Rebel FM
Rebel FM: Episode 98 -- 04/01/11
Join the regular crew as we discuss a bunch of smaller games including Sword and Sworcery, Rush N' Attack and many more! It's a shorter show, but hey, at least it's here. Enjoy!
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Nothing could ever break you ♪ ♪ Once again I didn't do ♪ ♪ It's your hard time to ♪ ♪ To wrap all that feels ♪ ♪ To wrap all that feels ♪ ♪ To wrap all that feels ♪ ♪ To wrap all that feels ♪ - Hello and welcome. It's Rebel from episode 98. I'm Anthony Ayos, with me. It's Matt Chandryne. - What up? - Tyler Barber. Hello, and Arthur Keys. - It's actually Matt's iPad talking to you right now. - Oh, hello. - And Matt put me down so I can talk. - We're here. - What's up? - And, uh, so, I don't know how long your phone is. - We'll see how this show goes. Arthur and I have both played games with someone we played I can't talk about, but next, in the coming weeks, I'll be able to tell you all about SOCOM. Next week, I'll be able to tell you all about the dishwasher vampire smile. - Nice. - So. - People love it when we talk about that we can't talk about games. - No, but I'm telling them. This is what you're going for. - It's a preview of what's coming. I mean, I do that. - It's like the nightly news bullshit where it's like, you know, at the end of the newscast, we'll show you the story that you're actually wanna see. - I'll be curious to know what you guys talk about next week since I won't be on the show. - Aw. - Yeah, Arthur's planning on going into exile for a year, being a monk, trying to really find himself. - Yeah, since the row style. - Yeah. - Everybody thinks he's bald because it's male pattern bald. - No, it is. - But he's actually on his way to-- - Exactly, this was a choice. - Yep. - Well, I mean, I would have hair on the sides. (laughing) - Actually, Arthur just shaved a ton, a tonch-er or whatever it's called. - Yeah, exactly. (laughing) - Got took off the rest. - Is that what it's called, a tonch-er? - A tonch-er, yeah. - We need to shave the little hole. - That's awesome. - The reason I know that is 'cause in college, a teacher gave a student extra credit because when we were acting out a scene from this play or something, he actually cut his hair into a tonch-er - Whoa. - For the part. - Wow, that is totally worth extra credit. - Yeah. Anyway, it's video games. - Yes. - So what have you guys, you know, been playing? - Well, obviously, I'm still super enamored with my iPad, so I've been playing some battle heart. We talked about that a little bit before. That game's a lot of fun. It's-- - It is. - Like, now that I've actually gotten to play, instead of just looking over people's shoulders, I'm actually surprised at how action-packed it is. - It is, it's pretty intense. And that, like I said, it's one of the only iPhone games I've ever spent, like, 10 hours, I've spent 10 hours. - Yeah, yeah, it totally can suck you in like that. Like, I've just been able to play a few hours over the last couple of days, but my co-workers, Sisar, he was saying like, last weekend, he basically played that all day, Saturday and all day Sunday. Like, that's awesome. You know, it's like, I think it just shows how the platform doesn't really matter as long as the game is good. You know, it can suck you in for just as long. I mean, like, it's really easy to think of iOS devices is quick throwaway experiences. I'm pointing at Arthur, but they're totally not. - A ton of them are. - Or they don't have to be. - A ton of them are. - A ton of them are, yes. But then you have things like battle heart and you have things like sword and sorcery, where they're just experiences that are worth having no matter what platform they have to be on. - And sorcery is the only thing I've seen where they're doing something interesting that hasn't been done other places better. - That's, I can see how you would see that being Arthur, but. (laughing) - It couldn't possibly be because I'm right. It's just 'cause I'm Arthur. (laughing) - Of course he has his own opinion. - Right. (laughing) - I think, just because games like sword and sorcery haven't existed before, it doesn't mean. - I really wish that sword and sorcery existed on other platforms, though, only because I've been waiting to borrow an iPad from work. - Well, it's gonna be an iPhone. - Or how about the, like the dead space game? I think that these are a lot of steps toward more full fledged game experiences and ones that might even make Nintendo say that they're actually worthwhile. - I wish they would put that dead space game on the 3DS. It actually would be a fun 3DS game. - Oh, I bet it would be. - Well, on that platform. - Yeah. - I don't know if the 3DS could handle that game. - Yeah. - It's hard to say, right? Like, I don't know how to compare hardware, really. - Yeah, me either. - But like, as a fig leaf toward what Arthur said earlier is that like, I think Dead Space is an example of a game that, you know, it's just done better elsewhere. - Yeah. - But... - I think you're thinking olive branch. - Olive leaf would be a cover-up. - Figue leaf would be a cover-up. - Figue leaf would be a cover-up. - Well, you are naked right now. It's kind of disturbing. - And that's the other thing as well. Are there's also going on monastic voyage. Part of his, part of his religious, you know, routine is stripping down naked while we record- - Yeah, natism. - That's not true at all. - And you're right, I didn't mean olive branch. But anyway. - Yeah, that's me being a giant know-it-all audience. Fuck me, for being elitist. - And I think sword and sorcery, I think it's, you know, you say that it's the first one that indicates to you that you can have those kind of experiences on. - No, it's the only thing I've seen that's doing something that I'm not seeing on other platforms. - Yeah. And I think that that's why it's struck such a nerve across kind of the video game media spectrum. And why it rocketed so high on the iTunes charts so quickly is because it's that way just, everybody is like, oh wow, here's a game that it's a serious experience that can't be had anywhere else. - Where is it now on the charts? - You know, I don't know. I haven't looked today. It was up there for a long time at like the top paid app of like all apps, which is pretty extraordinary. - How much is it? - I'm just curious. - Five bucks. - Okay. - It's so worth five bucks. - But yeah, I think a lot of people, I think this is the game that people are gonna look back on years from now and say, oh yeah, sword and sorcery is where it started. You know, even though there are games like Angry Birds and everything that prove that you can make a shit ton of money on this platform, you know, there aren't that many games where you can point at them and say that this is a seminal experience. - Any of you guys catch the Angry Bird joke on 30 Rock last week? - No. - That's great. - No, I heard about it though. - Yeah, I have seen Angry Birds on so many television shows. - It's on The Daily Show, it's been on. - Colbert. - Yeah. - It's insane. - Yeah. - It's totally insane. - Yeah, I mean, yeah, they're making a goddamn board game for that. - Really? - Really? - Yeah, where you have a slingshot and you launch plastic birds at each other's sports. - I actually think. - Yeah, so the desktop football. - Desktop football, basically, yes. - I actually think that would be more fun than the iPhone game. - I agree. I played some more 3DS than the last week. - Oh, nice. - Yeah, I've played through all of LEGO Star Wars in 3DS. You know, and it wasn't like. - How long have your sessions been with the 3DS? - Usually like a couple hours at a time. And we were talking about this at work that usually when you spend a couple hours with it too and you look at normal screens and shit, things look like they have depth. - Oh, yeah? - And it's just like, it makes you wanna shake your head, like this something's not right. - Wow. - So. - So that's just proof that the DS is actually sending a signal directly into your brain. - Oh, it's definitely doing something. It makes me feel weird sometimes when I'm looking at it. - It's part of the indoctrination process. - Yeah. Yeah, so this whole week I've just been thinking of myself, how can I get one of those? And I don't know why. No. But yeah, 3DS version of LEGO Star Wars, it's like, it's pretty fun. I mean, it's not, I wouldn't even go so far to say it's a good game. It's okay. But the reason that I think like, man, those games could be good. Like the level design is pretty boring. Not that the level design in any LEGO Star Wars games is particularly interesting, you know? - Exactly. - But the other LEGO Star Wars games like the console ones, you can tell they really do this careful balancing which they only succeed to some degrees of making them for adults and for children. Like they want something that dads not gonna wanna kill himself while he's playing. - Yep. - You know, and in the DS one, it's very clearly just geared towards children. I feel like it's a lot less clever. And more importantly, it does not make any fucking sense to me. These systems support any system it came out on. 'Cause the DS one, the 3DS and the PSP, they're all the same, content-wise. These all support ad hoc and infrastructure, like online gameplay. But none of them have multiplayer support. And to me, that's like such a big deal in LEGO Star Wars. - Yeah, totally. - Like even if I had to own a cart and my friend had to own the cart, we could play together. But there's just no option to play with each other. - Wow, that really sucks. - Yeah. - I mean, maybe there's something figured about it yet. - Yeah, I don't know. It's just, you know, I've done it. We're doing it with Mario Kart on the DS, playing with each other, but just sucks, because that's like such a big part of the leg, of any LEGO game experience. - It is. - It was always playing with another person. - Totally agree. Elm, you know, co-op makes everything better, but it's especially true in those games, 'cause those games can get kind of a naughtness. - Exactly, but it's always silly when you have another person that's doing something idiotic or something. - Right, right. Or like, you know, the both of you can't make this jump and you keep falling off the cliff, you know? - Sure, since there's no real way to fail. - Right. - I will say the 3DS one looks pretty good. But yeah, again, I still don't really have anything to judge it by, right? Like, it looks pretty good, but to me, a lot of the 3DS games that I've seen so far look like they're pretty much just on par with like the PSP at this point. Like, I haven't seen anything where I'm like, oh, is this what it can really do? Like, people are saying that that Resident Evil games coming out looks much better. - You know, I've seen new screenshots of that, and it does not look as good as the original screenshots of that shit that they put out. - Yeah, because even when they were showing it at D3, they weren't showing gameplay. They were just letting you watch a Resident Evil 5, like, cutscene running on it. - In 3D, yeah, yeah. Now, I had a feeling when that stuff came out that it was like, all right, this is what they're doing, and none of this shit is optimized, so they have, you know, right now it might be looking at this like this, but it's running at like a frame rate of six or 12 or something. - The only thing about the 3DS right now that's interesting to me is like, besides Ghost Recon, which I still think is a fun game, in which I've noticed several of our friends online talking about it as well. - Oh, yeah. - A lot of people are compared to XCOM. I know a lot of people are compared to XCOM, which I never played. But the things about the 3DS that are interesting are all the things that it does that aren't about games, which is stupid, but not enough to make me want to buy it. - Well, right. - It's just like, I look at it and I'm like, oh, that's nifty. Like how you can take pictures of, what are those barcodes called? - QR codes. - QR codes, and you can take a picture of a QR code and instantly download a me onto your DS. Like, that's pretty interesting. - Today, coworkers were putting their 3DSs in the window, so like hoping people would walk by with Street Pass. - Yeah, all the people going to like the Giants game. - Right, that's funny. Now that there were, like Ryan's got one, he has arrived yesterday or the day before, and he's just been taking a ton of 3D pictures with it, and those are actually really cool. - Yeah, see all those things are cool, but that's not what I want it for, right? - I know. - Wasn't this like a similar case with the DSI? Like a lot of the sort of app applications were-- - Yeah, it was like, now you have a calculator, and all this shit, and you're like, what? - They're really fun toys, but it's-- - They play like the 3DS system. - What's that? - 3DSs play MP3s now, too. - Over SD cards. - They didn't do that before. - Yeah, too bad, it's the ugliest fucking hardware I've ever seen in my room. - Really? - Dude, it's so, it's not as ugly as the first game. - I was gonna say, or the first GBA, like the only advance is pretty ugly, too. - I actually think it was-- - As far as like the first of anything, it's like the best Nintendo's done. - I actually think that the 3DSs were probably the most attractive piece of handheld kit that Nintendo's ever done. - Oh my god, no way, DS Lite. The DS Lite has like the-- - I think that it looks pretty much the same as the DS Lite, except it does more stuff. - No, it doesn't look the same. It has like tons more angles and lines that don't make any sense, and it looks like, and when it's closed, it has like layer on top of layer on top of layer, for no apparent reason, it's just the way it's kept together-- - The beveling of the edges are really weird. - The only part of the design on the 3DS I don't really like is that they put the headphone jack from the dead center of the-- - Yeah, that's really weird. - That's so weird to me. - Yeah, I don't know why you would put it there. That seems like the most inconvenient spot, actually. - Yeah. - Maybe they just had to fit it there 'cause of the other components. It was the only place left. - I could be. I didn't even think of that. - Yeah. - But anyway. - Yeah, I mean, it's like eventually I want one. - Yeah. - But I've just seen nothing yet that justifies, like basically $300 by the time I buy it with a game. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And so the toys built into it just aren't enough. - Yeah, yeah. - I have no interest in taking 3D pictures myself. So I mean-- - They look really cool. - Well, they look really cool, but the only way I can show them to anyone is on my 3DS. - I know. (laughing) - Well, part of the cool thing about them, though, is that it's mitigated a little bit by, it's probably just the way that it does it or something, but they look a little bit like view finders, you know, like you can sort of see the individual planes. And it seems to only really affect certain images and the certain way that things come out, you know, it's like, I don't know, like, I think it does better on things that are close to the screen or when there's not a lot of layers to look at. 'Cause if you're like, take a picture down a street, the street will look all nice in 3D, but then you'll have, you know, some trees and some parking meters that look like 2D images on planes, you know, as opposed to having three dimension, being three dimensional objects themselves. - Yeah, I'm still waiting for the game. Like even when the first DS came out, there were games that I was like, okay, so why does this, what's the point of the second screen? - Yeah. - You know, it wasn't until I played something like, I don't know, maybe, not quite Phoenix, right? 'Cause Phoenix, right, you could play with that. That's the touchscreen, you don't need it in that. I'm trying to think that there were just certain games that to me, I was like, oh, like, this is a really clever use, actually it was the Metroid game, it was the first one, that I was like, oh, that's a really cool use of the touchscreen, even though it was uncomfortable as fuck to control that game. But, you know, I'm still waiting for the game, where I'm like, oh, this is why 3D matters. 'Cause so far I'm like, yeah, it's an interesting little, that it's there, but half the time I found myself turning it off to save battery power. - Yeah. - You know, I don't know. - I like Ryan turned it off so that he could actually play Street Fighter at 60 frames, as opposed to 30. - I mean, I heard it in Street Fighter, there's at least a cool mode, or cool, I say, depending on how you feel about that, but it's like a 3D mode where it pulls the camera kind of like behind the, almost like, in between, like to the side, like a 45 degree angle from the controller. - Go over the shoulder? - Yeah, and so you're like seeing them like in a depth, giving like a depth to the fighting ring and stuff. I don't know. - I have no idea, I didn't know that. - Yeah, that's like their way of justifying its existence. - That and Capcom put Street Fighter on every platform. - Yes, they did. - They're pretty aggressive about that, yeah. - Except for BSP. - Yeah. - So. - Uh, anything else? - I played the Sims 3 medieval. - Yeah, how was that? We talked that we both wanted to play it. - It's actually cool. It's, you know, like for a lot of people who don't, who don't like The Sims don't like it 'cause there's not enough game there. And this is exactly what that is. It has a lot of game there. Like you build your kingdom, and each building that you put in your kingdom has an individual hero assigned to that building. So if I build a wizard tower, then I have to build a wizard sim to put in the tower. - So this isn't just Sims 3 in the sense where I'm building a hero and living his life, or how a character is living his life buying off. And this is where you're actually controlling like the whole town, basically. - Well, you're controlling individual hero characters. You're not controlling the whole town. - Right, but you are controlling the way the town gets put together, is what you're describing, right? - Sort of, I mean, like there's-- - So not at all, is what you say. - Yeah, I mean, what I'm saying is that like you decide what buildings to buy, but there's only a limited number of buildings to buy, and they always go in specific places. - So it's like Assassin's Creed 2? - Yeah, exactly, there you go. (laughing) - I win. (laughing) - And so then you're controlling all these various hero characters? - Yeah, and they each have quests, and so you can decide what quests to go on, and then the quests are a little bit sim-like or whatever. - Are they like get married? - No, they have quests like go to feet, a bear in the woods, and-- - Nice, we're shitting when you saw them. - They actually have a ton of quests, and the quests are tailored towards specific sims, and once you get like three or four sims in there, then they start giving dual quests that you have to have two and three sims to complete, and you have to use the skills of the wizard and the skills of the monarch, you know, in concert with one another at different times to like complete the quests, and it's actually really involved. I was surprised because there's a lot of depth in the game that the tutorial doesn't really go into, and I'm like, man, if a traditional sims three player picks this up and starts to play it, I'm not sure they're gonna get it. You know, at least not right away, and especially because like you do buy furniture and put it in the buildings, but you don't actually design the buildings themselves. You just put furniture in there, and the only real purpose to put the furniture in there is to upgrade the buildings so that their mood is better, so that it plays the sim. - Exactly, and so the sims, like they also don't have like hardly any of the needs, they only have hunger, and I wanna say fatigue, maybe it's just sleep or whatever. - Fatigue would make sense. - That's how the newer ones were, that you, well, in three I thought it was like, there was only really like two needs as well, but then you could go to the individual ones as well. - Right, well no, I mean like in this one, I mean there's no, you don't have to go to the bathroom. You know, like you don't have any of those other kinds of needs, you know? - Do you need a more, most important question. Can your heroes bang each other? - Yes they can, they can bang each other, they can get married. - Oh right. - Can they make children? - Can they have babies? - I actually don't know, I don't think so, but I actually, you know, I started playing it, like your sims look really good, all the clothing options that they have are really awesome. - And you can still dress them up, I imagine. - You can totally dress them up, you can do all the playing around with their faces and everything to make the sim look exactly like you want it to look and all the hairstyles and all that. And I've always loved that about the sims, but you know, like the, at least by the time I got to the sims three, the sims three was the most impressive graphically of the series obviously, but by the time I got to it, I'm like, all right, I already know this formula, you know, I'm just making the sims 'cause I enjoy making sims, but I don't really care about the rest of the game. And sims in medieval kind of makes me care about the rest of the game again because it's a different kind of game. - Yeah, I mean, sims three had a little bit of that, like trying to fulfill wishes sort of game like quests. - Yeah, so, so imagine that but deeper. Is this an expansion? - No, it's a standalone game. - Oh, I thought this was like, you needed sims three. - I thought it was the sims three medieval. - No, it is, but it's a totally standalone game. - That's weird. - I wonder how much parody there is, you know, between sort of EA's strategy with this game between this game and Darkspore, you know? - Yeah, it seems weird, they seem kind of like, 'cause they're both, they're both Darkspore steps way outside of the spore formula, but it has spore elements in it. Sims three medieval steps kind of outside of the sims formula at least as far as like the regular pace of the gameplay goes, but it has, but it has reminiscent stuff of that as well. So I think you're right, I didn't think about that. - It just seems like they're trying to say, you know, we have this, we have these creative tools now, it's really trying to make a game. - Yeah, I think they're trying to do, they're trying to make different kinds of games with the same sort of engines and tools available to them and yeah, Sims three medieval, it's actually, for me, it's more enjoyable than the Sims three. But if you're the kind of person who you really love building out every single building and you know, you want all that kind of fine tooth control over the environment that the sim is in, not just what the sim is doing, and you don't want Sims that have really specific jobs like wizard or monarch or blacksmith or whatever, then you're probably not gonna like this game as much, but if you're kind of fatigued with the Sims the way I am and you're looking for something that breathes new life into the series, I think this game does a really good job of doing that. - I can see myself playing this at some point. - I just, I do have a shot, I think you'll like it. - I do like Sims games quite a bit. - Yeah, and like knowing the kind of games that you do like, I think if you played this, you would get the same kind of impression that I've got out of it. - Can you harm your Sims intentionally? - Yes, also an important question. - And of course, you know, if they don't eat, they die and stuff like that. - Can they be ghosts? - You know, I don't know. I haven't had any of them die. - They have ghosts to the other games. - I would have been responsible prick. (laughing) - Yeah, all right, cool. Tyler, have you, you have been playing quite a few games, game's ass games. - Nice. - So I guess a listener pre-ordered Portal 2 or something and got a copy of the first Portal and he already had it. So he gifted it to me on PC. - Nice. - Yeah, that was a good list. - Totally fucking awesome. And so I've actually been playing through Portal 1 with the commentary on. - Yeah. - And that's cool. - Yeah, and it's my first time to play on PC as well. And it's so far it's been like the perfect like WASD training game. - Like you could, you know, that I can imagine. - 'Cause there's a sense of urgency just isn't really there. - Yeah, you're never like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. - And towards the end, by then you're a lot more comfortable with the controls. One thing that was odd is like that I just, you know, I guess you just play so many modern games that borrow off each other. I didn't realize, or I could be wrong, but is there no sprint in Portal? - I don't know that there is. - There is no sprint. I don't think there is a sprint. - I think there's a sprint in Half Life 2 where it takes you to energy. - Yeah, it's like a little, thanks a noise. But yeah, yeah, and I'm enjoying it. And like, you know, I have like the full HD textures on and it's still-- - Nice, pretty game at times. I mean, granted there's not a lot going on. The environments are very repetitive in some places, but. - I mean, you can see, you know, I've, you can tell how much Portal 2 is a step up. Like looking at things, for example, the eyes of the co-op robots. So they're almost designed exactly like the eyes are sort of designed like the eye of the cameras in Portal 1, but they just don't have that detail. They don't have that level like, you know, the lights and everything, you know? So it's interesting to look at the two and you know, know that it's still the source engine, you know, a good-- - Well, even when you go and look at something that's left for dead and you see how animated they make their faces go sometimes. Like, man, I can't believe this is still source. - Yeah, I mean, Portal 2 just leaves and bounds past everything else that looks so good. - Well, they've been up, you know, I'm sure that they, you know, they constantly update that engine in quiet ways that nobody really knows. - Yeah. - That's as unless like you're super into the-- - I mean, they've added like a ton of new like lighting effects and just general animation stuff. Like the way that the robots move in Portal 2 is almost picks our quality animation, honestly. - So, yeah. - I haven't seen it in a while. - I haven't seen it in a while. - I haven't seen it in a while. - It's been a little over a year. - I thought you saw it at PAX. - I've been avoiding all footage and info. (laughing) - It comes from Portal 2. - Really, really soon. We should actually, I don't know if we'll get it in the office. - I'm really, I really hope that I can get it early. - I guess. - I'm getting so excited for that game though. - With the last Portal, they didn't send out PC versions. - Yeah, that's right. - People had to fly up to Valve or play the 360 or PS3 version. - Yeah, we'll probably flight above. (laughing) - Hour and a half flight. - I would do it for that game. - I mean, we'll get it. - I'll pay for it on my own damn pocket. - Yeah. - So, I also had, I guess a listener gifted me two games. (laughing) That's like weird, like, come on. Yeah, guys, you don't wanna feel like you have to buy me games, but I checked out one. - Tyler, I would buy you a game. - Well, I appreciate it. (laughing) I checked out one, I haven't checked out the other because I wanna play it later. They got me Magica, which I haven't played yet. - Oh, that game is really fun. - Yeah, yeah, I hear it's great. So I wanna, and then he also gifted me Lead and Gold. - Oh, I don't know. - You guys know that third-person shooter, or third-person shooter? - Yeah, Lead and Gold, I played it when they brought it on a press tour at one point. And I remember, as a multiplayer game, it was kind of fun. Like, it had a little bit of almost like a team fortress-y kind of- - A little. - A little. - Yeah, it's- - Look how it is. - It's really weird. I am wondering why the game exists. (laughing) - That's kind of how I feel when I saw it. - The former Bionic Commando, re-armed, and Bionic Commando remake dudes. - Oh, really? I had no idea. - It's one of those to the two studios that spring up out of the ashes of that studio. - Well, here's what I can say about it. Is it, you know, and I don't mean this in a pejorative way, but it seems like it would be, 'cause there's a lot of like violence in it, there's a lot of blood. It seems they should take that out, and it should be like a shooter for like a younger audience, 'cause it doesn't seem deep at all. Like, there's no crouch. (laughing) - Did that game ever come out on 360? - No, I don't think so. - Like, it was supposed to. - I'm pretty sure that's how they showed it. We were playing on controllers. - Well, they were playing, yeah. Well, they brought control in 360s. - DCs, new controllers, yeah. - Was that the day that we were reviewing Bad Company 2? - Maybe. - Yeah, I mean, it's just very, very bare-bones, multiplayer shooter. There's four classes, you know, and you know, I'm sure you can imagine what they are. - It's either like Deathmatch, or like carry the explosive barrel or something. - Yeah, it's Deathmatch, or like carry gold to a spot, or carry an explosive barrel to a spot. - Oh, excuse me. And I mean, you know, the graphics look good, and the art style is good. But, you know, the whole time you're playing it, and there's like this whole like leveling up, you know, like you're level four, but I have no fucking clue like what that did. You know, there's no menu where it's like you could spin points or anything. You know, the game's super bare-bones, you know, you just go in and it's just jumping to a game. - So what you're saying, if they took the violence and just made it kind of a cartoony cowboy shooter. - For like a kid shooter, you know, like a my first shooter game. And I know that that could come across like, I'm serious about that. You know, I think kids love cowboys and stuff like that. But, you know, there's a lot of blood and violence. They would have to tone that down, you know? And, 'cause here's the thing, the whole time I'm playing this system, you know, I'm just thinking like, fuck, like Uncharted 2 multiplayer is way, way better than, and I'm not trying to slight Uncharted 2 multiplayer, but, or like games like Transformers multiplayer better. - Uh-huh. - Uh-huh. - Um. - Uh-huh. - You know? - It did. - It does. - I mean, the multiplayer still exists. Just nobody plays it. - Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I kind of am wondering why that game exists. It's not so good. But maybe I'm missing something. - I mean, it's a really cheap. - That's the other thing. - It's really, really cheap. - Like a multiplayer shooter on PC that's, that has a different stick than any other multiplayer shooter on PC. - Yeah. - I'm really curious to see, you know, if you'll have the fun with Magica that I did. And if you can like get over the, the left-hand tying your fingers together, 'cause you have to press so many buttons at once all the time to catch yourselves. - Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm excited to play it. You know, I just wanna like, I haven't had a good amount of time to like sit down and like really like get into a new game later. - Well, we'll hop into some co-op and see what's going on. - Well, now you're jumping into Magica after they've had time to patch some of the broken. - That's true, yeah. - Dude, but what I have jumped into, that was familiar to me, and I did not even know fucking exist. There's a new version of gratuitous space battles out that is fucking awesome. - Oh, really? - Oh, that's awesome. - I know I do. - Wait, hold on, is it like a patch to the old one, or it's, - No. - It's an entirely new game. - It's a new game. - Wow. - Fucking-- - I always meant to get more-- - Is it gratuitous? - Try that first one, but I got so intimidated building my own ships, like, I don't know. Like, I was so daunted, like, I played, I spent all this time building a ship and thought I was doing a really good job. Jumped into a battle and just got destroyed, and then I was like, oh. (laughing) - Yeah, well, that, it's funny, 'cause that's sort of what happened to me here, because like this new gratuitous battle setup, it's like $7, and I'm pretty sure you can buy it stand alone. But if you already own gratuitous space battle, it just sort of like rolls it into your current game, so like all of your ship builds are still there. And basically what it does is it sets up a quote unquote campaign for you, where it basically lays out sort of like a galaxy you have to take over, and you basically start with like a home planet, and all the different planets have different sort of resources on them, like some have like ship building factories, some have naval recruitment centers, and so you wanna take over these planets, and when you take over the planets, that sort of is when the battles engage, but when you're in the galaxy map, it's sort of like almost like Civ 5, and that like you know, once you capture your planets, you're then going to different planets, building ships here, there, you know, and so it just adds an over game. - I was gonna say, so what it sounds like to me is that they took like a, what was kind of before like a demonstration, a proof of concept, of a really cool idea, and made a game around it. - Yeah, exactly, now there's, now there's a, sorry, I was just gonna say, I always figured that's why they called it gratuitous space battles, because that's all it was. - Right, but it felt, something like that almost feels like a, like an app or something like that, like I'm not, again, not the city, it was bad anyway, but it sounds like there wasn't, like it sounded like a unique thing that you'd be like, oh that was cool for a little while, but now there's like, if there's like a goal, now there's like, before it was just like a goal to like see what type of ships you could build. - Yeah, there were like eight different missions you could play basically, and once you were done with that, you could replay them on harder difficulties, but this is actually a more campaign where you start off with a certain amount of budget, and like I said, you're balancing what planets you wanna sort of like take over, and versus which ones you want to defend, 'cause you could be attacked to your places, when you take over planets, and it's fucking rad. Love gratuitous space battles. - Nice, Arthur is asleep. - I am not asleep. - He's having a hard time, he had a very early day today. - My eyes keep closing, but I can't let them stay close and just listen, because I need to make sure that I'm opening them like every 10 or 20 seconds to make sure the garage man isn't freaking out. (laughing) - So, Arthur, tell us about, tell people, I guess this is the time for a PSA, why people shouldn't buy Russian. - Okay, so. (laughing) - After playing Russian attack expatriate, I looked over at Damon Hatfield, who is my immediate boss as far as reviews and stuff go, and I say, is there any way that the strap for my review, 'cause the title is the title, and the strap is the description underneath the title on the front page, so I asked Damon if my strap could be, it's like, buy on a commando, rearmed fuck your mom. (laughing) And he said no, and I kept playing. - Mm-hmm. - Russian commando, Russian commando, that'd be a good name for it. (laughing) Russian attack expatriate is like, buy on a commando, rearmed fuck your mom. - Basically, it's like, they sounded to me like, they did a remake that no one cared about and never needed to exist. - It is, because Russian attack is sort of like, the forgotten arcade property of Konami, like, it never had the cash out of like, Contra, or the console pedigree of Castlevania, like, nothing like that. Or the Ninja Turtles, or any of the Ultra games, like, Skater Die, like, it never had that awareness. Like, it was just, it had its Nintendo port, and that was it. - Konami's over two with those so far. (laughing) - Why? - 'Cause the one saying there's Russian attack, and then there was that other one they tried to do in the last year that was also not good. - Oh, 'cause they just put out hardcore uprising, which is fucking awesome. - But that's not a remake, that's like a-- - It's a re-imagining of Contra. - Right, but it's not a remake either. This is also a re-imagining of Russian attack. They already did a remake of Russian attack. - Oh really? - Yeah, called Russian attack. - What was that other one called though, about the flying fucking measles? - Oh, it was Rocket Knight. - Yeah, that was another one. - That was last year, like, June or July or something. So basically, they took Russian attack, which previously was a side-scrolling only, save for some ladders that you could go up and down. - Yeah. - Action game where you just ran as fast as you could from one side of the level to the other, and tried not to die. And they have made a platforming an item collection game where you need to find stuff to unlock stuff, to keep moving forward. And they added a ton of platforming to it. So, like, it's really clear that they had Bionic Commando rearmed as this sort of template of the stuff that they should do to make a game like that, to bring a game into the modern era, completely ignoring that Bionic Commando rearmed was just fucking Bionic Commando. - I was gonna say, that's what got me confused, I guess, is 'cause I thought, when you were comparing to Bionic Commando, 'cause Bionic Commando is just a remake of the first Bionic Commando remake, yeah. - But they can't do that because no one would buy that, because it'd be over, like, in eight minutes. - Oh, okay. - It's not less. Like, I have watched someone play from the beginning to the end of Russian attack for Nintendo in four minutes. - Wow. - Okay. So, like, another comparison I made in my video review script was that it's just like, it goes all single white female on Bionic Commando rearmed. It just wants so badly to be that, but it's not. Like, it doesn't control well. The animation is fluid enough, but it's just another one of those games that feels punishingly Japanese and that everything takes a ridiculously long animation cycle to finish. - Right, and there's no way to get out of it. And you can see footage of this in my video review. Like, you'll get hit just that it'll completely interrupt your attack animation. You'll get stuck between a pair of enemies and they'll just attack you back and forth until you're dead and there's nothing you can do to break out of it. Sometimes enemies will just decide to block everything you do and then attack you and fuck you up. - No, that's frustrating. - It's just, it's really, really bad. - Yeah. - And also, the last boss, I won't tell you what the last boss is, but I will tell you what it involves, which is... - Do we even, we don't want to spoil Russian attack? - This isn't spoiling Russian attack. This is like outlining a level design issue. - Well, I know what I'm saying. Why don't you just tell them? - Because the story doesn't matter and if someone really wants to play it, then I don't want to ruin that for them. But basically, you go into this vertical area where the last boss is in an elevator going very slowly up. So you have to, you're supposed to try to beat him up there, according to the really awful cutscene. And you have to platform up there. So again, it's by an academy armed, which you never had to do in Russian attack. And then you get to the top and there's a ladder that's hanging down from this hole in the ceiling. But you cannot go up that ladder. - What? - So you'll beat him up there, you'll beat him to the top and you will have to wait about three minutes for the elevator to finish getting to the top before you can follow him up instead of beating him up there. At which point, he will, in all likelihood, kill you. And then you have to do the whole thing over again and wait the three and a half for four minutes for him to get all the way up again. - That is fantastic game design. - There are not many games that I play for review that I don't beat, but I was finished with Russian attack expatriate before I beat it. - Yeah. - And I mean, it's single player only. There's no multiplayer, anything like that. They're a leaderboard, so you get graded for going through levels. - Is it at least like $10? - I think it's probably 15, but I'm not sure it could be 10. But that didn't enter the equation. It's a rip off at any price. It would be bad at $5. - So I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath for an actually quality remake of Akari Warriors that will actually make that game good. - Probably not. I mean, what could they do to that game that would let it happen? 'Cause it seems like they were not willing to let Russian attack or your Russian attack because they did that already. - Yeah, Akari Warriors is just one of those games that I have really fond memories of, but totally doesn't hold up. - I mean, you know what Russian attack really needed, apparently, was a gas mask in night-vision goggles. - Oh, well. - So yeah, it's just really, really bad. Meanwhile, I also-- - At least they tried? - No, they shouldn't have. I mean, it sucks that these guys worked on something that is awful, but the game is not good. What is good is Chime Super Deluxe, which comes out on PSN this week. - Oh, yeah, I totally want to play that. - So for people that bought Chime before-- - It's worth buying again. - Yeah, because of the new tracks and boards? - It's got five new tracks, so that's twice as many tracks as it originally had. They fixed some minor bugs, like sometimes in Chime, if you got way too big of a block, the music would sort of stutter, and the controls would freeze up for a second, which could really fuck you up as you were doing high-level play. - So they fixed that mostly. I still saw some slowdown here and there, but I'm pretty decent at Chime. - Is this one more expensive than the last one? - It's $10, but it has twice as much stuff. It also has multiplayer. - But none of it goes to charity anymore. - Some of it is going to charity, apparently. - Oh, okay, cool. - It's just not through one big game, but Zoe Mode is going to donate some of it to charity, or so I was told. So basically, they have-- One of the things about the first Chime that sort of got broken were the leaderboards, because what they figured out is that if you were good enough, you could actually finish a board and get more time back than it took you to finish it. - Oh, what? - So you would basically play forever. - Right. - So the highest scores were just a matter of who was able to keep their Xbox on longer. - Right. - So in this-- - Sort of like every extend extra extreme. - Yeah, they've decreased the amount of time you get for bonuses, and they've also made it so that the board changes each time you clear it. So like the first board, let's say, which was just a perfect rectangle, the sides will come in, like corners will collapse in, so there'll be ridges on the sides. There's another board for one of the new tracks that is a rectangular board with a separate square in the middle, and when you clear that board, that square turns into an H. So it fundamentally changes the board and it changes every time you clear the board. - Wow, cool. - So basically, there's no way that you can just keep doing the same thing over and over again and succeed, and sorry, I got feedback on GarageBand. There's no way you can do the same thing over and over again and succeed, and also you will run out of time. - And the basic thing of Chime, 'cause we never really explained that. - So the point of Chime is to clear a board, which you get coverage on a board by creating quads from shapes. A quad is a three by three square or bigger. So these quads will slowly fill up, and if you add a full row to a quad as it's filling up, it resets and you get more points for it. - And as these quads then get blown up by the bar that comes to clear the screen, it actually affects the music. - Yeah, so everything you do to the board adds a sample to it. - Such a cool idea. - So as you get coverage on the board, that is a permanent sample for the board until you clear it. And every piece in its varying stages of decay, because as the beat line goes over it, it slowly destroys those blocks, creates a different note. So eventually you get these very complicated layered compositions that are really, really cool. And the new, again, the Chime Super Deluxe has five new tracks. The two that I think people will probably talk about the most is there's a chip tune track, which is really, really cool. - Are these tracks that are adapted for use in Chime or are they made for you? - I think most of them were made for Chime, although for the last one, they definitely had tracks that were contributed by artists, because it was a charity thing. - It kind of seems like, you know, even if they are contributed by artists, like they would almost have to be if they're gonna come in all layered, like we're talking about. - But they evolve differently than they would on a normal like CD or whatever. And there's another track that is entirely beatboxed. - Oh, that's awesome. - So there are musical notes, but they're all musical notes the dude did himself, like with his voice. - So cool. Hit it, Tyler. - And there's, I mean, there's no really bad music in it. Like there's some more ambient stuff than there was in the last one. Multiplayer is cooperative or competitive. Cooperative, you're working to clear the board together, competitive, you're working to see who can clear the most. - Was there even multiplayer in the first one? - Yeah, it was single player only. - And multiplayer, can you like, hijack out of people's quads? - You can, cool. - Like if you, like let's say one is yellow and the other is red. So yellow starts a quad. And then red adds on to that quad, adds a row and makes it longer, then it turns a little bit red. So it's like a yellow orange. And the person who adds the most to the quad gets it. And the people who clear the most get the most points. And it's up to four players. - Nice, but you're all playing on the same board? - Yes, which gets really hectic. - I bet, yeah. - But yeah, I mean, it's adding more than double the content for double the price. And the game itself was really good last time. So I don't see any reason why if you're into Chime, why you wouldn't buy it. And also just as a puzzle game, Chime is really, really cool. - I never actually got to play the first one. So it is definitely really good excuse to buy it finally. - My review should probably be up in the next day or two, probably before you hear this podcast. - It'll probably, I probably don't need your review. - Right. And then I played one other, I mean, I played Lego Star Wars, the Clone Wars. I don't think I'm quite as enamored with it as Anthony was. It looks really fantastic and it sounds really great. I just think that the puzzle design and Lego Star Wars games has not improved. Like for the past, fuck was the first one, 2004. - I was going to say it's got to be like five or six. - Yeah, I think it might have been four or five, I'm sure. - The puzzles have not changed. They're not intuitive. It's bad at telling you what you need to do. Like I was, I was playing it. I haven't played one of those for years. And Anthony is like, oh, well, you just need to do this. And I'm like, well, it never explains that you need to do this. And it just seems like if you've built a vocabulary of playing Lego Star Wars games, then perhaps you will just know that you need to do these things. - Right. - None of those things are very well described to the point where you could easily just sit in a room killing droids forever. - I wonder if that's one of the things where like a kid who has all the time in the world doesn't mind the trial and error of it and we'll figure it out. - Right. - Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's funny. I was actually talking to a guy from Travelers' Tale today. And he was telling me that a lot of it is focused testing with children. - Yeah. - So I wonder if you're right, like, right? So this goes down and they're just like, ah, they don't give a shit. They're gonna sit there and figure it out, like little monkeys. - Yeah. (laughing) - They'll eventually write the complete worst of Shakespeare. (laughing) - So I mean, it looks great. I think it, like watching Anthony play it on PS3 and then playing it on my 360 at home, I feel like the PS3 version might look better. - Well, PC version also looks great. - Right. - Right. - Which is to be expected. - Right. - But the shadows look kind of weird on 360, particularly the shadows that characters cast on themselves. - Mm-hmm. - And it's a little jagged. - So shadowing is always hard. - Yeah, it's a little, it seems a little more jagged than the PS3 version and that could just be good. Like the three, the PS3 does an AA solution that blurs the edges of everything. And that relates often results in a softer picture, but it means jaggies can be seriously cut down. - Killzone two uses that and Killzone three doesn't. I think you can probably tell if you're looking. But I got beta codes for a game called Sanctum, which is an indie game from some kids using Unreal Engine 3 that is a first person tower defense shooter. - Sounds awesome. - It looks really cool. - Game four players. - And I was actually, when I bought the gratuitous space battles, I saw this game and I almost pre-purchased it. So I think it comes out next week, right? - I think it's really soon. - It's really soon, yeah. - It looks cool, it looks really-- - I think it comes out April 15th, actually. - Two weeks. - So two weeks. It's pretty cool. Basically, there are two phases to every wave, which is the building phase and the wave. During the building phase, you can lay down blocks and you can change blocks into turrets or these things called Televators, which there are two things you can do those. If you walk up to a Televator, it sinks to the ground and you can walk onto it and it raises you up onto your blocks. - Nice. - Or you can hit the tab key and it brings up an overhead map and you click on one of them and you instantly teleport to it. - Cool. - Which is useful in the game. The thing about Sanctum, and I think that this is probably gonna keep a lot of people from getting really into it, it is very complicated, control-wise. Like really, really complicated, control-wise. - Wow. - To where I, you're using a ton of keys in the keyboard and using the mouse wheel to circle through stuff and you have to look at an encyclopedia of enemies to know what their weak spots are and to know what all your towers do. And it's not like an accessible tower defense game. It is a PCS, PC game. (laughs) - Probably made for cheap though, so I guess they can probably still be profitable. - Yeah, the Unreal Engine 3 development license changed recently so you can actually use it for free until you make a certain amount of money with it. - Yeah, yeah. - And actually, it was Epic that put those guys in contact with me to play it. - Cool. - But it's very bright and it's kind of team fortress meets portal from a design aesthetic. - Yeah, to me when I was looking at it reminded me of, what was that tower defense game, Defense Grid? It looks like first-person defense grid. - I was actually gonna bring that up because judging from the trailer, Arthur mentioned this, I guess the unique thing about this game is, there's some tower defense games where you can only put towers in certain spots and there's others that let you sort of mold the path. - Exactly, this could let you do that where you could basically wind them in the direction you wanted them to. - I mean, you're still operating within a grid so you can basically snake the enemies through certain levels. But yeah, that whole thing, that Arthur was talking about the whole televators, where it lifts you up to the platforms, like when you're watching the trailer, people are running down below in the maze and then quickly getting up on top and that gives you a great vantage point to all the enemies. - Cool. - And it just seems like great. Someone has to do it eventually. - One, I think it's cool. - In the first person, exactly. - In the first person that gives them the opportunity to have them have weak points 'cause most tower defense games just like you just blob damage on a guy until they die. But in this one, as I was watching her other play, they're like some guys that can only be hurt from the back. - Right. - So Arthur, like always make sure he was on their flank. - And some guys just have a ton of life so you need very powerful towers that don't fire as often to take them out or maybe there's any air that you need. So basically they're all making their way toward this portal. - Yes, the usual tower defense kind of towers with all this other stuff attached on top of it. - So I think I got cut up and funneling them in a very specific way. But I didn't have enough points to really build enough guns to take advantage of that. So it definitely bit me in the ass and I didn't finish the level I was playing when I had a chance to play it. And the checkpointing right now is kind of busted because it's like, do you wanna start from the left checkpoint? I'm like, sure. And it's all went back to the beginning of the level. And those are not evenly spaced checkpoints. - That's not a checkpoint. - No, that's not a checkpoint after each wave. - Yeah. - I mean, tower defense games, I think they're really, obviously notoriously difficult to balance. - I mean, they're the last sort of bastion of tolerance for trial by death gameplay. - Yeah, totally. - But when there's like eight waves in a level, starting me at the very first wave is fucking unacceptable. - Even toy soliders, the new one, is doing checkpoints after each wave fruit. Don't play pixel junk monsters, the expansion. That is like, I mean, if you get frustrated by that kind of tower defense trial by death stuff because the expansion to pixel junk monsters is insanely hard, you can go through like 30 waves of guys down in the last one and you have to start all over. - Yay. - So, I mean, Sanctum is actually, it seems really cool. - Is it like a student project or is it? - It's just an indie project. - Cool. - It's like 15 bucks, I think. And if you, you can buy a two pack for 20 and it does have co-op. - Nice, that's cool. - Well, like you buy like two copies of Sanctum. - Yeah, and you get it for 20 bucks. - I bet co-op would make it a lot of fun. - Steam does that a lot. Steam does that a lot. - Yeah, Darkspore I heard is doing it as well. - It is, I'm not going to buy a Darkspore 'cause at this point, they have to fucking give away a copy of Darkspore to get someone interested in it. - I'm interested in it. - And right now, if you pre-order Sanctum, it's actually like, like I think it's like 10 bucks. - It's like 1249 or something like that. - Yeah, it's like super cheap right now. If you, if you jump in. And just from my time with it, it seems like it could very well be worth the investment. I, I, we'll try to have a review up. All of that, when does Portal 2 come out? - Yeah, April, I think maybe it's 2nd or April 15. - The 2nd week of April or 17th, yeah. - Oh fuck, well, I'm sorry Sanctum, it was nice knowing you. (laughing) I mean, are you reviewing it? - What Sanctum? - Yeah. - At this point, I guess I will because. - Well, you're not reviewing Portal. - No, I'm not reviewing Portal. I'm talking about in general, like who the fuck is gonna play any game other than Portal 2 on Steam? - Yeah. - The day it comes out. - Yeah. - I kind of wonder if there'll be a one-to-one tie ratio of Portal 2 to Steam. - Well, what they, what they, you know, they always say on Steam that any time a game is sells successfully on Steam, it has the bleed out effect to a lot of other games. So a lot of people will go on and like buy Portal and maybe, and you know, a certain percentage of those people will just buy another game while they're there. So, yeah. - Is that it for you? - I talked about three whole games. (laughing) - I wasn't saying you didn't talk a lot. - I mean, I played more Crisis 2 over the weekend, but fuck man, I talked about Crisis 2 on at least four podcasts. - There was somebody on Twitter who wanted me to share my thoughts on Dragon Age Origins versus Dragon Age 2, but we'll do that next week. 'Cause there's a lot of things. - Well, I'm not here and don't have to hear it again. - Yeah, exactly. - I will say we put out the two legit to quit back call over the last week, and I played with a bunch of, you know, listeners and stuff. - Back company too. - Yeah, back company, man. - How was the community in that game right now? Is it just like people playing like assholes? Like, is it any fun or? - No, no, it's actually, so I'm, you know, I'm a little bit miffed that it took 'em so long to do the update that the most recent update. I mean, yeah, they did it months ago, but they made it much harder for people to blow up the Mcon station. - Oh God, that makes me nice. - Just that has made the game so much even more. - It makes me wanna play it again. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the two legit to quit crew, it was like, we were dominating so badly, it was like borderline not fun. - I'm so tired right now, but I just kind of wanna pop it in and play it now. - Yeah, me too. - Yeah, if I wasn't really excited to go home and play the Mass Effect DLC, even though people keep telling me it's not gonna be good, I still really wanna play it. - Like Christine Steimer, who reviewed it for us, said that it's fine, it's just not the shadowbroker DLC, which was, honestly, the shadowbroker DLC should have been in Mass Effect 2 to begin with. - I'm sure if we look at Christine's review, Christine gave a score that says, "This is a good piece of content. It's just in the scheme of everything." - Well, when you make what is arguably one of my favorite games ever, and you release some of the best DLC for anything I've ever played. - It just sounds like people are down, and if everyone that played it so far in the end has thought it was good. It just wasn't as good as the best. - I think Justin McElroy of Joystick summed it up pretty well when he said, "It's great when you raise the bar really high, but then you sort of have to hit that bar with the stuff you do." - Yeah, and shadowbroker totally raised the bar. - Yeah, it just ripped the bar off and beat you over the head with it. - Yeah, and if this is supposed to be the bridge between two and three, I haven't played it yet, so I'm talking before I probably should, but if you're gonna raise the bar and this is supposed to be that bridge, then I would rather wait some more months and pay more just to have the better DLC. - Agreed. - Have another shadowbroker quality DLC. Do you remember what Christine gave this expansion? - Seven. - So she thought it was good. - Yep. - I mean, I kind of want to play it just because I want to play more Mass Effect. - Yeah. - I've already did it twice. - I want to go ahead and play it. - I did go. - Fucking EA, man, they're getting me. - I know. Well, I think I mentioned it last week, how I went back and finished Mass Effect 2 again, because I was preparing for this DLC when I heard about it. I was like, well, I have my playthrough that's pretty close to done. It was before I went after the IFF signal, so I hopped in and I went for the IFF signal and got Legion, and I was having so much fun that I just played through the rest of the game, and when I was done with that, I was like, God damn Mass Effect 2 was a good game. It totally just reminded me of it, 'cause the ending of that game is so phenomenal, like the whole way through. Anyway. (upbeat music) All right, we're gonna take a break. - What? (upbeat music) ♪ The time fades away ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ When breath starts, it's okay ♪ ♪ A secret for a certain time ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ This last time, I'll raise my hand ♪ (upbeat music) - Lots of letters, including some in response to the steroids guy, including one from the steroids guy. - Wow. - 'Cause giving you a little bit of a heads up. And including one from that guy that had an interesting relationship question where I was like, your friends listen, you don't think from the way you describe the situation and they're not gonna figure out who the fuck you are. He wrote in to tell me that they totally did. (laughing) All right. - First letter, who also says, please do not use my name. I have at least five friends who listen regularly. Well, I'm not gonna say your name, but let me tell you what I'm saying. - You know what, I appreciate that you're not saying their name 'cause editing that should out last week. (laughing) - I'm the first thing Anthony does. I'm not gonna say your name. You didn't include it anyways, but your friends are still gonna know who you are because there's no way that they don't understand the situation or you haven't talked to one another. - Assuming they listen to this piece of trash. - He says, I have five friends who listen regularly. - There you go. - Well, then you're fucked. - Okay, I think I have a problem. It's all my life. I don't even think this is a problem, but so all my life I've called my mom's best friend, my aunt. - So, that's pretty common. - Yes. - It's really common. - Exactly, but therefore all of her children and step children, my cousins. - Oh. - But now her stepdaughter is moving in with her permanently. She'll be going to my school. She is crazy hot, get along great, and from what her dad, my uncle, implies, she's pretty into me. So my question is, should I ask her out in the first place? I don't want there to be a ton of awkwardness between us or the family. If I do, how should we break it to the family? - The reason- - I don't want awkwardness. - You're not- - You don't have to break it to anybody because- - That's fine. - Her dad implied to you that she was into you. - Exactly. - And you're not- - He's related. - Yeah, her dad said that because he wants you to ask her out because he feels like you're a boy that he can trust. - It's not even a technicality, either. It's not like, oh, well, it's the stepdaughter of the blood relation. It's like, no, it's the stepdaughter of someone who, for convenience sake, of explaining to a five-year-old who mommy's friend is. - Right. - You've been calling auntie for like 10 years. - It's not a roll, 10 of bombs. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying. - Yeah, yeah. - He wrote this in. I just thought we had to answer it to tell him that there is no problem. - There's no problem. - No problem. - No taboo. - I mean, fuck, you are like 10 steps ahead of almost any other person ever because her fucking dad is told you that she likes you. - Yeah, dude, unless her dad is wrong, in which case you look like a giant asshole. - I don't think there's any problem with asking her out. - No, me neither. - You just have to make it. You cannot treat this girl poorly because then you will have a problem. - Yeah. (laughing) - Okay. Let's see. - So don't fuck it up. - Next letter. Unless we see hot cats. - I have a letter to me at some point too, but. - What is it about? - PC stuff. - All right. - PC stuff, what? - Sweet. - About like PC parts. - Oh, okay. On last week's podcast, you guys were talking about how hard it, this is from Andrew, by the way, how hard it can be to follow the story in certain games. Can you think of any games in which the storytelling is particularly effective? I'm not saying if you think the story itself was good, just in how it was presented. - Enslaved. - What do you think are the most effective ways to convey starting it? And enslaved, you're right. - Yeah. - I thought enslaved did a fucking fantastic job, both of making you care about the characters through incidental dialogue, of displaying believable emotion through realistic character development. And just, it didn't overstay its welcome at the points where it was like, okay, well, now you stop and now you watch the story. - Right. - And we're gonna throw in some funny parts and some cool looking scenes to keep your attention while these characters are becoming more believable. - And to that same, all those same points, I'm trying to choose one that I point to that for the same reason. - I think they have a lot of incidental dialogue that helps to do character development through your playing. - See, I don't think the stories in the Uncharted games are very good. I think the characterization in the Uncharted games. - Well, again, he's not gonna say, asking if the story is so good the way it's presented. And I thought it presents the story really well on Uncharted, especially with the incidental dialogue on that. - I just don't think that the story, it's not the story that you're presented with. It's like, what is the story of Uncharted 2? - Going on, I don't know how for trailers. - That's the premise. - No, well, the, I mean, it starts out as like, you know, - Well, you're going looking for the, - Exactly, you're going, and you're looking for it. - But then it turns out you find out that it's kind of this big evil artifact that you're trying to keep out of the hands of the, they're not Nazis, but they might as well be. So it's just an Indiana Jones tale retold. - Right, it's not a good story. And that's not the shit on Uncharted. There are plenty of games with not a good stories. Uncharted succeeds because the characters have interesting relationships. - I think, well, I mean, you can't have a story without good characters. - I think you can have an interesting story with bad characters. - In a game, I don't know. - Case in point, we were just discussing the movie monster before we were recording. And I was like, it's a good premise for a story, but I can't stand the characters. You know, it's sort of that situation. - But I like the way the letter addresses it. Like, what games do you think presents the story well? Like, what Arthur was saying, like enslaved, and even like, oh my God, I'm blanking on their previous game. - Heavenly sword does a pretty decent job. - You know, even they present a story really well. - What's the name of the city you're looking for, and Uncharted 2, by the way? It's just bothering me that I can't think of it. No, you're looking for Eldorado in the first one, but second one. - Oh, where the Chintamani Stone is? - Yes. - It's like another famous city, but I can't-- - It's a whole mark on the tip of my tongue. - Yes, I can't think of it. No, it's not a land. It's for whatever reason I can't think of it. It's on tip of my tongue. - I know what you mean. And I would also say that like storytelling through like really minimalism is eco and Shadow of the Colossus. They have fantastic storytelling in those games, and it's told like all through game play, almost all through game play with only the occasional cutscene to fill in some of the gaps. I love the storytelling in those games. - What about games that do it almost a more traditional way but do it well, and I'm thinking like Fallout 3? - I don't think Fallout 3 is a good example of a good story. I don't think Fallout New Vegas is a good example of a good story either. - Presentation of the story. I think Silent Hill, Shadow of Memories is a good example of presenting a story. And that's mostly because they, the single player, like the way that they break it up with these like psychological breakdowns that do like these really cool character developments in between the horror parts. - I think Mass Effect 2 does a good job of taking a style of story that a lot of companies just ignore that they shouldn't because it works particularly well for games which is a serialized format which is that Mass Effect 2 might as well be the episodes of a television show, like over the course of the season. Whereas most games are trying to tell the story of a movie. - Over the course of like 10 hours. - Right, and it just, it doesn't really work. - You end up stretching it out too thin. - Where is the point where you forget things like what are we doing again? - Where is enslaved is probably the closest to telling like a movie's story over the course of an eight to 10 hour game effectively. - Well, recent game anyway. - And I think that's because while they tell you vaguely like the overall goals were heading back to my dad, but then they're constantly like serializing it. Like you're saying where you're doing this little tiny arc of a story first. Always reminding you what the overall one is. - I just think at this point we're at a point with games where it's easier to do interesting characters than it is to do good story. And I also think that gamers attention spans connect with interesting characters more than they connect with what may or may not be an interesting story because it's easier to get those little snippets of character development here and there or like witty answer. - Think together to stick with them longer, but I also don't think there's necessarily a gamer attention span in general. The average person only has an attention span that will last 50 minutes. That was like the whole reason why our school did most of its classes for 50 minutes as well. People just have a hard time paying attention. - Yeah, and that's true, but I think also if you go back, you can go back through the history of games and there's all kinds of really interesting stories and stories that are told really well in games. You know, like what? - Like, oh, I thought you said wait and like-- - No, I said grow up. - Man fucked up again. - No, no. (laughs) Fourth wall. (laughs) No, examples of these games. - Out of this world, or in other worlds. - I don't know that those games really told very interesting stories so much as they just did it very cinematically in a way that gamers hadn't seen before. Isn't that the definition? - You know. - That's presentation. - I thought that's what we're talking about, how the story's presented. - Yeah. - I thought you were just talking about good stories. - Well, the question said the story didn't have to be good. He was just asking about stories presented really well. - And I still think that a story can be like a cliched version of something that's been told by man from millions of years and still be something that's good. - Well, yeah, you know, it's like there's the seven story archetypes, right? - Right. - Or whatever it is, seven or 12. - Joseph Campbell's stuff, right? - Joseph Campbell's stuff, yeah. You know, every story has already been told before and that kind of thing. It's just, you know, how do you change it up so that it's something different, so you learn something different over the same basic structures. And I think that happens, you know, like Beyond Good and Evil is a fantastic story, especially if you're, like, I bought that game on for my little brother and this is around the time the GameCube came out and I think he was like, what, like eight or nine then? Because I was like, man, Beyond Good and Evil is a story that I really want my little brother to experience 'cause it's all about misinformation and disinformation. - It's one of the few games that I can actually, if someone asked me to recall the story. - I can. (laughing) - Or another game with a similar plot. Like, I remember, I really liked the Abe's Oddworld sort of stories and-- - I never played those. - Really? - Yeah. - Oddworld and Exodus are on Steam. - So as much and stranger, but last time I checked, they were fuckin' broken, so. - I totally missed out on all the Abe games, actually. - They're very similar to that Beyond Good and Evil. - They're also available on PSN. - Oh, cool. - And stranger, the fuckin' sweet remastered version of Stranger should be on PSN pretty soon. - I'm just, I love stories and I love stories in games and that's probably a big reason why I love RPGs too, you know. - Right. - Well, I think, you know-- - Queenscape Torment tells a great story. - I mean, you know, anything that's successful is operating within its own medium and is aware of the medium. You know, like, we mentioned the success of Super Brothers, Sword and Sorcery. - Talk about a story presented really uniquely. - Yeah, I mean, they not only know their medium as a video game, but they also know their medium as an iPad, you know, and they're designing to both of those with that in mind. - And other things like the connectivity of Twitter. - Another example that we didn't bring up just to close it out is Bioshock. - Oh, yeah. - Up until about two thirds of the way through the game at which point it sort of collapses on itself. - Right, but it is presented really well the way through the game. - Well, and also, as Tyler was saying, it plays with the format it's in because are we at past statute of limitations for Bioshock? - Yeah. - Yeah. - I don't know, yeah, I think everyone here, we generally don't give a shit about spoilers. - Right, but I mean, it came out four years ago, almost, three and a half years. - Yeah. - So when you meet Andrew Ryan, and he basically reveals that your character has been a puppet through the vocal manipulation, Jesus fucking Christ, through the vocal manipulation of Fontaine/Atlas, it just sort of exposes the whole idea of the illusion of choice in games. So aside from the fact that it's a really cool hook for the climax of the plot that you are in point of fact, a clone of Andrew Ryan, that the reason the respawn tubes have been working is because it was tuned to his DNA only and you were regenerating just like he would, and that the only way to get at him was to use him. Just the turning the idea of gameplay on a tab like that is an extremely effective means of making someone remember the story, and that was also, audio logs were a system shock thing, obviously in bio shock is a successor to system shock, but it did it in such a way that I think it hit just the right time in next gen or current gen development to be really emotionally effective. And Minerva's Den actually I think sort of plays with the idea of the gameplay perspective and the idea of choice and the reasons why you're doing what you're doing ultimately and what your ultimate justification is. - They explained away the respawn tubes? I did not remember that. - Yeah. - You know who else has it? - How do they make sense of that in bio shock two then I wonder. - I actually know. - Bio shock two felt really thrown together from a fiction point of view. - Yeah. I don't want to, I don't want to belabor this letter much longer, but I do want to call out quickly for presentation, Andy Wells is a thief too. Like I like the stories in the thief games in general, but thief two I thought was told really well. And again, it has an incidental dialogue. Like you'll be walking around like, it didn't happen very often, but every now and then you'd walk up to like an edge or a ledge or something or you're walking along a thin piece of rafter and every now and then he'll just go, careful. You know, like he's talking to himself like your avatar is talking to himself. And I don't know, it was always brought in really well. And the levels themselves told stories in the levels. And I think when you're talking about presentation of story and game design, anytime that the story can be presented by the level design, that's sort of the best use of the medium. - Go back and play out cast for a story. - Vampire of the masquerade build lines is another good one, but I'm not going to talk about that. - He is, let's see. Okay, R.C. from Texas. Royal Cola. (laughing) He says, "I want you to tell me if I'm being stupid or awesome." Last week, I received a text message from a number that wasn't saved in my phone and it said, "I miss you." It then followed up with, "Oh no, not good, sad face." At first, I felt bad because I thought it might have been someone I removed from my phone that still missed me enough to randomly text me. So I just said, "I'm sorry, but I don't know who this is." The other person then said, "Sorry, wrong number." Then sent me her picture, which I thought was weird. - It is weird. - But she seemed attractive despite being hidden behind sunglasses, so I told her, "Very pretty," despite my brain telling me not to. (laughing) I sent her a picture of myself. - Your brain was overridden by something else. - All she said was nice, and that was that. Until tonight, she sent me another picture without the shades on, and yes, she is pretty, and said, "Had to send better pick for peace of mind." So after a few more texts back and forth, I ended up telling her my name. She told me hers, and we agreed to meet your person. - That's kind of awesome. - This sounds like it could go either really good or really bad. What do you think? Is this a bad idea? Or do I just watch too many crime dramas and have no-- - Dude, fucking go for it. - I would say do it, 'cause even if it's really bad. - Best story ever. - It's a story, yeah. Meet in a public place. - Yeah, exactly. - Exactly, yeah, 'cause she's like, "Let's meet in this alley and make sure you bring $100." (laughing) - She doesn't have a lampshade, made a human scan in her apartment. (laughing) - Yeah. - Is this a high school kid? - No, I don't know. - Did he say? - No. - 'Cause you can't tell anymore because high schoolers have cell phones. - Yeah, if you're a high schooler-- - High schoolers buy cell phones. - Don't do it. - Don't do it. - More often than anyone in this room does. - If you're older than high school, go for it. - Don't want to do whatever they said. Make sure you meet in a public place during normal human hours. - Yeah, exactly. - All right, so the next letter is from Jeff, and he says-- - Don't use my name. - He says, "I'm at a game stop, "and my normally bored out of her mind, "game stop wife lets out of, "what the fuck is this?" (laughing) What she saw were two words that frightened her on a game box, unified Korea, with her family only living a half hour drive from the North Korean border. - Right, that would be-- - Right, these two words-- - Understandably, since she was on her spine. Bobo, the point he's trying to make though, is he said, "It made me step back and think "about all the other games I've played "where I've obliterated hordes of enemies. "Could any of you guys recall a game "or a specific level that you wouldn't play "because of its content? "The no Russian level, modern warfare, two cups of mine." - I didn't play no Russian again, after playing at the one time. I mean, aside from the fact that it's kind of gross, it's also just not very fun. (laughing) - Yeah, I just, I didn't even pull the trigger in that level. - Yeah, I mean, either. I was like-- - I think I did, I think I just shot the roof up. - Wow. - The whole thing went out shooting. - I mean, eventually you have to-- - Yeah, let's shoot. - To shoot cops. - Right. - Yeah. - I don't really see how that's much better. - It's not, but-- - Well, there are many other games where you shoot cops, though. - Yeah. - I came to Lynch, that's like all you do, murder cops. - There are some pretty disturbing points of came to Lynch, too, actually, that I don't know if I would play again. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I could tell you, like all the grand theft auto I've played, there are times where I'm shooting the SWAT guys and it like, my mind sort of goes to that Austin Powers. I think it was like a deleted scene where, like, it shows his family sitting around at the inner table and they get a phone call and they're like, such and such henchmen was killed by Austin Powers today. Like, the family's like all sad and shit. (laughing) - I mean, you know, it's like in Hitman, you're basically nothing but a terrible person the whole time. - Yeah. - Yeah, but you don't have to be. - You don't have to be. You can go straight for just your one target. - You're still an assassin. - Right, but there is never a person in Hitman that you're killing that isn't a fucking awful person. - Yeah, exactly. - Or at least, what you're saying right there is that killing awful people is okay. - I'm saying that I don't feel a crisis of digital conscience. (laughing) Like, I don't kill an awful people. - I can't think of anything that I've played where I was like, I can't play this. - I think what more this letter gets to is just like the absurdity of a unified North and South Korea. Like, you know, just the way it seems to me, like the South Koreans, I mean, I can't imagine that they would even have that. I don't know. - I don't know enough about-- - The game was originally supposed to be about China, not Korea. - Yeah. - But they couldn't do it. 'Cause the Chinese would be mad. All right, so I'm gonna go after that question with the one that has a little bit of levity to it. I woke up in the middle of the night with these dumb ideas and I had to get them down. I submit these three questions and they're all very dumb, by the way. - Nice. - Shocking. - Do it. - If a Jedi were to fart in an elevator. - Awesome. - Would it be ethical to use the force to do a Jedi mind trick and pass the blame to someone else? - Whoa. - I'm going to assume that. I don't think that's ethical. Why wouldn't you just use the force to like push it down to the floor or something? - So really not ethical. - Yeah, you're a Jedi. You don't care about such trivial matters is what people think of your flatulence. Two, do you think force enabled doctors use force push to help deliver babies? There are no force enabled doctors because they would have to leave the Jedi Order and I don't, that the hardly ever happens. - Why would they have to leave the Jedi Order? - To be a doctor. - Oh, 'cause they're busy being Jedi Knights. - Yeah. - Gettis don't get treated by other Jedi. Gettis get treated by droids. - Is that a universal truth? - Yeah, they do have a one idea. - They do have a one idea. - They're treated by medical droids. - Oh, okay. - Didn't you see episode three? Baby got delivered by a droid. (laughing) - With big old scoop hands for scooping out vagina babies. (laughing) - Vagina baby, did you see vagina babies? - Yeah. - As opposed to what other kind of baby. - As opposed to c-section babies. - Well, and you know, this is an alien universe, maybe not all babies for all species come out of vaginas. - Pop out of their backs, like totes. - Yeah. - Wanna see the flow chart? - If Darth Vader could do a force choke, would it be possible for a young padawan to perform the ultimate stranger while masturbating? (laughing) - Yes, it would be, and it would be awesome. (laughing) - Wow. - I guess so, I mean, they can make themselves jump higher and sort of move themselves more quickly using the force, right? - Right. - Yeah. - Maybe, I mean, man, that's an awful lot of control. (laughing) - Yeah. I guess you'd have to be a true master of the force. - Yeah. - I would like to point out, did I ever tell you guys that I put on a force mastery machine, like, head gear thing? - No, did you find this on the internet or something? - No, this was something that Hasbro or made, and it was a legitimate Star Wars product. And you connect these little, this headset with it connects to your brain, your head, and it actually does do things based off of like, very rudimentary brainwave things. Like, you know those things, we always see it game developers conference that are like, move this block with your head. - It's sort of a game, yeah. - Exactly, this is the same thing. So you're using those same kind of basic functions to move a fan speed, to blow a ball. And so you're sitting here focusing, trying to get it to float between like two lines. And my force was strong. - Nice. - Stronger than everyone else's. (laughing) All right. - I knew that already, Anthony. - So the steroid guy wrote in. He said, first off, I wanted to thank you guys for answering my question and sub-depth in detail. Definitely gave me a lot of stuff to think about. Just wanted to give you an update, the good and the bad. The bad news is that while my ass has remained needle free, I still have not rolled it out completely. But the good news is I have a tryout with one of the major companies coming up. - Nice. - Even though a tryout in professional wrestling doesn't mean anything, will come of it, it will allow me to get feedback directly from the horse's mouth. - It means more than no tryout. - Yeah, exactly. - So, let's see. - In networking. - And so I'm gonna read this one. - Network is the most important thing. - A couple of people wrote in, and they said, so this one's from Mark. And he said, if you guys are gonna read the letters about the pro wrestler, dude, he says, I would just do it, don't do it for a simple reason. He said, if your dream is to make it in the WWE, which it should be, unlike TNA, the WWE wellness policy is no joke. If you took drugs while in the company, they will find out and seriously harm your chances. A current example of this would be Jeff Hardy, who is currently having a ton of legal troubles. - Oh, wow. I don't know. - Yeah, I don't know. So I'm just saying, he's just saying, from purely a, like, don't be yourself a trouble. - Career standpoint, yeah. WWE is strict about that. - Apparently. So, another person wrote in, Tim and said, coming from someone who has taken steroids, I would tell you that you're taking a big risk. Yes, they made me stronger and a lot bigger, but I also tore muscle tendons in both my shoulders, working too hard. My best friend took them also, and while his physique changed, the rage fits were very noticeable and they hurt his relationships. So, like I said, just stuff to think about. Anyways. Okay. Oh, and then Peter wrote in with the silly response to it, which was, "I didn't lose karma and fall out when I took drugs, so I'm pretty sure it's okay, but it might affect your intelligence charisma for a while." (laughter) - That's awesome. - Perfect. - So. Okay. Trevor writes it. "I've always wanted to play a persistent MMO-type war game, even if it's only semi-persistent, perhaps with the world being reset weekly or monthly. Something where a war actually takes place online. Being a huge battlefield fan, I would ideally love to see a massively multiplayer battlefield game that takes place over a huge world where battle lines are drawn, vehicles, blah blah blah. So, you know, you're actually conquering something. - Planets bud. - Tried to. - He says, "I know back in the dial-up days of AOL, they had a game called Air Warrior, which I know predates AOL, but that was the point I started getting to it, which had semi-persistent arenas. This game only consisted of flight in a few tanks and jeeps, but it had the basic idea of taking territories and making a push to attempt to take all of them. Do you foresee anything like this on the horizon? Arthur says, "Planetsides," was that was the game that did that? - It had a persistent world where the battles, you thought, affected the sort of tide of war. - Mag one, like touted that it was going to do that, but in Mag, it basically came down to who was attacking and who was defending. - Yeah, that's what it was. - Based on who controlled the territory. - And I did place in Planetside. It was cool, like, if you took a territory, then you could basically fast travel to that territory so you could go to the front line and keep trying to push it, you know? - And there's a remake coming out. - Is there anything? - Yeah, Planetside. I mean, they've been, like, slowly trickling out screenshots of the different ship models and stuff. - And I know it's not exactly the same, but Trion World is coming out with a massively multiplayer RTS. - The secret world, if it ever comes out, supposedly has a constant struggle between the three main factions for control of a resource that will affect their powers. - If it ever comes out. - And also that-- - I mean, it seems really cool. I hope it does. - That free to play MMO, far fall, is supposed to have some kind of persistent world with three different factions. And it's, like, tribes-like. - So we're gonna get into a couple of PC questions. One arth is gonna read, but before he reads that one, this one's also for Arthur. I was thinking of picking up an HP Pavilion DM1 laptop off Amazon, and I was wondering what you think about the new-ish AMD Fusion. From what I understand, it's something called an APU, a combination GPU and CPU, that was made possible in AMD about ATI. I think this is like their version of the Sandy Bridge. - No, I'm pretty sure that this is a single way for what the processor and video card on it. - Any thoughts on longevity or overall quality? I know it won't be able to play Crysis 2 or anything like that. - Actually, you might be surprised. - Yeah, he's probably able to play that. - He's saying he wants to play stuff like World of Goo. - I mean, when it comes to longevity, I don't see why a system on a chip, a system on a chip would be any more difficult consideration than anything else, because you can't replace the video processor on a laptop. Just like, I mean, you can theoretically replace the processor on a laptop, but no one does that. - I have never done anyone's done that. - So what is the difference? Sandy, so for the layman. - Sandy Bridge, so previously with Intel processors, there was something called the North Bridge, and the South Bridge, and the processor itself. And the North Bridge talked to the processor to handle things like talking with the memory, basically. - Right, the North Bridge went between the RAM and the processor, and the South Bridge was what went between things like the USB controller and stuff like that. - Okay, yeah. - With Sandy Bridge, Intel got, well, it's not just Sandy Bridge, it's like the entire Core i7 line. They got rid of the North Bridge, and the North Bridge functions are on the processor itself, which vastly increases the bandwidth that the processor has between itself and the memory. So you have much faster memory performance. - Okay, for some reason I thought the Sandy Bridge also had like a built-in GPU or something. - Sandy Bridge Core i7s and Core i5s, depending on the processor, have integrated video. - Okay, there we go. I knew I had read something like that. - Yeah, it's Intel integrated video, so it's not like a video game or it's not like a dedicated video card that you're gonna be using to play games, but for stuff like 1080p video and Flash and stuff like that, it works pretty well. - If you were just doing something like a media center piece. - Right, right. I mean, AMD got rid of the North Bridge years ago. That's been something that they've had over on Intel for a long time. - Yeah. So theoretically the AMD solution would be better for gamers, but there just seems to be like a mind-share issue and also I don't even know if that stuff is out yet. If it is, no one's talking about it. - Okay, so other PC question. - Other PC question was a gentleman by the name of Elliot wrote in, he says, "Hey Arthur, "so I'm thinking about building myself a gaming PC, "and this is the one that I put together. "However, I have very little knowledge on the subject "of PC gaming and PC hardware." Blah, blah, blah, blah, dick sucking. I thought I'd run them by you since I don't know anyone that would know about PC gaming. Anyways, this is what I came up with for about $620. So he listed off a bunch of parts. The parts in particular that stick out to me are the-- - As bad? - Or questionable. The one that's the most questionable is he wanted to know about an Intel Core i3 2100, which is a Sandy Bridge Core i3. 3.1 gigahertz, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And GeForce GTX 550 Ti. The Core i3s, I don't think, are overclockable, and that's a big thing with the Core i7, with the Sandy Bridge stuff. - He doesn't know much about it though, wouldn't he do that though? - There are tutorials online. Basically, I played a PC at the Crisis Review event that was put together for about $600. It was running a Core i5 that was overclocked quite a bit, and it was also running a GTX 560 Ti, and at maxed out settings at 1920 by 1080p, it was putting out 40 to 60 frames a second. So aside from the fact that Crisis 2 is the most optimized PC game I have ever played, the Core i5 is very overclockable. - What about AMD stuff, are they overclockable? - They are, the AMD stuff is a valid choice. - Especially with a budget. - I just prefer Intel. Something else you might consider is going with the generation of Core i7s before Sandy Bridge, especially if you don't need an integrated video because the performance difference is negligible, which is what I did. - They are significantly cheaper than they were. Now that Sandy Bridge motherboards are re-entering the market after a massive recall that happened a couple of weeks after Sandy Bridge released in January, the prices for the previous line of Core i7s, which is the, I can't remember the chipset off the top of my head, but I have there like 800s and 900s, as opposed to the quadruple digit Core i7 stuff that just came out. You should be able to find those for a fairly competitive price. And I would personally go with the 560 TI if you can, if you can manage. I don't see him list a case or a power supply. And unfortunately, those are two things that are going to eat up about $250 of your budget. Like the Core i7s are actually not super power hungry, but if you're gonna overclock. - Maybe he was just assuming he'd got whatever computer he had now. - I mean, it's not a good idea. Like Tyler can vouch for the importance of a good power supply and what happens when they blow out, which is nothing happens because you can't do anything. - Although I have to say about the cases when I was in the particular computer store here in San Francisco, they had some like ridiculously cheap cases on sale. - Oh yeah, you can get the cheapest most basic case. - I'm saying like $15. - I feel like it's usually worth, like if sometimes the difference between a cheap case and a great case can be just 20 bucks. And usually it's worth it. - It is worth it usually because a lot of times the greater cases have better air circulation and when you're gonna get expensive parts that put out a bunch of heat. - And there's like case designs where your components are easier to get to and that's more important than you'd think. - NVIDIA actually did a guide called how to build a kick-ass crisis 2 PC for under $600. - Oh wow, nice. - Which you can, I mean you can find it by doing a Google search for NVIDIA how to build a kick-ass crisis 2 PC. They list an AMD phenom processor and if you want, if all you wanna do is play games then that's probably a good bet. - Yeah, that's what I use. - And they talk about the i3 550 and I just don't think that the i3s are worth it. - What are the AMD phenoms not particularly, like if it's not like outside of gaming applications? - I mean, they're just not as good as multi-threaded applications. They don't get as high performance rating as the core i7 stuff, just a period if they don't. - Well, 'cause they don't have seven cores, right? - The most cores I think you can get on a core i7 right now is six. I don't think there are any octa core processors or hepta core processors. So there's a hexa core i7 that's like a thousand dollars. - Wow. - Which will be probably 418 months. - Yeah. - So I mean, like I was saying last week you just have to sort of figure out where you wanna be in the upgrade cycle, but for building a $600 PC if NVIDIA is recommending an AMD card or an AMD CPU which is their biggest competitor, then maybe that would be the way to go. - What I will say to him though is to find a list, write it down and just go do it because you can agonize over like, but soon this new thing's gonna come out that's probably gonna be better. And then you will just never build it. - Right, no. That's why I usually tend to go like three years between like upgrading my PC and that means when I have to do it, I have to upgrade everything at once. - Yes. - So I'm just gonna read your name now. Tyler wrote in. - This is really after all that time I spent bleeping out his shit. - Yeah, 'cause he says, he says, first off. - Thank you, Tyler. - First off, you were right. My friends figured it out. More importantly, the other night I called the girl. This is the girl that he was much older than him. - Was fucking crazy. - And was now, you know, not gonna be living here. I called her in as nicely as I could. I told her I couldn't do the long distance thing. - Okay. - Instead of the bitch first I was expecting, she just hung up on me. So that's about it. (laughing) - That sounds like a happy ending. - Yep. (laughing) - Awesome. - All right. Let's see, we'll do, I guess we'll do one more. - Uno, Maas, as they say in a Spaniel. - I'm a 17 year old guy who's been going through the situation to becoming shy and awkward in social settings. Not a man. I recently transferred to a school that is over an hour away from home. So that certainly didn't help. Along with the fact that I'm not very interested in knowing many of my other fellow classmates here. I'm a junior in high school. I was held back a year due to lack of credits. And all the kids I grew up with and whom I have since lost contact with are going to be moving away from home after the summer and off to college. And the ones who aren't leaving have become absolute stoners. I have no desire to really hang out with. - Word. - I feel like I literally have nobody I hang out with except my girlfriend and I only see her on weekends. And I would like to try and meet more people. So I guess what I'm trying to ask you guys, if you have any advice on meeting people and getting more comfortable, just interacting with others again. - He's still in high school. - Yeah, he said, I know Arthur mentioned working retail can help. And once I get my driver's permit and license it around the end of the summer, I plan on getting a part time job. - I think working retail is good for getting over social anxiety stuff. - Well, he says he does have some of that. Like he's just having like really bad social awkwardness and stuff. - Clubs. - Yeah, you know clubs, and Arthur's not talking about like, yeah, I don't know. - No, I mean like, hey, let's play chess. - Exactly. - Or let's make a yearbook. - I've tried to go out and be a little bit more socially and I've been going to like my local nerd store and finding out when the Warhammer guys all gather up. And you know what, they are surprisingly receptive if you just go up and be nice about it. - I don't know, you could always take up a nerd hobby. - Yeah, it's true. - You got to deal with other people who are probably feeling exactly the same as you. - Lots of nerds out there. - Well, and I'm saying who feel like they're trying to get over being socially awkward at times. - Yeah, definitely. I mean, like it's difficult when you're in a situation where like you don't feel like you can be with, be around any of the people that you're with. Like you don't feel like any of them can be your friends. - I mean, I would just say that like you're a junior in high school, you actually have two years to make some friends at the school you're in. And you may be surprised. A lot of that type of stuff just happens organically. So I would not give up on the people that you go to school with just because it's new and because it's kind of awkward right now. - Also, I mean, if you go to college, you're gonna be able to be who you are as opposed to. - Yeah, I think it's just a little bit bummed out. - Since he has still has two years in high school. - I know. I would just say don't count out the people that you're going to high school with right now. - You may, they may surprise you. - Even if they are quote unquote, whatever he said, dumb stoners or whatever. - Well, those people, those people don't even live by him anymore though, 'cause now he's not as well. - Those are old friends that he had that he doesn't want to hang out with anymore. 'Cause all of his, all the people he does want to hang out with are moving off to college and all that's going to be left behind are the stoners that aren't going to college. - I have another letter to read really quick. - No! - Okay. - It shouldn't be hard. - Don't make it depressing. - It's not depressing. This is just from a guy named Christopher who probably should have emailed me at IGN. - But he did. - I'm already depressed. - Blah, blah, blah, a little bit of dick sucking. He asked if I'm a fan of Richard Morgan, who is the writer from Crysis 2, because I mentioned a pair of Richard Morgan's books. - Not only is he a fan, he's a client. - He says if you have, if you've read his work, I'm curious to know and really I'm not sure I'm asking him blah, blah, blah. I'm going to play the game regardless. Pottles aside, do you feel that the story and the writing and the dialogue, et cetera, live up to Morgan's work? I'm sure a lot of cohesion got lost and they chaotic shuffle inherent to shooters, but I think I'd rather know in advance that I should temper my expectations rather than let myself down. I've read all of Richard Morgan's books. - Some more than once. - I've read almost all of them more than once, except for market forces, which was, that's actually, market forces is an example of something with a good story and really unlikable characters. And it was really hard to get through. I actually spent 45 minutes talking with Richard Morgan the day after Crysis 2 came out and that will be going up on IGN at some point in some form. I think that Morgan is dealing with issues that are common to his work in Crysis 2. The idea of, I mean, I mentioned transhumanism in the review, but that's definitely something that is discussed at length in Crysis 2, whether it's sort of in the background or just the way that people react to this thing that you are, which isn't really human, that you're this super powerful guy, but you're not a superhero, you're actually kind of scaring people. The idea of the corporatization of power because there's the cell who were going after you and I don't really think that's spoiling anything because it's right away. - No, that's just, you know, it's so funny when I, not funny when it's just interesting to me when I listen to you talk about this too, 'cause the first Crysis, it was like, you were just down there with the soldiers and they were like, "Man, I want me a bad ass suit." I was scared to point like a corporate entity, I think. - He talked a lot during my conversation with him about the cost of violence, like the human cost of violence, both to Alcatraz, your character, to Prophet, who was mentioned in the game who has a part to play, to the civilians around you, to New York. I think that there's a lot going on in that story that a lot of people just won't get. Also, a lot of development of side stories and secondary plot threads are developed in emails and collectibles, which is sort of just the nature of things because he was pretty frank about the idea that you can't force long chunks of exposition and story down player's throats because they just wanna keep moving and they let you keep moving in that game, but you will, if you're just moving and like shooting shit when people were talking, you're gonna miss some of the story and sometimes they're not very good about making sure that you heard it. But I do think that there are some sophisticated things going on that I can't really talk about because they spoil things, particularly the way that it ends. But yeah, I think that if you're looking for the story in it, you will find it, but it's not gonna fuck you in the eye sockets with it. - But to go back to his question, do you think it lives up to the body of Richard Morgan's works? - Probably about as much as a game about shooting aliens can. (laughs) - I sense sort of the undertone of this letter is like, 'cause you know, "Homefront" just came out and that was written by... - John Millius. - The red dawn guy, right? - I mean, it was a story created by John Millius. I don't know the actual game was. - Oh, okay, okay. - 'Cause it played, like the story in that game is like someone took the cliff notes from John Millius ripping himself off and added words in. (laughs) - Right, so I'm wondering if the listener is just coming in from that sort of worried standpoint. - I don't know, it just certainly creates a more believable world than "Homefront" did. Like it's a very day after tomorrow kind of thing where you're like, "Oh shit, that definitely looks like what I'd expect New York to look like in 10 or 15 years." And something Kotaku pointed out is that the Freedom Tower is built in New York, which is the memorial to 9/11 that politics and just various bullshit have kept from being built. But you can see it pretty often in the game, actually. So I think that there's some heavy themes and some heavy thematic content that's dealt with in there, especially when you see civilians and you see civilians dying of the alien virus and also just from the destruction in New York. But I do think that he was pretty frank with me about the limitations of the medium as far as-- - Yeah, as I'm gonna say, because seeing humans dying and I think part of it is like, I'm sure if I were reading it in the book and it's like being vividly described the way that they were decaying and looking sad on their face or something, but in the game sometimes though, just be like you said, players want to keep moving. So I was just like, "Ah, it's fucked up." - At one point, you go underground after a long battle and you come upon a woman that's immobilized on a gurney with no one else around her, like everyone else took off. And she's pretty much covered in a lot of her missing from this alien virus and she's just talking about her kid, she's just asking to know why they took them away and that she's fine and she just needs to get up and then she can go find her kids and stuff like that. And that's kind of affecting, but he talked about how there were things he wrote in the script to the game that had to get cut like times where you could explore the city and meet up with civilians and help civilians with these little side missions and stuff like that, but it just didn't work in the context of the game. Like it was exposition that couldn't stay. So. - Some of the hurdles. - Yeah. - The hurdles of the medium. - Of that genre in particular, I mean. - Yeah. - I don't think that they could have told the story that they told an enslaved and a first person shooter. - And I think that sort of underscores why games like even Half-Life 2 do what they do so well. Like, you know, when people hear people gush about Half-Life 2, there's a reason, you know, it's tough to do these like deep heavy stories in a first person shooter of all things, you know. - I just feel like Half-Life's strength has been the world that it's created and the ambiance that tells the story as much as anything that happens that you do, that the world changes around you as these things happen to sort of establish that shit is going down. - Yeah. - And a lot of that stuff happens in Crisis 2 as well. I just, I don't know that Crytek had the chops to quite pull it off. - Yeah. - But I don't know if that answered his question, but. - I think, oh yeah, I think yeah, his question was just whether he should anticipate the worst or think that, you know. - I just think you need to be paying attention if you want to get anything out of Crisis 2's story. It's not just gonna sit there and hold your hand for better or for worse. - Fair enough, yo. Sounds like fair statement to me. - So, letters at eat-sleep-game is where you wanna write. If you want to have a chance to have your shit read. You find us on Twitter. I'm Jeff Money. Tyler's dirty tea. - Yup. - Like the drink. - Matt is talking orange. Arthur is A-E-G-I-E-S. - Don't buy me games, just recommend our podcast. - Send us, yeah, exactly. - Send us some more game letters. You know, I mean, I appreciate occasionally being feeling like I'm hosting Love Line, but. (laughing) - Yeah, occasionally, I agree. - Especially if it bothers you that we read so many relationship letters. - Yeah. - It doesn't bother me. - No, it doesn't bother me. It's just- I mean, you pick out a good mix of game letters. - I tried. I tried to get some one's of levity in there too. - Yeah. - So, thanks for listening. - We're up. - We'll see you all next week. Next week for the Arthur Free podcast that's going to be all iPhone, all the time. (laughing) - I imagine that there's a good chance that there will be. It's Dragon Age and iPhone games for two hours. (laughing) - It's not a bitch. I don't know now. - Have fun, Tyler. (laughing) - No, it's cool, you can play some flash games. - Oh, it is. - No, no, I'll have magic cards. - Yeah, we'll play magic cards. - Okay. Okay, so there's our indie girlfriend. All right, we'll see you guys all next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (upbeat music) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (singing in foreign language) (gentle music)