Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 87 - 12/17/10
Hello, and welcome to GF- shit, er, Rebel FM, I mean. This week we're joined by Popcap Games' Jeff Green as we talk about Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Vietnam, Crysis 2, Section 8: Prejudice, Cataclysm, Infinity Blade, and more that I cannot specifically recall! Then we move on to letters!
This week's music, in order of appearance:
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son
Neil Young - Old Man
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> I hate episode 87 of Rebel FM, I was getting there. I mean, I think I guess with me is Arthur Gies, as well as my chandere. >> Hi. >> Tyler Barber. >> Hello, everyone. >> We're back after a week off and with a special guest to make up for last week's missing show, Jeff Green. >> Hi. >> From PopCab. >> Hi. >> I'm actually glad that we didn't just make you introduce the podcast, say hello. And welcome to insert podcasting. >> I'm doing that, it's like a very performing seal sort of thing. >> Do the hello and welcome thing. >> We've had you pizza now perform monkey. >> So we talk about video games, this is going to be the all the jewel podcast all the time. >> You better fuck it. >> Can we talk about it? >> That's in my contract. >> I actually don't think that anyone here has played the jewel three. Am I right? >> No, I almost did a couple of those. >> Do you get press accounts? >> We have steam press accounts. >> We have steam press accounts. >> All right accounts. >> And it's on there. >> It's a fast download of downloads in like five minutes. >> Right, it's like, it's just like 30 megabytes or something. >> Basically, if I play a game like that, then to me, that's like a. >> Except for the five minute opening cut scene movie. >> That's on the plot. >> Prerendered. >> Yeah. >> Is there a big old iPhone? Is there a big old three for iPhone? >> Not yet. >> Yeah, I think I'd rather play a game on my iPhone personally. >> Were you not supposed to say not yet? >> What? >> No, it's okay. I mean, there's no one else does. >> There is no announcement, but it's right. I mean, how could it not? How could it not be? >> Popcat is looking at all the platforms you would expect. >> It's true. >> I mean, I'll put on my PR hat. >> Basically. >> The way this works is if you say something that you're not supposed to, tell me, and then I'll go back and bleep it out and drive our listeners crazy. >> Okay, awesome. So far, it's all good. >> Yeah. >> So what games have you been playing, Jeff? >> Aww. >> Besides bejeweled. The greatest game of 2010. >> Yeah, I go through all the whole pop-cap lineup. >> Speaking of which real quick, though, why was that game launched on the same day as Cataclysm? >> Well, it's kind of like this. You have to pick a day for the retailers. I mean, a lot of bejeweled sales actually goes through Wal-Mart and Target. >> That's not surprising. >> To those folks. And any day you pick is going to be a shit day for some other reason, you know? I mean, granted the Cataclysm day is particularly bad for PC gaming and PC gamers, but ultimately we felt like, you know, they're not really competitive games. >> No, they're not. >> No, I mean, there's a big crossover, in fact, between both. I mean, you can play bejeweled inside, wow. >> Yeah, you sure so. >> So, we figured that, you know, why not? >> So, bejeweled through, you confirmed for a while. >> Actually, no, but I know that they're, you know, pop-cap and Blizzard have a really good relationship. So, I actually don't know if it works currently in Cataclysm, because it's like every other add-in in wow breaks when they have a new version. >> Right. >> Those assholes. >> Speaking of World of Warcraft, have you been playing it? >> Yes, that's my answer to your question. >> Yeah, me too. >> All right, well, let's talk about it, because of Aye and Seuss, Matt. >> Yeah, all right. >> And this is where I go on the internet. >> Yep, well, I've got a level, just like 16 Goblin, I have a level 17 Goblin. >> Yeah, but then I've got two level 22 undead guys, just because I started one got up that high and then realized I like fucking hate mages, so I started over with a hunter. >> I did that just because I wanted to experience the new undead storyline. >> Yeah. >> Oh, there's a new one. >> I didn't know there was a new one. >> It's all new. >> Wow. >> And I think that's the case, actually, with every race that's already been- >> Yeah, no, they've redone the newbie areas, yeah. >> Yeah, and it's like an entire new game, basically. I mean, it's an, you know, there's at least two or three cutscenes as you go, you know, level one through 25. >> Right. >> And I love it. You know, the conspiracy theorist in me just says that they did that because they want to make sure that everybody has an alt to play. So that you're like doubling the amount of time, because there's people like me that only play one character. >> Yeah. >> And once you get to the end grind where you're trying to build up enough gear so that you can go raiding. >> Yeah. >> And like, I just totally run out of steam, and I'm like, oh, I can't fathom starting another character, because it would just be so much fucking work. >> Now it's really not though, I've noticed that like, to me, I didn't play for like a year before a cataclysm came out. And yeah, cataclysm, like, since I haven't played in years, changed so much. It's like all the things that I used to look at mods and stuff for, they've all been integrated in the game. Like every quest now tells you exactly the area you need to go look at. It tells you like a blue triangle to represent where the mobs could be. >> It's so easy. My daughter actually, she started playing, it came out in what, in 2004, right? >> Yeah. >> So six years ago. So she was 10. So she played as a 10 year old, and you know, she's 16, which is basically like, she's a different human than it was then. And she's been out of it for years and years, and she saw me playing cataclysm, and she remembers being 10, and like the stuff she had to do, to like find where things were and whatever. And she was just like, "Dad, this is so easy." >> Yeah. >> Like they ruined it. >> I'm like, "No, no, it's easier now, we don't feel old." >> Yes, there was a little bit of an old man in me that I was like, I was talking to my friend, and I was like, "Oh, how's your character going?" He's like, "I have a little 20 worgen, I have my first mount." I was like, "What?" >> I know. >> First mount. >> I know. >> I'm like, "How much did it cost?" He was like, "It cost me 10 gold." I was like, "10 gold?" >> It's like 10, dude. It's like two, or one gold. >> Yeah, like the first time I heard you. >> I remember it was like, when we first started playing, it was like a big deal when my friend got his mount. >> Yeah. >> We had to get a hundred gold. >> We had to get a hundred gold. >> Pitched in gold. >> We had to get to your first ram, right, getting to that level was only half the battle. >> Yes. >> Or it was around your quest objectives. Fuck that bullshit. >> Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous how easy it is. I mean, yeah, I got that undead dude all the way up to 20 and then decided, eh, and I started all the way over in a day and got back to where I was and the mount. >> Yeah. >> It was like, cool. >> And not only that, but they've changed, like, every race can basically be every class was like, after I changed, I mean, I went back and now I'm a hunter. And I did that and I said something somebody about it and somebody else said, like, oh, why didn't you just pay to have it turned into a hunter? >> Tear it into a hunter, yes. >> Which I could have done, but that just -- >> Well, you could also pay like your highest level character. You could pay to turn them into a high level goblin of a different class on a different server. >> Right, yeah. >> Like, they will let you pay to pretty much do anything you want. >> Right, right. >> You can change races. >> Yes. >> But the thing is, too, it's like, in a way, it's been six years. >> Yeah. >> So, like, who cares anymore? >> Yeah. >> Like, it was pure for a long time, but now, do what the fuck you want. >> I mean, it's smart. It just makes it, like, like, I was talking to my friend about it, basically, it's like all the stuff, like, level one through 60 is basically made for the lowest common denominator of player at this point. >> Right. >> And then all the stuff for people that really play games hardcore, that's all the end game stuff is going. >> Right, they're all doing 83.85 right now. >> Right. >> And I do have my guy, you know, Ed Bird is just waiting because that's like the real thing. It's jazzed by all the new content on the old world. >> Well, I'm like, I've been playing my, because I got a goblin up to, like, level 16 or 17 in the beta, and that was really enjoyable, the goblin areas are awesome and so fun. >> I think it's really good the way that they've basically learned from when they made death nights. >> Yes. >> That they instance the beginning of anybody. >> Exactly. >> So, they can have, like, this really unique story that dramatically changes all this stuff because it doesn't actually change the real world. >> Right, right. >> Well, and they do that a lot, like, they did that a lot in Northrend, and now they've done it a lot in the new area, the underwater area, whatever it's called. I can't remember the name right now. >> Oh, I don't remember. The all underwater zone. >> Yeah, the all underwater zone, which is where you go right when you start your level 80 character, and that's where I am now. I just got, like, 81 last night, and it's fucking cool. >> Yeah. >> There's like all, it's, every, it's just like the newbie areas where, like, as you're going along, lots of things are instanced only to you or only to, you know, or only to people that have passed a certain point in the quest chains. >> Right. >> And plus, like, it's really some of the best art I've seen in the game in that underwater area. >> Yeah. >> And they do really smart things. Like, right away, they give you an underwater mount that, like, moves super fast, like, so you're not stuck swimming around. They instantly give you the ability to breathe water forever as long as you're in this zone. So it's like, they take away all the things that annoy you because that's the thing about wow, and it's like, as they've, as they've marched on and on, it's become more and more, give the people what they want. >> Right. >> And less and less, you know, like, we're gonna do this because we're gonna stick to our gameplay plan, and if you're not doing it our way, you're not playing the game right, you know? >> Right. >> Yeah, right. After I came back after 16 months, one of the first thing I noticed was that the mounts can swim. >> Yeah. >> And it was like, why not? >> That totally surprised me, too. >> Sure. >> You're right. Why did they make us get up those fun? >> Or are you still annoying? >> I used to, like, dangerously jump over puddles. >> Over puddles. >> Yeah. >> 'Cause I'd be like, yeah, I'm gonna get this mounted. >> Yeah. >> Do you guys feel, though, that an MMO could launch successfully with this sort of, like, populist approach from the get-go, or do you feel like some of the restraints that you guys are talking about that they're sort of almost like badges of honor? Are they sort of necessary at this point? >> I think no MMO could launch more hardcore with this and find a wider audience. >> Yeah. >> Basically, if you wanted to make a hardcore MMO, you need to do it, and it needs to look like crap. It needs to be, like, way-scaled back, and it needs to be, like, that you only need, like, a couple, a few thousand people to play it, like- >> Yeah. It needs to be, like, super, super niche and focused on a specific audience. If you're going for a general audience MMO, I mean, Blizzard has done you a favor. They've shown you the template, you know, nobody really knew what the template was before while, but now it's like, you need to give people the ability to do everything they want to do easily. >> Right. And that minority of dudes, or whatever, who just, like, can't, who think it's too easy now, like- >> No, they're a minority. I'm that dude, and I'm still playing it, because it's still fun. >> Well, right. Right. I mean, yeah, I mean, I do have that old man reaction too, like, really? You're making it this easy? But okay, thanks. >> Right. >> Yeah. I'll be a late teen faster. >> Yeah. It's true. >> Well, it helps, actually, that the- I think they're writing, and their quests have actually gotten really good. >> Yes. >> Like, in the past, there's a lot of stuff that was just like, oh, fucking really, and I mean, like, sometimes the references annoy me, like, the pop culture references still kind of annoy me? >> They do that a lot more now. >> Yeah. >> They do that a lot more now, and that kind of annoys me. But, like, I feel like, and they did, they, again, they started this in Northrend, and they started a little bit earlier, but it really started to show up in Northrend is that, like, you know, one zone leads into another zone, and it all makes sense how it's coming together, and you really feel like, wow, while I'm leveling, this is basically a single-player RPG where I can do multiplayer stuff if I want to. >> I feel like they definitely- >> Yes. >> It's Diablo's, which is- >> They definitely- >> Yeah. >> Just wanted to learn that people, when they were telling, like, the really lore heavy questlines, people were just like, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, yeah. So now they just keep it ridiculous. Like, there is a quest in that level 80 plus zone, the water one, where it's like, go kill eels, go kill 10 eels, and they realize it's a dumb, kill quest, and instead of them telling you some lore about why the eels are a problem, they're, like, attacking farms, they're just like, go kill eels, why? Because even eels don't like eels, and no one wants an eel to bite you, and it just says all in caps. >> In the face. >> It's like, what, like, okay, they obviously know at this point they're just like, okay. >> Yeah, they're clearly running with that. Have you guys done the new undead? >> No. >> No, I don't want to spoil it too much, I'll spoil it a little. Well, just this one area, after you do this, like, very lore heavy, very kind of dark thing, you go to an area where they're just like, they just take the valve off and just like, now we're just going to goof off. And I really don't want to spoil it, but there's this one, you get to this new area, and the quest is that you become the quest giver, so they have you on the mount, and the question mark goes over your head, and you can't move. And then they have, like, dudes coming up and asking questions, but the way that they've animated these guys, and the things that they say, they're basically all stereotypical wild players. >> That's hilarious. >> Yeah, like, the first guy who comes up is named dumbass, like, D-U-M-A-S-S. And he's like, and everything he's saying is like, yeah, yeah, I don't care, whatever, just tell me you would have to go kill, like, everything that's like that. Then the next guy who comes, he's like way too high level, he's like level 80, and everything he says to you is basically like condescending, and like, whatever. And it's just like, it's so meta that, like, in the old days, it would have been maybe a bummer, you know? But now they're, they clearly are just like, we know you've all been playing this forever, and we've been doing this forever, and so now we're just going to have fun. >> Yeah, when it first started out, I'm sure the thought wasn't appropriately, I'm sure that they had to take it really seriously so that you felt involved in the world, and yeah, you're right. Now, it's just like, you've done this before. >> And for the people that want it, they can go and read the Blizzard website that like breaks down all the story of Cataclysm. >> Yeah. >> Because if you do pay attention to the story of Cataclysm, it is interesting. They're totally setting it up for Warcraft 4. >> Oh, yeah, definitely. >> The game, because at this point, the Alliance and the Horror are like right on each other's throats. They're basically back to Square 1. >> I don't necessarily think that that's the case. I think they might be setting it up to finally make it so that you can have any race on Alliance or Horde. >> I mean, that could be too, but I definitely feel like they're heading towards another RTS. I think they'll do another Warcraft before they do. I mean, after they're in a Starcraft, obviously. >> Yeah. I actually just admire that the idea of Cataclysm in general, the fact that they rip apart. You can't go back. >> I know, there are quests that I never did, and we'll never get to do them anymore. >> Right, you can't do them anymore. They've stored a server somewhere where you can go back to the Old World, but I had took a certain amount of balls just to do that. >> And on the other hand, I don't know if any of us wanted to go do any of those old ones. >> No, the old Azeroth sucked. That was one of the main reasons why I never started in all this, because I am never going through that crap again. >> Yeah, I think they realized that basically when they made, by the time they made Burning Crusade, the Old World stuff was just boring and drab in comparison, and this was the only way they could redo it. >> Actually, what I hate now is Outland, I hate to say, because I had one dude who was 60, right? >> Yeah. >> Because that's a 60 to 70. >> Yeah, yeah. >> 60 to 70. >> 60 to 70, yeah. >> And I was thinking like, well, maybe in the year and a half I've been gone, they put stuff in the Old World, and it's like, nope, gotta go to Outland to get 60 to 70. And it's, yeah, like they need to cataclysm up that area now. >> Yeah, it's already been through one cataclysm, have it go through another? >> Yeah. >> I've just been really impressed also with the redo of the engine and the art, the art assets. >> It still looks great. >> The water, I love what they've done with the water. I think that's a change that came in earlier, but this is the first time I've seen it, and it's really, really nice looking, especially if you have a PC, which is powerful enough to turn up all the reflection effects and everything like that. And I got a kick out of getting on my mount and flying over the new Stormwind, and the new Stormwind, the way it is designing everything, and this was a cool looking city with half of it burned. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Do you guys role play at all? >> No. >> No. >> I like what you've talked about before though, like I would if I was a goblin and I could be racist. >> I'm definitely role playing. >> Yeah. >> Are you? >> Yeah, on a non-role play server. >> As a goblin. >> Yeah, well as a racist goblin. >> A racist goblin. >> That's not racist towards humans, like actual people, and saying racist towards all other horde members that aren't god ones. It's like, even if I really need the help, an orc offered to join a group with me the other day, and I just ignored him, like the whole time I just didn't speak to him. >> [LAUGH] >> And so I'm kind of a cop out if you're not telling him why you won't speak to him. >> No, I just don't even speak to him at all. I completely ignore him. >> The only true way is a gnome. >> I did that. >> Yeah. >> I just think it's really fun. >> I'd get into the little short guy. >> I think it's going to be really fun when me and my friend are rolling around together as he's a mage or no, he's a hunter and I'm a rogue, we're really good at DPS pair. And our plan is just to be like, well join your group if you kick out the filthy orc. >> Would you? >> [LAUGH] >> I just want to say stuff like that. I really just want to be a dick. >> For the listeners at home, what's your character's name? >> My character's name is Rob Cass. >> And what's your friend's character's name? >> Cass Grubb. >> [LAUGH] >> And did you coordinate when you were making these characters? >> We did. >> No. >> [LAUGH] >> Because we both play Warhammer and so Grubb Cass in the dwarf book is a Dorvish for goblin work. >> You like how he actually makes it worse? >> Wow. >> So I knew that and my friend made his goblin and was really trying to get the name of Grubb Cass and he was like, fuck, I can't get Grubb Cass in me. >> You want to explain how he couldn't get the name of Grubb? >> He made a character. And the reason he couldn't get Grubb Cass is because I had reserved that name with a level one orc like a year and a half ago. >> [LAUGH] >> Wow. >> So. >> Knowing that cataclysm is coming. >> No. >> Just in case I ever wanted to make it because I thought it was a good name. >> That is ultimate nerd awesome. >> So we're Grubb Cass and Cass Grubb, the racist brothers basically just roll around and if I'm in a group because I have to group with orcs, they're not allowed to bandage me. I don't want to be touched by them. >> [LAUGH] >> Don't touch me. >> That's pretty funny. >> I don't want your bandage. >> Yeah. >> You make me dirty. >> [LAUGH] >> So. >> I'm actually just surprised that I'm even back. >> Me too. >> I really felt was done. >> Me too. >> I just thought I was done too. And then I got a free copy of it and I was like, wow. >> And I got mine for 20 bucks. So. >> Yeah. >> I didn't want to come back. Like I was happy to be out. >> Me too. >> You know, the 16 months was like a good free 16 months. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Being like out of wild prison. >> The first step is admitting you have a problem. >> Right. I mean, it was like a happy prison. I was, you know, it was like being a drug addict or something. >> [LAUGH] >> You guys sound good. >> Yeah, thank you. >> You guys sound almost like institutionalized. >> You are not helping my cause, man. My girlfriend tells me all the time. She's like, I really don't like that you play this game. I was like, I was like, what is the difference between this game and other games? She's like, because other games don't ruin people's lives. You don't hear news stories about what marriage is ending. >> Yeah. >> I mean, two days yesterday or yesterday, I'm working at home this week. So I can suddenly schedule, but you know, I'm trying to keep it honest. >> Mm-hm. >> So like I wanted to get start work by nine and my wife gets up before me. So she, so she woke me up yesterday and it was like six and it was like, instead of going back to bed, I was like, awesome. It's like three hours of a while right now. And I fucking got up to play wow, it's six in the morning, just because I was, I was like, yay, I have a while time and I wouldn't do that with any of the game. >> Right. So you're a, you're a functional alcoholic. >> Yeah. >> Right. I was like, quit it, nine. >> Right. >> [LAUGH] >> So, yeah. >> So this is why I don't play this game. >> Well, it will. >> I mean, you saw me play New Vegas. >> Yeah. >> It's sort of like what I said. >> It's all out three and oblivion. >> Yeah, yeah. >> I couldn't do that with a game that ever ends. >> It's actually smart, Arthur. But like I said to Ryan is that I really do wish that RPG fans could just play it as like a single player RPG and just like experience some of the story stuff and just be like, all right, I'm done because like the content is genuinely good. >> No, it really is. And, you know, even the stuff we're talking about, the jokey stuff, I mean, like I said, when you get to that goofy, you're the Questkeeper thing, that's after a couple like pretty hardcore cutscenes where it's really dark, you know? And that part was really interesting to me just on a story level the way a good single player game was, like you're saying. >> Yeah. >> So I do think, wow, get short shrift for that. I mean, their lore is pretty deep and there's a good story there. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So. >> I think the reason they get short shrift is because so much of the lore originally was directly lifted from game- >> Everything else. >> Well, yes. Yeah. >> But I developed into something they're on though. >> It's true. >> What else have you been dabbling in besides World of Warcraft? If anything. >> Well, yeah, that's taken up a lot of my time and then everything else is sort of like a break between that, like Pac-Man, like everybody else these days. Nice. >> How you do on Pac-Man? >> Yeah, I can't even bring out my scores. That's a loaded question. Arthur just wants to- >> Arthur just wants to say I broke the top 100. >> Yeah. >> I'm like 20 years older than you, so, you know. >> I was playing it in the arcades when it came out. >> It actually wasn't even the top 100 thing that made me excited. It was beating Ryan Scott that made me excited. >> Was he the former king? >> He was actually the former king of the office, although we thought about disqualifying him from the running because he played on someone else's gamer tag once and put their score in like the top 200. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> Intentionally, he just had a good game. >> No, that was intentional. He knew. He knew he shouldn't have. That's some bullshit. [laughter] >> You don't play a score based game on someone else's gamer tag when it comes to that kind of stuff. >> Either way, he has his high score. >> But he has his high score and I beat his high score. >> Word to that. >> Which is 1.98 million or something like that on the five minute. >> It's hot. >> Great. >> It's- >> I'm not that good at it, but it's a lot of fun. And actually, I might like this better than almost every other Pac-Man I've ever played. >> Oh, absolutely. >> I think that's generally the general consensus from everyone I've talked to. >> Yeah. >> And it's the only Xbox Live or K game we've ever given a perfect score to. >> Is that right? >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Are there- >> Are there- >> Since we've talked about- or we're crafting games, you don't care about what's something you do care about. >> Pac-Man? >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Pac-Man, we've talked about it enough. That's a dumb game. >> Yeah, and yet somehow I go to sit down and play it for like 10 minutes and end up sitting there for two and a half fucking hours, which is even more impressive because it's like a five minute game that I- >> Yeah. So, yeah, that's another reason you shouldn't play well because if you're able to do something over and over and over again- >> Yeah. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Was that double entendre? >> No. >> Anyway. >> All right, so tell me about Battle for Bad Company Vietnam. >> Okay, so yeah, I'm reviewing Bad Company Vietnam and it's good. >> It is good. >> So, Pac-Man. [laughter] >> Wait, is it good? >> No, Bad Company 2 Vietnam is actually really good. In point of fact, I think it might be better than Bad Company 2's standalone multiple. >> Yeah. >> Why? >> Because they don't have because they don't have attack choppers in the same way. >> Well, right. I mean, it's just there's less stuff to unbalance the game that seems like there's less exploitable gear with the possible exception of the flamethrower. But even then, it's range is short enough to where anyone with a gun that can see you coming from straight on is fucked or you're fucked. >> It's like basically good for buildings or something. >> Well, it's good for coming around corners into structures of which there are many in Vietnam because the levels are laid out in such a way that there are lots of trenches and tunnels and just like choke points where there will be people holding up and a flamethrower is a very efficient way of clearing the entrance and killing people quickly and that you don't have to hit them very much to kill them. But they're going to take a few seconds to die during which time they can totally fuck your business up. >> There's no more, I mean, I talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago, but there's no more scopes for anybody but snipers and playing now for another couple of hours this time on PC, it very clearly changes the way that people are playing. Like when you get killed, you don't necessarily see yourself getting killed from across the map by a medic. >> Are they like terribly offensive, like Vietnamese voiceovers? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> I invite people. >> No, I'm pretty sure they were done by Vietnamese people. >> Is there a Koreanist clear water on this? >> Yes, Jesus Christ. >> Do the Vietnamese people speak in Vietnamese or anything? >> Yes, they do speak in Vietnamese and occasionally they speak in broken English. >> Okay, I was wondering if it was like Christ. >> Well, just like in Bad Company 2, they say, oh God, Christ is the most inadvertently racist game in history. There's, "Fortunate Son" is the menu music. >> Oh my God. >> Yeah. >> I was feeling-- >> There's like 20 of them on "Fortunate Son." >> I was feeling a little excessively credenced after my time with the game. >> Yeah. >> But there's also-- >> There were a lot of bands that came out in the '60s. >> Yeah, but it's just such a iconic song. >> But that and Ace of Spades just need to be banned from video games forever. >> I haven't heard Ace of Spades. >> Ace of Spades. >> That was only in GTA and that was my fucking-- when that song came on, I was like, I find a motorcycle. >> Spin. >> Kill someone. >> No, I can't do that. >> That's been in GTA's. That's been in every Tony Hawk. >> Wow. >> It's been a rock band. >> Wow. >> Which I don't believe. It's all over the place. >> Or automatic disqualification for being in Tony Hawk. >> There's a lot more to choose from than Credence. >> I mean, there is sympathy for the devil, or it's usually the other way. >> I haven't heard any sympathy for the devil. >> That's very common. >> Yeah. >> There's a lot of credence. There's also other songs. There's-- in between maps, the briefing screens are like red over radio bulletins about military actions. There may or may not be occurring in whether or not the US admits that they happened and shit like that. >> What's interesting is there's no controversy at all this time at all that there even is a Vietnam. >> I mean, I guess-- >> I mean, at this point, it's been 42 years. >> Right. That and Call of Duty Black Ops earlier this year did Vietnam stuff too. >> Right. So-- >> Yeah, no one cared then either. >> The difference between black ops-- >> It's been long enough. >> It's been long enough. >> The difference between black ops and Battlefield are coming to Vietnam other than the fact that one has an extraordinarily long name. >> Well, one has a story to it as well. >> Yeah. It's that there's no anachronistic component of bad company to Vietnam in the multiplayer. Like, in black ops, it's like, oh, it's like 1968, but I got all these red dot sites and a fucking-- >> Yeah. >> Instead of a red dot, there's a smiley in my scope. That's cool. That was-- it's cool. They're black ops. They had access to all that stuff early and remote control cars with C4-- >> This isn't even the first multiplayer Vietnam game. >> No, there's another Battlefield Vietnam game. >> Right, there was. >> Yeah, there was Battlefield Vietnam. >> And it had really good helicopters. >> Right. And so, I mean, this is-- in a way, this is going up back a little bit to that legacy. But for me, it just feels like it's between 1943, which felt a very particular way in bad company, too, which felt a very particular way. And I think that this simplifies some things enough to where there's not going to be such a lopsided balance of power between players who have played a lot and players who have it. >> Yeah. >> And I think that that's something that's gotten kind of lost in multiplayer shooters since 2007, like Call of Duty Modern Warfare was an awesome game, but in a lot of ways, it sort of fucked up the way that we play online shooters, and has made them less accessible. So now there's not just that skill curve that new players have to adjust to. There's also the making up the gap between starting equipment and later equipment. Like, that's the MMO factor. >> Right. So is that-- that was something-- we didn't know the answer to earlier, is there still a lot? >> You unlock. >> So everyone starts over-- >> Yeah. Everyone starts over. It was funny, the servers I was playing, they had almost everything unlocked. So as I was using my blowtorch to destroy a tank, I unlocked the blowtorch. But I just think that-- and in a way, bad company, too, kind of made some inroads to that in a typically EA fashion, which is you can buy kits, like fully outfitted kits with real money or space bucks, if you prefer, to bring a certain class as gear all the way up to fully unlocked, which is in a way kind of shitty because paying for some of the other people who have earned sucks. But if you want to enter the game and have all that stuff later on, then you have that option. >> Depends on how much your time's worth doing. >> Right. Exactly. And I don't think that's going to be as much of an issue in Vietnam as it is in bad company. >> It's $15. >> It's $15 for four pretty gigantic bad company, two maps. And then after each platform performs 69 million support actions, it unlocks a fifth map. >> All right. It's cool. It's a lot easier. >> Which is actually from Battlefield Vietnam. >> It's pretty-- it's one of the more expensive map packs, that's for sure. I mean, it is like the mode and stuff, but I'm saying, like, a lot of the Halo ones and stuff were always, you know, the Gears of War ones, they were always-- the precedent was $10. >> Mm-hmm. >> Right. But this isn't a map pack. >> Right. It adds new guns and everything too. I'm just-- well, I guess-- >> Well, it's not just-- I mean, it's all new audio. It's a ton of new music. It's completely redone characters. >> I'm not going to minimize. I'm just saying for a game add-on on Xbox Live, it's kind of one of the more expensive ones. >> I just-- I don't think that it's even DLC so much as it's an expansion. And it's an expansion in the way that we don't typically-- >> Sorry, you've done a version of this too. >> No. >> And that's one of the things that confuses me is because there is more content in this than there was in 1943. >> Yeah, right. >> So-- >> It sounds like they could have boxed up. >> Yeah. >> On-- I mean, on the 360 from the main menu, you select-- there's multiplayer and the next to that, there's a Vietnam. And on the PC version, when you boot it up, there's like a tab on the left that says Vietnam and you click on that and it goes to a completely different title screen. >> Yeah. >> So-- >> It is an expansion. >> It's an expansion. >> It's an expansion. >> It totally is an expansion. I'm not trying to minimize what they've done or anything. I'm just saying in the scheme of, like, the way pricing's worked in the past. There's a few things that just seems like-- yeah, it almost seems like it should have been a standalone thing. Like, the Red Dead thing's like $15 as well, but that can also work. >> Mm-hmm. >> You know, you play it on your own. >> Yeah. >> Actually, the Red Dead thing is $10. >> $10. >> Oh, yeah, it's $10 on that. >> Right. That's what I'm saying. There's just some things that-- >> Which is shocking on it in its own, right? >> Ten is a good price. >> That's something-- >> Yeah. >> Well, I mean, ten is less than we're used to paying for-- >> At this point, yeah, at this point, they've raised the price of Xbox Live games in general. Yeah, in general, Xbox Live games, the going price now is $15. >> Yeah, that is-- >> Well done. >> Well done. >> Arthur, are there flying vehicles in there? >> Yeah, there are helicopters. >> Are you in your cell system? >> Oh, okay. I'm not a show. >> Some helicopters have rocket pads. >> But it's great. But it's worth the $20. >> But the helicopters seem used much more in the way that they were used in Vietnam combat theaters, which is a transport. >> Right. Okay. >> What side gunners? >> I mean, they do have side gunners and some of them have rockets, but there's no-- there's no hind situation in Vietnam, thankfully-- >> Yeah, they cannot buy an RPG. >> Right. I mean, there's nothing in there that can't be taken out with like a machine gun, basically. And that's-- that kind of shit is what functionally broke certain maps in Bad Company II, and they never fixed it. They kept trying to make little changes to fix Bad Company II, and there are some maps that they just never fixed, even after they released seven VIP packs. But yeah, it's really, really good. I'm not sure what I'm giving it yet, but my review goes up third instead of morning. >> Better figured it out. >> It'd be better. >> Yeah. >> Because it's tomorrow morning. >> Yeah. >> But it's DLC, so I don't have to write breakdowns. >> I have a very old man attitude towards all these shooters now, and like I only want to play them single player, and it's not-- I don't mean because of like the online players. I actually mean like all this like unlocking bullshit. I'm not a fan. I actually-- this is where I feel old. Like I actually long for the days when we all got the same fricking five weapons and that's all there was. >> Right. What's funny is I remember when the beta for Modern Warfare came out watching you on the OneUp show talk about how awesome you thought it was that you leveled up your character and locked new weapons. >> You're right. I did. I remember doing that. But I mean after a while, it's like I-- >> It just gets old. >> I guess I must feel kind of like Jeff does, like I get-- it feels old down to me too. It's sort of like, you know, it almost feels to me like when fighting games come these days and they don't have all the characters unlocked from the get go, and they make you play through this-- through the same 12 rounds over and over again to unlock everybody. I sort of feel the same way about that. Just give me everything. >> I can handle like one game like that a year. >> And really, at this point, Halo is the only game that's sort of sticking to its gun. >> Right. And all that, you unlock a static-- you unlock a static stuff. >> Did you ever think you'd say that? >> Never. >> I would never think I would say. >> Halo is good because yeah, what you unlock is all a static and it's like-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> Because yeah, I got a badass new helmet, but it doesn't matter. >> Because it's like a sport. >> Right. >> As much as anything. >> Right, and that's enjoyable. >> I mean, I do like-- like there is like-- I have time in my life for like one call of duty or one bad company where I unlock things in here, but it's like when I'm playing things like Assassin's Creed. >> For me right now. >> I'm like right now. >> Well, for me right now-- >> For me right now, the game that I'm leveling up in and that I'm enjoying is Assassin's Creed, and that's because it's not a shooter like these other ones, you know. I'm not-- I'm not getting my ACOG scope, you know. I'm unlocking like fucking poison blades and smoke bones and stuff. >> Right. I just think-- I think we mentioned it very briefly on a podcast a couple of weeks ago. I just wonder if the unlocking mechanic is segmenting multiplayer user base super quickly and killing multiplayer user bases. >> That's how I feel. Like, I feel like I am opting out of that now. >> Yeah. >> But when I see a game that's like that, I'm just like eh, no thanks. I don't want to do that. As an example, how many copies of Medal of Honor sell like 3 million supposedly or ship 3 million and it sold really well in the US for its first month at least? If you had to hazard a guess as to how many people would be on Xbox Live at any given time playing that game, what would you guess? >> I would guess a very small number. >> Well-- >> 12. >> Fuck. >> Yeah. >> And they're all on the dev team. >> Yeah. >> I had to capture some Medal of Honor multiplayer this week for a video feature we're doing and there were 2,500 people playing Medal of Honor. >> Wow. That's sad. >> And all game modes. So like in one mode, there were 1,200 in another, there were 300 and so on and so forth. And when I went in, all these people were much higher level than-- >> Because they're the only ones playing. >> Right. And it's just like this vicious cycle where no one else can enter the game because these other people are so much better equipped. >> Right. See, that's what I'm saying. Like in the old days, I could join a Quake server, you know, any time. >> Yeah. >> I was just-- >> Whether I was good or not. >> Yeah. >> I have an interesting idea for this. They're experimenting with all these ways to get people not to buy used games, like $10 and you can play online and stuff like that. What they need to do is they need to sell me, if I buy it new, I have all the weapons unlocked. >> Oh, that's terrible. I did. >> And if I don't buy it new, you can level up. Fuck all you guys. You don't buy it new. You can level up. Me, I bought it new. I have everything. >> There is an option. I think Modern Warfare 2 started this last year and I think Black Ops is at 2 where there's like a traditional Call of Duty mode where you go in and you have a starting weapon and the other weapons are littered around and there are no perks or anything like that. But fuck to find out how many people actually played it because everyone loves their fucking grinding mechanic. >> Well, you know what I actually-- but what I'm asking is, with the thing I was saying, why would it be terrible if everyone had everything or I have to bet? >> Because that would lead to certain retailers giving certain weapons and other-- which is what they already do. >> No, not saying giving certain weapons, I'm saying you buy it new. You get everything. There is no unlocking. If you don't buy it new, you buy used, you level up. I'm someone-- >> Everyone would have everything right off the bat. >> I really enjoy the unlocking of all the different items and shooters, particularly because the way I like to play is I always like just trying new things. So every time I unlock a new gun, that gives me another way to try to play the game differently. Even if it's like, I have been playing with the MP5, but now I have a Uzi. I mean, even those two weapons are pretty different in the way you'll sort of face some certain situations. You know, the Uzi is much more close range. >> And I understand that, and that's part of the reason it's there, is to keep you playing that game and like grinding out the shit and unlocking more equipment and feeling constantly rewarded because that keeps you from taking it back and selling it. And I get that, but I'm just wondering if at this point it's backfiring. >> I think it's just, you know, it's a careful balance, obviously, that the developers have to draw. In Modern Warfare 2, the initial gun that you get, it's an effective gun. You can do really well with it, you know. It's like, I didn't feel like I was at like, at this enormous disadvantage from everybody having way, way better weapons than I do. I actually think that a game that I played a lot more multiplayer of, which was Bad Company 2, had a bigger spread between, you know, starting weapons and weapons that you could unlock. But, you know, you just can't make it so that the weapons that you unlock are vastly, vastly better than the starting weapons. >> I guess maybe that that scheme I'm thinking of, I'd actually prefer it more if it was not guns, but modes. That's one thing in a nice game in all these shooters is that Modern Warfare, especially in all Call of Duty games, is like having to level up to like 16 to play like hardcore and stuff like that. >> Oh, I like that. >> I should actually, that's weird. >> The ability to make a class. >> Yeah, it's like, I just want to be able to do that, right? Those basic things right off the bat. I don't want to have to wait to play my favorite modes. >> Right. >> Yeah, it feels cheap. >> Yeah, it just feels exploitative. >> Yeah, it is. >> It is. >> So yeah, I actually kind of long for the games like Counter Strike where you get better stuff in the course of the game. And then every time- >> This is what I'm saying. >> Yeah. >> And every time you start over, everybody starts over with nothing. >> It's not playing field. >> I just feel like- >> So you just know you could jump in a server and it's going to be your skill. It's not, you know, because this guy spent, you know, 80 hours and has unlocked all this bullshit. You know, he may not actually be better, but he's just like, put in the time. I mean- >> Right. >> I don't know. >> And the Monday night combat is. >> Yeah. >> Oh yeah. >> That sucks. >> I still haven't played that. >> And Home Front is going to be that way. >> I mean, it's just developers following what is successful because they think they understand why the formula works. And to a degree, they get like a basic level of it, but I don't think that they understand the nuances of how it works. Just like, I don't think the Treyarch understands the nuances of how Infinity Ward staggered their upgrades, which is why Black Ops is all fucked up and skewed. Like you level up super fast in some ways, but you have to complete specific challenges in certain ways. And it's just not, it's basically making up for depth by dragging you through the levels much faster. >> But you don't feel like you have that, I don't know, the leveling feels kind of similar to me. Like what is it that feels different to you in Black Ops? >> I think that you gain levels much faster in Black Ops and you only level up the guns you want to level up. Like you buy, you gain points to buy the guns you want. Instead of unlocking guns, tiered style, like it just shortens the path to getting what you want. >> Isn't that a good thing though? >> I think that it's an immediately gratifying thing. I don't think it'll keep people playing as long as the system model refers to that. >> I think that's an interesting alternative to allowing people to choose what they want to unlock instead of saying, this is what you unlock at this juncture. >> I mean, I think what Reach did could work because I've already heard people bitching about how there's not enough gear for them to unlock, so obviously there's a desire to do that. >> We've been trained or something. >> I want to run on a wheel. >> Exactly. Run hamster, run. >> So another game I played was Crysis 2, played with Crysis 2 yesterday. >> Sweet. >> I played on PC and I'm a little worried about Crysis 2. Not because of what I saw, but because of what I haven't seen, which is any of the console versions for about seven months, because it judges week before E3. I played the 360 version and it looked okay. It was really rough, but it was also in May. E3, all they had was the PC version and talking to Savat Yearly from Crytek, he said he swore to me that they would have the PS3 version and the games come and they didn't. So no one has seen the 360 version that I know of since May and no one has ever seen the PS3 version and the level that I saw on the PC version this week was fucking gigantic with a ton of enemy AI and a ton of lighting and just a massive environment to play around in and I'm not sure how the consoles are going to pull that off. >> Fuck. >> Well, keep in mind, keep in mind the area. I was hired by Crytek to do videos for Crysis 2, so take anything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. But what we have seen of the game, ostensibly their engine, is instantly portable to every console. So it's simply that they've been working on the PC, so I mean like I would think that it's that they've been working on the PC version and they haven't got around to porting it to the other consoles. Honestly, I have no idea if any of that stuff works, it's just like we've seen it in action, but I don't know what the state of it all is. >> Right, I mean I'm not saying that there's not a magic button in CryEngine that's like they hit it and it's like wow, it's on my PS3 and wow, it's on my 360, I'm just worried about how many times per second that button is going to be updated because not just the image quality and the effects but just the environments themselves seem so huge in Crysis 2 that I am concerned. >> Did you play the multiplayer thing at PAX, right? >> No, I was not. >> Yeah, it played really well, that's all I can say about that. >> Right, and again though, I mean multiplayer is routinely scaled down from single player. >> And obviously not going to be that huge of an area. >> Right, yeah, yeah. But that out of the way, Crysis 2A looks fucking incredible on a well equipped PC, much more so than even a well equipped PC running Crysis or Crysis Warhead because I feel like they've really got their shit together with their lighting and their environmental stuff. >> And they were playing it on PC for you, but they were still playing with the controller. >> Right, so there's that, is that I was playing on a PC, but I was playing with the controller. If you've ever tried to use a controller with Crysis, you'll know that it recognizes it, but it plays like shit. >> Yeah, it's not a surprise. >> Yeah, like there's no aim assist at all. >> Right. >> It'll know you're using a 360 controller, it won't let you tweak any of the buttons or anything like that or reconfigure the sticks. >> PCS PC game. >> Yeah. >> If this is a Crytek I know, even if it comes out, when's it coming out this year? >> March 26th. >> So I will have a PC that's able to run it in about 2016, given their tech. >> I mean, the nice thing about the console development is that they have to focus their level design a little more, theoretically. >> To make it work on a console. >> To make it work on a console. >> I reckon they can work on the Xbox 720. >> Right. >> And supposedly they've vastly optimized their engine to make it work better, which means that on the PC, you don't need quite as much hardware to run it in the comparable settings. >> I downloaded Crysis 1 from, I think it's on Steam, isn't it? >> Mm-hm. >> Yeah. >> So I downloaded that not that long ago, figuring after all this time, I'm gonna run it at Ultra. >> Nope. >> Nope. >> Call of beast. >> I have a fairly powerful computer, and that should still- >> Yeah. >> Is not happy. And it hates overclocked video cards, for whatever reason. >> Mm-hm. >> That's weird. >> And so that was one of my questions to the PR guy that didn't get answered, was whether or not it would play nicer. >> Oh, yeah. I'm gonna ask him that, and he was like, "Huh?" >> He wrote it out. >> Man, that's not internet miss-king today. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> So basically, this level took place in this area that looks kind of like Central Park, but isn't any named park, because it's not a real park. And it's totally fucked up by the alien invasion. There's this raised area, and just these giant caved in sections, and it goes about 80-year, 90 feet up into the air, and there's a raised area to the right that these aliens come down, like bounding down from platform to platform, and there are all sorts of routes you can take, and all sorts of verticality, and this is the thing that I feel plays better than a lot of other shooters is that it doesn't feel heavily scripted. It feels like everything unravels organically, and the thing that I said to PR, and the first thing I asked was if it was gonna piss Savat off if I compared it to Halo, because the way that Halo's AI and combat situations typically work out is like, they'll have certain routes that they'll take, but they react organically to the things that are happening, and that makes for a more interesting combat experience, and you always have a ton of different options for the way that you tackle encounters. Well, Crisis was that way, too, to an extent, yeah, I just didn't think it was, I didn't find the crisis or crisis warhead very fun, honestly, I just didn't think there's a whole other thing. The aliens you fight anymore, I think I've asked you, they have nothing to do with ice and stuff anymore. They haven't said, because I was like part of the reason I thought it was crazy. It's not New York City. It is New York City. It is New York City. The park I was in had the Statue of Liberty's arm landed right in the middle of it. Awesome. I was just identifying it as New York City. Do you play out as one of the guys? No, the name of your character is Alcatraz, if I understand correctly. Really? Is it like Al first name, last name, Katraz? I mean, maybe Alcatraz is just his first name, his last name can be like Lo and Steen or something. It's a pretty weird first name. She's last name is Island. So anyway, your brother Steve, your name is Alcatraz, good luck and junior high. I mean, if you prefer first person shooters on console just for the controller and you have a good PC, then that might still be the way to play it, because playing with a controller played flawlessly. The left bumper has the same zoom in that you expect, but it also has a little bit of the target acquisition. You mean left trigger? Yes. What did I say? He's a bumper. I was like, that's a weird way to zoom. That would be on a PS3, I think. The left trigger zooms in like it doesn't call of duty and there's kind of that target acquisition click where it pulls in a little bit to target more quickly. There's a little bit of aim assist when you're moving around normally. For me, the cool thing was that you could -- it supports south paw sticks for those who care. That's my immediate test for most shooters to see if they actually give a shit about like the user interface to see whether or not you can change the sticks, because Bungie's been doing that shit for nine years. Anyway, it just plays really well, and I always felt like I had a ton of options. There are suit upgrades that vastly change the way you play. One of them is a proximity sense that we'll do a little alarm beep when they're aliens close by. One of them might make enemies who walk around and leave trails on the ground while another will let you react more quickly or run faster or see further in your nano vision or whatever. Is it like bullet time? No. I didn't see any bullet time. When you said react after, that's what I thought of. No. There are so many different ways to change the way the game plays that it feels much more customizable than just the four or five suit modes in crisis. The bumpers as your power activators and deactivators and switchers work really well. Something that was kind of hard to do in the first crisis was turn invisible and shoot someone because as soon as you fired, you drain all your energy. So in this, I was turning invisible, tapping the right bumper to turn it off, firing really quick, tapping the right bumper to go visible again. So I'd be invisible for a split second, and then I would be invisible again. Yeah, they really didn't want you to use invisibility all that much in the original one it felt like. Unless you can run around invisible more often and also there are definitely parts where you'd better be invisible or you're going to die because I got pounded by a drop ship. And that's the other thing is that the enemies just behave an awful lot like elites. And there are dropships that fire pods into the ground that open up and aliens come out and it's just like, this feels kind of familiar. That's good. I mean, the alien AI was awful. Right. I mean, it's like, imagine the tech of crisis with a level design philosophy that takes some cues from Halo and I don't feel that that's a bad thing. I feel that that's a good thing because typically the level, in my opinion, the level design in Halo was much better than it was in crisis because crisis is just like, well, here's this geography and there's stuff over here and stuff over there and here's some dudes and just everyone's going to snipe you for three miles away. Crisis, crisis just wasn't a linear experience and that was too... And I just didn't think that it did the the undirected experience very well. I thought Far Cry 2 did a much better job. Oh, I agree. I'm just saying. Yeah. I mean, that was... Halo's nice because it is like a directed... It's sandboxes strung together. Right. Yeah. So that's kind of what this feels like except the sandboxes are much wider and about 150 feet tall. So crisis two is actually really...I was pretty impressed by what I saw, by what I played and then I had to stop and I was saying. I played a shooter this week that I was actually surprised. I like... Well, I saw two shooters this week and I was surprised that I thought they were both cool. One was Body Count, which is the game from the black body camp. Body Camp? Formerly from the guy. Yeah. So the guy Stuart Black that made Black for your former employer EA, he went to Codemasters and they started up this game called Body Count, which everyone thought was like... Body Count. Yes. Which everyone thought of as like a spiritual successor to Black. He left. He left in October and since then, you know, people have wondered what's up with the game I saw it. It's still really cool. Like it's Codemasters, the engine they have, the one that they were using for like dirt and stuff like that. It's actually... It's pretty interesting the way they've adapted it to first person shooters and stuff. It does particle effects really well. So you know, like in dirt, you know, you would see it with the dust being kicked up all the time and in this, it's just used to like basically make the environment totally blast, like you can blast it apart, but it's not like a bad company too where it's like explosions are blowing everything apart. It's like chipping away with bullets, you know, that's like their big thing. And it's like total gun porn game where it's like ammo is never a concern. Like every guy is dropping so much ammo, you can pretty much hold the trigger down the whole time. They want you to basically go through the game like you're an action hero just shooting everyone you can and like every guy when you shoot them, all these blue orbs go flying out of them. And that drops intel. And so that is because you're like a spy. So you collect all the intel and then basically use that to call him like your strikes. Some spy. Well basically... Sorry. Spies isn't right. You're an assassin. Okay. So you're basically a hardcore assassin. You go into these battlefields. You're a guy who kills dudes. Basically that's all you are. You're basically Arnold from every 80s movie. Right. And it's just really cool because it has like this really interesting aesthetic where it's like Brink or something and like how Brink has that kind of look where it's like somewhere between like a real game and Team Fortress 2. Yeah. And this has that same sort of look to it and like most British games it has like an awesome UI. Like it looks really pretty. Cool. And British developers do UI better than like anyone. But uh... It's because they like good design. Yeah. And they have those good axes. And so I mean even the Stuart Black guys left six, to me the game looks like it could be like really cool like games like that and Bulletstorm are kind of like gonna be like a nice choice for people that don't want shooters that are always like making a point. I actually played Bulletstorm as well. Yeah. And I played the multiplayer mode which is anarchy mode. Uh huh. And that shoot is a mess. A good mess? No a bad mess. Oh. As when I fired out my leash and became stuck to the wall and could not become unstuck until the next round. But I played single player Bulletstorm in this fun though. So I don't know. I just like that game. I do. I do. I think I'm in the same boat. It's so repetitive. I think single player could still be a lot of fun. Like imagine horde mode if you absolutely had to work together except it didn't really explain how it wanted you to work together. And if you didn't you wouldn't advance around you didn't even have to do it over again. Right. And that's Bulletstorm multiplayer in a nutshell right now. Single player Bulletstorm though in single player this game seemed like they have like a really kind of cool thing going on just because they're not serious at all. They're not trying to be serious at all and they really are just trying to be like play and just be a ridiculous asshole with a gun. Like a knife. I think that's totally like. You can get behind that. Yeah and get behind that compared to like I mean I only need so many games like Call of Duty and stuff that are like I'm trying to be serious all the time right but in multiplayer every game is I'm just a ridiculous asshole with a gun. True. Not totally true. You got pretty much dropped with a gun part and have every one of them. And then I actually played a multiplayer focus game this week that I went into and I was like man this game is going to suck ass. Like it's one of those demos you sit down in and you're like all right well I'm going to get through this as best I can. You had to take the ball for this. Yeah. It was for this game. Anthony you're not doing anything. Yeah it was a game called Section 8 Prejudice and I don't know if you remember the last section 8 game. It was like this really generic looking shooter that basically came out and everyone forgot that it came out. The thing about it was that you dropped from Orbit. That was the cool thing. I talked about this. Every time anybody spawned. I talked about this on the show before when I saw it. Right so anytime you spawn you know you shoot from like a drop ship you pick where you want a general area you want to fall on the map and then you fly down and you can like either slam right into the ground or you can like slow yourself and kind of glide down. You slam are you dead? No. No. You kill anything you land on. Yeah. No that's cool. Yeah. I'm thinking it kills us from like dropping on days. Yeah but the whole point is that it's like a it's like an arena shooter kind of like somewhere between like not quite as fast as tribes but not as slow as like a halo or something like that. Like you know halo is fairly slow but that's like that's because that's the way it's designed. This one's like some design to be somewhere between but it feels a lot like tribes because there's like the big environments with the big hills and when you kill guys you get money and so whenever you get money it basically has like this tower defense element too because everyone can deploy turrets and stuff like that and so everyone's trying to deploy a turrets to make sure that no one can deploy in certain areas of the map and you're trying to take out the A turrets and then it also has a little bit of the quake worst thing where the AI will dynamically distribute like new battlefield objectives to give certain teams like a boost if they're really getting their asses kicked but you know the other team can defend that objective you know so it's but the coolest thing about it is like it has all these modes it has like a five hour single player and it's like it's only downloadable Xbox live arcade it's done and unreal it looks really good and it's it's PSN, XBLA and steam and it's 15 bucks like coming out in the beginning of January and also one person can buy it on XBLA or PSN and run that copy as a dedicated server yeah and it supports 32 players so and it fills it fills them out with PC yeah I think it's like 16 or 20 and then it and then it fills them out with bots and honestly like when I was playing I know people say it all the time but I honestly couldn't tell when I was fighting a bot and when I wasn't except for the name like they generally fought pretty well so it's actually pretty impressively I think the first section eight like a lot of people were like well this game has really cool ideas because everybody has a jet pack and everyone has like a powered suit that they can run around in and you can call down tanks along with turrets and stuff like that it's like it's it's a really cool game but no one could ever find games in the old one because it was a $60 game and it looks so generic whereas this one it's like it's priced at 15 bucks downloadable game like I think it could actually have a shot if people are like willing to play it like it seems like a really cool thing like that was again I was just like one of those demos I went into I was like oh what a piece of shit this is going to be and then I was like oh awesome awesome surprise this nice one that happened yeah you know I was really happy to see a game that sounds like something I would totally try I mean all you really had to do is say try I knew that so yep that's why you said that so that you know it actually was because I knew that if you were speaking directly to your penis so is it heavy either you guys other than what we talked about I've been playing a couple of iPhone games I played I've also been playing infinity yeah I played infinity blade yeah me too yeah the I like the sort of punch out style of it you know where you have to you have to react like it's basically just a series of boss battles it is punch out I mean like the the most the most positive thing I can say about the punch out style gameplay is that like as you go through the generations because basically the way that this game works is you go from one boss battle to the next and at the end of it you meet this guy who totally kicks your ass and when he kicks your ass he says maybe the next generation will do better and then you come back basically as the character's son with all the gear and has all the old gear and levels and everything and it's just an excuse to walk through the whole castle again killing all the bosses and so it's actually I think a really smart use of the iPhone tech because the game looks so good and it plays great on my 3GS like much better than I thought it would play and it looks great on the iPad - oh yeah I'm sure nice that just doesn't perform quite as well because it is much memory is like the iPhone 4 I think I think it I think a big mistake though is that they didn't they don't let you have your it's a universal app iPhone and iPad but they don't let your character transfer between the two so if you're playing if you're playing on the iPad you can't start playing on the iPhone and play the same character I think that's a really big oversight I I think it's it's fun but one thing that drives me crazy about this game and all iPhone games in general like is I I've always wished that someone would make like a peripheral for controls because it really does bother me always having to block my screen with whatever I'm doing like all the time you know it's like especially in a game like that where like half the reason I'm playing it is because it looks so cool right I'm like I'm just drawing a big fat line over this guy that looks really cool and scribbling my finger like an idiot I feel like it happened like the you know it's like I feel like I'm watching the screen most of the time though like because I really because I do the parries a lot and the way the parries work is in a boss attacks you and if he's attacking you from the upper right you have to swipe from the lower left to the upper right in order to parry him and because it seems like the parries give you a lot more staggers and if you stagger them then you can like slash them a whole bunch of times right so I've been parrying a lot and like getting better at it and what I really like about it is that once I'm in like the fifth or sixth generation or something like that and the enemies are really starting to mix it up a lot like they'll do crazy combos of like moves that I've seen before but they don't expect them to come in that order I don't expect them to come that fast so it's like it's a real slow progression it took a long time before there was enough variation in where I didn't feel like I was just seeing the same thing over and over and over again do you feel like it's the way that they say where it's like the first real iPhone game like people will say that like oh this is like the first real iPhone game to me it feels like it's still just basic like iPhone mechanics with like a pretty skin like that's horseshit yeah I mean yeah it's fruit ninja with the with the different skin but I mean nothing yeah but yeah but of course people are saying that because it looks like I mean it looks amazing yeah it's like it's beautiful it's like between the PS2 and the PS3 but more toward the PS3 than the PS2 you know that's how good it looks right I've gotten infinity blade and rage yeah and in both those cases when I first downloaded them and booted them up the first time I'm just like this is the future yeah like this is the most beautiful thing and then you start playing them and they're like well okay right I mean this you know these phones and the iPad they weren't really made for this kind of experience right yeah I mean they've done like incredible work with these game engines but no one's really figured out how to do any actual like you saw the story that was circulating yesterday about infinity blade yesterday I didn't yesterday yesterday yesterday twice was it today yes today that infinity blade originally like its original concept was for a connect game yeah but they realized pretty quickly that it was more suited iOS well see I feel like I feel like it's just it's actually a really smart use of the platform because I can hold it with my left hand and you know I can dodge with my thumb in the in like the lower left and then my right finger can do everything else and like I can't say that about a lot of iPhone games I mean I agree it's a great way to do an RPG because if they had tried to do it like the way they they did that the original tech demo they did for the unreleased are you walking around like that just no like virtual sticks no one has done a game that uses virtual sticks like very well and I actually disagree with that a little bit because of the other game I've been playing which is gun brothers I haven't heard of that one and it's kind of cool because it's actually a free to play game so you can download and play right now but the problem with it being a free to play game yeah they both go for the right ones yeah the problem with it being a free to play game is that the progression is so slow and it's because they want you to buy the shit to make it faster and so yeah that's that's the thing because like I I'd be totally willing to like it's it's weird like I have this mental block and maybe it's just because I'm an old man but like I won't buy free to play content like if you if there was a gun brothers that I could buy for like four bucks yeah and a bunch of stuff was unlocked I would do it but if you give me the free one and I have to spend four bucks to unlock some guns or something like that I'm totally not going to right I'm not interested but the cool thing about this game is it it's a top-down twin stick shooter and you know you you hold both your thumbs on the screen you're doing it that way but they have it paced slow enough that it's totally doable on the iPhone it's not like trying to play geometry wars on the iPhone it's like it's a lot more it's a lot more like it really is a lot like smash TV only the enemies come at you like a lot slower and your guns fire quite a bit faster so that it makes it a lot more manageable and it's actually pretty good it's a it's a good use of like somebody looked at the iPhone and they said twin stick shooters you can't do a twitch twin stick shooter but you can if you just slow it down a little it's sort of the halo thing you know with the console shooters they slowed it down because they realized they had to yeah I feel a little bad that I called infinity blade fruit ninja so I want to I want to make up for that by saying that did I do think what one thing I think is amazing is that is that we're actually talking about a game like this on the iPhone man I feel like in the old days not old days being like a year ago yeah years ago this would have had to be like probably on like the PSP yeah to have a mobile game like that because it's also a matter of the price point to true the fact of the infinity bite was was it four ninety nine I think it's really kind of amazing it's an awesome trend you know and also just like the fact that we've been talking about games on an Apple platform it's phenomenal I mean it's true I was actually going to say you know people talk about it like it's the first real game on iPhone and I was thinking to myself like man I played plants versus zombie like two years ago I'm not just saying that because you're here to say no well that's the first thing I was sick and I don't mean pop tech games either I mean like there have been real games on the iPhone since the first I mean I played sitting there on my iPhone like a year ago you know flight control there's been like awesome games exactly yeah that one has like a you know an engine that hardcore gamers are used to doesn't make that the first real game right can I ask a question that's unrelated to the games quality yeah so anybody feel a little conflicted about buying a game from share no after the shadow complex stuff no not really I don't and then they just killed a enders game right they said that they weren't going to make it but that Donald mustard has an idea for a game in a novel oh god please kill both that's my plea to you leave enders game alone for god sakes yeah still feel a little oogie about share after the whole shadow complex thing was he just because Orson Scott card because of Orson Scott well because they're close personal friends with Orson Scott card well some of the people are anyway so who knows Donald and Laura mustard or close personal well I don't know I mean it's weird to me like because you know we we had this discussion before so I don't really want to totally get into it but sometimes you know it's okay to separate the art from the artist you know sometimes it's not and it's like it's really tough to tell when that's a good idea and when it isn't hitler had some awesome paintings I don't know why I said that you just compared Orson Scott card to Hitler wait for the way for the Jewish guy to bring up the nuclear I mean you're saying like I mean clearly Orson Scott card no fans is it it's a dick yeah wait actually no that's okay you can I'm a maximum offense yeah right in maximum offense he's a dick but but I met when I said that I mean because like even though I know that enders game still kind of a classic sci-fi book I didn't yeah I didn't know any that I didn't know when I read it either and I was like I love this book a lot of people knew because he only kind of went batshit insane over the last decade really like really badly yeah yeah but that doesn't now that I know what I know about him that you know that didn't diminish the impact of that book to me yeah yeah I agree and maybe I wouldn't read it now find it right I wouldn't buy it I wouldn't buy it yeah I take a shit on it and then mail it to him know that I did that I did anyone play anything else I feel like there's more but I can't remember everything I'll tell me it's been a couple weeks we recorded we all been talking for an hour yeah I played a I downloaded the indie humble bundle - yeah that's apparently you and everyone else yeah game did obscene amounts of that package did obscene amounts of deserved it and osmos which you're only finally playing is that not a fucking fantastic game dude it's so amazing it's on osmos it's on I know yes so yeah this is like my first time playing it and you know I'm a person like I love science I love space I love you know it's just like everything I love cells in space it starts off with an Isaac Newton quote you know not only that but has like great atmosphere kind of like almost dance music yeah super ambient and it's like chill gameplay like you know I know we need game yeah it's pretty intense towards the end yeah I like it man you know it gets really difficult and and fun I'm finding one of my favorite modes are the one where it usually has the gravity well sort of in the center and everything's rotating around orbiting around it how much is that bundle it's like what it's pretty cheap it's name your price oh wow yeah and it comes with some pretty great games it comes with that one that comes with the one that you talked about there's five games so there's braid right machinery and did I say that or a macheanarium or something like that yeah osmos revenge of the titans and rocket something maybe there's not five crap by the way it's a name I think the technical term is a bunch for pennies um oh no there's a five cortex command or text I talked about that on the previous episodes and tactical yeah yeah that's a fun it's super fun but um yeah and then in addition the revenge of the titans my real good friend Michael Manning actually worked on some of the sound for that game nice so it's really cool but it this is actually a game that I've talked about previously on the show too because I saw the trailer for it and got really excited because it's a tower defense game and I love tower the tower defense genre and this particular game it's of the ilk like I've talked about a game before drone where you basically the whole map is open and like your base will be in one corner and basically the enemies will swarm from another corner or various corners as the levels progress and and you can sort of make your own sort of defenses and um the the swarms will go towards the nearest object whether it's like a barrier or a turret so that kind of shapes their path so then you can kind of like come up with smart ways to feed them through your level but cool the whole the whole spin that like clap the clap uh revenge of the titans brings on it is number one it has like this really sort of almost like sixteen slash eight bit graphic style and sound that's just makes it really really cool it's got like really adorable kind of graphics but sci-fi and menacing yeah uh but they also kind of took some plants versus zombie lessons like oh did they yeah let me let me call our lawyers you know how you know how plants for zombie you have the um the the the sun the sun pieces that drop down to like that's kind of your currency and it also keeps you on your toes like you have to like constantly grab it well well they have that sort of same thing working for you uh where that's one way you can you can earn resources to buy more towers or defenses but you but you there's also sort of an RTS element to it that there are minerals on the on the map and you can place like refineries near the minerals to sort of mine the minerals and you know and it's all like location basin you know you got a certain range and if there's two minerals together you can uh you can try to put your refinery to where it's like mining from both as long as it's in the perfect you guys know how to like where they go to buy the ND bundle if they want to I'm sure you can just google it I'm sure you just google it every blog's been talking about it they've actually made good money off of it too surprisingly you know I didn't know as a name your own price thing it was they did five hundred thousand in one day yeah yeah that's so cool that's great I just worry about how much actual money they're pulling in when they do that if it's one hundred dollars that's five hundred thousand dollars here's here's the thing that's put amongst how many people when when you buy the game there's sliders that you can choose how much you want to go your total to developers to or to each charity oh that's fantastic so good that's great and you know these are all games that have already been out so they've already made except revenge of the titans oh that one has a brand new nice so what they be what would be awesome would be is if you set up a charity you know for yourself so what you need to do is declare yourself a religion there you go yeah and then send the money there so you're actually getting paid to buy their game this is man beautiful working a pop cap has changed yeah there's another game I played to that I'm I'm interested if you guys have played it as well and surprise no one's talked about it and I actually hope that it's a sign of things to come in the gaming industry as a whole and the game I'm talking about is Yahoo bus stop Derby I thought you're gonna stop no I thought you were gonna talk about that one game like that that game won chance did you play that oh I heard that was fantastic that sounds cool flash no yahoo bus stop Derby have you guys not seen it in downtown Derby no so who bus top Derby is that bus stop Derby so around the city of San Francisco there's a select number of Muni stops that have a giant touch screen LCD and there are four different games you can play and the different neighborhoods in San Francisco compete with each other with total scores what and so at the and like in January 26th or something they crowned the winner and the games are real basic and the gameplay is kind of crappy yeah but as a shape to of things to come it just fills me with optimism I mean number one you're writing out a bus stop you know what else am I gonna do let's do this typing game like one game you can do it's it like throws up a bunch of like chat phrases and so it's basically you know typical time typing game like how fast can you type and like when you press the buttons on the screen it moves them so it kind of makes it hard you know you not feel like a dork at the bus stop no it's totally cool people gather around and like you get tries and there's even a challenge mode where if you're like doing it during the day where there's a lot of people out yeah it'll wait for a challenger from another bus stop and you can play against someone this is fucking amazing how are these things like not getting like vandalizes that's what I'm wondering to and I've I mean I've seen more than one there's actually one right by my work where I wait and then there's another one where I usually go to get coffee every day and I play them the best one is the typing game because you only have to touch but some of the other games require you having to like swipe and man just because that it's like thick plexiglass it's it's not good it's not sensitive yeah when yeah yeah but to me that's a great idea implications yeah of that it reminds me of the TED talk that I watch and that you know the this guy his idea was that bring gaming into everything make you know and often when I talk about the future of gamers of being healthy people like what make health again you know well that is I'm off the bus now I was with you till that speaking of trying to make health a game I tried to eat a sports active on connect I hear that's pretty brutal when when you have a six by eight space and it's set up just right right just right and then there's the whole it freezing 29 exercises into a 33 exercise workout and not saving anywhere in that it is a good point if you're going to get it the weir ps3 ones are a much better bet I I tried three times to do a workout on active to on 360 and as far as the EA servers are concerned I have done nothing with that game fuck that um did you guys see that YouTube video of that guy playing that kung fu live game yes it was what it was the one up reviewer and I can't think of his name but it's pretty much exactly what you're in the movies looked like when I'm yes it's a city that country live game is god damn terrible one like one last shout out I'm gonna tell you guys should go play is there is a flashing called last chance I believe that's what it's called yeah and you get everyone should go play like it's called last chance because unless you delete your cookies from your browser you only get one chance to play it like when you're done playing it won't let you restart a new game and so and so the premise is that your guy created a cure for cancer and then but you find out that this cure for cancer actually breaks down people's genetic code or something and everyone's going to die in seven days so your cure for cancer is actually started a virus that's spreading across the world killing everyone over the course of seven days so the first day you go to work and everyone you're everyone you're coming like we're gonna be rich you've done it Tom and then the next day you come into the like we're fucking ruined the room is going down and like slowly be sure you're having to like explain things to your wife and your child you have to decide like am I going to go to work today and try and work on a cure am I gonna just start spending some time with my wife and kid and like all these things will change the way it's but it's all done by eight big graphics yes it has this really drab music but you like yes at the end you're like at people are like riding in the streets and people you'll see people that have killed themselves because they're just like not they don't think life's worth living and it's like do you still go to work and keep trying to work on a cure do you like at what point do you like well I guess I should take my kid to the park today and things depending on your yeah there's totally way different endings but you only get one you only get one you only get one you delete your cookies room yeah I love it I will say I'm not everyone everyone died yeah my wife killed herself so did you win I don't know everyone should go try it because I played that and it was like a one of the coolest ten minutes I've had that's so cool like it's so rare that games decide to just be ambiguous with the player yeah I don't know what the point was I don't even know if you can win right right so it's it's like the no country for old men a video game it was yeah I finished it and I was like what was the point of that give it an award all right is that it yeah we'll take a break I have one hit it I think this might be a sign of the apocalypse game loft has a game coming out for PSN oh wow that all they did was phone games I thought modern combat domination oh whoa well that sounds like that's like the type of game we used to make fun of like would your grandma accidentally buy you this instead of call dude yeah we will take you back to the door now the house will be like a rummage saying it ain't me get me I know million ass I know it ain't me yeah I know what you did want no. Brian writes and he says I was reading a feature on film director Danny Boyle 28 days later sunshine top five favorite films and he said his support for apocalypse now is because it's imperfect which every film should be that was his quote and he said this quote resonated with me as it relates to my own tastes and games I tend to appreciate video games that strive for something different and unique even though they may fail on a lot of multiple levels but quickly tired of games with polish it's the difference between far cry two and red fraction gorilla two of my favorites and the games that blizzard releases still only a few hours into starcraft two that's what he says so you know it's like starcraft two what before so the difference between far cry two and starcraft two is that one of them is really fucking awesome and the other is cool but broken he's saying that he he likes games that do something unique more than like oh we've seen this before but this is just like really polished version of that and he's kind of asking so he says can a game truly be great if it fails to take any chances in which side do you lean towards imperfection slash ambition or polish depends on the day of the week yeah like you know uncharted two is a really fucking polished game and I love that game but it's also frequently imperfect I yeah but I mean it's less imperfect than you know some indie game that's trying to do something really unique and right yeah like uh shit what was the what was that game it was a it was a first-person shooter but it was like mostly melee it was on steam it was a downloadable one had a really crazy unique world and xenophobe xenoclass xenoclass like that game failed in a lot of ways but I still really enjoyed it because of what they were trying to do with it because it told a really unique story and uh but I appreciated it but that's not going to stop me from playing uncharted two or starcraft two or starcraft two starcraft two single player I can't still can't do the multiplayer I get my ass kicked so hard yeah okay or Mass Effect 2 um this is a this is a nerd question about Mass Effect so I figured oh nice stay away uh I watched this trailer for this is John writing he says I watched a trailer for Mass Effect 3 and it dawned on me that it was spelling out how the final third of the game was going to work but I was immediately depressed for his work my theory he says my theory it will work along the same lines as the rescue mission for Mass Effect 2 but instead of saving specific crew members its earth all your decisions from Mass Effect 1 through 3 would create values as to how much of earth was obliterated during the reaper assault save the rachnai minus 5 damage to earth since they were coming to your rescue help the crogans minus 10 damage after finally reading the universe of the reaper's reaper cycle once and for all you're treated to a montage of scenes of what was destroyed on earth and what was saved maybe you didn't help out an alien race in the Taj Mahal's glass or maybe Disneyland is a fiery pit I hope I'm wrong but once you looked at the mechanics for the suicide mission Mass Effect 2 it was disappointingly binary it says what do you think I think you're thinking way too much about this I think a he's way over simplifying the way it would work and be they've never been one to really rub your face and the consequences so much as shit just happens and stuff continues yeah like because when a teammate died Mass Effect 2 like it was like okay that person died but everything is still moving right like you never dwelled on it well Mass Effect 2 they're like when your teammates died sometimes it was ambiguous as to why they died you know like you weren't entirely like obviously loyalty missions oh you mean like what decision you made that killed right exactly because you killed them right I think he's I mean it's entirely possible it could work that way yeah man that's plausible yeah sure sure I mean and ultimately every game I mean especially a game like virus games it does boil down to the sort of like percentages he's talking about yeah I could see that going to tally things you didn't didn't and that's gonna well right it's at some point it turns into math right yeah well and it doesn't turn into it it is man yeah it's a spreadsheet hopefully I can tally enough good decisions to see tally's fucking face this time right I I don't admit like when I first saw that trailer the first thing that came to my mind was this time instead of exploring the the galaxy are we going to just be exploring earth jumping around a different spots on earth or is that just the in location like the letter is saying I think it would be awesome if they proved all of this wrong and that's like the first thing that happens in the game it's like the first two minutes yeah well didn't they do that with Mass Effect 2 yeah when they showed it to the press they were like this is almost towards the end of the game like I showed this spoiler yeah retail description yes the leaked retail description Mass Effect 3 sort of makes it sound like earth is the end game ah yeah that makes it makes more sense with the way they've been doing things because shock and amazement someone at EA accidentally put up the retail listing in the EA store for Mass Effect 3 yeah I'm wondering if if like what happened for the trailer was the game comes out like December 10th 2011 and for some reason they're like December 10th 2010 go there's no story oh shit somebody was sitting in somebody's office that day yeah dear potential employers are they going to listen to this potentially I mean are they going to get offended if I read your employers I mean your employers are they going to get offended if there's something like dirty now all right just make a sure because this is very so this guy it's like x rated and no well the title of his email is ghost drinking listening to this place like so that next to the jack links he says okay is it okay to jerk off when your girlfriend is in the next room to you I've been doing it more and more because me and my girlfriend have stopped having sex we've spoken about it and it just caused a big argument where she says I shouldn't expect sex when she isn't in the mood the problem is she's never in the mood we do it once a week if we're lucky we're both 21 having going on for nine months so we should be having a lot of sex it says so wait this is a problem for me only having sex once a week he says and this is a problem for me he's been married 24 years this is a problem for me a lucky week for me man he says this is a problem for me he says a whole new perspective on this show I used to uh he says in past relationships we used to do three to five times a day what so he says you can say I have a high sex drive no one ever keeps that number up though unless your name is Scott Bromley that's pain so he just says yeah he actually lament how often he's he's forced into coitus he says that she says she's tired and has a lot of a great word yeah she does love me a lot and I know she's attracted to me it's just we don't have any sex there's a lot going on in this yeah that's the first of all it's not okay to be I mean call me a traditionalist that seems like a weird thing to be doing when you go friends in the other room I mean it's unfortunate to be certain it's unfortunate it's also a sort of a passive aggressive gesture oh you want to it fine yeah I mean I don't know seems like it'd be more passive I don't think so I'm just saying I think it'd be more passive aggressive he just like did it like a like American beauty and to start doing it right in my next door right where you just wait till she's asleep and stand in the doorway staring at her oh like paranormal activity yeah I don't know I'm gonna say I was gonna say when you said it's like being passive aggressive I was just like picturing her waking up getting out of bed all groggo opening her sock door and being like oh there's bad stuff gone on in your relationship dude yeah it sounds to me like it's time to move on or maybe a therapist yeah maybe you're too young for therapists i know 21 exactly nine-month relationships not the day of the world 21 it's more slash and burn we get quality letters yeah you're right dumper so I go ahead where you're gonna say I mean it's just a different it's just the case of different people have different sex drives dynamics change yeah it's true so what's a week though we get a lot of weird weird letters at 21 at 21 after nine months we get a lot of uh a lot of weird letters and put the bell curve for that letters this one from this guy joe he just he just said I heard jeff green was gonna be on this week and I got excited the little bit of we came out that's this whole letter a guy felt in writing that in I read that because that's how much people get excited I just let a little bit of we out that he wrote that so he and I have now had a moment you're not the first thing to piss on that couch all right so here's a good question oh that's because his we used to have a cat though piss on all the time anyways um now you're sitting on yeah thanks now I show up anyway on this cat okay so yeah don't worry about the piss he shampooed the shit out of it Jesse writes in and he writes in with something that you probably have something to say I jeff yeah uh says uh I was reading Arthur's Twitter feed the night of the vga's and I found myself agreeing more with everything he wrote the vga's felt like a disaster on a few levels and I'm wondering if there's even a way the show can be salvaged I felt patronized on a few different levels first the show was on spike tv which caters to the Neanderthal like frat boy dude bro douchebag lunkhead demographic that's what he wrote from here he says he's saying quotes and he says credit that characterization to jeff green from his blog and he says I also hated the inclusion of celebrities with no connection to gaming the fact that I have no idea who voted in these awards and the idea that the entire spectacle was just a vehicle to show us commercials and teasers for games that we won't see for at least six months we have an idea for these so I asked so I asked does the industry need an award show what would you do to improve it I mean first off we we know people who vote in these awards they contact people in the game's press yeah you just go there also other there are other award shows I was gonna say that to me the the preeminent like game awards show is the one that comes into san francisco over here during the gdc i love that anyone is like it's classy people dress up in suits for it seeing they have new one a suit is a weird yeah and they have like hosted by someone people that are important to the industry like tim shafer did it who's also happens to be really funny you know so you and they have an entire award show right after that for the indie games right it's great and it's it's so well done and it's like it is classy it's like what our award show should be right instead of atzio giving an acceptance speech about being the best character it's it's rough i mean yeah i i ranted about that thing and there were a lot of rebuttals to what i wrote and and some of them you know i uh i mean basically that block was a rant yeah i characterized it as a rant yeah and it was and i knew i was speaking you know in one particular i knew that there were arguments against but that was that was a from the heart that's how i felt for spending two hours of my life watching it just like fuck you yeah fuck this show but really when you do think about it any calmer you know less angry manner it's like in some ways it's just the same thing except you sound British fuck you no it's more like you know it's spike tv so it's like what do you expect yeah i mean this is what that you know look at the other shit on that network to like to expect anything else from that is is not realistic i thought that i don't know i think the Neil Patrick Harrison was a red herring for a lot of people that they just figured well yeah he's a cool guy who has classed it up by having nerdy shit and he's gay right and i realized that we don't care that he's gay but him being gay on the spike network is something that's a little out of what fee no i i think and i think that sort of fueled my anger i think it was it felt like a little bit of a bait and switch to me sort of like they brought him on so it's it is now one level higher of class than it was last year and in terms of it was just like the same lowbrow like meathead shit that it always is and i just feel like you know a lot of people are like oh green you know lighten up who cares whatever there's real awards but i just felt like this feel like it really like can we not do any better and also i'll say this like for the lowbrow jokes and the boob jokes i mean we just made a whole bunch of sex jokes right i am not above lowbrow humor at all i i love it but i thought like it it it needs to be funny yeah for one thing yeah the jokes were fucking terrible and that's the thing like lowbrow humor can be written with a highbrow sensibility sick and fart jokes are very intelligent well there can be great one south park is still around for a reason right um even a show like monor family will mix up fucking really brilliant dialogue with slapsticks so it's okay but when you're when your joke is like halo reach around like yeah oh you know i i'm just offended not just by the fact that it's that it's just it's not funny right right they just need better writers so so in everyone i just felt i felt my intelligence insulted yeah like having Denise Richards reading poorly off a teleprompter oh yeah god so terrible and i and and to the whole point about what did you expect i i kind of don't like that angle because it's kind of like saying you know just put your head in the sand except whatever you get don't criticize don't you know no i i did do feel like we need well that's why i wrote it exactly i felt they need to speak up so i'm not apologizing for what i wrote it's just it like i mean another thing somebody said to me was like well the only people who watch spike tv are going to be the people who like think that sort of bullshit is funny or even if they don't it's it's sort of a no harm no foul because of the people that were worried about who are going to get like a wrong impression of gamers or feel like you know they're never gonna they don't know this existed they don't know the show because they don't know the channel existence so i think i think i think i think the other thing a lot of you know people might feel frustrated is the missed opportunity i think you know the fact that they do have a a platform that could celebrate you know our hobby that we love so much but it's so transparent the whole you know even with the the way some of the games are nominated you can completely tell it's almost like a political sort of nomination you know like the way they'll sort of like jockey certain games into positions like oh well we want this game to win xbox game of the year so let's make sure it's not in this category so this game can win you know well like even the academy awards do that i think that's not a mechanic i mean there's a new politics in every award right um and also the other thing that bothered me which i talked about a little bit in the blog was sort of the disingenuousness really of what is this thing about because every year it feels more and more like it's this is just too out commercial it is it is not to say it's a commercial for games that came out like six months ago sometimes and then sometimes for one's one then i'll sell this thing to get these exclusive trailers to me the thing is like in in that sense it people can say it's oh it's just a shitty award show it's not successful but as a marketing machine it totally is successful because all the blogs and everything are still watching writing about it sure you know i mean to that extent everyone's still covering it the neo-gaf thread in real time as the show is going on all the excitement that that whole for that two hours was like every time they had a new trailer exactly if they didn't have those trailers no one felt to it no one would watch it right with those trailers right now that's the whole point so really what what is your what do you want your show to be what is this really about um yeah well i mean all they really want is they want people to watch that's all they really want it's kind of like watching they don't care how they get them to watch it's kind of like uh back in the day like since i never liked football but i would watch football's super bowl for commercials yeah those commercials and it's like the same thing i'm watching this gigantic thing but i could give a show us about i would i would like to see a a better you know funnier more well written a more respectful uh award show about games on tv but that will never happen on spike tv no so you know and in a way it almost has to be like for us by us like i feel like the presenters the cdc awards are so yeah exactly like the the presenters should be well-known bloggers well-known developers well-known people in the industry right they're not beautiful faces but this would so this would never be on tv though i'm serious because that's sort of the conundrum and that that's why you can sort of see like okay the you know you i get what they're trying to do you know because how do you get people to watch an award show any like why do you we watch the Oscars it's only partially for the winners it's but because you want to see whatever George Clooney all these dudes you know in real time you watch it for the dudes you know and i i i thought about George Clooney is a handsome man he is a handsome man sure you know i was thinking about this too and i and you know my mind when i was you know and every time i think about video game award shows i immediately think about the mtv award shows and how the first year mtv like i you know i remember when they started doing it you know i'm young enough to remember they were like the coolest sort of hippest award show you could do right you know now they're probably it's try it's mtv whatever but and in a way everyone was watching it's like you're saying everyone's watching to see the rock stars and and them like how are they gonna react how are they gonna present the awards to their own people and that and and that's why i think a good video game award show would likewise had that same sort of you uh gamers wanting to see gamers it would except on national tv it's just not the same because even like a cliffy bees not sure they just don't need to do national not sure sure it needs to be presented by a site such as our employer idion and just stream to the internet there's no point even having tv history i mean theoretically it is presented by a video game website it's game trailers is involved right but i'm saying don't put it on tv to start with just have it straight to the internet so really the commercial is an interesting fact that they want this to be on tv yeah that's maybe this should just not be on maybe we don't need a television award we don't not need more yeah i i think that there are a lot of people in the video game industry like on the publisher side that disagree of course i mean just like well they're very seduced to they're very seduced by the idea of the numbers of people who watch i mean they and there's also like they advertise on television so clearly they think that there's a television watching audience that they want to go after just a simple prestige it is being on tv just that right yeah even though you can have 80 million views on youtube and yeah 60 000 viewers on television you still think you still think whoo tv well don't we already know that like all of the trailers that were shown at the vj's now have more online views online views than he did the 600 000 who watched yeah but i guess you know tv awards but then i would wonder you know like like we said before all the blogs that like talked about this showing up on the vga's are part of the reason that those youtube hits got hit you know the stuff that i that i like that i see happening with tv is like guys like Jimmy Fallon you know i only watch that show but the fact that uncharted three you know that they had the first gameplay or gears of or three that's really exciting and that's cool last year after it was in um bill to d3 right now that makes me feel like okay that's right on yeah because you know there you know it's going to be treated not i don't say adult i'm trying to look for those more respectfully more respectfully and and it because it's more respect like a serious pastime right i mean it's treated like Jimmy Fallon himself is interested in this it's not just geared for babies or man because because Jimmy Fallon grew up with video games yeah if they're not alien to him that's the thing right that that's part of the thing is that the spike video awards had this whole undercurrent of like sort of like almost making fun of it or like you know all the people who do this are losers or something even though it's this is what they were supposedly celebrating whereas Fallon was it was just like another form of entertainment like like a movie or a total cited as a gamer and even though they were sort of pretending they were excited you could tell most of them were just like so we said didn't even know what the fuck they were there for yeah we're almost apologetic they were even there like some of them are directly apologetic yeah like Dominic Monaghan when he was doing his videos like look i'm just reading off the thing right mm-hmm right and they got him because lost ended so he's you know his agent needed him to do something right so it's just sort of like don't do that to us yeah yeah yeah and you got to figure that Neil Patrick Harris just got paid like the equivalent of like three episodes of how i met your mother to do it he's he's still cool though yeah spiking on the show i'm gonna read this letter out loud just because this guy wanted to share with somebody as opposed to reading into your no no well it's one of the ones really it's what i'm saying is yes exactly it's one of the letters that i would not necessarily read in the show but do it i'm going to because he says finally that's the subject he says 26 years old and i just lost my virginity and he says it was to a very courteous escort who didn't seem to mind my awkward social apprehension uh it was amazing for me anyways i know you don't care it would not approve of what i did but i have no one else other than the people in my iPod to tell me why wouldn't i approve i mean you took matters into your own wallet not only do i not not only do i approve but he he took he took a professional he brought a professional into it he probably had a good experience he had a better experience out of anyone else in the room no doubt if you spring a leak you hire someone qualified to take care of it i you know my my dad uh hope he doesn't well he won't listen to this but um you know uh he lost his virginity because his i think was his uncle took him to i don't like where this is going to to a brought no no wasn't took him to uh a brothel or something you know you don't ever start another story with it's like my basically your dad your dad or show your grandpa my dad so your dad your your dad's uncle was like it's time to become a man exactly and i was jealous of that oh why don't you do that for me right i feel that shit out of my hand and it sucked you know you know the funny thing when it wasn't getting paid for it yeah exactly i yeah i just read that one because i was like this guy is writing in because he's like he has no feels like he has no one else no congratulations we all salute you sir i admire that you're proactive exactly sexual assault just as long as you don't continue to pay for it throughout the rest of your life instead of getting a girlfriend yeah so now that you've done you don't make us a president right now you've launched your virginity and you could work on that old social skills thing right but as a first step go for it also don't tell any girls all right how you watch so you can tell us here right that the rest of that unless you know they're cool with it no there's no girl is cool with that things too hopefully you got your money's worth yeah exactly okay support a couple more yeah please all right well i wasn't sure let's go oh jeff it's getting kind of late i'm not a path of my bad time yet all right so Ben writes in and he says i had a question about how game developers get their support um if a game has been on store shelves for a while say for instance mayor's edge and has a price tag of 1999 does that support the developers who made the game in the same fashion as purchasing it day one obviously grin wouldn't get any money of a 9.99 celibana commando since they're closed which they're not closed right there's no grin grand is definitely closed it's two other developers that's right they split off but capcom are the ones that paid for the development but i was thinking of giving mayor's edge as a gift for a few friends but i don't have the money and quite honestly can't easily find new copies and want to support dice considering they're one of my favorite developers um he says yeah i bought middle of honor for 60 dollars mainly the support dice because thanks for putting really that was dumb but what he's saying yeah he's saying he wants to buy it but he's like if i can't find it new or even if i do find it new for 20 bucks is it actually gonna something i got the work around for him buy it used and then buy a battlefield Vietnam when it comes there you go i wouldn't worry too much about dice because dice is way too important they're okay nothing's gonna happen to the bell yeah but the thing but it's an honorable question though it is like if you really feel like you want to know that your money has gone to a developer but you really can't afford anything other than use game go ahead and buy the use game then go buy merchandise that has the developers yeah logo on it or something you know does dice have a store i'm they must yeah it seems like every other EA i mean i know EA has a store because i look at the massive picture it sometimes right yeah they're bound to get more uh off the top of their merchandise than off the games yeah for sure so i mean like i you know i realized that you're still spending more money than you would that if you just bought the used game but like as far as new games though i would still imagine that like you know they're marked down but you they're still getting something off the margin for that i mean the published well right i would also worry less about a developer like dice that you know that is basically you know it is EA it's EA yeah right so they're covered right you know it's like the indie developers this is more of a question i mean i think that there there are certain cases where like if metal of honor hadn't sold then i don't think danger close would exist right now um but dice is so instrumental to everything that EA is trying to do over the next couple of years in the console space that but then there's developers like uh like ninja theory they did enslaved right i don't know what's gonna happen with that studio there's someone that could use support yeah i think it's just you kind of have to know who's like independent and in trouble and who's like important enough that they're not gonna close them down but i still in it but like i still get the idea that like i just want to know that the money that i'm spending on a game that i want anyway is going to go to the people that made the game no matter what they are small they are well the thing about a game like ninja theory for example is that like namco has to pay their publishing stuff before ninja theory would see anything yeah that's true publishers always get their always get their piece of the pie first so i hope double make chrys succeeds because if that game tanks in that studio is that an interview yeah i didn't know that capcom that actually makes me relatively interested in them to completely reimagine double make cry and the whiny weeaboo fan base flipped their shit because dante is skinny with dark hair oh is he still and i mean is he still uh he doesn't look at all like he looks in the other game no oh and the reason is because capcom told them to do something different and when they sent back designs that looked too much like the old dante capcom sent them back and told them to try again good for them yeah i agree um Aaron writes in, Aaron from Vancouver. Vancouver is a beautiful guy and he says he says and you're from hoover and then he says Arthur insert comment about our girls here i said beautiful place i didn't say anything about the plethora of beautiful women yes and i i you've told someone today the Vancouver is the hottest women per capita that i've ever seen. He says until last week i had never played world of aircraft so in blizzard put the game on sale for five dollars i decided to pull the trigger on my first day i ended up playing for eight hours straight and and i'm terrified he says says i want to keep playing but i'm worried my bones are going to dissolve and that my house that my mouse and keyboard are going to fuse with my hands i says i was thinking of setting some rules like not playing two days in a row what methods have you guys used to have a healthy relationship to wow have a job have a girlfriend yeah just make up commitments you have to get to set plans and don't and you know you have don't ever let the words come out i would but my guild no shut up right i should never be uttered how about you don't call it a relationship that might help yeah there you go yeah and then uh maybe actually don't even join a guild doesn't wow have things in there too where you can tell it to like set an off an alarm i think you've been playing for like three hours like and plus if you stop playing wow and come back like after a week or two you actually level up faster you do yeah you get that rest of bonus yep it's great it's a really good idea okay and do you remember when they first implemented rest yes like wow players went fucking ape shit right they were like nah you shouldn't encourage people not to play yeah maybe you don't want to sit in a queue for an hour bro it was all it was all the hardcore people that were just super upset that they couldn't play for 48 hours straight and like do better than somebody who was only playing for 12 hours straight right i think i maybe i have this wrong but in my memory it's that they had it backwards it was like it was a penalty if you stayed on rather than a bonus for right that's yeah so they like reverse the psychologies right yep um okay robert it's and he says i'm 28 and got out of grad school two years ago since then i bought a Wii and a ds but i'm pining for a ps3 i really look forward to red dead redemption i i mean it's already out i don't know why i said but catamari gta4 and fall out three i guess i guess i said you write this letter i think he wrote this i bet the thing is that he didn't never have that he never played those okay so now he wants to play cash okay he says i just found it in his out boxes what he's asking though he's asking us so which of these package deals do you think has the best value he says uh he says uh okay i'm not looking to get a move he says but is playstation plus worth it no i don't know i don't think so plus has the move no but playstation plus he's just wondering like you know playstation plus is like a service he's not sure if he should buy it it's the paid psn add-on that gives you some free shit like every month but it's just like random psn games and if you stop paying for psn or playstation plus you lose the game oh he actually doesn't list us package deals out he's just asking us if we know what the one that's the best value i mean there is i don't know right now is obviously a good time to buy them because first of all it's christmas yeah and second of all sony just had a disastrously bad november and in reaction to that they've contacted retailers to have them offer really deep discounts i would look for more hardware sorry if i was gonna get one i'd look for one with uncharted two if you find one look for the store that's offering a seventy five dollar gift card with your three hundred dollar ps3 a game of which there are several right now so now is actually a perfect time to buy a ps3 because they're shitting their pants it was back i don't know if you looked at the amputee numbers i didn't they were horrendous it was real bad yeah it was like the 360 was 1.37 then the we was 1.27 and the ps3 was 520 oh my god yeah serial and connect to move was like five to one yeah i mean a lot of times you know the numbers are like eh not that we would do but this one you're like oh yeah yeah i mean at this point to be outsold by double on the we still it was disastrous the ps3 outsold the we in october yeah so but they to be fair though it was surprising actually though that the we sold as much as it because it's been you know on a freeway for a while but it's not super separate there's one to say considering the freefall it seemed like it was on uh think about think about like black friday i mean like they did bundle the shit out of it i mean there were plenty of bundled ps3s i just oh you mean the ps3 there were just okay there were some really good 360 bundles that we saw like the christmas 360 bundle for the 250 gig systems is fours of three and a downloadable copy of that one wake um with like a fifty dollar gift card or whatever so microsoft was pretty aggressively positioning their shit and i think it would be fair to say that connect cannibalized some ps3 sales because it clearly would not be cannibalized we sales yeah right right what do you guys think of the idea of waiting till after this guy waiting till after christmas and to see if there's going to be any kind of like little big planet two bundles now fight that by it now while they're still panicked yeah because those deals are temporary sony is losing a ton of money doing that shit yeah the only the only thing that you could potentially hope for is a ps3 price drop sometime next year and they're still losing a little bit of money for ps3 yeah all right this is a i don't know we'll see if you guys like this james writes in and he says uh a friend and i have been debating for the past six months over the same issue i figured it's time to call in an outside opinion here's the situation it's not sex uh here's the situation i believe the true gamer has diverse collection of games to show they don't have to be completed to 100 percent having more games to show and they have a wide-ranging taste and they don't have to stick to a small group of games um this guy sounds like a wine snub she on the other hand believes that it is better to have all your games completed to 100 percent and games that don't show all the achievements or platinum trophy is a blemish she even has gone so far as to get a fake account to check out games before she decides to play them all the way through on a real counts that oh my god wow what do you guys think is it better to have a gamer card or trophy card with a lot of different games that are completed 100 or to have fewer games that have all the achievements or trophies can i just both first both sound too it's too high maintenance yeah let me either play your game i will apologize in advance for what i'm about to say because i know we discourage this but you are both fucking retarded i don't know if i'd go that far why do you care why are you just so far in either direction i'm going to throw a third one into the mix that you guys can argue about i think it's far better just to play your games and if the achievement sounds like fun to you then go for it but otherwise you just described my gaming habits but otherwise just use the achievements as a record of what you've accomplished just to look back say that oh yeah i did get 100 headshots in that game you know that kind of thing all right all right uh i'm gonna end it i'm gonna end it on a relationship one yay okay i'm still blown away by those people Brian says i'm my name's brian i'm from new york i'm 19 years old and i need to know if i should tell someone an important piece of information oh jesus my buddy and his girlfriend dated for three years and my girlfriend and his girlfriend are good friends they just broke up a few months ago and are about to get back together during the few months they were apart she went and had sex with several other guys the only other person she told was my girlfriend who has told me he doesn't know that she had sex with other guys and he hasn't had sex with anyone in the meantime if i tell him about this it's going to ruin the friendship between my girlfriend and his he's one of my best friends is it not my obligation to tell him what has happened no stay the fuck out yeah it's not your obligation no this is like such stereotypical fucking male slut shaming bullshit yeah exactly for bid she fuck anybody else when they're not together yeah if a guy went out and did that like it would totally not matter they would not be i agree a bros the only way i would say that you should even mention anything your friends was only if like if she had she had lied and said that she'd like right like uh or if she had had sex with him yes exactly but i'm saying if it had been like if if it wasn't like a point of contention like they hadn't made some pact that during this break they weren't going to sleep with other people there's no conditions to it then yeah why would you say yeah unless unless like your unless your girlfriend tells you that uh she also contracted an std yeah that would be a good reason that would be a good reason but while they're broken up she's an adult she can do whatever she wants yes exactly she's not committed i would even qualify the stv thing like if it's like something that clears up with some penicillin then i still don't think it's oh yeah i don't know because i'm still like trying to shame someone because they had sex oh yeah yeah right really your friend should have just been having sex too right i really just kind of that was his bad yeah if anything like i said if there isn't any sort of there weren't conditions set on this break or whatever it was then you know what the fuck right who cares yep right um stay out so you can send your book she's a girl you can send your well uh what you just you distracted me send your letters to us at letters at eat just sleep just game dot com um you can follow us on twitter including jeff who's that uh your twitter's just green speaker green speaker yeah yeah all one word um where you can find out the hottest news for pop cap and jewel three on sale now does pop cap have a twitter feed that you'd like to uh pop cap underscore games it's a twitter feed you guys are not me and guys keep on the lookout um i mean you guys are going to be doing what uh for pop caps in podcast and whatnot yes um there actually is a you stream right now where i've done some live videos and we're going to keep doing stuff there and i don't remember the url so well just pay attention to just pay attention to just twitter if you wear like a snazzy outfit and like dance with a cane or something i i wear a suit made entirely out of jewels so pay attention to just twitter and you can find out more about when the use streams are going right and also uh there is going to be a podcast uh coming up and actually uh find gentlemen like arthur have been helping me deal with the equipment issues on that so nice so i like that fucker ryan scott so yeah so you can uh figure that out you can follow us on twitter tyler's dirty teeth matt is uh talking orange arthur's a-e-g-i-e-s and i'm chuffed money um that's all good bye thanks drug thanks jenn thank you guys thanks for having me i need someone to love me the whole day too oh look at my eyes and you can tell that's true oh my god [ Silence ]