gotten hit and done on with the smoke grenade, like right at my feet and nothing. Like, no red at all on my screen. - Well, that could also be lag. - No, I mean, I reacted to it. - Oh, okay. - Like, he did the whole smoke and like, coward for a second, I couldn't really move, but there was no physical damage. - Maybe they figured that was enough. What do you think of the over cover kick? - The mantle kick is cool once you get the hang of it. - Yeah, that's-- - I thought you hated it. - When I saw people doing it, you were like-- - I hate the mantle kick and sawed off. - What is it? - So basically, if you are on the opposite side of cover of someone else and it's cover you can vault over, if you hit A first, you'll jump over and kick them and stun them. - Oh, cool. - So it eliminates the over cover stalemate. - Yeah, just like blind firing. - Yeah, where you're both on the other side of cover, you can see each other, but you can't do anything about it. - That reminds me of, there's an episode of The Simpsons where they go to like this wild, wild west town, and there's a shootout, and like there's like one of the guys, he's just like shooting at Marge Simpson's hair, like-- - So you're saying like a tactic that happens that sucks ass is that someone does the vault thing and then hits you with the sawed off? - Yes, because the area of effect of the sawed off is so great, it's 180 degrees, which is too much. - Well, I mean, you have to be pretty point blank though. - I don't eat-- - Gun shoots like that. - It's not hard to get up close to somebody. Like people are doing the wall bounce bullshit and hosted matches that people complain about in Gears and Gears 2, which is that they'll roll and hit the wall and come off of it right away and just jib you with a shotgun. - Ah, I see. - So like if you roll into a wall and you instantly come out of your roll animation? - Yeah. - So you're standing up and then can fire? - Yeah. - Okay. - And you whip around instantly. - Oh, okay, I didn't know that. - And the area of effect on the sawed off is too great. It actually, I think with non-dedicated matches for hosted matches, the area of effect on your weapons is wider because it's compensating for a light. - Yes, explain that, that's what I'm trying to understand. Like everyone's talking about how the shotgun operates differently. - It's trying to get where you're, it's anticipating where you're gonna aim. Not just where you're aiming. Like if you're moving your aim, it's gonna say, well, he might have aimed a little bit more to the rider, a little bit more. - So you'll get a wider spread of fire than you should. - Yeah, so it's almost like inertia. It's like auto game inertia that's increasing your spread of fire. - Yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons why games seem less laggy now than they did during the Counter-Strike era. - It's the anticipation stuff. - Yeah, it's very complicated algorithms, predicting what it thinks you're gonna do or what it thinks other people are gonna do. - Right. - In a sense, that's how our brains operate. - Which is why, like in Call of Duty or something like that, like the kill cam will be something totally different than what you saw. - Right. - And you'll see yourself hitting somebody over and over again and the kill cam, like they were constantly moving to the side and you missed, you know. - 'Cause the predictive code was not in your favor. - Right, it's the same thing here. - That's been happening to me a lot recently 'cause with my little brother here last week, we went back and played a lot of old games too, 'cause he doesn't have a powerful PC, so when he comes to my place, he tends to hop on my Steam press account, just play tons of shit. And we played some Bulletstorm for a while. He thought that was-- - I saw you online playing Bulletstorm with the little computer logo next to your name. - A little computer logo? - 'Cause this game's for Windows. - Oh, okay. - So it shows you on Xbox Live, but it'll have like a little computer next to your name instead of a controller. - Right, gotcha. And then-- - That is the way to play that game though, if you can. - It is, it totally is. And then we played some Team Fortress, and so like, especially over like the last weekend, he left mid Saturday, and so basically from mid Saturday until today, I've been playing as much Team Fortress as possible, just because like, once I started playing it again, it reminded me how much I love that game. - Right. - So, and that game also has predictive code issues, because like, you'll definitely be all the way around a wall. - And then die. - And then die, and not from an explosion, it'll be from somebody shooting you with a pistol or something like that. - Yeah, that happens at Battlefield. Battlefield. Does a sign failed me to be Battlefield? - I've seen you online playing Bad Company 2 a lot in the last week. - Like every week. - That's like 90% of your game time. - More so than usual. - I played Bad Company 2 a new way. - How so? - I call it Siamese Bad Company 2. So, I grabbed with my right hand the right side of the controller, the stick and the triggers and the face button, and Jody, with her left hand, grabbed the other half of the controller. - That's really weird. - What you're saying is Jody does the moving, and you do all the shooting and aiming. - Yeah, well, no, no. Jody has to do the down the sidesaming grenades, shed less responsibilities yet. - That's really weird. - I've only ever played Siamese once, and it was for Indigo Prophecy. - Why? - I don't know, we just felt like it, and then keep it, but you know what it made me think? I was like, is this what Fissel's hybrid feels like? 'Cause it was, I would like look at a place, and I would tell Jody because I had, 'cause I had the ability to look. I would look at a rock and say, "Run to that piece of cover." And she would run, and I'm just aiming the whole time. I'm like, is this what hybrid's gonna feel like? - Probably not. (laughing) - I didn't do that bad though. - That's great. - Wasn't that bad? - That is awesome. What a fun road. - Siamese gaming, dude. - That's totally the kind of thing that you would do, you know, with your buddies after you came home from school, and you only had one controller. - That actually sounds like a stoner thing to do. I'm gonna be on it. - Or no, or like a back in the day, NES games not two-player. - Yeah, yeah. - Let me do the D-pad. - Yeah, exactly. I'll do the buttons, you do the D-pad. - I totally did that with my friends. - I've done it before as well. - Yeah. - Funny. - That's great. - Yeah, Gears 3, lots of fun. Just, it's good that there's a beta so that they can help. - Other really awesome third person shooters. No, I wish it was awesome, but they're just always space marine again. - I did see space marine, actually. I had totally forgotten about that. - That's not so awesome. - And that's because I made notes of games I knew you had seen since "Realize your Quays". (laughing) I wanted to talk about space marine. - Have you didn't play it at the event, did you? - No. - Is it still rough? - It does still feel rough. So, I mean, I flew up to Vancouver about a month and a half ago to see space marine. And when I played it there, I was a little disappointed. Not actually not a little disappointed, I was disappointed. Because during the presentation they gave because every game has a presentation now, it's the game book report that you have to listen to before you play it. - Yeah, yep. - Where the developers try to get you to use their talking points in your coverage and tell you what to think. - And their vocabulary. - Yeah. - Yeah, I completely ignore all that shit. - Talking points. - Yeah, I hate it. - It's a total talking point thing. It seemed like they were saying all the right things, like they were emphasizing that control is very important to them, that they want it to be easy to switch between melee and ranged combat options, that they want the space marine, whose name escapes me right now, whose voice by Mark Strong. - Yeah, every space marine's like a playoff of Roman type names. They're always like Antoninus or something. - I mean, the voice acting is cool. I mean, it's the dude that played the villain in the last Sherlock Holmes movie. Does the voice of the space marine? - Oh, okay, that's who he is. - And he looks kind of like him too, except his head gets squished. (laughing) - He's very mobile, he's very fast, and space marines don't take cover, so that's good. (laughing) Except when they do, because you've taken so much damage that you better get out or you're gonna die, and then you just hide behind something except you're not stuck to it. - As I can say, yes. The tabletop game, 40 K, covers are extremely important, but they never say you actually get behind it. But in fucking Donabori tickets-- - Yeah, I know, you actually tell your guys to get behind shit. - Well, not this space marine. He's more bad-ass than every other 40 K. - So, in some ways, one of the notes that I made when I saw it the first time and it still won't affect the last time I saw it, because it's basically the same build. I mean, it's a build that's early enough to where you can't even invert the controls in the settings. When you have to hold down back and Y to flip the Y-axis in a dev way. - Oh, it's like a weird dev worker. - Yeah, it's like a dev shortcut. Maybe that's temporary. - There is, you get stuck in animations. So, you'll be going to a combo, and then once you do it, you're just stuck at the end of the move for too long. - 'Cause you're in like chainsawing someone? - No, it doesn't matter if you're chainsawing someone or not, it doesn't matter what you're doing. You're just stuck. - Do you mean you're like-- - Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm saying like in Gears of War, right? You're stuck when you're chainsawing someone. So I was wondering if you're like, 'cause I know in that game you have a chainsaw. - Right, well, but this isn't that kind of game at all. Like, this is not Gears of War. - Are you getting stuck like the animation freezes, or are you stuck in the animation? - No, you're getting stuck as you're waiting for the animation to finish. Like, you're waiting for it to demonstrate just how hard he swung that chainsawed, because it's really important. You know that he swung it so hard that he's fucking stuck going through the animation and recovering from it. I mean, he's fast all the other times, but man, he really needs to do some effort to fucking pull that chainsawed back up. And it's really, for a game that surrounds you with enemies, and that's their big thing, is that they wanna throw dozens and dozens of enemies on the screen at the same time, and they do, and lots of them are shooting at you. - Being stuck is fine as long as you're not getting hit while you're being stuck. - Oh yeah, sure. - You get, you're totally get hit while you're stuck. So it's easy to get caught in animation. I mean, there are lots of little nuances and combat tricks, and that's good. Basically, X is light attack, Y is heavy attack, stop me. If you've heard this one, B is an execution. Executions are instant kills in your minceboy, you're doing them, but not everyone is susceptible to them right away. - Of course, yeah. - So let's say you meet like an orc boy that's bigger than you are. You can either sit there and swing at him over and over again, and he'll, this is another thing, is that heavy enemies, when you hit them with your weapon, it doesn't slow them down, it just like goes through them. - Oh, so there's no impact? - No, and this is something that the God of War does to a certain degree too, that it's not very satisfying to hit big enemies because it's like, your shit just passes through them. - Yeah. - And there's like that little vibration in this little pop, this little knock or whatever, but it's not. - Yeah, and the enemies will like, the big guys will sort of like stagger a little bit, but yeah. - But it doesn't interrupt them or anything like that. There's no, it's not like, this is something that Bayonetta and Ninja Gaiden get right, is that if you hit a big enemy, even if they're big, if you hit them effectively, it staggers them in a way that interrupts them, just like any time your hit, it staggers you and interrupts you, right? - What do you mean hit them effectively? They hit them in their weak spot or hit them in just this place that does damage? - They don't just block it. Like you get around their defenses. - Or like, like in, like the big Cyclops in God of War, you know, they'll raise up their club, and even if you hit them with like, you know, the end of a really strong-- - It still comes down. It still comes down at the same rate. - Which is dumb, it's dumb. Like it means that you are susceptible to being interrupted, but they're not, because it's just gonna do their attack thing. And it takes more work to figure out a combat system where people can be interrupted. It means that they actually have to be effective combatants to hurt you. - Right, yeah. - And unfortunately, Space Marine is sort of caught in the middle of that right now. - That's all right. - But there's still options like clicking in on one of the sticks makes you run. And if you're running and you hit Y, you'll do this like tackle. And the tackle is extremely powerful. It's your closing move. Like, and I've talked before on the podcast about games like this. They need something to close the gap between you and them. - Is this game more like, 'cause I, you know, I still never played it, so I'm wondering, is it more like Transformers in the sense that it's like you should be shooting, but you should also be doing melee attacks, or is it way more melee focused? Like, way like, it's like melee focused-- - And you have a gun. - It's really melee. - It is sort of similar to War for Cybertron, but it's heavier on the melee than it is the shooting. But like, what I was gonna say is that tackle, like, it'll kill smaller enemies outright and something like, say, the little goblin looking things whose name escaped me, it'll just splatter them. But for the big orc dude that I was talking about before, if you hit him with that tackle, it doesn't kill him, but it does make him susceptible to an execution. - So if you're smart-- - Okay, just a quick combo. - You'll, like, let's, you'll run and do a tackle through a bunch of dudes, do a jump forward and away, then turn around and do another tackle into him, days him and do an execution. And that way you can just plow through enemies like that. Otherwise, you're gonna be wasting a lot of time doing combos and stuff like that. - Right, right, right. - And I mean, I was watching people struggle in combat with those situations. It's not an easy game. - Right. - It's not going to be an easy game from what I understand. And they're still working on the difficulty, but it's not easy. And that's fine against some enemies, but the chaos is in the game. And the weird red demon looking things whose name escapes me, Anthony might know what they are. - Bloodletters. - Yes, bloodletters, who teleport and just generally fuck your business up without really any appropriate recourse. Again, they don't get staggered by your attacks. And it makes them not fun to fight because it's like it's combining the worst aspects of something like God of War and Ninja Gaiden. - That's too bad. - In other places, it's not as much of an issue. The shooting feels fine. It's an effective strategy, but you need to make stuff up. - Sure. Well, yeah, and I can imagine that the enemies close on you too quickly to let you just shoot everything. - So, you know, I suppose part of the problem sometimes too is that people don't look at it. I'm sure there are some designers that don't necessarily think, well, this is like stupid game design to have an uninterruptible enemy. They're just like, oh, he's big. Why should he get interrupted? You just have to adapt to that. - Or all the other games work like this. - But the thing is listening to them talk about it, it sounded like they got it. That they understand that you need to always be responsive, that you always need to have combat options that control is important. - Well, just because you have good taste doesn't mean you have like, you know, the ability that lets you match that good taste. So there, I mean, it's still got some time. It comes out in August, I think. - I'm gonna play it either way. - Yeah, I'm sure I'll play it. - Because I just, 'cause I love Warhammer. And I'll be said. - Something about the way that game looks in motion that is really appealing to me. Like, I don't know if it's the enemy animation, like their reactions to-- - It's animated pretty well. - Yeah, it's real expressive and-- - The thing is, all the footage that they're showing, I'm pretty sure is of the PC version. - Of course. - The 360 version looks markedly rougher than the PC version that I saw last year. - Oh, I'll show your PC version of it, yeah, exactly. - And that could just be because it's not finished yet, but it looks like it's running sub-HD. - Sure. - And not in a-- - Probably. - Oh, that's kind of cool the way they pull that off, but in a, man, it's jagged fucking everywhere. - Right. Yeah, that is evident in the video. - I just don't think that that's something that's likely to change. Like, they don't, upping the resolution of a game is not something that happens between alpha and final. - Usually not, no. - There's never really ever been a very good Warhammer fantasy or 40K console game. - I mean, it could, it could still be fun. Like, I'm still looking forward to it. I just, it's in a rough state right now, and they've got some major balancing and combat issues to solve before it comes out. Otherwise, I mean, it's, I'm already worried that it's gonna get buried. - Yeah. - Because it's called Space Marine. (laughing) And Space Marine, I know that it has Space Marines in it. I get that they're important, but Space Marine is the worst fucking title they could have come up with. - Agreed. - I still think Warhammer 40K Titan would have been better, because it's about the, like, you're on a forge world where they're making Titans, and the big risk is that Orcs have invaded, and they're about to get the schematics Titans. - You don't think that, like, somebody walking randomly through a GameStop or a Best Buyer won't go like, Space Marine, huh? I like Space Marines, or I like the idea of Marines in the space, you know? - I don't think big, muscly guy on the cover, like all in red, is gonna catch their attention. - Yeah. - Which is too bad, because there's some really amazing visual design going on and some very intricate shit. And like I said, I'm still looking forward to it, but it's got problems. - Well, speaking of another game that's still kind of rough, but I think has really interesting visual design. This is the last week we saw, we all saw Shadows of the Damned. Hurley Starthord and I-- - We saw Shadows of the Damned. - Shocked Shadows of the Damned. - Every time I've seen that game in video and stuff, I'm like, no thanks. - It's a fucking suit-a-51 game. - It is, it has a place better than any of us - Alien looking arm. - That's really not saying very much. I don't think it doesn't play particularly well. - Yeah. It was, like, it's definitely, all right, what am I trying to say? - If you compare it to any of the Grasshopper manufacturer previous games, it plays like a dream, but it certainly doesn't play like, you know, a modern third person shooter. - It feels like it almost controls like Resident Evil 4. - It almost does control like Resident Evil. That's clearly what they were using as their inspiration. - You can move and shoot, so there's that. - Yeah. - But I feel it's a little bit like Dead Space in that way. - Their characters look really weird to me too. Like the main guy, he looks like-- - That's a overly long limb. - Yeah, he looks like an alien human. - And they animate terribly. - Yeah, they don't animate really well. And it does the whole thing, like if you have to do a repeated action, like jam on the X button, instead of him just like pushing really hard and pushing harder, he like, every X is a push. So, you know, like he has to jam this torch up into this. - So he's just sitting in the-- - It looks like he's, you know-- - He's jacking it off. - Yeah, it looks like he's jacking off this, while it looks like he's female masturbating this torch that he has to jam this larger fireworks thing that he has to jam the torch into. - He's jilling it off. - Yeah. (laughs) - I see. - And, you know, it has like, and here's another thing that they always do with these press events other than just give us a presentation is they keep putting things on God mode. And I fucking hate that. - Right. - Because I can't really tell how the game is gonna play because they had it all on God mode. And what's supposed to happen is when you're, so he's in, you know, this alternate dark world and the darkness is supposed to constantly deplete kind of this soul shield that you have. And once that's gone, then, of course, it starts depleting your health. And the only way around that is to light these flares with, by, you know, doing the masturbating move and the flares temporary light up an area. And that's also when the enemies become vulnerable. And, you know, however they balance this mechanic is kind of-- - When you expose the shadows of the damned, that's very vulnerable. - Exactly. - I see how they got this name. They're fucking clever. (laughing) And so the thing is, you know, since it's on God mode, like being in the darkness-- - Has no suspense at all. - Has no suspense at all. - Exactly. That was the same thing when I played infamous. Like, isn't it cool fighting this giant fucking monster? I'm like, eh, do you hurt me? - There's no risk. There's no risk at all. - Not consequences. - Yeah. And how am I supposed to judge, you know, how is my brain supposed to shoot me that little dopamine reward if I don't feel any risk in the meantime? - It doesn't. - Yeah. - And it doesn't. - It's a pseudo game that's gonna coast by on style and charm. - And it probably will. - For some people, it just limits its appeal. - Yeah, I don't think it's, you know, I think that EA, you know, EA partners, they're trying to push definitely some more marketing muscle behind this than any other pseudo game has ever had. - I guess all the heroes got, right? - Yeah. - The first time we heard about it was like what? Like, it seems like the first item really hurt. Yeah, 'cause we didn't really see it until like February. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it's coming out. - No, there was a trailer like in October. - Right, a trailer, but I'm saying the first time they're like showing the game is February and then it's coming out in what July? - This guy made one of those. - Now it comes out the end of June, which is pushed back two weeks from its original release date. - No more heroes. I look at that game like it's an embarrassment on video games. - Why is that? - The game, the-- - You're sure words. - The gameplay. I mean, running around like collecting pineapples or whatever, you know, just like the whole belittling, like ha ha ha. - It's very meta. - I made a terrible game. Ha ha ha. - It's yeah. - It's gonna coast through his whole game career making terrible games. It's like, oh look, he's sticking to his guns. He's making all terrible games. - Yeah, 'cause there's no other people that made that god hand game, right? It is, right? - No. - No, god hand. - I don't think so. - Is it? - That was, that was commands, right? - I never made, I don't know who you got. - He was, got hand, actually. - But see what, what Grasshopper does is they make lots of generic like titles for Japanese, mostly for Japanese only audiences, like the kind of repetitious titles that would never make it here in the States. - Oh, okay. - And that's how they make all of their money. - It's a sort of from the god, and Shinji Mikami. - Okay. - Oh, did God hand. - Which was another one that was now. - He's like a chief gameplay producer or something random fucking title like that. - And so the thing is, is like these guys, so Grasshopper, you know, that's how they make most of their money, but then they go, and so that they can then go and make the games that they wanna make and don't care about sales. So when it comes to something like No More Heroes, the whole point behind that game was that it's kind of what, it's, No More Heroes is to video games what punk music is to the music scene. - I don't know, that's fair. I'm like, that's, I'm not saying it like pulled it off. I'm saying that that's mostly what the goal was. Is it supposed to be, it's supposed to be kind of a, it's supposed to be as much a critique of video game systems as it is, you know, a game itself. And sometimes it pulls it off, sometimes it doesn't. I didn't play enough of it to really know, but you know, I've seen enough of it played. - Well, they're releasing No More Heroes 2, right? Soon for 360, am I wrong in that? Aren't they real listening? - I remember the Wii game came out, but I think, anyway, sorry. - And the thing about No More Heroes 1 is like, some of the combat was actually really fun. It's just that everything in between the combat was fucking terrible. And a lot of that was intentional. And I think it's because Grasshopper didn't care about making money on a game. You know, Suda just wanted to make a game because he wanted to make a kind of statement out of it. Like, I don't think it was ever meant to be profit. - What's everything that they do for profit? - Well, that's what I was just telling. - No, but I'm saying, like, I'm just wondering, like, what is it? - Oh, you know, like, I don't know, like, I'm curious now. - Well, I've seen a lot, I've seen all the titles 'cause I looked him up on Wikipedia 'cause we were doing this thing for Shadows of the Dan, for Atomics. And like, it's a bunch of games that I've never heard of that I don't even know how they are. - Oh, these are like the budget games. - Yeah, they're the budget games. - They did that ambulance game. - I don't know what that is. - I think there's like this Japanese ambulance game, and I think there might be zombies in it. - Huh, but anyway, like, they basically do games just for the Japanese market a lot of the times. And some of them come over here, some of them don't. They're never really big releases. They don't have a big marketing budget. But that's the thing with Shadows of the Damned is like, because this actually is getting the big marketing push, because this is a major release for them, it's not the kind of, I don't think they can do the whole No More Heroes thing with it, where you can't just kind of ride on a particular aesthetic goal as, you know, sort of your mantra for the game design. I think for Shadows of the Damned, it's gonna have to actually be a decent game to play, not just make some kind of a Morpheus statement. - Yeah, they can't hang their hat on like-- - Oh, they do anime games, right? Like Samurai Champloo and Blood Plus One Night Kiss. - Oh, that's right, yeah. - Okay. - Yeah, there you go. - They did Fatal Frame 4. Did they? - Oh wow, I guess so. - You know, I guess sometimes, you know, I think cynically, like, and my cynical mind immediately goes to thinking like, the whole thing you were talking about, Matt, about punk rock, you know, No More Heroes is kind of like, was that, was that the goal, or was that the excuse afterward? Like, oh shit, we have a shitty game, it's punk rock. - It sounds like that's the excuse, but also look at like Killer Seven, which was, you know, the one before and over here. - Yeah, okay, so that's the other game they did. - Yeah, which also played like ass. - I could not say that game. - Yeah, but it was-- - But had a really interesting visual style. - It was all style, it was all style. And, you know, that's the thing is that like, that's the, because of that kind, because of the history of like, Killer Seven and then No More Heroes, I mean, it makes me think that the goal of this particular style that he's doing whatever with those games is genuine. It's not like an after the fact, oh wait, this was a shitty game. In fact, they've even come out and said, you know, before, I'm trying to remember back to when we did No More Heroes on the One Up Show, because I mean, that was the big thing too, is that it was like, is this just a shitty game that they're making excuses for? But then somebody said, well, no, like you go back and you look at what they said before and all along, it was supposed to be like this. That's kind of the point, you know? So, I don't know that it's kind of like anything, you know? It's a lot of people don't like punk music because they say, here's a bunch of no talent hacks, just, you know, just pounding on instruments. - Sure, sure, I understand that completely. - And it makes it see, and you know, that's not to say that punk music, I don't think punk music is bad, you know? There's a lot of extremely talented people that do punk music, but it takes a particular amount of skill to make, it's sort of like intent, it's sort of like going back and doing, you know, eight bit retro graphics, you know? Like, it's the same kind of thing. I could come back to you and I could say, you know, well, this game is eight bit just because these guys are shitty artists, you know? Or did they do it because it was intentional? And it's kind of a fine line to figure out where one thing falls on one side or the other. And I'm not saying that no more heroes falls on one side or the other, I'm just saying what their intent was in making the game. - Yeah, he's, I mean, talking to him, I wanna like his shit, I do. - Yeah. - Because he's a very funny, self-effacing dude who's into some of the same stuff I am. Like, I totally understand that. And I mean, I had kind of a cool interview with him last time at GDC about it. And he's into like American exploitation cinema and grind house stuff and Japanese exploitation cinema. Yeah. I just, I don't know, I wish that he could get someone to make his games with him that was good at making the game part. - Yeah, you know, like we had a conversation, the last time we did show about percussionist John Cage. - Yes. - And Jesus Christ, it's such a pretentious show. - You know, I'm just real amized at all, you dick-bags. - We didn't talk about that on the show. - Not on the show. - We talked about that at dinner. We talked about John Cage. Look him up if you wanna know. - And so Arthur, like, so what I'm trying to think is like someone would go to a John Cage performance where he would just sit there and do nothing. - Right. - I understand that, I don't know if critique is the word, I understand that statement in music. I understand that. But with games, I feel like because it is more of a product, less of a performance, you know, I feel like it's harder to get away with that maybe. - I don't know, when I would go watch someone performing live, it's not necessarily products, but I'm going there with an expectation to be entertained. I mean, so if he's not entertaining. - I mean, the John Cage thing is a performance art piece. You're going there for what it provokes in you. - Yeah, so I mean, like, you guys should say what the John Cage thing, I know you touched on it, Tyler, but you should say exactly what he did. And this was back, this was in the '60s? - Yeah, like '60s, '70s, any of you through the '50s, popular precutors, but in New York, he had like a couple of famous concerts where he did this. He did a lot of things like this, one, he walked out on stage and sat down at his piano theater full of people and didn't play a single note for over four minutes or whatever. And that was the name of the piece, you know? And his whole thing was, he was a big part of the existential movement that was growing at the time. And his whole thing was, oh, the audience sounds were the composition, what you could hear are the sounds from the street, that was the composition. You know, and so, you know, from-- - He was about composition without music. Yeah, I don't know, I think, and it's weird because I don't wanna be one of these people that does not consider games an art, you know? I do see, is it an art form, it is a growing art form, but like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm going to let them get away with it. - Right, and I would posit that part of the reason why you feel that way is because when you're the person behind the controller and you're being frustrated by the mechanics that are being presented to you, that's a lot more real of an emotion to you than it is maybe, to go to a John Cage show and-- - Well, and hearing about a John Cage show is one thing than going and paying to experience that. - Right, right. - I mean, I think there's a certain frustration that you would have paying. - People did walk out of his performance. - That's exactly what I'm saying. So, the difference is that you anticipate maybe playing this game and the idea of spending money to experience that probably kind of sounds frustrating. Just like, to me, when I think about the John Cage thing, I'm like, "Motherfucker, I'll be pissed." (laughing) - I mean, you would never have attended his stuff unless you knew exactly what to expect. - And I would say that it seems to me like at least for Suda's past stuff, I can't really say about Shadows of the Dam, but at least for his past stuff, you've got to know what you're getting yourself into, otherwise you're going to have that kind of reaction. Because it's like, you're doing these really stupid minigames where you're doing the same shit over and over and over and over again. And if that's not a critique on the common video game system, I don't know what is. You know, it's like, I feel a lot of times like when I'm playing a video game, I'll know that I'm being manipulated. You know, that like, I'm getting my little dopamine spurt because like, the game is designed in order to make that happen. You know, I feel that way. - I feel that way. - All the time. - You like my spurt. - I hear you like I'm-- - You know, like World of Warcraft is like the biggest offender of this and yet I still play it. - Like, I'm constantly aware that I'm always running a Skinner box in my video games. But like, you know, I feel in some ways like, you know, like Bioshock in a way did a better critique better. Like, they did a good game and they made that seem sort of point. You know. - How did they make that point? - The, I guess their whole, my takeaway from the first Bioshock was sort of how the player wasn't necessarily in direct control of their destiny and you know, being a pawn in the game of Fontaine and this and that. - Yeah, that's kind, that's, that's along the, that's kind of along the lines. - Well, it's not exactly-- - Yeah, but what I'm talking about is more like, you know, repetitious action. - Yeah, it's more salient in that situation for sure. - Yeah, yeah. And you know, I, and I think that making you feel that directly through poor gameplay that you are still participating in is, it may even be more effective if you can get past the fact that the mechanics are genuinely awful. - Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. - So I mean, yeah, I mean, like, and it's, it's a really difficult thing to come down 100% on one side or the other because like, like I said, I never played a whole lot of no more heroes. I couldn't do it. I couldn't get into it. And most of what I know about that game and people's reaction to that game is from the people around me that did play it and did get through it. And perhaps maybe wanted to justify the six to eight hours they just wasted or however long that game was, you know. So I don't really know. But as far as shadows of the dam goes, my biggest thing about it, especially at this event, was first of all, the shooting was only okay. - I think that's being kind. - The, I don't know, I got it. I understood it after a while. I was searching through weapons quickly and I felt like, okay, you know, I'm getting my head shots. I'm doing the mechanics. It just didn't feel like anything all that special, but it wasn't especially bad either. But my biggest thing is that everybody tells me that the thing about shadows of the dam is how fucking awesome the music is. And I couldn't hear a goddamn thing 'cause they have this event in a club with loud music playing. - No, it wasn't that kind of music. - No, no, no, shadows of the dam actually, supposedly has really good music, but I wouldn't know. - I know, someone at the club. - Oh yeah, the club was totally like that, yeah. - Over your game. - Yep. - I mean, the voice acting is not good. - No, the voice acting is not good. - It's really obnoxiously bad. (laughing) - Oh man. - Man, you briefly brought up World of Warcraft and I tried something today. - Well, it is an iPhone game. Like, it is crazy impressive. It's a game-off game that should already tell you that it's keeping something, yes, and it is a total wild clone called Chaos in Order Online. - I heard about this actually, remember? Monthly subscription fee, when you buy the game, it gets you three months. - And it is exactly the same, isn't it? - It is, the only difference is that for now, you can only be a human and an elf, an undead or an orc. And so, there are two on each faction. - Right. - But totally wow. I mean, you play with a virtual joystick or you can tap where you want them to go, but you interface with guys and instead of an exclamation point, they have a gold scroll above their head to get a request. But man, it's like, you know? It's like game-off did it? And there it is, it exists. - It exists. - For 99 a month, you can play their MMO online. - Wow. And I remember seeing the screenshots for this and going like this, even like, the art style is exactly like, wow. - It is crazy. - We were looking and we're like, "Man, that is their shield texture." - Yeah, exactly. - It's like blizzard shield texture. I don't know, this is crazy. - It makes you wonder like, why Blizzard doesn't pull a valve and just says, "Oh, we're gonna buy you guys." And I'm gonna call this Warcraft. - It's just crazy. - Warcraft, iPhone. - Yeah, I mean. - It's sort of like what Arthur said in the past when we've talked about game-off games is that like, these guys are clearly competent at making solid game engines for iOS devices. It would be nice if some time they take all this money, they're making off these clones and do something original with it. - Yeah. - Just a lot of the problem is that a lot of times the games they choose to make clones of don't lend themselves necessarily to iOS controls. And so they're just kind of like shoehorn in, a virtual stick and a couple of things. And you're like, "Oh, you play it because it's a gimmick." You're like, "Oh, this is like uncharted with crappy controls." - Right. - That's interesting. - Which actually did uncharted with crappy controls. - Yeah. - No, but instead do something awesome. - Yeah. - Well, I mean, I've said before, you know, people talked about popcap in almost the same, almost the same way as we talk about game-off today. - Yeah, 'cause it's a popcap with the exception of a thing like bejeweled, didn't, I mean, what, man. Like they don't even try when they're like, "Starfront." Instead of "Starfront." (laughing) - This game-off is like the fucking thing that your parents, you would go to like the grocery store and you talked to your mom into going to the toilet for a while. - Meared by the go-bot instead of the transport. - Yeah. - Except it's actually not bad. - Yeah. - You like get it home and be like, "Yeah, he's all right." - Yeah, it's actually pretty good. - It's in the G.I.J.O. vehicles? - Yeah, exactly. (laughing) Yeah, I just saw that today. And I was like, "Man, what a fucking, it's like the first portable MMO I've really seen." - And what did you think when did you started playing it? Other than it's a wow-club, is it actually? - I thought even the virtual stick and stuff worked okay in this because in wow, you don't typically need to like move in a hurry. Like granted in some high-level raids and stuff, you have to be positioned really specifically. Anytime you're fighting monsters, you're pretty much running up, finding a spot and sitting there when then hitting abilities. - So how many abilities can you have available? - I've only played through the, like a tutorial so far. - 'Cause it seems like, you know, there's no way you could do the wow action bars. You know, it would have to be limited 'cause of the screen space. - Yeah, I imagine it's fairly limited. But even still, I mean, it's just like, someone's finally done it. They've got like a legitimate MMO portable. - Yeah, on iOS spicy. - I mean, it's not the first. I know that like in Japan, there's been portable MMOs as well. - Sure. - But yeah, like here in America, this is like, oh shit. - Well, and it's actually like 3D and everything too. - Yes, exactly. And the speaking of wow clones, I also played at least six more hours of Rift this last week, six to eight hours more of Rift. - A lot of people love that game. - You know what, my problem with it is that it's so much like wow, that at times I'm like, by the, like I can only really do about three hours of it at a time because like at the end of that three hours, I'm like, wow, this quest is having me do the exact same thing that I've probably spent close to 30 days of my actual life, you know, doing in wow already. And it's the one thing, and this seriously is the only thing that I can really think of that Rift has over wow, is the whole Rift events that I talked about a couple weeks ago when I first played Rift. - Yeah. - And those are fun, but after a while they become really formulaic too. And it becomes just about going into the Rift so that you can kill the creatures with the dynamic public groups that happen around the Rift. And you collect planar essence, which becomes a currency that you use to then, you know, buy items with. And it's like, oh, okay, well, I wanna buy this item. Well, I'm gonna have to go into about 5,000 more Rift battles so that I can get enough planar essence to buy this item. And it's like, dude, no. I can't do the endgame grind this early in the game. - The only MMO I've seen recently that I think sounds potentially interesting to me. Not even that I wanna play it, I just wanna learn more about it, is that one Terra that's coming out. - Yeah, it's by the same company too, isn't it? - I think so, and the reason the Terra is interesting is because even though it's an MMO, it's like an action, it's like a character action game where if you'd manage to roll out of the way and dodge an attack, you don't get hit. And then you have to get in there and strike, strike, strike, strike, use your ranged weapons. It's like, it's interesting that someone's doing an MMO that you actually have to kind of be good at games. - It looks legit too. - It looks really great too, yeah. - And the funny thing is with that is like, I feel like an MMO that actually relies on player skill means that it's going to decrease the player base. - Oh, it's going to be significantly smaller. - And they have to be aware of that. And I can only think of that as being a good thing. (laughs) - Let's see. Yeah, I saw that. - So at least in terms of my comfort as a player. And I've seen videos of it, it's a beautiful game. It's crazy. - Yeah, it looks pretty incredible. That's the thing about all those Trion Worlds games that are coming out is they are all very high budget because that is an extremely well-funded company. - Yeah. - Very, very well-funded company. - Which is nice because for a long time we've had a lot of MMOs that came out and you're like, "Ah, this is all right." But it kind of feels piecemeal or not, like they feel very unfinished. - Right. - And see what you want about-- - That's what you want about-- - That's what you wanted about. - That's what you wanted about. - That's what you wanted about. - That's what you wanted about. - Exactly, yeah. (laughs) - And see what you want or a DC Universe online. - Yeah. - Or say what you want about Telara, but it's a complete game and it works and it's actually really pretty. - Yeah. Is EverQuest up? - Is EverQuest still up? - Like EverQuest and EverQuest too? - Oh yeah, they're still running. - I mean right now. Like were they related to the PSN stuff? - Oh, I know what you mean. - SOE stuff is still running I think. - Is it? - Yeah, different count. - My, some of my friends and I that were all on a WOW guild together, we went and pre-made our Star Wars online guild or the old republic-- - Like reserved the URL. - Reserved the guild name and everything. (laughs) - Well, now I have to know, what is it? - No, you don't get to know. - Maybe not on the mic. - Not on the mic, yeah. Because it's like this is like a private guild for my friends in Orange County and I and stuff and they probably wouldn't appreciate me saying it online. - Well fair enough. - It seems like also a co-tour is like smaller groups. Not like WOW or you can group up with a lot of people anyway. - I would be surprised that-- - I would be surprised if the old republic doesn't have, at some point, dungeons that they want large groups for. Just because some people, yeah, in-game stuff. Because for some people, the in-game organization stuff is what they get off on. It's like how certain people just love being-- - I know that my WOW friends and I if our guild was actually bigger and could have done like the 10 and 20 man raids, we probably would have been playing a lot more, probably wouldn't have burnt out on it so quickly because at that point it becomes a social exercise as opposed to just a mechanical exercise. - And like a crazy team, like almost like a, I don't wanna say it's physical because it's not but I'm saying it's much more like a football game where you like know that everyone goes into it with a game plan and is about to execute this play together. - And the thing that I keep hearing about tour is that you're supposed to take on lots of-- - It's a bit just tour. - You're supposed to take on lots of enemies at once. - And all the preview builds I've played, I could always take on like 10 things at once. - I will also expect except Thor. (both laughing) - Anyway. - I don't know why, I just assumed that they weren't planning on doing the big party stuff. - I would assume not with launch, but I think if they wanna retain players after they max out. - But man, I love the idea of a multiplayer RPG where the dialogue and the story stuff happens between all the different players. I mean, that's what I wanted with like Baldur's gate and shit like that for, you know, I wanted the multiplayer to be a multi-hero adventure. And so that's actually what I'm really looking forward to in this game. I kind of don't even care about the combat and stuff. I just wanna have a multi-person RPG to play. - Or just imagine when they decide to work on the Mass Effect multiplayer game, you know? You can fucking have some Mass Effect conversations, do you? That'd be awesome. - Yeah, and that's basically what this is. It just, you know, each time there's a dialogue choice that comes up, it randomly rolls who in the party gets to reply. And so, you know, you can sort of-- - Which is after you both pick a response. - Oh, is it? Oh, I didn't know that. But anyway, it's so cool. - At least it was when I played it. - Right. - I still haven't played a while ago. - Anyone else played it. - Combat was so generic. - Played it in the, I don't know, any other games. - Playing Crysis 2, playing through it on PCS PC. - The PCS PC game. - Are you enjoying it? - I assume you are. - It is, man. It's a lot of fun. Right off the bat, it's, you know, I don't know, 'cause like, I just came off playing Crysis 1 as well. And I just got to the skill level in Crysis where I felt like I could run into the quote unquote, sandbox areas and kind of make my own fun, you know? But, and so I feel like that's more immediately accessible in Crysis 2, but it might be less dense because, you know, maybe some things like destruction. The environments aren't as big, so there aren't as many vehicles. - I think it's more dense. - See, I haven't got that far yet, so I don't know. - Well, it's more dense, but less spread out. - Yes, true. So, so yeah, it's a lot of fun. And I'm seeing the buggy AI pretty frequently. Like, guys getting stuck on this. - When the AI works in that game, it's awesome. - Yeah. - When the AI is buggy, it's difficult to miss. - Right. - Man, but, you know, I mentioned earlier in my struggle, you know, I'm trying to really get my fucking mouse and keyboard skills down for Battlefield 3. But at this point, I'm wondering like, you know, the trade off is the quick aiming with the mouse or what I really prefer as a player, which is analog movement control. Because a big part of me when I'm doing shooters, if I'm aiming down the barrel and I'm trying to adjust my shot, I usually adjust it by movement, not by aim. - Well, it's harder to do on PC. - Yeah, on a controller, you definitely want to adjust with movement rather than aim. It's always more fine-tuned that way. But yeah, on the PC, you know, you're stuck with the digital keyboard. - Yeah, it's on or off. - Yeah, it's on or off. - And also, I don't like that as a player, it's sort of an experiential aspect to the game where when I'm playing on a console, you know, and this might sound completely dumb and frivolous to a lot of people, but I'll walk into a room slowly and look around, whereas like on a Mac, I'm sorry, on a PC, I have one speed, you know? It's like, I feel more like a robot. - So my question to you is, why don't you just plug in a controller? Because Battlefield 3, you're gonna be able to play with a controller. - I know. - I don't know that that's the case. - Yeah, I wanna-- - Flat out, you couldn't have bad company too. - I feel like they had to have learned by now. - We'll see. - Yeah, either way-- - But you definitely can with crisis. - Yeah, like let's just say for the sake of argument that you can use the controller in Battlefield 3, Mike, I'm worried, what's the better skill to have? The quick aim, or where I feel more like a ninja with all my other kids? - It's on what you're doing. - Yeah, it would depend a lot on the classes too. - Yeah. - And whether or not you go into vehicles-- - Yeah, vehicles are definitely-- - People use joysticks for vehicles on Battlefield. They'll switch between joysticks and keyboard amounts. - Yes, that's what I always do. - That's what I always do. - Jumped in helicopters, had the sticks set up-- - It's the only way. - It's the only way. Yeah, like, flying a, like, I knew that people flew the planes in the helicopters with a mouse and keyboard and they got really effective at it, not for me. I always switched to joystick when I get into vehicles in Battlefield every time. And I don't know, I would say that overall, like, if you're looking for a game to train up your mouse and keyboard skills, you know, like, Crisis 2, I'm sure, is a good one, but Team Fortress 2 is great too because there's a lot of gateway drugs in that one, you know, but with the pyro and the medic and everything, you don't have to be infinitely precise. - Can you use a controller on Team Fortress 2 on PC? - I don't know. - I have no idea. - 'Cause fuck, the controller support in Portal 2 is good. - Yeah, I can believe that 'cause it felt really good when I was playing it on the PS3, it felt perfect. - I might as well have been playing on a 360 except for the fact that I had achievements that didn't actually mean anything. - Right. (laughs) - Sorry, it's Team achievements. - Yeah. - It made nothing to me. - I don't think achievements mean it. Achievements to me, like I've said too many times, are just a record of what I've done. - They-- - Team achievements occasionally give you physical items. - Occasionally. - Like 360 achievements occasionally give you physical items. - Yeah. - But you know-- - But you know. - They're both equally worthless in the scheme of things, really. - Yeah. But you know, like the weird feeling I have trying to master mouse and keyboard, so like the game when I'm really proficient at a controller is like when I'm playing a shooter, I feel like those dreams that you have, where you're trying to run as fast as you can, and you're going nowhere. Because I know how good I am on a controller, and it's like just simple shit like crouching or pulling out my pistol. I'm like fumbling, you know. - What's really gonna fuck you up is when you do switch to a controller in Chris 2, because you should. Then you go online and play with it, and end up doing okay. (laughing) 'Cause that totally happened to me. - Wow, I think I am gonna switch. - Wow, that's cool. - I'll try a controller, man. I just don't know if I can-- - Do it. - I don't know if I can get to a comparable skill on mouse and keyboard. That would be like somehow I'll close the gap on how good I am on a controller. - I would say as far as single player of crisis 2 is probably not in a time that's worth it to you. But I mean overall you really should get competent at mouse and keyboard just 'cause it's a fun way to play certain games. - Yeah, it's how I preferred to play Portal. I never felt like I wanted to use a controller. - And I totally agree with you about the movements, walking slow and walking fast and stuff like that. But when it comes down to a first person shooter, and you're like you need to move left very slowly, you just learn how to tap the button. And I would say that just how you learn to compensate with your aim by moving really slowly with your left analog stick for the movement, you learn how to compensate with your aim by tapping into discrete increments. And it becomes just as useful as a skill with mouse and keyboard. Like you learn how games move the character at different speeds. So if I need to move to the left the right amount, that's how long I hold down the key for. And I know that sounds like really basic and obvious, but it's kind of a skill that you fall into naturally after a while to where you're aiming just to the right of the guy. And you know that your muscle memory taps the button just the right amount to move you over and headshot him. - Yeah. - So you know, it's a fun skill. - I mean, but going by that argument, you develop some more compensation for the controller. - Yeah, I'm sure that you would. - It's just tough 'cause the main thing is, I want to be able to play Battlefield 3 on PC multiplayer and I want to be able to compete. That's the main thing. That's the ultimate. That's the big question mark above my head. - Yeah, I've never been able to choose controller over mouse and PC and vice versa. I've never been able to choose one over the other. Like I just like them both in different situations. - I'm gonna tell you my biggest concern for Battlefield 3 and it has nothing to do with the controller. It has everything to do with the fact that they're adding prone back into the fucking game. - Yeah, I'm concerned. - Why does that make it? Why are you concerned about what is hide more? - Yeah, it hides the snipers more. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And that's what every Battlefield game has degenerated into is like just snipers. - It'd be funny if they didn't include it in multiplayer and only include it in some way. - Yeah, that'd be funny. But I mean, that's kind of one of the things to one of the ways in which tribes is superior over many shooters is that the sniper, it's a big red beam that you can see exactly where it came from. Everybody can see a sniper when he shoots. And so there's no hiding. There's no invisible projectiles. You know, exactly where every sniper shot came from. The whole team, everybody on the map can see it 'cause it's just a big laser beam all across the sky. - All the way across the sky. - All right. Well, we're in Taborate. - Yay. - And then we're gonna come back with some problems. - Don't worry. (upbeat music) ♪ You're married, you're part of me, you know ♪ ♪ You are, you are, you are ♪ ♪ But marry, you're part of me, you know ♪ ♪ You are, you are, you are ♪ ♪ But marry, please, part of me ♪ ♪ Truth ain't gonna change the way you like ♪ ♪ You ain't gonna change the way you like ♪ ♪ You are married, you are, you are, you are, you are ♪ - Michael strikes him. And he says, "Do you think that the Steam integration opened a "back door for the attackers taking down PSN?" - No. - Yeah. - Not related. - Not related. - Awesome. - Ta-da. - Don't fall. - I'm glad we didn't. - Because Valve is a software company that knows how to make a fucking secure service. (laughing) - So, this is a really silly email. Do it from Dana and he says-- - The same Dana? - What? - The same Dana that's written a couple times. - Mm-hmm. He says, "He also knows Matt. "Matt knows me from the one up show box that I sent him." - Oh, that's true. - He says, "Dana Loretta." - I was a little behind and caught up on some past episodes and a few weeks ago, Matt mentioned how much of humanity squats to go shit. (laughing) I was healthier for you. For some reason, this topic motivated me to write you if only to share a link, www.naturesplatform.com. (laughing) Where you can find out more about this, as well as a product that's supposed to let you use this method with a standard Western toilet. (laughing) - What? Like, why are you gonna invent a product you're gonna carry around? - You know, I don't even wanna know. I don't think he was on a perfectly gun toilet. (laughing) - I love it. - I don't wanna know. - Thanks, Dana. (laughing) - Joseph writes in. How is, why is Tyler such a cool motherfucker? How does he do it? - Pop. - You know, I've been trying to figure that out, actually. Like, you know, you don't see it every week, but Tyler is far and away the best dressed motherfucker in the room. - Ah. - Every week, it's like, "Man, where can I get clothes like that?" - Comes with consequences. - Jamie writes in. And Jamie says, "Do you think we could ever see a Samus "as a girl moment reveal in a game for someone "who is homosexual or bisexual? "Other than a BioWare games love option, "there's never been a great LGBT character in games." - I mean, wouldn't it be amazing if like in Half Life 3, the first line that Gordon says is, "I'm not into girls." (laughing) - I mean, to be fair, it's rare that any character discusses their sexuality. - Except in BioWare RPGs, yeah. - Right. It's just, I think the assumption is that they're straight, which, you know, is a point of privilege and general gender and. - All that good stuff. - An orientation bias, but. - Well, I don't think that-- - Probably because a lot of the people making the games are in that, yeah. - Which factors into that whole idea of privilege and gender bias, like people just assume, "Oh, well, if they don't say anything, they're straight." - You know? - But that would be actually pretty cool, I think. - Yeah. - If it was revealed at the end of Bullet Storm, that Grayson was like totally gay for Ishi or something. - No way, dude. It's like, "Oh, it's all Marcus and Dom, man." (laughing) That's the one everybody wants. - Well, yeah, Dom's wife is dead. He's kind of lonely. They're in the field a lot, you know, so. - Yeah, might as well. - No, they're birthing farms where they can just bang it out. (laughing) - So the one I wanted to read was from Nick Higgins. It's a quick one. He says, "Hey, I just got steam and bought Team Fortress 2 "and was wondering what games you would recommend "and if you could give me a shout-out "so that I can get some friends." And I think he means friends for his team ID, not friends for-- - What's his team ID? - His Nick Higgins. N-I-C-H-I-G-G-E-N, all one word. So go friend that guy and play Team Fortress 2 with him. I do not endorse whether or not he's actually cool. - But-- - I mean, he listens to this show, so that's a pretty big mark against him. - Yeah, exactly. But as far as other steam games go for Mr. Nick, you know, they-- - Just talk about Portal 2, like crazy. - Yeah, exactly. They have just about everything on there that you could-- - Yeah, I mean-- - Enough to keep you occupied for the next 50 years. - Did you get the orange box or did you just buy Team Fortress 2? - That's a good point, 'cause the orange box would be the way to go. - 'Cause what the holy hell were you thinking? (both laughing) - Yeah, good point. - Left or dead? - Yeah, left or dead? - Like pretty much all of our stuff is-- - And you should probably have it at all. - Yeah. - You should probably have all of it. - Plants vs. Zombies. - There you go. - That's a good one. - Julian writes in and says a friend of mine was listening to an interesting lecture in her sense and perception class. The professor was talking about the actual reason why some people need to invert their right analog sticks when playing games. I myself need to invert my look, but I could never explain why I needed to do it other than the fact that it just felt right. It turns out that it is actually something about the way the mind works. People who invert their stick, people who invert theirs look like I do, or like I do many, okay. People who invert like I do, tend to see the right analog stick as the character's head. When I pull back on the stick, in my mind, it's like I'm pulling back on the character's head, making him look up. People who default method of the stick think of it as the character's eyes. So pressing up on the stick makes the character's eyes look up. - That's super interesting. - Sure. - I want to know if the way they discovered that is like they put someone in an FMRI, like while they play video games, that would be fucking amazing. - That would be really cool. Yeah, to see if different areas of your mind light up. - Yes, that's what I want to know. - That would be super cool. I know for me, like I don't play inverted anymore, but for most of my life, I would just play whatever the default with the game was. So if it was inverted, I would play inverted. If it was normal, I'd play normal. - Thankfully, the 360 just inverts everything for me. - Oh yeah, you can just set it to be default. - That's nice. - It used to be that you could set it so that it would switch sticks whenever possible to, but that never seems to work. - Oh, I'll bummer. Probably never got implemented correctly by developers. - Yeah, they fuck. It's a regular occurrence to watch them. Fuck that shit up still. - That's kid Jackson, right, son? And he says, "I just realized that in Pokemon, "you are pretty much forced by strangers "hiding behind street corners "to put your pets into life-threatening battles. "And if you lose, they will forcibly take your money "and then leave you, a little kid, blacked out on the street." He's like, "Isn't this straight up robbery "our elements of street crime "and pet abuse acceptable to the ESRB "as long as the game is cute? "Is the nature of robbery within the system "of Pokemon battles but holds Pokemon back "from being an MMORPG, a massively multiplayer online "robbery per active game?" And lastly, if you're a Pokemon trainer yourself, would you be actively engaging and robbing people on the street? Or would you be the ones running around and saving fainted little children? - I don't think the ESRB is Captain reductive. Captain reductive. (laughing) - I mean, it's true. In the scheme of things, the whole system of Pokemon is ridiculous. You're like, "I love this pet." Now go fucking kill this other guy. (laughing) I just don't want it. - Yeah, but it's not about the pets, it's about being the very best, the best it ever was, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. - Could also be known as Michael Vico, come on. (laughing) - No, I don't think so. - Yeah, probably not. - No. - So here's one from Louis Williams, and I'm reading it only because it says a question for Matt and Arthur. - So this is about being bald. - That's what I thought too, but it actually says, on the 100th episode I heard Arthur under his breath mention how he hates object-oriented programming. I also vaguely remember hearing Matt in an old episode, but on the days he spent as a computer science major. What are Arthur's problems with 00? - And Matt's problems with CS. I'm just curious to hear the complaints since I'm a junior and a CS major at a college in the south. - Aye. - Yes, when you're signing off and say at dirty tea like the drink, I always expect you to say at talking orange, like the fruit. - I haven't seen it talking orange before. (laughing) My only experience with computer programming was using MaxMSP and Jitter in college. I don't know if anybody, if any of you guys have used it before. - I have not. - It's an object-oriented programming thing that is predominantly used by performance artists at this point, I think, and just like basic programmers. - Really, wow. - Because it's just, I mean, it's just object-oriented programming like it's gates and functions and stuff like that that you drop into a visual format that you can do crazy shit with video and audio with. But it's very obtuse and I didn't like that class and the teacher wasn't very good, even though he was a pretty famous artist. - So it may be the teacher that was the problem and not necessarily object-oriented programming. - Yeah, and I mean, I did a little bit of Python too, and I don't know. Like, just the vagaries of computer programming and the very strict semantics required in computer programming don't appeal to me. I like the looser, more fluid semantics of, say, CSS. - Yeah, yeah. - Because it's easier to just say what I want in CSS and not worry about the semantics because it's just very simple. - Yeah, I totally agree. - See, with the object, what is it called? - Object-oriented programming. - Object-oriented programming. I have a little bit of experience with these systems and like, the thing I like about them is you can, it's like you can see the logical chains within the system, but if you ever wanna add something, like that's outside of it or add onto it, that's the part where I'm just like, fuck. I don't know programming language. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. - Well, my, to answer the part about my experience with being a CS major, keep in mind that I was a CS major in 1994 and 1995. - Sure, oh. - So this is, that's fucking Stone Age. I mean, my classes were in Pascal for Christ's sake. - Is that before C? - It was, it definitely came out before C and my second year as a CS major was when they stopped using Pascal and just started having everybody do C, which for all of us, we were like, "Yes, get rid of Pascal, let us do C." And it turned out that I was just as bad at C as I was at Pascal. I'm just not- - It sucked at computers, which was- - Yeah, exactly. My problem was is that what I wanted was I wanted to learn how to make games, but there weren't any game programs around at that time, not one. The only thing that you could do is wait until you got into graduate level courses and then maybe you could do some graphics programming of some kind, but I wasn't gonna spend four years at college programming fucking back-end banking spreadsheet creation software in order to get to that point. - Now you just go download Unity. - Yeah, exactly. - It sounds like a barrel of laughs. - I think current CS majors, you probably have it a lot better than I did if games is your ultimate goal. - Mitch writes in. - And everyone else, wake back up. - What? - Since we just put half our fucking audience to sleep. Wow, whatever. - I probably wasn't the only computer programmer out there. - Yeah, the listeners. So this is from Mitch. He says, "I have the unfortunate privilege "of living in Alabama, 23, "and have always had a passion for producing video. "I didn't have much help where I grew up with, "so I went to California and started film school. "I attended Brooks Institute of Photography "first semester before circumstances "for some move back home. "I started a small production company "and did some pretty cool work until the bottom fell out, "and I didn't have enough business to keep it up. "I've since taken a few different nothing jobs "over the years to make money, "but I've never lost the dream of creating my own videos. "I don't want to work in the movie industry. "I've always been drawn more to documentary-style filming "as well as interviews and other short productions. "He said, "I would love to work for a company "like Revision 3 or Twit or work for a website doing videos "like the IGN or guys that are five. "I'm not terribly picky. "I just want to shoot and edit. "I don't care where." - I don't know that you really want to work at Revision 3. - He says, "I have a good bit of experience "and enough footage to make a demo reel. "Unfortunately, going back to school "would be impossible for me at this point. "Do you guys have any advice or know anything I can do "to help me realize my dream?" - I think those companies more interested in your demo reel. - They are. Your demo reel is more important than you going back to school. - Yeah, a website with them having an awesome demo reel. - Yeah, your demo reel is going to sell you more than anything else. - Put that shit on Vimeo, probably. - Yeah, exactly. And Revision 3 might seem like a fine goal, but it's definitely not going to realize that dream that you want, at least not yet. Revision 3 is still a company that's very much so struggling. - As is current. - As is current, yeah. - Any new media company, basically. - Totally, they're all struggling. Nobody's figured out how to make money yet. And so I would say that, yeah, do your demo reel. And I would also say that DSLRs are definitely the most cost-effective way to go in terms of your pipeline. They're so great. I mean, that's what we use all the time in Area 5. And there's definitely a new line of cameras coming out. Pro-sumer level cameras from the big companies like Canon and Sony that are going to make the DSLR workflow kind of obsolete over the next, I don't know, maybe two, three years or so. But that's only going to benefit the small-time filmmaker because DSLRs are just going to become cheaper. And unfortunately, the glass isn't going to become any cheaper because when you're a DSLR filmmaker, you're only as good as your glass. So just if you happen to get like a Canon body or something like that, you just keep a lookout all the time at the used camera sites and on eBay and stuff like that. And occasionally you'll find some really good deal on some old Zeiss lenses or something that people are trying to get rid of. So that's my suggestion. Go DSLR and have a really good demo reel. And also, there's no better time for this guy than now. I mean, it's just-- It is a pretty fantastic time to be doing video editing because so much stuff is available at a competitive price. I mean, think about the fan-made half-life stuff or the fan-made Fallout New Coca-Cola movie. Like the software, at this point, is more expensive than the hardware. Exactly. Yeah. Film technology has finally been democratized in the way that music technology has been democratized for so long. It's great. Mostly. Mostly. Can't quite edit a video on an iPad yet. No. Alex. My movie doesn't count. And he says, has any game ever had a soundtrack so good, you were compelled to buy it? Assassin's Creed 2. Sword and sorceries. Sword and sorcerie would be one of the first ones. Yeah. That should be number one on your list with a bullet. I love the Katamari soundtrack. Other than easy ones like Grand Theft Auto Vice City. I mean, that's kind of a-- It's a bunch of licensed tracks. That's true. And yeah, it doesn't really count, maybe. And then there's a little big planet has an excellent, excellent soundtrack. That's totally worth buying. Which a lot of that's licensed, too, though. It's true. Mass Effect 2 had a great soundtrack. But as far as we'll actually go out of my way to buy, the Sword and Sorcerie has genuine good songs. It's not like listening to a quote unquote soundtrack. When the Tron movie soundtrack came out, everyone went out and bought it. And the remix version has just come out. That's the album everyone thought they were getting. I don't know that that's true. I actually really liked the Tron legacy soundtrack itself. Oh, yeah, no, I'm not saying it's bad. But I think a lot of people were expecting a more song oriented album than a soundtrack. And they were expecting a death punk album. It feels like it's like a digital opera to me. Listening to the Tron legacy soundtrack. I really enjoyed it. But yeah, I would absolutely recommend the Sword and Sorcerie soundtrack, also because it's not just what's in the game. They actually, they made, because in the game, some of the songs are more like loops. And so what Jim Guthrie actually did, who's the musician behind all the music in the game, is he took the ones that were just loops and turned them into actual songs for the soundtrack. So they have a beginning middle in it. Oh, wondered how that works. Yeah, yeah, so it's not just the game sounds put in, you know, music form. And there's something like 30 tracks. Oh, yeah, there's a lot. I'm kind of like 30s accurate. Well, he put in remixes and stuff too. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's good, man. It's really fucking good. Yep. Yeah, everyone seems to be, I don't know, super into it. I think it's really good playing the game. It's like, you know you're in, I mean, every game has like certain defining music, right? Any great game where it's like, oh, this is the four song and stuff like that, it's definitely, has that. I would say, I mean, I would go as far to say like the album can stand on its own. I think it can, I think it totally can. Jim Guthrie's an amazingly talented musician, man. That's fucking brilliant stuff. Okay, should we, should we close out the letters with the intense relationship letter? Sure, why, why, it's not really that intense. It's that one we were talking about before the break. Why not break the mold? Oh, shit, that one. I'm staring down the barrel of a three's company situation. This is his name, Rusty. And I would like some of this. I highly doubt that. That sounds fun. Three's company. You have to pretend you're gay. I'm actually staring down the situation with three's companies. You're awesome. I'm 21 and I have this crush in a friend of mine who we shall call Olivia. She's 21 and goes to my school. We met in the course last fall. And as friends, we went to go see The Rock Your Her Picture Show. Few days later, I asked her if I could buy her coffee, but she said no. After a few weeks of awkwardness, we started talking again and since become good friends, hung out quite a few times. I've brought it up in the conversation that now school is out where she hang out more and she was quite receptive. About a month ago, I entered into a friend's of benefits relationship with another friend of mine who we shall call Mary. To be completely honest, Mary and I don't have a lot in common. And I don't really like her all that much. But I've been single since last August, so a bit of companion chip is nice now and again. We've made it explicit that this is just friends with benefits type arrangement. And she has a habit of giving out drunken hand jobs in clubs. [LAUGHTER] Mary's Catholic, OK. And it's really pretty clear that she won't actually have sex with me and just wants to fool around, which, again, to be honest, she's not very good at. [LAUGHTER] We've made out a few times. You saw, like, kind of a douchey guy. We've made out a few times and I ate her out once. [LAUGHTER] But other than that, nothing's too serious as happened. Mary has mentioned that we have hooked up to a few of her friends, but I haven't mentioned to any of mine. Anyways, Mary recently invited me to a house party for her 21st birthday, where she'll be giving out drunken hand jobs, I assume. [LAUGHTER] Well, that's Olivia, amongst some others. I wasn't really planning on going as I'm not much of a party person, but I got a text from Olivia asking me to come so she would have someone to talk to, as she didn't really know Mary or any of her friends. I said that I would go, and now I realize the potential disaster that could arise. That's a disaster. It's a girl who doesn't want to be your girlfriend going to see a girl whose boyfriend you don't want to be, maybe give you a drunken hand job that's not free. [LAUGHTER] That's not awkward. It's sad. [LAUGHTER] Yes, there you go. That's the answer to your question. Say, how should I handle this? Go or don't. Do you want a hand job? Then go. Do you want to be the ear for this girl while she tells you about all the dudes that she's banging that aren't you and-- I'm not banging. I love the willingness to give a drunken hand job at a club, but not to have intimate sex and privacy. Yeah. Well, that violate her religion. Oh, sure. Yeah. [INTERPOSING VOICES] I'm pretty sure if Jesus came back, it'd be like-- If you're in the club, it's cool. [LAUGHTER] I mentioned this on the debriefings yesterday when I popped in for a minute. I heard Saddleback Christians for the first time this weekend. Oh, what's that mean? Anal sex, Christians who retain their virginity through anal sex, there's a name for it. I had no idea. It's like, no, OK, if that's how you sleep well at night. Yeah, exactly. I imagine it would be hard to sleep well at night. I'm telling you that the Bible makes it pretty clear that it's kind of an all or nothing situation. You're not even supposed to think about sex and masturbating. Exactly. Jesus says that adultery is thinking about your neighbor's wife, thought crime, but well, but the whole point of why Jesus says it, to be fair, is that he's also saying that he's making point to everyone since. There's nothing you can do about it. But the point is that if you're really trying to do it for this-- Still, this is kind of a buzz kill. Religious, I know, but I'm saying she's trying to do it for this weird religious law. She's not getting it right, yeah. Anyways. If you want to send in your own letters asking me for religious advice, you can send them to you. Anthony knows a lot about that stuff. eat-sleep-game.com. You can find me on Twitter at chuffmoney. You can find Arthur on Twitter at AEGIS. You can find Matt at Talking Orange. And you can find Tyler at 30t. Like The Drink. That's what they all got for you. You did like religious studies, right? Yeah. When was that? In college, so it's been a few years. But if you look at the shelf over here, it's almost all Jesus' books. Do you have the Apocrypha over there? And I'll talk about it later. Anyways, thank you for listening to the show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Oh, my fucking baby. Sussing fires my hands when I try to do that. Whoa, my fucking baby. Oh, my fucking baby. Oh, my fucking baby. It's time to do that. Oh, my fucking baby. Oh, my fucking baby.