Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 94 - 03/04/2011
We're back! We take a break from the hectic schedule of GDC to talk about Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3, and more games that don't end with 3. Then we move on to letters.
This week's music, in order of appearance:
Ellie Gould - Guns and Horses;
Darker My Love - Northern Soul
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Nothing good on the radio ♪ ♪ Once again I didn't know ♪ ♪ Who's the part I turned to? ♪ ♪ The rebel above ♪ ♪ The rebel above ♪ ♪ The rebel above ♪ ♪ The rebel above ♪ (upbeat music) - Episode 94, Rebel FM, you are in it. I'm Anthony Gallegas with me as Arthur Geese. - It's so weird. - Mesh Andrene and Tyler Barber. - What's up? - The return of Tyler Barber. - The return? - Yeah, Tyler Barber said the last few because he wasn't doing the Dead Space game club thing. - Wasn't doing the Dead Space. Makes it sound like a dance. If Dead Space came out in the 90s, it would have a dance called The Dead Space. And the song would be sung by-- - I've been really into Dead Space ever since we went and did that. - Yeah. - So I've started reading Dead Space Martyr, which is really good. And it's sold out on the visceral store. - Is it really? - Maybe it's doing all right, I don't know. - Well, I mean, you can find it at like every borders and stuff. - Right, but that's actually the one video game book like you said, that like I've ever read and I've been like, wow, like it's not even one of those books and I'm like, yeah, I read it. No, this is like, fuck yeah, right? It's a great book. - Yeah, again, do you, what is it about the franchise of Dead Space that allows it to transcend so many mediums and-- - I think it's just because it does. - Well, for me, it interests me a lot of ways too 'cause I love religion and stuff. And studying religions and a lot of that, I mean, the whole point of Dead Space Martyr book is about the founding of Unitology. - Yeah, exactly. - It's actually really interesting. - And it happens in a way that you would not think. - Yeah. - Especially given like all the iconography and the imagery and the things that people say in the Dead Space universe like you read the book and the book's a total surprise. - Yeah. So speaking of Dead Space, Dead Space Severed came out. People were asking what we thought of that but as far as I know, I'm the only one who's playing it. - Yeah, I haven't played it yet. - Yeah, just on a whim, you know, when I heard it came out, I got the email from EA so I went ahead and bought it. I did buy it, people that would say I didn't, you know, I paid some-- - Who says that or would even care? - Well, 'cause some people when we make value propositions, especially in reviews, will be like, it's not like you guys paid for it. - I think that makes us more equipped to make a value proposition. - But in this case, I did pay my $7 for this 'cause I was not even the person who was originally supposed to review it. But-- - Tom, just going record is saying, I think paying for a game makes you more likely to say good things about it. - Yeah, cool. I mean, you want to just-- - It makes psychological sense. - Right? But this makes, again, makes psychological sense which is why our commenters would not typically say it. - Well, in that-- - Are you talking about our commenters or IGN commenters? - The internet. Well, that's why any editorial outlet that I've ever worked for, they always say that you shouldn't be buying the games that you review. It does affect you. And I mean, yeah, you want to justify your purchase. You want to think that you've made a good decision. - But Dead Space Edward, it tells the story of Gabe Weller from Dead Space Extraction, who was the cop that was kind of always an asshole throughout the whole thing. - Right, yeah. - And now he's married to the girl from Dead Space Extraction. - That's cool. - And they have a pregnant child or a pregnant, she's-- - Whoa. - Yeah, sorry. - Dude, this Dead Space universe gets more gnarly by the minute. - But he has an empty reality show. He's, I'm dead space pregnant. - He's working security detail in the minds. - I'm a fetus mom. - He's working-- (laughing) - Even better. - He's working security detail in the minds when all the shit that starts with Isaac. - Yeah. - So their two stories are running along kind of concurrently. The cool part about it is that you definitely can tell that you and Isaac are criss-crossing paths at times, a few minutes apart, obviously. Like you roll into that area where you fight the first big boss with Isaac and all the pillows are smashed and it's dead. You know, and you're like, "Oh, something happened here." You know, and so-- - It's sort of a spoiler, isn't it? - I mean, well, previous talked about how you roll through areas where it's been-- - Thanks, asshole. - No, don't edit that out. Don't, don't feel like you need to either. - Yeah, it's fine. - It's really, it's one moment of the game. - No, I wasn't gonna edit it out. You just spoiled it for me. (laughing) - No, that's like a one moment of the game. I'm not gonna spoil the really cool moments. There are a few cool moments in it, but the thing about it that I didn't like it nearly as much as dead space is that, you know, it's really hard to do character development and they don't do that much character development. They try, but it's really hard to do character development. You know, like you always hear David Cage and all these people talking about. It's really hard to tell a story when all you're doing is shooting things. - Yeah. - And dead space severed is pretty much you just shooting things. - Just shooting things, right. - 'Cause he's not an engineer, so he's not doing any of the engineering puzzles to break it up. And he's not, there's never a part where you go out in zero-g and you're floating around. Like-- - They don't do anything with the whole wife and baby situation. - I mean, the basic premise is you're trying to get started. - Oh, that's just safe and princess. - Yeah, so there really isn't all that much other than they start you off with a badass pulse rifle and they give you a shit ton of ammo and they're just like fucking kill everything you see. - Okay. - So it's fun because the combat's still great, right? - Sure. - And they add a couple of new necromorphs that are pretty intense to fight, like they add a-- - Oh, well, okay, I guess that's a spoiler. It's just an enemy type. - I mean, if you're paying seven bucks for this, you're paying to see all that stuff, right? - I guess. - Yeah, I could see definitely wanna be surprised by some new freaky thing. - Yeah, I guess. - Just let 'em know. I mean, that's exciting enough to know. - For me, yeah, for me knowing that there's new enemy types would make me wanna buy it more. - Right. - I would actually read, like if I saw a preview that explained the enemy types, I wouldn't think it was a spoiler, not for me personally. - Yeah, I just didn't think of that as a spoiler either. It's like, you know, there are new guns too, like-- - So I guess a good way for me to ask the question would just be like, as a fan of Dead Space or something like this, is this something to like, oh my God, I have to play right now? Or is it just like, man, maybe someday if I wanna come back and play some more Dead Space, this might be a good way to do it. - How Dead Space are you feeling right now? - That's the thing, it's like for like Dead Space nerds and stuff, you're like, okay, you get maybe like a tiny glimpse into what might be additional lore, but it's never really well explained. It really is just like a cool combat, a couple of really cool combat scenarios. - Gotcha. - I just feel excessively Dead Space, right? - How about as a recommendation, a lot of times DLC goes on sale. Wait, first it goes on sale. - Like, I mean, it depends, right? Like if you really are just dying for Dead Space, seven bucks isn't the end of the world. It's like two hours, right? - Sure, yeah. - But it's two chapters, it takes about two hours to get through on normal when I was playing. And, but I'm sure like if you're like, you know, if you're not really feeling it and you wanna take a break, like wait until it goes on sale and come back to it like in three months, I'm sure you're like, oh, that was really fun. - Right, right. - You know, just be ready that the game just assumes that you are super familiar with Dead Space still because it is like two minutes in. You know, like two minutes into regular Dead Space gets pretty intense too. - Yeah, I mean chances are if you're buying severed, you are-- - Yes, exactly, but two minutes into severed, it's not like you better be able to fucking defend yourself because from there on out, it is just constant battling. So it's cool. Yeah, I still thought it was good. It just, you know, no, nowhere near as awesome as the story of Isaac. 'Cause Isaac's such a cool character. The pacing's so great. - Yep. - Also out this week, I think it's out now, Pixel Junk Shooter 2. - Yeah, it's out. - I haven't played it yet. - I have been too busy with GDC and everything going on. - It's fun. You know, like the one thing that I thought is that when you first played Pixel Junk Shooter, right, it was like so charming 'cause you're like, wow, this is kind of like familiar 'cause it reminds me of other games, but it's totally unique in the way that it combines like the shooting with the, using the elements like fire and water against one another. - All the fluid dynamics. - And some of that kind of initial like charm is lost because you're like, oh, okay, here's really Pixel Junk Shooter 2. But they had enough new things that like, if you love the first one, it's totally rad. Like, now there's stomach acids. Yeah, and there's various other ones that I, you know, they deal with darkness now and you have to use darkness. They had some new suits and the level design and everything is so good. Man, they just have a great music. Like great, I can't remember the person, the name of the studio, just the music. - Oh, yeah, yeah, it's done by someone. - Oh, crap. - I can't think of that. - Pittsburgh Shooter is great. I mean, they're based in the UK. - Like if you have like $20 to spend, like that is so great that you can get one and two. - Yeah. - And it's like five hours of game, probably, and you can play through it cooperatively. Two adds an online multiplayer that's like, it is actually pretty fun to play one-on-one. It's like who, you go back and forth, someone is trying to steal scientists and bring them back to their little base. The other person is trying to hunt them down and kill them. - Oh, wow. - And if you kill them, then it's your turn to try and grab scientists and you can sit there and poach from their base, so it's the best other rounds. It's fun, you know, and it has like what you do. I mean, every online game, right? What do they do now? You get experience and you buy upgrades with those experiences. Now I have these missiles, now I have these abilities. But, you know, to me, that's like, I don't really see that as a selling point for Pixel drink. - No, it wouldn't be for me either. Like, to me, it's always been just about going through the weird levels and trying to figure out what they want me to do with the, like how they're gonna make me do the interplay of like fire and water and stuff like that. - Well, it's just cool because, you know, the Pixel junk shooter does a great job of putting you in a puzzle situation without you realizing that you're solving puzzles. - Exactly, that's what I like, is that they never have to tell you, like, there's never once in Pixel junk shooter two, or even Pixel junk shooter, where they're like, hmm, better use this water to put that fire out. No one ever has that moment where they're like, telling you, hey, stupid, this is how you do this one. It just happens the first time you're like, oh, of course, water puts out fire. - Right. - You know, it just makes sense. - Right. - And, yeah, I still think that, man, those guys, - Yeah. - A few games, they just make brilliant fun down what we'll be doing. - The name of the people that did the music is high frequency bandwidth. - High frequency bandwidth, yeah. - HFB. - And it's weird because you play Pixel junk and you're like, man, I wouldn't think I'd be listening to, like, fucking electric jazz music while I'm playing this, but it's a trip home. - It's a trip home. - And trip hop, yeah, it works. - Yeah. - It's very, it's a lot of fun. So, and then special shout outs, shout outs to games. I saw this week that I don't wanna go into depth about, everyone should check out Akimi Village. It's a PSN game from Ninja B, the people that made Kingdom for Keflings in a world of Kefling. - Nice. - It's very much a Kefling's game made for PSN with some slight changes and some usability things they've learned from the Kefling's games. - Did you ask if it supports home avatar? - I did not have his horse. I'm pretty sure it doesn't because the whole point is you're playing as these characters that support a very Asian culture aesthetic. - My name. - So, Akimi Village was cool. Vengeance Defenders, another really cool game that I just wanna say people should pay attention to because it's going to support cross platform play between Android, iOS, PC and PS3. Like, you can all play together in any mix. - Wow. That's kind of impressive. - Yeah. - That almost never happens. - Right. I mean, I don't think it ever has happened. - Ever? - Ever. As far as I know, it's hard for me to say ever, but it's so funny when I-- - Cell phone console on PC. - Yeah, so funny when I go back and think about it. I'm like, you know, you're probably right. It's probably never been done before. (laughs) - I mean, it seems really cool, especially, you know, if they can get everything in it, the way the guy was talking was like, you play it on iPhone and you're leveling up your character and then you get home and you wanna play it on a high death thing. So you play it on your PS3 or PC. You're still leveling up the same character. - Wow. - And Dungeon Defenders, if you don't remember, was it was like a Unreal Tournament mod, winner way back in the day. - Right, yeah, I didn't know that. - Yeah, it was like an indie, kind of an indie team, like this submission. - Cool. - That was the one where they had the ball. - Yeah, like the ball was in there and the thing hazard was in there too. - Yeah, and this is the one that ended up winning. - And I never played the Dungeon Defender, 'cause I didn't have time, I played the ball, but I didn't get to play Dungeon Defender. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently people say it's really good. - So, there's like the big games that I've seen this week. Also, everyone should check out Skullgirls. If you like fighting games, just go check out the trailer. It's cool. - It's very cool. - We'll bet you. - All right, thank you. - Head nods do not translate to radio, sorry. - That's why I said it. (laughing) - Really quick, I reviewed Bulletstorm. I gave it-- - Nice, I did that game. - An eight in an other choice. Did you beat it in five hours? - Like, about just under five and a half hours. - I thought-- - Oh, really? You must have been playing it on Easy. That's the only possible explanation there could be for finishing that game in five and a half hours. - PBX, it took me seven. - I believe. (laughing) - I can tell by the way that you were rolling your eyes when you said that Arthur, that those were the comments you received when you said it was a five and a half hour game. - Apparently, we are faster than the entire QA team in anyone at Epic. - Really? - Yes. Apparently, that game is executable in 5.5 hours. I mean, maybe the QA team just spent more time trying to get specific kill shots than I did. - That could be. I think I cleared like 60 or 70% of the skill shots. - Yeah, I would say I do too. - Play through. If you have a choice of versions, the PC version plays the best. And it-- - It's the prettiest. - I played on PC. - It's the prettiest. It plays the best. - Did you have any-- I had, sorry, I had like graphical glitches. - What graphical glitches? - Like, especially when there were particle effects in the distance, there would be things like, like little black squares would suddenly appear for like two or three frames where like a bit of a particle effect should be, or-- - That's like a graphics driver issue. - Or like, yeah, but it doesn't happen to me in any of the game. - That doesn't mean it's not a driver issue. - Yeah, that's true. - What was the last time you updated them? - I don't know. I haven't said on auto update. - You should see if you have new drivers. You'd be surprised. I downloaded the Crisis to demo on PC earlier this week and ran it on my work PC. And it ran not so hot. And then for some reason I upgraded my drivers and it doubled my performance. - Wow. - So these things happen. - I want to do that, yeah. - Yeah, both of them is quite good. It's quite short. And the multiplayer is not good. - Oh, I'm sorry to get that, but-- - The multiplayer, it's only like a sort of horde mode, right? - Yeah, except they encourage you to be more of a dick to your teammates until you absolutely have to work together. But yeah, but the multiplayer is good. And the characters are great and the story is actually well done. - I was shocked at the quality of the dialogue. - Right? - It doesn't seem like that game would have that. - No. - There you go. - Like voice acting or writing? - Both. - Really? - I thought the writing between your character and the girl and stuff were pretty good and easy. - Man, I hated that kernel character. I did not like his writing. - I thought his writing was fun. - But yeah, well, it's from good. Reviewed Torchlight this week. Went up today, also an eight. - Well, how was that? I mean, I don't know eight, but like-- - Translates are markedly well to a controller. So much so that I really hope there's control or support in Torchlight, too, if it's not on consoles. - I actually wouldn't have expected that. - The base X is attack. Left bumper is healing potion. Right bumper is mana potion. Everything else can be assigned as a hot key. - Right, well, I mean, like all of that, I kind of understand. It's like inventory management and stuff. - Inventory management has been drastically simplified. You just have 50 inventory slots. The end. - But how do you like, I mean, do you still have to like move through it to equip stuff and everything? - You do, but like hitting the right and left bumper switches you between your inventory and your pets inventory, hitting X swaps between A, identifies and equips and Y drops. So everything is very-- - That's easy. - And accessible on the face buttons. They look clunky, but that's just sort of the way it is. You have two sets of abilities that you can hot key. So like the left trigger, Y, B, and the right trigger can be hot keys. And then you'll hit down on the D-pad and then you'll have a whole new set of hot keys. But yeah, it translates really, really well. - Cool. If I played the PC version a lot, which I did do, should I play it on the Xbox? - There's a new pet, there's some new armor sets. - It doesn't really add that much. - I mean, it's just for people that never had the chance to play a previous set. - That's what I'm saying, is it like, is it for those people or is it for fans of Torchlight as well? - Super hardcore fans maybe, it's launching cheaper than Torchlight launched, but it's not cheaper than Torchlight is on PC. - Oh, I see, I see. - How much Torchlight launched? - 20, yeah. - And it's 15 from live arcade? - Oh, okay. - Let's see. Matt and I played Gears of War III last week. - We did. - Like two and a half hours of Gears of War III. - Yeah, it was multi-player. - Yeah, multi-player, not single-player. - Right, no, they're not gonna let anybody play single-player until that game comes out, basically. It's really good. - It is really, really good. - And I say that with a surprise to one of my boys because as Anthony will test you, and neither of us particularly cared for Gears of War I and II's multi-player. - Yeah, and I did really like the multi-player. I'm just not a crazy multi-player kind of guy normally, and especially when it comes down to games like Gears of War and Call of Duty. I'm more of a battlefield kind of multi-player guy. - Me too. - Yeah. - So the crew I run with, the two legit quick crew, we played the hell out of Gears of War I multi, but it was a new thing then, and that's when the exploits began. And they sort of just got worse with two. - Yeah, that happened a lot. - And we didn't touch two at all, we just played horde. - Right. Well apparently there's been a whole lot of patches to Gears of War II, and they've added in new stuff, and they've fixed some exploits, and there's some, I don't know, there's other people on the area five team that are much harder gearheads than I am. Much more, I'm sorry, much more hardcore gearheads than I am. - The two of you did there. - Yes. - I just, it's just weird to me. I know they push multiplayer 'cause like they want maybe more people to play, but I don't feel like, do people really care about the multiplayer? - Oh, very much. - Hell yeah, yeah. - No, does it do that well, like? - Yes. - Really? - Yes. - Yeah. - Like I figure most people buy it for single player. - With the exception of Call of Duty and Halo, it is definitely the biggest multiplayer game on 360. - Yeah, absolutely. - I just say to me, don't get it. - Yeah, well, yeah, 'cause it's not your game, you know. And it's like, and it is my game if I have enough friends push me into playing. - Exactly, that is the only time I've ever played it. - Yeah. - But every time I do play Gears of War multiplayer, I'm like, man, this is so fucking cool. And I have a really good time with it. But then last week at the event, it even got Arthur excited about-- - Yeah, I was an interested at all in the beta, honestly. But now I am very much looking forward to it. I think they determined the winners of the maps. And I think it was Trench's and Old Town. - Okay, you need to explain that 'cause probably I don't understand so many people don't. - So there were six maps at the event we went to. There was, okay, check out, which is like a grocery store. And they described it kinda like the grocery store from the mist, which is not incorrect. There was Thrashball, which takes place in a Thrashball arena. - That was by far my least favorite map. - I thought it was okay. - I saw in the artwork people skinned wearing football. - Cole, there is Thrashball. Cole is exclusive to the beta. - Yeah. - And if you get a certain level in the beta, you can, you get Thrashball, Cole, day one in Gears 3. - Skins, man. - Yeah. - Looks really cool though. - You, there's Trench's, which takes place in Trench's. Old Town, which looks like it takes place in Albion from Fable 2. - So it takes place? - Yeah, that's hilarious. - So it takes place in Old Town. - Yeah. - These names are really creative so far. Let's keep going. - I know. - I mean, they're supposed to be quickly identifiable. Well, the only reason I can remember them is because the names are simple. Otherwise, I'd be fucked. Like I couldn't tell. - Oh, I agree. I mean, the names of modern warfare are simple too, but I never remember them. Because they don't necessarily have to do with what you're about to see. - Right, well, I always do. - Oh, check out first story. - Well, I can actually remember like any of the Halo Reach maps we saw. - Neither can I. - Yeah. - I can because I wrote about them. - Right. - You can shoot chickens in Old Town and pumpkins. There is Overpass, which takes place in Hasinto, or Jacinto. I think it's Hasinto. Like, yeah, but like halfway through the match, the map will sort of start to sink and flood, which doesn't do anything to the game. It just looks cool. - Yeah. - And then there's Mercy, which is the map that they were showing at E3 with a beast mode. - Right. - And Mercy is really cool. I don't think it won though. - Is it an hospital? - No, it's a church. - Like a church courtyard in church. - Is Overpass a remake from the map from Gears 1? It looks like that one that took place on a highway, and it's like a U shape. - No, this is a circle. - Okay, nevermind. - With not with Trica, but with Lancer turret and placement. - One thing that's really cool is that like all of the maps before they load them up now, they have like an overhead view of the map, like a drawing of the overhead view, and then it names the different areas. So that everybody who's going into the map can call out areas, can call out the same vocabulary. - Yeah, because it's in other games, like Modern Warfare and stuff, it's just what we develop the names as. - Yeah, exactly. - Green building. - Yeah, yeah. Above the crate. - Yeah. - No, the other crate. - The crate. - Did you get a loadouts in the last one? I didn't think you did. - No. - Yeah, and this one you get loadouts. - As I'm saying, you just started with a gun and then you went and found one. - Yeah, unless you can pick the weapon, you want to start with. You don't have to worry about everyone. - Are there still guns littered on the level strategically? - Yes, there's some, but they're generally power weapons. - I was going to say that was always a strat and Gears of War II is who could get weapons next. - It's still about map control. Who knows if they'll have a mode or custom game mode where you get access to every gun for your loadout? I have no idea. But there are, it did seem, there are only a few guns that you can start with and the other guns you still have to find through the map. Like the, that one pistol, I can never remember the name of the pistol, like the Magnum revolver one. - Oh, yeah, I can't either. Which is funny because I was just playing Gears of War I on PC. - What sort of persistent leveling are they doing to keep me hooked to their game tomorrow? (laughing) - New skins, mostly. - Yeah. - Okay, but it isn't like-- - I don't think you unlock any weapons at all. - There are no perks. - Okay, I was curious if they were going that way too. - If that's what you're looking for, I mean-- - I'm not looking for that, but it just seems like that's what every game is doing. - No, I think Gears and Epic just don't make that kind of-- - Just like Halo doesn't really work that way. - Yeah, Halo doesn't really work that way either. - Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, it's more fluid, more responsive, it animates better, it's much prettier. - Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I actually, 'cause originally I was like, all right, Threshball Cole, that's a really stupid idea, he's wearing football gear, but the shaders on his gear are so cool looking. I just kept looking at the shoulder pads and it'll be around in the sun. - No, 360, it's not coming out on PC. - Looks incredible. - Yeah. - I know it's not coming out on PC, but I thought maybe, like, or a lot of times early on though, I don't see this with the controller. - No, these were all on Xbox. - And it looked, it just looked really, really good. - It's fucking fabulous. And I actually asked Cliff, I was like, well, the fact that you're going to dedicated servers, which is a big upgrade, or big difficulty ass going to dedicate server now, it's like, the fact that you're doing that is that what helped add on the extra horsepower for the graphics engine, because you don't have to have the server on the same machine anymore. He said, actually, that was less of an influence than you might think. The server, it's actually more just an upgrade to Unreal 3 tech that makes it look like this. - This is another big selling point for Unreal. - Yeah. Well, that's sort of the case with all the gears game. It's like, here's the, here's why Unreal Engine could look if you were us, but you're not, so it won't quite look this good, but it'll still be looking good. - Although I will say this, I was noticing this, I saw at least one new Unreal Engine 3 game that's coming out in a couple of months that I can't talk about yet. But what I noticed is that it had lighting and stuff going on that is new to Unreal Engine 3 games, like that was in Bulletstorm. - Ah, right. - And actually it was more refined than what I was seeing in Bulletstorm. So I think that the delay in Gears of War 3 from April to September has actually thrown off the way that these things usually work, which is that Gears will come out look better than everything else that uses Unreal Engine 3. - And my brain walks around and is like, "Bye, our shit." - Yeah, then games, well, though, I think they'll basically just sell people upgrades to the engine depending on when their game is coming out versus a epic set piece. So there are gonna be games coming out with Unreal Engine 3 in the next few months that look better than you'd expect that have stuff in it that similar to Gears of War 3. - Well, the big thing about the Unreal Engine 3 is the global illumination. - Is that happening in Gears of War 3? - Yeah, yeah. - And it shows? - I mean, it's not Crisis 2 levels of global illumination, but it's really fucking good. - No, I don't think so, yeah. I mean, it's the things like one of my big complaints about Gears 1 and 2 in Unreal Engine games in general is that there's sort of two levels of shadow and this is an exaggeration, obviously, but it always feels to me like even in bright daylight, if you're looking at a shadow, it's fucking black as black. And that always felt really weird to me, especially when you're looking at people and their armor and stuff, I don't know. But in Gears 3, the shadows actually look like realistic daylight shadows and it increases the visual fidelity of the game, in my opinion, at least tenfold. - And it's colorful. - Yeah, yeah. - There's a lot of color. - Yeah, well, I mean, there's been other Unreal games that have done color recently too, so it's good that they're taking a cue. - This will be the Gears game that finally kills that meme, the brown and gray meme. - Right, yeah. - But I mean, aside from the way it looks, it just plays much better, in my opinion, 'cause everything is smoother and more responsive and their usability improvements, like holding down buttons longer to do certain things so you're not accidentally picking up a weapon or rolling when you're trying to revive or stuff like that. And there'll be a little meter with the button on the bottom of your screen and then it'll slowly do a white circle around it to show that it's happening. - Yeah, once it draws a white circle around the button as you're holding it and once the circle is complete, then you've executed it. - That would be real handy in a bad company when I'm trying to arm the M comm station and instead I'm just switching kits. - Yup, 'cause everybody died right there. (laughing) It's exactly that issue that they're trying to get around. - Yeah, so I mean, it's just a lot of fun. - Yeah, for my understanding, the dedicated server tactic is also supposed to help get around a lot of the exploits and cheaters. - I don't really know. - So they've been really cagey about whether every game will be on a dedicated server. - Really? - Yes. - Or that it'll work like left for dead where it's like, if there is one. - Because they're like, oh, we've got dedicated servers and then a few paragraphs down the pressers. So they're all, we've also got host migration. It's like, why will we need host migration with dedicated servers? - It's actually a really good point. They're being very, very cagey. Cagey is the word I have. Matt and I also saw Battlefield 3 this week. They released a three minute video on Tuesday at midnight. The best shit in that demo was not in the video. - Yes, I guess, do you think it'll look, I mean, I'm always wondering how it'll look on consoles. Like, consoles can do great things too. - Don't care. - No, you're just gonna play on PC? - Yeah. - I think it'll look just fine on consoles. - I think it actually won't do everything. - I think it will do everything? I can't do everything. - It can do everything. - It can do everything. - Console can't do DirectX 11 stuff. - Consoles can do DirectX 11 stuff. - Really? - Yeah, there's this fucking meme going around. The consoles are limited to DirectX 9 stuff, but that's not the case. - Well, I thought it, I actually thought it was limited to DirectX 10 stuff. - No, I mean, first of all, the consoles can do whatever they program them to do, but the 360 at the very least has a tessellator built into it. Like, the tessellator inside the 360 is the tessellator that DirectX 11 tessellation has been based off of. - Oh, okay. Wow, I didn't know that. - That video card was seriously ahead of its time. - I learned something. - But I guess there'll just be some things that, I mean, it won't be able to look obviously quite as good, I bet, but that's fine. - It might not be-- - It'll look phenomenal. It just won't look-- - Right. - The fidelity of the image probably won't be as great. - I mean, well, they're also switching to a deferred renderer, which helps. So it should perform pretty well on consoles. - Actually, it seems like a PTSD waiting to happen. - It is. The sound is better than it is in bad company, too. - Not only the sound-- - That's great. - But the animations, the way they do, like the way people die and stuff. And the fact that it takes place in battlefields that are still occurring right now. - Yeah, that's the only thing that was like, yeah, I can't decide if that's like a ballsy move or like an evil move. - Yeah, I watched someone linked on my Twitter, Jeff Canada breakdown video after he watched it. He was like, so hype. And he brought that up that it gets close to uncomfortable. And to me, is that the holy grail of war games? Like, who here felt comfortable watching save him Private Ryan? - It was said-- - No, I did not feel comfortable. - That was a pretty horrible experience. Like, fuck, I feel stressed out watching this movie. And I'm wondering if they're kind of tapping into a sort of-- - Maybe. I mean, it's just like guns aren't loud, they roar. - Yeah. - Like explosions roar. - Well, and it's not just the way we're in a loud venue, it's sounded-- - Dice has always had some of the best sounding weapon now, for sure. - But this is orders of magnitude improved. - And that's the thing to me. The orders, everybody knows I'm a huge, bountiful fan, and I play it all the time. And I was stoked just like everyone else when they were gonna show a battlefield three. I didn't expect it to be a jump in generation. I didn't expect it. - Yeah. - I thought it would just look like a bad company, really. - But just better, and maybe better than me too. I did not expect what I saw. - No, uh-uh. - That's what, and to me, that's so rare when it happens in video games. It's like, it's a really awesome event. You know, it's like, when we all first saw Half-Life 2 for the first time. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. - People were like, what? - Yeah, that first-- - Or crisis. - Well, yeah, the first time I saw, I remember the first time I saw Half-Life 2, and they demoed also the new source tech at the same time. Here's what source can do, and here it is in Half-Life 2, and it-- - I mean, I can think of, there's only been ever a few games that have done that, where there's that jump, but it's usually not in the same generation, but like, you know, like I played it on Grand Theft Auto 3, right? And then when I saw 4, I was like, holy fuck. - Right, you know. - Well, they also made clear to point out to us that they were showing this on a PC, and that PC is the lead platform for the game. So, I mean, it's, I'm sure it's going to be the case where it'll look great on console, but this is a, I think part of the reason why this is such a jump in tech or whatever is because it is going to be a PC first game. - Right, yeah, definitely. - I mean, there are certain things that the consoles just won't have, and there are certain things that the 360 will have that the PS3 won't, and there will probably be some post-processing stuff on the PS3 that the 360 doesn't have. That's usually the way it works. - Yeah, I mean, I've-- - Like, but what are the, sorry, I didn't mean to-- - No, I was just going to say, like, I've been scouring the boards like a crack addict for information on Battlefield 3, and just, you know, there's all kind of speculations, but a lot of people are like, even of the opinion that the multiplayer maps might be even smaller on consoles than the maps on a PC. I mean, that's pure speculation at this point, but that, you know, these are the sort of balances we might be looking at. - I don't think that that's going to be the issue. I think it's just more a matter of number of players. - Number of players. - You were saying that? - Oh, I was going to ask you, Arthur, because, you know, you know, more about the tech than I do, but like, what's, what are some of the things that, like, you know, between Xbox and PC that one can do that the other can't? - Screen space ambient occlusion is something that you'll see on 360 games that's usually not active in PS3 games, which is where shadow kind of pools are in an area where there's no light. And that it just, it basically makes-- - There's also like, where two corners of a wall come together and it's darker and-- - Right, and generally graphics engines haven't done that very well, but more and more often, there are engines that are doing that. Like, Bad Company 2 does that in parts. And that's typically something that you'll see on a 360 build that won't be in a PS3 build. - Gotcha. - But I mean, it's, we'll just have to see what happens, honestly, because with third-party stuff, they're usually trying to code the engine in such a way that it works on both. But a bullet storm on PS3 didn't have a ton of the light-shifting stuff. Like the, just the god rays and the very epic lighting in the bullet storm. - Yeah, sometimes there were like a few community god rays. - It was, it's a little ridiculous, but the lighting in the bullet storm is really, really good. - Yeah, it is. - It is, but you're right, there definitely times are like, well, if we can do god rays, no fucker, we can do god rays. - And they're just not in the PS3 version. - Yeah. - They replace it with Bloom. Basically, it was very excessive Bloom. - Gotcha. - Would it be good for people to get an idea to look? 'Cause I know like there's a ton of mass effect two screens that compare PS3 to Xbox. Is that like a good source for? - No, there's, I mean, they're using a quote unquote, new version of the mass effect engine for PS3. - That's right. - It just looks weird. - Yeah, it does. - Like, I'm not sure what the fuck they did, but the lighting is-- - That's quite contrasty. - Well, the lighting is totally different in spots, like, and not in a way that makes sense. It's just like you can't tell where the light sources are in a lot of shots. - Weird. - And I don't know if that's the PS3 or if that's just the engine change. - And this is, and they said this is the engine that's gonna be mass effect three, right? - Yes, that's what they're saying. - Which makes sense. - Yeah, it does. - You want it to be portable as easily as possible. - There are other performance issues with the PS3 version of mass effect. Like all the DLC stuff runs like shit. - With giant texture issues. - Wow. - Oops. - Unreal Engine 3 was never designed for PS3. - So are we allowed to talk about, like, the rest of the battlefield demo, the stuff that didn't come out? - Yeah, I mean, people wrote previews on it. - Yeah, it wrote all about it. - So I just have to say that the major oh shit moment is probably what everybody else liked. The earthquake actually didn't really even impress me that much 'cause it was basically a cut scene, even though I know it was all happening in engine. - What really fucking impressed me in the kit because it's a direct result of player action was when the guy playing the game picked up a rocket launcher, fired it across the, he was on, you as the player are on the roof of this one building. - This is as a sniper with a 50 cow is taking shots at you and your team on a roof. - Right. And they roll the rocket launcher along, one of your team members rolls the rocket launcher along the ground to you and you pick it up and you fire it at the sniper across the building. And it kind of doesn't matter where you hit the building because it basically destroys the entire front of the building. - It blows out. It blows out like four floors. - Yeah. And you can see the floors inside, you know, 'cause it's like a glass front office building and-- - Boner. - I think what I'm more impressed by is just watching how much more destructible the environments are. - Yeah. And the granularity of the destruction. - Yes. I will say that I was seeing repeated sort of breaks in the environment. Like the same sort of cookie monster bites taken out of walls to get shot. - Right. Like it was pre-animated, like this chunk comes off. - Possibly, yeah. But it just, it looks really, really good. And then obviously the most impressive part is watching the building come down at the end that then falls on a helicopter. But it just, it's really incredible. It's next generation stuff. - The one thing that I couldn't help thinking though, the entire time that I saw it and it's actually less immersive because of it is that you can't take cover. It's still very old school PC shooter style and that if you want to take cover behind something you're crouching and standing and crouching and standing or you're, you know, you're strafing in and out of a corner so that you can shoot at somebody. And that doesn't feel like, and the rest of the animation of all of your team members and the enemies just taking cover. - They're taking cover. - And they're taking cover and it's a battlefield and you're like, I am PC turret man moving back and forth. I'm going to go prone. - Yeah, but you know what I mean. - That man, so many PC players bitched about that in bad company too, that you could not go prone. So that was a huge thing. Also, when you're crawling along prone he is really dragging himself. - He is, it looks cool, yeah. But I mean, like after playing Killzone 3 finally last weekend, I'm like, man, first person cover is awesome. So I just wish they had that in Battlefield 3. - Yeah, you know, I'm playing through Killzone 3 as well and I enjoy Vegas. That's another first person sure that uses cover. However, the reason why I feel I don't mind not being included is because even in Killzone 3 when you're in cover, it's like 70% coverage, right? So you can get hit 30% of the time about, right? And that to me would, I don't know if the developer can just like crunch the numbers and they're just saying, well, if they just crouch there, it's the same sort of ratio of coverage. You know what I mean? - Yeah, but it doesn't feel the same. - It's the immersion thing, it's what you're talking about. - That's all I'm really talking about. - Yeah, yeah. Like one feels like I'm moving with a D-pad and the other feels like I'm a soldier moving in a battlefield, you know? - Get it? - Rawr. - Sorry, but I just watching that game, it feels to me like what everybody wanted from a sequel to Modern Warfare. - Yeah, true. - Honestly, it's true. - Yeah. - And they also have the balls part in the expression to put it in a real city, in a plausible political event, which the last one was like "Bad Company 2" is much more action movie-y, this seems much more Black Hawk Down and it's a portrayal, but it looks really, really, really, really, really good. (laughing) - My, one of my two legit equipped buddies, he thinks it's fake. - It's definitely wrong. - He's like, he thinks it's fake, he's like no way. - He is wrong. - I'll believe it when I see it. - The guy giving our demo was bad enough at the game to demonstrate that it wasn't fake. - Yeah, he was playing a lot of it. - He didn't die, right, he definitely got hit. - Tell your friend, he was probably on God mode. - That he's the reason that Jesus was killed. (laughing) People like him. - But, man, that- - That's how I'm walking on water. - I mean, I get why because it looks like when I was watching it, I was just having flashbacks to the Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter concept videos that came out before the 360 did. - Yeah, totally. - They're like, this is what we're gonna have, and everybody was like, that is not what we got. - Right. - Yeah. - And this very much seems like that, except realistic, as opposed to futuristic. - Right. - But this is what you're going to get. - Yeah, it looks- - It looks like a fucking game is going to- - It looks incredible. - And this is how it will play. - I mean, there's things that it's not doing, that a certain other games are doing, like, Crisis 2, I still think, has some things to show people that they haven't seen yet that are really incredible. - Mm-hmm. - And, like Gears of War 3 actually has- I am really, really desperate to see Gears of War 3's campaign at this point. It's a multiplayer, which is good as it does. - He- - Rage is coming out, Skyrim is coming out. - Right. - Mm-hmm. - Maybe another high profile graphics showcase game. - Mm-hmm. - It's doing me a really good year for games. - Yeah, especially great-looking games. Uncharted 3 is coming out. - Yeah. - Uh, and then I played a bunch of Crisis 2, like just multiplayer stuff for write-ups in the site. - Right. - I played PlayStation 3 Crisis 2 and was not impressed. - Ooh. - The multiplayer or single-player stuff? - The multiplayer. I played five minutes of Crisis 2 single-player on 360 last week, and I was also not impressed. It seemed really choppy. They released an updated 360 multiplayer demo, and that actually performs much better from a control perspective than the last one did. Like my complaints about it being laggy and not particularly responsive have been mostly addressed. - Mm-hmm. - The PS3 version has problems. The PC version runs really fucking well, but there are other problems with the PC version of Crisis right now. (laughing) Like it maybe not launching with DirectX 10 or 11 on two ones. - Not to mention when you say PC version runs really well, it's like different what you see. - Oh, who's PC? - Exactly, 'cause it's actually-- - They've optimized the engine a lot. - Yeah. - I know, I'm just saying, it's like, when you say it's an Xbox version, it's gonna run like that on everyone's Xbox. - Well, yeah, that's true. But I mean, and I feel like every time I say something about Crisis, I have to say that they paid us to make C2TVs a series of videos, so I've been paid to do stuff for Crisis, but so when-- - But you got your check. - Yeah, but I mean, we're still making stuff for them. - Oh, well-- - And I would think it's moment to say that that really cool cross-platform play I was talking about earlier. That's a GameSpy technology. (laughing) - That's all right, so is all the PC multiplayer that's not working very well right now in Crisis 2? (laughing) Like none of the American servers work. I can never connect to an American server, so I've been shooting a lot of Germans. (laughing) - Wow, do you want me to babysit the beat? - So even when you boot up the PC demo, even if you don't have a controller plugged in, it says press start to continue. - Oops. - It has auto-aim enabled by default. There's mouse acceleration, which is really making people angry. There's virtually no configuration options whatsoever. - For video stuff at this point. - You can pick your resolution and you can choose gamer advanced or hardcore settings, but that's it. - It doesn't like the other crisis where you could go in and be like four times a-- - There are four options in the graphics settings. One of which is resolution and one of which is v-sync. - Well, it works so good to make the nanosuit just two options. We're just gonna do it every thing in the game. - And it does actually work really well to have the nanosuit switch between the three modes. - I'm not saying it doesn't, but I'm saying they were like, this works so well. - Right. - For awesome. - We all share everything. - I really need three. - That's happening a lot in PC games recently. Like I'll load up a PC game and the only option that I can choose unless it has some outside the game configuration, utility that you can launch, it'll only let me change the resolution. - So usually games on PC have config files that gamers can edit manually if they want to, but the Crysis 2 PC demo has all its stuff encrypted and a bin. - Why? - So they can't, I don't know. We asked them and they wouldn't answer our question as they said that there's, Crytek told Charles on yet our PC channel head that there's an announcement coming soon about the PC version of Crysis 2. - They're just canceling it. - That they're listening that things could change quote and that they're listening to feedback quote. But some enterprising young men have created a config tool that basically runs a batch script when you launch Crysis that changes the settings. - Nice. - So that's out there if you're looking for it and you're playing Crysis 2. - An announcement concerning the PC version there, like we've taken all your feedback into concern and what we're going to do is we're not going to release the PC version for additional four months to make these settings for you. AKA, buy it on console, you dumb fucks, stop pirating. (laughing) - That's too bad because even in DirectX 9 the PC version looks fucking amazing. - Wow. They, and you know, I can say in all honesty that they really do like listen to feedback all the time. - I'm sure they do. - They are crazy about what their community thinks in every step of the way. They're like, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? - It's just weird because they have a console developer working on their multiplayer. - That's true. The Nottingham team, what's their-- - Free radical. - Free radical. - I mean, they're Crytek nodding them now but they were free radical. They were the time splitters and haze guys. - Right. - And formerly of the original Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. They're a lot of former rare employees at Free Radical. Time splitters is Perfect Dark with two analog sticks basically. - Right. - And lots of monkeys. (laughing) I think that's all I has. - Yeah, monkeys. - I just wanted to give a quick shout out to the other games that I wrote down which was Men of War, which if you want a hardcore World War II strategy game, hardcore, when I say hardcore, I mean, like if a Polish company got the idea from company here is before relected and was like, yeah, we're gonna make World War II strategy game and we're gonna make it really fun. A.K. way too fucking hard. (laughing) - I think like five minutes of it, it didn't seem hard. - Well, how long did you play? - Like five minutes, I played the first one. (laughing) - Because after five minutes is when your guys start running out of like every individual soldier in a squad, you can give orders to every single guy. - Right. - And every single guy has an inventory and when he runs out of bullets, he just starts using his fists. - Holy shit. - So you gotta make sure every single guy on the battlefield is resupplied at the right time. Machine guns, they run out of ammo so they can't suppress forever. You better mortars, they run out of shells so they're not gonna shell forever too. So it's just like keeping track of all this. - Does this make it just too hard to keep control, too much to keep track of? - No, it's just you really have to go into it thinking. I better make sure these guys are supplied. It's got that extra level of realism. - Sure, but on a real battlefield, you have like sub commanders to keep track of all that shit. - Yeah, you are everything, man. You better fucking do it. - Wow. - Is there an awful unit that like runs and gets ammo for everybody? - You can bring in trucks. - Can they also fail to save someone from being stabbed? - You can bring in trucks. - Exactly. - And there's definitely one point where I was like, well, all these guys burn out of ammo, fuck it. You're gonna run at these four Japanese guys with your fists while everyone else moves up. (laughing) - So basically you go die. - Yes. - That's what you get for running out of ammo. - But it is cool if you really like-- - You're non-conserving. - If you really like the realism because like, it starts you off uneasy and even uneasy, it can be very challenging. You have to really keep pushing and every guy has grenades, you know, individual supplies are grenades. You have to sit there and utilize. And every guy has a name too, which I like. - Yeah. - And so that way you can tell Carl to go charge the enemy embankment with this. - You know, like a company hears or something, right? When a machine gun gets blown up, if the machine gun's health bar goes, the guys all die, right? They can never stop being a machine gun crew. And this game, if the machine gun gets shot by like a shell and blows up, the two guys will just run away and now they're just soldiers that you can give guns and use like soldiers. It's like-- - But apparently they're immune to their machine gun blowing up. - Well, I mean, they might get knocked back and be injured. - Right. - You know, but every guy has a health bar that you can use a medic to bring back. It's very elaborate. - So how big are your armies? I mean, are they-- - When I-- - Micro manageable? - The biggest army I had was like 30 dudes. And-- - Even that seems like too much to kill. - Well, you would just group them into groups of six and be like two Thompson's, two rifles and like a machine gun guy fucking go assault this position, good luck. - Yeah, until Hans and Heinrich run out of ammo on their Thompson's or something. - That's what would happen. - And then I'd just be like, well, use your fists. (laughing) - Damn. - It's the Soviet method of-- - But it's a really cool game. You know, I think that it has some really cool ideas. It was just a little more challenging than I was ready for. - I'm supposed to review that game and I'm not sure when the hell I'm gonna be able to. - Yeah, yeah. - I mean, trust me, Arthur, maybe not think it's all hard, but to me, maybe I'm just too used to RTS is where I have permanent ammo but the ammo thing, I'm just like fucking-- - Dude, that just seems so insane. Ammo in an RTS. - I know. - I know. - Not to mention my-- - Ammo in a strategy game. - My supply truck was driving up to resupply my guys with ammo and then a machine gun shot it in the engine and it just stopped dead. - Oh, fuck. - And I was like, fuck. - Enjoy this. - Enjoy this. - Yeah, well, the guys got out of the truck and you can tell them to repair it or you can just tell them to turn into soldiers and fight. - Wow. - So-- - That's awesome. - It's very elaborate. So if you ever wonder, there's many of them out, by the way. Arthur is just going to potentially, eventually be reviewing-- - Assault squad. - The assault squad, the newest one. But there's apparently a franchise that's been around for a while. So you can probably find them for pretty cheap on Steam. - Wow, cool. - That's it for me, Tyler. Yeah, I've been playing some Kill Zones 3. Kill Zones. - How is the Kill Zones 3? - Kill Zones. - Yeah, I was glad that I finally got a chance to play that last weekend. It controls well. - Right, yeah, just like everyone else says. - But I thought the story this time around, even worse than, like, the second one wasn't like a great story. But this one is just like-- - It was awesome. Like, as we were going along, the dialogue would pop up. 'Cause Jay Fresh, Ryan, and I were all playing it at the same time. We were passing off the controller, you know? And there were times where we would just fucking burst out laughing at how terrible the story and the dialogue were. - How many times does what's his face have to be told not to disobey orders? - Oh my god, I know, right? - How many fucking times-- - It's just shoot him already. - Yeah, exactly, at some point we're on a planet behind enemy territory, you're going to just kill that guy. - Yeah. - You don't need him that much. - There's no-- - Not to mention, he proved himself in Killzone 2, that he's an asshole. Like, that guy was, they killed in Killzone 2, the only really likable guy. - And I love how, like, and, you know, I don't give a shit if I'm spoiling this. I love how he comes back later. It's like fucking Rico's Roughnecks, you know? - Yeah. - And he's got, like, his Rico's squad of guys and like-- - Yeah. - But the story is not the reason to play that. - No. - But the battles and stuff, they're still really fun. - Yeah, mm-hmm. - To me, the thing about Killzone is, I feel like the graphical awe is starting to wear more now than was around 1-2. - What do you mean, like, of an wear-off? - Yeah, you know, to me when Killzone 2 came out, there was a lot of excitement of, can they match that target trailer? You know, there was a lot of-- - You're living in a post-Battlefield 3 world. (laughing) - No, no, no, no, no. - This game does-- - I thought this before I saw the Battlefield 3. - This game looks really good. - I'm gonna be in a post-crisis 2 world. It's a difficult world to live in. - I mean, it still looks great. Don't get me wrong, but like, you know, on some stages in particular, I feel like the seams really show, like the Helgen Jungle stage, for example, I felt like it was just really, it felt theme-parky. It felt like I was going through, like, a theme park, like why-- - A Jurassic Park museum exhibit. - Yeah, exhibit-thing. You know, it just felt like a set, like I was on a set. - I can see that. - But whereas I feel like maybe the art team is just better at doing sort of dirty looking cities, and he obviously, you know. - Yeah, well, and I would just say that the level design isn't inspired at all either. I mean, it's, there's lots of cool stuff to look at, and they have giant, huge vistas and, you know, big buildings and everything that all look really cool when you take a moment to look around, but the levels that you're actually fighting on is all kind of like, so what? It's like Gears 1 level of single player level design, I think. - Right, you know, I think, I feel like where they really excel in the single player is that they're always switching it up. - True. - Like, you're never doing one thing too often, you know, so there's not a lot of fatigue in that regard. - And the vehicle stuff in the turret times and everything I enjoyed and they were pretty well done. - Yeah, that was, you know, they did a better job at the pacing this time around. - Yeah, instead of you always just being a soldier the whole time, right, so. - I'm hoping to play that this weekend. - There's, you know, one thing I want to say though about Killzone 3, that was, man, the sound to me is poor. - Very? - Yes. - Isn't it like it's 7.1? - I would not say that it has good sound. - Their sound is like it's bad. - I mean, I don't like the sound of the guns. - I will be the first to admit I'm not the best with sound. - Right. - I thought it sounded cool. - I'll explain, 'cause there are, I got a couple of concrete points to make. So number one, there's a stage in the single player where you get into the mech suit, right? And Rico is in a mech suit with you too. And it's like they only have two volumes for Rico's mech and the volume is in your ear or far away. - Right. - And there is no change in sound that when you're inside the mech either. It's just as if you're outside normal. And Rico's mech does not sound any different than your own mechs footsteps, which is, just to me shows like kind of the differences in a, you know, you would have more base frequencies if you're inside of a enclosed area. You know, some other things too. It seems like when, and this is really noticeable online, it's really hard to distinguish where and what sounds are coming from. It's like it gets into like the audio soup that you hear audio people talk about. It's, it's really, yeah, I feel like it's pretty bad. Like the sound design is-- - I totally agree. - Not good. - Huh, I hear the, like people really complimented the lines. - I think I was one of those people. - And then they had, they had things like, you know, in the cutscenes even there would be this giant thing falling and explosions everywhere. - Yes. - And there would be-- - No volume. - No volume. - Things going on in the background, no sound. And oh, here's another point I wanna make. It feels like you're watching a sitcom from the '90s where everyone in the background are like, miming things and like, miming like they're talking but nothing's coming out of their mouth. That's what every scene looks like in all the cutscenes. You know? - You're not sure that you're not just having audio issues. - What do you play? Are you playing on a surround sound system? - If-- - It's not, not, not surround. But like I have a, a, a, a Bose stereo with like a subwoofer. - Did you, like, isn't maybe in the options set to 5.1 or 7.1 or something and maybe it's just not coming through? - Yeah, but Tyler and I are having the same issues. - I've put R's funds a little time. - And R's is going through an optical cable into a really nice audio setup in our living room that has properly spaced speakers and everything. And like, this game doesn't sound good. In fact, I would even say that the sound effects of the weapons and stuff I don't even enjoy. - Well, I'm not really big in the kill zones. - Yeah, I've never thought they had weapons that had very much to them. - Yeah, I mean, the sounds for the weapons, the guns that return from the sequel are exactly the same. I mean, if they're changed, I don't know. - I just think, I think the sound effects in this game are the weakest part of the game. - Yeah, me too. And, and I felt like it really showed because, you know, there, there's never even a point where some shooters, like if you're in a different, if you're in a room and there's fire fight going outside of that room, the fire sounds different. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, it feels very samey, like audio is very strange. - To the assholes listening at home, you'll notice that I didn't say any of this shit about your beloved PS3 exclusive. - I played on the phones. And I guess, I guess to me, I just never really, I did not think about it as much apparently as you guys. But I never really cared about the guns not having as much because they're kind of like, guns and like gears and that, like, you know, your gun and gears, like the answer, it doesn't never really have like, I never felt like I had like a bunch of bass kick, but it has a really particular sound. - It does actually. - I feel like the guns and gears-- - There's like a pretty thudding jackhammer to the lancer. - Yeah, I think so too. - Really? - I always think of it as the high sound of like the metal. - You do hear that high, like-- - I mean, there's a clack of the hammer hitting, but like definitely there's a pretty big punch. - Yeah, I think all the gears, guns kind of have the full range of sound in them. - Right, even the pistols, especially the pistols. - Well, I was just thinking, the assault rifle and gears always felt like it was kind of a lighter sound to me. - And I think it was lighter. - And that's how all the guns and kill zones have always-- - Yeah, I think in gears one, like the lancer does feel a little bit lighter, but in gears two, like there's definitely just da, da, da, da, da, when it fires and it's nice, I like it a lot. - But I will say, man, that, you know, and I won't spoil it, but the way, I feel like the way it kills on three opens is really smart and cool and interesting and-- - The tutorial seems a little pointless to me. - Yeah, pointless, but like, since there's no combat going on, it's like they fucking crank up the lights and, I mean, it seems like they can just, they throw you in an area where they just kind of put graphics all over your face. - Well, I think the Arctic stages is the best looking stage. - Dude, that stage looks real, and when you're jumping around between the oil tankers, or I don't know if they're oil rigs or not. - The derricks, right? - The derricks, yeah. - And there are, and the ocean is below you. - Yeah. - They're huge. - Yeah, it looks really good. - It looks bad ass. - Totally agree. - And my favorite stages are the snow stages, because I feel like they bring a whole new aesthetic, and I guess part of my point of being less awed by Killzone is like, one thing I noticed is just like, what the fuck, is it like, does it always snow ash on this planet? Like, well, it's kind of like a Killzone thing, there's just like ash snow. - So what I will say to remind you of the lore reason that that's going on, is that at the very end, they nuked the city. - Sure, sure, yeah. - So, you're like, you're right next to her, nuclear bomb just went off. So, I think that's the thinking behind that. But you've seen the planet's all volcanic as well, and fucked up. - Right, right. - But you know what I was thinking about this, is you guys were talking just now, I was thinking, you know, the reason I think about things like gears and stuff as not having the low base and stuff is, I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that, I don't think I use my audio the same as like, I have surround sound, but it's not good. And I don't probably have it balanced right, and I tend to play pretty quietly. So, I probably only am hearing like the synergy. It's like, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. So, I'm like, oh, okay, it doesn't have as much kick. It's not until I put something on with headphones, or I'm like, a gush, I'm like, oh, there is a low. I know, I probably am just experiencing these things totally different 'cause I don't know what I'm doing. That's what I'm saying. (laughing) - That's quite possible. The one thing, just to say one more thing about Killzone before I move on is, one thing that pissed me off is in two, they never did the fade out thing that I hate that games do, where it's like, you know, cutscene, cutscene, cutscene. - Oh my god, it happened every five seconds and three. - It happens all the time. - Yeah, and it doesn't make any sense because in two, it would show the cutscene, it would show your guy jumping off of the craft, and then it would immediately, there would be no black, it would just swing into gameplay. Like, into your guys' head. And in three, it's just like every two seconds to fight the black. - Yeah, but you know what game is even worse is a bullet storm. - Yeah, it does it too. You know, and again, I'm just like, I just don't understand, but with Killzone, it was more apparent to me because I was like, two didn't do this, so why the fuck is three doing it, right? I don't know, it's just one of those things that I'm like, why do games do that? - Yeah, that's it. - I think we're done. - Matt, did you have anything else? - I played infamous two. - How was that? - Oh yeah, did you like the make in your own level thing? - I think that that's a really cool idea. You know, who knows if it's gonna be able to-- - That is setting up for a butt. - Yeah, exactly, it's always the thing with user-generated content, right? - Is it most users suck? - Exactly, but they have it designed into the game so that there's a rating system, so something has to be well rated-- - Sucker Punch will curate some of them. - They'll curate some of them. So, and the really cool thing that no other game, I think is done quite the same way, is the user-generated missions show up in the open world as missions that you can go up to and activate, if you want. - If you want, and they show up based off of priority and a filter that you can, as the player can set, you can say that I only wanna see the highest rated levels that have the most plays. - Or the ones that sucker punch. - Or the ones that sucker punch says are potentially awesome. - And so when the game launches, they're doing a beta, and in the beta you can create levels, and the best rated ones in the beta will launch with the actual retail game when it comes out of sucker punch approved ones. And they didn't let us actually play around with the creator, but they had people there demoing it. And as you're moving around the city, at any point, you can basically just hit the start button and start making a mission. And you can drop objects, and you can drop goals, and you can define things. But what they did let us play is they had four missions that were created with the mission creator, and they were all meant to be under two minutes so that they could, you know, they just wanted people to get through them really fast. And you can do things like it'll say, you know, follow the rebels so that you can defuse the bomb. And so you're going and you're following the rebels, and then text will come up on the screen that you can control, and you can insert the text, and then you have to press the triangle button to continue so you can make sure that you're guiding players through your mission. And they had like a really whack, another mission that they had was a really whacky, like shooting gallery one, where you would force lift propane tanks and launch them at these guys that are floating in the air that are dancing, and you just hit them. - So they were just trying to show you that you can do totally crazy, whacky shit, but that you can also do stuff that feels more like. - It actually belongs. - It actually belongs in the world. - Can they put in the quote unquote moral things in there where it's like if you're killing good guys, and that's a really good question, I wish I had asked that. I have no idea. - Call them up. - I would doubt they'd give players the ability to let you tick one way or the other too much, otherwise you can abuse that. - But doesn't it work in infamous? - Just your actions generate, and they slowly generate towards one side or another, or I don't know if it's a good point. - That's a good point, no. Actually, in infamous one, it was really cut and dry. - Was it? - Yeah, there was like a mission, and it would even be like, hmm, I could totally help out these-- - Or I could murder them, or I could murder them all. What do I want to do? - I could be a human being, or I could be a monster. - Right. (laughing) - So who knows how it's going to work in infamous too? I can't, I'm pretty sure I can't say much about it, but Dark Spore is awesome. - Yeah, and since we recorded Last, I've also played So Come, co-op, and it was a lot of fun. - Oh, cool, I played So Come today. - Five player co-op over multiplayer? - Yeah, it's pretty fun. I think that that'll be a good game to play if you're looking for like a modern solution to your terrorist hunting of Rainbow. - Right, right. - So PS3 version? No, no PSP? - Yeah, I was playing PS3, there was-- - Oh, it's really cool, there's 3D. - Five player co-op? - Yeah, five player. - That's awesome, man. - And you can set the scenario and stuff. You know, like I want to have, you know, like terrorist hunt, right? High enemy density, I want to play a mission where we're going after objectives, not necessarily killing everyone. - Yeah, that's cool, man. - So come for looks really good in 3D. 'Cause it's full-frame 1080p 3D. - There's no grow out there right now. - True. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It kind of gets that itch that a lot of games don't. - Yeah. - They haven't heard anything about grow, or Ghost Recon Future Soldier in a while. - No, not in a while. - As far as I'm concerned, that game doesn't exist anymore. - Who knows? - Who knows? - All right, let's take a break. - Yeah, well, there's so many games that we could talk about 'cause of GDC. - Yeah, I mean, I played Chime Super Deluxe. - Cool. - One that's not for charity. - Oh, I-- - They're still donating some of their money to One Big Game. - I want to do a quick shout out to Magica. I actually played that right when it came out, and I just never got a chance to talk about it. - Do you know if Magica's been patched enough so that it's actually working correctly? - Really, it plays great for me, and I never had a single problem. - It was plagued by issues. - Yeah, they were pretty open about how they were sorry that they fucked up. Wow, I must have got lucky 'cause I didn't have any problems. I played that game a lot, and then I played a whole bunch of co-op and-- - Hatter. - The language in it is like-- - Sweetlish. It's like not real Swedish. It's like they're making fun of the chef from-- - Really? - I never-- - Did you not play with the dialogue on or something? Where you hear him talking like, "Go for it, you're going for it." "Oh, yeah, I did, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." - Yeah, it's not real Swedish. It's just them making fun of their own language. - That's hilarious, so. - Yeah, totally ridiculous game, but I've heard lots of good things about it. - I enjoyed it. - My only issue with it is that all the elements that you combine, there's, you know, on the QWERTY keyboard, there's the top four and the second four keys that you all have to hit in various combinations so that you can cast your spells 'cause you can combine up to five different elements. - Well, it's not five different elements. You can combine up to five different-- - Five different magics. - Five different magics, and they can be of any of these different elements. Plus, you can also do like water and then fire and that'll make steam. - Yeah, they're hidden ones. - Right, they're hidden ones, yeah. And then you can do like steam, plus an arcane bolt, plus an area of effect, something else, you know, whatever. And it gets really complicated, it makes my left hand feel like I've got five thumbs and instead of, you know, anyway. It's a really good game for this play. All right. That's the word from that. - We'll be right back with-- - Great. - I lost my hand. (laughing) - With. - Your letters, did you tell me to wait? - No, I said break. - Yeah, but we'll be right back with what? - Letters. - Go ahead. ♪ But I wish I could see it all for you ♪ ♪ I wish I could see it all for you ♪ ♪ If I could erase the pain ♪ ♪ Maybe you'd feel the same ♪ ♪ I'd do it all for you ♪ ♪ I would, I would, I would, I would ♪ - So apparently I need to watch "Dark On." - Everyone's to watch "Dark On." - Yeah, that's what was communicated during the break to me. - It is, it's a movie about larping and basically it'll, if you're ever thinking, "Man, I'm a sad sack." (laughing) You'll watch that and you'll be like, "Well, you know, part of it is like, "well, there are other people that are just as nerdy as I am." - Right, exactly. - Like I don't watch it. - That was a tempered reaction. (laughing) - Let me be clear. - It's not how you started out. - Let me be clear. - Backs. - Well, 'cause I thought of, no, it's not backsliding because I've never heard someone find such a securitous way of saying fucking losers. - No, look, let me be clear about something. Is that I don't think those guys are any nerdier than I am, they're just a different type of nerd. For instance, this week at GDC, when I was at an EA event. - Yeah. - Seeing cool EA games, I left early, so that I can make sure I got to a nerd store to buy a space marine book, you know? So I can't say anything to these guys, you know? (laughing) Last night I played a game of war hammer, you know, so. - Right. - I'm just saying that there really is no difference, but I'm just thinking if you ever think, man, I'm such a nerd, there's people that are nerdy about all kinds of shit. Dark Hunt is just an interesting movie to see how dedicated some people get to real life role-playing. - Is that for streaming? - Yeah, and it's on Netflix streaming, so it's so easy. - Very dramatic. - So our first letter is from Siren, and it's a relationship letter, 'cause we haven't really done one in a while. - Sounds like a dark hunt character. (laughing) - Well it's C-I-A-R-A-N, Siren? That's what I'm thinking. - I don't know. - One more time? - Chardon? - C-I-A-R-A-N. Siren, Kieran? - It could be. - Kieran, I think. - Kieran? - I don't know. - Anyways. - Yeah, who knows? - He says, "I'm 16," and he says, "Pause for groans." - Aww, geez. - And I like this girl. She lives across the road, but we don't really talk much. This is already sounding like a dumb movie. - Yeah. - So I've decided I want to ask her out, but I don't really seem to be getting any opportunities. He sent this letter seven days ago, so he missed out on Valentine's Day. - Aw, a bar. - I usually only see her once or twice a week getting onto or off of the train to and from school. - Hmm. - I'm kind of getting sick waiting after a few months of this with no chances. So my question is, how do I get a chance to ask her out? He says, "Could I use the Facebooks?" (laughing) Oh, bear in mind her mom works with my mom. So if I just knocked on the door, it would get a little awkward. - Why? - No, you just-- - So it wouldn't be awkward if you asked her out on a date and then took her home? - Well, if you asked her out on Facebook when she's across the street-- - Yeah, that's awkward. Now here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna get, you're gonna get a straw man. You're gonna go burn it in her front yard. (laughing) So she comes out-- - What'd I just make it across? - Yeah, and you're just gonna tell her how much you care about her. - No. - And how you've always been in love with her. - I did this for you, baby. Just fucking talk to her. - Burn an effigy. - Hold on. - I just fucking talked to her. - Inside of her window. - When you go to the train, when she's on the train, and you're on the train at the same time, if you see her fucking leaving her house, just go talk to her. - That would be my advice. Catch her on the train. - 'Cause it would be weird if you went knocked. - Maybe, why? - I don't think it would be as weird as-- - But it really? - You know, it's definitely not as weird as face-booking. - That would be the last time. - Talking to her on the train when you live across the street from her is also kind of creepy. Not Facebook creepy. (laughing) But creepy. - Yeah, I would just-- - Oh man, this is a crazy boy. - You're the boy across the street, knock on her fucking door. - See, if you were like me when I was 16, what you would do is you would basically follow her to the train for about a year, like totally pining after hers, though she was the lost love of your life, and then never actually do anything. - Then you'll be crushed when you see her walking with a boy one day. - Exactly, yep. - Don't be, don't be mad. - So don't be mad when he was 16. Go fucking talk to her. - Yeah, you should really just go talk to her, and then email us and let us know. And say you talk to the train girl, so I see your email. Julian writes in, he says, "I've always wondered, what type of classes "did you guys take in high school and college "to get you where you are? "Is it freshman in high school?" This applies to me a lot if I ever feel like wrecking my life in the same way you guys have. (laughing) Dude, what I did in college has little to do with what I do now. I studied history and religious studies in high school. I just took some AP classes, not even knowing what the fuck. Even when I was in college, I didn't have any plan of doing this. Honestly, there are people that I work with that never went to college. - Yep, there was at least one that didn't finish high school. - There's at least one that didn't finish high school. So I'm just thinking-- - I wouldn't recommend that route. - Yeah. - Right, but I was just thinking, what I'm trying to say is your education doesn't matter as long as you can learn to do the skills that-- - You've heard it on revelation. - However-- - Education doesn't matter. - I feel that a good-- - Never. - Strong liberal arts education can teach you how to critically think about the world around you. - Yes, sir, and I was actually being focused. - Yeah, I'm very glad you said that Arthur, 'cause I think that's the biggest takeaway that you can get from your college experience is critical thinking faculties. - That I will say is-- - That experience is one of the other people. - Yeah, that is right. Actually, I will say Arthur's very correct. 'Cause even though my classes were by history religious study, it made me sit there and read history and think about the implications of that and how that affected X, Y, and Z, or read religion. And it also, like you said, gave you critical thinking where you stopped thinking about things and having necessary flippant reaction, and you could sit there and think about, oh wow, like religion, you may think it's dumb or you may think it's great, but you start to realize like, wow, it affects this, it affects this, it affects politics, and you start thinking about all the ways that these things are interconnected. - Yeah, it does. - Basically-- - And there's a big problem in the video games press that there's a lot of really bad writing out there. So that gives you a lot of opportunity to be a good writer if you go and study how to be one. - I mean, yeah, you know, like a lot of, a common thing you hear are, if someone ever is majoring in philosophy, it's like, what the fuck are you majoring in philosophy for? And I would, you would even have, you would even catch me take that position maybe a year ago, but I recently just watched it. - You'd be a philosophy major. - No, no, I recently watched a YouTube video that a philosophy professor put up addressing these sorts of concerns, and he basically brought up that, you know, like how much philosophy concentrates on making sure you have sound logic, you know, making sure you're not using fallacious arguments, you know, and all these sorts of tool sets work perfect for journalism. - I mean, I'm sure because there are probably plenty of brilliant people that all of us know that are brilliant and smart, and even know how to think critically, but they still don't necessarily know how to not make a fallacious argument, you know what I mean? That happens a lot, you know? My friend that was a philosophy major and became a lawyer, that was like a huge point in that. - Yeah, just learn your logical fallacies. - Well, I remember in way back when I was in college, my favorite class that I had was, it was rhetoric and rationality, and we were fortunate in that it was actually, our discussion group, you know, how you have like those like 5,000 person lectures, and then you have like a 12 person discussion group or whatever, and the discussion group leader was the associate dean of philosophy for the school, and this guy was like apparently pretty well, I don't know anything about philosophy or academia or whatever, but this guy was apparently pretty well known, and he pushed us hard to actually really think about our arguments, 'cause we were studying everything that had to do with, you know, how to make a good argument, and what's good, what's bad, and you know, how you are being manipulated by other people's arguments, and-- - I think it's always really good to think about arguments and stuff, and in my head, I always try and play devil's advocate with myself, with anything I'm thinking to try and challenge myself to think about it from the other person's perspective, even if I think they're an idiot. - Well, one of the common things that you learn, and you'll see this in games writing all the time, but you'll see it way more, and even in advertising, is that the argument where there's a premise and a conclusion, and that's it, there's no intervening statements, you know, that like lead up to the conclusion, because they want, the whole point behind that is that as the listener, reader, observer, whatever, you fill in the intervening reasonings through your own experiences, and through your own memories, so you tend to believe their argument, and that's the, you know, like in advertising, somebody, you see something on television that says, tastes great, buy it now, and so you think, tastes great, buy it now, okay, well, I need to buy this now, because it tastes great, and you don't have any intervening logic in there, but you believe it as though it's some kind of sound argument. You see that in politics all the time, and so it's especially important, when you're trying to be a critic of some kind, that you don't formulate your arguments like that, and I know that I do it all the time, especially on podcasts, I'll just say, that's fucking awesome, and that's it. Go buy this, it's fucking awesome. - Right. - Don writes in and wants to know if any of us are going to Pexist, and if we had any plans, I wish. I am going to Pexist. - Nice. - I am not going in any official capacity, but if rebel and listeners would like to meet me, and hang out and talk and stuff, I do plan on going to whatever meetup IGN's having. - Cool. - So I don't think that's been officially set up with a establishment right now, but you should pay attention to IGN and IGN's Twitter feed, and you'll find out where that's going to be soon. So I'm sure it'll be somewhere close to convention center, most likely Saturday night. Most likely-- - I don't know, all the bars are across the bridge. - Most likely 21 and older, wherever it is, sadly. So I wish I was going. - Can you guys try not to send someone to the hospital this year? - Hey, we didn't, I didn't send anyone to the hospital. I blame that all in Scott Romney. Mark writes in, he says, "I know you guys aren't that old." - I am. - He says, "But I was wondering at what age "I should accept the fact that I, "that the girls I date might be moms. "I'm 24 years old, and I recently moved to a small town, "where it seems like nearly every woman "in my age has at least one kid. "I'm not ready for kids, but I'm also wondering "if I should get by this if I want to date slow." The response, given your situation, would seem to be 24. - Yeah, exactly. (both laughing) - Yeah. - Yeah, fortunately, I live in San Francisco, and I'm 35 years old and I still have any stuff in that. - There's just slots with no kids. - What I will say is you can always try it, and if you don't like it, it's like someone you're committing yourself to a marriage. - Yeah. - And you may be surprised, you may actually enjoy it. It's always, it's always hard to know. Kids can be terrible, but they can also be awesome. - So we got a lot of mixed emails about the mommy and daddy fight on our last podcast. (both laughing) - Yeah, I saw some of those. - But I will say they were almost equally split between people that were like Arthur's right and Ryan's right. - Right, of course it was, yeah. - It's because we get a lot of people to listen to the podcast that like, Arthur and his views on things, and we get a lot of people that are iPhone listeners and like it when we talk about iPhone games. It's just the way it happens. - This one, I don't remember this. Peter, or no, Bob from Peterborough in the UK, right, Zen. He says, "I wanted to let you know." - Bob from Dicktown. - Well, it's funny, I wanted to let you know that the part of the penis involved in Arthur's accident is called the friendulum. - I knew this. - Colloquially, it is known as the banjo string. (both laughing) Giving us the phrase, Arthur snapped his banjo string. - Arthur didn't snap his banjo string. Arthur's girlfriend twanged his banjo string. (both laughing) - So, tuned it too high. - The banjo string takes longer to say than friendulum. - Friendulum, that's a fun word. - That is a fun word. - That's also my favorite science blog. - Really? - I think friendum is a word too, like. - Peezy Myers, friendum. - Is the artist, the artist. - The friendulum. - Arthur. - Hey, can I say, you guys talked about penis. I wanna retract my statements about circumcision. - Well, I did that publicly for you, but yeah, do it. - Okay, I just wanted to make sure that. - I put my paw on. - Do yourself a favor and don't look at friendum ladder on Wikipedia. - So, people are aware. - Good, good, yeah, I mean, 'cause. - They just. - I just totally took it for granted. Yeah, everyone gets circumcised and then, you know, I did research on the internet and concluded that there's no medical basis for it whatsoever. - So now you're gonna name your first child. - No, it's just to be closer to God. - You're skin. - Exactly. (both laughing) - It's a celebration of foreskin. - It's a celebration, bitches. Yeah, so I apologize if I've made anyone feel weird about not being circumcised, but I was just speaking from ignorance. - Yeah. - Can you correct it yourself? - It's good that you can admit that. - Well, yeah, I can. - Yeah, I totally have done the same thing. You know, it's just like, I never have, I'm always right. Like, you know, there's plenty of things that, when I was younger, I used to think that people that were religious were genuinely dumb and stuff, and never, all of them were x, y, or z. - After a while, you learned that's not true. - Well, yeah, you learned to separate the religion from the religious a lot of times. - Yeah, exactly. - It's funny too, like one time we were playing a show in Oklahoma, and there's a lot of Native Americans, there's no Native Americans where I'm from, and we were sitting around and we were talking, one of my friends brought up the word powwow, and one of the guys was like, see, that's like a derogatory term. That's like a white guy term. - About a gathering of Indians? - Yeah, yeah, but we're really a powwow. - Native Americans. - Yeah, see, like, I think that is like a, I think of that as like a cognate now, like powwow is an English word for a gathering of people, not even just a gathering of Native Americans, but I didn't even think about how that might be a piece. - Or just like the fact that you'd never think about when you were a little kid and everyone was like, all right, now everyone goes sit on the floor, Indian style. - Yeah. - But that was something, you know, all your teachers said. - Yep, it's true. - I guess Indian is fewer syllables than cross legged. - Right. So Nova writes in and says, "After looking at pics, "over." - Well, his actual name is James. - His channel? - But his email name is Nova. After looking at Epic's new pictures of how games should and will look in the future, it made my brain tingle. Won't better graphics increase development time and drive up the price? I'm all for improvement, but I think we've had a happy equilibrium. - No. - Yes and no. - I mean, if they're using an engine-- - Really, those assets are mostly being created at that resolution anyway. - Well, not only that, but if they're already working in an engine like Unreal that's been made, it makes it easier for them to create. - And the more time goes on, the more complex tools build on the tools of the past to make the creations of the assets. - It just seems like every year at GDC, more and more people are selling engines in middleware, all of that plays too. - Yup. - But also, I mean Unreal is still pretty ubiquitous. - Yes, it's true. - It's everywhere. And honestly, the stuff that Unreal is doing right now is actually pretty cool. - Yeah. - Like not just that tech demo, but stuff I've seen of Unreal Engine games over the last couple of months. Like Bulletstorm is gorgeous. - It is. Julian writes in and he basically asks in so many words what we think of the Dragon Age Origins demo, Dragon Age Origins. I mean, not-- - Dragon Age 2 was the sequel. - I haven't played the demo, but I played some of the retail game. - I played the demo. - On PC, I actually think Dragon Age 2 looks good. And I played the version that had everything enabled as opposed to the demo that they released that had a bunch of shit disabled. So like all the DirectX 11 shaders that I thought it should. - I can, like when we finish, I can actually go and show you like the opening cutscene and show you the character faces and stuff. It's actually pretty good, actually. - Yeah, I'd like to see that. - I like the character design much more than I thought I would. - Yeah, I do too, actually. - Even if Flemeth's tits are hanging out. - I was actually a little bit bummed that there isn't, you know, I thought that the last Dragon Age had some kind of sparse environments just because it was an older game, you know? Like it had been in development for a long time. - The game looked like it was from 2003. - Yeah, and so, but this one, it still has kind of a sparse environment. So I'm like, yeah, I feel like it should be a little bit more like Mass Effect and a little bit less like Dragon Age. - It seems like it's like the quality of the environments, but at the same time, I was, when I played the demo, I was like happy to see that it still plays like Dragon Age. You can zoom out, you can highlight guys, you can give commands. - But now stuff explodes all the time. - Only now stuff explodes all the time. It's a little ridiculous, but that's okay. - Oh, backstab, that would definitely cause that guy's arms and legs to fly off. - What's even better is when you do the, when you first start out and you have the overpowered Uber character in the tutorial of the demo. - Oh, right, the bullshit character. - Yeah, exactly. - It's like, when this happens, when this happens. - It's so funny because like I started out with a rogue and you have like a dodge forward move and I would roll through to dark spawn and they'd both explode. - I will say if you could find, there's a, there was a really funny thread on Neogaff about Dragon Age and I think. - Was it the official thread? - Right, when I was that thing where someone took all the screenshots and made a comic out of it. And it was, it was hilarious 'cause it's this comic with all these screenshots and it has all these quotes from Bioworth or the real quotes that are like, we just want you to press A and it'd be awesome. - An awesome shit happens. - Yeah, it just shows like a guy getting hit and just, it's like exploding like you dudes. It's like, it just shows you that game is ridiculous. - Yeah. - But I have no idea what it's going to be like. - When I played the rest of the demo, it's hard to take yourself more seriously. Sorry, Tyler. - No, no, I was just saying like. - All right, and there's the picture that has a Metacritic score of 1,000 out of 100. - Yeah. - Universal claim from 69 critics. - When the countdown timer was rolling down for the BF3 trailer, I was up, you know, hit him refresh, battlefield.com. And I was also like watching Neogaff to see what the reactions were. It was just like maybe laugh dude 'cause there's like so many people who were just like all over my face. (laughing) - That's funny because even this person that emailed about Dragon Age said his email was titled like spooging for Bioware. (laughing) So, it's very common to hear the audience. - Well, it's no secret that Dragon Age 2 is one of my favorite games. I just love that. Or Dragon Age was one of my favorite games. Probably my favorite game of that year. And so I'm really looking forward to the second one. - Um. - So Anders writes in. And this is gonna be the last letter. - That is such like me. - We have gotten very cool letters, but. - Sorry. Where I work, I do a lot of design work for people and like a lot of names, stationary, private invites. And we get, you know, so I see a ton of names and I got a name today that was Anders. And I was like, that is such a sci-fi name. (laughing) Like that's a sci-fi ass character right there. - Well, Anders writes in and he says, "You and everybody else have been drooling "over Dead Space for a while now. "Many love the storytelling and mood now in Wake "and one of the most critically acclaimed games "in the last few years was Bioshock. "I'd like to have fun with Dead Space "interesting shooter mechanics "exploring the fascinating failed Utopia Rapture and so on. "But this genre, 'cause he considers these "all kinds of like scarier year games." He says, "This genre of games does all it can "to make me feel tense and uncomfortable." And guess what? That makes me lose the desire to play. He basically goes on to say that he doesn't like horror movies. - Yeah. - He says, "Horror games are all over the place "on the grown-up system these days." He says, "The Subiquitous fetish." He says, "Maybe something messed me up or something, "but the Subiquitous fetish with feeling bad "really turns me off. "Why am I alone in this?" Like I think he's kind of like, "Why is it the genres that people are always talking about, "how it makes them feel and stuff for always these?" - That's scary ones. - Kind of how I feel about horror movies. I don't like horror movies. - But I think what I like about these sort of darker scary games is that I take control of that tension and that fear. And by the time the game is moved on and I've managed the mechanics well enough, then it makes it that much more triumphant. - For instance, when you watch a thriller and stuff, you're along for the ride. Whereas when you do something in a thriller like heavy rain, but you're still kind of scary in a way. When you do it in that, you're conquering it. You're not just doing it, you're experiencing it and getting past it and you feel accomplished. In movies, you don't necessarily feel happy for that character, but I don't know. I think that it's easy. But I mean, there are other games that make me feel a lot too. Like for instance, there are certain games like Eva Pinata, for instance, that makes me genuinely feel delighted at the time. Like Super Mario Galaxy, but it's just easier because you might feel happy and stuff, but man, I think it's like when you go back and think about failed relationships, the bad times stick out way more than the good times. It's just like these intense parts stick out way more because it was just like fuck. - Well, for me, I still think about my experience with flower and it brings joy to my face just to think of that game. But it's just like these games that resonate with people is usually scary because I think it's fun. It's easy to make a game that's fun when you're conquering something scary. I think that that's just fundamentally fun. - That's true. See, but I think I get where the reader's coming from with what he's saying specifically about the stress factor, like games that are really trying to amp that up. And obviously that's gonna create anxiety and the players intentionally. - Sure. - And this is something that I've been thinking about because I really don't enjoy horror movies for more of the cheese factor, but like a show I've been watching lately that's extremely stressful, but I've been incredibly addicted to is breaking bad. - Oh, that's a show where-- - That show is all tension. - It stresses you out so much and it rides that line to where it keeps me coming back. - It's funny you mention this because I actually think that stress is one of the reasons I've never finished Battlestar Galactica, for instance. - Really? - Because every episode was like horrible shit is happening and I was like, "I can't handle it." (laughing) - It's like from worse to worse. - Yeah, I get where he's coming from. - I get where he's coming from. - I get where he's coming from. - And Kelly Santiago from that game company talk about all the time is that there's this entire pantheon and library of emotions to explore and all we ever get is tension and-- - Fear intention. - Fear intention, yeah. So, I mean, that's why games flower stick out so much. - And things like if you have been out of two. - Like I may sound like I'm a dictator when I play it, but I still think it's just like, ha ha ha far. - Right, right. I think that's probably one reason why the Sims has done so well. - Sims is another one that I play and I'm just like, this is just enjoyable. - Yep, and actually, I feel that way about World of Warcraft a lot. Like I play it just to have sort of this, you know, rote enjoyable. - I play World of Warcraft not to feel. - It's almost like-- - Yeah, I think that's what it is, yeah. - You want to have the NPR lady's voice in the back of your head. You want to have that feeling like-- - And now we turn to talk to Gustavo. - You're talking about Terry Gross, by the way. That's her name, the NPR lady. - She is, it is Terry Gross. (laughing) - All right, so you can find me on Twitter, @chefmoney. You can find Arthur, A-E-G-I-E-S. You can find Tyler at Dirty Tea, like The Drink, and you can find @chandronate, talking orange. You can send in your letters to letters@eat-sleep-game.com. Remember to pay attention to IgN where you can read me and Arthur stuff, and area5.tv. And also, you know, check out IgN if you want to find out where that meetup's gonna happen. I'd like to shake hands and eat with anybody I can, and if you happen to see me on the show for it, do you say hi? I'm there for fun, and I wanna have fun, so. - Oh yeah, you don't have to go to any appointments so people can stop you all they want. - Yep, I'm just there for fun. For once, many years, so I just wanna have fun and talk to you guys on. All right, we'll see you all sometime. (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) - Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]