Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 73 - 08/26/10
We had a double awesome show this week, so it's only appropriate that technical issues killed half of the show. Meanwhile, you get a full games segment, where we discuss Kane & Lynch 2, Shank, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and a ridiculous amount more as Anthony speaks about his adventures at Gamescom. Next week, join us in welcoming the scribe of Xanthor.
This week's music:
Stars - Dead Hearts
(upbeat music) ♫ You're right for the sun ♫ There's nothing good on the radio ♫ Once again I'm down ♫ It's your hard time to ♫ You're right for the sun ♫ You're right for the sun ♫ You're right for the sun ♫ You're right for the sun - Hey, welcome to Rebel FM, episode 73. I'm Anthony Agos, with me is Arthur Geese. Matt Shandernay, and... - Arthur doesn't speak about it. - Tyler Barber, just in case you're wondering, we put Arthur on mute, much to fan requests. It's like he's here, bitches, fuck you! (laughing) - Oh, hello there. - So, games, games and games, Arthur, why so low? - Which game, I gave two sevens and a 4.5 while you were. - Yeah, but I don't think anyone was thinking why so low with came and let's do. - Well, I was talking about Top Gun as well. - Well, that one, I don't know. Do people actually say that you were wrong and that was a good game? - It was a PS3 exclusive. - Is it a retail gamer? - No, it's a PSN. - Oh, well, isn't it just like Afterburner? - It's a PS3 exclusive, and I was writing the review, so. - And since you're a giant Xbox fan boy who can never impartially judge a PS3 game. - Let's get it right. Xbox, all right. - Xbox, you're an Xbox. - Oh, I'm told. - Oh, that's so clever. - Isn't it? - Oh my God, like I'm laughing. - So, inside. But isn't it bad? What are the other people get it? - It is, Kataka gave it a really high score. I don't know what drugs they were on when they wrote it. - Kataka's always on drugs. - No, really, like I've been to events with them, and they're like high the whole time. - I understand that many of them are not very good at games, and that's okay, because as we've discussed before, you don't need to be good at games to write about them, but it would be nice if you were good at writing about them if you're bad at them. - Ooh, Snapzilla. - Not that that was leveled at anyone in particular. - Other than Kotaku. - Moving on. Yeah, Top Gun is not good, and more not good than I think the whole Top Gun association would imply to where Maverick decided that he would be like Wink, as far as the amount of dialogue he's willing to have with anyone. - Isn't it, it is like Afterburner, right? That's the type of game I'm picturing my head. - It's like Afterburner meets Hawks, and everything awful that that would imply. - Do you, is it like the old Top Gun where landing on an aircraft carrier is the hardest thing in the world? - Is fucking impossible, and so is refueling mid-mission? No. I did have that conversation with a couple different people at work. They were asking if that happened. - So, what does it look like? Is it like, 'cause you know, that recent Afterburner remake they did, that one was still all old-school looking. - It looked arcadey, but it looked good. - Right, but you know, it was still done with like. - This is more conservative, but also just looks really bad. Like everything just, like the ground. It looks like a... - Crappy Ace Combat. - Kinda, I suppose that'd be a good way to put it. Yeah, it made me miss Ace Combat actually, 'cause I played an Ace Combat game not that long ago, and it was much, much better. - So what do you say Xbox, if it was on Xbox Live, it was probably like an 8.5 or nine. - Or right, but I mean, it's just because everything on Xbox is better, right? - Right, exactly. - That's how it works. - Tyler agrees, I got it. - When we're doing really good online and bad company too, I call out to my friends to start quoting Top Gun. (laughing) - That's a fact. - You're dangerous. (laughing) And they're all, there are a bunch of those lines in the movie, or in the movie, in the game. - Oh, okay, that's good. - It was a... - In the game movie. - They've been, yeah, the game movie. (laughing) That would actually be a funny name for the movie itself, but that's an entirely different conversation. There's no volleyball, sadly. - Is there love making? - No, there's no love making between a woman who came out as a lesbian and Tom Cruise. - With Berlin in the background? - Yeah, no. - No single moms. - No, that's so much. (laughing) - So all you do is fly a plane. - Right. - How's that Top Gun? - Well, it is F-14s shooting at Russian joints. - It can't be joint strike fighters. - It's really bad. - So what's the shitty about it? - It doesn't control particularly well. It's not very fun. It just does the same shit over and over again. Like, you have not played this game and you could tell me what this game is like. (laughing) - In my head, I can already see it. - Yeah, me too. - The voice acting is phenomenally awful. It's like the Dragon Ball cast is doing a live reading of the Top Gun script. (laughing) The part where Goose dies, I was actually kind of glad because I didn't have to hear that guy talk anymore. (laughing) - Well, so it actually kind of follows the plot of the movie? - Yes. - Wow. - That's just a bad idea. - Paramount is just now getting into doing games. - Penis. - Yeah, which is why there's also a Days of Thunder game coming shortly. - Oh, double. - And when I saw a trailer of that seven or eight months ago. - Dude, if they're gonna do shitty games, they have to leave it to cell phones or something. - Right, I think they're doing an iPhone version of Days of Thunder, or they have if they didn't already. - At least they're downloadable. - Yeah, it's $15, which is kind of a lot. That sounds like about $12 too much. - They're not paying for that license, they own that license. - Yeah, the developer maybe. - Paramount is the developer. - Oh, Paramount's doing its own development? - Yes, they own studios. - Wow. - They make that happen. - Scary shit. - Vertical integration, bro. - Yeah, it's exactly like when the movie studios took over the animation industry in the '40s and '50s. - So yeah, Top Gun is bad. Top Gun is real bad. - Well, it's not even talking, which is. - Right, so that's a warning, don't buy Top Gun. - Yeah, exactly, so move on to your other bad game. - Unless, of course, you like the PS3, in which case, clearly, you can't take anything I say seriously at all. - No, it's just the only time you should get it on PS3, as if it were your PlayStation Plus member, and you could download it for free. - I don't know, it takes up space in your hard drive. - It's not worth the space. - I don't think it is. I don't think it's worth the time. - No, I'm sure it's not worth it. - You're making it sound even worse than a 4.5, so what you're describing to me is a game that is not worth playing in any way, shape, or form. - It's not. Afterburner is $5 on PSN, and afterburner is good. - I guess it's just our abuse goes kinda fucks. To me again, it sounds like that, it sounds like it's like a two. - Right. - It's no point in ever playing it in any time, ever. - Right, I mean, it's not, it didn't rape my sister. - That's what a two is. - That's what a 4.5 is, it didn't rape my family. (laughing) It's bad, and that made some people sad, apparently, because some people were really expecting Top Gun to be up there. - They were expecting incorrectly. - I also reviewed Kane and Lynch. - Jeez. - I don't know, I talked about that a little bit the last time. - Right, in a seven, I don't think anyone would say, oh, a seven, that's way lower than I was expecting for it. - Right, I feel like it's a game that's worth playing. I just think that it-- - Did you play the co-op much? That's the thing that I'm serious about. - I played the co-op a little bit. I kind of feel like the people who were saying it's four hours long played through it in co-op. 'Cause playing by myself and single player took about six or seven hours. Playing co-op, it goes much faster. - Some people I talk to dug the multiplayer. - It's interesting, it's definitely different, but it's just not the underlying mechanics, the responsiveness of the controls, how the guns feel. None of that is very good. - Who's gonna be playing it a month from now? - True. - Right. - It's sort of like it's in there just to sell more copies of the game. - Or to make sure that you don't return it. - Right. - Yeah, yeah. - Although they act like it's a huge focus for it. And I mean, that's fine, they can sell it however they want to, it just wasn't that good. But the story is interesting. It's funny, I said in my review that the story allows me to sort of have a conversation about a game that I don't usually get to have, which is about whether it's like it's narrative arc. Like, 'cause usually a game's story is so awful that you can't have that conversation because there is no narrative arc. It's like a bunch of cliched bullshit from other things that developers thought would sound cool next to each other. But-- - I'm sort of, I mean, like from an outsider, I would think that that's like the definition of Kane and Lynch. - Right, except that's not the way the story feels, the story is cohesive, like it holds together much better than the last one did in particular. My problem is that it sort of blows its emotional load about halfway in. And after that, you're left without much suspense for the characters in any meaningful way. And it tries to make up for that with some fairly cool set pieces and the visual style works pretty fucking well. - It seemed like a part of the problem, though, that you seem to have with it. When I was talking to you about it, it was that the last one did things other than shooting, and this one is just, you are always shooting. Everywhere you go is shooting, shooting. - Yeah, it's just shoot, shoot, shoot. There's no heist, there's no crime. It's all just shooting. - I guess they probably thought that, you know, that was one of the things that people didn't like about the last one. - Well, yeah, people didn't like it because it was bad in the last one. And so is the shooting. - Yeah. - And so that bad stuff isn't there anymore, and the shooting is better, but there's just, the shooting is not good enough to sustain the game, and that's all there is. - Well, I guess, you know, if you're a developer, and you're like, well, what do we focus on this time to actually make this game sell? Well, what can we cut out? Well, we can just cut out all this stuff instead of trying to figure out how to make it good. - Right. - But even with the shooting not being that good, you still feel the storyline carries it enough to make it a good enough game. - I mean, it's worth, I think it's worth checking out. I do think that people should check out the game. Even if it means, they were talking about on the Giant Bomb cast last week, I think. And I think it was-- - Who are those guys? - They are the second best video game podcast on the internet. Behind the Geek box. - Exactly. - But I think it was a... - We're both in, it's like what, seventh, eighth? - I don't read the bit mob power ranking, so I'm not sure where we sit. - I would say eighth. Tyler, right? - Yeah. - We're like eighth right behind sarcastic gamer. - But Ryan Davis on the Giant Bomb cast was talking about how even if you want where to play it on easy, it would be something worth experiencing. And I agree with that. I think that it's something that does things that games don't typically do, both through presentation and story and characters and voice acting. And it does it pretty, it's pretty strong at it. It's just the game thing is where it stumbles. - Right. - Which is unfortunate since it's a game. - Right, exactly. And they also just totally rip off a section from heat in a spectacularly brazen way at the end. (laughing) - Like the character comes up to you and says, "This is just like in the movie, heat." - They might as well have. You are on an airfield. (laughing) - On the grassy area next to an air, through a landing strip at an airport. - Right, with some like industrial like power boxes or something around it. - Yes. - Transformer boxes or whatever. - Yes, that is precisely correct. Yes, yes sir, yes. (laughing) - It's funny 'cause I hear you say this and it's just like we still haven't seen the game. It still just looks so generic to me or something. I can't get over that. - It's not really generic. - I thought it looked a little bit generic until I went to their multiplayer event a couple months ago and I was like, wow, this actually like the whole visual style of it. 'Cause like. - I don't know, the visual style looks good, but it's just like, I guess the shooting and stuff. - The shooting itself. - Right, the shooting is as boilerplate as it gets. Like, there's nothing meaty there from a gameplay perspective. - I just wish someone would make a DVD showing me the story. - The conceit of multiplayer is more interesting than the gameplay is, which is that in the heist mode, someone can always betray you to try to get more money. - That was the first time too. - Yeah, to try to get more money. - That was really cool. - In undercover cop, it's like heist mode except one person is a cop. - And you don't know who. - And you don't know who. And once the heist starts, it's their job to stop the heist from going down. - Which is really, really difficult 'cause as soon as you shoot somebody else, you're building yourself. - Right. So that's really interesting in cops and robbers, even is really interesting 'cause all of these are objective based games that don't depend on kills. - Right. - And that conceit is interesting, but again, they rely on mechanics that are only serviceable. Like they're not particularly satisfying, they're not very good, you're not accurate. And I understand that that might be more realistic, but it's not fun. - Just go make another hit man game. Quit teasers. - I would really like another hit man game if they were, would they make two of the fixed all the problems with hit man. - Man, even if they didn't, I would still rather play that thinking. - Right, if they made a blood money style game with many of blood money's problems with this engine and new hits, I would buy it. Because that is a game that does not come along very often and it's been four fucking years since hit man blood money. - Yeah, but they made that awesome movie to tide you over. - Right. Well, they're making a second one too, I understand. Oh. And maybe they just didn't have enough time to work on Kane and Lynch too, because this is the second game in a couple of years that they pumped out. - Yeah. Who knows? - Do you remember what that game was? - Mini-Ningis. - Yeah, okay. - Oh, what was it? - Mini-Ningis. - Mini-Ningis. - It was a bio game. - That's funny. I didn't even realize that. - Which also, I wasn't that good. - Oh, I'm sure it was awesome. You just don't know. - So yeah, I enjoyed the time I spent with Kane and Lynch. It's just not great. - Right. - And I wish that that's the one thing about comments on reviews that annoys me is that people are just like, if the score doesn't reach a certain threshold, then the person who reviewed it didn't quote unquote like it. Like it's impossible for someone to fathom that I might like something that I didn't think was amazing. - Right. No, well that's because there's no room for nuance in people's view of what you do and what you write. - Well, not for commenters. I think that there are plenty of people that visit IGN that are totally, I mean, there are so many people that visit IGN that I would fucking hope that there are a few people reading that review that would understand. - Well, that's the whole thing about people that are passionate enough to actually comment. You probably don't want commenting to begin with. - Right, negative energy drives that much more than positive energy does. - In general, yes. - And then this week, my review of Shank went up, which I spent the weekend playing. - I've been looking forward to that. I really won't play it. - Which is also a game I enjoyed but has some problems. And I'm sitting, basically the reviews for that game are like either six or seven or nine and 10. - Right. - There's really not much in the middle. - Right, six and seven at least. I mean, that's still like saying that it's at least decent. No one's saying like this game fucking sucks. - No, no one's saying it's an abortion. It's just, my biggest issue with Shank is something that's always been a concern since the first time I saw it, which I saw with you Anthony at a hotel last year during PAX, which is that it seems like they are putting such a focus on the animation that the gameplay suffers for it. - I mean, I didn't pick it, but any of that one, we saw it at PAX just 'cause it was like one third of a level. - Right. - Yeah, it was like, I had no clue. I was like, "Oh, the game looks great." - But when I played it at PAX East, again, like I had concerns that there was, there was a lot of wind up to certain actions that sort of broke the flow of combat, that there was no dodge move to speak of and they added one, but it's still not very good. I mean, to its credit, the way it plays you expect more from it than it gives you, because it plays like a big budget action title does except in 2D, and that's amazing. That's not something that you get in downloadable titles. Like any, I've never played a downloadable title with combat as good as Shank has, unless you're counting a fighting game. But the level design is really boring and the animation versus gameplay issues can make certain things really frustrating and feel really cheap. A lot of the bosses. - Do you think it was animation versus gameplay or just that they had really great animators and only okay designers? - I think it's animation over gameplay, honestly, but I mean, those are both the same thing, really. - Well, but the way you're saying it, it sounds like it's like one guy that was like, "No, the animation matters more than making this gameplay." Those are the choices then in the second. I think that they just had people, they didn't hire-- - Amazing animators. - It's not a consideration that I think studio animators really think about. Like they don't think about how a game plays when they're animating it. They think about how it looks. And that's a problem that I think Shank has. And some pretty poor level design and some boss encounters that are really brutally cheap until you find out the one little exploit that you have to do to beat them. - That's old school. - Yeah, it's just not very fun where it got to the point where there were a couple of bosses where I didn't feel skilled when I beat them. I felt lucky. And yeah, that makes me sad. It's also really short. The multiplayer is a mess. I finished it in three hours. And it honestly, I felt like I should've been done after about two. - What makes the multiplayer a mess? - It's not very well designed. It feels very poorly implemented. You and the both characters look very similar and have the same move set. It's pretty bad about indicating where you are, shy of the way your character looks, which isn't enough. Senory will frequently block your view of where you are. Enemies will catch you between animations and juggle the shit out of you in single player and multiplayer. And the bosses in multiplayer are 10 times as arbitrary and fucked up as they are in single player. And they've got about a thousand times more health. So in those cases, I definitely felt lucky to have finished the levels as opposed to I did good. - Right. - When I could find someone to play with me because everyone who played with me quit. - Do you have infinite continues? - Yes, but you still have to keep doing the same thing over and over again. It's like basically slamming your head against a brick wall until you find a weak spot and your head plows through. - How are the checkpoints? - Pretty generous, but they don't do much to a swage frustration, particularly when you get killed by something arbitrary, like random rocket falls that will knock you off of the wall you're supposed to be running along and you fall to your death or they do a ton of damage and they just kill you out of nowhere or it tells you after you die a couple times what you should be doing. Their death is like the only real meaningful way of means of feedback that Shank has. - Which as we know isn't always a bad thing in games that can do it like limbo, but Shank is not that. - Right. - How would you put this up like next to another brawl or on Xbox Live like Castle Crashers? - For combat, it's leaps and bounds better than everything else. Like the combo system is extremely robust and you get a bunch of different weapons that play differently. But from a game design perspective, like what's fun, what will keep you playing? I think that other games are better and Castle Crashers comes to mind. There's a lot of variety in what Castle Crashers does and Shank is just you go from left to right. - Right, I mean, yeah, that's one thing that I saw like that could be problematic with Shank and the multiplayer was we were talking over dinner as like, Shank you only move on the X axis whereas like Castle Crashers you at least have the Y axis as well. - Right, and they never like, Castle Crashers is another game that's very strong visual design, but it never, it's always in service of the game. - Right. - And Shank is just so busy trying to show you how beautiful it is that it just gets in the way. Whether that's through scenery that blocks your view or animations that you get stuck in, et cetera, I mean, it's an issue that I find in a lot of Japanese action games actually that they're so interested in showing you the full, every frame of animation that the artist spent time on and with him getting up after he gets knocked down that you get knocked down again. Like, Lost Planet was guilty of that a lot. - Oh yeah. - I noticed some recognition on Matt's face when I phrased it like that. (laughing) - No, it's just that like, I've played a lot of games like that too. It's always really frustrating when you get knocked down and it's just as you're getting up again that you get knocked down again. And I get up again. (laughing) - Right. So I mean, I enjoyed the time I spoke with it. It's just not. - Damn you, Matt. - It's not problems. And sadly, some people didn't want to hear that. And I knew before I put it up that there were gonna be people that were upset with it. - Yeah, the internet's just upset with everything. - Fuck 'em. - Yeah, that's every-- - Fuck 'em all. - Right, it's just before I wrote their review, I posted something on Twitter about needing to separate my enthusiasm for a concept from how effectively it's executed. And reading other reviews, there's differences in opinion, but I also feel like certain reviews definitely just completely overlooked any flaws in the game itself for its aesthetic. - Well, into them maybe those things just make the game that much more enjoyable. - And that's fine. But for me, the play is the most important part. - Yeah, well, it's kind of, you know, the whole thing, like, does a top-scoring review like a 10 or a five-star or whatever, does that mean that the game is perfect, you know? - No. - No, it doesn't mean that it's an absolutely perfect flawless experience. Just like a four-star movie isn't a flawless movie, you know? So yeah, for those particular reviewers, maybe it was the kind of thing where it was just like, like Anthony said, all those other things that you've been talking about were overcome. Like the flaws were overshadowed by the other things that the game does really well. - Right. - So don't, so if you were gonna spend $15 in the Xbox Live though, you should-- - Play the demo. - You should spend it on lower-craft in the Guardian of the Light. - I've played some of that too. That was really fun. - That is the best arcade game since Toy Soldiers. - Yeah. (laughing) - To me anyway. - I had to get times over, like, I couldn't convince Ryan to play more than a couple hours of-- - Well, Ryan's a dummy. (laughing) - Need to know when I said that because that isometric view is so cool. Like I love the Baldur's Gate PS2 games and it kind of reminds me a little bit of that, except combined with the Twin Stick Shooter. - Yeah. - Well, combined with the Twin Stick Shooter and like, I love like-- - Physics puzzles and stuff are so great. - There's a whole ton of puzzles in that game. Like, I was like, oh, a challenge room. Well, this is gonna be great. We're gonna go into a room and it's gonna be a shitload of enemies to fight. And like, I already know how this is, but you go in there? That's not what they are. The challenge rooms are like super hard puzzles. - Yeah, and that's why they're optional. - Yeah. - They're really hard. - And they're super cool. And they take co-op to beat, you know? - Right, and it might just be like a room where all the, every stepping on every tile makes spikes come up through it. So you have to, in one run, touch every tile and make them all pop up without every, you know, backtracking, getting killed. - Talking to people about this game, it kind of sounds like everyone went in thinking they knew exactly what to expect and that they were kind of surprised pretty often by things of the game. - That was me. I knew what to expect only 'cause I saw it early. If I hadn't seen that, I would have thought this is gonna be the dumbest thing ever. - I saw it at E3 and thought like, oh, this is so lame. Why are they doing this? This is a really bad idea. I didn't even play it E3. - Can I have another Tombed Raid, please? - Yeah. (laughing) - I'm like, I'm just gonna walk on by this. Fuck this. - In a lot of ways, it still feels like a Tomb Raider game. It doesn't, I think it keeps that vibe. I mean. - It does, but my biggest problem with is that like, so they have, you know, kind of this stylized art, you know, in like the cutscenes and the beginning. - Right, right, right. It's almost like a comic book. - Yeah, exactly. It's actually really cool and really colorful-looking, but when you get into the game itself, it's just a giant gray and brown mess. - I mean, it's true. They do have tombs, there aren't that many. - And I realized that tombs are gray and brown, you know? But like, they should have just, it's a downloadable title, it's an arcade title. They should have gone, I really feel that it would have been a stronger game visually if they had stylized it, as opposed to trying to go with, you know, realistic seeming graphics. Because like, I, you know, like the two characters, Lara Croft and who's the other guy? - Uh, I don't know, insert tribal names. - I wanna say like, Tombow or something like that, but yeah. (laughing) - Tribal name. (laughing) - Tonga. (laughing) - But like the two of them, like you wouldn't- - It's shameful shit. - You wouldn't think that you would get the mixed up on screen, but when Ryan and I were playing, we were getting mixed up all the time. And it was like, maybe if they had been more stylized and more colorful or whatever, maybe that wouldn't have happened. I don't know, I just thought the visual style was really boring. - I thought it was fine. - It was so colorful. - For what it was, I thought it was, if anything, like the visual style might have kind of not been super exciting, but what was really great was the way that they used that camera and stuff to have like these epic looking dungeons where you could see like hundreds of meters below you. - Totally. - And you'd actually eventually go down there too. It wasn't like they were just there. It was like, that is going to be something you end up exploring. - Yeah, like the one that's like two or three stages in where it's like you're going and like unlocking these things that gradually make this bridge move closer and closer across this chasm. And like the camera zooms in and out every time, like you make the bridge move a little further, it was like, wow, there's a sense of space right here. - The levels are totally like scaled huge. I mean, in that sense, it feels like a Tomb Raider game 'cause you still are solving these several little puzzles that all lead up to one huge, like puzzle you're working on. - And just the use of physics that it does a lot is really cool. Like just little clever things, whether it's like rolling balls or like even certain ones where there's like balls that might be on a platform that's based on where your weight is on the platform or even the way that the characters cooperatively interact with each other. Like he can throw spears that only she can jump on and she can shoot her like grapple cord and save him so he can make it across gaps and stuff like that. - And I think that a couple times 'cause Ryan was playing Tongar or whatever his name is and he would fall off the edge. - And you just say, oh shit, grapple. - I'm gonna like this up right now because this is embarrassing. - And you would save him or there'd be times that like you'll see something off of a ledge that only she can get so you'll like shoot your cable and attach to him and then lower yourself over the side and like repel down to grab the eye. - I love the thing that like if there's a ring hanging from somewhere, you can throw the cable, attach it to a ring and then jump on it. - And he can jump on it. - Like tight rope on it. - Yeah, like they use those puzzles really well and every time you think you've seen them use it like every way they could. - Toteck. - Toteck. - For God's sake. - Toteck, that's pretty close. So every time you think you've seen like every way they can use it, they find really clever ways to use it. Like they might teach you early on, oh the grapple hook, all I do with that is I shoot it across the space and it's like a tight rope but later on there's ones where there was like one where I had to shoot it, hit the ring and then walk in a huge circle to wrap it around a pole so that there were like two parallel chords that he could jump between. Like it just like. - That's so cool. - It just does these really clever things with the puzzles. Like the game really does that good balance that Tomb Raider games did of like combat and puzzle solving. Combat is really a secondary thing to the puzzle solving in it but the combat still is pretty fun. Like they actually give you a good amount of weapons and they don't have as much RPG elements as I would like. Like, you know, you get like a couple of little token like things you can put on your-- - Little totems that you want to put on your character. - That you put on your character. - Okay, they're stats. And the only stats you have to worry about are defense, speed, weapon, and bomb. That's it. It's either plus or a minus to those stats. So, but yeah, you know, they do such cool things as physics in general. Like even the fact that each character has like an infinite amount of these mines they can lay and they can blow up in any given time. Like they use that later on too where there might be like a crazy pole of spikes that's rolling towards you guys and there's nothing you can do to stop it but if you sit down a bomb you can blow it up and over your heads. Like it'll blast it into the air just so you guys can run underneath it. I don't know. It's only like, it's like, well, I say only. It's like a five-hour game, but-- - No, I think that's about right for that kind of game. - It is, yeah. Just play it and just maybe wish that there was more. Like if anything crystal dynamics to people that make this game, they should just make those type of games. - I think I've heard that they're making more of these. - And not only that, but they should do it for like a sea of cane as well. How badass would it be to have like a legacy of cane co-op game, vampire, co-op vampires? - I think they missed that opportunity already because the last legacy of cane game was Raziel and Kane working together against the Elder God. - Ah, let's just forget that it happened. Let's just go back and do it again. - We've already talked about video games here, like where all they need is an excuse to resurrect some kind of-- - It's just like common ones. - Let's not even call us, like I said, can't let's just do another game where it's just about two vampires rolling together. - Yeah. - Yeah, totally. - That's how much it gets finished. No one will want to hear about vampires anymore. - But yeah. - That's what you'd think, but they, I don't think vampires ever go out of style. They seem to just always keep coming back. - I just think that this style, like the overhead, it could be so good for so many games. Like imagine if there was like, immediately when I played this, I mean, it's not a stretch to make, right? But I was like, man, if there was like an uncharted game that was like an in-between two uncharted games, eventually like this, I would totally play it too. - Yeah. - Like I just think that this style of game kind of lends itself well to-- - What I was thinking that a lot when I was playing this too is that like it, 'cause uncharted was really, really good at doing the whole like mini puzzles unlock like the whole giant level puzzle thing. - Right. - And this game like, I don't know, probably not accurate to say they took a page from uncharted 'cause they borrow from each other, you know? But I was getting that same kind of vibe to play in this. - Yeah. I don't know. I hope the crystal dynamics gets to make games like this, 'cause honestly-- - Yeah, me too. - I would much rather see games like this, downloadable titles like this from them than another just like Tomb Raider, right? - Although the last couple of Tomb Raiders have been good. - They weren't okay. I didn't think, I mean, they were fun, but they weren't great. - Yeah, I managed to hold my attention. I just think that the franchises in the formula that it was was getting tired, you know? So seeing like, it would be cool to see them make a bunch of little downloadable games like this that are totally unique and way too cool. Like I just thought that that is such a great game. - Word. - You should buy it. - I understand you also-- - I want the online call. - Made a quick trip through Germany. - Yeah. Did you go and eat lots of sausages? - They play a lot of PC games there. - Yes they do. - Like you go to their game stops and stuff and they actually have a whole PC section. - No way. - Like a huge PC section. - You lie. - I know, right? - Lies. - And like the equivalent they have there of like Circuit City, they advertise like Battlefield 2, Bad Company 2 on the front of the store, but it's the PC version. - Yeah, weird. - It's not the 360 version. - Man, I love my PC. I wish my PC was still like as awesome here as it is. - So I saw a bunch of games in Germany. - Yeah. - Some notable ones were things like Postal 3, which I don't understand why that game looks as bad as it does. 'Cause I-- - It's a postal game. - They've been showing it for like three years though. - Yeah. - You know and it still runs terribly at this point. And it's a source mod. Like the menu and everything is still just source. So I just don't understand it. You know that game is so vulgar. Like I don't know if it's a postal thing, but it's just so vulgar that like I don't even like it. It's like-- - So many people could possibly be working on that game. - I don't know. But do you know that game that you start that-- - We're gonna make another movie out of it. - The premise of that game is you're just a dude trying to raise enough money to fix your car. - Really? - And you say you're just taking all these jobs and the first job you take on is you're a jizz mopper. And so you have to vacuum up jizz rags at this sex shop. And then you have to shoot the jizz rags at soccer moms who are coming trying to ruin this porn shop who look curiously like Sarah Palin. Then later on another job you have is collecting apples at this orchard, which you also use your vacuum gun for. And then for some reason, some have been law and attacks. (laughing) So using like a combination of your vacuum gun and cat grenades where you actually grab a cat, shove a grenade up its ass and throw it at the guy. - All of this sounds like a, you know, normal-- - Whole some family entertainment. - Whole some family entertainment, yeah. - I was, I think I saw that it was supposed to come out on 360 or something. I was like, there's no way this game's coming out 360. It will get an AO rating and it will just never come out. - Yeah. - Like, is it gonna be a PCS PC game? Even with that, I'll be surprised if it ever comes out. - Yeah, honestly, I just don't understand how, like they made more games past the first one 'cause the first one was a shitty game on top of being-- - Right, but it had the gimmick of being totally outrageous and vulgar and people got into that. - Man, if they understood gimmicks, what they would do is postal three should star Steven Seagal and then all the people in the game are just kids to mimic that PNG or that, or not that that GIF, that animated GIF that goes around where it's like Steven Seagal cut scenes of like him shooting and then like kids getting all shot up. - I know exactly what you're talking about. - They should just make that game. And then people will be interested, not grenades and cats, buttholes. - Yeah, the shooting children is so much better. - So that was the low point of my games I saw. - Yeah, definitely. - The high point was definitely a low point of everybody's game. - The high point was definitely seeing the actual demo for Bioshock Infinite. And that was actually really well done. The demo they had was obviously put together. Like, you know, a lot of demos are made, right? Vertical sizes. But I don't even think this was necessarily vertical size. It seemed like it was like trying to show in like five minutes several things they want you to experience in the final game, you know? But it, like, I just don't think that we'll have that same experience when we play. - Right. - Like that's not, we won't go through this scene. - Sure, yeah. Sure, that happens a lot in demos. - Right, you know, this is just something they put together where we're like, well, we wanna put together something that shows you the way we get around the city, shows you the powers you're gonna use, you know, on pretty quick succession. The game looks amazing. Like the engine they have looks really great. And one thing that I will credit irrational for, like, there's some of the best at this, like the original Bioshock did it as well, where like, you know how when you arrived at Rapture, you just crashed and you rolled in, and immediately just from like walking around the city, no one had to beat you over the head with like, shit has gone wrong here. Let me hear, hey, stranger, let me tell you what happened to Rapture, all of that should happen. - Right. - No, you just like pick up all that from seeing like the abandoned suitcases by the bath of spear and stuff like that. - Yeah, but the set tells the story. - Right, and this one does the same thing. There's no one beating you over the head. Like they didn't even, they just told us like a brief two minute presentation maybe before the demo started. And then while they were playing, no one was speaking like, and now you're seeing no, they just let the demo speak for itself. And it was like, that immediately the demo, when it opens, has like this mechanical horse pulling a cart like for newspapers, but the cart's like missing a wheel, so it's just like sparking and dragging in the street. And then there's like this house up ahead and there's this woman sweeping the stairs, but the house is actually falling apart because it's burning. She's just like silently sweeping the stairs. Just like I have these little things that set the tone for what's, how fucked up things are. You know, and it just speaks for itself, but. - So what's, I actually just haven't looked into the Bioshock Infinite stuff, is the story that like raptures technology is spread to the surface. - No, this is not related at all. - No, it's not related at all. - No, it's a, it's like. - He's not commenting on how it may or may not be related. - This is turn of the 20th century. - Yeah, it's yeah, it's like way earlier. - Oh, so the idea is just that they're gonna cash in on the Bioshock name, but basically make a new IP. - Right, the impression I got was that, was that it was just like System Shock 1 and 2, not necessarily being connected. The idea for Bioshock all along, I got the impression was that, it was always going to be not necessarily linked games, but just that we'd try and pursue the same themes. And so, but who knows why the name's there, could be cash in whatever, but either way, it does share similarities. - Yeah, I'm not, I'm not. - Shookay has the utmost respect for the integrity of the Bioshock brand. - But. - Yeah, I don't give a shit, you know, they can call it whatever they wanna call it. And it's, you know, I'm fine with, if they need to cash in on that name, great. If it's something that they planned all along, that's fine too. I don't really care either way. - So the, so I think they did start, they have been planning for a long time, but so the plan, so the basic premise is this, there's this city called Columbia, and it's a city you made of several like platforms that float on the cotter blends. And they, and they all float in the sky, and it was made by America in the industrial revolution to show how great we were and it was supposed to be a portable world's fair. Took fly around the world and show how great American industrialism was. And at some point, the US government realized that it could be a really powerful military tool. And so instead of it being this thing to show how great our industrialism was, we used it as a mobile attack platform to go and push democracy and other countries. - It was the big stick. - Yeah, and so it became a democracy pusher. And so when the game starts, no one's seen it for like seven years. And no one knows what's happened to it. And this guy approaches you a private detective and tells you he wants you to find this woman and bring her back from the catches she's on Columbia, and he knows where to find it. So that's how it starts. - Cool. - Yeah, I can see how that's associated with the other Bioshock themes. - Right. And you know, yeah, and like, you know, the themes of like this, this utopia type thing that goes on. - Right, right. Well, the sort of like particular American brand of utopianism, you know? - Right. And so, you know, people will immediately comment on the fact that like in the demo, you also see like him, the character using like a lightning and the character was using like a telekinesis. And I was asking our buddy who works at Irrational Sean and he was saying that the reason you'll see that in like these Bioshock games, he says to them and their design philosophy, you know, the couchiness and the fact that it's coming from someone from the team. Just saying that he, you know, he says that to them, lightning and telekinesis is like the equivalent of their halo, like melee and grenades. Like to them, that's the combo that they look to. It's like how they design their combat around those three things. Guns, lightning, telekinesis working in tandem with each other. But I've also, you know, been told, there's a ton of powers that none of us even know about that are coming. And those things that you see in the initial cinematic that look like they're gonna be like the big daddy replacements, I don't think they are. I think they're just an enemy you fight commonly, actually, watching the demo because at the end of the demo, they show this thing that looks like a replacement big daddy and it is ridiculous. It's like five times the size of a big daddy in Bioshock ever was, and it's flying. It's got like gigantic wings. (laughing) It's crazy looking, but the game looks really great. I mean, it just has like the way you're gonna get around the city with like these rails that go between all the buildings and you can kind of like roll, like surf them almost with like a handrail thing. It's really interesting. I don't know, I mean, we gave it our game of the show. - It sounds like, that reminds you of like the Sky Town and like Metroid Prime. - I actually hadn't played. - Well, in like a Metroid Prime three, you know, she does a, Samus does a grapple thing where she'll like attach and she basically becomes like a sky cart, you know, like in between like these floating platforms in the city. - Maybe that's how this is, it sounds a lot like that. - Sounds like that. - That's kind of how you eat this was too. - Um, yeah, it's just like, it just looks like, it was also the first game I'll ever say that when I watched it, like, you know, lots of games will be like Uncharted for instance, I love that game. But anytime you're high up and Uncharted, you don't really feel high up, right? You just feel like you're on a wall. You don't ever get a sense like, oh, this is a wall that's supposed to be like 2,000 feet up in the air. And if I fall, I'm really gonna fall to my death and it's gonna be like this epic fall. - Yes, you know. - I never really got a sense of scale. - Sometimes I do. - A lot of times it just was like just any other wall. Whereas this one, like, somehow they just did a really good job with actually making it feel like, like a sense of vertigo, like, Jesus, I'm way too high up. Anytime you would look down and stuff. So I thought that was really cool. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was easily one of the more impressive things there. Like, you know, especially 'cause so much of Gamescom stuff is stuff that people have already seen in general. - Yeah, so, um, so of the, the actual gameplay demo you got to see, did they show any of the interaction with the female character? - Yeah, you know, she does some stuff. Like, there was one point where there was like a, one of the big, what people think of the big daddy things, the things with like the heart speeding in their chest and stuff like that, which are basically like mechanical guys with a normal human head grafted onto the top. They're really weird looking. - And they have like a human heart and a jar? - Yeah, and they're centered in their chest. But everything else looks like robotic on them except for their, they just have like a grafted, stretched out skin head over the top of their shoulders. - Oh shit, that's so great. - And, and yeah, she sees them. So she takes a bunch of pots and pans and welds them into a big ball. And then you use telekinesis to shove it into them. Something like that. Or there was like one point where she charged up the air and then you used your lightning and it shocked everything in the whole area at once. So yeah, it did show like a little bit of interplay between you and her. - That's cool. - Did she seem like she's always gonna be with you? - No, I got the impression that she'll be with you and without you all over the place. - Oh, okay. - Yeah. - Another thing I was curious about, there was an episode of irrational behavior. I don't know which one, but they were talking about the weight in Bioshock one, the combat, it was a lot of the same. Even though they gave you a lot of the same tools, the splicers generally would attack you the same. And you could use the same-- - They run straight at you. - Yeah, you would use the same tools, you'd take out the splicers, anyone else. Have they, have they really shown anything where they've kind of maybe introduced enemy types that are more vulnerable to other attacks than others? - I don't know, I assume so because it seemed that the combat's gonna be pretty crazy because in Bioshock also a lot of it boiled down to strafing and hallways and shooting. And then this one, the way it looked is that you're gonna be able to use those like sky tower things to like mid combat, just jump up and zip and all of a sudden you're just like flying around them and a huge circle and stuff. - So these are like all around? - All around, they're everywhere. Kind of like a Half-Life 2 Citadel sort of thing. - Yeah, exactly. - Things that you would ride on or-- - Yeah, you know like how in Citadel when you're in Half-Life 2 Citadel, how are those cables that everything's riding on? These are like that, they're everywhere. - Okay. - So at any given time it looked like the goal is for you just to be able to like zip up to it and start riding it. - Okay, cool. - Which means the enemies will do it too. Like, and so there will be fighting while you're both sliding. - That's awesome. - And stuff like that too, so. But yeah, I don't know. As far as, I think that that's the way they want to use verticality as far as changing up the comment to where enemies aren't just like bum-rushing you. - Did they say if all the enemies were gonna just be kind of like human enemies? - As far as I saw there was humans and then there were those big robots. - Okay. - And then there was whatever that big daddy-looking thing was that they showed at the end. - That was the handyman, right? - The handyman, I think that's the-- - The handyman's might just be the robots with the human head stretched over. - Oh, God. - So did they make any comment at all about how Bioshock Infinite basically precludes all sequels? 'Cause you know, you have Bioshock 1, 2, and now Infinite. - They're not saying it's a prequel. - You can't have like Bioshock 3 or anything anymore 'cause that's covered by Infinite. - I think what they said is that System Shock 2 is different than System Shock or something like that and that they don't feel compelled to have to stick to that, but maybe it's more-- - I'm just saying how do you follow Bioshock Infinite? - Well, I'm wondering-- - You don't know Bioshock Infinite or-- - We don't have to worry about that until 2012. - The word Infinite has some kind of interesting play on their-- - I'm sure it does, yeah, it probably does. - It's crazy though, like the day before they announced it, I put up on my Twitter, I was like, what if their next game is a Bioshock in the sky with like air balloons and shit? I totally guessed it, it was one of my guesses. It was one of my three guesses. - It's funny too 'cause the day it was announced, someone went back and listened to old GFWs before Sean was ever going to work at a rational and Sean was saying how the Bioshock trilogy was gonna play out and Bioshock two was in the earth and it was called Geoshock and then the third one was, he said would take place in a cloud city and it would be called like Skyoshock or something. - Skyoshock. - And it totally, now it totally is true. - Right. - But yeah, other games I saw are, there's like some PC game called Lionheart. I know Lionheart was in the name, but I saw like Stronghold 3, which I know like, yeah, that's looking interesting. - So Lionheart's gonna give me King Richard. - Yes, it will. - It is about King Richard, it's about the third crusade. And so the whole premise is that you, it's-- - Is it a strategy game? - It is a turn-based strategy game. - Legacy of the, not Legacy of the Crusader, that's a few years old. - So it's a turn-based strategy game, but the battles are played out in real time. And so it's not really, actually turn-based isn't even fair, it's more like-- - Is it more like, did you ever play Myth, Bungie's Myth? - Right, but it's kind of like that, except imagine Myth with like a campaign map. It's actually more, almost like Empire Total War, or like Rome Total War or something, where you have a map and then you're like, well, I could now, I could go and attack this part of Jerusalem, this part of Jerusalem, or this part of Jerusalem. - You wrote about it for IGM? - If I'd, no, I didn't, but it has been written about, but if I do this one, I gain favor with like France, if I do this one, I gain favor with England. - King's Crusade? - King's Crusade, it might be it. But I should say something about Lionheart, isn't it? - Yeah, it's Lionheart, King's Crusade. - Lionheart, King's Crusade, too. I think, but then-- - I am good for something. - It's interesting though, 'cause you know-- - What's it about? - You play these missions and you have to, and you have to, it's a lot like the Warhammer RTS games where the fantasy ones that Namco put out, because you have your armies and if you lose guys in a unit, you have to like pay money to like a paymaster to have them refilled as you go. You can recruit additional armies. You can like upgrade a unit of like warriors if you give them horses, all of a sudden they're knights. And you have to think about the terrain that you're fighting in because like knights will be great if they're on a hill slope. - Right, right. - But you can, you know, you can also do things instead of like upgrades, you get like, you do favors. So if you do like a mission where you're like doing something for the French, you're going to lose favors with the English, but if you do enough for the French, they'll give you like this special cavalry unit. So, and then you put the, cool thing is you also get to play as the Muslim armies as well. And they seem to fight totally different because they're basically all light armored. And so they fight for lack of a better word. They, they fight a little dirtier, like a. - Well, they're more guerrilla style. - Exactly, they're, you know, they're defending their land. - Right. - So for them, it's more about, you know, using cover and attacking right when they're close and flanking people and stuff like that. And so it's a totally different field to the battles. And they don't have the factions because they were all united under Islam. So they are not like the French, there's no like French, oh, if you do something for us, you're going to piss off the English. No, that's not how it works for them. But yes, it's just, it actually just looks a lot like a really awesome, almost like Warhammer rule set, like RTS. 'Cause you can give like heroes relics and relics, we'll give them special powers in battle. I don't know, it seems really cool. And you have to worry about morale and stuff 'cause units can break if they lose a ton. - Yeah, it really does sound like heroes of my magic. - Yeah, it's, I thought that game was really cool. And, you know, then another PC game, I felt was like Stronghold 3, which I never played the old Stronghold games, but I know those were immensely popular. - Yeah, and like it's, Stronghold is totally one of those series that I see as it's been popping up in its incarnations and been like, I need to play that game and you just have never done it. - Yeah, I would wait for Stronghold 3 because apparently Stronghold 2 is really broken. - And the guys that made Stronghold 3 recognize that, they said it was because everyone, they said it was like in a time of PC gaming where everyone was making their own engine and they got convinced they could do it too and they were like, we're totally wrong. It was not their own engine. I mean, they totally met when they released the game, it was basically like, not done. - Yeah. - But, so now they're like, we're using proprietary engine. Like that was one of the things they emphasized. Like, so we already had the engine now, we just had to make a game with it. And it looks really cool 'cause, you know, the whole, it's like a, that one's like a, kind of like a little bit of a real-time strategy game as well, except the premise of it is that you basically have to build up your little kingdom and so you build your castle walls and you design the castle however you want based on the terrain that you have. And then you have to, basically it's all about maintaining enough peasants to make sure that you have enough peasants to build farms, not to mention populate and army, man everything. Basically it's just about how well you can manage your peasants to make a kingdom sustainable self. Which sounds really hardcore PC in some ways it is. - So this one actually looked really user-friendly too. Like I thought it was a really cool looking game. Plus I really liked how easy to like drag and drop and manipulate the castle editor really looked. Like it looked like you could really build some crazy castles. - Yeah, I think that that's the kind of thing that'll be fun, especially if it plays a lot into the actual gameplay, if like you're under siege or something like that. - Oh yeah, yeah, totally. And they said this one should go a lot faster than the old ones 'cause they said, you know, real sieges are really boring. So they tried to make it a lot more faster pace 'cause you know real sieges like months and months of people just sitting there. - Right, exactly. - So, start you out. - Right. - Do you have any non-boring games to talk about? Where you shoot things? - I mean I saw Killzone again, three. - Played the multiplayer. - I played the multiplayer. It was fun, it's pretty much like Killzone 2's multiplayer except the levels have been designed with like more verticality because they give you jetpacks and stuff too which is the jetpacks are pretty badass. And then the vehicles are pretty badass too because that was something two didn't have. Like in two a lot of people liked the level where you actually got to use a vehicle in single player but they didn't have them in this. So now they do have vehicles. Some of the classes they have are pretty cool 'cause they have like classes that are like spies and stuff that can, I think that was in two as well. - Do the vehicles really add to it? - Yeah, I mean the vehicles totally, they're not like way too overpowered but they will allow a team that works to them right to like do a push on like any, like a mission where land grabs it. - Like the reason I ask is because the multiplayer in Killzone just seemed like a very call of duty inspired. - Right, so this all comes down to the modes. They've added new modes too. Like there are, I don't know, I don't have my notes on me but there are several, there is a mode. - Let's say four. - There is a mode that's just like call of duty where it's like just about active spawning near your team and it's all about just team deathmatch but they've also put in other ones that are more objective based and like pushing a battlefield forward basically. Like they have like sort of a battlefield mode. So that one works better in those ones than it would say in like a, just like who can get the most kills one. - Sure. - I also played Killzone three with move controls. That was interesting. - How does that? - I wouldn't choose to play it that way. That being said, after like a few minutes of getting used to it, it certainly was playable. Like it wasn't like awful or anything. I still think that the PlayStation move. - You didn't feel like you could aim better or anything like that? - Oh, you can be a little bit like faster maybe with snapping to like two different people but I would still, I still felt a little more out of control. Maybe if I had more time with it, I wouldn't do quite as much and I do appreciate, yeah I only had like three minutes to try, right? But I do appreciate that they don't do dumb things like make you swing the remote to throw a grenade because the guy that was like when he was like, yeah when we were doing it, he was like what? You want to throw a grenade and then all of a sudden when you let go of the throw grenade button, you're like pointing in the corner and you're out of control. - Right, exactly. - But they do still have some that are kind of like dumb to me which is like a melee where you have to like stab forward to do a melee. I understand why they do it and I think it mostly comes down to the fact of the PlayStation moves button layout is really difficult for them. Which 'cause like for someone like me who always like kind of regular sized hands, I can basically reach like the trigger buttons and then the one top button, the move button, like the center button. - Oh, you can't reach the other little buttons on the side. - The other face buttons are kind of awkward for me to reach. It's kind of like when Wii games require to use the D-pad. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And so I feel like they were like oh shit, how are we gonna throw in a melee attack? I don't know, have 'em hold this button and do a stab 'cause you can still use all those face buttons instead. Like if you don't want to do a melee attack, you can push the X button or whatever it is to do it. But for me that's like so hard to reach. - Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. I haven't used the move controller although we did just get them in the office. Is it easier to hit the buttons on that button? - No, the face buttons are not easy to hit at all. For me, I mean my hands are small. So for me it's like reaching out for the D-pad. - Yeah, it makes me, it makes me. - Yeah, I was gonna say like it seems like the kind of thing that maybe these motion control holding devices, we just haven't figured them out yet the way that we figured out traditional control. - Well the bottom line is that it should be designed for games that will only require like two buttons. - Well I mean like I don't know, it's kind of easy for me to picture in my head anyway, something where all of the buttons are easily accessible to your thumb, you know? - Yeah, I mean there was actually a really interesting controller done in the PS1 days that was done for RPGs only. It was like a really hardcore RPG controller where it was all one-handed and it had all the buttons. - Why was it all one-handed? Is that so you could like walk off the phone? - No, it was for people that played really slow. - Way to jump to that conclusion. - But JRPGs wanted to like drink a soda. - There was a strategy guide, I think I've actually seen versions of this in GameStop recently for like PS3 controllers and shit. - But yeah, I just find the button layout kind of be problematic. I also played a cool move game called Create, which is like originally started off as an interactive art program where they just wanted people to be able to paint on canvas and drop in things and then like if you were to drop in a helicopter with a simple gesture of the move, it would animate it to where now it's like scrolling and flying across the screen. It was just supposed to be for families to sit there and make art 'cause the guy said it came to him because his kids always liked to paint with crayons and shit but it was so messy. And so we thought maybe it'd be fun to give him this where there's no cleanup. And then that turned into having like a puzzle element solved on it too where it'll give you like a puzzle like get this car from here to here and all you have is like these four pieces. So it almost has like, yeah, that or like a, that Elefunk game for PS3 where it was like golden bridge to get them from here but you only have these pieces. So it's just got this little, you know, you can be the art game if you want it or it can be like this really complex puzzle game. And then on top of that, people can also make their own puzzles, upload them and you can download them. - Cool. - So that one seemed like, that's an EA published game. It's coming up for 360 as well. But I only tried it on move. But yeah, in general, the game's gone, both the move and the connect things I didn't really hear anybody being particularly excited about in general. - Yeah. - I just feel like. - Well, that's because like, you know, we've had the hardware announcements already. Now it's like just gonna be whether or not the games can measure up. - I mean, I imagine Sony is sort of panicking a little bit because move comes out in a few weeks, right? - Yeah, I think comes out like in a week in the UK or something, I know it comes out. - Right. - Yeah. I mean, there's not much more to say. You have the move controllers. Are you gonna buy it or not? Well, there's games you wanna play with. - Has anybody seen any of the advertising for it? - When I was in Germany. - I haven't. - It was on everything, including like the BBC, like talk shows and stuff. - Like commercials for it? - I know, like on like the BBC equivalent of like the Today Show. - Oh, okay, see that's one thing, but I just mean like commercials. Like I haven't seen any commercials or ads anymore. - I don't know. In Cologne, they're posters were everywhere. But that's Cologne for GamesCon, right? - Right, right. - But they were still like, these were not games composers. These were just like Sony putting up ads everywhere for. - Sure. - But, I don't know. I haven't, I still haven't seen enough move games that make me really walling. Like I wanna play iPad, but I don't know that I wanna play with move. - You'll be playing one soon. - Yeah, I will. But besides that, it was a ton of MMOs at GamesCom. - I, yeah, the MMOs are like back in a big way. It's kind of weird. - Yeah, everyone's making new MMOs. And I also saw the new Dawn of War game, which looks awesome. - Nice. - Dawn of War II expansion. - Retribution, isn't it? - Retribution, you plays Orcs this time. - Cool. - I guess that would make sense. - If you played as Dawn of War II, the other ones, it was basically you had like four or five heroes you could take into battle. And they always, it was like a hero with like an attachment to them. And then the orc campaign is just the heroes by themselves. They don't have any attachments, but the Orcs can then build units, not out of buildings. They can just summon units to the battlefield at a specific point. So with the Orcs, you fight with a lot more guys at any given time. - Gotcha. - 'Cause the whole premise is for them philosophically, as far as Warhammer goes, Marines are super hard to kill and they fight for each other. Orcs are not like that. Orcs are like, they'll fucking drown you in their blood if they can. - Right. - And they don't care about each other. So that's why you're fighting with these hordes. But it still looked like it has like a really fun storyline and an interesting campaign. Like it looked like we're Dawn of War, but finally with like a different races campaign. - Cool. - Like I already know, like I saw it day one, and I was like, "Yes, I will buy this." I already have no doubt. (laughing) So, let's see, I don't know. I guess I didn't get a chance to see as much as I thought. I saw infamous too, that looks fun still. But. - Yeah, that was 83 and stuff. - That's what I'm saying. There really wasn't all that much coming out of Gamescom that everyone did not already know about. Like even the announcements that occurred, the only big announcement, I guess you could say that occurred at the Sony press conference was the announcement of Resistance 3. - Right. - We already knew that was coming. - Right. - And from what everyone gathered, like watching, did you, did anyone else see that? So it's the trailer they showed, the teaser they showed was just like real people. It wasn't like in-game or anything. You know, it was just a live action. But it looked like they're trying to make Resistance 3 like a left for dead. Like it was what we all took away from it. - Really? - Yeah, because in the trailer, it's like five people rolling together. - I didn't get a chance to see that. - At any given time. And so all these five people are like in a train, and then the train breaks down in this tunnel, and then there's just tons of the things running out them, and they're just like in a last dance sort of thing. - They had the really robust co-op mode in the last one. - Right, so that's what I'm thinking. So I'm thinking now that the main character is kind of out of the picture as far as Resistance 1 and 2 went, maybe the third one really will just be about humanity just trying to survive. And so we'll have much more of that, that left for dead kind of feel, because they had a couple of levels in Resistance 2 which had a left for dead 2 vibe to it, where you were fighting like non weaponized versions of the enemy, where they were running at you without weapons. They were just like running at you like the way zombies did. It was really scary. So maybe they're kind of capitalizing on that. And the idea of, you know, a big co-op experience. - Right. - But yeah, and then, you know, they're also releasing that co-op ratchet and clank game. All for one. - Yeah. - That one looks interesting. I mean, I-- - That was very delicately worried. - Well, I've never been a big ratchet. - That's the thing is I do like ratchet and clank. So for me, seeing them not doing a typical ratchet and clank game kind of made me a little sad. - Oh, I got you. - I mean, I think it's cool, but I kind of wanted a regular old ratchet and clank at this point. But I mean, it's a different studio too. I mean, it's still in Sannek, but it's their North Carolina studio. They just opened. So, I don't know. Looks like-- - North Carolina's. - That could be cool. But yeah, overall Gamescom was kind of boring in a lot of ways. - But you got to hang out in Germany. - Yeah. - And where those-- - Dude, I never wanted to come back to America so bad. Eight day in Germany. And I was like, when I got into-- - Give me some fucking Mickey D's. - When I got into Detroit, Michigan. 'Cause that's where I landed in America. And it had the thing that said, welcome home. I was like, thank you. - You've been so excited to fly into Detroit. - I was. I went to a Taco Bell and I ordered the-- I was like, give me the biggest fountain soda you can with as much ice as you can. - 'Cause that's a thing there, apparently, that they don't put ice in anything. - They don't. That fucking drove me insane. I went to a subway and they did not-- I said, can I get that with ice? And they said, we don't have ice. I was just like, can I get my sandwich on wheat bread? We don't have wheat bread. I was just like, fuck this country. (laughing) Goddamn, man. Sorry to be so American, but fuck that. (laughing) Nah, and then I've just been playing it's on a regular old Starcraft one. - Yes. - On your little laptop. - 'Cause that's what-- - Yeah, you do when Starcraft two just came out. - That's what I do when I'm on a plane and I can't. 'Cause I've been trying to recall some of the story. - You finished the campaign, right? - I finished the campaign in Starcraft two since we last recorded as well. - Cool. - That was great. - Yeah. - That's good stuff. - I thought I would want to go back and play it again on hard, but I really don't. - No. - Not anytime soon, for sure. - No, if I'm gonna play Starcraft at this point, I'd rather play crazy custom games that people have been making 'cause there's some really brilliant ones out there already. - Me too, like, if I hadn't been playing, if I hadn't allowed myself to get roped back into Civilization four, I would be playing a lot of those crazy Starcraft mods. - Is that in anticipation of Civ Five? - Yeah, I can't help it. It's sort of like what I talked about on our last podcast, but I want to hear what Tyler's been doing. What have you been doing, Tyler? - Well, it's a good thing Anthony just got back from Germany. I actually had him over there doing some field research for me on some stories that I was picking up on the wire. They were coming in, some suspicious sources, so I had to have Anthony go and check it up on me. So according to the sources, there's a situation years ago that like, there's like all these like stray cats around this concrete wall, and one of the cats saw this bug run into one of the little cracks of the wall and it started chasing after, you know, started doing the claw thing, you know, that you see cats do on the couch or whatever. And, you know, some of the wall started coming out, started breaking off, and, you know, this like, lonely old man comes by, might have been part of the Wizard, local Wizard Club, and he saw that the cat was there, so he wanted to help the cats out 'cause he's the lonely guy. He started knocking away parts of the wall too. More people started seeing him, you know, what he was doing, and we're like, "Hey, I'm gonna help this guy out." And before you know it, people on both sides of the wall are chipping away, and next thing you know, the Ronald Reagan says, "Gorbert Shaw, take down that wall, cat facts." (laughing) - And we're gonna take a break. (laughing) ♪ The kids that I once knew ♪ ♪ I can say that you won't believe me ♪ ♪ When you say you do what you don't deceive me ♪ ♪ It's hard to know that I've been ♪ ♪ It's hard to know that you still care ♪ ♪ I can say that you won't believe me ♪ ♪ You say you do what you don't deceive me ♪ ♪ Dead hearts are everywhere ♪ ♪ Dead hearts are everywhere ♪ ♪ I can say that you won't believe me ♪ ♪ You say you do what you don't deceive me ♪ ♪ It's hard to know that I've been ♪ ♪ It's hard to know that you still care ♪ ♪ I can say that you won't believe me ♪ ♪ You say you do what you don't deceive me ♪ ♪ Dead hearts are everywhere ♪ ♪ Dead hearts are everywhere ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ They look kids that I once knew ♪ ♪ They look kids that I once knew ♪ ♪ They look at us to you ♪ ♪ They look at us to you ♪ ♪ They look kids that I once knew ♪ ♪ They look kids that I once knew ♪ ♪ They look at us to you ♪ (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]