Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 82 - 10/29/2010
Greetings! This week we go on at outrageous length at the flaws of Fable 3 (and how it could still be the object of our love), the flaws of Fallout: New Vegas (and how it merits tolerance), and then discuss the painful realities of some time with Kinect Sports before closing out with letters. Fat Ibuprofen!
This week's music, in order of appearance:
The Afghan Whigs - Now You Know;
Blaqk Audio - Cities of Night
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Rebel FM, episode 71. We're here. We're queer. - I don't think it's episode 72. - We've gone back in time. - It's 71 last, like 72. - No, it wasn't. You're about 10 off. - 80, oh yeah, we reached 80, man. - I'm in 82. - 82, that's what we're on. - That's what we're on, 82. The year I was born. - Nice. - So. - I'm an old, old man. - All right, so Arthur Shakespeare said, "Darth, there's like a year older than I am." (laughing) A year and like two months. But yeah, hello, welcome. I think I guess with me is my one year and two month older companion, Arthur. - It's actually a one year and like four months, isn't it? - Aren't you born in August? - Yeah. - Yeah, it's September, October, November, three months. So, one year, three months. - Nice. - Hi. - I said hi. - Okay. - It's so interesting. - And then, Matt Shandine. - Hi. - I'm doing a good start already. - Yeah. - How's this not a good start? - This is cool. It's so smooth. Right? It's a well-oiled machine. - If people were coming to this, expecting well-oiled smooth things, go fucking listen to NPR. - Well, it's true. - It's not like we've done like 130 of these or something. - Yeah, exactly. But if I wanted to be NPR or I wanted to be NPR, I would have done what Phil used to do and write out a fucking script intro. - Right. - That's not what I do. - That's not what you do. - I'm also not gonna talk to you in my ham and it up voice. Just so you know, this is gonna be a great show. With me is Tyler Barber. I had the chance to use equidistant in a sentence today. - How so, do you mean equidistant? - Equidistant. - Equidistant. - Equidistant. - Not equidistant. - Equidistant. - Equidistant. - Equidistant. - I kinda like the way equidistant sounds. - Equidore. (laughing) - Equidorko! - Es bonito bono. - Why did that come up in a conversation? - Because I was saying, I went to a satellite U of H campus, but I said the main campus and the satellite were equidistant. (laughing) - We were on each other. - That's a goddamn ear worm. I'm just every time I hear equidistant now, I'm just gonna lose my goddamn mind. - I'm from Texas, we can't say nuclear, right? I can't say it right either, and I'm not from Texas, so. - That's right. - Yeah, what the hell is a nucleol, anyway. - Video games. - Video game. - Video game. - Oh, yeah. - Well. - Night of the Sword 3. - Nobody played any video games. - In the podcast. - I played a lot of Fable 3. - Nice. - I did see Tyler playing a ton of Fable 3. I either played a shit load of Fable. - I have it in my bag right now. - I have it in my bag right now, and I haven't had a chance to play it. - What are you saying, Matt? - Well, I beat it Monday night, and there's still some more questions and stuff to do, but. - Wait, is Fable 3 out? - I know that sounds ridiculous, me asking that. - Did it come out? - Yeah, I know I got it early, but. - Yeah, that's what I thought. I came out Tuesday, but then people were arguing with me about that I was talking to earlier. I was like, no, it came out. - It's out. - Who was arguing if you were earlier? - Eh, no one of them important. (laughing) To anybody on the show, so. - Tyler first. - Yeah, so I haven't gone as far as you have, but already I've surpassed the hump that I didn't get over in Fable 2. - What was that hump? - For me, and I've talked to other people who had the same exact experience, about two hours in, they just stopped caring, and that's how my game was with Fable 2. I kind of like the combat, but. You know, the Clutsy menu system was really frustrating, and the, you know, it was just really, really cumbersome, but their whole interactive menu system, you know, that has a lot of people skeptical for good reason, is actually, it works pretty damn well. Like, the one thing that I have the biggest gripe I have is that you go into that little room, and then from there you still have to go into additional rooms, like for your wardrobe, weapons. - Right. - Or whatever, but other than that, it's pretty fast and seamless. - Right, so what Tyler's talking about for people that don't know is like, when you press start, instead of just going into a traditional 2D menu or something like that, you go into an actual room. It's like you can warp to your, it's your hero sanctuary, and you can warp to it at any time just by pressing the start button. - Your fortress is solitude. - Yeah, exactly. (laughing) - Would you care to tell the people at home why this is such a big deal? - Because this has like never worked well in any game ever. - Or 'cause the menus in Fable 2 were a fucking abortion. - Oh god, they were really bad. - They were like a case study. - They were slow, they were ugly, like they discouraged any experimentation whatsoever, 'cause they took so long to get into you, but I'm running into the same, sorry Tyler, you don't know. - As you can say, even like the load going from pressing start in Fable 2 to the menu pulling up was like more of a delay than I would tolerate, which is here is like pretty instant. - It is instant, you hit start and you're instantly, it's like it's constantly running. I think what they must do is it must just be another level that's just constantly running with like a clone of your character or something. - Yeah, such a small area. - Yeah, so like you warp there instantly. It's cool because there's a map there that you can just go to fast travel in. I have a lot of problems with the way that the map works and kind of the way that this menu system works as well. - Wait, there's fast travel on Fable 3? - Oh yeah. - No, there was not in Fable 3. - You're right, there wasn't. I ran my ass all over Albion. - Yeah, so did I actually. But anyway, Tyler. - Yeah, it's back to Tyler. It's not perfect, you know. I'm not gonna say it's like a revolution in menu design, but it works really well for Fable, and especially Fable's universe, because it has like all these little bells and whistles like your gift cabinet. You know, as you get gifts throughout the game, you know, you go up, you can check out your gifts or-- - That's really cool, 'cause it'll queue them up, and you can, 'cause by the end of the game anyway, I had everybody in the fucking world giving me presents. And so I would walk up to people, hit the A button, and then run up to the next person, hit the A button, and they just get queued up in the menu. So you hit the start button, you go to your sanctuary, and you'll have this wall shelf that's just full of presents, and you can just like keep clicking A button to open them all up, which is kind of cool. - In the interest of full disclosure, I was wrong, there was fast traveling and Fable 2. - I'm gonna say I thought there was, but I think it would-- - Aye, many dudes. - I think it would just-- - Even still, it was probably hard to find, cumbersome. - Yeah. - And it would only, and it would only put you, if I remember correctly, it would only put you to like where, where like a stage connects to another stage, you know? - Like-- - Follow out three fast travel, it was not. - No. But in Fable 3, if you're in the map that's in the sanctuary, and you're highlighting a building and a town, and you fast travel, you will appear next to that building, which is kind of nice. I wish that you could appear kind of just anywhere in the world, but that doesn't seem to work, and it only seems to work on buildings and towns. - Yeah. You know, I-- - What, I mean, so like, you said you liked the combat in Fable 2, but the rest of it just kind of made you not care, is there, is it sort of like beyond the menu, is there other things in Fable 3 that are just making you care? - Yeah, so there's, well, so there's a ton of things that I get real nitpicky about with Fable in particular. Like I feel like there's a lot of design decisions that they make, just specific design, where it frustrates me a lot and takes me out of the game, a whole bunch, and it happened a bunch in Fable 2, and it still happens in Fable 3. And what's funny is Jody, my girlfriend that I live with, has totally started her own game and has been playing a lot, too. - A Fable 3? - Yeah, and so it's really cool because I find it real interesting, the things that she points out are the same things that frustrate me. - Yeah, like what? - In Fable 3, like what's the consistency with hold down the A button or hit it when you want to, like if it's accept, there is no consistency and it bugs the hell out of me. Like, that's such a little thing, though. - Well, I was trying to figure that out, too, because sometimes it'll say like you're hitting A to enter a cavern or open a door or whatever, but it'll make you like press and hold it before you can like open it. And I think what they tried to do, and I don't think it was entirely successful, was like decisions that you might want to think about before you actually do it. But like there are times where it's like, I just want to open this door. - Yeah, I mean, that's not like a life-changing decision right now. - Yeah, I mean, they even introduced this in Fable 2. - Yeah, yeah, it was there. - It's not new, but it's just another thing. It's so frustrating that it's just, they use it on almost every instance that use A button. It's just like a game design thing. And like, this game, I brought this up before, I really wish there was a role in game development that was just like game director who would come in, who like works laterally from Peter Molinue and just like, can veto shit. Like, no, you will hold down the A button only if you're making a moral decision, and that is it, not opening doors, not opening chests, not fucking anything else. Or, you know, another thing that's really weird about Fable 3 is the opening cinematic. You know, we've all seen it, we love it. It's beautiful, it's fun. And then the very first scene the game throws at you is boo-boo, it's kind of boo-boo. It doesn't put its best foot forward. It's a really dark scene. It's just the butler opening the window curtain. And I can completely understand they want to transition from the feather landing on the window sill. But these are little nit-picky things. I want there to be a director for it to say, look, this very first shot is dark. The graphics are kind of bad. We need to open on another scene, period. If this is, you know, 'cause there are plenty of beautiful scenes of Fable, and even Jody agrees. She was like, yeah, like, you know, when it went from the CG scene to the game, she was kind of like, whoa. - It was pretty jarring. 'Cause that first scene I noticed right away as well, I was like, wow, everything in here looks aliased to shit, you know? - Yes. - And like has really like harsh borders around all the characters. And maybe it was 'cause they were trying to stream in the lighting, but there's no soft focus. - And coming off of a CG cut scene and all that? - It made it worse. - Yeah. I don't know. - But I mean, like, yeah, that is like the little nit-picks, so if you're listening to this, don't take that as, don't take this as-- - This is Fable's not bad. - No, not at all. - Yeah, my, the, I have like sort of this weird, 'cause I really enjoyed Fable 2. In fact, I played through the entire game twice and loved it both times. And for me, Fable 3, I think the thing that, I can nitpick all I want, you know, but like when it comes down to it, it was less of an emotionally meaningful journey to me than Fable 2 was. Like, Fable 2, just the way that it all happened and the way that the whole game and the story comes together and everything, I felt, I felt really, it was, yeah, just emotionally compelling, you know? - I can see that. - It drew me in, it sucked me in, I felt lots of ups and downs throughout the course of it. And Fable 3 is more just kind of one note, you know, like ascendance, you know, ascendance into greatness. And there isn't, there isn't really a time where you feel like there's no, there's no immense tragedy to contrast with the immense success. And I don't know if that's necessary in a story, but it seems kind of the thing to me that like really appealed to me about Fable 2. And there's, you know, in more than nitpicky things was like the one thing that I got frustrated throughout my entire experience in Fable 3 was like, you know, you hold down the Y button and you do a flourish, but with your gun, you know, which is basically just a strong attack. You hold it down until you feel the controller vibrate and when you let it go, it's a strong attack. You know, otherwise you're just pressing it to do normal attacks. And you can do that with any of the face buttons, B is mapped to magic, Y is mapped to-- - Your gun. - To your gun, yeah, and X is magic to sword. And I would do a flourish with magic. Sometimes it would do this with magic, but it would do it all the frickin' time with a gun in that like I would do it and I would shoot something, it would kill something, it would do kind of like what people are used to seeing in Fallout where the camera would change to the enemy and the enemy getting struck by the bullet and then it would go back to my character, but it would always go back to facing my character. When in a third person action game, that means that I am now all of the, all of the enemies are behind the camera off screen while the camera's facing my character. And so every single time that would happen, I would have to like move the camera around behind my character to fight again because the majority of the time, I mean, even if you're surrounded, you're always trying to roll to get away so you're not surrounded anymore, which means that you're always facing a group of enemies. So if the camera's gonna come back from a scene like that, it needs to go back over the shoulder. The entire game I was thinking, man, how did anybody play this game and not get frustrated that they can't see the fucking enemies every time this happens? And that flourish stuff happens a lot. - Yeah, when you land a giv flourish after like a smooth combo or something, it does that little cinematic thing. I mean, it still even has like the general camera issues that Fable 2 still had. Like I still had, you know, times where like the camera would swing kind of like behind a tree on the border of a fighting arena. I just like, yeah, get around there. - Yeah, I had a couple of cinematics. Well, not a couple, I think I can only remember one. But I definitely had one cinematic where it went to an in-game cinematic and it was a high hat shot, which means the camera was on the ground looking up at the character, but there was a dead body in front of the camera. So it was like totally blocking the whole screen. - I've heard a lot of people talk about Fable 3 feeling very broken in spots. - I mean, it happens. - I think it comes sometimes from one studio having the same people working on it so much that they get like, like for instance, I've talked to people at start off like Bradwardo and stuff, you know, and he was talking about how like, you know, there are certain things in some of the games that they've made where they're just one studio working so hard on this one game that they get this idea that something is totally intuitive. Oh, it makes sense to us. It's totally intuitive, it's totally intuitive. And then when it gets in the hands of people, they're like, oh, we were just so used to making it that way it seemed intuitive, like, and it's not at all. - Those are stories you hear all the time from game developers all the time. - You know what, Stardock has an excuse for that. Stardock is a small independent developer. Fable, or Lionhead is owned by Microsoft who has one of the largest internal QA departments in the gaming industry. - Right, which means that if you see stuff like this in a game, it probably needed to get rushed out. - Right, they were cutting it real, real close to chip. Was this the first Fable game that wasn't delayed at all? - I don't know. - Was Fable 2 ever delayed? - Or it's Fable 2 I'm almost positive was delayed. - I mean, to some extent, I'm just wondering though, it's like those QA people, they're just QA people. - The fact Fable 2's definitely. - So they're looking for bugs, do they have any say so? I'm like, oh, this feels kind of awkward. - Yeah. - It's not a bug, you'd-- - No, they do. - Well, they also have play testing, like enormous play testing. - Yeah, right, it's just my friends that work in QA, they didn't get to say like, this feels weird. - Right, it depends on where you work. - Their job was totally just to be like, ah, code. - Yeah, that's true. - I'm sure it depends on where you work. When I was working at Perpetual, like the QA department, like they were-- - Making suggestions. - They were making suggestions as well. So I'm sure it just depends. And like Arthur said, Microsoft has QA and play testing. - Right, a lot. - I mean, like the Halo stuff is an indication of how vast Microsoft's resources on that shit is. - Well, see, they were too busy bug checking Halo and then after Halo was done, they're like, nah, I guess you can put Fable in there. That's a fun game. - One thing that's really nice, have you played co-op yet, Tyler? - Yeah, we played briefly, we were trying to play more so I could talk a bit about more on the show, but Jody wanted to get a lot more familiar with the world because it's not designed to start the campaign co-op with someone because like one of the first missions you get is like, go make some pies and it's like, no, I'm not gonna sit here while you make pies. Like, you know, it's like another of those veto moments. Like it just needs a director to come in and be like, no, how is the co-op when you do it? Is it like, you know, is it where each person is playing their own character in their own story? - Yeah. - Or, okay, 'cause yeah, 'cause I always picture being more like, desk bank where it's like one person's desk bank and the other guy is arbitrary character. - No, you pull in your character, you retain the experience in gold and you can even form a business relationship or a marriage with your co-op partner. - Which means that you can go into their world and you can buy buildings and stuff like that that then contribute to both of your incomes. - And you can then play separately from each other too? - Yeah, yeah, and you just keep what you get in either world and so actually what happened is I jumped into David Ellis's game and he was pretty early on. So I didn't want him and David Ellis is a friend of ours who works at Microsoft and he jumped into, like I didn't want him to jump into my game 'cause I'm done, you know? So I jumped into his and I'm like, you know, my character's the, you know, the, well, I probably shouldn't spoil stuff. - Basically you came in and you just were like, made David into a trust fund baby. - You just bought him and gave him much money. - Yeah, yeah, like, 'cause you can give players gifts. So you can only give the, I literally have, well, not literally, I virtually have millions of gold pieces. - But they limit your campaign donations? - That I can't do anything right. You can only do 100,000 at a time. So I just gave him like 200,000 gold. I just did two gifts of 100,000 gold 'cause in the beginning of the game, that's all you really need. - Oh yeah. - Once you have that much, you can buy a couple of the bigger, the bigger, better businesses and buildings and stuff like that and start charging rent on them. And then after that, it just rapidly snowballs until you own every single building in Albion. - Nice. - And it's, yeah. - And you can see your physical stash of gold too in your little-- - Which is funny. - In your kingdom, it's like straight out of DuckTales. - Overlord did that too. - Yeah. - Yeah. - My problem with the way that the sanctuary virtual menu system works, you know, like, you hit start, you go into the map room, you walk up to a map and then you can fast travel from the map. Like, that's too many steps. You need to just be able to go straight to a map and that'll happen sometimes where it'll be like, oh, your family has a gift for you and it'll pop up as a heart icon like showing you to press up on the D-pad and that'll immediately go to the map screen. I need to be able to go to the map screen instantly anytime I want to say. - It's not select button, is it? - My back button never didn't. - Really? It just seems like, just map it says hello. - Yeah, I mean, every game should have always a quick map button. Like, you can follow, it doesn't have that, which can kind of be annoying at times. The menus and follow out work really well. But I'm saying most games where you're going to go to a map a lot of times, having a quick map button. - Is it? - This game really needs it really badly. - Is it like if you were on your map last? - It's the first thing. - Yeah, so if you keep the map-- - It's the first thing. - Yeah, so if you keep the map pulls up, yeah. - Totally, yeah. - You know, most games where you're going to your map but it's nice to be able to just tap it to map. - And I did find myself, 'cause you have to go into your armory, and then you have to select a weapon. And if you have too many weapons, then you have to like click over to it, like you have to click to different sets. And I found myself, like the magic system is really simplified from fable two, and fable two, you could switch to a different kind, you could switch to like, you know, fire or ice or wind or whatever. And you would, you could do it on the fly, and which was really cool. But in fable two, or fable three, the way that they let you use multiple powers is you can have one glove on one hand and one glove on the other. And it's pretty cool, 'cause you can do like the fire and the storm one, and you can create a fire storm. - Yeah, that's especially rad. - Yeah, it is. It's cool when you mix and match, especially once you unlock all the magics and you can mix and match them like that. It's a ton of fun. - I remember when Bioshock two did that. - Yeah. - Fucking fable three. (laughing) - It's a good way to simplify the magic system, but even though it's simplified, I found myself not changing up my weapons and not changing up my magic as much as I wanted to because I don't wanna go into this, I don't wanna have to press start. And then you do have like a quick thing on the D-pad once you're in the sanctuary to just jump from one room to another so you don't have to actually walk to that room. But even that was still a little bit too much of a barrier to me to like, want to switch out stuff as much as the game wants you to, because the game gives you weapons in particular weapons that have, in order to unlock all of their things, you have to meet certain criteria, like kill 200 hollow men, you know? - Yeah, like this one does good on the skeletons, like the one you're talking about, the hollow and pistol or whatever. - Yeah, exactly. And so it's like every time you face a hollow man, you're like, oh, I switched to one of these weapons that has that requirement, but it's too much of a pain in the ass. - Right. Yeah, they should do weapon loadouts. That was like something even the Baldur's Gate PS2 games did, was they had it mapped to where if you like, held a shoulder button and hit one of the deep heads, you could instantly go from sword to shield to two-handed sword, like instantly, you know, weapon loadout. - Yeah, there was a Castlevania game like that as well. - Yeah. - That I played. - How far are you, like have you gotten, 'cause the, have you gotten pretty far in the story yet? - I'm not, I feel like you're kind of far. - I haven't finished what they call the road to rule, which is how you level up your character again. You're not leveling up just by some menu. It's actually like a physical plane you walk around in. Basically all it is is treasure chests you unlock. And so like one of the things that I kind of got to call bullshit on Fable 3, like the whole thing about your weapons morphing as you fight and how you fight, is it just me or do they just morph when you just say it's time to make these stronger? - Yeah, when you open the chest that increases your melee damage, that's when your weapon gets better. - It doesn't like actually change as you're fighting through the game, which is how they sold it. - I mean, does it just build up like karma points kind of that are, that are like applied once you find an upgrade? - It does that too, like as your karma increases, some of your weapons, like they will have a, like one of their requirements to upgrade it will be like increase your moral standing. And all you have to do is do that once and then that weapon gets that upgrade slot. You know, it'll say like increase your moral standing and then this weapon will be plus 10 damage. And like that's about it. The hero weapons, like you start out with two weapons, you start out with one of each weapon and it's called the hero version of it. And like the hero sword or whatever, they will upgrade themselves as you go through the game. But I've noticed that like on the hero sword, it had one for like your ability to make gold that has given your weapon a golden sheen and then like two slots down 'cause there was only four of them. Like the last one, it said your weapon, your ability to your large income or something like that 'cause it had two of them that were rated to just me getting gold. So it's not related at all to how you fight. It's not like if I use lots of quick slices instead of the flourishes, you know, that my sword gets faster or anything like that. So I think it's a little bit misleading when they tell you that too. Which Peter Mullen is leading, it never happens. - Yeah, the relationship quest thing bugs the shit out of me. Like you, so you interact with people and it's always just a binary thing. You either have a positive interaction or a negative interaction and then the game just kind of chooses one or the other and like you can unlock ones that are like, you know, hug and tickle and chat and stuff like that. - So like the Sims, basically. - Yeah, but you don't-- - Why are you watching the other Fable games? - Well, no. - The Sims are older. - No, the Fable 2 was more like the Sims and that like a wheel would come up and you would choose your reactions from a wheel. - And you had subreactions and-- - Yeah, exactly. Fable 3 is just press A or X and that's it. And then like the game chooses which action you do when you press A or X or like A or Y or whatever. And so what happens is you build up somebody's relationship from neutral to friend and when it builds it up to friend, they give you a friend quest and there's two types of friend quests. There's fetch and courier and fetch quests suck and courier quests are just fetch quests by a different name. - So can I just interrupt you? Like did you guys like any of this at all? - Yeah. (laughing) - 'Cause you just spent like the last-- - I know and it's-- - The game is good. - 25 minutes, bitching about Fable 3. - I know and it's because like any other mall in your game it has like a ton of flaws but the stuff that's good in the game is really good. - He said like, he said a quote that was so telling but last week he said I'd never made a great game I've only ever made a good game. - Yeah, that's totally true. - I think that's perfectly fitting and it's like, you know, for Fable it's like, you know, it's like I said in the beginning there's a lot of nitpicky things about it but what it does well is it's beautiful. Like the game, like the environments are, I feel like the graphics are better than two. I haven't seen a side-by-side comparison that could be completely bullshit. - It looks better than two. - I think it is definitely. - I feel like it looks a lot better and the townspeople, the, you know, the chatter that the stuff that they say, the character design, the design of the buildings is so interesting. - I have laughed out loud so many times playing this game. I don't remember laughing. I mean, Fable has always had its charm but Fable 3 has charm turned up to 11. - And Jody and I were talking this morning and she's saying that she likes it a lot because she feels like the world motivates her to actually fight whereas like other games where there's like combat. She never feels motivated. She feels just kind of like a cog. Like, oh, just go, you're a soldier. But you know, so it's always interesting to get her take on it, you know, she never plays. But, you know, and it's like I was telling her today, you know, I really love the worlds of Fable but sometimes the things I don't like are the game design. - Yeah, sometimes, yeah. - Or that's really the only things I don't like. - Yeah, I mean, there's just so many things to nitpick about this game that it does. It takes it from being a great game to a good game but like I have, I still have a lot of fun with the combat, you know, even when it's a little janky sometimes. The story still definitely kept me playing. I still found myself doing every single side quest because like the other fables, or especially fable too, a side quest can be something that's gonna take you half an hour, 45 minutes to complete is gonna take you to a total unique area and you'll be like, man, I'm really glad I did this side quest. Like every single quest in that game, except for the relationship fetch quests, is a valuable one to do. Every single demon door that you go through is really cool and really unique, you know, gives them a chance to play around. And the overall story definitely kept me going forward. Even if I didn't think it was as good as a story as fable too's. - Yeah, even though I've not gotten as far, I could totally see what you're saying by like two kind of has a better story. But to me, the story didn't pull me through too. Like, but whereas this one, I'm having a good time with it. - Yeah, and you know, it's like, it's weird for me to say it, but I did really love fable three. I still had a really great time with it. I still like think about it like, I'll get up in the morning. - You would use the word loved. - I would use loved. - There's something about like an art. - I love fable three. I still really enjoyed playing. - There's something about an RPG where you walk into a store and you look at the items on the wall, you know, to see what you're gonna buy. - I mean, that's the case in like Fallout too, you know? - There are plenty of games that I love despite having tons of nitpicky things about them. - And I feel like I'm sort of extra sensitive to the things that I don't like in fable because I just want it to be better than it. - You finally want the perfect fable - I want the perfect fable. - Yeah, it's like I want to get out everything that I don't like about it so that maybe it won't happen again. - Make it open world. That would make it perfect for me. - Make it open world? - No, I like it like it is. Oh, no loads, I see what you see. Yeah, no loads, yeah, definitely. - I don't like it. - I thought you meant like just wide open terrain, you know? I like kind of the focused terrain that fable has. - Yeah. - Uh, what else? - I played Super Meat Boy. I see you played more Super Meat Boy. - Yeah, what do you think? How have you been doing at it? - I mean, it's weird 'cause I hate a lot of games that kill me fast, like Ninja Gaiden, but for some reason I have a high tolerance for giving myself an aneurysm of Super Meat Boy. - Why are they over so quick? - Yeah, it kills you fast, but levels are fast. It's like seven seconds to finish a level. - It's true, except for when you spend a level that takes like 30 seconds and you try about 300 times. - Right, but I think I like what works for me is that like the goal still is like, it's always just out of your reach which makes you wanna do it again. - It's true, I honestly don't know why I like this game though because it's so punitive. Like every time I get a little bit farther and then I'm like, "Motherfucker," there was like almost no way I could've known that was coming without dying once. I hate that type of shit in most games. - I don't even, is it punitive though? I mean, you can see every danger. - Sometimes, there are sometimes that I'm like, what was I supposed to know about dying once? - Arthur, I was watching you play a level where you have to like run from left to right. - Right, it was the first boss. - Yeah, the boss and it was just like, "Holy shit, you like have to get through "all these obstacles die just to see what's coming." - Yeah, I don't know. It's still, the game is very charming and it gets by a lot on its charm. Just like, "Splosion Man" was like a kick in the balls. If that game hadn't been so charming, there's no way I would've forgave it for being so punitive but it like, all those things was like, it worked together to soften the ball. - I mean, like something like Ninja Gaiden, I honestly don't even know that punitive is the word for it because it's very clear. It's like, you have the ability to do this. - That's true. - And these guys have the ability to do this. Either you react appropriately and manipulate the situation or we will kill you. - It's very harsh. - It's very harsh. - Unforgiving. - Yeah, it is all of those things. - Yeah. - Like punitive is, oh, we're gonna knock you down and then when you're on the ground, we're just gonna keep hitting you over and over again and we're gonna make you wait like 10 or 15 seconds to get up. - Yeah, right, yeah. It's very harsh and unforgiving, not punitive. And in this one, it's very unforgiving as well. There are just a couple of times, I'm like, that was fucking cheap. Like seriously, there are times I was in the room playing with my friend, Paul, who was visiting. I was like, man, if that game designer was here, I would fucking hurt him. I'd hurt him so much. And I was like-- - Didn't they have like the punching bag at Pacso 9. - That was for explosion, man, yeah. - For the one level, the guy that means like, I made level, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't even know which one that was, I'm sure it was getting the balls though. But yeah, it's just like, ah, that game is just like, gives me such a sense of satisfaction and also brings me to such a fucking moment of physical violence. - Yeah, well, I think actually you talked to team meat and we did that commercial for them. So like we spent a lot of time talking to those guys about the game and their philosophy and everything 'cause we wanted the commercial to fit the game philosophy and they're into like that old school shit, you know? That's why the commercial looks like an old Sega commercials because they want a 2D platformer that takes a ton of skill to get through but with some modern game design convention. - I mean, it is nice that the game, the levels are short enough that when you die constantly, it's not quite the end of the world. - Yeah. - And like the absolute brilliant design decision that they made is that since you're a piece of meat, you leave a blood trail everywhere you went and it stays there. So like that's also a marker of like where you jumped off the wall and so it's either it can tell you where you hit correctly or you hit incorrectly. And it also has an audio cue when you hit it like a little sounds like somebody jerking off. (laughing) But I mean, that's just absolute brilliant. I mean, I think that and the speed is like the number one reason why this game works. - Have you unlocked any of the other characters yet? - I don't know, I'm on like the fifth world but I don't know about other characters just because I haven't even thought about it. - There's like, there's like, I think eight or 10 other characters that you can unlock and they all have different abilities. - I will say the boss of the salt world was the closest I've come to like breaking control in a long time. (laughing) Like that doesn't happen to me very, very often. - So what world was it like a snail? - No, it's a poo version of yourself and you have to race him. And I could feel my controller creaking in my hand and I was like, alright, he's down, he's down, so. - I feel like Ripley escaping from the complex and aliens. - Exactly, I can hear it. (laughing) I was like, oh, whoa, whoa, my hands man, they're getting crazy. But yeah, I've been playing a ton of Super Meat Boy. I also played costume and quest, which is awesome. - Oh, I see. - So long. - And so I need to play that. - I said like on Twitter something about it being, you know, Tim's game, Tim Shafer. - Shafer. - But it's actually, there's a woman that comes from my camera burning. - I can't either, but yeah, it was-- - She was the project lead. - Yeah. - And it was all her idea. - Yes, I didn't know that. I just went to Tim Shafer 'cause he owns the company. That's the only reason. - Right, right, right. - You know, but the game is great. One thing I've noticed in some reviews that they complain about, which I agreed to at the next time, I remember Nick, our old co-host Nick pointed out to, you know, that there's no voice acting whatsoever. And that is kind of crappy in some ways. Like even fucking like Legend of Zelda, remember that sounds would have been nice. Because there are just times where the game goes on awkward silent things 'cause there isn't that much music. Music is very ambient a lot of times just kind of making like, oh, it's Halloween. And there are moments where they'll just have dialogue for so long between characters that it's just like awkwardly silent. Yeah, it just doesn't make very much sense, see? - You need a game director. But I'm in there veto that shit. But I will say that that game is the most fun I've had with like a turn-based RPG. I don't even play that much turn-based RPGs. - But how does the gameplay, like what is it? - So you roll around like you would in like a final fantasy and the whole premise is that you get to pick early on whether you're gonna play as a boy or a girl, you go trick or treating. And at the very first house, a monster takes your sibling. And so now you're on a quest to get your sister from the monsters 'cause your sister's or your brother is dressed as a candy corn. And so they think she's a giant candy. So now you're on a quest to get her back 'cause they're taking, they're going to all the houses and they've ridden taking all the candy for their like evil leader. And so then after that, your little kid's like, "Oh fuck, I gotta rescue my sister." And then he meets up with his friend and he's like, "Dude, I need to go on a quest to save my sister." And your friend's like, "Oh dude, you have me at quest. "Let's go." (laughing) So join your party. And so then you go to each house and you trick or treat. And each house that you trick or treat at will either be a person that'll give you candy which you can spend on things or it'll be one of the goblin type guys that's trying to. - Oh cool. - And you never know. So it has like that trick or treat element when you go to a door to you. And then when you meet when you go into a battle and when it goes into a battle, it goes into like a final fantasy style battle. But it goes into battle like it goes from that cute kind of cartoony thing that you always see. - Yeah. - And it goes to like anime style versions of them where like it's like the, if the kid's wearing the robot suit, it goes into like the way he imagined themselves. All of a sudden he's a giant mech. And the other guy's like a knight and they have like, and so it's really basic. Each guy has like one attack only, but it does that type of thing that Penny Arcade did with their turn based RPG. It's like, it's interactive like, okay, attack. And then if you time it right, you'll get extra damage. You know, if you time your block right, you'll, so they keep it interesting. - Did you guys ever play the Mario RPG? - Mario and Mario RPG. - Did they do that? - They did that too. Like if you tapped at the right time, you could do extra damage. - Oh yeah, that's so good. - So it's got a lot of that vibe actually of like a Mario RPG. And it's just like really short and really quirky and cute. And the writing is really, really good. Like it actually is really funny. A lot of times I'm really smart. And the whole premise is that you're going, searching for yourself during gathering, gathering other costume parts to like, you know, to make other costumes that'll have certain powers. You need to get past certain things. And it's just like I said, it has all this really witty writing. Like there's like a patriotic party where only patriotic kids are able to get in. So you have to like collect the parts to get like a statue of Liberty costume. And then there are like all these Abraham Lincoln kids dressed up throughout the neighborhood who are like a gang. They won't let you pass until you know the password. It's like a piece of American history. It's like really just all this really smart, funny writing that makes it like a really cute, cool RPG. And I think a lot of people aren't going to give it a chance because of the way it looks. Like it looks like a kid's game, especially when you see the art and stuff for it. They've sent out. - Like every double fine game? - Yeah. I mean, brutal legend kind of, you know, had less of a-- - Less of a kitty thing. - But this one's like, you know, two children in costumes. And you're like, what a costume quest? Like it totally looks like a-- - For me, it just sounds like I get what you're saying. Like most people probably will just kind of like, oh, like kids' game or whatever. But like I look at it just because, you know, I know the legacy of everything that makes me want to play it. - But I totally think that this is like, this is exactly what I want out of like short little Xbox Ivercade games. Like a really cool written story. And really quirky kind of art style. The artists and the writing in that are like brilliant. - How did a Death's Pink do Vio? Did they have Vio? - Everything was read. It was all Vio, you know. I actually found myself skipping it most of the time in Death's Pink. - I skipped it sometimes, although I will say that it was really good. - It was really good, but I would read it and laugh and then skip. - Right. So maybe that's why they didn't. That's what I'm saying. Even just for the-- - Even just the audience. - Yeah, that's what it needed. But yeah, what else have you guys been playing? Man, I checked out the Mongols in Civ 5. - How are they? - Do they play different? - Dude, yeah, how are they? - I think they're like my favorite race now. - Really? - They're so red. - Faction, faction, you're not a race, yeah. - Race, faction, sorry. They recruit-- - Is it not a good to call it? - Sorry. - No, it's-- - It's fine. - It's fine, too. - They, so their special abilities are really red. They get higher, they get 30% attack bonus on city states, which is like, that makes perfect sense. - Yeah, it does. - And then they also get more frequent appearance of their military leader and like their cons. And the cons, or no, they don't appear more frequent. What the thing is, they can move further than all other military leaders. They have much more further movement. And then their special unit is a, I'm gonna pronounce it wrong. It looks like Kashuk, but I know that's not right. - Man, they should totally have, if I was making the Mongols, I would have it to where they don't have a capital. Their capital's always mobile. - Yeah, they often carried like almost like mobile castle things with them when they were all versus, you know, mobile palaces. - Yeah, but there isn't enough actual land mass in Civ to really make that work. - The city state thing though, I thought was particularly smart for them. - That is, I like that a lot. - I think that's a good fit. And their special unit is just like a, it's a horse archer, but he can move further and shoot further than the other horse archers. So it's like, they're the perfect strike team. - That's cool. - Oh my God. - I have regrettably played very little Civ. Since it's come out, man. - Nah, you've been playing crappy Japanese games. - And I played the Force Unleashed too. - Nice, yeah, that's right. (growling) Which is not an awful game. - Right, like it's good, but not great. - No, it's not even good. - No, it's not even good. - I'm gonna stop you here and I'm gonna say that every description you ever told me or anyone else about the Force Unleashed too was pretty strongly in the negative. - No, I mean, I've said it's not a good game. It's not an awful game. - To the point where you seem like it hurt your heart. - Well, that's the thing, it's like a lot of people were giving the game from a review shit and I agree that an editor probably should have caught it, but they were giving it so much shit for saying it's one of 2010's biggest disappointments and the guy gave it a 7.8. And I get where he's coming from because like, I saw that game several times and it was a huge disappointment for me too, even though I gave it like a middling score, which wasn't because it was a abysmal piece of shit, but it's because I thought it was gonna be fucked up. I thought I was gonna be like, I thought it was gonna be like the next coming of a great Star Wars game. - That's an invalid statement, giving it a 7.8 and saying that it's one of the biggest disappointments. Like it's still being a 7.8 and it can still be, no, you can even expect to give it a 8.8, but if you love Star Wars, if you wanted this game to be an 8.8, you could still say that. - That's the thing, as I really wanted this game to be good and all the shit I was seeing early on, I was like, this could be so cool. And then the story just like, like it's like you go and read all the reviews will say it. Like the story is like, the first one was like so cool. Told a super important piece of the canon that no one knew, like, and it had really great writing. And I feel like Hayden Blackmo is very involved in that sort of writing, and he is talented at that. And then the second one, I don't think he really wrote that. Or if he did, he must've been a gunpoint. (laughing) It was bad, and you know, it was just like, oh yeah, and remember how this happened? And then the way it ends, it's like, 'cause it's not really consequential either. Like the way the game ends, whether you pick the good or the bad ending, neither one, you can tell there's any consequence like on the movies or anything. Whereas the first game was like, this happened, and that's why the movies happened. - Right, it really feels like they just shoehorned in to cash in on kind of a new IP. And they should've done "Force Unleashed 2", but done a totally different story with the totally different characters. - Yeah, I mean, they could've just went back to the Clone Wars and just done, still done that hyperactive powers, you know? - Right. - And what's a lot especially about with like video games, it's like, we're used to sequels being better. (laughing) - That's the thing, it's like, I know that-- - It's like, I know that-- - The one before-- - The thing too is exactly that. I mean, the game looks like, that's one thing. Like, when I see the engine and the way that they do their character animation and stuff, I'm like, dude, they just need to license that out to someone who loves Star Wars. - Yeah. - And just let someone do it. - Yeah. - 'Cause it looks beautiful, but like internally, it's just like, I'm just not, like LucasArts themselves have, like the first "Force Unleashed" was okay, but they haven't really made like a great game themselves in quite a while. - No, it's like-- - So it's like, but yeah, the story's not that great, but the thing is, is I normally don't harp on length, like something like a limbo is fantastic, right? It's like a three hour long game, but you're always playing and getting like variations or pretty interesting new things. - It really does, yeah, right? Whereas the "Force Unleashed" is like a five hour game, and that wouldn't, you know, whatever, it's short. It is in the scheme of what people want. - For an action game? - But it also is like, after the very first level, you've basically seen most everything the game's ever going to have to show you, and then they're just gonna repeat it in a few different environments. - Right. - You know, like, even like God of War helps break it up with some like major set pieces that are really cool, and "Force Unleashed" occasionally has cool set pieces, but they're set pieces that are like bare, very, like the tiniest variations that you saw in the last level. It really does just beat things to death. Like, remember when you fought this guy with a giant shield? Well, now fight two of them. (laughing) Yeah, and you're just like, oh God. And you're just a little too powerful, but honestly, like, on medium and on hard, even when I played it on hard, like, it's really not all that much harder. You just have to survive long enough to get the second level of force push. And then again, you're just a monster. - Seems the impression I get is the challenges in the bosses, which a lot of times can be frustrating. I don't know, or I was reading reviews. - Yeah. - I haven't played it. - The bosses are fine, like in, for instance, on the second world, like, so they tell you that there's nine levels, but there's really only four worlds you go to. You go to Camino, you go to Caeternamoidia, you go to a starship, then you go back to Camino. That's probably maybe spoilery, I don't know, but I'm saving it for myself. So there's really only four areas you go to, but they split that into nine levels. So when they, on the menu, you're like, oh, there's nine levels. No, it's more like four levels that they make feel really long and feeling-- - They just break up a bunch, yeah. - And feeling tonight, yeah. So the thing is that there are really cool boss fights, but again, it's like they find a really cool mechanic, and then they make you do it like four times, and you're like, why do I need to do this four times? - Right. - The game is just like, it really broke my heart. How, like, totally mediocre that game is like, that is a pure fans of the genre game, and even then you better be pretty hardcore about it. And even then, I would say don't buy it. I would say rent it. Like, it's too short to be worth a purchase. - A lot of other reviews have actually expressed such overwhelming dislike for the story that they say that Star Wars fans won't like it, that they'll find it even more insult to it. - I think that the story is kind of lame at points, but I will say that the guy that does Starkiller's voice acting, I can't remember that actor's name. - Sam Whitward. - Sam Whitward, that guy is a, like, you know, you can say whatever you want to say about his bitch, like he always plays like a lot of whiny bitch characters and stuff, whether it's in Battlestar or in Dexter, or in this, like, it's true. Man, he does it, he really sells it, and his voice acting is so good that the final confrontation in the game and the way that it's framed and stuff is almost worth playing through a four hour game just to see that, honestly. - Wow, wow, that's actually a bold statement. - It doesn't affect the storyline all that much of Star Wars overall, but just the way that's framed and stuff really hits, like, some classic Star Wars themes. Like, you can tell that certain things were a labor of love, but it really does feel like people that love Star Wars and wanted to do a cool game were given, like, you have nine months and this much money, fucking do it, or we'll kill you. (laughs) No, it's like, yeah. - Game design and gunpoint, the theme for today's show. But, you know, I will say, like, you know, and I jam, we do breakout scores for reviews and stuff. And, you know, it's like hard because in that game, like, that game looks fantastic. And, man, the Star Wars game, it's like a given, they're gonna sound awesome. - Oh, yeah. - Like, LucasArts does THX stuff, not only that, but they have such a wealth of, like, music and sound effects to draw a point. But, yeah, that game was totally disappointing. And even more disappointing is the DS version that I'm playing now for review. - Oh, God, I don't even want to look at that one. - Dude, the DS version, the last one. - I've seen, I see a screenshot. - The DS version, the last one was fantastic, by the way. - I remember you telling me that when the last one came out. - And the DS version, the last one, the reason it was so fantastic is they had, I'm going to make comparisons that they had all the combat mapped on the bottom screen and all the stuff that you saw and were doing was on the top screen. So, there was a big, like, button for attacks and then there were, like, three or four minor buttons on the screen for all your force powers. But, what this meant was you could tap, tap, tap, tap, like, attack, attack, attack, you know, hit, force, push. But, you could also draw lines between them. And so, then you could be, like, slash force push or you could be, like, charge up lightning into my sword and then hit a guy with a lightning charge sword. - This is really fluid, yeah. - Yeah, it was, like, that is, like, one of the, that and, like, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword and stuff, or, like, some of the better DS action games and it's, like, this is just, I don't know who they gave this to. The same people they, like, took fucking 12 steps backwards. - Wow. - So, I don't know. - Oh, we're dude? - It just sucks, yeah, 'cause there isn't even, like, a good version of the force unleashed that I can be, like, go play this one. That's how I felt about the DS one last time. - Did you guys hear the rumors that George Lucas may make three movies after all of the current ones are released in three Ds? I read that on IO9. - No, I don't. I mean, when he originally wrote Star Wars, from what I understood, he had the basic plot lines read out for nine. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and Fox made four because they said it was the most marketable. So, that's why he started with that one. - So, like, if he does seven, eight, nine, is it the ones that's, like, covered in the Star Wars books? - Yeah, this, like, the books have done it, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - But, it's rumor. - Huh? - I read it. - Yeah, well, you know. - I would, it's like, I would want him to give it to someone else, but whatever. - Does he even care if it sucks anymore? I don't know, I don't wanna talk about this. - Yeah, who cares? - Yeah. Did I assume Arthur has played more fallout? - Yeah. (laughing) - I think my save is up to, like, is 26 more hours from the last time we talked. - As I say, as far as I know, it's pretty much the only thing you played that you can talk about, right? - That's what I can talk a little bit about. - No, I can talk a little bit about some other stuff. - Okay. - But yes, I have been playing more fallout. - Nice. - Fallout New Vegas continues to be broken in many respects. (laughing) There are a number of quests that don't trigger correctly and there is a quest that seems like it could be fairly major later in the game that is totally broken right now. - Wow, we did. - That is literally impossible to clear. - We did figure out what Arthur's long loading problem was. - Yeah, so the loading problem I talked about last week is that either immediately before or immediately after loading, the game would essentially freeze my system for about 17 seconds. - Oh, that's not fun. - To the point where you couldn't even bring up the guide. - Right, right. - So what we figured out is that saving to a USB drive is the problem. - Oh, that's good information. - Because it autosaves every time you walk into a door. - Right. - So I guess they didn't do proper QA and bug testing on saving to a USB key. So as soon as I moved my primary save to a hard drive, it's just like that. - Anybody that bought a new arcade system would be sad. - I mean, maybe not, maybe the memory inside of the arcade systems is faster than the officially licensed Microsoft 16 gigabyte USB key. It probably is because actually large USB keys typically are slower than smaller ones. So that has improved my experience considerably. - Definitely. - Yeah, we calculated that we decided you were losing like 12 minutes of every hour playing. - Whoa. - Wow. - Not quite that, but yeah, a lot. - That's enough. - A lot. If you factor like six or seven minutes per hour of waiting for that, then that is seven times 40. It's 280 minutes. - That shit adds up. Those are seconds you never get back. - That's more time spent waiting than it took you to finish the Force Unleashed. (laughing) - But I mean, it's fallout. And by extension, the same as oblivion, which is that the quests are laid out in such a way that they sort of spiral out of control. Like you get a quest and that leads into a bunch of other quests and that leads into other quests and that leads into other quests. It's just like fireworks of quests exploding in every direction and that takes you around the wasteland. - Everything scales though, right? Like a quest is like, like that's one thing that always drove me crazy and something like World of Warcraft and other things where it's like you would get that same thing overwhelmed with quests and then at some point you're like, "Ah, now it's not even worth the experience." - I think something scale, I think other things don't. - I think they kind of figured out that in oblivion that if you just make everything scale by some kind of algorithm that it sort of actually breaks the experience. Because you never have that feeling of progression, you never feel like, "Oh, I am really powerful now." - There are definitely parts early on where like there's this town called Slown that's next to this quarry that's been taken over by deathclaws and you go there and you're like level eight or whatever and you talk to the lead minor in front of it and he tells you about this problem and you offer to take care of it for him and he says, "You know, I don't really think "you can handle this." And most RPGs you're like, "Well fuck, "no one ever thinks I can handle anything, I'm awesome." So I ran over there and I just got slaughtered by those things over and over again. - You're right, I can't handle this. - I couldn't kill them, I couldn't sneak past them, I couldn't bargain or reason with them. (laughing) And now that I'm like level 18, I went back last night but I went back with a high powered sniper rifle and I went without my companions and I ninjured my way through it. But I died several times doing it. - Wow. - It took me like 90 minutes of very delicate perching, hiding and finagling to beat that part and the only way that I beat it quote unquote was by killing two specific deathclaws that I had to from a distance without vats. - So I know that the companions are a much bigger part of this game than they were in the last game. - Yeah, about that. - That's what I wanted to ask. - Or they can't die, right? - Yeah, it doesn't seem like they can die. They can definitely get knocked unconscious over and over again. - Does it really annoy, is it really annoying if you're trying to sneak? - It depends on the companion. - You can tell them to wait too. - Human companions seem to have an easy time sneaking but my character has a sneak skill that's super high so no one is gonna sneak as well as I do in all likelihood and I can't give them a stealth boy and expect them to use it. - Right. - And so a lot of times I'll just tell them to wait and go off on my own. Meanwhile, my robot companion Eddie, which is an I-bot, some more to the ones of the Enclave used in Fallout 3. - Right. - He's disappeared. - I lost him. - He's just completely gone. - He's completely gone. I walk around and everyone acts like he's still there. - Oh shit. - And I still have the perk you get for having him with you. - But I was reading online 'cause I'm like, what the fuck? 'Cause I've been missing him for hours now. - Right. - Essentially what can happen is that your companion can get hung on geometry in another section and not come with you and eventually the game clears that data from its cache and that includes wiping out your companion. - Oh shit, but then it doesn't appear next to you or anything like that. - He was banished to another dimension. - Yeah, no, he's deceased to be. - Wow. - He is in no dimension. - Oops. - He lives on only in memory. - I mean, I remember this shit like that could happen really knowing in Fallout 3.2 where you'd be like, lotta, lotta, lotta, lotta, where'd dog me go? - But then you just wait. - The dog me has died. - Yeah. - What the fuck? - Yeah. - Right, and companions, I don't think companions can die. No. - Right. - 'Cause the AI isn't good enough to keep them alive so they need to make it so they can't die. - That's really frustrating. - Yeah. - It's really frustrating 'cause now I'm pretty sure that I can never have another robotic companion or animal companion. Because you have to dismiss your companion in order to take another one. - Right. - And I can't dismiss something that's not there and it still acts like he's there. So I've just basically got a permanent perk. - Oops. - You just need to tell yourself a story of how your character had to harden his heart after Eddie died. He would never take another companion. (laughing) - What are some big sort of tonal differences between this and Fallout 3? - It's a little more whimsical in spots, like a little goofier. - That's kind of the impression I get for screenshots. - Sometimes I feel like too. - Do you think? - Certain quests are, to me, a lot more brutal so far than I feel. - Have you taken any Legion quests or something? - No. I took a quest where you get a companion, the sniper companion. - Oh, right. - I thought that was pretty brutal. - No, that person had it coming. - That person had it coming, but I still felt it was brutal. - I'm actually, I'm going through this as way more of a Clint Eastwood than I did the last game. - See, I'm specifically playing as a gunslinger in my mind. - Yeah. - I'd spent justice left and right how I see it. Some guy ran up to me and was like, I won the lottery, I won the lottery. And I didn't understand that he meant like a lottery to live or die. I thought he'd won a bunch of money. So I was like debating whether I should shoot him. (laughing) - That's not justice. - I know, it's fucking asshole. - I know. Well, it's a harsh wasteland. - I was going to say, yeah, that doesn't sound, you don't sound like-- - Yeah, you don't sound like a deliverer of justice. - You sound like a plus. - That's why I'm trying to make him is that I didn't kill him because I realized that would not be in line with my character. - Right. - So I did not kill him because of that. - I've heard other people complain about the faction stuff in Karma, but I haven't had that problem. And it seems like they're pissed off because they wanna have their cake and eat it too. Like they wanna support every faction and get all their quests. But once I went to the prison like at level four and killed some dude and saw that I had failed a quest because I killed someone that would have given it to me, I was like, whoa, there's just gonna be quests that I can't do this time. - Right. - So that has led to a hardening of my heart. (laughing) - Yeah, and that's like kind of one of the great things about Fallout, which, you know, it makes me a little bummed that your companions can't die because in the first, in the fall, not for the first, in Fallout three, I mean, there was a real threat of losing your-- - No, there was a real threat with the lame companions with the best companion in Fallout three could not die. - Fox couldn't die. - Right, but there was something awesome. I know what you're saying, Tyler, when like, Star Paladin crossed the die. - Yeah, and you'd be like, "Forever, you guys." - I'm gonna go deliver this dog tag now. - Yeah. - To the record, so-- - Especially if you like-- - I've got plenty of dog tags to deliver to the NCR, including irradiated dog tags. - Oh, I'm just saying it when you deliver hers. - The Legion detonated a radioactive bomb in a town and turned every soldier into a fucking ghoul. - But I agree with what Tyler's saying, that there is a certain drama lost when, you know, someone that's been with you for a long time can die, and you're like, "No." - Well, first of all-- - But yeah, I mean-- - Kind of a wuss when that comes down, it just reloaded. - At this point, like-- - Like, there is no bargaining with me if you're from one of the factions I know is evil. - Right. - Like, if I see Legion, I shoot them. I do not talk to them, I do not get near them. - Right. - I blow their fucking head off from as far away as possible. - Can you talk to your-- - Any factions? - If you're not vilified, you can. But I am extremely vilified, by the way. - I was gonna say, does your karma automatically go down when you shoot somebody from another faction and nobody's around to see it? - Factions are karmically specific, or karma is faction specific, and certain factions are considered good and certain factions are evil. - I'm just saying that, I'm saying like, if you were to kill somebody from a particular faction and there's nobody around to see it, does it count against your karma for that faction? - I think it does. - Yeah, it does. - I don't like that. - It doesn't matter that no one's around to report it. - 'Cause there was-- - 'Cause Fallout 3 had a moral ambiguity built into the game. It was like, you could get and lose karma, but like, people wouldn't attack you if they didn't see you committing a crime, you know? - Oh, people won't attack me, like, necessarily. Legion will come after me no matter what now because I have killed a lot of Legionnaires. - Right, but that's kind of my point is that like, if you were like really sneaky or whatever and you killed Legionnaires, like you killed them like one at a time without anybody else seeing you. - Right, and I didn't know who you were. - And I mean, Oblivion started that. Like in Oblivion, like, pickpocketing or stealing anything from a box. - Or murdering someone when they're asleep. - Or murdering someone when they're asleep. Like all of that stuff made you like, automatically counted as bad and it was way too easy to get caught and Fallout 3, I feel like Fallout 3 would actually give you negative karma if you killed someone. - It would give you negative karma, but if nobody else saw it, you wouldn't get in trouble. - Yeah, the distinction here is that they had to make it faction specific. - I feel like if you ever killed an outcast, like a brotherhood of steel outcast, then the other outcast would go after you. - Oh, like one of the red guys? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Totally. - So that's all fine. The weapon modding stuff is cool. When I can find it, I don't feel like I'm finding very many mods and that's kind of a bummer. - I haven't found it. - I didn't do any of that shit in Fallout 3, the weapon building. - The world is mod, it's like where you can like - Like I have-- - Because you can actually put silencers - Yeah, I have a varmint rifle, which is like 22. - It's like the most basic gun you get. - But now it's got a night scope and a silencer on it and that thing is damn good at killing things from real far away. - Nice. - As long as they're not armored. - Right. - Technically, Fallout New Vegas is a bigger world, like it has more square feet or whatever, but it doesn't feel bigger, it feels smaller. - That doesn't feel far feels way less dense. - Yeah, and it just doesn't, like there's not as much, there aren't as many landmarks. Like one of the reasons that the DC area was picked for Fallout is because there are so many gigantic recognizable landmarks. - Yeah. - Like you have all the monuments, you have like that fucking giant aircraft carrier, there's nothing like that in this. - Yeah, if anybody's ever driven through the I-15 through Nevada, you know that there aren't any landmarks. - I mean, it's barren and I get that that's realistic, but you know what, it's their responsibility to make it interesting and it doesn't feel as interesting. Like there's a lot of good writing and a lot of interesting characters, and interesting situations, but it just doesn't feel like as interesting a setting. - Well, what they should have done, they should have compressed some of the stuff that people think of as Nevada. - That sounds gonna-- - Like the Virgin River Gorge should have-- - They should have San Andreased it. - Yeah, exactly. They should have just compressed Nevada's a little bit more. They did that somewhat because, you know, obviously you don't have, if you had to walk all the way from real life, Prim to real life, Las Vegas, it would take you for fucking ever, but anyway. - So yeah, I'm enjoying it. It's more fallout. - Right, yeah. - Does this kind of seem like they're really gonna, just like Fallout 3, it's gonna be ripe for really creative DLC and-- - I hope so. - Sort of seems so, right? - I mean, like, it doesn't seem to be a reason like why there shouldn't be. Now, you know, the, I'm sure the reason why they made companions a bigger part of this one is because the companion mods are still like the most downloaded mods for Fallout 3. - Are they? - Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm clearly I'm enjoying it 'cause I put like 39 or 40 hours into it. - So that's the same thing with me and Fable 3, 'cause I've put over 30 hours into Fable, even though like I can bitch about it like for 20 minutes. - Like I could easily stay up until three or four in the morning playing it. - Yeah. - And I really have to stop myself from staying up late to play. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And yeah, it's fucking broken in spots and it's infuriatingly broken and buggy in spots. And I'm still playing it and really enjoying it. - And I would be right there with you. I think one of the main reasons why I chose to play Fable instead was just because I knew that, you know, you would be playing Fallout and I wanted to con, I want to have something else to talk about. - I'm a little concerned about the DLC. - Yeah. - 'Cause I think we talked about last time that Fallout 3 got less and less stable the more DLC you were running. - Right. - And I'm a little concerned with how Fallout New Vegas is going to run with any DLC running. - Right. - But, you know, we'll see what happens. - We shall see, yeah. - I'm trying to figure out what I can talk about. I'm reviewing Sonic Colors right now and I can't say much about it other than-- - Yeah, I don't know if we can say much of anything. - Like we've written previews about it before so I can just reiterate what I said before which is that so far it feels a lot like what I want. A Sonic game to be. And it's also totally gorgeous. - Nice. - Like it is one of the best looking Wii games out there, period. - Cool. - I am-- - Sorry, go ahead. - Go ahead. - I was gonna say, I thought that way about a game that I played for a good two and a half hours yesterday and that was the new Donkey Kong country. - I heard that's really good. - It is really, really good. The, I can talk about the stuff we saw on the first six levels, let me see what's in there. Oh, there was just like, the stages are super creative. It's kind of like, you know, playing new Super Mario Brothers Wii and Mario Galaxy and that like you just are kind of constantly surprised by how different the stages are and how creative they are. And it helps that the platforming is fucking great. And like the integration, like if you're playing co-op, you know, one of you's Diddy Kong, one of you's Donkey Kong, it plays so well, the co-op works so well together. And I just, it just controls fantastically. And I didn't play the last one. So, you know, I have nothing to compare it to. I just know that this one is really, really excellent. And it's weird because, you know, it comes from the same people that made like Metroid Prime. And so, I'm thinking to myself like, wait, these guys are making a platformer, but they've made an extremely competent platformer. I'm sure like a lot of people are gonna play this and think and rightly so that, wow, this controls, this feels like it was, this feels like it was made by people who know platforming as well as in the Mario games. - Who made peacemaking Donkey Kong Country Returns. - The Metro, the Metroid Prime people. - Yeah. - What the fuck? - I know, weird, huh? - What? - Nothing, it's just... - It's weird and it's all- - Take them off the Metroid series and give us like the lamest Metroid title in a decade. They put their Metroid guys on a fucking Donkey Kong game. - I don't think it was taking them off from what I understood, the retro guys approached them about reviving it. - Oh, did they? - And they were like, 'cause they were like, we love Donkey Kong Country. - Nice. - I like that because like the way you were describing it, I was gonna ask is Nintendo developing this? - I never liked Donkey Kong Country. Like, I never got into it. - I know people that did, but I never played it. - I loved all of them. - Yeah. - Even Diddy Kong's quest and fucking with Candy Kong. - Well, this one is really, really good. So, at least what I've played of it is excellent. I don't see any reason why the rest of the game wouldn't be as good. 'Cause I mean, it's like the first several stages and we jumped around a bit. We went for like World One to World Three or World Five and back around just like looking at different cool stages and like dying a lot 'cause it is a platformer, you know, like New Super Mario Brothers Wii where you have to pay attention to where you're going and you kind of get into the rhythm of it because the controls feel so good and you kind of have to hold yourself back sometimes. So it has those, that really good element of what makes a platformer great in that you can get through it with patience but it has a good amount of tension to hurry you along and it feels like you're improving at it. As like the game allows you to get better with your skill because it controls so well. - Like Super Meat Boy. - Like Super Meat Boy. - See, but I was just sitting here thinking in my head about the difference between Super Mario, Donkey Kong and the difference between like other popular platformers, like more modern ones, like M Plus, Super Meat Boy, explosion man. All right, when are we gonna start to see these modern indie games influence Mario? I'm kind of curious if that's ever gonna happen or are we ever gonna see a Mario game sort of like Meat Boy, where a stage is 10 seconds. - Yeah. - I don't know, maybe. I mean, it's just indie games have like influenced mainstream games in all kinds of other ways, you know, large ways in small ways. So I think it's entirely possible. - Super Meat Boy will be in the upcoming Microsoft game, Ilo Milo. So. - Oh yeah. - Ilo Milo. - Is that one with like the squares? - Yeah, it's a Microsoft Windows phone seven and XBLA game coming out and he's in it. - Cool. - All you Ilo Miloized. - Good. - Oh, it makes sense because he's a square. - Yeah. - And then in the office this week, we got connect. - Yeah. - Wow. - Originally, we thought we weren't gonna be able to talk about it. - But now you can. - And then we got an email from Microsoft saying we could. - Yes. - Yeah, preview coverage. - Right. - I think we should take a break really quick. We're at 70 minutes. Good idea. - And then we'll come back and talk about that during the weather. - All right. - All right. (upbeat music) ♪ You're aware of the consequences ♪ ♪ I can tell what's left of a strike on you ♪ ♪ Get into a bright one out there ♪ ♪ Watch your two ♪ ♪ Two ♪ ♪ Two ♪ - Okay. - Are we back? - Yeah. - We'll be back. (laughing) - Connect. - We got connect in the office. - Thumbs up, thumbs down. - Well, we, okay, so. - I've only, I haven't really played it. - We can't be reviewing. - Yeah. - That's part of the condition of being able to talk about it. - I'm not interested in talking about it. - Okay. - What does that mean? - I can't not have an opinion about it. - What is it? - No, you can have opinions, but I'm, I mean, I'm not ready to issue a conclusion on what I've played yet. - Right, but I guess I meant like thumbs up, thumbs down as in your experience has been positive or negative so far. Not like, you know, buy this, don't buy it. - I think it works better than I expected it would. - Yeah. - It certainly works better than it, I've ever seen it work at any demo. - Yeah, but, and then the, on our walk over here tonight, you're like, I am sore. - Yeah. - All over. - I hurt everywhere right now. (laughing) So. - On purpose. - Well, 'cause that's the thing with like, we motion control gains have always noticed that I'll start out making big sweeping motions until I figure out I can sit on the couch and just like barely move my hands and it still does the same thing. - Yes, you can. Certain games let you sit. - Certain games let you sit to an extent. - Right, but I mean, like with connect, is that the thing while your body hurts is 'cause you just haven't learned that like, you can just do a little flick of your wrist instead of swinging your whole arm? - Well, you do kind of need to swing your whole arm for some things. I do think that there, for one of the reasons that I hurt so much is because too much force, nothing tactile to hold on to. - Yeah. - Like one of the stuff that would actually make people hurt when they were playing Wii at first, like Wii Sports. - It's like when you throw a bowling ball, you can feel the weight of the ball carrying you through your swing, you know you only have to throw it so hard. Whereas when you don't have a bowling ball, you're like, "Motherfucker, I'm gonna hurl you." And it's like doing a really jerky, spastic movement with your arm. - Yeah, I never do jerky, spastic movements with my arm. - First off, just like talking about stuff we've seen, I haven't played it, I just watched it being played in Connectimals is hypnotic and how adorable it is. And it looks really, really good. It's almost like they're using the Viva Pinata engine to make something realistic looking. Like stylized realism, like the Cutesy Dreamworks Pixar realism. - Which I mean, it should look good, right? It's not like you're walking around the world, you're basically in like a still framed thing interacting with the Cutes exactly. - Oh, this is what video games could look like if they didn't have to do any of that other shit. - Right. (laughs) - They'll make you squeak. - I'm reviewing Connect Sports. - That's why you're sore. - Yeah, that is why I'm sore. Although every Connect game has an activity level advisory on the back of it, which I thought was really funny. Also, every Connect game is in a purple case that is very clearly labeled Connect on the top as well as Xbox 360. - So you make no mistake. - Yeah, there's no doubt, there should be no doubt whatsoever in your mind, what you're getting into with Connect, and it seems very clear that it's part of how they're differentiating Connect from just standard core offering stuff. - Really old people and families, you can buy in Xbox too. - Yeah, or just women. - Yeah. - I feel like this is their salvo toward women as much as anything. - It's about time somebody did besides the week. - Or just parents in general. - Yeah. - Connect sports actually works pretty goddamn well, usually, so far. There are certain things that work better than others, like kicking is surprisingly good in Connect sports. There are like 16 minigames in addition to all the events, and one of those minigames is a soccer exercise where you're trying to hit these targets, and there's a goalie in front of you, and-- - Can you bend it? - You can, actually. - It works especially well, considering that we don't have anything compared to either. No other game, whatever-- - Yeah, there's literally never been another game like that, and it's extremely organic. - Except for the ones that are in Dave and Buster's, or whatever. - Right, even those, those are pretty iffy. - Yeah, they are. - But yeah, it works really, really well at times, and other times it gets confused, but not as much as I expected. - Nice. - I, without talking about the dashboard or anything like that, I just, people are gonna have to go through the setup phase and not just turn it on and get right into it, and-- - Right. - I kind of feel like if parents are buying this for their kids for Christmas, they should be setting it up the night before when their kids are in bed, as opposed to trying to do it that morning, 'cause otherwise it's just not gonna happen. (laughing) - Yeah, like I cannot see a seven year old kid, like I've seen seven year old kids that have never really played a Wii pick it up and understand, ah, TV remote, pointing this, but I could see children having a very difficult time with this initially, until they get the ropes. - Yeah, I-- - As a learning curve. - I think the learning curve is actually surprisingly-- - Well, I was gonna say like the learning curve for kids, at least when it comes to like video games and computers, I mean like, kind of step back to, you know, who you were when you were like, eight, nine years old. I don't remember anything ever being difficult for me. - Maybe children don't have an easier time. I think adults actually have a harder time sometimes. Us, we-- - All of them, right. - Have a harder time with, well I'm saying, we specific 'cause we play games a lot, have a harder time with interface, of like doing things like, so you go and stand in front of it. Well, huh, how am I gonna recognize me? Wave your hand, what really? - This isn't working. - Yeah, yeah, it's like, we don't understand like, oh, the act of wave my hand, right? - Yeah, so that's one of the ways that it can find you. Again, if it loses you, as you basically just wave it, connect and it detects your hands. - Well, that's good, that's nice. - Every game has the same pause, which is that you stand with your right arm pointing at the ground and your left arm at a 45 degree angle and you hold it there for about five seconds and it will pause the game. - Interesting. - Hopefully that's not a move in a dance game. - I think in dance central, you actually have to put your leg out at 45 degrees. - And you don't hold it for that long though. I have to hold it, but. - But yeah, connect sports, I haven't tried everything. I mean, predominantly we've been doing like the Wii Sports stuff, like original Wii Sports, not Wii Sports Resort. - Yeah. - I think table tennis is actually one of the things where it feels the most robust. - It's funny, that was the same thing in Wii Sports Resort, table tennis felt the best. - So if you're just standing in place and moving your arms, the immediate impulse I'm noticing with everyone was connect is to stand with their body as still as possible and move their arms to do stuff. And I did the same thing in table tennis until I inadvertently moved my shoulder back and then I remembered, oh, right, it's tracking my whole body. And so that's where I started changing the way that I was playing, which would be like to serve like I would turn to the side, just like I would playing ping pong to toss the ball up and serve with it. And then I started turning my wrist around and doing the sort of like palm facing outward, top of hand facing inward backhand and that works. It all works very intuitively. - Nice, and moving to the left and right is important, which is something that doesn't translate particularly well in any Wii game, like that stuff is automatic. - Yeah, exactly. - So would you say that your Cirque du Soleil experience prepared you for this activity? - Man, fuck all of that. - Yeah, the Cirque du Soleil, I think. - I think the best thing that, the best way that Microsoft can get core gamers with Connect is for core gamers to go play it in people's houses. - Yeah, they can buy me a bigger room too. - Is that what they want? - Yeah, so I can actually play it. - I mean, the first bits of Connect out in the public were Oprah giving in a way and like Newsweek. - Microsoft's Connect onslaught has begun in earnest and they are just knocking everyone's door down with Connect advertisers. - The thing I'm most concerned about Connect is playing space, honestly. - And that is definitely a concern. - I don't think that, I don't think that most people will be able to play it in their bedroom. Like flat out, I don't have, I don't have only a four space. - It's a living room. - Four feet of space between my bed and my-- - Yeah, it's a living room game, to be sure. - Looking at our living room right now, I'm actually more confident that we'll have room in here to play it. - Again, but I can't play it in my room, like I can every other game. Which would mean-- - Well, you can play, so some things work fine when you're up close. And, but if you have a small space, I think playing with multiple people is going to be an issue. - Oh, definitely, yeah. - And the fact that it can't work in small apartments just tells me that right there, that's a whole section of game types. - I mean, what do you define as a small apartment? - Whatever their parameters are, I don't know what they are, four feet by four feet. - I mean, you need about six feet of distance, I think. - But I say, I mean, I think six feet of distance-- - Six or seven feet of distance will be-- - Dual board, a lot of places that aren't studios. - Right. - But for most people, even if you're in a two bedroom apartment, your personal space is really only about the size of a small studio apartment, anyway. - Right. I think that if you have enough space to have like a little rock band party or whatever, or like a rock band multiplayer session, then you will probably have enough space to play connect. - Right. - This is all conjecture, because we haven't taken connects out of the office yet. - Yeah. - Regardless, we're making plans to everyone who's reviewing a connect game to take connect home so they can experiment with it in different conditions. It's like we're experimenting it with it in different conditions in the office. And sometimes it performs better than others, and sometimes it's really funny watching the games that aren't properly calibrated and what they detect. Today I watch someone play a game sitting in a chair. But I think that a lot of skeptics will be surprised by how well it actually does work. - How well it works though. - They might not wanna buy it. - Right. - It doesn't mean it's gonna be for you. - I was gonna say, I've never been a skeptic on how well it works 'cause anybody that I know that's ever used to connect has been like, wow, that's impressive, but I've never gone. - I think every demo though, like every public demo has been kind of bad for connect. And like we've seen repeatedly like connect demos that just look like shit in public. Like the best buy connect demos always look awful. Like they're never working, they're always broken. - Part of the problem is, yeah, I don't know if maybe you're part of the, well, I don't know. - You know, the whole calibration thing, you know, I've mentioned before, like I've gone to rock band parties where like they've been playing for 30 minutes. I step up on my first go around and I'm like, you guys have been playing all night and it's not even calibrated at all. - Right. - Like I have to play off the phone. - It seems like it's doing a lot of auto calibration by itself. Again, when you wave your hand back and forth, it finds you. - Right, okay. - And it always has you do very specific motions so that it knows you're there. Like connect sports is actually really intuitive in the way that it detects you. Like if you jump out of frame, the game will stop and it'll say, please step into frame. And then we were switching people out. - Yeah. - Like so I would jump out of frame and Brian Altano like one of the humor guys would jump in and then it will say reach up to continue and he would reach up and it would find him pretty much immediately and we would just keep playing and wear different heights and it would work the same thing with Scott Bromley who is a tall guy. So it's very slick in the way that it finds you and that it keeps you calibrated and that you don't have to do these weird exercises. - That's good 'cause it kind of has to be. - Yeah, I mean, I think that Microsoft seems to have known that people were going to be skeptical and that they're gonna be people who were not patient. - Right, where the major failure points could be. - Right, so that all seems very good. At least in connect sports. I haven't played connect adventures yet so I don't know what to say about that. I played a couple of other connect games. I'm positive I can't talk about one of them and I know the others I probably can't talk about either. - Right, right, right. But I actually was having a lot of fun today with connect sports. - Good, I think that like a lot of we sports game is going to come down to who you play with. - Yeah, right, well even, but by myself I was actually having fun. - I always have fun playing with myself, I know how it is. - Well, that's a different conversation. But I am a little concerned with how connect sports plays with more than one person. Like at least in table tennis it's a lot different playing the two people than one person because that body movement stuff seems just gone. - Right, that's what you're telling me. It's like 'cause it only, 'cause it can't attract enough. - Yeah, it can only attract 40 points of articulated movement at a time. - So it can't do the full body movement for two people. - Right, right. - So it's still, it works but not as well and then there were some weird detection issues playing boxing with two, with versus. - I just saw that by punching people in the face in real. - Right, yeah. Oh man, people are going to get punched in the face playing connect, just flat out. Like there are all the we-mode accidents like there are going to be so many connect accidents. - I was going to say, 'cause there's no safety strap for connect unless they put people in fucking safety harnesses and seat belts. - But I'm generally, I'm genuinely not sure what I would label or how I'm going to review connect sports. - Oh, I'm sure, yeah, it's going to take a while. - First of all, there are a ton of modes. Like there are 16 just mini-games. - Wow, yeah. - And a bunch of sports. - And it's the kind of thing that like that you're never going to really know. I mean, it's one of those things where it's risky because even if it's the kind of thing that seems really cool to you initially, it may not be sticky. You know, you may just like get bored with it really quick. - Like a gimmicky sort of thing. - Like a gimmicky, like it's gimmicky in tech domain. But on the other hand, it could be the kind of thing where it's just, it works so well that it keeps you coming back to it when you're like, "Oh, I need, you know, 15 minutes "or a half hour of fun right now "and I'm just going to turn on my connect for a little bit." - You know, I'm a little surprised. Some of the other reactions I've seen, like, destruct, I put up a preview of Joyride where they said it actually controlled really well, which I have not seen. I don't know who's reviewing Joyride in the office, but that's a surprise to me. - Maybe they're using the pro-raft. - It could be. - Have you guys seen that? - No. - There's like a raft, like, I don't know. - It's an inflatable raft. - Yeah, it's inflatable raft that you, for fucking connecting. - I thought the point of connect was to get rid of the controller. - I love my hobby, but I hate how it destroys the planet. So. - It's true. Preserving the planet is one of the reasons we've had such console reliability issues, this generation. - Yeah, really. That's why, but, I mean, it's another reason to love digital downloads. - Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing more. I'm just, I don't think anybody is sure what they're reviewing, what they're giving anything yet. - Sure. - I think people are starting to get more into the hardware than they thought they would be. I'm certainly having more fun with the hardware than I thought I would. - All right. - Do you have letters? - All right, the first letters from Nick, and he says. Okay, Matt mentioned in an episode that he was wondering about how the realm of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood would compare with the real room. I enjoyed visiting some of the locations from AC2 when my wife and I were in Italy. We did Rome, Venice, and Florence, but I strongly pushed us to go to San, give me, give me Johnna. - San Gianna? - Sir, and Montha Ragoni, based on that. - Based on their inclusion in the game and got rewarded by San, whatever, being my wife's new favorite place in Italy. Okay, so the actual question, have you guys ever navigated in the real world based on seeing somewhere in a game? Found that a real world place was nothing like its representation in the game. I will say that I go to DC rather frequently and I am surprised when I walk in the capital mall where I'm like, "Oh shit, this is why I fought super mutants." (laughing) That's very place. - And I looked at, I was curious and I looked at pictures and Google Maps and stuff of the mall and it's a pretty good representation of it. It has the things in the right locations, more or less. - When I visited Los Angeles for the first time, we had a rent a car and just driving around all the neighborhoods, it's like, "Oh yeah, this is San Andreas, this is totally it." - That's awesome. - Even there's even that little piece of shitty modern art in downtown Los Angeles, this is Park and in San Andreas, it's a park where you get a rampage. (laughing) I was like, "Hey." - My answer would be no. - Yeah, I've never actually tried to navigate by what I knew. - One time I went to the R-Space station and I was like, and so I started walking around and I realized that I was heading towards the demonic port of the hill. (laughing) - It was a reverse, Matt. Like you've used real life data and experience to navigate the game world in Assassin's Creed. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like when I was in Florence in Assassin's Creed II, I knew where the Duomo was in relation to the Ponte Vecchio. And so I was like, I was kinda doing that. I was like, "Oh, the bridge has to be this way." And it was, you know, I'm sure it's like not the same distances as it is in real life and everything, but like to have something that's north of something else be the same way in a video game is pretty cool, actually. - Is it a, who is it? Is it Need for Speed Smash? It's got something coming out in San Francisco. - Need for Speed is definitely not anywhere realistic whatsoever. - What game has a San Francisco? It's a racing game. - It is. - It is. - Yeah, it's driver. And it's the one where San Francisco's being destroyed by an earthquake while you're driving through it. - Yeah, let me tell you how like graded is living in a city. Like I live on like kind of a popular street corner, like where you always, like they're always doing the open top tour bus guides like coming by. And so it's like always wake up to like hearing some tour guide on the microphone. And this is the part of the city that was completely destroyed by the earthquake. Fire, destruction, people crying in the streets. - That's alright, can you remember the last time there was a major earthquake in San Francisco? - It was like, 19, 18. - 1989. - Do you remember what was going on at that point? - Baseball game? (laughing) - Anthony pointed that out to me today. I know I can't stop thinking about it. - No, you're just waiting for it to happen. - I just walked through the city everyday and picture where I should stand when it starts falling apart. (laughing) It's like a common thread in my thinking. - Wow, that's depressing. - Yeah, I often think to myself, should I carry a dust mask in my backpack so I don't have to breathe in the horrible things when I'm trying to save people from rubble? - A dust mask and two days worth of water? - Yeah. - Right? - Or pistol to put people out of their misery. (laughing) - And steal their water. - Or fend off cannibals. The next letter from James, and he says, "I'm legally blind, but have enough eyesight to work, "play video games and not miss when I'm in a public urinal." (laughing) - That's good, that's good, those are good. - There you go, your question is-- - Legitimate member of society. - Do you think motion controls will play a large part in the future of games? Possibly to the point where controllers really will be gone completely. I ask because I have to sit so close to my 50 inch TV that motion controls won't register on the sensors. - Right, I don't think so. - No way. - Yeah, I don't think so either. - I think controllers are a very efficient way of doing certain things. - Yeah. - Virtual reality has taught us that. - I mean, I could see it at some point if something is so sensitive that it can see where all of your fingers are at in the minutest amount of detail as though you were actually using a real controller and you could just do like little wiggly finger movements and I could see that happening. But that's a long ways off. - Maybe, it seems like you still need some kind of feedback, but at that point you're just talking about implants inside your actual fingertips and then you would just have like the feedback would just be like something like neural. - Yeah, yeah, at every point, yeah. You don't even actually feel it. - Which would be awesome. - Like neural feedback, you know. - I would so do that. - There we go. - Normally I try not to go into any of the letters that touch on religious stuff. - Uh-huh. - I'm not really-- - 'Cause you don't want Tyler's head to do stuff. - I'm not really gonna do this either, but it's just a haiku. It's a haiku for Mr. Barber. - For me? - Yeah, and because he wrote it in haiku, I thought I would read it. - Nice. - It's from Rutherford and he says, oh, Tyler Barber, grateful for your skeptic views. I too hate Jesus. (laughing) - I think they might have put that, 'cause I put this funny ID, like an intelligent design haiku that I read on the internet. That was something like, I'm gonna get it wrong, but it was something like a universe is at understanding I fail, therefore Jesus Christ. (laughing) I don't think that was the right syllables, that was paraphrasing. - Right. Tyler doesn't hate Jesus. - No. - I don't hate Jesus, I don't even, I'm not even in his hard course, Tyler Warrior. - Yeah, don't, yeah, I don't hate people. I mean, Tyler burns crosses in the front yard of his homes. (laughing) Oh, wearing a white sheet. 'Cause he hates religion so much. - And white sheets. - Yeah. - I've done it, throw them away. (laughing) - It's true, I've been to Tyler's house and all of his sheets are black satin. - That's right. Actually, while I was gonna say, I would not recommend people getting dark sheets. - Why is that? - Other liquid show up. - The bodily fluid show up, a lot more on. - So wait, Sam writes in, this is a super easy question for us to answer. Sam writes in, it says, what is your greatest gaming achievement? - Oh, shit. - What are you most proud of? - You know what? - Maybe shamed of. - I was actually really, really proud of getting all of the agility orbs in Crackdown 1. - That would be an achievement. - That is an achievement. So even not related to achievements, 'cause that one is, but I'm saying, even if it's not prior to achievements even. - Discovering the truth in Assassin's Creed 2 before the game launched. - I've heard that that is an achievement. - Because there are no fucking facts. - Right. - To find that shit before the game comes out. - Yep, it's true. And I agonized over one of the puzzles in that, yeah. - Retroactively one of my favorite gaming achievements is getting the Samus reveal in original Metroid. Like getting through the game so fast that she lost her suit. That was later on, I realized, wow, that must've meant that I did really well at that game, didn't even realize how awesome I was in. - Some of my gaming achievements are also shameful, it was like beating Silent Hill 2 in one sitting. That was pretty shameful. Like started and spent the whole entire day. Beat Baldur's Gate, Dark Alliance 2 in one sitting. Like just ordered a pizza and we didn't leave until it was done. Like we had decided, you know, we threw down a gauntlet, like we will not leave until this is done. - Yeah. - There was like a 14 hour streak in Everquest one time. We fought the same 10 monsters over and over again until we got the item we wanted. That was an achievement. - That was a fucking endurance test of the psyche. - Yeah, that's great. - But I don't really have any good ones as far as like, 'cause I've never been 100%er in like any games. - I used to be when I was young and 100%ing a game didn't mean that you had to hunt down obscure achievements in order to 100% a game. That's not, I definitely don't do that anymore though. These days I just look, I think I've said this before on the show too, 'cause I just look at achievements, as records of what I've done, not necessarily of things that I need to go do, unless I'm going through the achievement list and I go like, oh, that sounds like fun. Most of it, on most games I go through the achievement list and I'm like, I'm not doing that. Fuck this, no, I'm not doing that. No, fuck that too. - More of a list of things you're not gonna do? - Yeah, exactly. And otherwise, like I'll get an achievement and I'll be like, yep, I did that, right? Okay, one relationship letter from Hunter. He got me with his name. He says, hi humans in Tyler, your distinction apparently. - Tyler's actually a cat. - First off, if you don't remember me, it's your boy Hunter, the one with friends in Georgia, or the one with no friends in Georgia. - I remember us getting a Hunter letter before, but I don't remember. - He says, "Recently I met a girl, the really only cool girl at the school, or so I thought." So I got the cojones to ask her out and she said yes. - Nice. - I took her out to a nice dinner, spending more than $200. - That was a mistake. - Might I remind you that I'm a broke high school kid? - That was a double mistake. - At the top restaurant in our shit town. Then, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. When I was driving her home, she asked if she could come over to my place. I said, sure, because of the fact that my family was out of town, and we got busy. The next morning I wake up and she's gone. I said, okay, okay, she just had to run off to work. Then, when I saw her the next day at school, I asked her what happened, and she acted like nothing ever happened. She hit me and quit me. She took my virginity out behind the gas station, beat the shit out of it, then took $200 off of it. - I actually am pretty sure she took your virginity behind the gas station and fucked its brains out. - What the fuck can I do to get revenge on her? - No. - What? - What? - What? - Why do thank you let her? (laughing) - I mean, I'm not saying you've got to be super enthusiastic about the fact that she didn't call you, that she actually nothing happened. - Basically, he says he really opened up to this girl and stuff. I think that's what he's-- - He feels emotionally betrayed. - Yes. - Yeah. - That's the problem. - I get where you're coming from, Hunter, but-- - Revenge isn't gonna make you feel any better. - No, move on. If video games have taught us anything, it's that revenge is never good. - There's always another mission. - Yep. (laughing) - Go take it. - Move on, just put that as a feather in your cap and be like, you know, this is an experience that I have had. - Yeah. - What on the wrong? - Yep. - Yeah, I've been used by a girl once too, not for sex, but I was definitely not like, I was definitely like, "There's no way this girl will make out with me." And then she was just like, "Argh." And I was like, "Whoa." (laughing) And then she was like, "Yeah, that was fun." I was like, "But, but." - Yeah. - "Yeah, no, it was just fun, but, but." - Yeah. (laughing) - So. - Yep. - No, it sucks when that happens to you. It's happened to me too, but like, you know, what? Yeah, don't give her a binge. Jesus Christ, what a stupid idea. - Um. - Um. - So, okay. Saving Anthony some money. That's why he got me. (laughing) William. He says that's his name. So, "I work as a food safety microbiologist, and I think I can help you with your plural habit." Alcohol-based hand cleaners. This is a debate we have all had. - Awesome. Alcohol-based hand cleaners can denature some viruses and make them unable to infect you. However, the bad news is that respiratory diseases like common cold and flu don't spread through your hands unless you regularly stuff them into your mouth. These type of viruses rely on you breathing them in, which is why they spread so effectively in a setting like packs. Pure will keep bacteria in viruses that give you stomach diseases, which you're especially likely to get while eating or doing anything that might involve touching your mouth. So, I'm not saying it's useless. It does have a place when you can't get soap and water, but most of the buzz about it stopping you from getting cold and flus is just hype. In fact, overuse of this cleaner can leave your skin free of the normal harmless bacteria that live there and make it potentially easier for a harmful one to get a foothold. There you go, that's food. That's from a food safety microbiologist. - That was just my favorite letter we've ever received. (laughing) - I will say that I constantly fucking shut my fingers and move it. - That's awesome. - Also, you hold food with your hands and eat it. - Oh, it's just one of those things you're just saying, like it has its place, just don't fucking overuse it, like people do, yeah. I mean, there are exceptions, like when I go to see my girlfriend in the cancer ward, you know, they have those-- - A little dispensers. - They have the dispensers all over the place and you have to use them all the time because everybody in that ward has zero immune system. So, like at that, when I'm in that situation, yeah, my hands are like sanitized to fuck, you know. - Yeah. - Yeah. - This is interesting. You know, we've always heard, you know, you always hear people being like, "It just makes the bacteria stronger." But now we're seeing food safety microbiologist. - Yeah, exactly. - Silly question. - Awesome. That was a good letter. - The question is titled, constipated Jedi question. Could a constipated Jedi use force push to relieve himself? - Whoa. - Could a Jedi who is not constipated, but still mischievous, use the force push to relieve other people around him. - Whoa. - I've been wondering about this for weeks and I need help. - Okay, so I-- - Well, master guy, I guess. What do you have to say? - Yeah. - I think I might have an answer. - Do it. - This is why they have to indoctrinate Jedi's at such a young age, so they get all the immaturity out, really young. And by the time they're older, like, "Ah, that's old hat." - I don't see why, right? Darth Vader could crush people's windpipes. He could affect their windpipes through their body. - Right. - So, why couldn't he be like, "You're colon." Bye. (laughing) Dude. - It's true. - Yeah, like, absolutely. - I'm gonna, if I ever become a Star Wars Raider in life, I'm gonna write a story where two Jedi are battling or a Jedi. - One guy makes it a machine himself. - And then one guy makes it a shit himself. - Shit himself. - Yeah, exactly. - Or, no, no, you have, like, one Jedi that's, like, a hippie herbalist and, like, they do, like, colon cleansing Jedi power. Like, "Wow." - Like a, like, a force anima. - Yeah. Like, you can't see it over the podcast audio ways, but we're doing, like, the ringing motion, you know? - With your fingers, yeah. - Yeah. - Like, you wring out a snake. - Well, I've seen somebody eat, like, cut a snake's head off and then wring the guts. - Oh, yeah. - The guts out. - That's true. Wow, that's what you went to. See, I went to, like, you know-- - That's what I imagined. - I went to, like, squeezing the water out of a rag or something. - Okay. - And you go to, like, squeezing the guts out of a snake. - Well, that's more, like, squeezing the shit out of some intestines. (laughing) Right? - Okay. - Well, it's also more, like, jacking off, but I didn't go there either, though. (laughing) - So, there's also an actual game question as well. - We had a letter that asked why we stopped being profane, okay? - So, we have an actual-- - Dicks, dicks, shit, fuck, dicks. - This is an actual game question from Greg, very easy for us to answer. - Dicks, dicks, dicks, dicks, dicks. - I currently have a DSI. I was wondering, should I upgrade to a DSI XL? Or should I wait for a 3DS? - I'd wait for the 3DS. I like that. - Yeah, at this point. - I'd like my XL, but I'd wait for the 3DS. - Unless your eyesight really sucks. - Yeah, I mean, I don't even want an XL just because it doesn't fit in my pocket. - It doesn't even look that good. - Really? I love the screen on it. - On the XL? - Yeah, oh yeah. - I think it looks way more alias than the image quality is worse. - Well, I mean, the image is not-- - And those are the image quality feels like it's worse just because it's bigger. But I mean, like-- - The image quality is worse 'cause they're bigger, fatter pixels. - Yeah, but that doesn't make, I mean, like, it's the same number of pixels just on a larger screen. - Right, which makes it look worse. - It does, oh, yeah, I mean-- - I can see what it's saying. - It's more like a perspective, I guess. But yeah, it is more zoomed in, so you see the individual pixels a lot easier. But I just, I think it looks cool. I like the bigger screen, and I like the, and I think maybe because I've gotten used to pixel art and stuff like that. - But can I talk about the bigger problem here? Like, let's not see what's going on here. I bet Homeboy here owned a DS light. Now he's got a DS eye. - Stop it! - He's talking about the XL. He's talking about the 3DS. - Right, what? - What the fuck? - Yeah, it's because like, you know, it's like that picture that you have of what's his bucket with a DS that prints money, you know? - Oh, me, Mo, I bought three DSs. - So are you sure you don't wanna read that piracy, Mo? 'Cause I am ready for it. - Do it, do it. - I mean, there was multiple. Here, I'll read the other one that we got, 'cause I liked it better. - Read the piracy, Mo. - Here, I'll read a piracy, Mo, 'cause we got more than one. - I knew that was gonna happen as soon as-- - All right, this one's from Toby, and he says, "First off, I used to be a huge pirate. "I don't think I ever actually bought a Dreamcast "or a PS2 game, but I possess more "than I could ever actually play." This generation, I've made a conscious decision to pay for games, whatever we all grew up. Blah, blah, so yeah, I have a background in piracy. I wholeheartedly disagree with Arthur's comments on single-player activation anti-piracy arguments. I can tell you it has done absolutely nothing to curb piracy. All it is is something else to crack, and it's pretty trivial to that. Patches, DLC, and content that's downloaded on first activation can all be packaged into a single download that's pre-cracked and easy to use. This, like the long list of anti-piracy measures before it, just add to the complications of legitimate users, while the pirates don't even notice. I mean, piracy was the first digital download medium, get the game at full 20 megabytes per second on my connection, install and play, no must, no fuss. Every time I'm confronted by the drawbacks of going legit, whether it be activation, servers that are down, or a system destroying copy protection, I'm looking at you, Star Force. I get really nostalgic for the carefree days of pirating everything, and really upsets, it seems like companies are punishing me for giving him money. In some cases in the past, I've actually bought the retail package of the game, and then get pirated it to play it because that was easier to get going. - I've done that too. - Yes, those instances are getting rare and rare, but I still can't understand why I have to jump through hoops as a legitimate user of the software in general, when piracy is so much easier. No disk slash internet connection slash proof of ID slash signing over the first born solved. I'm paying you now, stop treating me like I'm stealing your software. Those guys over there are and always will be, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, except make my experiences legit user more difficult. Basic copy protection is enough to curtail casual copying. That's about the biggest victory you're going to get. - That's enough of a victory for most publishers. First of all, DRM is not designed to prevent piracy. It's designed to make it as much of a pain in the ass as possible. - Just like a door lock is not designed to keep someone out of your house. - Right. - It's designed to at least fucking slow them down. - Yeah, I mean, he brings up a good point in that, you know, the DRM measures that, you know, the pirators often just quickly learn how to circumvent it. But I think what he's maybe missing is like Arthur's point. I think is more of, they have to do something. He's not saying like this is the solution, right? - So I will give you one example that is why DRM on PC games exist. Modern Warfare 2 last year sold about 300,000 copies on PC. And was pirated about four million times. That is a more than 10 fold difference between sales and piracy, whereas the 360 version was downloaded about a million times and sold about six million copies. - It's a little harder to pirate them. - Because it's a much bigger pain in the ass. - It's not like it's, I could mod my 360. - Yeah. - You could mod your 360. - Right, but I'm saying it. Why were you could probably mod your 360 and we know that you hate PCs? - It's a lot easier. - It's a lot more difficult though than going to Pirate Bay and, you know. - And the point is that the more of a pain in the ass it is for you to pirate something, the more of the chance there is that you'll throw your fucking hands up in the air and buy it on Steam. - See, there are other ways to do it too, which is just certain companies are trying to just change the way they market their game. Like, company heroes was another game. There was like a 10 to one type thing. - It was devastated by pirates. - And so now they're releasing a free-to-play version with micro-tens actions. 'Cause we're like, fuck it, we better just give it away for free 'cause you guys are taking it for free anyways and trying to game you. - And also, I mean, we've had multiple developers go on record for PC development that have said the overwhelming majority of support cases that they receive for PC games are from people who are running pirated fucking copies of the game. - Man, how is that still? - And the reason it's not working or the reason it's running weird or improperly is because it's a fucking pirated version of the game. - Man, that would piss me off so much. That was a game developer and so much. - I am not innocent in this. Like, I have pirated PC games before. I haven't pirated a PC game in about seven, six or seven years, I think. - It's been a really long time for me too. - But I will tell you flat out that the vast majority of viruses that I ever had on a PC, and the vast majority of viruses that most people I know had on their PCs. - I'm sure-- - Or for pirated games. - And I'm sure that the reason why my World of Warcraft account got hacked was because my little brother, and yes, I'm putting this on his feet 'cause this really happened. We even did a co-op episode on it last year. He came to visit me, he downloaded Warcraft 3 and a Dota mod so that he could play out on my PC. And there was definitely a virus there and a keylogger or whatever 'cause it's like the day after he downloaded that and played it and I logged into WoW, like right after that, my account got hacked, everything got stolen and sold everything. - Your account to get hacked, they logged into it. - Yeah, they logged into it, yeah, basically. Yeah, and so, yeah, all that shit happens. I mean, that's an inconvenience right there. That's one thing that definitely stopped me from doing piracy more. But where to this day, I will still pirate a game is if I have bought it and I own it, but it's like, if it's like too inconvenient for me to even start up the game, like if I have to sit through, if I have a PC game and I have to sit through like a minute of like Nvidia logos and shit like that, I'll download a hacked version of the game or a CD crack of the game. - Well, there's usually-- - It's all that stuff. - And you don't even need to do that 'cause usually you can tweak that shit in a configuration file. So please, Matt, for the good of yourself. - Yes, no, I mean, like it's hard. It's not always the case where you can do that. - I just, and there are such more robust digital distribution alternatives for games than there are for music or movies and I'm not innocent of pirating content. Like, I'm not. - Right. - I have drawn, I think I'm of a similar mind that Gabe at Penny Arcade is, which is that eventually you have to sort of draw a line and say, these are the things that I have to support. - Yeah. - And games-- - If I want more of them, it's something I have to support. - Yeah, they're on the list. - Yeah. - I mean, I've heard people say also like another anti-piracy thing is like, oh, music, you know, they really solve those. They purposefully release all those downloadable things where it like fucking makes horrible noise after like 30 seconds and so-- - Oh, oh. - And so people are like, why don't they release like a fucked up version of a game? And the answer I had for that was like, because when they, where everyone can have an opinion, then they'll go and write all these reviews about how fucked up the game is and how they realize that it's like a tension fact. - Right. - The Titan quest games are a good example of that because they developed a reputation as extremely buggy and very fucked up and never working properly. And the versions of the game that predominantly were not working properly were pirated versions of the game. - They should have, well, I mean, like I can see a company doing that if they, you know, you download a version that says like pirate all over it or something like that so that people can't really bitch about it for being buggy and just to get to the players. - I am watching porn, mom. (both laughing) - Like DRM is often a pain in the ass, but I can honestly, there are very few situations where DRM has been a problem for me with PC games over the last-- - Relative to the amount of PC games that I have in play. Yeah, it's a small percentage. - Like there are certain annoyances like Far Cry 2, I was really annoyed that I had to keep the disc in the drive. - Yeah, 'cause that felt very 2004. - Yeah, that's the case with a lot of PC games. - Disc in the drive doesn't bother me. Persistent internet connection does. - Yeah, persistent internet connection I think is one that's like we need, they need to be a better solution. - I feel that the companies that are doing the persistent internet connection thing just feel like they're at their wit's end. Like Ubisoft has said flat out with their games that if this doesn't work, then we're just not gonna put our games out on PC anymore. And there are examples of games that Ubisoft made this year that did not make it to PC. - And didn't they have some of the other worse DRM plans on PC like last year? - They were the Star Force people. - They did Star Force until like 2005. - They were the Star Force people and they were also like the first ones I think with Assassin's Creed. - Yeah, that's what they thought. - Where it was like, it had the persistent internet connection issue and it's like where, if not only did you get kicked out of the game but your game did not save. - Yeah, it just booted you quick. - It just booted you, it just quit the game. And so it was like, you know, if you could have been playing for a really long time and that happens and that fucks a legitimate paying user out of their experience. - And it's just they lost internet connection? - Yeah. - Yeah, internet connection. - And if anybody has-- - People got pulled out of your-- - Exactly. - If anybody has like our Comcast cable connection, we have Comcast cable internet. Like our DSL was stable as a rock even though it was super, even though it was super slow. The our Comcast cable internet connection, not stable. That modem reboots itself at least once a day. And like it totally lose the internet connection while it's rebooting. So I mean, that is not a solution. That's not an acceptable solution. They need to figure out a better way. - And I mean, last year actually, a guy over at Tweak Guides did a 10-page like just report on piracy and its effects. And just to sort of study a PC gaming piracy. And his example of Star Force is Bonersoul Chaos Theory which came out in March of 2005 on PC and went 422 days before a working crack was released. - That's effective. - So, yeah, Star Force is fucked, but it worked. - Yeah. - I don't know, I don't actually know how well Chaos Theory sold on PC. I mean, unfortunately the Bonersoul Games sold worse and worse and worse. - Yeah. - But Star Force was in games because it worked. - Right. Well, I mean, if they could do something where it's like, yeah, if your internet connection cuts off, then your game automatically saves or the game just, you know, or you can play offline. - I think Assassin's Creed saved and quit. Command and Conquer 4 just quit out. - As far as I knew, Assassin's Creed just quit out. And then I think they might have patched it so that it did save because there was such an outcry about it. - Right. - But I think initially it just quit out. And then I, again, just to reiterate, for most companies going two weeks without a crack is a success. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. Like, I mean, if permanent DRM is impossible, is a temporary DRM? I mean, most games are only in the hotness popularity for two months, three months. - Right, Bioshock is another example of a game that you secure on, which a lot of people hate, but they consider it a success that they went 13 days without being cracked. And now that's fucking unheard of for a game to go that long without being cracked. - Shit, now games leak. - No games leak before they come out. - Right, exactly. And I mean, Bioshock on consoles, I'm pretty sure leaked online before it leaked. - I mean, even Halo 3, people were playing before that game came out. - Right, a month before we're playing Halo 2 before it came out. - Which is why people were getting banned. - Right, so DRM exists for a very particular reason and DRM is there because it works to a degree. I mean, clearly, it's not a final solution because they're continually looking for ways to improve on it. But I mean, you have to understand that the games that require constantly connected internet connections are just taking a cue from the only PC games that have been hugely successful over the last five years, which are fucking MMOs, where you have to be online all the time. - The game play requires it as much. - Yeah, that's funny. - World of Warcraft has sold like 12 million copies and it has virtually no piracy to speak of because you have to be connected. - Yeah, I mean, there's people who play in the fake servers. - Right, exactly. - The very, very, very, very, very, very-- - I mean, that is the fucking wild west of PC gaming piracy, like pirate WoW servers. - Yeah, that's kind of fucking nuts, but it does happen. But apparently, like those servers are kind of fucked, of course, 'cause they're missing all kinds of content. - I mean, I'm never gonna like smile with grim satisfaction as someone has problems playing a game that they bought legitimately. Like, it's not something I'm a fan of. Like, I don't like DRM. There are a lot of things I don't like. I don't like fucking vaccinations. - Arthur loves it. He goes into his room and feeds on your sorrow. (laughing) - Okay, well, that might be true, but-- (laughing) - No, it's like, it's not that I don't understand why it's there. You know, I just wish that people could find out a better solution for it. I mean, like, Stardock's philosophy is that, like, we know people are gonna pirate it, but what we do is we create our game budget around what we think the game is gonna sell, not around what we think is gonna be pirated. - Right. - So it's like, you know, that's the kind of thing where that's like a realistic attitude toward it. But I mean, also their gains don't cost $100 million to make. - And Stardock is an application developer as well. - Yeah. - Then they make millions of dollars from that. They release window blinds, which until Windows Vista came out was the only way to get a attractive looking Windows desktop. So they have another revenue stream. - Yeah, they do have another revenue stream, but if you're budgeting for a game, you don't necessarily say that like, you know, oh, we're just gonna use all of our window blind money to fund this game. You know, it's like, we know that this game is gonna be pirated this many times, but we think it's probably gonna sell at least this much so we can make our money back. - And yeah, that works for some people that works for some games, but like for a dead space too, or a crisis, or a fucking modern warfare too, that doesn't work. - Yep. - Yeah, they know where their bread is buttered anyways. The PCs and afterthought for a lot of people, yeah. - I mean, that's practically charity. At this point that they release a PC version. - Well, it's not so much charity. I think it's more like icing on the cake. You know, if they-- - If they can make some money off it. - If they can make some money off it. - I don't even know that that's true because I think that a lot of them, if the delayed PC releases that we see are any indication, say that we're gonna sell as many as we can on consoles first because any PC piracy is threatening our console sales as well because if you just plug in a controller to your PC, you're playing a fucking console version of the game. - Yeah. - So-- - I'm sure that happens too. - Don't enable consoles. - I hate DRM. - I hate DRM. - Yeah. - I hate DRM but I don't, I don't begrudge people for using it. - I begrudge them for using bad DRM. I begrudge them for doing things like killing my game. You know, it's like-- - What game has been killed? - Assassin's Creed, that's what I'm saying. Like you kill my game when I lose my internet connection. Like, you know, what am I supposed to do? Like, okay, I bought this thing and now I can't use it because I don't have an internet connection. And that's-- - Yeah, and I feel that same-- - That's basically where them walking into your house and taking that game away from you. - I feel that same way about not being able to play XBLA games on a different console with my hard drive at times. You know, I can be really-- - Yeah. - Because I've lost consoles. - Right, without having to change your ID as they react. - Exactly. I go to my parent's house, they don't have that, and I'm like, fuck. - Although, you can do that now. But you can just reassign-- Well, they've got the tool on Xbox.com where you can reassign all of your licenses to a new serial number. - Once a year? - Yeah. - Well, yeah, it's about right for how often they break. - Yeah, I mean, like, you know, on Steam, all you have to do is like go onto a PC and use your login and all your games are there. And now with SteamCloud, all your save games are there and all your settings are there too. If the game supports it. - When it works. Yeah, sometimes it does not. - So, to find out more about piracy, go to our Twitter feeds. - So, go to twigguides.com and do a search for piracy and you can talk with that article. - On Twitter. - The best resource for it is Matt's Twitter feed, which is Talking Orange. Arthur's also-- - Oh, yeah, I'm a pirate. - Yeah, Arthur, if you want to find how to do piracy, it's Arthur's Twitter feed, it's A-G-I-S. And then there's Tyler's where you can learn about shit that has nothing to do with video games, which is at dirty T. - How to make your pirate costume. - That's what I can put. - You can send us letters to letters at eat-sleep-game.com. I don't know, keep good ones coming. You don't have to tell us that we aren't profane enough for you. You don't have to tell us silly dumb jokes like Arthur has balls on his feet 'cause you said that last week. That was a letter. Those letters are kind of worthless. - Balls on my feet. - I don't read 'em. Yeah, you mentioned something about, I run on the balls of my feet. - Oh, Arthur's feet has balls. That was the entirety of the letter. (laughing) That guy wanted to take time out of his life. - Wait, like, a pair of balls on each foot or one ball, one foot. I don't, that guy was just making a dumb talking joke. - Two balls, one cup. (laughing) - Send us good letters. - Tell your friends. - Yeah, tell your friends all about us. - We will have full-connect impressions next week. - Well, Arthur will have full-connecting questions. - You'll play some connection. - The rest of us will have them. - That's it. - I'll listen to this. - Bye-bye. (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music) Oh Oh Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh [MUSIC PLAYING] [ Silence ]