Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 71 - 08/06/10
This week we talk about... well, Starcraft 2, and a few other games, like Kane and Lynch 2. Then we move on to a discussion about how much is too much for downloadable games in particular, and close out with letters.
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Nothing good on the radio ♪ ♪ Once again I didn't know ♪ ♪ Who should I turn to ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ - Hello and welcome to Rebel of Them Episode 71. - I am knocking stuff off the table, Anthony Gaiigos. With me is Arthur Geese. - You're awful at this. - I'm actually really good at it and you're just jealous. Arthur Geese, and then there's Tyler Barber. - You're like pointing at him like you've got-- - I'm hesitating 'cause I'm trying to pull the table over for Arthur, so he can put his feet up, but it's too heavy. - And then there's Matt Changerine who you're hearing laughing. - Hi, I laugh a lot. - So video games, they're fun to play. Aren't they guys, totally. - No, no, so what have people been playing? Like has anyone been playing anything besides StarCraft? - Everybody talk at once, please. - Go Tyler. - Tyler, go. - What have you been playing, Tyler? - So I haven't played anything new that I played from last week. I wouldn't have if hadn't been for work. I would have loved to have played nothing but StarCraft. - Right. - Have you been playing multiplayer? - We'll get to that. - We'll get to that. - But I was thinking of a little task for the community to do that might be fun to play a little fun interactive game sort of thing we could do. And I was thinking it might be fun to take everyone who has ever appeared on Rebel FM and cast them into the original Star Wars trilogy. - I would like this to be in the comments. I would like to know where in the original Star Wars trilogy people see me. - So there's a few steps. Like first we have to gather all the people who have been on the show. - That's true. And then we can debate on who is cast as who. - Right. - It should be fun, I don't know. - That would be really fun. - I feel like Matt would be C-3PO. - Aw, fuck you. - What's wrong with that? - He's an important character. I don't care if he's important. He's like the most annoying, are you saying I'm the most annoying character? Is that what you're saying? - No, what's wrong with that? - He's saying that he wishes someone will blow you to pieces. (laughing) - And put you back together, gold. - He like never ever stops whining. I do whine a lot, so maybe that's it. - Oh, I didn't mean to make it sound like you're a winner. - Okay, so you guys should do that. - Yeah, that would be awesome. That's okay. Well, now everybody has to put me a C-3PO because I got so bent out of shape about it. - Now, someone could probably make a case for another character, you know, a really good case. I don't know. - I wouldn't mind being like some like, one of those characters that like is on the screen for like 30 seconds and they make a super rare toy out of. - Somebody in the background of Moss Eisley? - Yeah, I'd be fine with that. - I think it's gonna be interesting to see like who falls on the Sith side. (laughing) - I don't expect to be a main character. So, have you been hitting up any games that you want to give a shout out to, Tyler? Man, just the usual bad company in limbo. - All right, so Starcraft 2. Once again. (laughing) No, actually man, I have played one online match. - Yeah, me too. - To answer your question. - I've played one. - It was a 2v2. - Mm-hmm. - And the- - That's my accident one. - It was, it was by accident. We thought we were doing custom game against computers and we jumped into a 2v2. - You and I? - Other? - No, me and my friend, Paul. And the only reason that we won, I say with air quotes, is because they quit. And the only reason that they quit was because we both realized we both sucked so much we couldn't kill each other. - Right. - Like, they would do this huge attack and we'd barely defend and then said we'd go do a huge attack and they'd barely defend and it was just, it was never going anywhere. And so eventually they just quit out. - What do yous were there? - They were Taren and Zerg. - Man, if you can't find a way to win it's a Taren, just fucking don't play that game. - Dude, that sounds to me like more fun than my game. I played a 3v3 with my roommate Carlos who's like an excellent, excellent real-time strategy player and with Ryan who's about the same level I am. - Sure. - Which is total suckage. - Yeah, I suck. - Yeah. And so we played a 3v3 and just got our asses so handed to us. I mean, like on the other, it was versus two Zerg and a Taren on the other team. One Zerg, he had more units and more resources than our entire team combined. - Yeah, I watched the replay of our video and both of us were averaging like 20 APM, 20 actions per minute. - Right, exactly. - Which was like, you know, a really good StarCraft players in the world. - 300. - Two 300. And so then we played against one insane computer, just the two of us. And the insane computer, when it was tapping out at its highest was doing like 7,000 action per minute. (laughing) - Anyways, Skyne that's older brother. - It is like Sky, yeah, every single unit was being micromanaged against us. We never had a chance of it. - Oh my God, I don't know. - Yeah, I've been playing some games against computer skirmishes and stuff, but I've just still been trying to get through the campaign which Arthur just finished towards the end of last week. - Nice. What did you think other than crappy story? - I don't think the story is crappy. I just think that it, it's and fits and starts. It's not paced very well. - Yeah. - I think that the time you spend on Char is not long enough for the sort of, the heady intensity of story that it's supposed to be. - Right. - So, spoiler warning, which path did you choose? - I haven't actually. - Oh, you haven't actually. - I haven't actually. - I just got to Char, officially. - All right, well, I won't, I won't. - But I'm the good thing. - I don't know what you mean what path, like. - I can't explain it without spoiling it. - How? - I don't, I don't, clearly. I am totally confused by. - I, well, there's a choice that you have to make on Char. There is a choice. - Air or underground? - Yeah. - Oh, okay, that already knew that. There's a point where you have to choose whether you, which one you want to hurt. - Right. - Right. - I did air because, I fucking brood lords, man. - Yeah. - Brood lords are the single most infuriating unit in that game. - 'Cause of their range. - Right, because they have the range of guardians and more damage than a queen. - Wow. - Yeah, well, 'cause their little globs don't just do one hit, they keep going. - They keep going. - They do a ton of damage when they hit, and then they just keep attacking. - Yep. - And nothing does enough damage to take them out fast enough to keep them from just fucking thing. - If you upgrade the range on your Vikings, can the Vikings shoot them? - No, nothing, no air defenses I'm aware of can take them out. - I mean, the nice thing that was the brood lords can attack air. - I imagine that you could just have your Vikings patrol. - Right, well, that's what I did is like, 'cause I actually took the underground, which means I got attacked by a whole bunch of air things, but I found if I just parked enough ships around my base, it was no big deal. - Right, yeah, that final section is hairy to say the worst. - It is, it really is. - The nice thing, though, about taking the campaign as a slow as I have was that it actually allowed me to get the secret mission on this playthrough. - Oh, I didn't get the secret mission. - The only reason I did is because, like, you know, my GM put up a new story, 'cause they had, one of our coworkers had found it. - Right, we took Nick. - By pure chance, yeah, or from Nick. And, you know, it happens on the mission where you're using the Odin, that's all I'm saying. And you just happen to kill this one building and you find a document. And it's really weird to me having played the secret mission now that they made it a secret, 'cause I think everyone who has the chance should look that up and do it and go back and do it, because the secret mission is really cool and well-designed. Like, it's designed in the very much the classic way that they used to do the, you know, like "Starkov 2" doesn't have nearly as many as the old "Starkov Game Scene" to have the "Dungeon Crawling" type ones, where it's like you get-- - Right, there's like two. - Right, and so this is like one of those, but it's like it has a very field, the old ones, where there's like turrets that pop out of the ground and that's just, but they add enough twists in it that it feels really cool. And it explains a pretty crucial story thing. Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me why it's a story. - I don't like the "Dungeon Crawling" ones, you know, I hated them in "Starkov 1". - Oh, yeah. - I hated them. - No, I like them. - I, in "Starkov 2", I don't hate them, because I feel like they're much better. - Yeah, I don't remember "Starkov 1" well enough to remember if I hate them or not. - And those ones, the part of the problem was that even on those ones, it was usually just get from like A to B and slowing, you learn, this one is like typical to the rest of the "Starkov 2" design where it's like they're constantly like adding these little variables in a lot more than the original "Starkov 2" crafted. You know, like just like in the new "Starkov 2" where you have levels where the fire is sweeping across, like this one has that same sort of vibe where there's always something that's like throwing a wrench and what you would expect. - Right, I also feel in "Starkov 2" that it's much rarer that you'll encounter situations where your units are doing things you don't want them to do. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - Where you're not saying, "Oh fuck, what are you doing? "What are you doing? "Ah fuck, ah fuck, add them." - Well, it's like something comes and attacks you and your units won't chase them forever. - Right, they'll chase them for a while and then come back. And that's something that always used to get me in "Starkov 1" anyways. I feel like my units would always get out of control, they'd be chasing somebody. - And they're just much quicker to respond. - Yeah, definitely, yep. - So, so we need to get those actions per minute up. - All right, did you, did you, did you get any good video requests? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You requested some people on Twitter that responded gave some good ones and I've been watching some of the Shout Cast things on YouTube. - That's the guys I watched. - Those are really cool to watch. Like, I still feel like it's hard for me to learn because the people that they generally show on those are like, at such an advanced double play that I could hope to use like maybe one 20th of any of the tactics they use. - See, look under those guys, they have ones for beginners like that. - See, that's what I probably need to do 'cause I was just watching like, these are like world champions playing each other. - Yeah, there are a ton of them. Did you get the window pop up? Oh no, 'cause you won. When we lost that one game that I played, afterwards a dialogue popped up that said, maybe you wanna join the practice league that has new, that has rule sets and run slower for people new to multiplayer. And I'm like, you know what, you're bright. I probably do want to join the practice league. - I mean, I do like watch the ability to watch replays and stuff, but I don't know. It's fun to watch this high level things, but yeah, I just realized that like it's just watching, it makes me realize I will never be a good Starcraft player. I don't think I can ever be. Like I will always just be mediocre at best. - Yeah. - You ever thought that you'd be a good company for your as player? - That's true. But I've definitely been out of the game in that for far too long too. - Right, but I mean, while it was in its heyday, you were in your heyday as a co-player. - It's true. - Yeah, I remember watching you and Sean, and I think even Rory was on one of those times when you guys were at the office. I was watching you play and it's like, that's pretty hot. - Yeah, so I actually recently tried company here as online this week. You know, the free to play version of co coming out. And it's in closed beta right now, but it's pretty cool. I mean, it's got its fair share of potential issues, but it is co. Like it's not like they lowered the graphical fidelity. They didn't make it look like a Starcraft one version of co or something. - Right. - Were like made for like any computer. Like this is still the graphical horsepower intense co. The same engine. - Right. - You still get-- - That still stands up today. - Yeah, and you still get the full American campaign that came with the original game for free when the game comes out. - Oh, right, that's cool. - You know, the only thing that I see potentially having balance issues is that they've just thrown in so many new elements on top of the old game, because now they, you know, it's like Starcraft where you have a persistent account and you gain-- - Right. - Except imagine like if your commander level could increase in Starcraft and that did things, like, so you play through the tutorial missions and each one of those yields experience for your overall account. As you increase your levels, that unlocks your ability to use items that you're obtaining. So like just playing through the tutorial, get like a special unit of your most basic infantry. Except when these ones deployed to the battlefield, they immediately have like 10% more health than normal one. - Oh, wow. - So like now being level two gives me the ability to deploy this unit that is a buffed unit. - Mm-hmm. - And then-- - So it's a little like legal legends that you have a persistent-- - Right. - Like the Lord character or whatever. - Imagine the way that legal legends is with the way that you can have rune books. - Yeah. - And you set up a rune page. This, before each battle, you have like eight slots for your overall army and then you have a layout of your base before you load into a game and you can click on like the tank manufacturer building and you can drag like a special tank to that. If you have a special tank unlocked, you'll be able to deploy. And so it seems like a really cool idea. Like, you know, like if both of us were level 20 players 'cause in theory, the matchmaking should put two people the same level against each other, then that would mean that it's a totally different game than standard code because you don't know that that level 20 person isn't gonna pull out some crazy tank with some crazy abilities and you know, they have to choose what those slots are gonna be and you get to see the load out as you're loading in the map and adjust your strategy accordingly. Oh, I know this guy brought all this tank stuff. I better do anti armor. - Right. But the problem with it that I'm worried about is that there's like so many possible combinations between these items that it already sounds like from the people I know they've been playing a lot that there are already exploitable builds. - Of course there is. - Yeah. - You add that much stuff in and it's inevitable. It's like legal legends is basically it's just come down to accepted that there are certain character combinations that are always going to rule. - Right. And so they're constantly nerfing and doing balance tweaks. - Right, but they even they admit that like, yeah, we're never gonna be 100%. There's always gonna be something else. - Right. And so this is something like that with a ton of variables where, you know, even an old code where there wasn't this leveling up system stuff, there were always like exploitable things that you could take advantage of. And this is just so many more variables thrown in on top of that. And the other problem is just that so far the matchmaking doesn't, I mean granted, this is beta, right? That's what this is for. But, you know, there aren't that many people playing in the closed beta right now. And so far the matchmaking isn't like consistent with a low level player getting matched to a low level player. Sometimes a low level player just because it, you know, it searches for an ideal match, doesn't find it moves on until eventually all of a sudden you're thrown in like a level 15 guy who's pulling shit out that you've never even dreamt of and that doesn't make any sense. I mean, the nice thing, I do appreciate some of the things they've done though from a free to play standpoint. Like a person that wants to come in there and spend actual dollars right off the bat could buy all those special tanks and everything right off the bat, they could buy it. But until they've played enough games to actually reach like a level 15 commander, they can't use them. Yeah, all those things are locked to the tier of your commander. So yeah, a level one person could come and spend $200 and have everything, but they still wouldn't be able to use them until they're in that same experience tiers, everyone else. So they've avoided giving like a clear advantage to people that want to spend money. It's just that people that, 'cause otherwise, when you play a bunch of games, you get supply and you have to choose which of those special items you want to buy out of the store. So this is just an option of when you hit level five, maybe you want to get all the level five items instead of having to pick and choose. Right. Wow, that's crazy. I wonder if I just wonder if this is going to be a successful model 'cause I still have yet to see free to play except with the rare exception succeed in the Western markets. Right, I mean, another thing they're trying to do with this free to play thing is like, if you do have a special tank, each time you use it and deploy in battle, it'll cost you charges. So when you first get the item, it has like 100 charges. And each time you deploy it, it's like 10 charges. So eventually you might run out and then you can use real money or in-game currency to play enough to just, yeah, buy the ability to deploy it more if that's like a tactic you really like. Right. I mean, I really don't think that co-online is made for America. Like it was never designed for Americans, at least in the first place. I had always heard that co-online was like relics attempt to deal with the rampant piracy problem they've had in China and free to play is proven to work well over in the Asian market. True. So it's interesting, you know, I think that it, when it comes out here, anybody that's always been on the fence listening to me talk about Coke 'cause they don't wanna go drop 40 bucks on it. At least pay it for free and try it. Totally try out the single player at the very least and just play like offline, you know, and see what these like interesting games are about 'cause you can play through the whole single player campaign of the original one for free. Like it's totally free. Nice. That's gonna be really cool. And this week I've also been playing my very first JRPG. Like I said, I said as a person, I've played like 20 minutes of Final Fantasy VII and I've played like an hour of Chrono Trigger. Okay. But I've never like, so I've been assigned a review for this game called Arcarise Fantasia. That's crazy that I've played more Japanese RPGs than you have. Yeah, you know, I just don't write. I kind of actively dislike it. I think a lot of it was that I didn't own a PlayStation first of all, and that was when a lot of people got into Final Fantasy games. True. But even in the Super Nintendo days, a lot of the Super Nintendo purchasing decisions were made as like a co-operative decision between me and my brother. My brother didn't like JRPGs so it just never happened. Right. And usually I wanted games that I could play with my friends and that was never a JRPG. That was always like a Contra or something. One or two JRPGs. Right, but I guess, you know, my mind, it was always things like Contra, Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct. These were all like the Super Nintendo games I had. And... Have they really secretive mana on a virtual console? I don't know. Is that a multiplayer one? You can play three-player in secretive mana once you get all the characters. Yeah, I don't know. It's like three-player Zelda. For Super Nintendo? Yes. Man, I forgot the Super Nintendo even had like a multi-tap sort of peripheral. Very much so. But yeah, you know, it just... How's this new when you're playing? It's a wee JRPG. Yeah. And I think it came out in Japan like what, two years ago, Arthur? A year and a half. So this is published just for full disclosure 'cause I know Shane Bettenhausen and we... Right. But it's published by the comic-shainers for Ignition, you know? And they do a lot of pretty out there Japanese games, you know, that are very like not made for an American, typical American audience. Totally. And this one is very like when you make fun of stereotypical JRPGs, this is that. This is it, yeah. Games called Arkrise Fantasia. Like Fantasia, a female Fantasia. And the premise of it is you're this character named Lark and you know, like L, apostrophe, A, R, C. I know. I knew it around the back. Lark. And you're Lark and you are a guy who lives in this kingdom where and you fight dragons 'cause that's what your kingdom's always battling. Right. And you get separated from your group because you're battling a fell dragon. You kill it and fall off your airship 'cause there's airships, obviously. Of course there is. And so when you fall to the ground, you meet this girl who is a priestess, no. But you meet this girl who's a priestess from a neighboring kingdom who you don't exactly get along with. And they like dragons in their kingdom, of course. And so you take her under your wing when you find her and you end up coming to the city and through a long chain of events, you find out that you're like some spiritual, I mean, of course, somehow you're not just a guy, right? No, you're special. You are special. And somehow you're also connected to the special. You have a destiny. Yes. So you're very much so I have a destiny and there's like things that look straight out at Evangelion. It's like all these things that you would just expect to be, and they're always using a bunch of dumb words that they just seem to have a strange fascination with. Right. Their square recently published a JRPG that I can't remember what's called but everything in that game was like noir. They were always using the word noir everywhere. And that is in this one all the time, too. Like the priestess of noir, noir. Yeah, final fantasy 13 or whatever is filled with so many like bullshit crappy names that I can't even keep the story straight. Right. And this has that same thing, you know. And I hear everybody making us friends in the podcast space. Thanks, guys. But it's-- More angry comments than email. So that being said, you know, this game has all those really silly things. I actually find that I kind of am enjoying it to some extent, like much more than I thought I would. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, even with all the silly story, and the voice acting is so bad, sometimes I play it on mute. Right. 'Cause it has, 'cause it all, it's all out there. 'Cause someone today at work was like, "Why are you playing it on mute?" And I unmuted it and they were like, "Jesus Christ." (laughing) It is like so bad, but-- It was like the kid who eats the ghost peppers. Yeah. (screaming) Yeah, the voice acting is just like whenever someone's like, "Oh, I didn't see you there." And you're just like, (laughing) Like it sounds like us when we were reading those Metal Gear lines. (laughing) And this is like a, you know, but all those things aside, like I still kind of enjoy the aspect that JRPGs, I think a lot of people get into, which is the whole zoning out that you can do because they don't require extreme amounts of attention. You know, I've had to learn my few lessons that are totally JRPGs, like things that anybody that plays as they just know. Like I got to my first boss and I was like, just dying in like two hits. And I was like, "What the fuck is, am I not playing right?" And my coworker that plays on JRPGs was like, "Did you grind?" And I was like, "What?" And he's like, "Did you just go out and kill things?" Like I was like, "Oh no, I killed things along the way to the boss." Right. To be fair, that's something that a lot of JRPGs have moved past. There's not been a lot of evolution in JRPGs, but grinding is something you have not had to do nearly as much for a long time. Dragon Quest says, "Hello." Yeah, well, Dragon Quest is like the fossil-- Dragon Quest is like the starcraft connection to old JRPGs. Yeah, would it be fair to say the new shining beacon of JRPGs is the Persona series? Maybe. It's supposed to be the most relevant. Do you have to grind in Persona? Right, yeah. I am aware of that. I mean, you have to grind in the Shin Megami games too. Yeah, the Shin Megami games are popular. I played last year. I was definitely like, "Fuck, I have to grind." Yeah, I mean, like the-- 'Cause I'm sort of like you, Anthony, and I don't expect to like any Japanese RPG that I play. And Final Fantasy 13 just kind of confirmed that to me. But then I started playing Dragon Quest 9 since I've been taking all these train rides to and from Reading for like six hours. It's a good way to kill time. Yeah, and I totally am like, "All right, this is kind of cool." And then this last weekend I was in Vegas for a bachelor party and it was a nerd bachelor party. So it's not like we went out to strip clubs and stuff like that. We just did a lot of gambling and played a lot of games. And one of my friends, he was like, "Brought out as DS." I'm like, "What are you playing?" He's like, "Oh, just some JRPG." And I was like, "Dragon Quest." He's like, "Yeah." And they guys played together. Sweet. Finally, somebody I can play multiplayer with. And yeah, we had some good time. I hopped into his game and I helped him kill a boss and stuff like that. We were having fun. Yeah. You know, I'm just learning all these things that probably a kid that would pick up archives right now would just be like, "Oh, all these conventions I'm totally used to." And I'm just like, "I have no idea what I'm doing right now." See, one of my problems in Dragon Quest 9 does this too. A big problem for me with Japanese RPGs is that one of the conventions is that you're supposed to pick up the strategy guide because there's like a million obscure things that the game will never, ever teach you. And the only way you could figure them out on your own would be if you played the game 10 times in a row and somehow figured it all out through just through experimentation unless you get the strategy guide or unless you have a fact. And I hate that. I don't consider that good game design at all. And so it's like when I run into that, it's really frustrating. But Dragon Quest, you know, I've been getting around that just by like, 'cause, you know, we have so many friends that are playing it, I'll just post something on Twitter and they'll be like, "Oh, you need to do this and this and this." And I'm like, "Okay, good. Thank you for telling me that that was, you know, that's good to know." Yeah, the weird thing about Arcurez Fantasia 2 is I've watched a ton of JRPGs being played throughout the years. And, you know, I always saw like Final Fantasy games and it was usually like, they lined up, you lined up, and you chose who to attack and they would like slide to them and then move back, you know. And in this one, position matters. So there's, everyone just moves up to each other, but their battle lines can be all intermixed. Like the enemy can be completely behind you, fighting one of your people behind you and you can be fighting this one. It gets into like, it's kind of like a, if two sides lined up and then just gotten to a skirmish. Right. And a turn-based skirmish. Do you move, do you control your position every time? In the sense that if you just tell them to attack an enemy, they move right up to them. But you can also choose to use some of your points just to move to a new spot. Gotcha. 'Cause sometimes that's important because certain enemies, certain allies have like an ability, like when my character attacks, if an ally is close by, he'll join in on it. Oh, no, you have to think about positioning like that. Yeah. So that's kind of cool. Like I just, I'm not exactly used to that. But like you said, in some ways, it almost feels like they want you to buy an instruction, like an annual or something because it's like so hard to like really get good at that. Especially because they're just throwing all this language out that probably other people make sense where they're just like AP, SP, WP. You know? And I'm just like, ah. Storage space killed the Japanese RPG, really. Yeah. Like all the greatest stuff that ever happened in Japanese RPGs was in the 16-bit era and the ability to do long-ass cutscenes and a ton of animation and a ton of video and presentation is what killed JRPGs. Because that's what they become. The point of a JRPG now is to watch all this shit happen. Yeah, this one thankfully doesn't have a lot of cutscenes. Like if anything, what is annoying though, that Arthur's saying is that this one doesn't use storage space very well, maybe, but it presents a lot of things through constant popping up, pausing the action of like a, like, pop up in this, just drawing with dialogue. You know, and then another character's drawing with dialogue will come up, but they're not like animated or anything. It'll slowly fade in and slowly fade out. Right, and you know, it'll just be like, but it'll do that and then you'll fight once and then it'll do it again for a few minutes and you're just like, shut up and let me play the game. Well, it's, and in Dragon Quest 9, it's really frustrating because like, I don't know why they don't do this, but even in other Japanese games that I played that have just dialogues, you can press the button to make the dialogue, like, instead of letting it draw out every character, you can press the button to skip to the end. But you can't make the dialogue go faster in Dragon Quest. You cannot make the dialogue go faster in Dragon Quest. How have I not seen this in a review? I have tried every single button, and unless there's some like mystical way to make it happen, I do not know, but it does not work, and it's fucking annoying. How was that possible? What's even worse is that like, every time you save your game, like you walk up to a church temple and you walk up to the priest to save your game, and you have to go through the entire dialogue every time where he says like, oh, you wish to confess your sins, and oh, should I open the book of whatever, whatever, to record your adventure? Thank you, I shall now record your adventure, you know, and it's like you have to wait for this to draw out every time. And like every time you go to a shopkeeper, you know, you have to wait for them to finish saying they're stupid text before you buy. - Meanwhile in American RPGs, it's just auto-saving. - Yeah, I know. - Auto-save complete. - Yep, there's a reason why Japanese games haven't caught on in the West. And especially RPGs. - It's not just, I mean-- - There's a certain subset of the populace that really loves Japanese RPGs, and they're not wrong for liking-- - And it's shrinking. - Good games, but the problem is that like, if you're trying to reach a larger market than just this subset of people and just your home market, then they're not doing it correctly. But you know, there are people out there that are like super Japanese RPG purists that don't want it to change. They're like, these are exactly the kind of games that we wanna play and we'll keep buying them. And you know, as they keep buying them and that-- - I mean, that's where companies like Ignition come in that can do small runs of games that have been out for a while. - Yeah, and like they make a profit, enough profit off it to stay in business and they're doing good business, you know? Maybe have a low growth potential, but that's fine for them. - Right. - So. - And yeah, and then besides, Parker's vintage that I'd beat Plants vs Zombies finally. - Yay. - Welcome to two years ago. - No. - One year ago. - Comes to live arcade next month, right? - Yeah, it does. - So awesome. - Yeah, I'm gonna buy it with the game of the year edition. - I don't know. - I mean, I know it comes with a plastic zombie, but I didn't know if it actually has like something extra in it. - It comes with no Michael Jackson in it. - Is the bar go up for the plants versus zombie stuff that happened this week? - I don't know. - It's right, they took out the Michael Jackson zombie. That's so annoying. - Yeah. - Oh well, thank Michael Jackson's family, right? - I know, just because that zombie was super cool. - Well, yeah, that's pretty much it for me, I mean. - I mean, you talked for about half an hour right now. - I tried. - We tried to do my part. - Good talking. - Good talking. - Arthur's been playing some shit. - That much, really. - Has it been actual shit? - Nah, actually Arthur's been working on features and stuff this week. - Yeah, I did play a PSP mini, which was Arctic Adventures, Polar Tumbles. - Was it a Bismol? - It actually wasn't, it's not a Bismol. - Good, so so many of them are. - There was an Xbox Live Arcade and PSN game that came out near the end of last year called Polar Panic, which is sort of like Pango. - Oh, okay. - Was like what? - In the arcade, there was a game called Pango where you're a penguin that slides a box of ice and a slide puzzle type thing. - Super old game. - So, Polar Panic was that like it had an action-ish type thing where you'd squash these humans with box of ice because they were evil humans and-- - Of course they were, yeah. - Those evil humans had death by ice crushing coming. (laughing) - Sounds fair. - There's also a puzzle section to it and that's what the PSP mini is. It's just, it's all puzzles all the time. - You know, so many other PSP minis that I've been forced to play at some point or another for like five minute experiences like in two or three minutes, you could have seen everything there is to see. - That is definitely not this. - That's good. - I mean, there are lots of different kinds of blocks to push that react differently to the environment and to the way you touch them and there's some extremely devious puzzles and it's totally willing to let you fuck yourself and have to restart a mission. - Right, does it tell you? - No. - I hate that shit. - You will get to the point where you only have like a lot of the missions rely on you. You hold it like getting all these blocks on pressure plates and you'll be at a point where you think you have everything where it needs to be and there's a block that you can't push where it needs to be and you have to start the whole thing over again. - That's a little annoying. How much is this like a dollar or something? - Five bucks. (laughing) It's, I actually enjoyed the time I spent with it surprisingly enough. I think I gave it a seven 'cause it's sure shit not gonna be for everybody but it's kind of clever. There's another level where there's a ship tilting back and forth and there are these barrels rolling across the deck. And not only do you need to push crates onto some of these pressure panels to get them to stay but you need to wait for a barrel to roll onto a pressure plate and then roll the crate in place to hold it there as well as stay on a pressure plate while not getting crushed by said barrels because-- - So more clever than maybe you might think at first blush? - Right, yeah. It's kind of hard honestly, but it's really hard and it tracks time and number of moves required to finish puzzles. So that was actually, it was, I could have kept playing it honestly when I stopped to write the review. Let's see what else. Today I saw a couple of games that I didn't play. - Oh, they didn't let you play any of 'em? - No, I mean, the only one that's embargoed I'll be playing next week, along with Kane and Lynch 2, I think. - What are the ones that weren't embargoed on? - Battle versus chess, which is, I just got the funniest look from Tyler and Matt at the same time. - Did you have been talking about Kane and Lynch 2 on the show? - No, I didn't talk about Kane and Lynch 2 on the show. And I wrote a preview of it a couple weeks ago. - Well, I played battle chess, but battle versus chess. - Old battle chess was awesome. - Yeah, I probably remember way more fondly than I should. - So, battle versus chess has like blah blah blah themed boards and a light and dark army that were animated. - Like what themes we got going? - Like environments, they didn't show me a lot because it's still super early. - Oh, that's too bad. - But the rub is the way that there are different sort of variations on chess as well as a very traditional chess game, including a series of challenges based on real world events, like real world chess situations that somebody would be two moves from checkmate. - And you need to stop them? - And they would get out of it. And some of those are really hard like they said that they had one guy on their, one of their guys on the E3 floor was like staring at this problem for four hours, couldn't get it. And finally, when he went home, he looked up online, like how someone got out of it and he just could not fucking believe it. - Right. - But I think the thing-- - Is it like battle chess? - Where it's like animated killing. - Yeah, there is that, but there's also now a battle mode with three different means of three different types of battle mode. There's a straight out slayer, which is that when you move a piece to take another piece, it cuts to the chessboard as action game arena. And you maneuver around with your piece. In this case, it was a queen, so it was really powerful. And it was going against a rook or a bishop. I don't remember which, but that rook or bishop had a ton of pawns, so you had this rook trying to kill you and a bunch of pawns trying to kill you and you would hack and slash your way through everything. - So wait, is there the chance then that, like unlike in regular chessboard, queen takes pawn. That's it, that you could actually fail and not take the pawn. - And then you would lose half your life and be put back at the square that you moved from. - It's funny, I remember way back. - In the sense that someone really skilled could not, could fight off a queen. - Right, 'cause I remember way back in the day, my friend Jason and I would play battle chess all the time and we used to think about exactly that kind of thing. Man, if only we could control the battles. - Right, but wait, there's more. There's also a-- - It's turned into an infomercial. - A rhythm game version of it, where it puts one piece against the other and the attacking piece has to hit a series of button presses and they defend-- - When do they use that to hit a bunch of button presses? There's no music, it's just a series of button presses. - Quick time versus quick time, who does better? - And then there is a mode they described as like bomber man. - Oh, nice. - Where you have to set bombs to destroy barriers to get to this other piece. So it's like a bomber man puzzle that take out another piece. - What's the plan for this? Is it a retail game? - Now it's a downloadable game for pretty much everything except for mobile. - So it's gonna be downloadable for like DSiware and PSP as well? Or is it gonna be-- - They didn't say DSiware, I don't know if it's gonna be on DSiware if it's just DSi, but it will be on the DS in some form. - That's awesome. - I kind of like the idea of that, but yeah, it's just like-- - And then there's like a strategy mode where you and the other player are in a double blind situation where you each have half of the board to set your pieces as you will. - Oh, and you don't know what they're doing? - Yeah, and then the fog lifts and you see how each person has laid their pieces down and play from there. - And of course you can just play regular chests as well. - Right, right, there's regular chests and you can change your chest pieces on the fly like to just normal chest pieces. I don't know if you can do that in battle mode. - I mean they're really-- - Have plenty seeing an actual chest piece with a sword. - I like to play chest, the idea of playing able to play chest like that would be really fun. - Yeah, and like just kind of always-- - As long as the AI isn't like amazingly brutal. - Yeah, I like the double blind mode too. - That's why that sounds really cool. - And then there's a madness mode where you're each randomly assigned like piece locations and have to fight your way out of it. Or play your way out of it. - Right, I mean it's at least it's a clever take on chest. I also saw Two Worlds 2 again today. - Yeah, that was much better shape than it was in E3. They had basically redone all the animations since E3. - I mean when I saw it even before E3, it didn't look like, like I expected to look really bad 'cause of the first Two Worlds. And it wasn't like-- - Right, there are actually moments where it looks pretty good surprisingly. - Some of the spell effects are really good. - We'll not just that, but the lighting is really, really, like they did some really aggressive lighting. - Is that a third person action RPG? - Yes. - Yeah, that was the one that when it first came out, the first one came out, everyone just knocked it for being in a Bolivian clone 'cause of the timing of when it came out, an awful Bolivian clone, yeah. But now it sounds like the sequel could be like a wishful sequel of a Bolivian. - Right, there's not a lot of games like that coming out this year. And it's certainly the sheer amount of customization that you can do. - Yeah, especially with spells. - Is mind bogg, it's not just spells. - Oh really? - Like the crafting mechanic is basically everything could be broken down into component parts and everything can be upgraded. - Yeah. - So like let's say you've got like chain mail, you can break that down into weather and metal and then use that weather metal to upgrade some plate mail that you have. And if you upgrade enough, it starts giving it slots for gems and you can craft better gems out of your shitty gems. - Nice. - See, the spell stuff is what I always thought was really cool. - And then yeah, the spell crafting system is also awesome because basically you find magic cards, it's not me if you've heard this one. (laughing) And you'll like take a method of attack, like a projectile or something like that. And then an elemental effect. And then you can start stacking new effects on top of that. - Right, cool. - Like you fire an elemental ice blast and then you add a multiplier to that to fire like four or five of them. - My problem with crafting in games is I usually can't be bothered to do it. - Right, well in this you have to. - Right. - And then so there's a second tier of effects for that spell. So you'll add like a ricochet and lightning. So once those hit something they'll be cold and they'll ricochet off and that will hit something and cause lightning damage. And then maybe you add another effect on that that's like fire and spiders. - Yeah, I was gonna say when I saw it, yeah, they did a crazy one like you're describing when we were at shot split ricochet and then summoned skeletons at the end. (laughing) That's awesome actually. - And you can increase the damage and add more multipliers and a bunch of other shit. And it actually looks pretty interesting. It doesn't sound like the type of game I picture a lot of, I mean, I don't know, my wrong 360 players wanted to play as much as like it seems like when I play it, I was like, there's a PC SPC game. - It's on PS3 and 360 now. - Wow. - See it seems to me like what I was saying earlier, like this is the game people are gonna pick up who've been really wishing an oblivion sequel would come through. - Right, and I think that, I don't know, I think it could be a mild sleeper hit. I don't think it's gonna be anything huge. I doubt that South Peak expects it to be huge. But yeah, every time I've seen it, I thought, that looks like something in my play. - Right, I'm actually interested to play it now. Like, I think I might be the one that ends up having to review it anyway. And I definitely, I think that it has a lot of promise, or maybe not a lot of promise, but some promise. - Yeah, some promise better than no promise. - Yeah, exactly. - There's a lot of really weird names and weird fiction. But it's got this sort of thing where the race of orcs was almost completely exterminated now humans and orcs have to work together against a Dark Ward. And that's slightly different from one of the orcs. - You want it all fixed? - You want it all fixed. - Together against a Dark Ward. (laughing) - It's always the Dark Ward. - So tell us about Kano Lynch, too. - Kano Lynch, too, is really hard. - Really? - The preview that I played dudes would fuck your shit up with very little warning or defense on your part. - Yeah, it seemed like the accuracy issues that you were having were not shared by them. - No, so no machine gun in that game is accurate for you, which I suppose is realistic, but still kind of infuriating. - Well, it's only infuriating if the AI has machine guns and accuracy, you know? - I mean, maybe it's just that there are like 16 of them and two of us. - Yeah. - So they're just firing so many bullets that I would get hit over and over again, but they take about as many bullets to kill as you do. (laughing) - Right. - But the visual look is really working, like really working. - I thought it was when I was at the multiplayer event, I really liked the visual. - The funny thing is that Arthur was commenting on it and we were all noticing it worked, too, is that there are certain things in that game that don't look good and then there's sometimes you look and you're like, "Fuck man, this looks almost real." - Yeah. - Like, there are times when it is the most amazing thing you've ever seen and times where you're like, "This looks awful." - Yeah. - Yeah. - Well, it's all because of that post-processing, you know? - Right. - It's like, I think the source art actually probably doesn't look that good, but that post-processing makes up for it. - Right, and I just feel like they've really looked at the way that video looks. - Right, yeah, they've watched Handicam over and over and over. - There are only a few other games I can think of, and in particular, Gran Turismo has always done this. They've always, Gran Turismo has always been modeled to look the way that high-definition video of cars and races looks, as opposed to saying, "Well, this is the way light works in real life, "and this is the way the metal looks." - Right. - It's like, this is the way the cars look on camera. - And Kane and Lynch is like, "This is how artifacting happens on YouTube." - Right. - Through his cell phone video. - And it's not just that. Like it's, like a lot of, it just looks like digital, filmed with a digital camera. - Yeah, absolutely. - Like, it reminds me-- - Like a clue over the field. - It reminds me a lot of collateral, like the outdoor scenes and collateral. - I don't think I've seen collateral. I'll take your word for it. - Movies, awesome. Which were shot in HD on a digital camera because you can get better shots out, like outdoors actually at night on digital than you can with a film camera. But then picture that if the camera isn't always being held stably and getting knocked the fuck around. - Right, it's just, it's filmed like that, like Miami Vice, like the born movies. And you can turn off the shakiness of the camera if you want to, and if it would make you sick, then I would highly suggest doing so. But it really-- - The shakiness adds to it. - It does. - The one complaint I've seen about the shakiness and all that though, that even people in the office kept on asking, it sounded like, was people being like, why is this happening? Like, who's following? - Right, that's one thing that I just, they don't contextualize it very well. And I guess maybe they thought that in Michael Mann's movies in particular of late, he never explains why there's this sort of cinema verite documentary style shot of his movies. It's just, that's the way it is. And it's Michael Mann, so no one says shit. - Yeah, I think he also doesn't like do the blurring out thing when people get their head shot and stuff like it's actually being broadcast. - No, that's full on. There's a lot of mosaics in that. - Mosaic, that was what I was looking for. - I think it's supposed to, it's just supposed to feel like you're there, you know, it's supposed to just bring you in without even explaining it in. - And it is just so viscerally violent and offensive. Not in the, oh, I can't believe there's so many dick and fart jokes, he said cock, blah, blah, blah. It's very intense, it's very adult. And it's not even necessarily in a puriant way, it's just, it doesn't pull any punches, right? - The gun play seemed to be possibly problematic too, 'cause remember, we always talk about the first K&Linch that it felt like Hitman's gun controls in a shooter, which wasn't. - Which was a good idea. - I think it controls okay for what it is, it's not gonna supplant something like modern warfare or Halo and the way that it controls. - But does it do as good as like a mass effect too? - I suppose so. - Or army of two, you know, those kind of games? - I suppose it has a comparable to army of two, maybe a little more responsive than army of two was, there's a lot of lag in army of two's controls, an army of two two's controls. - Two two. - But I think that the amount of bullets it takes to kill things is definitely something that people are gonna point out in reviews. I think that's gonna hurt it. - Especially like playing like dudes in just a Hawaiian t-shirt. They don't even have a t-shirt on it. - Yeah, it was like the most annoying thing about Uncharted 1. - Yeah, exactly. - It was like you shoot 25 times a wife beat to the ass. - Take it to the chest, still throwing bullets back at it. - It wasn't just that. There was a lot of input lag and Uncharted and there's a lot. - Yeah, but I'm saying I'm just talking about specifically the bullet. - The bullet sponginess of the EA game. - That was really bad, yeah. - Which doesn't make sense because I don't feel like guys were like that in K&Linch or Hitman. Like they took a lot of bullets. - Oh yeah, and Hitman, guys were dead in like one shot no matter where you shot them practically. So. - But I'm looking forward to playing the rest of it. I'm not saying it's gonna be awesome or even really good. - But it does have local and online co-op. - It does, that's a big one. - It's interesting. And there's a lot of games that are coming out that I'm excited for that aren't super interesting. They're just gonna be good. - Yeah. - And it's interesting. - Doesn't it come out the same week as Reach? - No. Two weeks before. - No, that's Hawks that comes out the same week as Reach. - Yeah. - Oh. - Sent to die. (laughing) - Yeah. - I actually, oh, I played Hawks too last week. - I played a shit. - That's how I saw anything. - I don't have anything nice to say about Hawks too. - That's okay. - My roommate from Houston loves like Air Combat games. - Did you post that preview? - Did you post that preview? - Yeah, we did not post a preview of Hawks too. - Fair enough, sorry. What were you saying? - No, I was just saying, does Hawks like good air combat? - Is there something in air combat aficionado would enjoy? - I didn't seem to think it was that fun. - I didn't have fun with it. I don't think it controlled very well. - Does your buddy like Ace Combat games? - He liked, yeah, he liked Ace Combat. - Also, I don't know, I just think that there are certain things that they don't get. Like, you can select an F-14, but you can't do the things that an F-14 was most known for. Like, because that's not good game design. So it just sort of, I mean, the reason the F-14s were the world's foremost fighter-interceptor aircraft for so long was because they could engage six targets simultaneously from a hundred miles away. - Oh, okay. - And so that's not a fun game because you're like, oh, there's not even dots on the horizon, but I know they're out there, lock, lock, lock, lock, lock, fire. - Right, going home. - Yeah, I mean, all combat playing games do it where you can see them and you're like flying right past each other, which is like something Jets never do. - Right, because it's more quote unquote exciting, but I don't feel like Hawks controls very well. - Right. - And it certainly doesn't, the missions don't feel tailored to the kinds of things that you can do in a plane. But I'm actually not sure when the embargo for that stuff is, so I don't want to say too much. - Yeah. - I played Ace Combat on PSP. - Yay. - It was a damn sure Ace Combat game. - And I haven't even turned on my PSP in probably six to seven months, maybe even longer. - Understand, well, Ghostless Sparta comes out not that long from now though. - That's cool, that's one I'll play. - How do I either use my PSP at this point to play like PS1 classics? - Yeah, I believe that, yeah, totally. - Yeah, I think that's it. Matt, what's everything else? - No, just Star Cratch and Dragon Quest 9 and a bunch of board games last weekend. - Yeah, well, we don't care about board games. - Nope, I know you don't, even though board games are awesome. - I like board games. - You know, the only thing I don't like about board games is the maintenance, like cleaning them up, setting them up, putting them away. - And that's why I like them when they come out on Xbox Live, you can't lose any pieces. - You know what else I did play this weekend? I played the watch Anthony cheat at risk online game. - How did you do that? - My friend Paul came over and there's a TV in the living room that we record in, in the 360, and Paul brought over his hard drive, and then we joined a party chat, and these are non-ranked games. - Right, one of them was. - No, they were both non-ranked. You can't, so they're non-ranked games 'cause you can't invite a person to a ranked game. And, so then me and Paul were basically just like, we would see the opening initial thing of like who was in the best position, and then we would just form a plan. Like, okay, it's kind of like when you played the actual board game risk and you made alliances with friends, except this was like an alliance where no one could hear or speak, and it was like, it'd be like playing a real board game risk where two people were constantly leaving the room to go whisper. And where one of them was obviously-- - Where a couple people were cheating. - Risky tells you in the instructions, first of all, the form alliances in the paper instructions. It tells you that. But the only way that it's different, in our case, that I will tell fully digretivores that when you play risk and you make alliances like the game says, you're both still trying to win. - Right. - Whereas this, me and Paul would pretty much make the decision that you have the best chance to win, I will just be your little agent of chaos. (laughing) And so that's what would happen. I would just like do the most unplanned thing where I would just be like, I'm going to hurt this person as bad as I can. - Right. - So that on Paul's turn, he can wipe over them. (laughing) And we did two matches of that and decided it wasn't fun. - Yeah. - 'Cause it wasn't. - It would be over pretty fast, it'd be kind of boring. - It was. And it wasn't very fun at all. - It was disgusting. (laughing) - But, you know, I like to grief people sometimes. - Yeah, that happens. - So. - Yeah, well, having a board game weekend really did make me feel like, yeah, there's more board games that could easily be translated out of time. - Oh, fuck. - Do we make it five years in this console generation before we got a risk game? - Yeah, exactly. - How's that possible? - Yeah, I know. - Yeah. And other ones, you know, things like Carcassonne have been like really successful. So, I mean-- - Catan, like these hardcore games that were considered hardcore German. - Apparently, yeah. - Catan wasn't successful enough to keep big huge games from almost going under. - Well, I mean, that's the only thing they made. And I can't imagine that it's to be with like 50 people. That's probably pretty hard to keep paying them a salary. - Exactly. - But yeah, no, but good for them though. They're working on a game now too. So-- - Well, when we played this week was a Warhammer quest and that kind of like, you know, board game, RPG-ish kind of thing. I think it could work really well over Xbox Live, especially-- - Yeah. - I think it could work really well as a mobile game too if you didn't, 'cause you can do asynchronous turns. - Right, I mean, I think that there's been a lot of examples of board games that could work really well in Xbox Live, including zombies if that ever actually comes to light. They were going to do zombies and it just got delayed and canceled, I think. - Yeah, and see, that was one that was like, you know, all these games where people love them, but you always hear, but I wish they didn't have to clean up afterwards or set up. Those are all the ones that Xbox Live is like so fucking good for me 'cause there is no set up or clean up. - I would like a Euroquest, I thought so. - Mm-hmm. - That would be cool. - So. - Make it happen. - Yep. - Someone. - Uh, net note. - Sticky big. (upbeat music) ♪ The world has turned ♪ ♪ And left me here ♪ ♪ To swear I was ♪ ♪ Before you appear ♪ ♪ In your place ♪ ♪ An empty space ♪ ♪ Is filled with the void ♪ ♪ Behind my face ♪ ♪ I just made love ♪ ♪ With yours free men ♪ ♪ Three ♪ ♪ One thousand times in my man ♪ ♪ You said you loved him ♪ ♪ But what the hell ♪ ♪ But you said you had made ♪ ♪ Turned away ♪ ♪ Turned above every day ♪ ♪ The world has turned ♪ - Hello, and welcome back 30 seconds later for you. 10 minutes later of Muppet YouTube channel for us. (laughing) So we had a topic for this week. It's something I kind of thought of that I wanted to maybe do a feature with, but it seems too subjective to maybe do that with maybe an editorial, but the question was, how much is too much? And this is something that's come up because of limbo more recently, but it's come up repeatedly with a ton of different games, right? - I think arguably it might come up because of StarCraft considering it's $60 for a PC game. - Right, and not only is it $60 for a PC game, but a lot of people, you know, I'm not saying they're right, but a lot of people are like, ah, it's only one third of what it should have been. - But just a lot of blah, blah, blah. - Jesus Christ, that goes long. - But a lot of people say, you know, the original came with all three campaigns. - Right, or another way to say it would be, it's one third of what they expected, right? - Yeah. - So the topic I wrote was this. We often hear people say X is too much because it's only Y long, or that's way overpriced to have no multiplayer, but why is this? No one seems to be able to agree in the value games with the recently released Limbo standing out as a prime example where people seem to be torn over how much it should cost. When it comes to retail downloadable in games that are everywhere in between, how do you decide what it's worth? Is there a standard, you know? - Yeah, that's a good point 'cause there really isn't a standard, is there? It's like, for me, it's totally based off. When I look at a game and I think, how much work really went into this game? - Right. - And, you know, like for instance, I would say Crackdown 2, not Worthful Price. - And it sometimes comes down to, for me, is like, what did I get out of this game sometimes? Like if the game, like, really provided me with some sort of, like, either, in the case of Limbo where it's not necessarily like Joy, but it's like an experience that you really like or something like Captain Forever, which is just fun. Like that game's not gonna touch you emotionally or anything, but it is just like fun. You know, like, how do we price that? You know, in our mind, it's so easy for us to toss out an arbitrary member. - I Captain Forever, I don't know, it's like a $15 game. Like, where does that number come from? Like, I just, I don't exactly understand it. I mean, like, we accept $60 at the retail price of 360 games, you know? And there's so many games like Uncharted, you never hear that many people complain about the length of it. And that's like an eight to 10 hour game and you pay $60 for it. And Limbo's like a four hour game and you pay $15 for it. - Well, and I think it's really easy for most people to see how much work went into Uncharted, but it's hard for them to see how much work went into Limbo. Even though it's like, if you're really paying attention and you think about the kind of games that you play and you think about how simple Limbo really could be, and kind of like I said last week, there's so much detail every step along in Limbo. They're like, if you kind of step back from it and the length of it and you look at it and look at, you know, they didn't, how they didn't repeat anything. It's like, wow, a lot of fucking work went into this game. - Yeah, and to me, Limbo in particular is an example where, you know, I bought it the week it came out because for me, it's sort of a situation where I'm voting with my dollars and it's also me saying, I value this, excuse me, this type of experience, you know, over another, or even if it's a game I might wanna play that comes out on Xbox Live. I might wait for the price to drop, but for Limbo in particular, there are so few games that sort of try to do what it does, you know, that sort of X factor. That I feel like that's a situation where I step in and vote. - I mean, like Toy Soldiers, for instance, for 10 bucks is a game that, you know, is like three times as much content as Limbo. But a lot of that is the same content over and over again because it's just that type of game. And I have no problem paying $10 for Toy Soldiers. I probably would have paid 15 for it, but like, and I still have no problem paying $15 for Limbo, even though it's like this four hour game, that in all likelihood I'll probably only ever play like maybe twice ever, you know? But like just what I've gotten out of it through playing it that one time and seeing like these clever things they're doing with the way they design their game and not only that, but having the opportunity to have someone else play it for me, like that was really cool too. Like that, like Limbo's one of those few games, it's like really easy to learn the basics of and it's so great to watch other people play. Like it's such, I guess you're right, it is just voting with your dollars. It comes down like, you know, I mean the price was set on Xbox Live, but I could see Limbo being one of the games that would maybe benefit on a PC release of Pay What You Want, 'cause-- - Yeah, well not pay what you want, but I could see it like selling for cheaper on PC. - I don't think there's ever been a game on PC that's benefited from Pay What You Want. - Well, what games have really done it besides World of Goo? I don't know. - Yeah, that's well. I mean, I just don't know that. - Well, I mean, musicians have tried the same thing and it's resulted in less than they had hoped for. I think that assuming the generosity of a gaming audience is not conducive to making a living at this, but I think-- - I think it might depend on how good of a living you want to make. (laughing) - But I think the sort of the interesting point to make here is that we're talking about limbo in particular and how the game is sort of an outlier from all the other games that we would just completely suggest. Like we would say, "Oh yeah, this game is super long. "You should definitely pick it up." But people are still buying limbo despite it being short. So to me, it says something to the subjectivity of the artfulness of the game or-- - God, you sound so pretentious. - You know what it means? - For some people, they just want to be able to experience it. - Yeah, I mean-- - Yeah. - This one of our users, Brent Namius says, "One of the things that bothers him "about downloadable games, you know, "since that's what we're kind of talking about." He says, "The other part of this "is that I can't sell downloadable games. "If limbo was $15 and I could sell it on eBay "or Craigslist for $8 to $9 after, "or GameStop for five to six, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. "But if I'm stuck with it, no matter what, "full price is almost always too much in my eyes. "Rockstar and Bioware are the only two companies "that will get me to buy a game of full price "and keep it at this point." So basically, yeah, he's just proving how subjective it is. It just comes down to what you're willing to pay for it. There are certain companies that do it, but limbo to me is one of those games that I have no problem. - Well, and I'm like poor enough now that I probably wouldn't have bought limbo. - Right. - You know, but I got given a code for it. And after playing it, I'm like, okay, if I had spent the $15 on it, even in my current financial situation, I would have felt like it was worth it. But the barrier to entry was high enough for me that I never would have gotten to that point. So, I mean, it's gonna depend a lot on the state of your own personal economy as well. And whereas I used to think nothing about dropping $60 on a game. - Right. And then this doesn't even consider the factor that Microsoft doesn't necessarily make it easy for you to just add the amount of points you need to buy a game. - Well, they have changed that. I think they changed the denominations that you can add to your account. - Yeah, but I mean, like you. But I think, but correct me if I'm wrong, Tyler, but I think what you're saying is that, like you can't just pay the exact amount. - Right. - You're always over. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. And that's where they get you. - Yeah. - Jai says about the topic. Is this about Arthur's penis length? Because there's never, there's no such thing as too much. (laughing) - That's not true, actually. I can speak from personal experience. There's definitely such a thing as too much. - Too much penis? - When I saw the post, I was like, I was learning too. - I'm only so big, I can only take so much. (laughing) - Matt C posted, did you post in this? - Apparently I did. Shit, I don't remember. Maybe I was really drunk. - You said, I've only recently started. Well, Matt said today at 8.43 a.m. So I've only recently started downloading arcade titles in XBLA and for 15 bucks, I'm getting some quality games. I recently bought Death's Bank and Limbo and both are awesome. Sure, Limbo only took me a couple hours to complete, but the whole experience was incredible and surely worth the price. When people complain about spending $15 in the game, I'm not sure what to think. $15 for a game is incredibly cheap, especially when there are $60 games that are shit compared to them. I've seen forums explode about Limbo being $15 while only lasting a small amount of time, but if that's the way you go about basing your purchases on, then you suck at life. If you like your games, get it no matter what. - Wow, that almost sounds like something I could have written. - Yeah, well, he also said the end, comma, bonus. - So, well, that's definitely something I could have written. - I don't know that you fail at life because you care about price. - No, I don't think so either. - I am sympathetic to that, 'cause I have been broke. For sure, I just feel that, even when I was broke, I still appreciated something based on its merits as opposed to how much of it there was. - Right. You know, a lot of people, I was talking about this with Ryan Scott, 'cause he actually kind of prompted this in a way too, 'cause he was fighting with the coast of the geek box, the Ryan, the other Ryan that he does with. That guy was basically saying that if limbo came with a plastic toy or something and it was a disc, he would buy it in a heartbeat for $15. But it's just like so many people have this idea that a digital copy is just not worth a lot. Yeah, I've heard people say this about steam too. A lot of people have a problem paying a full price that they would on steam as going and getting it from the store, because they don't have that physical presence to have on their shelf. The funny thing is, is that ostensibly, unless the internet's implode in the entire world is destroyed and you have no way to access your cloud, that digital copy has potential to be more permanent than your physical copy. - Right, that's true, plus, I mean, Ryan Scott, again. - That's what I'm saying. - Ryan Scott again said that, you know, he thought that his co-host Ryan on the geek box would totally have a good perspective of us, 'cause his house burned down and he lost all his physical copies. - Right. - And you know, had those all been digital copies that he could just re-download, it wouldn't be a thing. - Did you say that during that conversation with him? - Yeah, I think so. - Man, that's a good way to get punched. - Ryan, those two have known each other forever, though. They're like lifelong friends, you know, but yeah, but for him, you know, it's just-- - Well, if you bought more digital copies, when your house burned down, you wouldn't be successful. - But yeah, you know, it's just like, for that guy, still the physical copy is much more valuable than this idea of, you know, something that you can access anywhere. - Well-- - Physical ownership is more important to him than the idea, the concept of ownership. - Yes. Well, whereas for me, it's like, I'm into the point now where I don't want more boxes. In fact, I would like it if I could take my existing boxes and somehow turn them into digital copies of the games and then get rid of the boxes. - You mean like Blizzard does with literally every game they've ever released? - Yeah, basically, I wish I could do that now with the majority of my games collection, except for like super collector's editions that I have of some games, you know. - That'll never happen with console games. - No, I know. - Because, I mean, PC games you can't do that with and then take them back because I know I'm gonna let you bring back a PC game. Like you can't sell a PC game used in the US. - Yeah. - But sure, shit can sell a console game used. (laughing) I mean, remember when the PSP go came out, people were like, well, maybe they'll have a trade in thing where you just send stuff in, and you'll get a download code and they're like, "Yeah, that's not happening." - Right. - Romakin says something that I think is kind of a point that this comes up again, this topic of price and what it means. He says, "Price is such a subjective thing. It always strikes me as crazy to hear people bitch about subscription fees and traditional MMOs, but those same people will turn around and buy a game like Limbo for 15 bucks that will last them two to three hours. For less than the price of Limbo, you can easily squeeze 40 hours out of a month's MMO subscription. At 35 cents an hour, an MMO subscription carries much more value than a $5 per hour Limbo charge. Sure, you can play Limbo as often as you want, but chances are you won't. Personally, I'm not willing to invest $5 an hour for entertainment no matter how good. So apparently he doesn't see movies. Limbo strikes me as a $5 to $7 game. Maybe I'll get it when they slash the price of some. I do think that it comes up a lot with MMOs though. People are like, how can you pay monthly for that? And you're just paying monthly just to access a server, but you are paying, you are playing a ton of it for a long period of time. Right, but I mean hundreds of hours. The very nature of MMOs is to draw out the reward structure as long as possible. In a fun way. Yeah, in a fun way. Fingers in the air and air quotes. It is fun. For some people, some people don't find that gratifying at all. Well, but obviously a large amount of people do. Well, it's the kind of, it's the social aspect that really does it. But that's what does in MMOs and that's what keeps you come back and paying is the social level. I mean millions of people play MMOs. Yeah. Because they do find that drawn out thing, I think rewarding, although some people probably don't and they still pay to play. Well, I kind of wonder how many people actually find MMOs rewarding because pretty much everyone that plays MMO, like I would ballpark out of my ass that 70% of them are playing wow. Well, yeah. Or free to play ones. That's 11 million people. And the overall gaming populace is much larger than that. Yeah, although I feel like I know a lot of gamers who have never even tried an MMO either. Right. Well, and anecdotally, I know a lot of gamers who are like, I'm not going to play an MMO because I already have enough problems with my team. It's true. I mean, MMOs do have a very rightfully earned stigma. I mean, both Arthur's been straight up told by people that he was dating. If you play fucking wow. That was the girl I was dating at the time, yeah. It is over, you know? Because yeah, just because MMOs do fuck with a lot of people's lives. She heard up a lot. Like she sat down and watched me play Psychonauts. Like, she didn't say shit when I bought Halo 2 release day and stayed up till five in the morning. But yeah, that was her line, apparently. Yes, I did. I think that limbo offers a richness of its experience that belies a $5 per hour charge. Yes, sure. I mean, just like, I have no problem paying $10 to go see most movies, you know, that I pay to spoil. There are some that I'm sad. I feel that you actually have expressed a number of problems of paying $10. There are certain movies that I go see that I'm sad that I paid for. Yeah. But then there are other movies that I think are fantastic and I had no problem paying for it all. I really enjoyed Inception. I Inception won. Oh, you saw it finally. I finally got to see it. Inception was a movie, for instance. It was totally worth my 12 bucks. It was worth every penny. Yeah. Whereas there have been other movies like Clash of the Titans. I was sad I paid to see them. But we saw that, man, we paid so little to see that movie compared to-- Yeah, we probably paid like $9. If that, less than that. But even that, I was like, I just wish I hadn't paid to see that. I actually think I bought your ticket for that movie. I wish that we had those two hours back. OK, that's fine. You know what, I don't mind giving up a little time to that movie. Like, that's fine. Like, I do kind of wish I had seen a matinee and paid less. But I think Clash of the Titans is perfectly acceptable to pay like six bucks to see, like, on a day where you're not doing anything else. I would rather we use that six bucks to go buy a can of spray paint. Me and you wouldn't have had an adventure doing some tagging. [LAUGHTER] And then accidentally tread on someone else's turf and have to run away. Yeah, and that was when Arthur and Anthony went to jail. You still wish we had not seen Clash of the Titans? And it was worth it. Arthur does have a pretty sweet tag, though. So Chris P says, when it comes to PC games, $60 is too much. This is the new trend started by Activision and Ubisoft with Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed 2, respectively. Part of the reason why console games are $10 more of the licensing fees paid to Microsoft Sony and Nintendo. If I remember correctly, OXM did a breakdown and showed that's where $12 of the price tag of a 360 game goes. Yeah, licensing fees this generation aren't more than they were last generation. They cost $60 because people will pay it and because games are expensive to make. That's just it. It's been proven that they can get another $10. Yeah, exactly. And, like, I honestly-- You could think Blizzard for proving that people will pay 60 for a PC game. And Modern Warfare 2 sold just fine on PC. Yeah, well Modern Warfare 2 was probably the first-- I think was that the first 60 other PC game? Yeah. Well, and that's part of the problem with PC games costing $60 now as well as, like, I kind of agree that, like, I don't think they should cost that much, but clearly people will pay that much because that's just what people think of as games costing now. I imagine that the people that they feel are most likely to tip over into not buying a PC game at 60 are the same people that they feel probably wouldn't buy it anyway. Yeah. And not because they wouldn't play it, but because they would acquire it through other means. Right. That's true. I mean-- Well, and also, it's like, when you think about the amount of games that they're going to sell, like the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 isn't going to sell near as much as the console version. So they are trying to squeeze as much blood out of that stone as they can. Right. I just feel like, man, it's definitely-- if you really love PC games, it is certainly not a battle that you want to get into saying, well, I'm not paying for this because they are more and more publishers are moving to the point where we're not developing for that platform anymore. Do we have any idea of what Civ 5 is going to be at launch? I don't know. Civ 5's piece. 2K hasn't done any PC games recently. So I don't know if they're going to go with the price on the Amazon right now. I will say right now, if you were to go on Amazon in pre-order Civ 5 for $50 or whatever it is right now and they announced a higher price, then you would get it for the original price. Oh, really? Yeah, that's how most pre-order places work. Well, I do hope that most publishers still decide to keep PC prices a little bit cheaper than console prices. Why? Just because it's the platform that I prefer to play on, if I can. Civ 5 is currently $50 for pre-order. OK. So maybe you should pre-order it in case-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] They do decide to make it a system that you-- Or get the 10 buck pumped. Yep. Amazon is cool, too, because if they decide to put it on sale or whatever after you've paid for it, if it's like a week or whatever, they'll refund you the difference. Well, then there's also-- I'd like to try to wait and see if things are going to come out on my Steam press account, too. There is, however, a Civ 5 special edition for $100. I can't see that being $100. OK, hold on. Just a quick aside from the topic. Arthur, tell me what comes up. Badass book in this collector's edition. But what else becomes going to be said to fatass book? I don't like to read. Ah, figures. I don't like to read. Little Peter Warhammer 40K style figures. The art book looks a lot like the art book in the StarCraft special edition. Oh, that's good. Five metal figurines based on units from Civilization 5 manufactured by Reaper miniatures. The Reaper does good work. A behind the scenes that for Axis on Civ 5 DVD, a two disc CD soundtrack and a 176 page hardcover art book. This guy makes a comment that goes in line with what you said, Matt. He says, for me, it has a lot to do with the density of the experience. His value in a game has less to do with how-- oh, this is foggin, by the way. Value has less to do with how long it takes to play and more to do with how much well-crafted content there is. Art, detail, design, polish, pacing, balance. These are all critical. I haven't played limbo, but I keep hearing how densely packed it is with interesting environments and clever puzzles. And that regard, it does sound a lot like braid, because braid also earned its keep by filling the entire experience with challenging and thought-provoking uses of its mechanics. There's also the reverse value of the question. As getting a game cheap can dramatically improve my opinion of improving my tolerance for shortcomings, I got by on a commando and mirrors edge for $20 each a few months after they came out. And as such, they were among my favorite experiences of that year. Similarly, I got forced and leashed for $7.50, and ghostbusters for $4 on Steam. And on those terms, I find them completely enjoyable. I bought Brittle Legend for $20 on Friday. You bought what? Brittle Legend for $20. I see you didn't end up owning that. No, I never ended up owning it, because I just didn't think it was very good. And as an aside, can I say-- Boy, you didn't think it was very good, but you still bought it? For $20, I'm willing-- It's worth $20. --to throw double fine a bone. And I want to see how it ends, because the story is really great, and the characters are awesome. It's just the game isn't fun. And as an aside, I love Tom Chick. But in his "Starcraft 2" review, which is fine, he talks about how well-realized and brilliant the RTS is in Brittle Legend, as compared to the-- That just came to you. --by the numbers RTS approach in "Starcraft 2." And I think that my reality split asunder just a tiny bit when I read that statement. Anyway. Anyway. Did he say the Brittle Legend RTS was great? Or he was using that as an example of-- No, he said it was fantastic, yeah. --one that different. Because now he brought up Don of War II as well. Yeah, if Don of War II isn't-- --different RTS who tried different things. But Brittle Legend-- there is no gameplay part of Brittle Legend that is good. Mm. Well, there you are, then. Which is why I paid $20 for it. So "Foggins" or "Figgins" or whatever that person's name was. You're a good person. You're a "Figgins." So yeah. And it makes me wonder why more developers don't step out and price their game's lower. I mean, obviously, it has that stigma. I don't know if there's things in place to keep them from doing that. Yeah, that might be the case. And there's incentive on places like the App Store to price things low. Because if you price it low enough, you can get a big enough bump to get into the top list. And then, suddenly, you hit this tipping point where you roll over into immense profitability. And we don't have that kind of equivalent in other markets. And boxed games, unfortunately. Yeah. I was actually talking about something along these lines. I was on "Three Red Lights" today. And this is a "Halo" episode. And "Talk" came to ODST, of course, and the pricing of ODST. And I just think at some point, there was a discussion with that game that they might sell, like, say, four million copies of the game at 40 and three million copies at 60. And they were totally willing to lose those million users because they made so much more pricing at that higher price. Yeah, I mean, I don't think people were mad about the pricing. It wouldn't have been mad about the pricing of ODST if they hadn't said it was only going to be $40. That was the problem. Was they made it public? But then, that's the thing about other games that-- Oh, I didn't even know that. Like, just came out, like, cracked down, too. Like, that's a much better $40 proposition than a $60. Yeah, totally. But, I mean, isn't that right, Arthur? Didn't ODST, they said it would be $40? No, they never announced a price. They announced a destination, which was-- they'd said downloadable. Yeah, like an expansion. Expansion, yeah. And that sets a certain precedent and a certain expectation in people's minds. It does. They had really catastrophic messaging on that game, which I mean, they only sold three million copies of fucking Halo, ODST. I was going to say, they only walked, they only left to the bank, which would be like the most successful console expansion, like, that I can think of. I mean, expansion? Jesus, of course, yeah. Yeah, that wasn't-- What other console games even have expansions, Dragon Age? Grand Theft Auto? Oh, yeah. Those ones. And we also discussed how Grand Theft Auto, I think, demonstrated to everyone that the console market maybe just isn't ready for a large scale downloadable expansions that way, which is why we're retail is going to be where things keep going, since they sold-- Makes me sad that Dragon Age expansions are just not going to be around much longer. Well, they got a ramp up production on that. Almost single H2. I know. It's just like-- You got to get your hawk on. Yeah. Apparently. Are they trying to rope that into the Tom Clancy universe? Hawk, not hawks. Like, instead of hopping into your dragon, you hop into your F-15. Why not? I just want-- there were a lot of good comments on this. And then there was also plenty where people said, this is an idiotic topic. Really? Yeah. And then there was-- Idiotic, idiotic, idiotic. And then there were also plenty where people just said, basically, the same thing about how subjective it is. And it is totally-- I was just curious about what people's subjective opinions were, you know? And it's an interesting thought experiment to be like, can we reach a standard? I'm a good one, man. Every person that said it was a stupid topic, a swear to Christ, I'm tired of you people. It's like, can you reach a standard with a question like this? Can you say that like a game-- I mean, I'm sure that companies-- like, I imagine companies that make games. They're probably sitting there laboring like, oh, God. What do you think people think this is worth? Yeah. Yeah, that's all they do. Because there really is no formula that you can go for. I mean, that's why you can go to an art gallery and something that costs $25 can be sitting right next to something that costs 1,000, you know? I don't know that a lot of publishers and developers are thinking, oh, what is this worth? They're thinking, how much can we charge? Well, yeah. Like, what will people pay? Like, what is the most that we-- It is a different way of looking at the same question. Right, what will it be worth to others? Well, I mean, Xbox Live Arcade has been at the forefront. That's totally picked up on the mic. Has been at the forefront of pushing what people will pay for games. Like, limbo has been compared to braid over and over again. And limbo-- wasn't braid-- Braid was $10. Braid was $10, yeah. And limbo is $15. Yeah. It's like everything from the summer of arcade last year was $10 and everything on the summer of arcade this year is $15. Well, it could just be that they're trying to see if people will actually pay $15. And you are. And I am. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Um, did you want to read a couple of what comes to you? Do you want to take a break? Oh, no, I was just logging in to see who I have to ban for calling it a stupid. OK, well, we're going to take a quick break. And people are going to get banned. And we'll be back with us. [MUSIC PLAYING] Yes. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] What's up? [MUSIC PLAYING] Again, 30 seconds later. What? What's that for? I think I'm going to just load the way. And then what's up? [MUSIC PLAYING] Sometimes my brain farts. So Tyson rode in. Sometimes your ass farts too. From Canada. [LAUGHTER] And this is not a question we're going to answer. Why not? But I feel like we can point him in the right direction. OK. Because he says, I just got a new iPhone for him. I was wondering what games and apps are a must for it. This is my first smartphone and any tips would be appreciated. And I don't feel like we should sit here and name off a huge list of games. Because man, we've named so many iPhones and stuff. Sure. Listen to last week's episode, for example. That's our kid.com's a good place to go. But touch our kids. Yeah, so I was going to say there are some websites where you can find it. IGN actually has a pretty robust iPhone. One might even say comprehensive. Yeah. So they review a ton of iPhone games. I will just say, kill to live. Yeah. That's all I'm going to say. Sure. Fanboy. And I'll say Plants vs. Zombies. There you go. Those are like two that I can think of off top of my head. But yeah, you should check out those. I mean, you know, as far as apps and stuff, just check out what the top free ones are. Like a lot of the best apps you can just usually look at the top free ones. Did you see that you don't get the game center stuff anymore? The game center stuff? Like the achievement stuff and the game stuff and OS 4 that's coming. Yeah. Like they've eliminated 3G's from that pool. Yeah, because OS 4 has killed the 3G. Yeah. It's awful. Like if it wasn't for the fact that I'm going to be getting a 3G as soon from a friend, then I would have reverted my 3G to 3 to iOS 3. And just imagine the pain that Anthony is in. Oh, God. Yeah. Because you have original iPhone. Yeah. Do you have OS 4 on it? I don't think so. Oh, well, don't do it. Okay. Because I mean, if it killed my 3G, it's got to kill yours. Yeah. The next letter is titled Adalema. And it's from Hunter. And Hunter wrote in before. He says, "Dear, decent people, is I the miserable fuck who had no friends and lived in a racist part of Georgia." Oh, I remember that letter. I have an update for you, peoples. Oh, good. I have an interesting quandary. This year I was starting my senior year of high school. I am a virgin. I have never had any type of intimate contact with a lady or a rendezvous. And it is not because I am a nervous wreck, maybe an emotional one. Up until I was junior in high school, I was sort of the nervous wreck many of the writer-inter seem to be. Oh, the people that write to us. Right. And then halfway through my junior year, I had a revelation. I started trying to make friends. I stopped talking and taking any bullshit and began hanging out with people, both male and female. Then I started realizing why the fuck I had been so shy and nervous and came to the conclusion, my parents screwed me up. My parents have always had very little boundaries and very little trust in me. My dad and stepmom acted like third graders when it came to me and the ladies. This really fucks me up and is one of those truly painful things. I know Arthur and Matt, it really shouldn't bother me, but it does. I don't know why he, that was a quick thing. That's a weird sentence. I have traced that and my mother is in security back to the routine of my social issues. So my question to you is, should I try to get intimate during my senior year? Or just wait until I'm 18 and can get out in the world to plow the field? Also, I don't have a vehicle, so it would be hard to go on dates. It's really not, but well maybe in the middle of nowhere it kind of is. Figure out a way to take girls on dates that don't require a car if that's what you want to do. Yeah. What do you want to do? Do you want to be intimate with girls? Yeah. He's 17. Yes. Right. Yes he does. I mean there's like the sort of man, my penis just won't shut up. And then there's like him that just feels like I'm 17 and I haven't. I need to. Right. Like don't feel the social obligation to get laid. I mean at least wait till you're 20 before that anxiety sets in. For 24. For 24. But if you want to go after a girlfriend and see where it goes, then you're going to go and see where it goes. Like you shouldn't, you shouldn't like let any worries or whatever stop you. Right. That's awesome that like he, you know, halfway through his junior year, he's like fuck this, I'm not going to be a loser anymore. It's also incredible that you're having such revelations about your parents at such a young age. I know. It usually it takes at least until your second year of college before you realize that. He says P.S. For that resentment really starts to snowball. He says P.S. I just want people to know I wasn't considering killing myself after I wrote that last letter. Apparently I think maybe we thought that. So. Did we? Yeah. I don't know. I don't remember. But he just wanted us to know. We'd have to go back and research that episode of Rebel of Fame and we're not going to do that. Here's a gaming question. From Robert. No gaming questions. Relationships only. Just wondering what you guys think about the new Zelda release stuff. I must say that I was not very impressed by the E3 trailer. It feels like Nintendo is jumping on the bat and wagon of lots of gimmicks, aka a bunch of new weapons, and this will somehow make it into a good experience. Also, what do you think about its new take on style? I really enjoyed Twilight Princess by the way. I just feel that it will be overshadowed by other games when it's released. If this guy really enjoyed Twilight Princess, you're going to love this game. I just think it's completely uninspired. That was the day my Zelda dream died. Yeah. I haven't been into a Zelda game in a long time. Well, that demo made it even seem worse than it really was. Well, it wasn't just the demo. I don't think the visual style is interesting. I think it's really boring. I think that they're not trying anything different, they're not pushing in a new direction. They're just like, "Oh, well, now we've got more one-to-one sword mapping." Yeah. And... So what? Really? I don't need to wag on my sword to feel like I'm interacting with my world. I mean, it's just every Zelda has had the same problems for the last seven or eight years. They're all repetitive. They all require a ton of backtracking. They all are a slow build. They're all Zelda games? Yeah. I mean, it's the problems of Zelda have come to define Zelda for me. And I think for a lot of people, when I was writing that thing on Darksiders a few weeks ago, like one of the things that I asked people why they didn't play Darksiders and they said, "People compared it to Zelda. I'm not fucking interested in Zelda. I don't want that kind of shit in that game." Yeah, but people compared it as like a good Zelda. I was gonna say, I will say that I've played other Zelda games and got bored and I love Darksiders. Right. People just compared it to Zelda because the expectation that certain critics have is that everyone associated Zelda with awesome as opposed to just the same shit over and over again. Exactly. I think a big problem is like a lot of Zelda's, a lot of the recent Zelda's. They just don't have interesting overworlds. Possibly. That's a huge issue for me because like the dungeons are still good. The bosses are still good, but the overworlds are really annoying. They're just like the shit you have to tread through to get to the next dungeon. Exactly. They have more in common with no more heroes open world than they do with like you know, I don't know. Something else. It has a good open world. A link to the past is still a game that holds up so fucking well. And that is the one Zelda game that I've played and been like fuck that was incredible. It is so magnificently designed. Like it just clips along like you almost never get stuck and if you get stuck it's not for very long and then you feel awesome when you figure it out. It's clever and it's beautiful and the music is great. And I just, I haven't felt that way about a Zelda game in a long time. And then the game that they really tried some different stuff. They still had some design issues, but they really tried something different. It's got hammered in the balls over and over again by the fan base and went right back to what they've been doing before. That would be Wind Waker. I loved Wind Waker. A lot of people did, but then there was a lot of people that really did not like it. As soon as they showed, as soon as the art style debuted pretty much. That was like when Weezer released Pinkerton and it got railed on it, but there were some people that really loved it. And then when they go back to Weezer went back to the songs that all just have that rhythm the whole time. And Pinkerton is definitely Weezer's a link to the past. See, you know, you try something new, people don't like it, you go back to what's safe. Now I think I might have another Pinkerton song in my podcast. If you're Blizzard, you don't ever... You don't ever... You're solving Pinkerton's song. Yeah, three Pinkerton songs in the breaks. So the next letter is from Logan. Hi, Logan. And he says, "Have any of you fellas given any thought to gaming with your future offspring?" Yes. My wife is due later this month, and I've been wondering what is the best way to expose him to games. Part of me wants to walk him through the evolution of gaming, touching upon the highlight of each generation. I realize this will most likely not work, but it's a nice thought. What game or series or system would you want to start your kid off playing? But for me, it comes down to like, by the time if I were to have a kid in theory, like it would come down to what was relevant at the time because chances are from something that I want to play with him, it's because I want to play it too. Yeah. Like... Well, I think that's the most important thing is to like, because I know that John Davison, he's now in charge of GamePro if people aren't familiar with who he is. Sure. But he also started what they play. Yeah, he started what they play, he's been in the industry forever, and he's always trying to find games that he can play with his kids. And have a good time. And have a good time. And have both of them. That's why, you know, they're really into the Lego games and stuff like that. So that's what I would think is, you know, like games where your family can have fun together. That's going to be more important than anything that's designed specifically for your kids. As a quick aside, did you hear the Lego game sales news today? I know. I just heard it sold a bad load. Oh, God. Batman Arkham Asylum sold 3.2 million copies. Lego Batman sold like 7.4. Holy shit. But it was on a bunch of systems. Right. But Arkham Asylum was on three. Yeah, but man, those Lego games are just fucking cash money machines. Telltale, man, that's all they do now. They might as well be called Lego Games Incorporated. Yeah. Well, it makes sense. People keep buying it. But travelers tell. Sorry. Travelers tells me. Let's say telltale. No, it's just they both have a TTE. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, like that's kind of another aside off of that. That's an excellent example of why you don't want to exclude your market by exclude market potential by, say, not ever having female protagonists in your game. So anyway. Man, I think it's like really awesome. Like our culture, gaming culture, just what it's going to do for us as parents. I mean, like my parents didn't do sports with me. I mean, I wasn't into sports. You know, I mean, that was kind of that or like phishing or camping was kind of the things you thought parents did with kids. Right. But now video games. Well, my and my brother and I, we were raised by my mom after my mom and dad got divorced. I still have very fond memories of my mom playing Legos with my brother and I in our room, you know, and like the whole idea of play together is just enhanced by video games. Yeah. Learning together. I mean, the relationships we're going to be able to form with our kids and vice versa, man. I don't know. I often love to like wax, like dream big about like the gamer culture and like how our hobby is going to sort of shape us as a subculture. Yeah. I mean, I don't foresee like I'm not even huge in director gaming that much. It's like a novelty for me. But I don't really see the need to like go back and be like, yeah, except for maybe like 10 minutes when my kids like 15 and be like, you know what, I used to play. I used to be double drag. Yeah. And we'd be like, all right, this is dumb. Let's go back on halo way. And especially when you consider like Nintendo is just remaking all their old games every year. I mean, there's always going to be the new version of what you played. I think for this guy, the best advice I give him is to make sure you're playing something that you enjoy. Yeah. Like don't, you know, find games that aren't going to be like something you don't want to expose your kid to, but find something you can play together that you can enjoy. Well, the one thing that you can say about classic games, I can't remember which of my friends it was, but he's saying he downloaded a bunch of games on his Wii virtual console, you know, like Super NES and NES games and stuff like that. And his kid really got into them because they, they had, you know, because 2D games, you understand immediately what's going on. I'm jumping. I'm moving left to right or whatever and his kid did get into them. So, you know, don't discount the classic games just because. Super Mario Brothers Wii. And you know, Anthony, you mentioned something to that you said, you don't want to introduce them to games that aren't appropriate, but man, oh man, you guys remember there was a news story that was circulated about a month ago. I think it was a guy who led his four year old son, played Grand Theft Auto. Oh, I just mean games that you find appropriate for. Right. That's what I meant. But did you, but did you, any of you guys read it? No. It was so amazing. It was like, he let his like super little kid play Grand Theft Auto. And the kid was like, and he was, he just let him play and he told the kid nothing about the game or anything. And he said what the kid just naturally did was like drive in traffic, stop it, red light. And like he said, like the, when he, when he accidentally ran over somebody, the kid flipped out and thought he was in trouble. Like, you know what I mean? So it's, you know, well, it's just, you got to be careful, right? Like my, my boss, my old boss that games by will, he has had twins and their infants, you know, tiny little infants just born. And he said that in their life, he's pretty sure they've already heard more gunfire than the people that live in Fallujah, because all he does is all he does is play like modern warfare when they're around and stuff like that. But you know, it's just like, they're, they're infants, right? You can get away with that. But at some point, you know, I know several parents, even ones that I work with at IGN that have said, you know, like, ah, you know, I saved the, the fallout three with the gory death for when they go to bed. Right. Sure. There's just certain things that you may not want to expose them to. Sure. I can understand that. The next letter is from Zach, and he says that nerdy things to do in San Francisco. So he says, he also just wanted to save right back. I want to thank you guys for doing this and to let you know that you helped me get through long 12 hour shifts as a 911 dispatcher. So just in case you're wondering Rebel of Fame saves lives. Or kills people. Or, yeah. I know as he's just like, no, he's just like, ah, fart jokes. Oh, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. King murdered. I'm murdered. Not funny. Yes, I just finished listening to episode 70, and I would like to second Arthur's proposal for Anthony to play music at PAX. Oh, man, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have read this part. I thought I was getting into the nerdy things to do in San Francisco. Oops. Well, that will. Yep. And that's not getting edited out. It's definitely standing. Well, we'll see. Well, we won't see because this will be, you will be in the air when this podcast goes up probably. I know it's, well, I just meant that we'll see if I do. I know it's been asked before, but I have a slight tweak to the question. Are there any cool nerdy things to do in San Francisco? Stuff that someone into art, games, and tech would appreciate. My wife and I are coming down this library at our 6th anniversary, 6th anniversary from the 12th through the 15th. And we'll be checking out a lot of the standard tours, just stuff and I was hoping to make or do some nerdy shit while we're there too. Sounds like a Penny Arcade on Fisherman's War for something like that. Yeah, there's the Musee Mechanique. Right. And it's all of these old amuse molds from the time when I'm from home. From back in like, from, you know, the late 19th century into the early 20th century. Right. Shit, like, he's on big. Yeah, exactly. Urban Boyna Arts Center also has some really cool stuff and it's right across the street from MoMA, which has a really, I mean, that's not a really dirty, but it's good. Well, no, he said art stuff too. Definitely go to Musee Mechanique. You'll have a really good time there. I mean, like, you kind of think to yourself, all these old crappy games or whatever, but they're super interesting. What about the Academy of Science might be good? That's like a little nerdy. Here's the thing, like that museum, it's the new museum, but everyone, and I've been there and it's good. It's super interesting, especially me, like, I love science and natural science. It is expensive. Everyone tells me that instead you should go to the Exploratorium. Yes, I was going to say it sounds weird because, like, you think Exploratorium and it's like a children's museum or whatever, but it is so fun, especially if you're there with your wife and it's just the two of you, it'll be a great way and it's right by my apartment. So you call me up, and it is considerably cheaper. It is. It's like four bucks as opposed to, like, the 20-something-per-person it is to get in the kitchen. It has hands-on science experiments that are meant for kids to just experience scientific principles and stuff like that. That being said, you'll have a great time there. If you want a romantic time, the Academy of Science would be nice only because it's in Golden Gate Park and then you could go to the Rose Garden, the Japanese Tea Garden. True. And the Day Young Museum is another great art museum right across from the natural science. I love the architecture of the Day Young. Oh, yeah. It's great. It's fucking awesome. It looks like the jaw was like a sand crawler. The sand crawler does. It totally does. The thing trips me out every time I see it on the horizon. Anyway, there's some nerdy stuff for you. Yeah, hopefully that helps you. So most of the people that write into us, that sort of thing, they always want to eat. Like, where can I go to get awesome food and stuff? And I feel like I am totally the bad person that's right. Oh, I've got plenty of places. Well, I'm vegetarians. So I have a very limited things that I will recommend. Anyways. Moving on. Okay. This is from John without an H. And he says, I was at a small land party once at a friend's house who had three kids from ages three to ten. I brought my GameCube with me so the kids could play while we were playing Quake 3 and whatnot. They were old enough to hook it up on their own so I figured they'd be fine. Before I could leave the room, however, disaster struck, they put in Super Smash Bros and decided they wanted to start their own save. And the process overrope my own which had earned 288 of 290 trophies. They did it just slow enough that I was able to watch them do it. That's what I like when Anthony delivers. But too fast for me to get any words out of my mouth until the damage was done. It's hard to quantify, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was 150 plus hours of game. Play flushed. Yeah. A different friend, the one who helped me earn most of those trophies, wanted to tell me, wanted me to tell the kids parents suggesting that maybe they'd beat the kids, but I was too deflated. So he says, "Anything like this ever happened to you, and if not, consider yourself lucky. What's your most painful? I almost got its story when you put a lot of effort into serious game miles done only to fall short." Oh. Anthony? Yeah, I deleted all my 360 saves a week ago and that's a extremely painful man. You know, all my oblivion, which I never actually beat the game, never actually beat a balloon. I put like 100 hours in it, but I just played all the downloadable content, all the side missions. Never actually beat it. And who knows if I ever would have? Who knows if I ever would have? You didn't need to beat it, actually. I don't know. I liked the ending of oblivion was pretty epic. It's true. But it was just one of those things I kind of wanted to do. No, I think about it. You know, I lost my fully completed Fallout save, which again, was I going to go back and do it? I don't know. Yeah. I lost my progress and cracked into it, I lost my progress in Red Dead, I lost my progress in Batman. Do you know for sure that you lost your cracked onto progress? Yes. I kind of wonder if it's linked to your gamer tag. It is. I checked. I have the game installed, but nothing else. Oh, I'm sorry. So yeah, basically- No, but what I mean is like, did you start up the game and see if you- Oh, no. I haven't. So maybe you might have a cracked onto you save. Maybe. Which, if all things I could have kept, that's when I would have sacrificed for several others. I actually almost did the same thing. I erased half of my saves, and then I unplugged the fucking hard drive. See, he did a smart thing, pull off the hard drive. I just hit the power button. It was not the safe bet. God damn. That really blows. It's cool. That really blows. It'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I did lose- I never beat San Andreas because I was in the last city in San Andreas, and then we had a party and a bunch of people were playing San Andreas, and- Someone deleted it. Someone totally rode over the save. There was one time where I, in the original Mass Effect, it had like eight save slots or whatever, and Ryan was playing and at the time I didn't have an Xbox, so I was playing Mass Effect on Ryan's Xbox, and I rode over his save. I never finished Final Fantasy 3/6 because someone deleted my save at 56 hours. Ooh. Twice. Yeah. Yeah. They're buried in my backyard. Two separate occasions, my friends and I, when we were younger, we all hung out and we were playing through Rygar, and twice we got to the last boss, and the Nintendo froze on us. Oh. There was no third attempt. No. I bought an original- a second original Xbox to replace my first one when I was trying to beat Ninja Gaiden, and it would always freeze at the credits, so I couldn't- unlock the next difficulty to start it again, like to play all the DLC that they released for it. Right. Aww. Because it was the Discrete error. Right. Yeah. I've had- I can't remember what Game Over was now, but it was pretty recently where there was like a really, really hard boss fight, and I hit the boss and he hit me and we killed each other, and then it went to the cinema, like, "You did it, you beat the boss," and then after the cinema was over, it said, "Game over." Was it a thing? Yes. It was the thing. Where I was like, "I beat it. I guess it's not going to count that death." Yes. We count the death. Do it again. I was like, "No." So Elliot writes in. He says, "With all the buzz about Starcraft 2 releasing, I decided to check out the game only to find out that my computer's incapable of running it. Since I don't have the money to upgrade my computer or buy a new one, I was wondering if there were any console RTSs that you guys would recommend people like me check out." Mmm. That's a toughy. I mean, Halo Wars, I liked Halo Wars. Hey man, a lot of people. Yeah. Halo Wars actually. Halo Wars. It is the most well-designed, I would say, console RTSs. I just thought Command and Conquer 3 was really good. Oh, okay. I reviewed and enjoyed universe at war a lot. And I heard that one was also vague. Really? Man, that got some real bad reviews. No, I liked it. And that's coming from someone who's not a, "I like RTS games, but I'm not like a hardcore RTS guy." Yeah, maybe it would be good for him. You could probably find it for super cheap. Yeah. Yeah. At this point, you know. Yeah. LA could probably find any of the games. They had that cool alien race where the whole base was like a one giant unit. And like, your... The War of the Rings RTS games. Oh yeah, those were kind of fun about those. They pretty well. I never played them. The Who? The Lord of the Rings RTS player. Oh yeah. Yeah, man. Universe at War is a 66 on Metacritic. So I thought it was fun. We'll do a couple more letters. Were you the one up review? Yes. Okay. You were right next to totally 360 in games right now. Okay. Paul writes in and he says, "Well, I finally got some time this summer to go back and beat both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 in one run. Aside from the control changes between these two games and a few graphical glitches, I have no complaints." I played this game not really aiming for either side, but just playing the commanders I would myself. Which man, I started off as a nice guy, but slowly as people kept fucking with me trying to save the galaxy, they ended up getting a bullet of the face or being shoved out a wimpo window simply because I did not have time to deal with them. My problem is that now I am distraught over what to play. I have to dabble in a few of the earlier RPGs in the last years that I've missed and I just can't find the charm, humor, and outstanding characters that Mass Effect gave me. I want to play them again as a cult tactician and make the decisions that will help when the war is a whole, which would change the event significantly, but sure to play the Mass Effect games again, is there a game out there that might bring me the joy that these games did? Did he play Dragon Age? Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. Yeah. You should just go back and buy over his back catalog. Yeah. Dragon Age. Like it's still-- Not feeling the back catalog. I just feel like buy over his games don't age particularly well. But once they crossed into the polygonal era. Well, yeah, it depends on-- well, I think Kotor is very playable. Oh, man. Kotor is-- I totally-- Yeah. I'm kind of picking up what I'm just putting down because-- Exactly. Because, I mean, I would say that Dragon Age plays a whole lot like a better design-- or like a better Kotor, almost. I don't know if that's blast meters. Man, if you can find it, "Plainscape Torment," or Baldur's Game, Baldur's Game 2. If you have a PC, then, yeah, those games are totally viable. Well, plus, he says that his PC can't run Stark out, so he might be able to run those. Oh, man. I'm sure that they can run "Plainscape Torment." Oh, yeah. Of course. If that computer came out in the last seven years, they can play Torment. And "Plainscape Torment" is like one of those games that a lot of people will try out as one of their favorite RPGs of all time. I am one of those people. But it's also one of those games that a lot of people just never got around to playing. It didn't sell well, you know. They never made the plan to seek-- I never played it, and I always heard it was great. Yeah, because they linked it to "Plainscape," which no one gave a shit about. Yeah. But it was so well crafted, and the story is so good. And it totally does have that modern RPG vibe where, instead of being a whole party-worth of characters, yeah, you have a party-worth of characters, but it is really centered around your one main guy, and it's very bio-wearing that way in that you have the main star of the show, and then you have a bunch of party members that are all characters in themselves and the way that they interact with you and the way they interact with each other is really interesting. But what makes "Plainscape Torment" so incredible is it's almost like reading a novel. It has so much in there to read, because this is before everything was voiced. And it's just-- it really, really is like one of the most storied-- I thought everything you were in "Plainscape" was voiced. Uh-uh, no, it really is one of the most epic stories for an RPG that I've ever experienced. All right, I'm going to read one more letter, and then we're going to wrap this up because Arthur's being awesome and putting together the show tonight, because we're both going out of town. Shit. So in the comments section, I expect some love for Arthur again. Yeah. Especially since I like cult things up. Arthur doesn't expect any love for Arthur. I expect it, fuckers. I expected two, especially because I delayed the podcast by showing up like an hourly. So Steve Ritzen. It's cool. I was taking a nap. He says, "My question is, I'm heading to college later this month, and I'm trying to decide whether or not to bring my consoles, a Wii with Mario Bros, with Mario Smash Bros, etc., and a PS3 with nothing yet. I'm waiting for the last Guardian, but he has PS3. Dude, buy some games. I have a nice laptop with braid portals, sieve, etc., and I won't be without games. So I won't be without games because he has a laptop, but I don't know if having consoles would make it easier to meet people or not. Bring them. Bring 'em. Especially bring a Wii. Especially bring a Wii because not only, you know, because a Wii is very much a unisex console. It is. Right. You can just like throw down and get together and play for a little bit, and then go drink, which is probably what you're going to do. Plus, if you're going to live in dorms, if you're going to live in the dorms, dude, Smash Bros and stuff like that would be such a good way to meet people. Just keep your door open and people will see you playing it and want to jump in. Yep. Like it'll happen. Yep. So I would recommend it. From experience, games were how I met several of the people that ended up living with like after the dorms. Two bad dorms. It really is too bad. You don't have a 360 because a Halo release year is an excellent time to make friends in college. Yeah. Local co-op. I mean, they still have local multiplayer. Yeah. Well, not just that, but everyone is networked together on the school land. Yeah. This is true. This was back when I was in college, games weren't all online yet either. So we still played a lot of local games. Yeah, me too. Especially because I'm even ancienter than you are. Yes. You're very ancient. Yes. No, you're not. I don't. You remember you can send your letters to us at letters@eat-sleep-game.com. You can find us on Twitter. I'm at chuffmoney. Tyler's at dirty tea like the drink. Matt is at Talking Orange and Arthur is at AEG IES. Is that just like your name or does it mean something? It actually is Arthur's first name, an initial, and then last name. You mean first and middle initials? Yeah, first and middle initials. AEG. But it looks like it means something. Not a shield. Yeah. But it looks like it looks like Aegis, like a shield, yeah. What's your middle name, Arthur? I'm not saying on this podcast. You can guess Arthur's name in the comments when you're praising him for putting the show together. It might be on my face with profile, honestly, I don't remember. Or you can guess in a review on iTunes, an ex-favourable movie, a nice fun review. And on that Snoop Dogg. Do you really want to hear what you have to say as long as it's positive? And on that Snoop Dogg's going to tick us out. Oh, he's not. Oh, he's not. Oh, he's not here? No, I got to go. If I buy a Snoop Dogg album on Amazon, it's just going to fucking recommend Snoop Dogg album for the next six months. I just stopped recommending Bobby Brown. And on that slipknot, it's going to tick us out. We're out. Let's play. ♪ And I don't want to be an old man anymore ♪ ♪ Been a year or two since I was out on the floor ♪ ♪ Chicken only make a sweet love overnight ♪ ♪ It's tough I got back to the good guy ♪ ♪ It's tough I got back to stuff I got back ♪ ♪ And I don't even know how I got on the track ♪ ♪ It's tough I got back to stuff I got back ♪ ♪ And I don't even know how I got on the track ♪ ♪ I'm not an old man ♪ ♪ I'm not an old man, I'm not an old man ♪ ♪ I'm not an old man, I'm not an old man ♪ ♪ I'm not an old man, I'm not an old man ♪ (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]