Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 64 - 06/04/10
We triumph over old technical issues this week in a show that went off without a hitch of computer or canine origin. We talk about Bad Company 2 co-op, Transformers, Splinter Cell DLC, Snoopy Flying Ace and more. Then we move on to your surprises and disappointments of 2010 so far and close out with some letters. This week's music, in order of appearance: Raveonettes - Heart of Stone; Coheed & Cambria - Apollo I: The Writing Writer; Bat for Lashes - I'm On Fire
[MUSIC] Do you guys ever hear the story about the banana lady? >> Hello and welcome to Rebel FM episode 64. >> You talked about that in the car dude. >> I'm Anthony Gallegos, that's starting, no, that was just me and Tyler just off the cuff using telepathy. So I'm Anthony Gallegos, the person you heard speak first, that is Tyler Barber. >> By the time you hear this, it will on Friday is the national donut day. >> Nice, I did not know that, yep. >> I will have to maybe have half a donut. >> Should I wait until tomorrow to have donuts? >> You had them today? >> I did. >> That early celebration, that's Arthur Geese, who spoiled national donut day for himself on all donuts eve. >> It is all donuts eve, doesn't that mean we get to have donuts on all donuts eve? >> I have donuts today, I'm gonna have them tomorrow. >> It's all donuts, it's all donuts a day somewhere. >> It's like Christmas, you got to keep it in your heart every day, donuts and coconuts. >> The problem is you also end up keeping it in your ass and thighs all year. >> And then there's also Matt Changerine, hello. >> All right, so we're all here talking about games, I played some aspect too. >> For the first time. >> Yeah, we were surprised, he just walked into my room a couple days ago, he's like, you, I'm gonna borrow this. >> Well, Sal, my girlfriend, she is always berating me to play it, you've been berating me to play it forever. >> I have not berated, I encourage. >> So here we go, here we go, this is now we know how to get Anthony to play the games that we want him to play. We get a whole Sal. >> And then we get the keys, you know, it's like, it's like her favorite game she's played in this generation for sure. >> Dude, it's really good and it's really good. >> And you know. >> Did that opening kick you in the face? >> That opening is pretty ridiculous. >> Like I said, I, what I wanted to put on my review. >> And it was ridiculous for me, which isn't even, and I didn't play the first part of the way, and I'm for you guys, it must have been like. >> What I wanted, like, when I wrote my review was, and I had to result, resort to Twitter was to say it goes from zero to boner. And like 60 seconds. >> Yep, I couldn't, like, when I first did that opening scene and, you know, because you get really attached to your crew and everything. >> Yeah, see, I didn't have. >> You could attach to your commander's shepherd and stuff like that. So in that opening scene, when it's like showing people like dying all over the place, you're like, oh my God, that's that guy. >> Yeah, see, for me, I was just like, oh, hey, dude, that died. I didn't realize that I was like, oh, this is that dude you talked to in between every mission. >> Yeah. >> Like, we're just red shirts to you. >> Yeah, and I, like, for instance, when I think Arthur might have been watching or maybe Sal was watching, but either one of you guys told me, like, I had no idea, Joker had some degenerative bone disease. >> Yeah, so I didn't know he was being hurt or anything during all that. I was like, oh, you just got injured in the blast. I didn't know it was like, no, you're fucking throwing him around. >> But it says in the first one, you played the first one. >> But it's been so long. >> Yeah, and they do say that pretty early on in the first one, but I'm sure you would have forgotten because it's not like. >> Right. >> It's not like, it's only something that like you really get involved in if you go and talk to Joker several times. >> Yeah, it's good. It's really good. I don't know how, I think it's weird that they brought clips into the second game. >> Right. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> In the first game, it was like, you just had to worry about cool, like, yeah, cool, yeah, and this one, it's like, now the cooling is the clips, which is really not. It's just bullets. >> Yeah, right. >> Call it what it is, but. >> I think there's a throwaway line in the instruction manual explaining why that is now, which is like, each little thing is a little cooling shot. >> Exactly, they've taken geth technology and retrofitted every weapon in the galaxy with it. >> If I was shepherd, I would have been born two years later and then like, what the fuck am I old guns back? >> Yeah, exactly. >> But yeah, so far I've been playing kind of like, middle of the road, like if you look, I'm almost equal. >> You can totally do it in this one. >> Because I just like, and it's not even intentional. It's just like, I handle a situation the way I think it should be handled. And then it'll be like, you got five paragon, seven, like renegade, you know, you get both. >> Yeah. >> Like, I thought it was like you do all one or the other. >> No. >> And so. >> So I make good decisions, just sometimes the way I make them is like. >> Well, and it's, it's a lot of fun to play that way too. Like, I totally played paragon because that's just kind of the douche I am, but the. >> You asshole doing the right thing. >> But the, like, every now and then my commander Shepard, I'd run into a situation where he'd be like, no, no, fuck this and fuck you and like go renegade. >> Fuck man, who didn't? >> Right. Well, there are some really funny ones, like when you're doing the part to save, what do they, what does he call himself at first? >> Archangel. >> Archangel. >> Oh, yeah. >> And there's that kid that's like going to sign up to be a murder. >> Right. >> And for some reason it gives you that brief moment where you can stop him. >> Right. >> Like, for some reason you can just tell he's young and you should intervene, and I ended up talking him out of it, right? >> Right, so do I. >> Instead of just letting him get killed, I assume you let him get killed. >> Oh, yeah. >> I was pointing at Tyler. >> Yeah, so, but what I thought was so funny about that was then I saved this kid and somehow he got a hold of like my super secret email. >> Yeah. >> Like, how do you get that? >> I mean, you know, I was like, isn't this supposed to be like fucking classified? >> That's like a little space. >> I mean, it's like Gmail, you can have multiple counts going this way. >> Well, to, to, to nerd out a little bit. It's actually supposed to be that the messages that come to your private terminal are passed on to you from the organization. >> Oh. >> Well. >> Yeah, and see, I also didn't know anything about Cerberus, like were they in the first game? >> No, they were. >> Okay. >> Cuz I was like. >> I know they weren't mentioned in the first one. You actually run into them on a planet. >> You're right. There was a mission, but like they feel like kind of a minor thing like, oh, there's some sort of terrorist group or something, you know, and you don't really pay attention. >> And this one, it's like they're a big deal. >> Right, and then like if you read the second Mass Effect book, that's where the elusive man in Cerberus Corporation are really introduced and like they become a big thing. So like I read that book because I'm a giant douche. >> I didn't. >> I read the first one. I know you're in the second one. >> Yeah. >> I want to. >> The second one is slightly better than the first one. They're both not very good. >> I actually thought the first one was pretty good. >> They're all right. >> Yeah. >> Anderson was a cool character. >> Right. >> Right. >> And he explains. >> And he explains the last quarter of the book. >> Were you talking about where they blow up the chemical factory or whatever that whole final scene was kind of lame. >> Yeah. To me it sounded like they were just trying to write a novel that was sort of blocking out a scene from Mass Effect 1. >> It is. >> Which isn't very exciting. >> It is interesting that since I didn't play the first one it makes certain assumptions about what I chose to do. >> Yeah. >> Like I chose to let the male human crew member die in the first game. And I was like I thought it was going to do something really cool for a second like I thought it was going to ask me so why do you let your crew member die and then I thought it was going to give me the option to be like this or this. >> Yeah. >> I wasn't there for making the decision right there in the first game. >> Exactly. And that was like something that they kind of did at the beginning of, was it couture too, where they did a little bit of that, where they would ask you questions. It would be something like. >> Like an ambiguous question where you get to decide which decision you made. >> They'd say something like and Revan went on to do something. What was it that he did again and then like you could like you know say oh he did this. >> Right. >> And that's what I kind of thought was going to happen but it's so far it's really cool. Actually the first one I kind of had to like push myself to keep playing and this one I want to keep playing it. >> The combat's a lot better in the second one too. >> It's pretty, yeah I mean it's not like it's no gears of war, but it's really good. >> The performance doesn't slow down to fucking slide show territory. >> No and it still feels pretty fluid and your squad in general I feel like they're a lot better. >> They use their powers really slowly. >> I was going to say because in the first game I didn't like stopping and giving the mortars every time that's not the way I like to play. >> Like RPG I mean. >> Yeah well I wanted it I wanted them to handle themselves more. I would rather sit there and program like macros and have them be ready to go then sit there and have to pause it every two seconds and this one in general they're pretty on the ball. >> Do you use the. >> I only stop it when it's like an oh shit moment right okay I need to take control at the moment. >> So do you do you ever actually use your team members powers like bring up the wheel and that's what I'm saying yeah but when I do it specifically you know shit moments like five guys come out of one so I'm like all right so in this instance you're going to do this you're going to do this otherwise if it's just like one or two guys small encounters like hardly worth it. >> Yeah exactly yeah when I was playing through Mass Effect 2 I guess you know when I was getting towards the end of the game you know I was really really familiar with the controls and everything and that's when I was like really focusing on memorizing my squad members powers and like just mapping them to the d-pad and then just like also almost like controlling them. >> So I didn't realize you can control with the d-pad so that's good to know. >> So if you just imagine in your mind like in your wheel you have a party member on the left and you have a party member on the right of the wheel so you map left and right of the d-pad in perspective to like one of their powers each that you choose and that. >> So let's see that'll make it a lot better. >> Dude then it's like not only do you have powers but then you have one of them. You have each of your teammates powers and then they also reinforce it when you chain your powers with your teammate so the combat is so fun. >> Yeah and so far I think the story is pretty cool too as well. I mean the story I thought the story and the first one was cool too as well but it just took a long last time to get to it in a lot of ways and I feel like too they're like go here you go. >> Well I mean the narrative and the first one is very much here's our big epic story whereas the the second one has the backbone of a narrative thread that holds it together and everything is like episodes. >> Yeah well and they and I feel like the second one does a much better job of being like here are the planets you need to go to for these missions right now and you still have options and so it still feels like you're exploring but at the same time you know like I'm going to this planet to recruit this person. >> Yeah. >> Like I'm not just kind of aimlessly wandering around and landing on this planet and seeing if there's like a crazy quest to it. >> Well Mass Effect 1 the the quests were directed as well. >> I mean it wasn't really aimless. >> No no I just I just feel like this one does like a better job I don't mean it was I mean it's more like it does a good job of making me feel like I am doing what I want. >> It does. >> At the same time I'm still progressing the story at the same time. >> Like when you go to the galaxy map like each little galaxy will have under its flag like like that sort of has a bullet point of all the missions that you could do. >> Right and so it's like I'm still getting to pick what I want but I'm always like still pushing something forward even if it's in a completely different order than like what my crew tells me I should do or something like that. >> Totally. >> Also I think it's weird that you have that red-haired girl on your crew that like at one point seems like she was coming on to me. >> She is. >> She is yeah. >> Okay. >> She's don't believe her when she says she'll feed your fish. >> Because she was like she was like she tried to call me shepherd and I was like it's commander. Let's keep things professional. >> Are you going to totally take her up and listen to records and talk about boys upstairs or whatever. >> Yeah she totally seemed like she was coming on to me I wasn't sure. >> She was. >> She also seems like she kind of is ready to do everyone. >> Also true. >> She is. >> Okay. >> Just like I was. >> Spare slow on the same page. >> She's very forward thinking. >> Yes. >> I bet by that time in the future did everybody would just be getting on all the time. >> That's how the future is going to be. >> Future times mean future of venereal diseases Tyler. >> No man. >> No man. >> Yeah. >> Yeah man I heard. >> The humans were getting it on way more freely than we were like five centuries ago. >> Man it's like the six times. >> I don't know. That's true. For all we know we'll revert back to like the most hardcore Victorian culture world to be like let me see that ankle. >> Everyone's wearing corsets. >> I don't know. >> No way do alienality like bestiality. >> Alienality. >> As soon as they figure out. >> As soon as they think you're out. >> I'm offended that you just compared aliens. >> Inner species. >> Saratica. >> Fucko. >> How do we get on this topic? >> As soon as they figure out nanomachines that can cure disease. >> No we've had this conversation several times man. People at our work they talk about would you rather fuck. >> Right. The first question that Hillary Goldstein ever asked me was would you fuck an e-walk? >> And then after that it was. >> To which I replied would you fuck a hanar? >> Yeah and then it was whether you would you rather fuck a hanar or an elkor? >> Dude I don't know. A hut. >> Different units. >> Well the hanar are the jellyfish right? >> Right and the elkor. >> That would have to be more fun than the elkor. >> Everything's a hole. >> Well look on Tyler's face right there was priceless. When I've scandalized Tyler I've done my job. I'm surprised I am a little surprised that you liked it to be completely honest. I kind of felt like we had built it up so much for so long that you. >> No I mean I'm enjoying it. I mean I'm not. It's still not like a. >> Mind-blowing experience. >> Yeah but I haven't gotten very farmed it either. And I still feel like there's a lot of things that are like the ooh is lost on me. Like when you find out who Archangel is, like that for me I was like. >> Right I had that ruin for me before I played the game because I made the mistake of looking at the review sheet. Stupid me. >> I still feel like a lot of it's lost on me but I can still appreciate that it's like a cool story so far. >> What class were you playing as? >> Vanguard won everyone seems to play. >> Yeah. >> Maybe in July you can play Assassin's Creed 2. >> Yeah I'll get to eventually. >> Probably not. >> I played, I actually played Adept. Adept was super fun. >> I did too. I figured you know there's all these biotic powers I might as well actually see them. >> Yeah and they're good, they're cool. >> I still haven't even gotten, I mean I doubt I'll get to Assassin's Creed because I bought Mario Galaxy 2 and I haven't even tried that yet so. >> Everybody loves that game. >> It's true. I like the first one a lot so I want to play it too but. >> You were rocking it like it was 2006 this weekend. >> Yeah I played a ton of, I played through Earth Defense Force again with my buddy Ian. Start to finish. That game is still probably the best local cooperative game on the Xbox. >> Damn I haven't even played it. >> That game is fucking magical. >> There are a lot of good local quad games but just that one for me it's like, and I say best local cop because there is no option to play it online. This will not put it online mode in this. But it's such a cool game in the sense that it's so cheesy but I also tried to play deadly premonition, that game is not cheesy in a haha, it's still cool way, no it's just bad. It's fucking awful. I bought it for 20 bucks because I was like I'll give it a shot and it's just like really bad. >> Wow really? >> Yeah. >> I almost want to play the first 10 minutes for you guys so you can see how it's comfortable. It's like a survival horror game kind of that was published by that company Shane works for now. Shane Bettenhouse. >> Ignition software. >> It's like the kind of shit you would have seen on Saturn or PS1 that just barely squeaked by to get ported over to them. >> Like people would have been like this is a shitty Resident Evil knockoff on PS1 days so now it's on the Xbox 360. >> Wow. >> The thing I like about Earth Defense Force is that for all of it's jank and all of it's just total cheese, the underlying foundation is good, the shooting is responsive and the controls are tight. >> And at times the humans don't look that great but they're not aliased or anything. They're still smooth, things still look good even if they don't look good. >> They look clear. >> They look clear. Yeah, they're not ugly. They're just really badly drawn. >> And the sense of scale is really great. >> It's hard to explain. The ants look smooth, they look like bugs but they're not the best looking, most realistic bugs you've ever seen but they'll also put like 150 of them swarming at you on a screen at once. >> And they're gigantic. >> And they just do a good sense of like, "Oh shit." >> It's just such a combination of so many things together that equals this awesome game. >> Yeah, I would never play a game by myself. See, that to me is also, that game is only for co-op play. Like if you don't have so many you can play with, if you start to finish it's just not worth it. Like, because all the comedy comes out of like occasionally killing your teammate because friendly fire is definitely always enabled, you know, or just having that moment where your teammate dies and they can never come back so then you finish the mission without them. >> Sounds to me kind of like the same experience that I've had with a serious Sam. >> Right. >> Yeah, exactly, right? It's like it's not the best game but it's like, got this like certain cheese stupidness to it that's like just really cool for whatever reason. >> Right. >> Yeah, I mean, I still think that that game is great but again it's hard to find, it's out of print at this point I'm pretty sure. >> You can find it used for like 20 bucks but if you try to get a quote unquote new copy it's like $45 or $50 which is more than it debuted for $5 to $10 more than it launched at. >> Wow. >> It was a $40 game when it came out. >> It was like the first $40 game. >> It's surprising it's not only like games on demand or something. >> I was actually thinking that that it'd be awesome if they did but I just- >> Yeah, it's putting games on demand for 20 bucks man, people will probably buy it. Buy this shit out of that game. But again, you can't, well, yeah if people could still buy it and just play local split screen and if they could just really subversion it with online, it'd be so good. >> I can't imagine how that would work. >> What ever happened to the development team behind that game? >> I don't know, there was something in Edge about it a couple of issues back about how that game actually managed to exist even though. >> Right, I mean it's so weird, yeah, I mean it seems like it's a product of like just like it being at the right place at the right time or something. >> Yeah. >> And that company made a ton of like $20 games in Japan. >> Right, I think it was kind of the experiment to bring it over here, you know what I mean? >> They did like zombie ambulance or something like that. >> Like who would release a game? Like a game called Earth Defense Force 2017, like how cheesy does that sound? And it's just got, oh and the other thing about it that makes that game so great is it has such cool voice acting, like really bad, but they just say the stupidest things and some of them are translated so badly, like we're in, what is it, it was like their casualties are incrementally going up or something like that, and it's just like what? Or people will just scream things like, man, they're coming over the horizon, it looks like the whole ground is throbbing, just like things like that and you're just like what? >> Yeah, it's-- >> Or like I was in a cave and another guy was like, we're on a thrilling underground adventure. >> Magical. >> This is supposed to tell us that there is a market for our level of voice talent. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Sell yourself short, Tyler. >> But yeah, so that game was still really cool, and then I also played some of the new Splinter Cell DLC that just came out this week. >> How's that? >> Having played some of the original maps that come in the Deniable Ops stuff, it's pretty much more of the same, you know, but it's maps that you're not, like at this point people that are playing that game like crazy and there are some that play those Deniable Ops maps, like to where they just know, like, this is the route I follow and I murder everyone. These ones, it's like, at least you still have that, you know, for people that are really addicted and for people that aren't, you still have like these new maps and they do a really good job of making the maps just like the single player, like a really good playground where it's just like there are pipes criss-crossing over the ceiling everywhere so you can drop onto guys. >> I do like dropping onto guys. >> I like Deniable Ops. It's a little bit different than the single player and the single player in the sense like you can get caught a lot of times and it doesn't really matter if you can get away, like most of the time. It's really their parts that are probably not like that, but I haven't played all the way through. But in Deniable Ops, it's like your goal is to never be seen, like because if you get seen the enemy count goes from like 12 to 24, like you have to kill to move on. So the goal is to really never be seen and I like that about it, it's like a different sort of pacing than the single player where like sometimes you'll pop out intentionally to draw guys over and this one you like will never do that. >> Yeah, and it's really nice when you do the coordinated assassinate move, that's a lot of fun, like especially if it's a room with like eight guys and each of you marks four of them and it's like all right, ready, go, all right, and then just like drop the whole room, it's really satisfying. >> And just in general there is like certain things about playing cooperatively in a terrorist hunt situation, especially in one where it's so reliant on stealth where there's just really good opportunities to have like a badass moment, like where my teammate was like going forward and he didn't see the guy coming up to like suffocate him from behind and I like get that lucky headshot or something like you know just little moments where you're like that's really cool. >> Yeah, and I do like the ways you know that one guy gets suffocated and you can go and like not go and rescue him, or if someone gets downed, they're like playing dead and at the last minute they can sit up and chew guys, but if they do so they can also be permanently killed in the mission if they fuck up. >> So I've not even had a chance to check out in the multiplayer but I went through and played this mode single player. >> Right, you can also do that with the new maps as well. >> And you know you made a good point, it is a lot like terrorist hunt, it reminds me of the Rainbow Six. >> That's a bad thing. >> Yeah, it's also Ubisoft, yeah, and they know it was awesome, terrorist hunt was one of me and Arthur's favorite ways to play Rainbow Six Vegas. >> That was super fun. We love that game so much. >> Yeah, I just love how the Splinter Cell Team, or the Splinter Cell Designers or whatever are never afraid to shake up the way that the multiplayer works. It seems like that there is board as I am with trying to just do traditional death match and capture the flag and stuff like that, so it's like let's try it, let's do some interesting things with co-op. You know I still kind of miss, it's kind of a bummer that they haven't tried to improve on the spies versus Marines gameplay, but the fact that they're doing co-op in this way with whole moves and whole different things that don't even show up in the single player. For me that's definitely a win. >> And all new maps, I mean there's a single player story and just deniable options and then you can also play those deniable options missions in a survival mode as well. >> Right, yeah. >> I mean there's a lot of options there. The denial of ops maps, they also have a story that goes along with them and the characters you and the Russian, whichever one you are, the Russian and the American are always talking to each other and saying things and it's like it's cool. >> Yeah, yeah. I think the DLC is totally worth it if you are super into the game because I think it's ten bucks. >> I still only played like two of the denial of ops maps. >> That's the thing, I'm saying for people like you and I it might not be worth it, especially because- >> It would be worth it for me if I had more time in somebody to play with. >> Yeah, well, I was going to say because I've been searching for matches and when you search for matches it'll look for this denial of ops map and then when it doesn't find that it expands the parameters and keeps expanding until it finds a game to throw you in. And so far I've found almost nobody to play the denial of ops maps with. Like in random searches it always puts me in the older matches. So I think for people that are super addicted to denial of ops and have played the other games in the ground it's like a no brainer, ten bucks because they're really well done. But for everyone else. >> It seems like they sort of miss the boat on the good window to release this. There's too many other games that have come along and sort of pushed it out of the zeitgeist. >> To be fair, they've also been releasing free DLC for that game like weekly for a while now. >> True. >> For weapons and stuff. >> Yeah. So. >> Hard core. >> Hard fucking core. >> And then I played some Sims, that was about it. >> Right. >> Sims expansion. Good. >> Which ended up giving that? >> I ended up giving it in eight out of ten. >> Which expansion is this one? >> Ambitions. >> Oh, is this the one where you actually go to the job? >> Yeah. To me that was like- >> I actually own the Sims expansion. >> There have been a lot of Sims expansions that are totally useless and crap. Like it's like, oh, I got a pet. Who cares? >> Yeah. >> But the ambitions, yeah, but ambitions in my mind is like the first expansion they've done perhaps not long time where it's actually like this is a change, a significant change to the way the game works because before it was like, you would lose like eight hours of your Sims life every day just to watching a clock tick by real friends as they went to work. >> Which is sort of how work really is, but yeah. >> Right, but it's just like now they give you these jobs that you get to participate in and that are like things are changing on the fly. Even if you're like doing something stupid, such as being a stylist, you still have people coming in every minute. >> That's right, stylists. Your jobs are stupid. >> You have someone come in and being like, I need this makeover. What the fuck? And you have to do it right there on the flyer. Or when you're a firefighter, you have to entertain yourself in the station and do all these little station jobs in between, also putting out fires when emergencies come or an earthquake happens. >> Do you actually do you increase your Sim skills during the day when you're at work now too? >> Well, you can because like for instance when you're a firefighter, if there's anything to do around the station, I can sit there and play a guitar. It's basically just now you have a whole day with your character to do things they want. When I had a character that was a ghost hunter, she would go and be a ghost buster and zap up ghost tonight. But then in between if I wasn't micromanaging her, she would also just sit down and start having a conversation with the person after she cleared their house with ghosts and our might start playing their piano when I wasn't looking. >> Sort of like a puppy. >> So yeah, you do have to keep him and check and be like, you work. >> Man, that's super interesting, just taking a very zoomed out look at the gaming landscape in general and this is basically, it's making the job a game and you have time in the game where you're not at your job and then you have a time where you're at the job. It's like you have a lot of people that draw examples of like, wow, wow is like a second job. Well, what happens when there's jobs within the jobs and then jobs within those jobs? >> That's beautiful online. >> I've actually wanted the Sims to go super hardcore Sim. I've wanted it to be, you know, not just that there are random NPCs that you can run into, but I want the town and the jobs and the neighborhoods and everything to be all connected and all functioning all at the same time. >> And now they are much more like that. I mean, you know, the town is going on around you all the time. And you get to experience that and with some of them, like being a private detective, you actually have to go and like search through people's garbage for things for like clues on other people and you can like break into people's houses if you want to look for clues. >> It's such an awesome fucked up social commentary. >> Yeah, I mean, you know, you can do stakeouts on people and I still, you know, the Sims still just has that weird hook where you realize how true to life it is and it's kind of eerie. Like when I had the two characters I was playing, I was a private detective which meant I got to make my own hours, but that also meant I took most of my cases during the day because all the people I had to talk to for my cases were only awake during the day and the ghost hunter always operates between 5 p.m. and 3 a.m. So the girl I was living with, okay, I made me my girlfriend because I'm lame and that's lame. It's a make real life. >> You know, it's a hot, Tyler lives in the house next door to us. >> So anyway, so. >> Arthur is dead. >> Arthur is a ghostie. >> He's buried in the back. >> I would wake up in the morning and like make breakfast and leave it out for the two of us and she would sleep until like three every day because she had that late night job and I realized it was like this weird thing where now my sims were never seeing each other and they both started getting lonely. I was like even though they lived together, they never see each other except briefly in bed at night. >> Right. >> And earlier they were like never having sex, never doing anything, but they were like all I cared about was like working them to death to a crew new items and build expansions on their shitty one bedroom house. >> You turn this into fucking leave a pinata. >> I did. >> I was like no, I ruined the relationship, like they haven't just sat and talked forever. All they see is like the leftover dishes left from someone and so they know they're still alive. >> You just took this into a weird place, Anthony. >> Yeah, I just had that weird moment with the sims where then I was just like fuck it, the detective wasn't going to work for the next two days. >> Nice. >> And they're just going to try and reconnect. >> And she left him. >> Yeah. >> And then Arthur's ghost came. >> That's right. You're fucking angry ghost. >> Good thing you got a ghost hunter in the house. >> I bet you I could make a character that looks like Arthur, it's really hard to make a guy that doesn't, well it wouldn't look like Arthur though because it would look way too girly. >> You dug yourself a hole here. >> No, all the characters, you should see the character I made for myself. God, there's no way to make characters in that, they just don't have big old dough eyes. >> Hello. >> Yeah, because they're inviting that way. >> At least it's not as bad as the character designer in home where you can't make anybody who doesn't have an underbite. I didn't know that. I think it wasn't developed in the UK. >> Apparently everybody in the UK has an underbite? >> Yes, that's what I'm saying. >> Bad teeth in general. >> [LAUGH] >> Yes. >> Raises. >> Okay. >> Anyways. >> When I was in London everyone, there were a lot of really wonderfully beautiful people there. >> Oh, London's a beautiful place with bad teeth. Just kidding. Anyways. >> Now that we've alienated a good chunk of our audience. >> Do you? >> America, we beat you in a war, America. >> [LAUGH] >> Anyways. Sorry. >> Anyways. >> Anyways. >> What have you been playing? >> Tyler, Matt. >> Someone. >> Go Tyler. >> So. >> Go Tyler. Go. >> I haven't actually played anything new since last week, just still more, a lot of red dead. But one thing I would like to say about red dead. The, you know, I just didn't, you know, I could expand on is, and I won't spoil anything is I sort of assumed that there would only be three acts to the game, acts, acts. >> Mm-hm. >> It was a weird plural word. >> Let me ask you. >> Acts. Anyway, and so I got to the end of what I thought was the end, but apparently there's a fourth act, and I assume that, you know what I'm talking about. >> Oh, I do. >> I, it's so unexpected, like the direction and the tone. >> You thought the game was coming up on the end. >> Dude. >> And it totally doesn't. >> It's, I, I, I'm not going to spoil it. >> Is it a good thing or bad thing? >> It's totally amazing, awesome, like, the typical ramp up in sort of rock star open world games is it's a constant ramp up, you know, think of the end of San Andreas where you're like parachuting with fucking oozies and grenades and rocket, you know what I mean? And jet pack, you know what I mean? It does not do that. And that is very surprising, unexpected and welcome. >> That's the best story telling any rock star game. >> Dude, I did not, it's, it's so blooming away last night when I got to it, I was like, holy shit. >> Yeah. >> So, but, but I have another real talk we can do later because I don't have any games to talk about. >> I'm down. What's it from? >> GTA 4. >> Oh, she is. >> Working through the hits of 2008? >> Well, I've been actually working my ass off with my company. We had a last-minute contract job, so I don't really have anything to report. >> That's not true. We talked about this before. >> What do you mean? >> We both played battlefield bank company to co-op. >> Oh, we did. That was like, that was a couple of weeks ago. >> It was. So, like, before I went to, to, judges week. >> Yeah, it was. >> Yeah, I forgot that the embargo's up. >> Yeah. >> Is the embargo talked in the sense that you could be like, buy it. >> Right? >> No, because it's still not out yet. They haven't even announced release. >> You played it, right? >> Yeah. >> Based on what would you play? Are you going to buy it? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> I probably will too. Yeah. >> On slot. >> It's, yeah. And it's, it's terrorist hunt, but in a battlefield way, you know. >> Cool. >> So, there's like, is there, is it, does it tell you, like, there are 20 guys killing them? >> No. So, it's captured. >> It's a combination of conquest in, in rush. >> Exactly. >> Like you hold a point until it blows up and then you move on. >> And then they are just rushing you? >> Yes. >> So, the first thing you have to, so, you know, it's like conquest and then you go from one base to the next. And those bases are occupied by AI. And then, so you roll up and you kill all the AI around and then you plan to charge and you have to guard the charge until it goes off. That's the way it works, right? >> Well, you don't plan. You just sit. >> No, that's right. So you're, and then there's, like, AI reinforcement, AI reinforcement is trying to take the base back. >> And they, they're no joke. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't super hard on them, but there were definitely times where guys got right up in my face with the shotgun. >> Yeah. >> Is it basically the AI, like, I mean, it's, I assume they are, they're not trying to play, make them play, like, players. These are pretty much just the same AI from the game, which was not bad. >> Yeah. They mostly just, they mostly just run straight at you. I mean, like, they'll take cover every now and then, but they're mostly just, like, aggressive as fuck. >> Yeah. >> On normal anyway. >> Yeah. That's really cool. So, is it the only have one life to do it, or do you have reason? >> You can respawn as long as one person is still alive. The respawn is the same as multiplayer. >> Okay. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Does it include any vehicles at all? >> Yes. >> At any point. >> All the vehicles. >> Oh, yeah. Boner. >> It's, and they've, like the, the Nelson Bay setting is set apart from most of where you play in multiplayer. So it's a new area of the map, Valpreso, which is the map where you start with the helicopter and the tank on one side, and then you go to the beach. Is it night? >> So, they're multiplayer maps, right? >> Yeah, they are. >> So, do you get to still pick out your loadout, like in multiplayer? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> And you still earn rank and points. >> And you're still using that persistent thing. >> Right. >> Do you even though I've earned all the rank that I possibly can? >> I'm so. >> I unlocked every weapon. >> Right. >> That's awesome. How many maps are there for this mode? >> They're gonna be four. I've only, we've only played two. >> Yeah. >> But it's a lot of fun. It actually, it does feel like a co-op experience. >> Is that coming up this month? >> I have no, they don't know. >> It's supposed, I thought it was supposed to be this month. >> Did they put a release date on that press release? I didn't see it. >> No, not a date, but I thought they said June. >> Well, I mean, they said they were gonna put that last patch out a lot sooner than they did too. >> That is true. Very true. So. >> Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. >> It's a good sort of introduction to teamwork for multiplayer. I know that we're getting the point where the warning curve and online is really high. So it's a good way, like if you're just getting into Battlefield, sort of join up with your friends and we're not gonna play together and coordinate and support each other because you still need to play like you're supporting each other. >> Yeah. How many co-op is it? Is it just two? >> Four. >> Four. >> Oh, see, for some reason, I always just thought it was two. >> No, it's squad. >> Hmm. >> See, but what I'm curious about that though, the fact that it's gonna be a paid content. >> I'm sure, yeah. >> Yeah, it is. How will people who are sort of new in the battlefield be like, well, I'm not sure if I'm into the multiplayer, but let me go ahead and lock down another 10 bucks. >> I don't know. Maybe they'll release a new version of the game with it. >> Game of the year edition. >> Yeah, that would be good. >> As possible. >> Like not even a game of the year edition, just like a gold or platinum edition or something. >> They also call game of the year. >> They have like kind of- >> Three months later. >> Yeah. >> They have like kind of special events like in Nelson Bay or Valparizo, whichever one it is, like after you take the second point, you start getting shelled by a boat out in the water. >> Right. >> And it's like, so you have to get out there with your engineer kit and destroy the boat. >> Awesome. >> Because it's kind of annoying, otherwise just blowing up all the buildings around you. And it's pretty good at targeting you from the ocean. And there's one, and there was one, I don't remember which map it was, where as you're trying to take the point, they send a helicopter after you. So, you know, it's not just, it's not always just dudes running at you. >> And then it is the same every time, like it's always when you get to a specific point, the same event happens. So, you know, it's coming and like, but it's still, it's a nice little edition. >> At the end of Valparizo, they're just dudes parachuting in all around you. And they're all fucking crack shots from the air too, which is amazing. It times you as you're playing? >> I was going to say that's what I was wondering, because even if it has the same things occurring every time, it'll still come down to like people that are like, we're a four-man team, we can do this in three minutes. >> I mean, all the spawns are the same, but enemies act dynamically. It's not like they always do the go through the same routes. >> Yeah. >> The goal is eventually to start beating your previous times. >> Yeah. And it keeps track of stats, you know, like your headshots and stuff like that. >> And kills and deaths, et cetera, et cetera. I didn't think it was that hard when I played it, I read some other previews that seemed to imply that it really was. >> I didn't think it was that hard either. >> I don't. >> You guys also play a lot of the multiplayer. It makes me wonder if these people were like, I play shooters, I can probably do this. >> I like to think I'm fairly good at bad company too. >> Yeah, me too. >> And it probably does, you know, like we've talked about before, you know, a lot of game reviewers might not necessarily be that good at particular genres of games. >> True. >> In general. >> Aww. >> That's true. They can play a lot of them. >> Or they're just okay. And there's nothing wrong with me, just okay. You know, if you're obsessive compulsive nerd who has to unlock every weapon in Battlefield, then you tend to get pretty good at it, but that doesn't make you a better person, that's for sure. >> Are you saying you're not a better person, Matt? >> Oh, I'm always a better person. >> I'm currently going through the paces of getting medals on all the guns in bad company. >> Bad company too. In weeks. >> No one can, I haven't played it in weeks either. I need to. >> Man. >> There's just so much other stuff going on right now. Red Dead sucked up my life for a long time. Anything else Matt? No, that's it for me. That's all I got. Are they? I hate you. I feel like there's something I could talk about. Can you talk about Transformers? I can talk about Transformers. The embargo is Friday at 8 a.m. I went and played Transformers again yesterday. Really? Tell me more. The previously unannounced mode, which is Escalation. Horde mode. Horde/Nazi Zombies. So it's more like zombies instead of Horde mode in the sense because you really do hole up in one specific spot? No. When you kill, okay, so there are two maps. One for Autobots, one for Decepticons. Instead of, in multiplayer you basically sort of outfit your own transformer and paint them the way you want to, etc. Escalation uses the existing Transformers from the campaign that you've unlocked in each one. It has their own abilities and whatever. So you pick your transformer and enemies will start spawning. And as you kill an enemy, they drop these little chips that you pick up that are currency and there are stations around that you can use to refill your health or get more ammo or buy new weapons. And there's also these glowing green areas that you pour credits into to unlock to get to new areas. Okay, but you don't build up defenses or anything like that. Exactly. If you're a, so I think I asked you this before, but I don't remember the answer. Can you, are there flying vehicles that you can transform into? Jesus Christ, yes. Those are my favorite. Because jumping up into the air, transforming and rocketing across the map is still one of the most awesome things I've ever done. What about single player though? I know that's what this event I thought was going to be. You know what? They said that there really wasn't that much single player on display. That's the, that's the part of it that I'm so. Right. And I'm just, I'm at the point where I, I can't get a feel for the, the single player with what they've shown us. They haven't shown us enough to give us an idea of the level design and stuff like that. Like multiplayer is awesome. It's fantastic. I'm sold on multiplayer. Yeah, me too. Right. But I mean, that's a lot to ask someone for 60 bucks. And it's really good. Escalation is also really cool and it's four player cooperatives. The only thing is like, when I hear about these really cool multiplayer and stuff, it's like, I have all these multiplayer games. I already don't put that much time into like, do you think this is significant enough that you would want to play this as opposed to spending your multiplayer. It could happen. I think you have to really look at your own gaming habits. Like I play multiplayer much more than I play single player. Like I've even said like Alan Wake and games like that. I, I typically, I enjoy them and I think they're good, but I, the stuff I spend my most time with are multiplayer and open world games. Like if I, if I buy Transformers and play the multiplayer a lot for three or four weeks, that's enough. Right. I need to spend 60 bucks on that game. Yeah. And I can see that happening and you know, that's the kind of gamer I am. Is it like, if I get sucked into a multiplayer, I'll play it for up to a couple months. But you know, it's, it's not unusual at all for me to get sucked away by something else. And I, and I am definitely interested in what they're doing. Like I want to play through the single player just to see it because the game looks so good. Yeah, it's like the campaign is three player co-op. So that can be the reason that I am. I mean, you can transform at any time. Like if they're, the thing that they do so right is that it always feels like you have so many options all the time for what you're doing, like a waste to tackle the situation. Like if I'm playing as, as optimists, like I can run out, transform into a truck, ram into a guy, turn back into a transformer and smash someone with a melee attack. Yeah, that's awesome. Like a second later. And when you transform from a vehicle into robot, again, if you're going fast, like you slide along the ground and whip around just like you'd expect them to. Yeah, cool. I was gonna say I'm kind of with Tyler in the sense that it's easier to get wrapped up in a multiplayer session because you're with friends. Yeah. Rather than spending a bunch of time playing a single player, but when it does have something like Gears does, where there's like a co-op campaign, that almost makes it like a combination of the best of both worlds. Well, for us, Gears is much more of a co-op slash. Yeah, I would never, I don't even like to play Gears without a co-op partner. Like single player, I'm fine, but I don't like Gears multiplayer, so. Yeah. Do you guys see the awesome GameStop commercial, the new one for the Transformers? No. Oh dude, it's so rad. It's like, it stars the Decepticons. And, okay, so there's Soundwave and then is, who's the guy? Is it Shockwave is the other guy? Shockwave is the guy that looks like he's got a single LED light in the center of the set. Yeah, I was just kind of getting confused because both of them have wave, Shockwave and Soundwave, right? He's got like a hexagon head with horns on either side. So, like Shockwave rolls up and he's like, "I'm the leader." He's like, "Soundwave." He's like, "Hit my jams." You know, play my jams or whatever he says. And then Soundwave has to transform into his boombox and he starts playing the touch. You got the touch! And they were playing that dude that last night. And Starscream starts like, "Bitchin." But Shockwave is like, "This is my rockin' music." I just love it. Play the music from the movie. I mean, they're well represented with characters from the last one, like Skywarp and Thundercracker and Starscream and Vericade. I really like the visual design of the aerial bots. I think they look cool as hell. And then when you look at the character models, there's just so much shit going on in all of them. Like, so many moving pieces. It's really cool. I love the art style. It's gonna be good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It's just a shame that they're fucking dumping it into the worst possible release window they could. Oh, why? You think so? The Tuesday after E3, yes. I am pretty sure that is the... For industry insiders? No, not for industry. Look, dude, who the fuck is gonna buy Transformers? It depends, right? So let's say you... Game sales drop during the summer. They don't go up. But hold on, let's just say a bunch of people are visiting their various websites like IGN. And how Michelle asked for like IGN. Oh, yeah, you're a show. Like, we're the biggest video game site on the planet. So I'm just saying, a bunch of people are visiting a site like IGN, the week before E3, or of E3. This game's coming out the week after. So let's say they buy ad spots all over IGN during E3. You know what I mean? The say this game comes out this coming Tuesday, you know? That could draw attention to it. I mean, I would just say like in the past summers, we haven't seen that many great games come out. Like, look at Battlefield 1943 last summer. That sold really well. But then there was a reduction came out the week of E3, which was a mistake. I think that that game probably could have sold better if it hadn't had an infamous came out the week before. Prototype came out in the week of. I could see Redfraction. Arkham Asylum came out in August. Yeah, but I don't know. I think people are willing to buy games during the summer. Yeah. I think that's changing slowly. It also depends on just how many, you know, how many big releases a particular publisher is having and how much marketing muscle they can put into it. And it also depends what's coming out on the horizon, right? They don't want to compete with it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Right. It just seems, I mean, Activision has put some muscle behind Transformers, but they're dumping it. The week after everyone's excited for what's coming as opposed to what's here. I don't know. I think I'm kind of with Anthony. I think it's probably a pretty good marketing strategy to take advantage of E3. I really do hope I'm wrong because the game, from what I've played, plays really well. I could totally see what you're saying. Like, early June might be too early, but they're like right at the tail end of June. I don't know. That might be like a really sweet spot. And then Singularity comes out the week after. Dude, that's from nobody's radar. I'm just like, do you believe that shit Singularity comes out a week after Transformers? I honestly don't even know what Singularity looks like. I've never seen a screenshot. Neither have I. I know it has a glove with a lot of shit on it. This is what I'm saying. It's June 3rd, for fuck's sake. Like, who the fuck has seen Singularity? I don't know. I've heard people that have seen it and they said it was bad. Really? Yeah. But I think if bad, I got sent alpha protocol. I got sent alpha protocol off. Oh, did you play it? No, I haven't. The games actually received much better reviews than I felt it should have. From the usual suspects. Everybody tells me how awful it is. Are they getting into the RPG stuff? The only semi-reputable site that gave that game a fucking good review was one up and that was Scott Sharkey, who has a soft spot in his heart for shitty games. Even IGN, though, gave it a 6.8, which I thought was high based off the few minutes I saw. No grants, and I did not even play it. But I was just like, wow. I feel that's a low IGN score. Well, I just felt like if you see the score might make you think it's as passable, but read that review. It was not very negative the whole time. I mean, there's so much stuff that it does wrong and so many awful things about that game, but there are these moments of brilliance that just poke up diamonds and a pile of shit. And you're like, this game is so bad, but there's something that keeps me playing. Yeah, I've had games like that before, to be fair. And there are certain people that love it, like the James T, 1080 on Twitter, who tweets at us all quite a bit, I believe, likes, loves that game. He says it's his favorite game all year. Wow. Like, there are certain people that that game is just going to click with. Is it the Demon's Souls of 2010? Could be. The Demon's Souls was at least a pretty well-made game. It seems like the retarded stepchild of Deus Ex to a lot of people. This game just looks like it should have come out in, like, 98. Wow. Or 2002, 2003. Anyways, the character models wouldn't look out of place in brute force. So how does the... How does the Mass Effect 1 meets Jack Bauer analogy stand up with this game? Poorly. It's not even as good as Mass Effect. No. Mass Effect controls better than... Though the storyline might be as good as any Jack Bauer has ever been in. That's not fair. The first few seasons of '24 were really good. After that, it got stupid. Okay. I'm sorry if you love '24, but man, after season 3... No, most of my friends that were addicted to '24 said the exact same thing. After season 2, they were like, "What?" Seriously. That used to be a show that I scheduled my life around. Wow. I saw the first season, like, somebody... I think somebody rented it or whatever, and I saw the whole first season. Okay. And I was like, "Okay." I scheduled my life around the OC. It's all on Netflix. Is that for sure? I actually really like the first season of the OC. The OC? Don't call it that. Well, that was what the show was called. I know. So, the only reason... The only reason... The only reason we scheduled a life around is because it was like a group of it from you, my friends. Right. It's just there and fucking make jokes all the time. No, I just quoting a rest of development. Oh. And Seth was a fun character, I think. Yeah. I thought the writing on that show in general was pretty comical. A lot of things. Produced by Mick G. So, dude, man, have you guys been checking out some of the images for the Walking Dead? I just saw the same, with a few productions still there. Right, the zombie photos. Yeah. But for me, that's... Like, I've seen lots of zombies, man. I know. Some of those zombies, like, they're taking panel for panel from the comic, though. Yeah. I mean, they do a good job with, like, the comiciness of their face or something. Yeah, they released one today where they showed the degradation of human to, like, full-on zombies. Like, you know, after months. Oh, I missed that. Of decay. It's all, dude. I apologize if I'm coughing into the mic. Well, before you get all fucking coffee, tell us about what else you played. I've been playing Snoopy Flying Ace for review. Just kidding. It's actually really cool. It's like Snoopy Flying Ace is fucking amazing. Wow. It is the best air combat game since Crimson Skies, and in a lot of ways, it's much better than Crimson Skies. That is an awesome review. What's the platform? Just let people know that it is multiplayer only. It's not multiplayer only. There is a campaign. Oh, there is a campaign. But there is a campaign is pretty inconsequential. Like, I think I've played through it about two and a half hours. Is it a downloadable game? Yes, it's 10 bucks. Is the campaign any good? It's fun. It's definitely-- it certainly helped me learn the game enough to go in a multiplayer and knock at my ass. Oh, there's no reason to buy this game if you're not going to want to play the multiplayer. Right. This game-- buy this game for multiplayer, but I think the demo might have multiplayer. Try it. It's just a favorite, and try it, because it is really, really fantastic. So do you get to-- do you get to mod out your dog house? You don't get the-- you don't fly the dog house, usually. Aw. You fly planes that look on the side. You have slightly cartoony over Crimson Skies planes. Exactly. And they have a shitload of different weapons that you can outfit your planes with and a bunch of different pilots like most of the big Peanuts characters are there, including Lucy and what looks like a fucking SS outfit. But you can also use your avatar, and you can also use your avatar, who wears his avatar costume, so I look like fucking Ezio flying around into a biplane. Whoa. Like, which means that if you're shooting-- like, you can shoot fucking Boba Fett out of the sky, which is amazing. Well, Lucy always was a closet dominatrix, so that makes sense. Right. Right. Who's the developer behind this game? God, I can't remember their name. They're the developers of the B-movie game. Which actually I heard for a license game was supposed to be good. I do remember hearing that. I don't know where the fuck these people came from other than, I think, Utah. I think they're in Utah. But fuck, it's brilliant. I'm really enjoying it, and the multiplayer is just really, really, really good. Hopefully enough people buy it to make it sustainable in some way, because a lot of people will be totally turned off by the license, I bet. Right. And if you squint your eyes, you can't tell. This is a-- They should have just called it Avatar Combat. It's super violent. It's super violent. There's just explosions everywhere. The multiplayer is totally chaotic and super awesome doing stuff all the time. What sense does the license even make in it? I mean, there is Snoopy and the Red Baron is a pretty common-- Yeah. --is a pretty established thing. If you get four kills in a row, you get Woodstock as your tail gunner. Cool. And it's not Woodstock mounting a gun. It's Woodstock sitting on the back of your plane with two pistols. Oh, that's awesome. Please add a pistol in each hand. [LAUGHTER] If you get a nine kill streak, you turn into the dog house. Which you've never done. Yeah, I've never done. I've never done. I got up to seven today. What are the game modes like? There's dog-- just free-for-all dog fight, team dog fight. Those are death match. Honey. Pig skin. It's like football. It's like a football. It's like a football. There's the catch the carrier type match where someone is trying to hold a bone for as long as possible. And there's team and free-for-all modes of that. I think there's more that's slipping my mind right now. There's a lot of content in there for multiplayer. It's really, really good. It controls super well. Would you say 10 bucks? Yes. Wow, that sounds good. It sounds like a deal. It was out yesterday. Yeah. Environments like, is it all just like open sky? It looks like they look like crimson skies. No. It's like crimson skies except a little pack. It totally looks like crimson skies environments. Except, I don't feel like I'm constantly ricocheting off something if you bounce off something. It's not going to be the end of you. Although you can kill yourself by crashing into something. Cooler. But it's just like if you have a hole in your heart after the Xbox One servers were shut down and you can't play crimson skies anymore, guess what? You can have your life back. I mean, the controls are fluid but slightly simplified from crimson skies. You don't move the camera with the right tick now. That's exclusively to do tricks. So you don't have to push in both sticks in either direction to do stuff. It is the best aerial combat game I've played since crimson skies. I hope this spawns like a whole new genre of peanuts themed violence games. They wanted to do an open world action game and couldn't get the funding so they did this. That would be so bad at that. Yeah, that's the good move, man. I'm telling you, make small arcade games to fund your larger projects. Right, and it doesn't look like a cheap game. Like it looks good. No, it actually looks really good. Nice. I wonder if, cause I would always listen to Sean Elley. It's podcast that Engai was on for a while. He would always talk about how everyone he would consult, like consult, how so many people want to make open world games and he would tell them don't bother. Yeah, really. It's so hard. It's so big. And it's so prone to failure. Yeah. Do something focused. Or if it's not an open world game, they want to make an MMO. Yeah, right. MMO is like the biggest money sink of all time. What's, there's an MMO coming out this year or something like that. No, it's not coming out this year. One of your time I was the one made by Kurt Schilling. This summer. It's been like dumping money in two, three years now. No, there's, there's a new one and it's supposed to, and it's DC. DC. Oh, oh. Oh, oh. DC ever saw that. Yeah, they were showing that last year. I saw that and I was like, that's, I saw, I saw a post about it. I was like, that's not out yet. It's out in November. Yeah. Like I'm sorry. I saw that a couple of weeks ago and it's looking better. Sure. Sure. But it's like the champions already came out. It's like the champions already came out. It looks kind of, it just looks kind of boring. Well, then there's that MMO only company, Trion, that like just came out of the woodwork. I don't know. A couple months ago. And it's like, here's three massively multiplayer games we're working on. Yeah. It's crazy. It's like, I kind of thought that the whole like, everybody's, everybody and their brother is going to make an MMO had kind of gone by the wayside because so many of them failed. But like 90% of them did. Yeah. I just think that like the money draw that wow, it's just too tempting. People can't help themselves. Like if we could just be the next wow. Yeah, exactly. You invest, we invest a hundred million dollars and we have the potential to make a hundred fold back. Yeah. Exactly. The wow is like the ring and Lord of the Rings dude, and all the developers are like fucking golem. All right. At least that's what happens to me. I hate you so much. They turn into golems when they're on their path to getting them. That is such a good comparison. Damn. I'm all on track. Goddamn it. That is. God. That's true. That's what it is. Tyler wins. I also played the Clone Wars adventures game. Which is an MMO. It's free realms with lightsabers. That's free to play. Yeah. With microtransactions. Blammo. It's pretty fun. Actually, there are a lot of really fun. I have for good things. I have free realms to be fair. Oh, is that that? It's not. I really like cartonique kind of fantasy like like fantasy is in like I was in Wonderland almost type fantasy. Yeah. And just a bunch of little mini games. All right. That is exactly what it is. Oh, okay. That is exactly what this is. It's got like a tower defense game and a breakout type game and a spot the differences game and a toss the gun gun game. What's the platform for that? PC. PC. It's free to play MMO. Microtransactions. Free to play. Yeah. With microtransactions. I'm pretty sure it's going to launch around the time of the third season premiere of the Clone Wars cartoon. Now this now I mean I know I was just talking shit about MMOs but like this is a much smarter solution. Apparently Sony is making a lot of money on free realms. Yeah. So the well the whole the funny thing about microtransaction is that it's it can all it's also a big risk you can go one of two ways as well like a lot of companies that will work on MMOs they'll be like oh shit we're totally we're totally out of money. Our game is going to be free to play which is like it can be an indication the decision to be free to play can be an indicator of the intimate imminent demise. It's an act of desperation. Yeah an act of total act of desperation but I guess you know if you're designing it that way from the ground up it seems to be a pretty good learning from this Korean MMO companies basically. Yeah I think. To make these games that don't look they don't have as much depth as wow they don't have as much like graphical fidelity even as wow they look like they're but that's not the point of them. The point of them is to get you to have like a farmville type experience where you're like in there for hours at a time and eventually like pay five bucks so I don't have to do this. Yeah the sad thing is I think that the only people that can really successfully try that shit are these super established companies that can afford to launch that and not have a shitload of people buy it right away. Battlefield heroes. Battlefield heroes I mean I know that Carmack it has gone on record saying that they have not made any money on Quake live that they're still losing money on it but they're trying to figure out ways to monetize it. Yeah I mean I can see they took it they have a very long term approach though too so that could but yeah Quake live hasn't made any money from what I know but like the Doom game on iPhone didn't make money for like the first year was out either and now it's made money. Doom 3 or? Yeah the Doom iPhone game. Huh. The Doom 3 one yeah that's weird. It was so expensive it was the first game to debut at that price and so first it didn't make up enough money to get back but now it's made money right well they well now there's a whole strategy for putting your games on the iPhone 2 about like you know having a sale weekend so that you can get bumped up into the top list and then you know after that weekend is over then you put your price back up to normal once you're in that top list because once you hit that top tier list and like people are just wanting to pay whatever. Exactly so it's like there's totally ways around that now that all these strategies that just take advantage of the architecture or lack thereof of the iTunes store. Yeah and they didn't know that back then. Does anyone think that's it we've been talking for an hour to break just one to let you all know that digs traffic between March and April fell thirteen point six percent million uniques. Really? Holy shit. Yeah. The people really not use dig anymore. Yeah you know what when someone said people aren't digging our podcast anymore I don't know if we set it on this podcast it was just the conversation but I was like is it our podcast or is it dig that's becoming. Which is funny because our listenership has definitely gone up. So apparently apparently 25 percent unique traffic drop by like 30 percent in span of a month. Your traffic's gone up 25 percent since when like in the last six weeks. Wow that's awesome. I have no idea why. I thought that we would lose listeners quickly. I was expected we'll lose listeners. Well that's yeah I figured that's going to happen after I came in. No those are the weeks for you in here. Alright. Oh wait. We're going to get there. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Oh. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Great. Great. Just enough. Feels good. You all fucking discussed me. That was some chip. So our middle topic is your favorite game from the first half of 2010 and your biggest disappointment from the first half of 2010. Nice. Anthony is looking at comments right now because he sucks. We're supposed to, because I suck. You've had a week you could have done this. Kick it. Kick us off. I don't have a net book. Kick us off. No but you have the ability to look up comments. I don't know what you're talking about. I put the post up. But kick it, dude. You've got a game that you hated or something. You don't like games. You've got things you don't like. Everything. Mass Effect 2 is my favorite game of 2010 so far. Funny because Benjamin I says I was not as hot for Mass Effect 2 as everyone else. I felt the combat sequences were too frequent and the mission structure too predictable. Bit of story, 4 to 5 rooms of dudes to headshot, bit more story, back to the Normandy. No surprises. I didn't feel that it was that way at all. You reductive prick. Well, I'm just telling you what Benjamin said it just because you said Mass Effect. I kid Benjamin. I don't think you're a prick Benjamin but I just figured your assessment. Go go back on that. You were just telling me a couple of minutes ago how you thought he was. Now you're going to take it back when we're on the air. The first little fight club is you don't talk about the fight club. Benjamin also is like the anti-Arthur Kaziosa. His favorite, the best surprise of the year were Monster Hunter, Triad and Bayonetta. I liked Bayonetta. Right, but this kid sounds like he's like I love Japan. I love Japan. Right. Japan Japan Japan Japan. My cousin here is now he's he's interning for us at area 5. He's a he's a big Monster Hunter fan. He's playing Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii. When I was watching him play because he's you know he's a lot further along in that game than I would ever get. It's a pretty pretty looking game. Yeah and like it looks like the kind of thing that yes you can have some fun with if you're willing to put in the crazy amount of time and play with a Fakner you the entire time. And you play with other people. Yeah exactly. Yup. Yeah, I just don't have any interest in playing that. My most disappointing game this year was Dante's Inferno. Uh one more that even like you still kind of liked it. It had so much potential that it didn't live up to. Right. I mean you were genuinely excited for it. Right. Yeah I remember that. And a lot of people were just like oh fuck that game. Fuck me. Yeah. Yeah. I got a good one which this guy reminded me of reckless 44.85. I got a post a lot. He sent a lot. But the one that he said is uh is dark ciders. That was my biggest surprise of the year. I did not expect that game to be nearly as cool as it was man. Right. Neither did I. Right at the beginning of the year like you know right when everybody was coming back from vacation or whatever and it's just and it just hit right then and it's the kind of thing where it's like wow I'm actually glad that this hit in in 2010 because people are going to be talking about it at the end of 2010 when they have to make all their game of the year decisions. I think it outsold band out of here. Did it really? Yeah. Huh. It sold really well. Cool. I mean it sold well enough. It sold really well for a new IP from the THQ like no one really knew that much. I mean it didn't sell as well as shareholders we're hoping it would. I mean it sold more than a million copies it's like it's a comes out on PC at the end of the morning a million copies for a company that's our first game. Actually I'm interested in seeing that game on PC. I have a feeling it would look really nice but run like shit. Yes it's totally well not run like shit but it wouldn't control it would control like shit unless you plugged in a controller. Why wouldn't you do that? Why do you object to controllers on PC Matt? Just because I like to play things with PC controls because a lot of PC players don't have controllers necessarily. A lot of them just don't buy controllers. Yeah. A lot of people that have PCs don't have consoles. Back in the day before I owned a console that the controllers would work on the PC like now I have controllers that will do it but before I never owned controllers that would work on a PC ever. I mean the only thing that Microsoft has really done this generation for PC gaming is to give it a standardized controller. Totally true. But that's just it is like there are distinct advantages to being able to look with a mouse is it posing to have to look with a thumbs up? Like no one played the old splinter cell games with a controller on PC because that wasn't an option. And they were poor. It was an option but they were poorer for it for playing with a mouse. The option was to go out and buy like a third party controller or something like that but no one did that. Yeah. A lot of times I- A lot of people did that. I did not know anybody that owned a controller for their PC. The only person I knew that had one we thought it was super cool because we could play emulators. Alright. I still don't know people don't know people that are PC gamers that are exclusive PC gamers that have controllers for their PC. Neither do it. They just don't do it. They just have a 360 one that they'll pull out occasionally. And they also own a 360. Right. But then they're not exclusive. I see what you're saying. Yeah. But it's like I actually really enjoy looking around with the mouse in most games because I feel like because I can whip with it really quick and do quick wrist movements it's almost like I'm looking at things as though my eyes were in the scene. And it's a different feel. It's a different kind of emergency. And I also just think it's really it's really enjoy and I get a lot of enjoyment out of games that allow me to mouse look and even if they're a console port still control really well with a mouse and keyboard. Yeah, I just don't think it was as big of a necessity up until the last five years or something either because before every game there weren't as many crossover between PC and consoles is like there are now where like every game is also coming out for consoles. That's why I didn't know anybody they don't control it because all the games that were coming out were PC exclusive in general anyways. So they were designed for a mouse and a keyboard. Right. But you know, you know, another game like Mass Effect on PC and it plays perfectly, you know, and then you play on console, it plays perfectly even though the controls are different. Like that's what, but I imagine Darksiders is totally one of those games where you're playing it with a mouse and keyboard thinking like man, these controls clearly weren't designed for a PC player. But I could see the game still working pretty well. I mean, they are a developer that develops for PC. Their next game is a MMO. So they might know what they're doing. Well, then I may have to eat crow. Did you have a disappointment? Uh, no. Fucking fail. Yeah. Guys talk about Darksiders again. Yeah, his were all just games that he really liked. There was no disappointments. This one person said from Michael, this one person Michael, he said my let down of the year so far has been dark void. That was mine. Um, I don't know how you make jetpacks unfun and a story involving Nikolai Tesla boring as hell, but apparently airtight has a formula. Dude, that is a challenge. Good point. Sir. How do you make jetpacks not fun? Yeah. Answer dark void. Uh, by making colliding with a wall and instant death, by making engaging the start of that jetpack, sending you like thrusting hundreds of miles an hour and suddenly reversing your controls. Yeah. Yeah. And also cutting out giant chunks of that game. I am positive there, enormous parts of that game that were left on the cutting room floor. I really, really, really wanted to like that game. I did too. Mass Effect 2 is one that people are saying the game they like the most and the game that is pointed the most. It's like both, you know. Pretty polar, right? Well, it's especially polarizing amongst, you know, long time, bio where RPG fans. Cause the majority are definitely saying Mass Effect 2. Right. That game could easily still get game of the year. Right. At the end of this year. Which is impressive. I think this is the first time and I can remember where a game that came out in January in June is still got game of the year buzz attached to it. Resident Evil 4 is the first one that comes to mind. But it didn't get game of the year. By a lot of places. For a lot of places. Man, I don't, I don't remember anybody saying Resident Evil, Resident Evil 4. 4. Not 5. 4. Okay. 4. Watro. God of War also came out at the same time. Yeah. It's another one. I haven't been disappointed by anything this year. You have low standards. Well, there's a lot of people out there that, you know, because they don't get every game. It's just like they only buy the games that they want to play. So. Right. If you only buy one game a month. Yeah. You've had a fucking awesome year. Yeah. Yeah. You really have. Your chances of like hitting a shitty game are very low. You know, if you buy more games in a year than most people buy for the entire time they own a console. You'll get the disappointments for me. I'd like to talk about my disappointment. No. Because it's a game. What? You said that so I didn't have to. It's a game that, that I was kind of looking forward to, not because I have any history with it. But my biggest disappointment was, is God of War 3. Just because like based on a simple fact that I played, I probably sat down with it three times and just, I don't feel compelled to pick it up again. Makes me a little sad because we really, I'm sorry Tyler. We really pumped that game up for you. No. God of War. God of War 2. You are fucking awesome. No, no, no. It's really cool because like, I'm just really understanding like I really don't like very linear games. Like I was the same way with Uncharted 2. I feel like I'm gonna be the same way with Alan Wake. I just don't like, I'm just, that's not for me. Alan Wake is over so quickly. Yeah. You can be it in a couple of days if you were determined and unemployed. I'm sorry I need to do that God of War as well. Yeah. I mean, I was kind of disappointed by God of War as well that it was not in the way that it's a bad game. I'm not saying it's bad. It's a competently made game. It just doesn't feel like it has heart. Like when we talked about when David was here, I just don't feel like it has, it doesn't have balls. It doesn't have soul. Yeah. Well it has the... And it's on a sonic console. And it's on a sonic console. Kind of balls. It has like, you know, the gratuitous kind of balls where it's completely not afraid to go there. It's hard for the course for that series really. Sometimes I only mention people's comments because they're good and then sometimes I only mention people's comments because their taste side with my own. Such is my power. Eli says, so far my top game has been Toy Soldiers. Alan Wake was good. Eli. But didn't keep me playing like Toy Soldiers. I love that cheap downloadable games can have enough content now to be a real game and not some 2R experience you never go back to. Right. You stole my game. Oh. I was gonna say that one. Well if you had hurried up, Mr. I Hade. Hey Toy Soldiers surprised the hell out of me too. I still think that that game is like flawed in the way that you pointed out where it's like they're clearly maps where it's like you're going to lose 20 minutes in and then be like okay now I know what I need to do. But this is a game. It's just so cool. It has so much personality. I mean, yeah, that was going to be my big surprise and one of my favorites. I would say that it's easily in my mind the best downloadable game I've played this year. Yeah. Wow. Nice. That's your game of the year? No, just downloadable. That I've played so far. So far. But I know there's some shit on the horizon that's coming out in the next few weeks and months that looks like it could be really cool as far as the rumors of Dead Space Extraction Xbox, Liver, K and PSN popped up again to the Dead Space Extraction. That looks like it's coming. It would make sense for PlayStation move. That's gotta be insulting. PlayStation move, it makes perfect sense to me because it's like a Wii remote, right? Now, Natala, I'm curious to see how they'll do it just because I'm not saying they can't. I'm just curious to see how, right? Like I know they can do all the finger things. So is it going to be like I'm pulling a trigger and like my wrist tilts? Like is it going to be? You have to make the gun shape with your finger and pulling your head. That's what I'm wondering. I've got to figure that you're holding a controller on one hand while you're doing it. Yeah, because I'm just wondering, yeah, because if you could still use just button inputs for certain things but then point. Like the triggers? Yeah. And then reload with this but just make, yeah, that could make sense because yeah, I'm just curious how to work with this talk because the move, it's like, yes, you just basically remap the Wii remote to this other controller. Right. It's just an HD version of the last game. Right. Right. Yeah, that is really cool for people that if you didn't play it, man, and that really does happen, you got to if you have the option to. Do you guys think they might add anything that PS3 or Xbox 360 could bring that the Wii could not? No, they'll probably just, they'll probably just up-resit I imagine because to be honest, if it's a downloadable game, people aren't going to be expecting it to look like a 360 or PSN game. They're going to expect to look like a PSN or XBLA game and if you would up-res the graphics that were on the Wii, it would already look pretty good because the game looked really good on Wii. So if you could up-resit, it would be like that. I mean, what came out today is that EA Montreal has been working on it, which would lead me to believe that they are not just like up-resing that maybe they're using existing assets. I imagine it's just an up-resing thing because you'd unless they're going to have- It'd still be cool. I would still, I'll buy it if it comes out. Because even if it's just up-resing, it's still like a six-hour game, which would be a huge downloadable thing, you know? I would really like it if it was upgraded visually. Is there online multiplayer on co-op? No, no. There's no online. Same screen. Same screen. I don't understand how that could work. The whole point is that you want it to be local anyways because it's that sort of game, right? Where you're sitting on the couch together just pointing cursors. It's a like-in game, you know? Yeah, I know. But I mean, if you're both- It's a good experience. Same thing. Huh? I don't know. Yeah, but honestly, I think a lot of the experience would be lost if you were sitting over a headset doing it. It's part of that just sitting there talking shit with someone. That oh shit. Or ha ha, we're throwing white balls at things. Yeah, I mean, I think that game is one- like, like-in-game is a particular kind of important to have them. Same room co-op. Time Crisis Online is awesome. Yeah, no thank you. No. That's what I want for move. A new time crisis. Let's see. I actually never got into time crisis. That's what I want for a tall, so I have to doubt. I was a virtual cop man myself. Virtual cop. Virtual cop was fun. True. Shoot him in the hands. Yup. Got everyone just copy each other. Mass Effect. Mass Effect. If you say Mass Effect, I'm not even talking about you anyway. Deadly Premonition is definitely my surprise of 2010. And currently my game of the year. I just can't resist. It's quirky charm. I can confidently say I enjoyed the characters in the story much more than Mass Effect 2. Hey, Shane Benthausen, please quit posting on our blog. You're dead to me, sir. What was this guy's name? Ochi Cherai. That's Shane. All right, Ochi Cherai, who's a what's it? You're dead to me. Yeah. Shane. It's post-em. The funny thing is, I would occasionally see people that I respect on Twitter going, "Oh, shit. Deadly Premonition. Awesome." Right. That's why-- Some of those people are people that like bad shit intentionally because it's bad. But I like bad shit sometimes because it's intentionally bad. But this is just like, it crosses into bad bad. Yeah. It's like awful Japanese horror aficionados, or like, "This movie is so amazing. It's all no. That movie is fucking stupid." Maybe if I drink a lot, I would think this is fun. It couldn't hurt. Oh, man. No doubt. Let's see. Well, another person said Monster 103. Try. Try. Well, the he wrote three. That game looks really good. It is. For a Wii game, it looks really good. For a Wii game, it looks great. Yeah. I understand. I understand every area that it loads is like only a hundred yards big. I understand that it plays a lot like Lost Planet 2, actually. Really? Yeah. I wouldn't say that. A lot of-- yeah, I read a few articles that were comparing a lot of the game design sort of philosophies. Right. That Lost Planet 2. I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago that Lost Planet 2 was the stealth attempt to get Monster Hunter into Western homes. I don't know. You're still seeing it while that works. Park City is the biggest disappointment was Bioshock 2. Did he elaborate on that? Didn't feel like he brought anything new to the World Rapture, just another lap through the same old crap. That's what he said. Okay. That's fair. It is. I would strike it as that bad. It's Jurassic Park 3. But I didn't think it was-- it wasn't a disappointment to me. I kind of expected that. No. Yeah. And I enjoyed it. I liked the combat mechanics of the big daddy, so I found that funny. Yeah. Okay. That's fair. People expected-- Yeah. I didn't expect that. That was the whole thing for me. I just expected another go around, but could it at least have a story that was engaging enough to make me want to finish it? And it did. I thought I had a good enough story. I felt like I was forcing myself to finish the game here. 3D Dark Game Heroes. I don't know what to say about this game. So fucking great. That game goes on way too long. I still haven't played it. 3D Dark Game Heroes? No, Bioshock 2 goes on too long. Like, where you think you're almost finished and there's like another 3 and a half hours. That was a Cody who said that. I still need to play 3D Dark Game Heroes. I have that in my room right now and still haven't played it. Cody is not the only one who's told me how awesome that is. Man, a listener, we sent a few Twitter messages back and forth and he's made--I posted a link to his website. He's made some really cool heroes in this game. He made one of the MS--the Mystery Science Theater 3,000 robots. That's the one. Was it Tom Cerva? It was the one that looks like Gumball Machine. Tom Cerva. Yeah. That's so cool. He made a pyramid head. One. That's fucked up. Some funny ones. He did a dead space one that looks really good. You played Mod Nation Racers, didn't you? Yeah. And you didn't talk about that? Oh, but I haven't played that since the preview, really. Oh, okay. That is a cool game, though. Yeah. One of the last previews you did for Game Spy? Yeah. Like, full last. Before the quickening. The quickening. The quickening is when you eat something raw, no? What's quickening? No, the quickening is from Highlander, when you cut off someone's head and you gain their power. Right. Why did I think quick--what do you think of? Is that like the diarrhea you get from eating your own food? Is that what you're thinking of? What am I thinking of where you--like, when you eat like a fish, you just catch like ash. That's what? What? What? Diarrhea. Not the quickening. Yeah. Whatever you're thinking of is not the quickening. I thought there was a term for it. It's my nose. Diarrhea. Diarrhea. I do--I admire that we keep coming back around to diarrhea. Right. It's the circle of life. It's because food either does two things. It makes you poop or it makes you not poop. Whoa. That was deep. Some people list way too much. And then some people get all fucking esoteric like-- What's that? Let them. Like Ubisoft's continued hatred of PC gamers through the draconian DRM measures. That was like someone said was like a disappointment. And it's like it wasn't a game. You know what? You got--we have pushed them to this. Yeah. I realize that it's not something that gamers want to hear, just like they didn't want to hear that yes, Resident Evil 5 was racially insensitive, but gamers have pushed companies to DRM, period, because people stopped buying their games. And you can say, well, they don't make good games, but when people download them and play them anyway, there's obviously something going on. And do I--I don't like DRM. I think that it sucks, like, that you have to be online all the time to play Command and Conqueror, Assassin's Creed 2. Yeah. They don't have a choice. That or not release it? A lot of people said the Heavy Rain was a disappointment to them. That one almost took my God of War spot. If it just wasn't for me expecting to be God of--for God of War to be a much better game, but yeah, I would totally agree with that. One thing that really bothers me about Heavy Rain is like they're a reinvention of the will. Like, why do they have movement so fucking weird? Like a tank. Like, I thought Resident Evil 1 and 2 were the last games that would ever do that sort of control scheme, you know? Was it how Resident Evil 1 was? Yeah. I thought you just turned with the right--with right and left on-- Well, it wasn't exactly, but you know. The reason I--the only reason I can think of it, and I agree with the controls were like that made you like a tank in a lot of ways that ruined certain scenes that were supposed to be like emotional. Like, I can't even get through this doorway. The only thing I can think of it was that they wanted to-- No. I don't even know. Because they wanted to free one of the analog sticks except for some bullshit action. Right. That's really what it is. But there are other ways to do--I don't know. Yeah, there were a lot of things--I never got to talk about Heavy Rain on the show. It just never sort of happened. Like, you guys played it, I played it after you all, but yeah, that was my big--I mean, oh, the movement, like, really. Well, the--it makes sense from a certain perspective because, like, yes, the right stick moves your head around independently of your body so you can stand in one area and look at different things. But the other way to think of it is that Heavy Rain is a game that's--that even though I doubt it's sold, you know, it didn't go mainstream. It's a game that was designed for a mainstream audience. And mainstream audiences don't understand dual stick controls. They just don't get it. I don't agree with that. Every game made is such. I don't know. Well, I can tell you this. I'm not talking mainstream--I'm not talking, like, you know, Xbox 360 owners. Okay. And PS3 owners. I'm talking Wii owners. That's totally fine. But would you call those controls accessible? I would call it accessible when you only have one stick to move your character. That's more accessible than having two sticks to do with your character. No, but you move with the left and right and don't you hit--hold, like, the triggers to walk? Yeah. Yeah, but it's like you hold the trigger to move forward and then, like, you-- Your direction is-- Your direction is your character. And it's like a lot of people don't understand that if you move the camera, then, you know, your character doesn't move in the same direction, or should it move in the same direction? I don't know. I don't understand what's going on here. Like, it's really difficult for people that aren't used to using two sticks to control your character. I get that. I just don't think that heavy rans controls are the solution to that quandary. No, I'm not saying it's like the solution. I'm saying it was like--I'm saying it was an attempt to make an accessible--to make the controls more accessible. I don't know if it's a scene because I don't have any focus groups to put in front of any rain. Yeah, I mean, there would be-- But I get where they were trying to go. It's one of the things where there were so many times during it, like, I'm in a particular scene and they spend so much attention to detail in making the scenes look real, making the animation look real, making the characters look real. And then when I have something like, I can't even turn at the right angle to get through this particular door because there's a 90-degree wall and there's doors on both walls, you know what I mean? And it's like, no, I want to go into the door on the left, not the one on the right. It totally breaks it. It breaks--it's like you've shot yourself in the foot on everything you were trying to build. It's weird to me. I never ran into any problems in the controls in that game. I don't know what it was. Maybe I just got used to them really fast or something. I didn't have too bad an issue with them either, myself. Sorry. But Omri writes, and I'm just going to read one that he said that he liked. I'm not even going to read the rest of his comment because he invalidated himself for the first one. Why? Tell me how he invalidated himself. Xenoclash Ultimate Edition. That's that first person--that first person fighting game. Man, a lot of people really love that game on PC. A lot of people are dumb. I like Xenoclash. Have you played it? Really good time with it. I played the whole thing on PC, yeah. The first person fighting game. It's not--well, it has a little bit of fighting. It has a lot of shooting in it, too, actually. You're fighting like elephant people? So what? Yeah. I feel like you're writing that off without giving in a chance. Man, every time I would walk by and see it, it looks like-- I hear you, man. It looks silly in me, too. No, it's good. That invalidates his opinion. The universe that it's set in is really cool the way the story is told is really cool. Because it's simply because his opinion does not line up with mine, therefore. I'm not saying I'm being logical here. I'm just saying that he puts Xenoclash in the same-- This is my opinion as an American. He puts that in the same sentence as splinter cell compaction aspect, too, and I'm just like, what? Shut up. I don't know, man. What's your-- what's been your surprise and disappointment of the year, Anthony? No, I said darksiders. Yeah. All right. But then-- I'm surprised. What's your disappointment? Yeah. I don't know, what have I reviewed this year? A lot of games. I don't know. I haven't been drawn into Red Dead as much as I wanted to be. Is that like your big disappointment, though? No. You got pretty excited for that game. Yeah. I like cowboys, but-- I like cowboys. Oh. Shut up. I think I got wrong. This is good. That's OK. You're not the only one that likes cowboys. It's true. Cowboy. Um, actually, I'm not really sure, like, things I've been particularly disappointed in, because a lot of the games that I played in were like, this probably isn't going to be very good. I knew that going into Army of Two, I was like, this isn't going to be that good. Yeah. So I don't feel like there's been anything that-- What was that Warhammer football game? Oh, well, that's true. Blood Bowl let me down. Blood Bowl let me down pretty hard. I really wanted that to be good. That was really bad. Um, I think I can probably think of it's surprise that you didn't expect, which was the Silent Hill Wii game. Oh, that's true. That game was good. Well, the game was deeply flawed, but still really cool. And yeah, it surprised me. I expected it to be really bad, and it was actually something that is-- if you're a Silent Hill fan, there's like no reason not to play a game in my mind. It's like the one of the most coherent Silent Hill stories that's still satisfying. It was developed by an American company, wasn't it? Yeah. But I mean-- There you go. But a lot of people don't like-- a lot of people really hate it the story. People like Silent Hill and stuff as well. I thought it was just-- I thought it was super good. Right, a lot of people like Japanese horror, and those people are wrong. Well, I do as well. And I say this having audition on my shelf. Yeah, I like-- oh, you mean Japanese horror movies? Yeah. Um, what's wrong with Tyler? Your Ball Zitch or something? Yeah, his Ball Zitch. He's got to scratch him. Everything also about Japanese horror movies, Korean horror movies do better and with more intelligible plot lines. Really? Yes. I would not know, because I'm not a horror movie aficionado. Except for the host. I really didn't like that movie at all. In fact, like, I'm kind of a-- kind of a wuss when it comes to horror movies. Here, well, I'll end it with one final comment, which is from Chuck, who says, Ellen Wake, Deadly Premonition, and Mass Effect 2 of all been great in 2010 games. I'm so far-- There's a real shit sandwich you got there. --so far are on tops of my list for Game of the Year. Shit sandwich on Magic Bread, my friend. But then he says Alien versus Predator is my biggest disappointment. I didn't expect it to be good, but I did expect it to at least be decent, and it's not even close to decent. Wow, I forgot about that game, actually. I tried. But anyone released a game called Alien versus Predator, and have us fight against Android soldiers. [LAUGHTER] To be fair, at least half the Alien versus Predator comics ever, or Alien comics ever it, have had a lot of Android violence. Yes, it might too, but-- Well, it's kind of like that one guy that was talking about how to make a jet pack. And then if you like, that's going to be bad, it'll be the same kind of thing as how to take a break. [LAUGHTER] Break, break, break, break, break. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back to the letter segment. Hot. This letter is titled, it's from Justin, and it's titled "The Power of the Secret Sin." Whoa. That's why I had to read it. Secret Sin. Before you read it, Tyler, did you see the email I sent you? Yeah, yeah. We from the Met wanted to sponsor the show. I know, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, we talked about that. I think it's the week you're at E3 judging. Right. Yeah. Side note for Anthony, he puts it at the top. It's the guy who on Twitter told you, I went up to four guys in a Utah bar and asked if any of them were you because they could have been your clone army. I don't remember this. [LAUGHTER] Anthony's not very good at Twitter. Long time listener, first time writer. But he does have a clone army. He does. OK. I've seen-- I just got out of a relationship. High school relationship, I know. But it's all I've had. Well, it's fun. With a girl I had been crushing on and dating on off and on since freshman year. Enjoying being a single high school guy and occasionally playing some Tyler advice, I'm having a good time. I was just listening to the Indian Summer special episode in which you asked to hear stories about listener results using the amber oil by Nama. Well, as a long time listener and obsessive personality, I wanted to get-- I wanted to know sex god Tyler Barber's secrets sent since it was first mentioned way back when. Do you like how you been elevated to sex god? When you guys finally revealed what it was, I knew I would be tracking it down momentarily. Fortunately, your timing was perfect. I listened to the episode in the day off from school, a day which I had already had plans to pick up a new fling from school. You mentioned that this amber could be bought at Whole Foods and I bought the oil, put it on my neck and wrist, apparently usual places, but a new experience for me as a 17 year old geeky teenager and left to go pick up this girl from school. Long story short, as soon as she gets in the car, she makes a comment about how good I smell. The night proceeds on and she keeps smelling my neck and getting closer to me than ever before. I'd only met this girl three weeks before and she was seeming more into me than normal. I honestly think this had a lot to do with the smell. We've been sort of dating now and she always makes comments about how amazing and sexy I smell to me and her friends. She also took two of my sweatshirts because she says she loves the smell that they smell. Wow. Here's the thing. I didn't want to over sell it. So this guy's over selling it for you. But I'm telling you, that is my experience with it. Thank you, Tyler Barber, Anthony. I think it's credit too, but only as Tyler's sex padawan. Yeah, that shit smells fucked up. Sounds different than I think you meant it to. Yes, my dad's girlfriend said I smell sexy. Wow. The older ladies too. That is a different letter. PPS, also we did The Nasty that night. She's hot. I blame the set. Dude, we just had a free ad for Nemat right there. Babies have a babies. You know what the one here, you know, I'm like a big proponent of, you know, play the field, you know, be young, date around, but one like word of caution I really want to put out there is like, if you meet an amazing girl or an amazing guy, like, try not to have the goggles of like, oh, but I want to fuck everything that moves like, don't, like, I don't know, don't take them for granted. That's always my problem. So those could be pretty awesome goggles. Too many women all at once, I've just, I don't know how to handle it all. Really? I don't, I lack the sexual agility to juggle that many girls at the same time. I just couldn't do it. No, I couldn't do it. My heart. Can't do it. Oh, my heart. I'll break my heart. Okay. This is a Star Wars lore question. Nice. John. And he says, uh, so we were all sitting around watching Empire Strikes Back. I hadn't seen this one since I was much younger and something tiny jumped out of me. I was wondering if you could help me understand, says there are no planets mentioned in the movie. They talk about Dagobah, Bespin and Hoth, but they refer to them as the Hoth system, the Beth spin system, the Dagobah system. Traditionally, I'd always thought of Hoth being the ice planet. Dagobah being Yoda's home at Bespin, being Lando's floating pad. And now, and I know I'm not alone there, what the hell planets did they actually visit? I imagine systems are like our own solar system with multiple planets. And I would like to say, and I would like to say that you are being naive thinking that every solar system is like our own, why can't it be a system with one planet that goes around a star? There are systems like that. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. There are so many out there that the idea that there can be single planet systems. All those are single planet systems. Typical human. Yeah, why not? I don't know. They just... It's wrong. Why not? It's wrong. Either way, that you could still have a system named after the biggest planet maybe, and maybe that's what all those were. Yeah. Or the most important planet. Right. We call ours the solar system because we realize the sun is the most important, but I could see some other asshole being like the Earth system. Those planets are definitely called what they were, and you're right. I think Hoth is a moon, I think. That's what I thought. Investment is a gas giant or something. So the Hoth system is named after a moon? Yeah, maybe there are no planets there. There could be a system with no planets. I think it's just called a moon of Hoth. Although does a moon have to orbit a planet to be a moon? It has to orbit. Shut up. Man, I didn't know until recently that I think Jupiter has one of its moons, is not perfectly round. Right. True. I didn't know that. Which one is that? Is that Europa? I don't know. No, it's not. It's like a super small one. It's tiny, but it's very irregularly shaped. I think if it's an object that's rotating something that's not a planet, it's a satellite. If it's something... Something. I could be wrong. So... Sure. It's a scientist. And while Jim's letter is obviously going to be controversial, I feel like I have to read it because Jim was 100% instrumental in me meeting my girlfriend. Really? So... Is this a guy that brought her up? Yes. Oh, hey. So I can't not read this dude. Wait, wait, wait. He's like, there's this girl who's totally into you? No. He doesn't say the N-word, does he? No, no, no. Okay. But I feel like what he did is he made sure that she stayed afterwards to come say hi to us after her. Oh, that guy. Yeah. Cool. That kind of seemed like he had a crush on her. Well, maybe he did. Probably. And if so, I'm sad, Jim. Hey, man, he did. It was a bigger man. Does that make sense? I assure you, you're the bigger man. No, I mean... In the pants. Jim. But by the way, I feel like I owe Jim like a debt of thanks. So I'm going to read this letter, even though it's like one that I might have skipped because of... It's about religion. And one packaged vagina. So. Religion. This letter is mainly directed at Tyler. On a recent show, you responded to a letter, a listener letter about living with some Christians who didn't want alcohol, woman, or whatever it was in their house. I think you won. I think your response was along the lines of fuck 'em. I pretty much agreed with your advice, though I'm not sure I would be able to interact with friends this way. Luckily, I haven't been put in this position. My question is, however, how would you handle religious family members? I'm an atheist, but all of my family, save for my sister, are varying degrees of Christian. My family is pretty well educated, middle class, left wing, and very tolerant and respectful. They're pure gay rights and all that jazz. But he says it's kind of weird to me that they believe in something I just can't, and as much as I'll take Tyler's stance on religion, it's not a smart approach for my family. And so he says, "As what I think to be an agnostic, atheist group, how do you handle religious family members? Have you or do you know someone that has had a serious issue because of religious differences?" My sister is super religious. Right. And I mean, it's certainly not a problem. I mean, she asks me every time I'm in town, like, "Hey, you going to church with us?" And I'm like, "I don't believe in God." But I don't know. I was fortunate enough to be inoculated from religion in the way that my parents didn't raise us in a religion. Right. Mine either. My mom grew up a hardcore Pentecostal and the church kind of sort of, I don't know, long story short, my mom felt burnt by the church. And so she stopped going very young. So I was never... You were spared. Yeah. Like, I feel like, you know, as religion, as a virus, I was just not... Spared the rod spoiled the child. Yeah. [Laughter] But, you know, I don't really have too many problems. No, I mean, I just think with family, obviously, right? It's family is like, you could love a family member even if they turned into a serial killer, right? 'Cause they're your fucking family. How many things do your family members do that piss you off that they get away with? The thing is that you just have to develop a relationship of mutual respect, I think, because I can't speak about this in the sense of having family, but I have friends of mine who are like substitute family members for me because for years I was not particularly close to my brother or sister. And so I have friends that are like, I have a friend who's... You know, you go in his house and there's like a picture of the Pope, you know, he was raised extremely Catholic, still with his girlfriend, still a virgin, never having sex with her until they get married. Sure. You know, he's very hardcore. And we always had to have those times where it was like, like, how are we still friends, you know? And it always just came down to a matter of mutual respect, like, I would try and understand where he's coming from. He would try and we didn't sit there and like, we did not make it a top of constant attack on each other. Right. You try and live with the differences rather than the, you know, like don't get offended if your family ever tries to ask you to go to church, that sort of thing. You should look at that as like a sign of love. Onshore. I dated a girl who was Christian and she bought me a Bible, and I remember it pissed me off that she bought me a Bible. The most more she bought me a leather bound Bible, knowing I was vegetarian. I remember I wasn't thinking. And I remember I was like, you bought me a Bible and you bought me a leather bound one. It's like, and I was like, why the fuck would she get me this for my birthday? And then I realized in some ways, I was kind of like one of the nicer presents someone could buy me in a way, like, like a really thoughtful one. You're trying to save your soul. Exactly. Because to her it was like a step towards like trying to like, give me an afterlife. Yeah. Sure. You know, so you have to realize that when they give you shit, unless they're just trying to be like a moral compass for you and give you a lot of shit. But if they're just trying to talk to you about it, that's just because in their mind, it's like, they're trying to help you. Can I say something contrarian to that statement that might actually put me in the camp that Tyler was getting attacked by last time? I feel like a lot of times people are very aggressive and outgoing with their religion because they lack confidence in it, that they lack conviction that they're threatened by people who don't believe in the same thing because it challenges their faith. I think that there are plenty of people who are super weak about that as well, but I've dealt with people who were confident in it. Yeah, me too. And where it wasn't like, if I didn't believe in it, it wasn't going to be the end of the world to them, but they wanted to talk to me about it sometimes because they cared. Like, yeah, I mean, one of my best friends, like, totally doesn't buy evolution, doesn't buy carbon dating, doesn't buy, like, you know what I mean, I mean, and to me, the bigger problems with my family are things like racism and homophobia. I mean, those are the things like I will really get pissed about. I feel like that guy who explodes at the end of big trouble in little China whenever I hear that shit. Yeah. I mean, that shit really pulls my blood. Steam come out of my ears, you know? Yeah, I mean, I just realized that, you know, there are easy ways to get along with people that have differences and, you know, it sounds like if you have a cool enough family, you could talk to them and be like, hey, you know, we don't share these same things, but, you know, let's talk about it. Yeah, and plus, like, my sister, she's like the type when I sent her an email today, I was like, yeah, because I'm going to Houston over the weekend, I was like, I got a layover in Phoenix and she's like, what's a layover? Well, so she's never been anywhere. She's like, did dinosaurs and humans exist together? Wow. The comic BC seems very accurate. The Flintstones. Right, well, Texas is a special case right now. Joke. Joke. Christ. Fucking Christ indeed. Sorry. I really liked Texas the last time I was there, but then again, I was at South by Southwest in Austin. Yeah. You know what? There are a lot of really nice people when we went to Texas. But in Tyler, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but there was a lot of latent racism everywhere we went. I will be the first to say if you go to Texas, if you're in a room, if you're white and you find yourself with in a room of like four other white folks, pull out a stopwatch. Really? Pull it off. Before the N word is dropped? Sure. For some racial epitaph. It's so Institute. I say latent, but it's not even like latent really. You want to hear a crazy story? This is the fucking truth. When don't I want to hear a crazy story? I used to have dreadlocks when I was in college. I've seen pictures. And I took swim classes and the class before my swim class was like the elderly people would go take courses and they would do aerobics in the pool. Fattled people. Yeah. And dude, the fucking professor who led the aerobics class one time, like I was doing my warm-up laps, she was white, she was asking me, "Why do you wear your hair like the N word do?" Wow. And words? Yeah. Wow. We want correct grammar with our epitaph, that is a true fucking story. Yeah. Damn. Texas. College. Hard. Fucking. Professor. Right. Well, I don't know if you would call them. I mean, she led... Sure, man. I knew another college professor that me and Paul met on our motorcycle trip where the guy was like, "I'm not racist, but now I'm here." What? Yeah, there was. The next letter is from David and he says, "Okay. Could Arthur elaborate more on how people with lesser gaming skills are fully capable of interviewing games?" Oh, fuck, that was pretty rude. I understand how they may have a more helpful view for those consumers who themselves are lacking in gaming skills, but I'm not sure that saying it does not affect their ability to review games as fair. Personally, I don't want to read a rock band three review from someone who can't play expert on an instrument or a ninja-guiding review where they can't get past the first level on normal difficulty. I understand that they can always crank down the settings to accommodate their skill, but as we've clearly seen over the last year, not all games are tuned to maximum fun on all difficulties. Again, having the views of lesser skilled games would be beneficial for those corresponding consumers and I therefore propose that a gaming skill test is set up so that along with the reviewers' name, you get an accurate rating of their abilities. First of all, an overwhelming majority of people playing rock band play on normal or easy. That's the thing. They're trying to make those games easier. Then what skill am I supposed to play games on for review, the game that I perceive the skill was made to be, or should I always just put on normal? Because that's what it says. It says normal. Right. Well, I think that certain games have handled that better. I think Gears of War is tacked for difficulty with smart. They had casual, hardcore and insane. Well, I think in general, it's always best when they have a little description that says, "I play a lot of first-position shooters." I play this. Actually, going back to the heavy range, heavy range difficulty settings in the beginning of the game. Right. I'm very familiar with the controller. Well, I remember when Halo 3 came out, we had a big ice argument about this because you're like, "Oh, well, I didn't think it was very good and I didn't think the AI was very smart." And then you're like, "Well, I played on normal." And I'm like, "How could you fucking do that? How could you fucking play Halo on normal?" At least heroic. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I totally blew me off for that comment. And then when we got it, I was playing on heroic and you're like, "Jesus Christ, these guys are doing things they never did." No, I told you the exact opposite. I never thought that the AI didn't think that there was that big of an AI jump even between the different skills. I still don't think that there is. I absolutely disagree. It says, again, this is something we disagree on. As far as games go, as far as Ninja Gaiden, nobody was going to review that game that didn't think they could handle that game. And that's a niche game. That is a completely different example than Rockman. But I play most games for review on normal, just in general. I play almost every game I play on normal. But let's say you've got somebody who just overall is generally a less skilled gamer than somebody else in your office. That person is going to review all of their games from that same skill level. So I mean, it's relative to the person reviewing non-relative to games at large. Exactly. And you should be able to-- I mean, those people, if they're writing about games, they still enjoy games. Yeah. Like if you enjoy games and you can write about it and you're good at picking them apart and figuring out how they work and why they do, then you don't have to be awesome at a game to review it. And if you're reading a website that has so grossly misassigned a game as to give someone who's into Farmville the next Ninja Gaiden to review, then stop reading that site. Right. Because they're not doing a good job managing your game. Unless you're super into Farmville and you want to know if you'd like Ninja Gaiden, in which case, man. That being said, I still think that in general, games should make it clear more what skill levels are. Because when you just say easy, normal, and hard, to me, it seems like normal is like the default, like what they designed the game around. And I actually wish that more games would do different things with the difficulty, you know? Like when-- If you played the game on hard, then there were more objectives that you had to complete to complete a level, which actually works. Or even if that's been true ever since like Perfect Dark. In Perfect Dark, you put it on like each level. You increased it. Exactly. There was like another thing you had to take care of to beat it. I mean, earlier this year, we watched someone at work who was awful at the game they were playing. It was awful. They just kept dying over and over again. And they still gave it a really good score. So I just-- You don't have to be awesome at games to review them. You don't even have to be good at games. You just have to like them and know about them and be able to write about them. Any asshole can be good at a game. Like there are lots of assholes and people who are wastes of human beings that are good at games and lots of people who are awesome that are good at games. Okay. I thought this was-- Because you happen to be in the latter category, Arthur. I didn't say that. I am really good at geometry wars. I am in the latter category. You are. One of the best gamers you know. I am one of the best gamers. I know. I'm perfectly confident saying that gaming is something-- is one of the few things in life I feel like I genuinely skill. There aren't very many things. And there aren't even that many games that I feel like I can beat everyone at, except company heroes. That's like the one game that I'm like generally with the exception of the fools that I play with. I can beat most people. The guys that I play with? No. How do you feel about a company of heroes doing the free to play thing here as well as in Asia? Why not, right? The game's already sold all. I'm a seller here. And if it gets-- and if it's like a maybe less intense version that gets like, yeah, I mean less intense like power system wise, they can get more people to play. Why not, right? The game came out three and a half years ago. I know, man. And I saw like a screenshot of it today. I mean, it's mainly for China anyways. I just think maybe they're like, I will put it out here in America and see what happens. Right. It's way less serious if I remember, right? It's actually-- they're saying that the full campaign-- the full campaign-- Oh, see, because the Chinese one when I heard about it was supposed-- maybe they're adapting the Chinese one to be very Chinese specific, because I know in the Chinese one, I had heard things like there were female units that did very specific things that were like very, you know, like playing on the fact that they're women, you know, so I don't know. Don. I'm just curious. Is a hardcore coper so much thought about that? I mean, I'll check it out. I'm generally a fan of everything relics done. I mean, I didn't even think the outfit was a bad game. It just wasn't great. Oh, shit. That's right. They did do the outfit. That's a bad game. Company heroes, man, still looks amazing today. It's true. Oh, Jesus. I guess I'll-- no, it made some of these relationship letters again, lately, or shitty, such as this one. Patrick says, "Where do you guys draw the line for defining cheating, kissing, texting, penetration?" I asked this because I'm very happy with my girlfriend of nearly two years, but I know it will not be a forever situation. And over the last few months, I've seen myself almost actively prepping for a replacement for some undetermined point in the future. I'm sure under that mindset, it's over. Well, as soon as he entered the mindset of this, we'll definitely-- and we've been together dear. This is not forever. He's already looking. Yeah, exactly. All right. You've hit this all by good on that relationship. And so he says, "Is this wrong? My girlfriend and I were starting to talk about marriage at one point, but that is really no longer discussed as we've settled into a comfortable place." I'm 28. And this is my first serious relationship. She's 22. And it seems like she's still figuring a lot of stuff out. And I know she's not the one. Dang, dude. I think you should-- You're wasting your time. Yeah. And not only are you wasting your time? You're wasting your time. But you're her time. Well, in her age, I think that she's got plenty of time to figure that shit out. She does. But at the same time, she's emotionally investing in a guy who knows that this is going to work out. Right. Right. Yeah. It's-- In an age where-- you know, they're getting to the age where things could get serious. You know, the honorable thing to do is to break up with her and go-- Especially when you're already prepping for someone else. Right. If you're asking if kissing is cheating, then-- Yes. Yes. Yes, it is. I mean, there's even things where, like, I've had this conversation before, that there are times that you can be-- obviously, like, infidelity isn't just a physical thing. There are times when you can be, like, emotionally, like-- there's, like, a line you cross with someone that you're like, "This was not just friendly." Totally. And I feel like, you know, I don't think flirting is cheating. No. But, like, I think, depending on the-- what you're texting, texting can absolutely be cheating. Right. Well, I think that it can be inappropriate. Inappropriate. Yeah. Yeah. It's-- My friend Paul put it well to me once, which is just that it's the intent of why you're doing what you're doing. Right. It's the intent of, like, trying to, like, get into another girl's pants. That's probably something you shouldn't have. Or to lay the groundwork for pants getting. Exactly. That seems like what Patrick is doing. Yeah. Yeah. Patrick, our advice is you need to break up. You don't-- man, she's probably way too in love with you, and you obviously could-- [LAUGHTER] You obviously are trying to-- You don't know that. Well, she might be in the same boat. Or, I mean, just, like, open the dating thing up, you know, like, we're going to date other-- Yeah, or at least, yeah, be honest with her if anything. I don't know. If you guys can't find time to have sex, like, if you find yourself sort of avoiding having sex with her, which sort of sounds like maybe that's where you are, then it's time to stop. Just-- stop. Just-- just stop. Stop. OK. OK. Next. Quick fire questions from Jared. Uh-oh. E.A. charging for multiplayer passes. Dick move or don't care? Dude, it seems like Dick move. Don't care. Dick move. I don't know. Again, this is another example of-- What is he talking-- like, what was his-- Project $10. OK. Like, when you buy a used game, it's like, now you got the $10. But the whole Madden-- some of the sports-- the stuff they're doing with the sports games. Why is that bad? Well, I don't know exactly what-- It doesn't matter if you buy new. If you buy it new, you get-- you get to play online by entering a code. But if you buy it used, you have to buy it. You can't play online. You have to pay $10 to play online. If you rent it, you can get a seven-day trial. Yeah. Don't care. I-- no. Again, like, this is what publishers have been pushed to. I think it's better. Like, E.A. has been hemorrhaging money for years. I think it's better than-- I think it's better than some of the alternatives-- Best selling game of 2010 would go. Oh, fuck. According to MPD numbers? What would you think? What would you think? It's a tough one because my mind immediately goes to Halo 3. Yeah, it's going to be a reach for Call of Duty. But I don't think that will be it. I'm going to go with-- Super Mario Galaxy 2. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Oh, that's right. Super Mario Galaxy 2. Ooh. Arthur's got the good Dark Horse one, which is that Wii games always sit on the top 10 days. Or it'll be the Wii Party. Ooh. Yeah, that could be it. Wii Party. Wii Party. I'm going with Wii Party. It's like the price is right. I don't know about Wii Party. You bet a dollar over or under. I don't know about Wii Party being good either. No, no, no. I'm not just about being good. I'm just-- I'm not sure it'll outsell Super Mario because Super Mario-- the fuck, dude. I kind of wonder if we're hitting Mario. I'm wondering if we're hitting Mario's saturation and Nintendo knows it. The only other thing I could see possibly going over Wii Party is if Nintendo were to announce that E3 this year, new Super Mario Brothers DS2 because of the first one sold so well. Yeah. So. Nintendo knows that they're in trouble. Right. They're selling more than everybody else. They're selling more than everybody else. New Wii. Awesome. But that's why they released the new color Wii because they're in trouble. Yeah. All right. This is an easy one for us all. PSN or Xbox Live. Xbox Live. Xbox Live. Yeah. Moover Natal. Natal, from me at this point. I just can't say they could both suck. Yeah. Moover has underwhelmed me more, but that's only because we've seen more of Moover. Right, exactly. Well, Malanu actually delivered on his grandiose promises for fable three. No. Even his promises. He's getting injured. Fable two is the closest he's ever gotten. Yeah. What is he promised for fable three? Right. Well, he's not a mole. Well, he's promised true co-op for one thing. Okay. Call me crazy. I think they might pull that off. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I can't remember. There was something else that he promised that was like that sounds awesome, but I wonder if this is a Malanuism. I haven't felt Malanu yet the show. The whole touching things, like grabbing stuff. I mean, that just seems like a mechanic. Fable three. Yeah. I mean, you know, he always has his lecture at these big things. That doesn't seem like a big thing. Yeah. That just seems like a fundamental, like, thing, like in a little big planet, like you design shit, like in Fable, you grab stuff probably with Natal, but not only because it's coming to PC, that pretty much sealed the deal on fable three not being in a tall game. Right. Totally. I haven't felt Malanu yet. No. In Fable 2, he definitely got the closest he's ever gotten to realizing all of his promises. That's another game that got reviewed with such fucking hype goggles. That game got way higher scores than it should have. I love that game. I liked it a lot, but that game did not deserve the 9's and the 9.5's that it received. It was broken as hell on a lot of spots. The co-op, yes. A single player. I don't think so. We get some emails that I feel like people don't think maybe I shouldn't send this. I want this to be read in a public place. Read it. I sent it. They know. Johnny writes in and he says, "You know, you guys have been conspicuously absent, like low with the dick jokes lately." Have low. What happened? Happily. And he says, "I know everybody has been busy, but just as James Hampton said in Teen Wolf, with great power comes greater responsibility." And he says, "So in order to help raise the quote, I'm offering you a little secret of my own. I've just highly revealed the source of his powers, so shall I. This is an original penis and testicle trick that I discovered nearly two years ago, and it performed countless times since." I highly doubt this is original. No one has done that. That's what he said. He said, "I realize that many people have probably done this, but I'm pretty proud of the name in particular." Step one. He bolded this. Step one. Bold penis and testicles with two separate hands. Step two. Lift testicles up. Tuck penis between legs. Step three. Squeeze legs together and look down at your penisless scrotum yelling, "The flood, the flood." That's so good. Now picture your balls exploding. Does he have a name for that? The flood. Is that the name for it? Yeah. He says, "I used the flood on my potluck roommate and his friends the first day we moved in, and we were living together again next year." Is the one that explodes when you shoot him? Yeah. That's the one it looks like in my head that I can't unsee every room. Very good. I've got a couple more. I'm just going to read this one because I don't know what it even says. It just says, "This is not a relationship question, and Arthur saved me $100." Nice. "Here in Australia, new game releases are typically between 80 and 100, so I normally buy my games online so I can save between 20 and 50 depending on where I get them." Right. "I was waiting for my copy of Red Dead to arrive in the mail, so I was in a local game shop listening to Rebel of him looking over off a protocol. I was contemplating buying it, and then Arthur started talking about it, and I put the game back in the shelf so I didn't walk away. So thank you." Damn. You really did help that game. Yeah, exactly. Could you imagine dropping 80 bucks on Alfred Protocol? You should be skeptical about it. Even if it's Australian. Oh, protocol when you look at the back of the box because it basically doesn't have any screenshots. Like, the two it has are like, like, way small thumbnails, like so tiny, you're just like, "What am I buying? Can you really tell?" I have that box. I haven't looked at the back of it yet, so I didn't even know that. Well, guys. I thought he was going to say that he didn't buy Red Dead because I got something on Twitter from someone that said, "I guess I'll avoid Red Dead after you didn't like it." And I was like, "I'm in a minority there." No, I think, you know, if there's a lot of, I mean, there are people who just aren't into that thing. You know what? It's not that big of a sea change. And if people have listened enough to you, Arthur, they know what kind of games you like and don't like. And if they think like, "Hey, I'm a lot like Arthur," then yeah. I'm sorry if that's the case. You know what I did here that's getting annoying is like certain people say, "I don't think I could trust your opinion because you play like a freak." What? Because I invert my controls because I switched the sticks sometimes. I have seriously not too bad. Oh, they've got it. Like, call me out. No, it's about... Are they jerking? No, it's about criticism. I'm just saying, would you take the opinion of a mutant? Would you? I mean, people read your reviews and you're practically a bearded lady. True. Did you ever, when you were a kid, did you ever do the thing where it didn't really matter if the controls were inverted? You would just play however the individual game was. I did that for the majority of my life. Like, I'd hop into a game and it didn't matter if the controls were inverted or not. I would just play it however it was but I can't do it anymore. Some of the things would be right to us, man. The thing that I like is on 360, it just inverts everything for me because that's attached to my profile. Nice. The next generation better have a way to switch the sticks. Goddamn it. That's what makes your show awesome. I can't even read these stuff. You have to now, you fucking laughed into the mic. No question, just a statement. For some reason, all the noises the dog was making in the letter section made me imagine Anthony masturbating and making those sounds. I also thought this earlier when there was a constant, low panting sound. I'm not sure why. I just imagine Anthony making strange noises and jerking the jerk in all the rest of you talk games. I'm not even going to read that guy's name for his own sake. I'd just like to say, you are not far off, sir. That actually is what happens every week. But people write in about that, man. What? Like, what do you want to tell me about that for? I don't even want to imagine myself masturbating. Goddamn. I'm picturing you naked doing the truffle shuffle making those noises. This is going to be the last letter. The flood! Because Matt can help point the sky in the right direction. I'm a big fan of your show, but I love to do more when co-op is around because for the obvious reason, a lot of the games you talk about was also in their show and the games I didn't play, I could get a taste for in co-op and understand your point a few more. So to continue to see work from Area 5, do I need to have an eGMI subscription, or can I find it elsewhere on the web? Preferable in a downloadable form on iTunes. Where are you pouring yourself this? Also, can you recommend any other video podcast with the same personality and charm as the work you do in the work Area 5 did with co-op? No. No. Really? And that's not like a... That's not a dig in anything else, there's just nothing like co-op out there now or the one up show. But where can they find Area 5 work if they want to find it? Well, we're trying to get more stuff up on our website, Area5.tv. And it is on iTunes, right? All the stuff's available on iTunes. No. No. Okay. Only co-op goes through iTunes because we can't afford the video hosting. Oh. That's what I mean. So co-op's on iTunes. You know, the co-op's on iTunes. You know, the co-op's on iTunes. It does video hosting. For fairly cheap. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Like, we can't even afford fairly cheap. But co-op is on iTunes, so he can't find all those episodes of co-op. You can find all the other episodes of co-op, yeah, and like, because Revision 3 still makes money off them even if we don't anymore. So they're going to keep them up. But to the extent of like regular video programming, yeah, you're going to have to get an eGMI subscription and to see the premium content. And they had a video player up that totally freaking sucks. In fact, I think it's the one that's still up now. But in like, pretty soon, I don't know how soon, but like probably within the next couple weeks is supposed to be putting up the new video player, which allows you to see everything in full glorious HD. And we actually have two episodes of this stuff that we're doing for, we just call it Area 5 at EGM. And there's two episodes that are up on EGM I right now. The first one is a Street Fighter, Super Street Fighter 4, partially just kind of being at a Street Fighter 4 event and partially kind of talking about it and talking about what it used to be like to play Street Fighter as a kid. That was from the event at GDC, right? It was, yeah. But we also did a little bit of like having people over to our house and like playing Street Fighter and talking about it and that kind of thing. And then the other thing that's on Area 5 at EGM right now that we're super proud of is we did a whole piece on Gamma 4. And Gamma is this event that they used to have up in Montreal, but this year they had it at GDC and they take a bunch of submissions from indie game developers and then they sort of curate them and they're based on a topic and this year it was one button games, games that could only be played with one button. And there was a bunch of really cool games at Gamma 4, like I think they choose six total and all six were awesome. But Gamma also, the whole thing is that it's a giant party. So I don't know, I think I might have talked about this already. You did a little bit, but either way you can see that shit. You can see that. GMI, yeah, and it's pretty good, but we're supposed to be doing more stuff for them in the future. Other than that, we're like working on a lot of contract work right now. So I don't know. I would really like for us to do, you know, if you have millions of dollars, talk to me. When can you guys talk about your contract work? As soon as it goes up, you know, we'll post blogs about it like we did this video for this company or whatever. But that's about it. I'm excited to see it. I think it'll be pretty good. It's actually a lot of fun to work on. Ryan and Cesar were just in Germany that might give you a clue who we were doing contract work for. If you have letters of your own that you want Matt or someone else to address, you can send them to letters@eat-sleep-game.com. Once again, letters@eat-sleep-game.com. You should also check out the Geek Box. It's a cool podcast about stupid nerdy shit and occasionally video games at Geekbox.net. And then remember, you can find area5content, area5.tv, or at EGM, which I think is what EGMnow.com. EGMnow.com. And beyond that, you can find us on Twitter. I'm Truff Money. Tyler's dirty tea. Arthur is a-e-g-i-s, and Matt is talking orange. Did you see that our Twitter feeds are on that IJ3 page? No, whatever. We're going to start putting nothing but 8 equal equal equal. The flood. We're going to start putting nothing but 8 equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal equal