Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 79 - 10/08/10
Hello! This week we narrowly avoid a Diet Dr. Pepper disaster as we talk more about Dead Rising 2, Enslaved, Quantum Theory, Civilization V and more. Then we move on to entries in our Halo contest and read letters. THE USUAL.
Since it's a new month, I've again chosen music that's on sale during this month's Amazon $5.00 MP3 Album sale. Each of these songs is featured this month.
This week's music, in order of appearance:
Rilo Kiley - Moneymaker
The Do - On My Shoulders
Gnarls Barkley - Who's Gonna Save My Soul
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> 79 is brought to you by drinking water. >> [LAUGH] >> I can't think I could use our third geez. >> That's asshole tax. >> That's my other barber. >> Put it in the pizza match and your name. >> Jesus Christ, dude, do you need to find the queue? >> I tried to drink it and it went in my lungs, lung water. >> In this episode 80, not 79, we just said that. >> Next week is 80, the big 8-0. >> Video games. >> Video games. >> I feel like Tyler should be more on the ball with this stuff considering he's now been on 67 episodes. >> Well, I just heard you guys say something about 80. I was tuning you guys out. I guess you were talking about next week. >> Yeah, next week. >> I was saying that they should do something special and Arthur was saying that's a terrible idea. >> For 80. >> Yeah. >> I was saying I said we could do an 80s themed show. >> That'd be awesome, all 80s video games. >> Yeah, no. >> So video games came out this week. >> Did they? >> Including enslaved. >> I played enslaved. >> I thought you were going to talk about how much you hated quantum theory. >> Well, that came out last week. What kind of did that? >> Did we do that last week? >> We did that a little talk about it last week. >> It was a pretty lengthy PSA, I think. >> I just don't want to talk that much about it, it's an abortion. >> Why did you give it? >> I gave it 2.5, which in hindsight, I should have just given it like a zero. >> Yeah, why not? >> For anybody to buy it at any point. >> And just really, to clarify, what was the strap on your review? >> Said, it's a fact, not a theory, this game sucks. >> And do you remember your closing line? >> My closing line was, was you only have one life to live and you shouldn't spend any of it playing this game. >> Oh, man, I'm so glad I only get to play games. >> The person that read my review wanted it read by a second person because he thought it was too mean. >> Wow. >> Someone on gaff suggested that quantum theory raped your mom while you watched. >> Yeah, well. >> And that actually did happen. >> It took hours away from my life that I'll never get back. >> Yeah. >> And then more hours at work, a lot of them were hours here at home. >> Yeah, and you are a little closer to death now. >> Yes. It's true. >> Because of that game, that game helped kill me. >> Yeah. >> You are a quantum theory closer to death? >> Yeah, that game is really, really terrible. That game is like, as I said, it is like every person that wants to make video games and wants to make a shooter should play that, that have like every reason of what not to do. >> Right. >> Like this is how to fuck it up repeatedly, even when you're just aping on someone else's game. >> I don't know. I heard it got three eights and a seven in Famitsu. >> Yes. >> I wonder how much they paid for that review. >> Coe's money must have went far. I don't know. >> Not that far, if it only got eights. >> We just can't live with ourselves. >> Our integrity prevents us from doing this higher than an eighth. >> Does anyone else picture there's a character like Clay Davis over there at the office? Coe brings in a briefcase full of money and he's like, "Oh, I'm going to get you the good score. You best believe." >> So three eights and a seven is a light bulb contract is what you're saying. >> When it's Medicare is a four over here. That is... >> Oh, that is... >> Oh. >> That game is... >> It's almost like you have to try to be that bad. >> Yeah. It's not even one of those games like a deadly premonition. >> Where it's got a charm to the performance? >> Where it's shitty with the intent of being shitty, like this game did not want to be shitty. >> I don't know that deadly premonition was shitty with the intent of being shitty. >> It totally was, I think. >> Really? >> I don't think so. >> You think it's like a two to 51 game and they're intentionally punking you? >> Yeah, or in the way that, to some extent, a game like Earth Defense Force did a little bit, but a game like deadly premonition really took it too far in my mind, but a lot of people love that about it. And this one is... >> Can we really say a lot? What is a lot of people? >> Well... >> Seven. >> So anyways, though, this game, I don't think... I think this game, I'm going to guess, MPD for that next month right now, that game is going to sell somewhere around 4,700 copies nationwide. That's my guess. >> Wow, that's actually kind of a specific number. Why 4,700? Why not 4,800? >> I don't know. That's just me. I'm just feeling 4,700. >> Do you want to get in on the MPD predictions this month? >> No. That's the only one I feel comfortable with. >> And so your opinion is that those 4,700 copies probably shouldn't have been sold. >> Yeah, no one should. This game should have... There are many other games that end up in landfills, like this one, I originally was writing something in my review that I took out that was like, someday someone's going to have to answer to God for the plastic they used to help destroy our planet to manufacture this piece of shit. But that just got too long when it didn't really make any sense. >> Your expression is one of extreme pain, but I have a feeling it's not because of quantum theory. >> No, it's because of the hole in my arm and the tape that that asshole put over. >> Yeah, no one's playing multiplayer and it's a press press. >> No. >> I didn't even get to try multiplayer for the review. >> Wow. >> I was fucking... >> You didn't get to or didn't have to. >> Didn't have to. Yeah, I mean, like I said in my review, at the time like earlier last night, last night when I was trying to play, there was only 298 people on the largest leaderboard. So I mean, amongst the people that have bought it, even fewer, you know, of course fewer try it online. >> Does it have online co-op? >> I don't think it has co-op at all. >> I could be wrong, but... >> Because the girls are not made to be strong, they're made to be thrown at things. >> Yeah, that was the whole point is I actually never even thought I had co-op because the girl character, she only serves as like an occasional weapon for you to throw around. >> So... >> An object, if you will. >> Yeah. >> Got it. >> Yeah, that sounds about right. >> Next time I get thrown, I'm just going to shave that part of my arm. >> Well, to be fair, there are other women character in the games. >> In the game who are real women. >> No, it was the girls. >> The character in this game, the woman that you're always with, she isn't like a real woman. She's like a genetic byproduct of this building. So... >> Why did you decide to rip off your bandage while we're podcasting? >> Because it hurts. >> And so it's going to hurt more now that you've done this, and like you're there like screaming silently. That looked like it hurt, actually. And you do have kind of hairy arms. Arthur is stomping his foot on the floor and trying not to scream into the mic. >> I'm fine. >> Well, it's off now. >> Dude, we should work. >> I see him. >> I know, really. >> Um... >> Fuck. >> You're such a baby. >> So, another game. >> We'll see. We'll see about that. >> We'll see what else played the games. I don't want to talk about that one anymore. >> In Slaved, I played enslaved. I finally got a chance to do it. >> I heard that was okay. >> It is. It is like very okay, actually. >> Remarkably okay. >> Yeah. >> That was my review on a nutshell. Remarkably okay. And that's actually what it says under eight on our rubric. >> Really? >> Remarkably okay. >> Huh. Well, that's what it is. It's a remarkably okay game. I actually really dig the story, and I really dig the characters and the voice acting. The world is freaking gorgeous. Like it's very well realized, you know, like I keep looking around in all these little areas that tell stories, like there's a part where you're on this side of, I don't want to give away all the locations because I don't know what people have seen in screenshots or whatever. But there's a part where you're up high, and there's like a chair there with an awning, like somebody was clearly living on this little corner of this structure. And you know, you go up there, and it's just like every, it's just one of those little spots that tells a cool story, you know, and it's like that's all over in the level design in this game. >> Half-lifey in that way, actually. >> Yeah. Yeah, there's like little stories to tell around every little looking cranny. >> Or left for daddy, I guess would like to do. >> Maybe that too, yeah. And like, you know, I think Ryan actually said it best because he was saying that he really wants Ninja Theory to make a game kind of like heavy rain or something like that, where it's not super heavy combat focus, but it's really heavy story and character focus because they do do that really, really well. In fact, I think they're one of the best at it because, you know, when we did Heavenly Sword for Game Club, I was reminded of how amazing the cinematics and the characters are on that. And I don't think enslaved reaches heavenly sword levels of, you know, character animation. >> Oh, I disagree. I think enslaved surpasses heavenly sword. >> Really? >> Oh, yeah. >> Oh, I totally don't think so. When you go into the cutscenes and heavenly sword, that shit is epic. I mean, the cutscenes. >> Right, but I feel like it's that epicness disguises some of the more hackish implementations of voice acting and story. >> Sorry, who does the voice of the main character in The Slave Dead? I was talking about it with-- >> Oh, it's Andy Serkis. >> Oh, it is? Okay, yeah, because I was talking to my girlfriend about it earlier because she just bought it and she was like, man, this game has like some of the best faces and stuff about the Andy Serkis thing. And I was like-- >> I feel like that epicness and heavenly sword can sort of disguise some of its shortcomings whereas the story in enslaved is much more intimate. It's just two people interacting. >> No, I'm not saying-- I'm not judging the stories. I'm just saying the characters, like their facial animation and stuff is better in heavenly sword. >> Oh, I disagree. >> Yeah, well, that's-- >> Why are those looking up to make sure-- >> Is used where we're both wrong? >> One of them theory was indeed only single-player. >> It is. [laughter] >> Just make sure you didn't have to print a retraction. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> So I haven't played it enslaved yet, but I did check out the game trailer's video review, just wanted to check it out. And like one thing, like actually two things that I would like to point out that sort of got me interested into the game was some of the different nuances with the animation. Like one thing, for example, like his climbing animation just looks very physical and very fluid. >> Yeah, it is. It is. But it's a little awkward at times too. Like when he jumps off a ledge that's like even as high as a coffee table, he'll still like-- >> Make the-- >> Hit the arm drop thing. >> Yeah, and he'll hit the ground and like his hands will hit the ground like he fell from 10 feet. >> The animation is a double-edged sword, because while it's fun to watch, you're very often waiting for it to finish. >> Right, yeah, which sort of like swings right into the next point. >> That seems-- >> That seems to be an increasing thing in games too. Like, well, because that also came up when I was watching someone play a recent basketball game, they were like, yeah, the animations are really, really great, but at times you pay for that with the basketball, it's self-feeling like more sluggish than it did back in the day when guys just passed to each other with like a quick robot snap of the arms. >> Mm-hmm, right. >> You know what I mean? >> So they need like a God of War type thing where you can break out of anything at any time? >> Right, yeah, because there are times that it's like, yeah, you're doing this bad astroble across the court, but then it's like you're stuck in that bad astroble even for those few milliseconds. >> Yeah, what were you saying? >> Well, it just seemed that the animation that they use in the combat, like when you're the monkey, character monkey I guess, is using his staff to fight the robots, like it seems like there's a ton of impact with the staff, like, uh. >> Oh, there is, it feels very solid, like when you hit, yeah. >> Yeah, almost like, almost sluggish in a way, like what Gears of War did was shooting, like kind of slowed pacing down and make it more thuddy. >> Um, I feel-- >> And that's the only video, so I don't know. >> Gears of War slowed the pacing down, but not the responsiveness where it's enslaved is slower and less responsive. >> I would agree with that too, yeah. After having, I've played it for, I don't know, I'm like on chapter seven or eight or something. >> Have you gotten to the cloud part yet? >> Yes. >> Okay, so you're pretty far. >> Yeah, like I really, so he has this device called the cloud, which is like his little personal, uh, hoverboard, if a hoverboard were a circular beam of light that you could stand on, and it's actually a lot of fun to use. >> Yeah, they show that in the review and-- >> It is, it's very squirrely. It's because it has like a full cushion underneath it, cushion of air. And it's a little bit like I would imagine the hovercraft is like, only it's very, very quick and you can still turn really, really rapidly and it has, you know, all that good stuff and it has like a little jump and everything, so the cloud is a lot of fun to use. But I would agree with Arthur on the combat is that it is definitely sluggish. My problem with the combat is that I feel like it's entirely too straightforward most of the time. I'm just now getting in, as far as I've gotten into the game, I'm just now getting into some more interesting combat because they're, they're putting a couple enemy types in battle with me at the same time. And I like how they have the enemies that have flaws, they'll have like an icon over their head telling you that this enemy will self-destruct if you do a special move on it and this, but what they mean by self-destruct is you do, you beat down its health enough and then you can just circle and then you do a takedown. So any, any enemy that you can do a takedown on has an icon over their head and that icon represents that type of takedown. And so you can do a takedown where it's explosive where you take the guy's arm, shove it through his body and then you kind of like fire him like a cannon, like off of himself. It's strange. Well, I mean, you stab him through his own arm and then you sort of aim him ideally towards other robots and then we'll shove him off the arm and he'll take out other things. Yeah. And then there's, there's a takedown where you rip the guy's gun arm off of his body and use his gun arm like a turret for a little while and there's, there's a takedown where the guy will explode and stun all of the robots around him, you know. I think it was, it was like the best acquisition Namco's made in a long time, like publishing this game, like Namco's published some really fucking terrible games in the last year, man. And this is not a terrible game, by any means. I mean, I think it was just like serendipity that, that someone in Namco thought that this game might perform because basically it seems like they were just really desperately looking for a publisher for a while. Yeah, I can believe that because they burned a lot of publisher bridges just with how badly Heavenly Sword did. Honestly, if anything, it's like, the sad thing is I would have been more excited for enslaved farther back had it been published by someone else. It said that sounds. No, it doesn't sound sad, Namco. Because Namco's published like dead derights and like ever repeated offender. Namco developed dead derights too. I mean, that's an internal story. Yeah, it's just, I don't know, I feel like maybe I just, I'm afraid that that could harm it because like, for people like us who are in the know enough to know like, ah, Ninja Theory, oh yeah, we like their stuff, but other people might just see Namco. But I think, I think the average gamer out there doesn't keep you track of publishers. I don't think they really care. If they are know enough to know, oh, Namco, they probably know enough to think, oh, Ninja Theory. It's sort of like when you go to the movies and you see Universal Studios pop up or you see Columbia pop up, you kind of don't think anything about it. But to be fair. Unless you're a film buff. 20th century Fox appear before something, it sort of makes me cautious because that's a studio that's demonstrated a history of fucking with projects and during production and screwing up. Let's say again, film buff. Yeah, film buff. Not even necessarily film buff, just informed consumer. Yeah, but I would say that you would fall more into film buff than most people like, I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Like reading online, like you just hear things like, oh, when, when the director of Wolverine was offset, someone from Fox came in and all the sets repaint. But you're the type of person that reads about film stuff. Most people don't, you know. Most people are not that well informed about their media. They just, they know if they like X game or Y game and they might know that like, this game is made by the same people that made another game. But that's probably about as far as it goes for most people. Or specific people, like in the case of Christopher Nolan with Dark Knight. Right. Or, I mean, there are certain studios in movies and in games that have the cash it to just do anything and people, it will have people's attention like Trixar and Blizzard. Yeah. I'm curious to see how enslaved does. I feel like it'll do best in Europe for some reason. I, it's going to depend really heavily on word of mouth. Because when I was in, when I was at Gamescom, they're pushing that game pretty hard. Really? They were actually and Europress has been much more enthusiastic about that game. Yeah. And I think in part, because Ninja Theory is a Euro developer. Well, and it wasn't PS3 original game originally, you know, their last game was a PS3 exclusives. Yeah. And it's funny because when I was playing it, it reminded me of another European game and that's Beyond Good and Evil, like the staff combat feels kind of like Beyond Good and Evil staff combat actually. Which was only okay, but Beyond Good and Evil made up for that with the rest of it. Right. Which is sort of what enslaved does. You know, the combat's okay, but the rest of the game, really, I think more than makes up for it actually. It's the first game in a long time that I'm actually been excited to play. Like, I know like we find out about so many games all the time that like I see them and I see them throughout the development and eventually I'm like, eh, but enslaved was like the opposite of the way it normally goes. A lot of times it goes like I see a game early on and the more I see it, I'm like, it's like one of those games that when it first got announced, I was like, ah, game looks dumb. Yeah. And then the more and more I've seen it was like, oh, this world actually looks really cool and it's just really beautiful animation and it's kind of held a long way in the last four months because it wasn't kind of bad shit. It was. Yeah, I saw it at E3. I wasn't impressed. The impression I get from a lot of people's reviews and from enslaved is that this game is to a lot of people like their little brother, you know. Sure, he's not the best at like football or whatever, but he can, you know, whatever. He's cool. Let's have a hangout. It's just it's the most successful I've seen any game that I can think of with the possible exception of Mass Effect to be with story. Yeah. Yeah. It's really good with story. I think that's what I do think that that's Ninja Theory's strongest ability is their ability to tell story and be real compelling like because I was thinking while I was playing this that it actually reminded me a lot of uncharted and not necessarily in the gameplay aspect, but in the way that the story unfolds and the way that the characters interact with one another. I could see that when I was watching Arthur do a brief interaction, I was like, man, like just that brief interaction was like, I want, I want to play this. I feel like enslaved, it feels more like the action in the story feel more coherent because in enslaved, you kill like hundreds of guys. Yeah. And in uncharted, I mean, you kill hundreds of guys and slave you, I don't even know that you actually kill like a hundred robots and the entire time you're playing. Oh, I definitely more than a hundred, but yeah, it's it's not like it's definitely not like uncharted where, you know, you've murdered an entire civilization by the time you're done. It's been a long period of time without fighting anything. And when every fight is a problem, like even when you're powerful or when you're powerful or you know that you can beat it, it's still like, well, this is going to take some time. Yeah. Yeah, the enemies take some damage and like it's my problem with the enemies is that so far like the ones that are supposed to be the biggest problems or this kind of mini boss that they call a dog and the it's supposed to be really scary and really like, oh, fuck, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? No, it's just the method to take it down is absurdly easy. Like you fire a staff bolt, which stuns a robot and you can stun the you can stun the dog. Then you just walk up and beat on it. You can you can walk backwards like three feet, wait for it to start getting up from being stunned and just shoot another one. You don't even have to wait that long. Yeah. Second that it shakes it off. It's just like zap. Yeah. So basically it just spins the entire time on the ground stunned, stunned locked while you're beating on it. It's like the most boring fight in the game and it's supposed to be the scariest or one of the scariest. That's disappointing. Yeah. Later on there are other moments where the only time you really feel a sense of danger is never for yourself. It's always for trip. And I think that that's intentional. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I really do feel like because you know, after the first time you beat a dog trip comes out and she's all that was awesome. Right. And I'm like, no, it wasn't. That was like the most boring fight in the game so far. What was the big deal? The thing is though, I mean, like that's almost all the fights like the fights just aren't that interesting. Like you don't have that many options. You always win the same way. You can always win the same way, which is definitely a flaw, but I've like mixed it up myself just to make it more interesting for me. Like do the dodge move because you can do an attack right after the dodge, you know? And like, I'm gotten pretty good at the counters and I've like, I've just tried to mix up the abilities that are available to me. But the problem with the combat is you really don't have to mix anything up. You just have to get out of the way. Do a basic attack. Get out of the way. Do a basic attack. If they, if they blocker have shields, do a stun attack, you know, it's, it's really really basic. What about, uh, like the actual, like, cause you know, for me, it's like, for instance, it's an uncharted, at least the original one. The second one, not so much with the first one. The combat was always like, ah, combat, but then I would get to like the Tomb Raider exploration parts. And I always liked that. Is there like a good climbing and jumping? Is that really fun and? It's very simple. It's very Prince of Persia. It looks awesome, but there's never any danger that you're going to die until very near the game. No. Like there's no danger. I mean, or there's, it's very rare that there's any danger. But that's the thing with like, with, uh, it's not quite as, yeah, there's like Prince of Persia. You could still fall off a ledge. Like he would turn around and grab or whatever in this game. You can't fall off the ledges, um, but it's very Prince of Persia like in that you know exactly where you need to go. And as long as you press the X button, you're going to make the jump as long as you, uh, you know, there's no like missing jumps. There's no like jumping the wrong direction or anything like that. So it is very, very basic. Like the climbing, the climbing stuff, just there, there is in the sense of danger. That's kind of the thing with this whole game. I'm like, I, on the one hand, I'm thinking like, okay, well, maybe they just tried to make this game really accessible so that like, if you don't want complicated combat, you don't have to have complicated combat, but if you want to do it, then you can, you know, like the way that I've been trying to mix it up for myself. And that's kind of a tough judgment call for me because I can sort of see from a developer's perspective that they want anybody to be able to make it through the game. But do you, do you take it too far to the point to where the combat is just completely not interesting as I don't think that that's what it is simply because the combat isn't particularly satisfying, but it's also not very responsive. Right. That's true too. I mean, that's true. I like the combat and heavenly sword and that was, I felt like still pretty easy, but was still fun. Like I know that they know how to do it. I definitely felt at times in heavenly sword, like I was like, fuck these guys again, this is going to be a hard battle and I've never had that feeling in enslaved so far. I honestly think the thing that other developers should take away from enslaved is just the thing that Ninja Theory has done well is integrate the storytelling process with the game design process. And this is the clearest action, the clearest involvement in an action game I've ever seen of the game's writer being heavily involved from start to finish, like to the point where Alex Garland weekly was working with them to design levels around the story, like to help maintain pacing. Like this, even during the game itself, like there's awesome story pacing. There is, yeah. And like you said before Arthur, there's parts of the game where there's just not any combat. You're just running through a level and you would think that that would be kind of boring, but because the level is kind of telling a story around you, it's actually interesting. And it feels good because like you get the sense of this devastated post-apocalyptic world, but you know, since everything is overgrown and you know, with vegetation and everything, it's not the usual like gray, dry, brownness. It looks like like a life after people if you've ever seen that. It does what it is. And they do a pretty good job of not like fucking you in the eye socket with, wow, look at this stuff that used to be awesome and now it's fucked up. Right. I mean, it sounds like, you know, to people that are probably listening, it sounds like you guys are kind of down on it, but you both are enjoying it. Does it really sound like we're down on it? A little bit. I mean, the combat, you know, the combat's kind of boring. This is kind of boring. I just think that it's like, why should people play it? Why should people play it? Story. You should absolutely play it for the story. I mean, people hate the word experience and the slave is a good experience. It is a good experience. I want to buy it. It's like, you should buy it. This is a game that I think does deserve people's support. It's a company that I think deserves support, but just approach it with the knowledge that it's flawed and right, just know what to expect. I think you'll enjoy it more if you know what to expect. Yeah, definitely. That the combat is not particularly good and the platforming is for babies. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, there are certain parts where you can face danger. Sometimes handholds will collapse and later in the game, their platforming parts will kill you if you fuck them up or severely wound you, but I only died a couple of times playing this game. I've died twice and both times were because I ran too far away from trip and like I couldn't tell right away that I was like, oh shit, I'm too far away from her. I turned around and run back and he would die. I was like, that really sucked. How's the PS3 version treating you? Fine. I'm sure it's one of those things. If I put the 360 and PS3 version side by side, I would notice a difference, but since I've never seen the 360 version in an action, I've just been playing the PS3 version. I'm fine with it. It just don't do that. It's funny that we're talking about the story and stuff because I quite literally just now I've got a text message from my girlfriend where she said my mom loves to watch enslaved. That's just like when I was playing, like when we were playing Uncharted, I think I said this on the podcast a couple times like my non-gamer roommates would come down and watch us play because we were playing on the big TV downstairs. They would like get food and watch it like they were watching a movie and like the next day they'd be like, are you going to play more Uncharted? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Can you wait till I go get my food? So it's one of those things where even people who aren't gamers still love a good story. And I think I could, I mean, enslaved doesn't have replay value and so far as you're going to see something new the second time you play it, but you might want to pull it out again like just to, just like you might watch a movie again, which I've done with Heavenly Sword. Yes. I've not done that with Heavenly Sword. I haven't went either. But man, you guys definitely intrigued me. I really not. I really wanted it before but not really. I've noticed buzz around the office like a lot of people have been asking me if we have extra copies of enslaved. Good. It's worth it. I think people should buy it. Matt, have you been playing anything else? I made the, the grave fatal error of buying Pagle Knights on iPhone. Oh, was it on sale? For, yeah, it was on sale for like 67% off or something like that and more can be said about Pagle other than that's Pagle. I know. And like I made a grave error because now I can't stop playing. Yeah. Other than that, just a whole bunch more Minecraft. Like after, after complaining last week about not being able to find enough resources, I went online on the, the minepedia and it talks about how most of the resources are very close down to the bottom layer of the, of the level to the bedrock where you can't dig down any further. So I dug a five by five mineshaft in the giant open area, like the, the area where I built my tower and stuff on top of this mountain, like I've been hollowing it out and I've been like leaving this space for these columns so that it looks like giant, giant, like super tall columns supporting, supporting the ceiling. And so like I dug all the way down and found a, and like it was cool because I was digging straight down like this five by five block mineshaft placing torches kind of in a spiral on the way down in a ladder so I could get back up. And suddenly I, I popped through the floor and there's nothing underneath me. I was like, oh shit, I found an underground cave. And it was like, it was this whole cave complex that had like underground rivers and lava flows. And I found like all kinds of awesome resources and stuff. It was fun. I still don't understand this game to some extent. I don't think, are you, I thought you were always under attack by monsters. Are you, are you attacked by monsters or are you just mining a world? You mostly are just mining a world. I mean like there, it does generate monsters, but it only generates them in the dark. So like when you're digging a dungeon, if you place torches everywhere, you're not going to really run into any monsters. And like I've sort of like been treating this as a creative project. You know, it's like I really want to make like the more that I dig out a dungeon area, the more I get this picture in my head of how I want it to look. And so I've been like, I'm going to, I'm going to dig out all of these, all of these stone blocks and I'm going to design this room to look like this. And you know, I'm going to have, I kind of have this concept of a floating dungeon where I have all of the, where I have an enormous open space, supported by these stone columns. And then in between the stone columns are going to be bridges with rooms and stuff like that. So instead of a dungeon that's like in caves, it's going to be a dungeon that's like, you know, kind of floating in an open space. I can't play this game because there's no way I'd ever stop. That's the problem. That's why you should play. No, I have a problem job. That's the big problem. And see, like, I was at first, I was like, I'm going to do this all by hand, one brick at a time. And like, I have, like this last weekend, it's one of the few games that my, that I can actually play on my girlfriend's computer because it's such a slow piece of shit. And so I brought it up there and she was sleeping most of the weekend because of the medication she's on. And you didn't even care. And yeah, I was just like Minecraft the entire time. And I probably put in another good, like probably eight to 10 hours, just like mining out bricks. And I came back home and I found a tool which lets you just kind of like select bricks and change them into other bricks or like clear or delete them out or cut and paste and stuff like that. And so I've been cheating. I've been doing, I've been doing more of that because after a while I was just like, because my room is the underground area under this mountain, I've hollowed out so much of it that just to hollow down one more layer of bricks takes like two hours. And like, I have to go and constantly mine more iron so that I can make a whole ton of pickaxes because otherwise I'm using wooden pickaxes which take like twice as long to mine a brick and then because they break all of your tools break. And so it's like after a while I was like, I just can't devote the kind of time this would take. So I'm just going to design the dungeon like a, like with this application, treat it like a 3D level design program as opposed to hollowing it out by hand. But once though everything is hollowed out, then I'm going to build everything in between the columns by hand. I feel like there's a lesson to be learned here in Minecraft which is that we need to fucking start giving humans real pickaxes and set them up. It reminded me a bunch of fucking rock. You love it. I get it man. Jesus Christ. Did you guys see the kid who made a 16-bit computer in Minecraft? Yes. I saw that video. She was insane. It's insane. So one thing that you can do in Minecraft is there's, you can mine redstone and redstone has ability to transmit a signal. So the redstone turns into dust and you can sprinkle the dust on the side of a brick. And so then you have a redstone torch which works like an activation. And basically because you can do simple switches in this game, you can just look up this video on YouTube with this kid that did this, or this guy, I don't know if it's a kid. Oh, that sounds like a kid, but yeah, I mean, basically because you have on off, I mean, that's one and zero or zero one. He made an entire logic board. He made a 16-bit logic board in Minecraft and he apparently made it so that at some point he can add on RAM and he was even saying like, and I don't know anything about programming. So like, probably somebody out there is going to tell me that I'm using all the wrong terms and talking out of my ass, but he also, yes, but he also said that, you know, the plan would be that at some point you could actually run a compiler on his logic board in Minecraft. So that makes me wonder like, could you actually program a game in Minecraft that runs in Minecraft? I don't know. That's hella met a shit, man. I imagine it can be done. Yeah. But like, he was pointing out that like, the thing is that it's really, really slow, you know, and like he's, and he was saying like, there's things that I need to do to optimize it. Like I need to make the bridge, the distance on the bridge not so long because the red sand circuits, they only work over a certain distance and then you have to put in a repeater. And so like, if anything, it's like just, it's like a natural circuit, you know, like the longer it is and the more repeaters it has, the more it slows down the signal. And so it was funny because he was doing things like he would turn on a couple bits in one area and turn on a couple bits in another area to add like one plus two or two plus three or something like that. It's weird. Some ways when I hear people talk about Minecraft, I'm like, it doesn't really sound like a game. It just sounds like a program you get to use it in the, the creator even says that, you know, it's intended to be a sandbox. I mean, now that they've made all this money off of it, they're going to try to do more stuff with it, but it's mostly just supposed to be a sandbox. Right. It's like, there isn't a point necessarily. No, not really. No, it's just, it's, it's like, you know, having a bucket full of paints and an empty canvas go do something with it only, only because only I think because of the limitations provided by the game engine and the limited number of things that you can do, you know, limitations, how they inspire creativity, so like the, the limitations of the Minecraft universe inspire the kind of creativity that would, that would do stuff like what people have done with it. Right. Um, that's it for me. I saw a couple of European games that are small worth mentioning though. Yeah. This one called the first Templar. These are both published by Calypso, which does a lot of like German games. So most recently a game that they've done, which we talked about a lot of people like was Tropico. Oh, yeah. So the first Templar is actually the first like action adventure game ever from, uh, I can't think of it. I think that you say their name like Harry Mont or something like that, but basically they're, they're the company to Tropico. Man, I didn't know that that like, I remember Tropico. I just didn't even know that that company still existed. Right. So this company like that made Tropico, I mean, they've done like 20, some like 20 strategy games, but all they've ever done is like turn based in real time strategy. Really? So now this first game, the first Templar is like a third person, like fable style action RPG. Whoa, cool. You know, and have they done any strategy games that I know or has it all been like European releases? A lot of European releases. Maybe I'm not familiar enough with what they've done, you know, besides Tropico. Mm hmm. Um, but yeah, so they're doing this, this third person action adventure game where, you know, you get to place the Templars in, and in this game, unlike Assassin's Creed, they're not the bad guys. You know, they are the good guys. They're actually the ones who are being persecuted because this is during the time where the church was deciding to not repay the loans they took out from the Templars and so they wanted to murder them, um, and, uh, that's a bummer when that happens. Yeah. And so the whole thing is it's a third person cooperative action game. So there's always two of you, no matter where you go. So the whole point is that it's supposed to be, you know, anybody friends can jump in and out at any time. And it's kind of also has a little bit of a dragon age in the sense that you can switch back and forth in single player between the two characters. Oh, cool. They each have their own skill trees. They level up. You know, that being said, like those things sound really cool. The game is like super early still, like at this point, um, like I saw it in the Swiss come out in February, but when I saw it, I was like, man, this game seems like it's like more than a year away. Wow. Like, uh, it probably actually is more than a year away. Yeah, I just don't, I just don't see how come out in February, because at this point, everything from animations to like dialogue to, you know, just even basic graphical things just seem like really, really early. And that's the whole thing is that the game is this third person action game is actually being done in the engine they use for Tropico. Whoa. Like that, you know, way zoomed in straight, like it was zoomed out strategy game. Wow. So the game looks a little rough in some places too. They said they did it because it was cheap, you know, it's their own engine. And I get that, you know, if they can optimize it like over the course of a year and like really flesh things out, like right now they don't even have all the skill trees worked out and stuff, like I think it could be a pretty interesting, not a great, like I don't think the game will ever be great, like just looking at it now, you know, making a snap judgment. But like, I think it could be a fun game, especially a fun cooperative game, but right now it's just so rough and early that it's like, it just seems weird that they'd be showing me that in October and telling me it's coming out in February, it's just like no way. Yeah. But the other game I saw that was a lot cooler or at least more believable that it's coming out in February and pretty unique is this game called Dungeons, which has like the weakest name ever. Yeah. Dungeons. But the premise is basically you start in a grid and you dig out a dungeon zoomed out overhead and so unlike other games where, you know, you are a person invading a dungeon and this one you are the dungeon master and you're basically trying to make a dungeon for heroes to come in, which you know, there was that PSP game, what did I do to deserve this, my Lord, where you were digging out a dungeon to make it button this one. Well, there's also a dungeon maker. It has a really funny name. You know what I'm thinking of. I do, shit. Why can't I think of this? I had like two or three versions too and they were all like a sequel just came out. Yeah. No, you're talking about holding an invasion to privacy bad man. No. That's what he's talking about. And that's what I was saying. What did I do to deserve this, my Lord, there's a, that's like a PSP digging out the squares. This one's different. This is an overhead game. Dungeon keeper is the one I've done. Dungeon keeper. So I think he actually, I've never seen dungeon keeper, but he mentioned it has a similarity to dungeon keeper. Yeah. So you have a dungeon Lord and the whole premise is that you're trying to make a dungeon not just to kill heroes because you actually need to get soul points from heroes. And the way you get soul points is you have to make a dungeon that gives the heroes what they want out of the dungeon before you kill them. Oh, that's awesome. So like, so like, so like if the hero wants to find new spells and stuff, you need to build a dungeon with lots of bookshelves and that sort of thing because the whole point is you have to build up heroes desires. And then when you kill them and by kill them, I mean, you just incapacitate them because then the more close higher their desires were fulfilled, the more torturing you get out of them to get soul points to build up your dungeon. That's the whole point of winning a lot of times is to get your dungeon up to a certain prestige. So you're having to make workers using these soul points and the workers can dig out new whole like rooms and then you use that room and then you use soul points as well to populate your dungeon. So you'll drop a bookshelf or you'll drop a pile of gold they can loot, you'll drop a monster generator, you'll even drop things like light sources and mirrors that just make your bring up the prestige of your dungeon to make it attract more powerful heroes that all want different things. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And so on top of that, you can also go into like a third person behind over shoulder camera of playing your actual dungeon lord in your dungeon to do specific objectives like kill certain heroes or maybe even invade an opposing dungeon so that you can go in there and kill their dungeon lord. Yeah, this is very, very much so like dungeon keeper, but with the twist. Yeah. I mean, I didn't ever play dungeon. It just seemed like, like to me, he didn't ever having played dungeon keeper. I was like, oh, this is kind of like a an interesting little game. Like, I like the idea of first off being the evil guy, but second off that they don't want you to just like, what did I deserve this my lord, that PSP game? Really basic premise. Like, you know, you're just building a complex dungeon to kill heroes that come in. That's all you're trying to do. Yeah. And this one, you're like actually using heroes as a resource and more than just their body. You have to sit there and make sure that the monsters you build aren't too powerful that they won't just kill the heroes. You want the heroes to have time to explore the dungeons. It's almost like the, it's almost like the game is telling you to be a good game designer. Basically, yeah, you're trying to design a dungeon that the heroes will enjoy, but eventually they will get killed. Right. Like, but it's all about finding that right balance. Right. There's also desire to be hurt and fight hard monsters, but if you, and so you'll get their soul raised up like their meter, but if they fight too hard of monster that kills them, then they won't get it built up enough that they'll be worth very much. So you have to like really, yeah, basically plan out this really complex balance of like light heroes that would like monsters that will do enough damage to them, but still die to their type of attack, you know, to eventually come in there and fight them. That's really cool. I love the idea. That's just the thing that you expect out of like a European developer. That sort of thing just doesn't happen in America. Maybe is a downloadable game, but it would never be like a retail game. Right. Well, that's because we don't have a big enough, you know, like what people don't think of the PC market here is being big enough, you know. Right. And I mean, games like that, I could see that having a real heart. So yeah, States, but in Germany where that game is being made, I mean, that's like the type of shit they eat up. Sure. Totally. That's great. Yeah. Sounds like a ton of fun. Yeah. It just seemed like the type of game that I really want to check out, you know, and there's also another game for PC coming out that I just want to give a little shout out to because I never talked about it, but it's come here really soon. People should check it out. It's called the ball. And it's from. Yeah. I just got a download code for that. I saw that at PAX. Yeah. It's the people that made a killing floor, that six player PC co-op like zombie shooting game. I never played that. Yeah. It's really bad looking and stuff, but it's really fun and, but the ball is like a really good looking, I think it might be done in Unreal Engine 3. It is. It was one of the winners that was submitted to that game contest. Okay. Yeah. Like design a game in Unreal. In 3. Yeah. So it's like a really cool looking Unreal Engine 3 game. And it's a, you know, the whole premise is that you're moving a ball through these various environments and having to use all these various physics elements to get it through, but it's just got like such a cool look and those guys did such a great job with killing floor. But I would want more people to check this out when it gets close. Cool. It's definitely one thing. Move the ball. Like the ball is, it's a big metal glass sphere thing. Yeah. And when you're moving it, it takes up your whole screen. So it's like when you go up to it and you start moving it, it becomes partially transparent. So you're like all the, like it has the metal frame, then it has like all the glass and tiles. I don't know exactly what all they are. Like inside the metal frame, all those kind of become transparent when you get close to it so that you can still see where you're rolling it. It's a, it's a nice little touch. Yeah. I just think that that could be like a really cool PC only like steam game that a lot of people are going to ignore. Yeah. And speaking of which people have written in a lot and tweeted to me about like, have you checked out amnesia? Have you checked out amnesia? Yes. Amnesia is a fantastic core game. I have not had enough time to play it. But that being said, like there are very few games like what the people that put out those games do and it is like one of the best horror games on any. Yeah. Wow. I haven't even heard of it. I don't know. It's from the same people that did a penumbra, which I talked about in past, you know, it's super physics based where you move the mouse and that's actually like you pushing the mouse forward or pulling the mouse back is actually, you know, closing and opening doors for open genres. For the no-vent falcon. Yeah. Originally it was like supposed to be like a game that was going to, you know, be all about the no-vent falcon that forced feedback pushing and pulling controller. Oh, right. It came out that they were pushing it like two years ago. I remember that one. But yeah. So it's just, it's just this really good game. And the whole point is amnesia is just like the second penumbra game is you can't defend yourself at all. There's no fighting whatsoever. So anytime it's always about stealth and how you can use complex physics puzzles to get past a lot of things. Cool. You know, and it does a really great job of making the scariest things, the things that you don't see rather than the things you see, you know. So that's, that is a really cool, Oregon people are right. So there's our, there's our PCSPC talk that we had for a few minutes there. Not enough of that around these days. In my opinion. Beyond that, I haven't played much, I played a ton of Monkey Island special edition too. Cool. Which is really good. Yeah. But fuck me, man. I just forgot how hard those games are. Like they really are so nonsensical. They are ridiculous. It's like fun to go back, but if they released a game like that now brand new, I'd be kind of pissed. Yeah. Because like I, it's nice. At least if it didn't have a hint. The hint system, I use the hints like, like crazy, like I don't understand how people back in the day before facts and everything beat these games. I remember playing those games back in the day and I remember that was part of the fun was that it was like, I don't know, it was because I was like in the sixth grade and had an unlimited time, but it was like, I would literally wander around in the same areas of the game for three and four hours and finally figure out one solution. And that would cascade into maybe two or three more and then it gets stuck again for like another three to four hours. Eventually you sort of find your way into their logic. I think. Yes. No. I mean, I'm kind of dumb, especially back then. So like totally. I never really ran into their logic that much. I always like ran into walls occasionally, occasionally be like, oh, yeah, I know what they want me to do. This thing's kind of like glue and I'm supposed to use something that's glue like, but there are other times that I'm just like, well, I know I have something to do with this. I'm going to sit here and combine everything I have in my box. And I don't know. All right. It totally happens. But yeah, that is a, I mean, it's funny because you know what you were talking about Paggle and I was talking about this and both of which came up because they were on sale for iPhone. Yeah. Yeah. So. Uh, Tyler. Uh, it's been rockin's five a lot, you know, it's playing that a lot more. Um, man, I'm kind of hoping that they'll do a nice little bug update or something. I hope so. I'm sure they will. It's only been out for like a couple of weeks. Yeah. But I'm getting frustrated with Civ because I, like I've said before, I like to play on the larger maps and the later in the game, and later in the game, I'm having problems. I feel like every single turn I risk a crash because I do crash and it's corrupted my save games a couple of times, whether they were on Steam Cloud or not. It's really annoying to like, and the turns take so frickin long when you have like 12 civilizations. Yeah. What are you plus? Are you rocking now? The same one I was like two and a half years ago, a, a shit, I can't even record. Yeah. I think it was a core to duo. Yeah. To give you a clear on mine, you know, when it gets later into the game and there are a lot of cities and a lot of civilizations, uh, and then it's the computers turned to act man. It takes a long time. I mean, I run a quad core at like three gigahertz and it still takes forever. It's crazy. And so I don't know if that's something that could be fixed in a patch or not, but I'm sure it can be optimized more than it has been. Yeah. I mean, there's still some like visual glitches, like do you guys notice like when you load a game, like you almost have to like zoom in on every tile for it to like load the highest texture? Well, I think that's just because it's slowly loading the entire map as opposed to, I mean, right. Yeah, but it doesn't seem to load the textures unless you actually scroll over that part. Like if I, if I just stood in one section of the world and then five minutes later went over here, it would still be like, well, I've noticed that I had to turn down the detail because what would happen is it would, it would unload like every, all of the graphics like when it would go to the, when it would go to the enemy turn, like let's say that the camera suddenly has to zip over really far on the map to show a ship fighting a barbarian or something like that. Like the battle would be over before any of the graphics have drawn in other than like resource icons, you know, right. So it's just like it's, it's, it's strange to me because I've been so used to my PC just like outperforming all of my expectations because everything is almost everything is multi platform these days. So most of the stuff I play on PC has been optimized for console, which means it plays great on my PC, but Civ 5 is a PC game to the core. Exactly. And so it's like, Civ 5 is like, Hey, guess what, fucker your PC is two years old. I'm like, Oh, right. Does a, and is it just fear to, or does the great wall disappear when you build it? It doesn't disappear. It slowly gets bigger. For me, when I build it, like, like it shows the construction phase and then when I get the message that it's done, it's like not there. I never see the great wall either, but I think that maybe it's just a me thing because I've seen Arthur's game and Arthur definitely had the great wall. It has definitely expanded to my borders. Like as I branch out further and further, it, it grows around my city. I wonder if it takes a lot of gold to do it. It takes a lot of gold to build the great, you only one person can build the great wall. Mm hmm. There's wonders are a single civilization only thing, right? Yeah. And maybe the kind of thing, because I've done this a couple of times where I thought I built a wonder, but it was really somebody else had built the wonder and because it'll still tell you in your city, production finished, even if somebody else built it for us. Maybe that's what happened. Because it'll send you a brief message. Like, you know, someone else finished it, you've been converted into this much gold. But it doesn't, it never says now you don't get to do it. Yeah. Right. And it shouldn't say production finished when somebody builds a wonder before you. It should say production. Someone built him before you. Yeah. It should say production. Construction is very old. Yeah. Construction canceled or something like that. Yeah. I mean, there's, I mean, there's, there's just a bunch of like little nitpicky things like that. Like, you know, like, like the leaders, it's, it's kind of weird that like the Aztec leader is definitely the most interesting to watch and all, I mean, cause he's got like fire going on and it's like rippling the screen, but, and but then, you know, you talk to like the, the Russian, um, the. Catherine agreed. Yeah. Catherine, the great. She's got boobies. She just stands completely still. Like she has like the least animation out of all that kind of corset and see how much you move around. Right. Yeah. But your tits are pretty cool. Yeah. I know. It's just, it just seems like even the leaders, they're inconsistent in their like level of flash. I don't know. I mean, it's true. There's like certain ones that you can never tell if they're upset or happy or anything. They're always just got the same face on. I mean, let's have a minute of real talk. Like you guys have been playing Civ 4 after years of patches had happened. Right. I know. Yeah. Which is, to me, it's going to be interesting to see how a, how a Civ game is at the beginning. Yeah. No, cause I did play Civ 4 right when it first came out and back in the day, it totally destroyed my PC when I was playing it, like I was really happy, you know, as I would upgrade through the years, I would reinstall Civ 4 and be like, oh, it plays so much better than it did on my last PC, you know, and it's like there, it's, that's just the way PC games work is they always push the hardware to the absolute limit. There's like no other way for them to make a PC game practice. Yeah. Maybe they'll optimize it through patches. I'm sure they're really insane. I haven't tried to mod yet. Have you guys even though it's like built in? I've looked for mods. I kind of don't understand man. Give it time. Find them. Yeah. I came out on what? The 21st. Yeah. And like for. Oh, I'll be playing it. It'll have to give it down. It'll be with me. It'll have a lot of mods sooner rather than later, I would think. Yeah. Maybe, maybe if one of our civilization contest winners or is a good enough civilization, maybe the developers will catch one of it and put it in a patch later. Well, there's no reason that anybody can't, you can make them make any kind of model. That's true. Yeah. Fuck yeah. We can make a rebel. I film patch mod. Whatever. Why would you do that? I'm a PC new. A Scientologist. A Scientologist. I don't give any. That was already somebody's submission. Yeah. That's the money I did. This was the Scientology civilization. Is there the church of Latter-day Saints? There's lots of options that's cool. They have the Boy Scouts. Is there one of their units? Speaking of which, we'll be announcing the Halo winners at the end of this episode, right? I think so. Yeah. I'm excited for it. Yeah. Arthur. I played a lot of Dead Rising 2 over the weekend actually. I started that, but I haven't played much yet. What do you think? I think that they made enough minor usability changes to make it a significantly more playable game than the last one. Good. Oh, cool. That's quite to hear that. Really good news. Like, first off, you do not have to babysit survivors the entire time anymore. Like you can totally run ahead and they will generally make their way to you and you'll know when they get caught, but they're good at pushing zombies out of the way or defending themselves typically. And if they can't, then typically you can carry them. Cool. The one thing I saw that seemed annoying is if they get surrounded and they're in trouble and you go in swinging, will you fucking kill them? You can definitely hit them with weapons, but I noticed that just walking into a zombie that's got someone from behind seems like enough to break their grit. But yeah, it is really annoying when I'm swinging the baseball bat with nails and they're behind me and somehow my swing catches them. And I'm not sure how anyone thought that that was okay, but it's in there. But it's not Japan. It's a fucking Canadian developer. Canada. Everyone in that game sounds Canadian. I think we talked about that last week, but if you're playing like 10 hours, like hearing Chuck talk, that's fine, it didn't make that much noise. I spilled soda on the laptop tonight, so I can't really criticize you because the mic stands. Yeah, you won't hear it in the final edit, but we, like about half an hour ago, Arthur spilled soda everywhere. Moving on. Playing it for 10 hours, you definitely like, man, Chuck sounds like he's from Canada. But it's just much more playable than the last one. Psychos are still dumb, like they're just stupid, bullshit encounters that are unfairly difficult until you find out a specific way to exploit them because they don't follow- I try to get their AI to run into a corner or something. Right. Or just like no, like one psycho's dude in a bathroom, like you might be going to save your game. What is a psycho? A psycho are the humans that you fight. Oh. Yeah, they're bosses. Those were always the most annoying parts of Dead Rising. Yeah. I remember fighting a couple. Like the dudes in the Jeep. Yeah, it made me cool. Or infamous in Dead Rising for how fucking annoying they are. Dude, I fucking hated those guys. But the only time I've really died is fighting psychos. Sure. Oh, yeah. Because the zombies are basically harmless. Mm. I mean, I definitely take zombie hits, but you usually can find food if you need to. Right. But yeah, it's much more playable. And it's got that sort of RPG, like Western RPG slash Oblivion style thing, where it's always like, well, I'll just do one more case. Mm. Like I'll just do one more like little side quest. Oh wait, I've got time. Like all this time before my next case starts, I better do all these side quests. Mm. Have you had any problem with time management in the game? I've had some real close calls. I've had one time where I ran out of time, right as I was getting into the duct that leads to the safer-- Oh, bummer. I'm really pissed at me. I'm really pissed at me. No, ran out of time to be at the main room for the next section of case to start. Oh. So it failed me. It failed the entire game. Wow. Yeah. So I mean, like, so for you who's played more of it than I have, does that time management stuff add anything to the game for you? Do you feel like it would be a better or worse game without it? I mean, I guess it adds tension, but I don't think that it's particularly good tension. It's not like exciting tension. It's like, god damn it, I've got to get back to this room tension. Yeah, it's the kind of frustration-- for me, it's the kind of frustration that I feel in real life when I'm late to get to an appointment. Right. And I don't want to juggle a bunch of shit. Yeah. I don't want that when I'm playing the game. Yeah, it doesn't really build good tension, but there-- I mean, you do have an impetus to finish missions and I don't know how it would work without it. Like, I'm not sure if it would be fun, but it doesn't seem like a big deal breaker right now. I would like more time to explore them all, but I feel like I'm always doing something. I'm just not sure how far I am. Gotcha. It runs pretty well on PC. That's what I'm playing it on. Yeah. I played on PC too. It runs great. It definitely runs a hell of a lot better than the console versions do. And the PC one has achievements, although it's really playing havoc with my gamer profile. What do you mean? Like, it won't always show Dead Rising 2 as a recently played game. It might take a few hours for it to show up and sometimes my achievements don't show up on my Xbox. Yeah. The games for Windows Live stuff is not integrated well with the rest of your gamer profiles. I mean, it is. It seems like it's been lagging like crazy. That's what I'm saying is that's the way it's always been. It wasn't that way when I played Dawn of War 2. It was that way when I played Oblivion. No. They're not oblivion. Fallout. I mean, maybe it's a game by game thing, but I don't know. It does seem like it's easy for people to join your game on games for Windows Live. I definitely had messages from people trying to join my game as I was playing. And I just saw like, random, who the fuck is that that's trying to page me? And it's like, oh, they want to join my game. I thought this was private, but I'm enjoying it. I want to play more, but I haven't had a chance. I played about an hour of Castlevania yesterday. Yeah. Any good? I liked what I played at 83. Like I've been interested. I've been cautiously optimistic about Castlevania. It runs not that well. And at times, that's fine because we've talked before about framerate and how it can affect how believable something looks. Like I know that they're these hardcore people that are just 60 frames a second or nothing. Right. But I'm getting more and more often that it seems like games are animated with a 30 frames per second budget in mind. Yeah. And when they go above that, that it looks weird, like I'm playing a review game right now on all three platforms and it looks weird on PC at 60 frames a second, it looks jerky. And I think that actually happens a lot. I mean, especially if you're kind of a video and film buff, you know, and like you like seeing movies running at 24 frames and then you see a game running at 60 frames and things just, yeah, they do look kind of weird. Well, it's not just that, but framerate can definitely help evoke a certain sense of scale, a sense of scale that's broken at a higher frame rate. It's like everything is shot of miniature in a game. And when the frame rate is lower, it looks slower and more epic and bigger than it does when it runs at 60 frames a second because then it just looks like a little puff of flame on a model set. But anyway, Castlevania does not run very well. Particularly on Xbox 360, I've heard forum goers say the PS3 version runs better. I'm not saying-- You heard a forum goers say that. They call you up. I haven't played the PS3 version except a D3 and it E3, the 360 version ran better than the PS3 version. I'm not sure why that is. Did you hear what the forum goers said about that? No, because most of them will go to E3. Smartass. It is-- the frame rate actually affects how you have to play it. You have to sort of anticipate doing things instead of just playing off the cuff and expecting that you'll be able to dodge right like a second before you need to. And that's a little weird. Yeah. Some of the platforming is a little weird. It's a very pretty game in spots. It's the pretty laggy combat game week. Pretty much, really. I actually enslaved grabbed me much more. Well, yeah, because the story is at least interesting. The story in Castlevania doesn't look interesting at all. It never is. It's just taken so long so far to get started that I'm not sure if it is or not. Yeah, I just get the impression it's super cliched. Yeah. Like, not even like cool cliched, like not even cleverly. It's just, hey, Patrick Stewart, isn't that cool? Stuff and things. So, uh... Patrick Stewart is a voice in there. Yes. He's a narrator and a larger character in there somewhere. I did not know. But, uh... But I mean, I'm hoping to play more soon. Yeah. Cool. And, uh... I think that's it. Ah! Ah! Ah! Exactly. All right. We'll take a break and then we'll come back with letters and talk about Halo Winter. So, we're going to start with reading our favorite of the Halo pitches and then as a council, we're going to vote on who wins and who gets second place. Like a Jedi council? Uh, so here's the first letter. The first one's from John. It says, uh... All right. This is Halo Pitch. You are Sadie. You do not have any weapons. Your only companion is the Omniscient AI. You must escape Numa and Basa. Like Dreamfall or Heavy Rain. But Halo. So... He means a superintendent? Yeah. I think he means like a superintendent. I, you know, like the... I think the superintendent already has the one girl that he's helping out. Well yeah, that's Sadie. Yeah. But, uh... Oh, that was Sadie. Yeah. So, he's saying you are that character, Sadie. Oh, right. He's saying the game based on her story. Right. Oh, okay. But he's saying like an adventure game, like Dreamfall. And I... It's super cool. I'd also say like maybe like that Xbox Live game that just came out the hydrophobia or you kind of use different sort of environmental... Well, the reason why I liked this one. This suggestion was because, or this game idea was because I always think that the AI stories that Halo has done have often been some of the most interesting, you know? Like... Oh, here's your cat being annoying. Yes, she is. She's rather skilled at that this evening. So the... like, you know, when they did the I Love Bees thing and anytime that they do this sort of AI metaphysical kind of stuff in Halo, it's the stuff that's the most interesting to me. So I really like the idea of that one. I like the idea too of what you're saying, Tyler, taking a step further about it being like hydrophobia. Because hydrophobia takes place on a ship that's all falling apart and if this was taking place in the city during attack, you get of all these cool set pieces in the background of like covenant killing people and stuff while she's like sitting or trying to figure out a puzzle or timed things where like guys are coming and she has to get in. All right, that one we developed into a cooler idea. He had a good elevator pitch though, that was a good elevator pitch. The next one's from Nathan. He says, "My Halo game would be Halo, first contact. Don't call it that. Fuck." Star Wars for public commando style squad based FPS. The setting would include the event from humanity's first contact with the covenant on harvest and the subsequent battles that took place. It would encompass action on multiple planets as the covenant discovered human settlements and attack them. This is essentially the beginning of the human covenant war and would be the start of a new trilogy. I envision the player as a Spartan who is in the leadership role of the squad. Squad members could be ODSTs and like Republic Commando, they would all have individual specialities. For example, sniper, demolition, specialist, medic, etc. You would be able to issue context sensitive orders to your squad, although I think the system could be made more interesting and complex than Star Wars Republic Commandos. The game would include the typical Halo shield and health pack system, however I would give the medic character the ability to revive downed squad mates. I would keep Halo's vehicular segments and would expand upon the space combat section and reach. Perhaps as players traveled from planet to planet, they would have to engage covenant forces in orbit. Of course, as an in-halo game multiplayer would be a significant part, the campaign would feature a four-player drop-in drop-out co-op. It would also contain the familiar Halo competitive multiplayer modes. In addition, it could also feature more tactical, rainbow-six-style squad-based modes. This one is like Halo Dreams. It totally touches on a theme that we actually got a lot of entries from, where I think probably three or four times Republic Commando was brought up. People really want a tactical squad-based shooter, or at least our listeners want a tactical squad-based shooter set in the Halo universe. I think we've said this before, amongst ourselves, like, "Man, I'm running around with my squad here in reach and I wish I could go order them to do stuff." Republic Commando was a lot of fun. When we did that game club on Republic Commando, it really made me appreciate that style of gameplay. Which guy was this? That was Nathan. That was Nathan. The next one's from -- well, I'm just going to -- I don't want to mangle his first name, so I'm just going to read his last name. His name is Ahmed, and he says, "Okay, Halo 4, Master Chief, Fat Penis, Adventures in Space." So he says, "Okay, so really what it is, though, is the story would consist of Master Chief crash landing on a harsh robotic planet where love is nothing but a calculation. The female robots, yes, robots have a gender on this planet, would be intrigued by his fleshy manhood and would teach him to love like only organic being -- oh, wait, hold on. Okay, never mind. That was his joke. That was his joke. Okay, sorry. Good. At the end of Halo 3, we see the ship that Master Chief and Cortana are stranded on, floating ship in from a strange planet. As a side note, the planet reminded me of Cybertron for a second. Okay, the planet they eventually crash land on is completely artificial in nature. There's no organic life. The originator of all artificial life on this planet is a rogue, guilty spark that has escaped the forerunners control thousands of years ago. This guilty spark used what power he had at the time of escape to create a single being on this new planet. This being, however, was created without the knowledge of the halos of the forerunners. So the course of thousands of years, artificial life evolved on the planet to eventually create what we see at the end of Halo 3. This isn't evident to you at the start of the game and is revealed to you as you progress through the story. A giant ship. I'm just going to slow you down because like he goes -- like his is seriously like a novels worth of explanation about how this game would work and how the universe would work and that there's like a council of robots that they first accept him because they see him in his Mjolnir armor and are like, "Oh, you're a robot too." And then he takes off his helmet at some point and then that creates a divide amongst the robots about people that want to kill him and robots that want to kill him and robots that want him to still remain as part of them and this giant civil war ensues or whatever. Kind of all that other stuff is irrelevant. I just like this particular entry because I like the idea of it's still tied in with the Halo universe, and it's the guilty spark and stuff like that, and again, it kind of addresses this idea of forerunner artificial intelligence. Are we going to speak at all about the likelihood of whether or not these would happen? No, I just thought -- I think it should be whatever idea is the coolest. Yeah. Because I mean, I would just say that it's going to be a while before Microsoft is willing to take Halo past Halo 3 as I'm sure. Oh yeah, none of that. This is all. Yeah. None of these would happen. And like the -- I actually thought we'd get a lot more people just trying to be funny because we did say that funny ones could win here. Right, yeah. Most people took it pretty seriously. Yeah. And like, you know, I thought this one was -- No, that one is cool. I like the idea of a rogue guilty spark. Totally. And he basically says it would still be first person Halo shooter or whatever, it would just have these different story elements to it. Different potential planets and different enemies that we've never fought in a Halo game. Right. Yeah. All right. It would sort of make it not Halo. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Halo is still about the whole 4Runner technology and this other stuff outside the Covenant as well. Yeah. And the 4Runner stuff came up a lot too. Like there was lots of people that wanted to know more about that. Want to know more 4Runner stuff. Like some people were suggesting prequels and things like that. I think there's even an entry in here about that. But anyway. So the next one is from Matt, and he says, "Controlling Master Chief, you'd have command of the Marine forces on some planet trying to rebel against the Covenant who were in the final stages of glassing. So if the end objective is to destroy the Covenant battle cruiser, then from the start you'd have the ability to start to go in and try to destroy it. But your team would be utterly decimated. Or you could spend time doing side missions in an open world like destroying A guns. So in the final battle, your spaceships had a better chance of surviving." So he wants to make it red faction? Yeah. These side missions would be carried out in first person perspective. And really, it's what you've been doing in games like Reach Noty's T. But you'd actually be changing gameplay later on from them. Most importantly, though, there'd be a finite number of side missions, maybe 20 to 40, to make sure these missions were meaningful, unlike the saboteur that made it so every free play of location you blew up had little effect because there were so many of them. After five or ten missions completed, there would have to be some kind of disadvantage to make you think about risking the final battle already, like adding wandering scarves to the map or something. Of course, there'd be a time limit, but not something incredibly overbearing like Dead Rising. I love that. Of course, there'd be a time limit. Like, why? Well, I guess he's thinking, you know, if they're glassing, they're building towards a climax. Yeah. The glassing. Yeah. You know, and you can try and engage them at different points. I like the idea of a non-linear thing, the replayability is a certain aspect. But in that point, I don't see why you'd need to be Master Chief. Right. Yeah. I picked this one because it really got to this whole idea of a battlefield that I really want in Halo. Like I love all of their individual pieces. And I want just a huge world and like to have those consequences where you go and maybe you're fighting on the, you know, on the east side. So because you came from the east flank, you have, I don't know, some kind of upper advantage. You know, who knows? Yeah. And you got the sense of like more of a sense of an actual war going on and reach than we have in any other one. Yes. Yeah. And this kind of like sounds like, you know, sounds like Matt wants to take that to kind of the next level. Right. I'm not hearing anyone explore what I would like to see, which is something further back in the Covenant, as opposed to the four routes. Well, Matthew says, I have been saying this for a while. The next Halo game needs to be based on the Arbiter. Little's known about his past and it would be fun to play a campaign fully dedicated to the other side of the war. I think we do know about his past. Well, but I think he's saying like other arbiters and stuff. I haven't read the books. But I think there has been little to no light shed on his character. Of course. But I think he's saying not only just as him as the Arbiter maybe as like before when he was like a commander. Right. Of course, this game would ideally be set before Halo 2 and focused on the Arbiter's coming to ranks and you could get a feel for the inevitable civil war between the elites and brutes. So he wants to know more about that side of it. I feel like Halo 2 was that game already. What I mean is more hundreds of years or thousands of years before Halo when the same Gelly were at war with the Covenant. Right. But then would that be a Halo game still? What makes it a Halo game? I mean, it would take place in the same reality. We'll see. But then how is that any different than like the guilty spark rogue one with like 400 technology. To me, I like this one too because when I play Halo 2, I really liked the Arbiter's character, like his lines and his dialogue. I felt like there was a certain level of like chivalry. He's the most interesting character in a Halo game. And what I think could be really cool about going through his story is it might not fit canon, but you could make it like because the Covenant basically would go to alien planets, beat them into submission and when they were about to be killed, say you got to join our Covenant or we'll kill you, you know, we'll destroy your whole race. That's how they picked up the grunts, the jackals, you know, everyone. So this game could kind of be you recruiting the Covenant forces. You know, and there was somebody who made an entry now that I think about that that we didn't save. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why, but there was somebody who was like saying like, you start out as a grunt. Yeah. Yeah, I read that one too. Yeah. And then at the end of being a grunt, basically you you die, but then like the next chapter is you playing as a jackal and then at the end of that you die and then the next one you play like is, you know, an elite or a brood or whatever. So it's like, you go through basically the entire, the entire Covenant, the entire Covenant, like playing as different characters. Right. And that's a pretty good idea. I think the Covenant are interesting when you read the little bits about him, you learn the books and stuff. They are cool. Yeah. All right. So this one is, the next one is based on a book, which is the only one both Arthur and I have read. Um, Christian, he says, uh, okay. So blue team used to be master chief's team of Spartan twos. They were separated from him, but actually survived the destruction reach in the end of ghost of Onyx. They wind up inside a forerunner created Dyson sphere, which supposed to serve as a safe haven from the firing of the halos. So he says, I think it would be awesome to play as Kelly, the member of blue team who was the closest to master chief. I don't think it was master chief. It was a different Spartan. Wasn't it? Arthur? It was like a different Spartan. Kelly and master chief have a history. Oh, okay. Yeah. She's supposed to be the quickest of the Spartans, so she could have a really fast sprint ability. The game would focus on exploration as blue team tries to solve the mystery of the Dyson sphere. They could run into actual living forerunners. Um, yeah, I know it's, he says, I know it's detailed and super nerdy answer, but instead of shorting something short and funny, I thought I would just be honest. I think that that's a cool idea too. The only problem is that there's so much story that goes on the ghost of Onyx that like no one outside of people like me and Arthur would have any idea what was going on. But while we're exploring Halo dreams, it is a cool idea. Right. And I love the idea of like the, the, the forerunner Dyson sphere, because that was the other theme that we got, you know, like I said earlier was, you know, all the people wanting to know more about the forerunners. And I thought that this particular entry, I thought he did a good job of, uh, you know, doing a forerunner themed Halo game without it, without it feeling like, you know, like forced or whatever. Sure. Yeah. I don't know if that's the right term. But you know, the, and plus Dyson spheres are just cool. Thank you, Matt. Well, and I mean, it'd be a really cool way for you to actually run into living forerunners in the time period of the Halo games because it's like they built the Dyson sphere so they could set off the halos while protecting themselves inside the Dyson sphere. You know, I think the thing I've said about, uh, now that Bungie is done with Halo is we're never going to see a solid connection made between marathon and Halo. Yeah, which is there. It was always supposed to be there until Microsoft bought Bungie. Well, it's not just that. I mean, it's, it was always supposed to be there until Bungie spun off from Microsoft. Because it used to be that Bungie owned the IP from Marathon and Halo and Microsoft owned Bungie. But now Bungie owns the IP for Marathon and Microsoft owns the IP for Halo. Maybe someday they can work together. They're going to be too busy making an MMO that totally fails. All right. We have two more. So Casey says, uh, his basically is an online class based shooter that features similar gameplay mechanics to battlefield bad company. Think about awesome would be to have massive Spartan versus Covenant 64, 64, 128 battles with all the awesome Halo vehicles included and of course, destructible environments. But this game could even top battlefield in big battle up against department by allowing players to take some part of the battle up into space. Um, basically, then he just says, think of awesome would be, man, I don't feel like that would work. It'd be really hard. It couldn't look anything like Halo. It's not that so much as the Halo dynamic is very much about powerful units against one another, like in close combat. And when you have that many people fighting that many people, it's difficult to have units that powerful. It's true. But I mean, like, you know, since we're, since we're like out on a limb and thinking like, you know, what, what could our dream game be? That's right. But I thought we were going on plausibility and interest and like whether or not it would work. Not, not as a cool game, but as a game, what's the coolest idea, you know, I'm not necessarily going on. Like, let's actually pitch equality, you know, it's just whatever, whatever seems the coolest. Cool factor. The it. I mean, it's, I could see it, but it would have to, it would have to be more like, uh, like people participating in a big battle, but they couldn't all actually fight each other at any given time because then like the Halo, it really is about like one on one and two on two encounters, smaller encounters. If that were all taking place as part of a big battlefield otherwise, it wouldn't feel like Halo if it was just like 30 of us lined up shooting at each other. Yeah. But it, but is that really, uh, is that really like so far off from the Halo universe? I mean, like we talked about one that's basically an adventure game idea too. True. I guess you're right. You know, so it makes me wonder how far challenging. What it means to be a Halo game. Yeah, exactly. Totally. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, I was hoping we would get a lot more genre like genre, yeah. Yeah. Halo Tower defense or something. I, I mean, I want to see an action adventure game of like the, uh, like the Covenant Wars, like the war, not the Covenant Wars that happened, but like the wars that like founded the Covenant like between the brutes and the elites. Yeah. That could be an action adventure game. Yeah, it really could be like a god of war. One of the other ideas that we, that we, that was in there as well was like somebody was saying, you know, you, you play as one of the Covenant. You play as one of the forerunners. Oh yeah. In fact, I think that was one that we actually starred here, didn't we? Maybe. Uh, it's actually the last one. Yeah. The last one. Okay. Gavin, who says the Master Chief lands on a planet seen in the legendary ending of Halo 3. He finds a library of sorts. This is a foreigner library where you experience forerunner history by playing as a soldier in the war against the flood. You should be able to play in first person as a Halo game should. Also included should be space combat in the scale, thousands of ships battling to save primitive races and installations, perhaps give more light into where the flood came from, extra galactic, et cetera, the field of the game would most likely be like reach and that you know how it's going to end and you have to change the, and you have to get a change to see the stories about it. Yeah, that sounds cool. Reading history and that's how you're experiencing it is like Cortana and Master Chief. You mean like Dragon Age too, kind of? Yeah. Someone reading over a story and you experiencing a first person, that could be really cool. I mean, it's like everyone wants to know more about Halo. Yeah. Well because the games have been so bad it really delving into the story of the universe. So, alright, people have a clear, clear favorites in there. Surprisingly, I am really liking that one guy's adventure game thing with Sadie, especially realizing who Sadie is now from all those tapes in OTST. That is really cool. I've heard the end of her story. Me either. Me either. Me either. She's finding the tapes. I was trying to do it before Reach came out, but then I got sidetracked and then Reach came out. Did we read, did we read Cory's? Oh, no because it wasn't starred. Oh, I thought, sorry, I thought we just started. Maybe I missed, maybe I started the wrong one. Do you want me to read Cory's? Yeah, if we can. Okay. So, the next game would detail the original civilization that built the halos, and the conflicts with the Flood that took place over a hundred thousand years before the events of Halo. It would be called Halo 4Runner, it would be a first person adventure title in the vein of something like Missed Meats Condemned Criminal Origens. The game would start off with you playing Origin, sorry. The game would start off with you playing the character Dydact, who is a forerunner living on one of the peaceful civilizations. Did you read this? I felt like you read this. You know, Matt wanted us to tell us about this, that he named you guy. When your world is attacked by flood in the grave of mine, there would be lots of horror elements involved as you see in your friends and family gruesomely turned into flood zombies. As the game goes on, you would fight in various battles with the flood, but the focus would not be on shooting, rather using your mind to solve puzzles, your way to get you through conflicts. However, if the fuckers at Microsoft don't stop making money, it will probably evolve forerunner weapons like the Sentinel Beam to shoot your way through walls of enemies in typical Halo fashion. As the game goes on, you will encounter humans in the early caveman incarnations, as well as St. Gelly's, Elites, Angoy Grunts, Kigyar, Jackals, and Girahanei Brutes before they were part of the Covenant. You and your lover, known only as the Librarian, will work through various levels on these species different homeworlds to index all the creatures to be saved from the flood. Towards the end of the game, you would wind up on the Halo from Halo combat evolved, and it all would culminate in the control room where the fifth level of combat evolved assaults in the control room, in the dramatic final moment you would commit suicide and genocide on your race by activating the rings to save all the species. I feel like you read this first. No, we talked about it during the break. Yeah, that one is elaborate, and this guy knows the shit. He used the proper name for the Covenant species. So that's a really cool concept, too, I think. As least as far as the game's story goes, it doesn't have a whole lot of gameplay in there. He's sort of sidestips. That's the most fleshed out of the story. He's the most fleshed out of the story. He's the first person to be. I thought he meant Metroid Prime, and that would be much more interesting to me. That would make-- yeah, Metroid Prime type thing for that thing where you're cataloging all these races and stuff would make sense, too. Put it on Wii. Put it on Wii. Halo Wii, right there. So I know we don't need to decide this right now, but several of the people said they didn't want the-- what we were going to give away for the first prize they wanted to do. They don't want your goddamn limited edition. Yeah, they already had the legendary pack or limited edition or whatever, so they want different things. So we'll figure that out later, but we should totally pick three winners. Two. Two winners? Got two items. So one of my votes is for sure. I think my number one is still John, elevator pitch John. Yeah. Of the action of the point-and-click adventure type game. I actually think that's mine, too. I really like that. I think I'm on the same page. Yeah, that one's definitely mine, as well. All right, so what about second choices, because I have a second choice, too. Yeah, what's your second choice? I really like the one about the Arbiter going back and playing his game. Who was the Arbiter one? Give us the Arbiter one. Sorry. Looking around. I think it's Christian. No. Christian was blue team. Oh, it's Matt. Oh, OK. That one gets my second pick. That is a good one. I don't know. I think my second pick is the one with the idea of a planet that's being glassed and having different ways to effectively making a short halo experience that you can play over and over again. I know. Those are the two. I'm torn between halo over and over again anyways. Yeah, yeah. That would be so rad. My second choice would probably be Corey's halo 4Runner, which is the one that we just talked about. That was probably my second choice. But I did like the one about the more halo open world type thing, too, because, you know, like Arthur said, it was more red faction like in it. And then-- Sedred faction. Media boner time. I know. But then like, but the idea of your side missions affecting how like the final battle in the game plays out, I think that's really cool. That's actually very mass effect too like-- Right. Yeah. Yeah. Arthur, you got a second choice? Um. I suppose the Arbiter one probably. That one. It's tight. So we essentially have-- it sounds like the Arbiter one gets the most straight up votes. All right. So who's-- No, I thought Sadie-- well, for second place-- Well, Sadie's definitely won. Sadie's definitely won. Never won. Yeah. You definitely won Johnny. Johnny and Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. So if that's two votes for the Arbiter, then that's the one that wins the second prize. Well, yeah, two-- but two votes Arbiter, two votes-- Open world. Me and Matt were a little torn. Yeah. One was Halo 4 Runner. Oh, OK. Yeah. So it's-- so the Arbiter was-- Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Let's see. Yeah. Corey was Halo-- Halo 4 Runner, and man, it's hard because, like, you have to like-- And the other one is-- Is Matt E. And that-- Matt E. one second place. So we'll be in contact with you and we'll figure out how we're going to sort out these prizes. Yeah, if one of you doesn't want the briefcase or-- Or if one of you really wants the briefcase, we'll sort it out. I think the person who won gets to pick and then the other one gets what he's left over. Yeah. So the prizes are John with your Sadie elevator pitch. What are they, Tyler? What are John's options to choose from? The limited edition Halo Reach with all the goodies or a Halo Reach briefcase branded controller, the Fall of Reach novel, and a little art book. It's a different art book that isn't a breach. It's like an aluminum briefcase, too. It's really cool. It's like a cool looking-- like steel-- steel-looking one. It looks like something like-- But it's a real briefcase. I mean, it's a brief ass case. And then Matt, whatever John doesn't want, you get his leavings. All right. And then for the Civ 5 contest, I guess entries are closed and we will pick the winner. All right. Next episode. Yeah. Woo-hoo. Yay. Okay. Belch-tastic. So now we'll move on to some regular letters. I'm glad we could sort out the Halo contest. Also, we still have our Civ 5 contest, which is pitch us a civilization you have till Saturday. Wait. Tyler just said entries are closed. Oh, you just said entries are closed? That's closed. Listen. Fuck all y'all. Entries are closed. We're going to pay attention. Sorry. I was trying to find a letter to you. How about we take a quick break to come back. All right. All right. Alright. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's flying in another way. I won't realize that I'm way like a soldier. How many summers will it take? How many summers will I? First letters from Eric. He says here's the deal. I'm about to move into another apartment. I want to give a wall, a door, a room, or something a video game motif. Now keep in mind that I'm 30, and even if I've played video games since 7, I'm not going to paint rainbows and shit all over the place. But I want to do something nice, interesting artsy. I know Arthur and Tyler have some art and design backgrounds. And Anthony and Matt have good taste for games. So do you have any ideas or tips? I also have a... I've seen some retro wall decals but want something more unique and would really appreciate your input. I'm pretty sure my initial tip would be don't. That would probably be mine too unless you were going to do something... It depends on how you do it. I was going to say like unless you're going to do something that's a little bit more vague. Like something that's maybe pixel art inspired. That's what I was going to suggest exactly. I've seen there's theme hotels where one thing that's really cool to do in an apartment is just paint one wall. It has an accent wall because all the other walls would be white. So maybe paint the wall red and reverse out in white, like pong. Just a line down the middle with white reversed out. Stuff like that could look cool, like real high contrast. And just like really big pixel art reversed out, like a pitfall. Like from pitfall, you know, like the pixel art. Something really straightforward and simple like that. Some of the easier ways to repel vagina and paint on your walls. I think it could be done cool. Yeah, that's the kind of thing is you do something that's just good design. And regardless of what the theme is or where the inspiration comes from, people can just look at it and say like oh that's really cool. Even if they don't know what it is. So the next letter is don't put Mario on your wall. The next letter is I'm going to read this letter mostly just because of the name of the person that sent it. Which his name, at least for what he uses in Gmail, is Ghost of Baby Charles On Yet. Charles On Yet is a person Arthur and I work with. And this guy's name is Ghost of Baby Charles On Yet. What the fuck? He's Canadian. He says I'm writing in reference to the hot sauce versus salsa letter that was read and sent by a mysterious Nick. And he says I, as soon as I was read I experienced the extreme case of deja vu. After racking my brain I realized I heard the question read verbatim on an episode of the Joystick podcast. One week prior to Rebel of Fame. Really? This is unacceptable. It seems that Nick decided to merely copy and paste a letter he had previously sent into Joystick to be read in Rebel of Fame. Spending no effort on the podcast and effectively giving you guys sloppy seconds. His ass needs to be castrated or at least should be ridiculed and insulted heartily. Remember last week the guy that wrote in about salsa versus hot sauce and how he didn't know what the difference was? Right. Okay so fuck that guy, I can get behind that. Yeah man. So in the past we've not read letters that mentioned us and other podcasts. At least give us, not because we hate other podcasts but because that's lame. At least give us an original letter. How do we know that this guy, how do we know that it isn't just like serendipity? I know he said his verbatim. Oh verbatim. Like the word for word and from Nick both cases. Oh okay. And I would like to point out that salsa actually just means sauce. And so a lot of people are writing in to say that a lot of people just say hot sauce because it's just the same word. Right. But to me it still means two different things. To me. To me too. Like if I go to the store and I buy a bottle of hot sauce it's always liquid. Yeah. You know it's always like vinegar based a lot of times you know. Salsa is fucking chopped up. Closer to pico they got it a lot of times. Yeah. Totally. Totally. So. Um. This one's from Tanner. My sister is 20 years old. I am 18. We don't really get along well. She's into partying and smoking and drinking which is something I just don't like to do. Anyway she's dating a guy who is almost 28. This really bothers me. I met him and he seems super cool. He likes video games and guns and other stuff I'm interested in. However I just can't shake the feeling that he is way too old for her. Should I stay out of her business? I've already let her know how I feel about it and she's just kind of brushing it off. I feel like this guy is going to turn out to be a scumbag who's sleeping with college girls for the ego boost. Should I let him know this? What is the proper thing to do here? Stay out of it. Yeah. I mean if you guys don't get along very well telling her that she has an awful taste in dudes isn't going to fix that. And didn't she say he was kind of cool? Like what should it matter? Yeah. I mean I think my parents are eight years apart. Yeah. And I mean it's the kind of thing where the difference between 28 and 20 is a lot. It is. It is. Yeah. And it's like you know I would be a little you know I'd be a little wigged out by you know a 28 year old dating a 20 year old but you know like everybody's an individual and yeah you should just fucking stay out of it. The only thing that the only thing that your involvement can do is make it worse. Like you can only make the situation worse. And if he's really cool man you already said he's really cool so maybe he's a good guy. I don't know. I doubt that very highly. Yeah me too. He probably actually is kind of a scumbag. He's taking college girls. I mean I'm not saying he's a scumbag it just sounds like a man child. He loves field games and guns and all this other cool stuff and he totally really is a 28 20 year old kid. That's every one of my friends from Houston. Your friends freaked me out a little bit. So perfectly fine. The next letter is from Peter. It's not really a question or anything but it is it's just an update. Peter was the one who wrote a cent about moving in with a bunch of really religious guys. And wondering how he should go about like being himself. I remember that one. Then he says it's been a few months with the Holy Roller roommates and I can confidently report that I'm corrupting them. I started with swearing and worked my way towards ethnic and religious jokes. My goal by the end of semesters to get them to try alcohol. As far as how I've affected them they have been fairly understanding about my attitudes towards partying and women. The jury is still out on how the rest of the year will go. At first I thought you were going to say by the end of the year I'm going to try to get them like warmed up to abortion jokes. God damn it. Yeah. Oh, that's awful. Umm, awfully hilarious. The next letter is from Keith. He says I just wanted to see if you would agree with this. From Dreamcast to PS2, nearly all consoles seem to have enough on each of them that you couldn't help but go fuck. I gotta get that. Back then there was no way I could live without playing Final Fantasy but there was also no way I was going to live without Halo or Kotor. The generation I got at this generation I got at 360 and figured that the time I laid down my cash for PS3 was just or the amount of time, sorry he wrote it kind of weird. Before I laid down my cash for PS3 was just a matter of time. But I'm not saying the PS3 sucks but so far this generation and as a gamer that buys maybe a game every two to three months, I'm pretty set. The extra console cash stays in my pocket this generation. Do you agree? This generation more than any other, you don't really need to have more than one console. That's okay. Yeah, well there's a lot more multi-platform games this generation than there ever have been. Sony has a lot fewer huge exclusives this year than the last generation. But I was going to say but I feel like last generation I had a PS2 for the same reason I have a 360 and then I had an Xbox and I had an Xbox for the reason. I have a PS3. That's a very good point. Because on the Xbox it was like that was where I got all the crazy, the games that worked just like on the PS3, the only reason I have a PS3 is for the exclusives. Totally. And it's just like you're saying, you know when you go and you look at your bookshelf of PS3 games, yeah it might be one third the size of your 360 library but still man there's a bunch of really good titles. But you know it's like he's saying you really are set if you have a 360, you know. I think you're set like if you have either console really. Yeah 360 or a PS3. Yeah there's so many multi-platform games this generation that like you're really not missing out on all that much if you can't afford it you don't need that other console. The only one that's the Tard console is the Wii. Yeah. At least for our kind of gamer, you know the people who game like Wii game. You all notice I didn't say a fucking thing. That's because you're an X-Bot, it's true. Okay, the next question is from Logan. He says, "My friend met a girl on Xbox Live, Modern Warfare 2, about a year ago. She was living with her boyfriend at the time." 14 year old boy. They struck up a relationship and when she broke up with her boyfriend she and my friend met outside the internet for the first time. They are now going to get married. That's all. He is immigrating to Canada from the USA to move in with her and her family. Holy shit. He is only 19, a drug user, meth, though possibly only into the softer stuff now, a high school dropout and a runaway recently returned home. Have you had a friend who moved far away for a girl after only a couple of months, had a friend who was in a relationship that was so clearly a disaster waiting to happen but they could not see it. Any insight you could be appreciated. No. Not like that. It indicates major problems on both sides. Wow. Oh my God. I mean, I'm always a kind of like cup is half full kind of person, you know. It's like I always want to believe the best of a situation. A cup is cracked in half. Like maybe a cup can't hold on her. No. There's a silver lining. He's going to get good health care. That's true. No, I think you have to be a citizen, don't you? Well, you only have to be in Canada for a long time. Well, you can help take care of her. I don't know what the law is. I don't know what the law is. I don't know. Canada can help take care of her meth problems. As far as I know, all you have to do is actually physically be in Canada to go into a hospital and get treated. I don't know. I didn't know if it was like they got married over there or something. You should tell your friends. They said they're engaged, right? They're going to get married. He can immigrate, but tell him just to do not give up your citizenship. No, you never have to. That's the weird thing about like the United States citizenship laws is that it's completely silent on whether or not you are able to hold another passport at the same time. You hold a US passport, so that's why a lot of people are dual citizens when they have family in other countries. Basically, the law says as long as you don't do something that actively demonstrates that you don't want to be a US citizen, like I think being like politically active against the United States or whatever, then you can hold two passports. But if they find out that you're being active against the interests of the United States, then they can revoke your US citizenship if you have dual citizenship. I don't mean passports. I mean, actual citizenship. Basically, all of our advice is let your tell your friend, man, you know what? No, if I can tie your friend up and take him somewhere. Oh, man, tie him up and take him. I was going to say that I would like to believe that maybe this is the thing that the both of them need to get their lives in order and make good shit happen for them. Or it's going to be a disaster. Or it's going to be an unmitigated disaster. I'm leaning toward disaster. But really, there's nothing you can do. I mean, if your friend's going to make that decision, you can't do anything to stop him, except just tell him that that's how you feel. Okay. I'll just the next letter was Duke open war, the next one's from John, and he says, what are your guys' opinions on dating the workspace, particularly if it's a temporary part-time job? Should one try and pursue a relationship or try not to damage the work environment? Has anyone ever dated someone in the workplace? If so, how did it go? I will tell you a statistic that I read once, and I have no idea if this still holds true. This was like, I don't know, eight to ten years ago. It was that people who meet in the workplace and get married have the same divorce rate as the national average. People who meet in bars and clubs and stuff like that have a divorce rate that is like two to three times higher than the national average. So the workplace, apparently, is a pretty good place to find a mate who will share your interests. It's a good place to find a spouse, assuming you're finding a spouse. What is the chance that the person you're meeting are a spouse who knows emphasis on the word "spouse"? Well, yeah. It's a terrible idea. Yeah, there's something so wrong with finding a spouse. What I'm saying is that most of the people you're dating are not spouses, and should that not turn into a spouse, it is going to be a goddamn disaster. But that it is a part-time temporary job, which makes it very different. So why don't you go for it? You be a 40 friend with this person until it's no longer a part-time temporary. No, totally go for it. Do it. No, I mean, especially at this day and age, I don't think there's anything really wrong with it. I mean... I think it's an awful idea. I mean, especially like me, like I met Jody at work. I mean, we've worked together now, and we've worked together at another design firm in Houston. I think it's fine. Yeah, I think life is too fucking short to limit yourself by cliches that don't shit where you work and stuff like that. Especially our generation, who do you know that holds down a job at one place more than three or four years? Yeah, it almost never happens now. Seriously. The days of the 25-year career in retiring with a position is over. It's over. Or retiring with a pension, I mean. Yep. I say go for it, man. I'm nay-saying. I think it's a dumb idea. Okay. One more letter. He says, "This is her mouth. I spent more money than I'm proud of on video games and accessories." Me, too. I've been seeing more about house fires recently, and it made me think, "What would I do if all my games were lost in a fire? I like having the boxes on a shelf because of old fashioned like that." I was just wondering if any of you have ever thought about taking out insurance on your games and systems? Well, I wouldn't do that specifically for my games, but if like if you're renters, then getting renter's insurance isn't a bad idea. Yeah. Meaning do that and don't. We really should. Yeah. Right. If you're like super hardcore like we are, you probably have multiple consoles, a lot of games for each and HDTV, and it just like gets crazy. You are a veritable bounty for people to rob and to burn down and whatever else could happen. But ultimately, if your house does catch on fire, it's like time to start cultivating some non-attachment. That's true too. That's true too. And end up owning you, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So yeah, we've thought of it. You're not a weirdo for thinking about that. No, you're not. No, you're a consumer. Yeah, exactly. You own shit. When you own shit, you worry about what would happen if you lost it. And the answer would really be not a lot. Yeah. So sell all your shit and become a monk. We're done with this podcast. We're all joining the monastery. Fuck you. I like TV. I like TV too. I like pizza. So that's the end of our show. We will be announcing Civ 5 winners probably next week. I imagine. After we read over the abundant entries we've had being contacted by Halo winners, you can find us on Twitter. I'm a chuff. No, me. Tyler is at dirty tea. I like the drink. Matt is talking orange. And Arthur is A-E-G-I-E-S. You can send your letters into us to have read. If they're cool or got an obscene headline, two letters at eat-sleep-game.com. That's it for us. Itches. Oh, who's going to save my soul now? Oh, who's going to save my soul now? Oh, I know I'm out of control now. Oh, tired enough to lay my own soul down. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]