Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 63 - 05/27/10
This week we're reunited in time for a borderline disaster of a show, as we try to discuss FEAR 3, Red Dead Redemption, Blur, Dead Space (the first) and several more, before being completely derailed by catastrophe on four legs. Adorable, adorable catastrophe. This week's music, in order of appearance: Slipknot - Wait and Bleed; Shivaree - I Close My Eyes
[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to episode 63 of Rebel FM. I am Anthony Gallegos with me is Tyler Barber. >> Hey everybody. >> Arthur Geeze. >> Hi. >> Mashed Andrew Day. >> Hi. >> And in the background, you'll likely hear a dog. You won't hear the cats this time because they're terrified of this dog, but you'll hear the dog because he's very noisy. >> Right, he's excited. He's excited to be here with you, the listener. >> It's his very first Internet podcast, right? I think he's a little nervous. >> So we're gonna talk about some games, so let's do that. >> Nice. >> Tyler's gonna kick it off. >> Okay, well, I've mostly been playing just Red Dead, which is well, all I've played last week. I probably not the best to kick this one off. >> Well, I got the impression that was mostly Matt too. Have you come to any new revelations about this game? >> Well, I actually played some multiplayer for the first time last time. >> I can speak on multiplayer, yeah, I would like to as well. >> Yeah, because I've played a whole bunch of that. >> Yeah, you played a lot more than I did, but I played for the first time last night with you and a couple other fools. And it was good times. >> That's who you wanna play with. >> Yeah, fools basically. >> Exactly, yeah, I was a little bit disappointed with the free roam. I was hoping there would be more to do. I mean, it has a lot of challenges where it's like kill these animals, kill these guys in this way, the sharpshooting challenges, the hunting challenges. They're reminiscent and sometimes direct, just direct rip offs or whatever you wanna call it from the single player game exactly the same. Sometimes they're a little bit different, but they also have a whole bunch of weapon challenges and stuff to fulfill and it's like, man, I don't think I would ever want to try to do all these because it's just not that fun to be in free roam trying to do all these challenges. It's like all I really wanna do is I'll do a challenge if I happen to come across an area where it's like, here's these animals that I need to kill and they're conveniently placed right here along my path towards where I'm really going, which are the bandit hideouts, cuz those are the ones that award you the giant pile of experience at the end, so it's like, I don't know. I was hoping that the free roam would have a lot more stuff like the single player has, make it a little bit more co-op feel and a little bit less like multiplayer empty world feel. >> Right. >> I mean, I guess that's that's that's holy fair, I think a lot of people are really holding out hoping like with that this co-op downloadable content that's supposed to come out and do, yeah, I mean because right now other than the gang hideouts and then the sort of the little challenges, the only thing you can do are like the other objective versus type games, which are like the lead in gold, which I don't find those very fun, I mean, it's mostly because when we get into a free roam and I might be posied up with like four or five dudes and we start a game, it'll just throw us into the game against each other a lot of times, the other people in the room won't game up as well. >> Right, right, it like it looks for something that had like, I think at one point there was six of us that were in a posse together and it just looked for a game with six open slots, not necessarily six open slots on the same team. >> Right, yeah. >> Yeah, and that was kind of a bummer. I was hoping that you know, you could, you could, I don't know, gather resources, maybe do something with them or that you could use the shop keeps in town or whatever, but the towns are basically just there so that you can kill people and get the law and you're asked to fulfill your outlaw challenges. >> Right, yeah. >> Otherwise, there's no real reason to have them there except as transport hubs. >> Yeah. >> And so like the, I, you know, I guess what I'm really, I guess what this game made me really want is a Western theme, a Western themed MMO that plays like Red Dead does. >> Right, yeah. >> It's like I want to run around in the, in the desert and, you know, hunt things and, you know, do whatever you do and go on missions and stuff. >> And have real, real shooting as opposed to like most MMOs where it's like Bush one. >> Yeah, exactly, yeah. >> Yeah, so, and I guess I kind of thought that the open world thing, the free run would be a little bit more MMO like and a little bit less just kind of a big open area with a few things to do that I can tell are going to kind of get boring after a while. I mean, the only impetus to, to level up is that you unlock weapons and you unlock characters and then, well, you unlock courses too and then you can take those into any of the other multiplayer modes. So if you're not leveling up, then, you know, you're not, you're going to be at a disadvantage. And of course you can level up just by playing any of the other modes as well. You get experience in any of the multiplayer modes, but I don't know. Like I wasn't finding the other multiplayer modes all that fun. And I think it's because the way that the shooting works in Red Dead, it's, you know, it's lock on and fire. It's kind of the, it, it works the same way that it did in GTA 4, like it does in Crackdown, you know, and I have, for me, that makes the shooting less fun than it otherwise would be. For me, I, I, I don't mind the lock on and, you know, I, I really like shooters a lot. It's my favorite, sort of my favorite genre, but, excuse me, you know, what, one thing, my friends and I, sort of the kick that we get out of the multiplayer, is just the, it's just like us sort of putting our own context on like what's going on, like, you know, like, funny, crazy things happen and we say, oh, wow, that was hilarious or something, you know. And, and, and, I mean, that, that's what it really is and, and, and I don't know, I mean, that's, I, I think that there's a lot of gamers, like they definitely want clear objectives, and then, and it's like, it's like you're saying the gang hideouts, they are fun, and even the gang hideouts, they have varied objectives, like there are ones where you, you know, set, set a charge at these different crates, there are some where you got to clear out these different buildings. And there are some where you clear out the buildings and then you have to defend from a counter to act like outside the walls, yeah. And so I think, I think against the AI, the lock on is fine because to me, to me, another reason why I feel like the lock on and, and the shooting in Red Dead works a lot is because, because of the Western type guns, you need a big payoff for, for a little output. In other words, you know, they're, they're all sort of semi-automatic weapons, single shots, there's a lot, a lot of cool rifles. So the gun shots have to be really good and, and, and the way they hit the players, it's like really impactful. I don't know, I, I feel like when I'm shooting things in Red Dead, like you're really shooting stuff as a point, as opposed to like just hitting hit boxes. Yeah. You know what I mean? No, I totally agree. Well, I mean, you can see it. You know, we talked about that last week about how you shoot somebody in the leg or the arm and the way that they spin around and the way their leg gets kicked out from underneath them. Yeah, exactly. But the problem is how long does that hold up? Yeah. And I don't think it's going to hold up long enough to keep me playing the multiplayer. Now maybe when they release, like you said, maybe the co-op stuff could be really awesome. I'm kind of bummed that you can't, you know how you can hold a and, and match, match your horse speed and kind of get a little bit sticky onto, onto horses in the single player game so that you're sort of auto following people. Right. You sort of have to, you don't really have to baby the stick, you just kind of have to gradually turn it. Yeah. And I was like, man, that's awesome because that's the exact way that horses behave in real life. You get one horse behind a lead horse and they'll just auto follow them and you just, you know, you sort of just have to barely pay attention to where they're going. Yep. And it seems I, and, but it just doesn't work that way in multiplayer and I feel like it should work that way in multiplayer, you know, like if you're posied up and you have one guy leading, then everybody should be able to hold the A button and just match his pace. Right. Or maybe even just be able to posse up and not have to worry about doing anything except aiming and shooting at that point. Yeah. Everyone else just kind of follows the leader. That would be really cool. Sorry, Arthur, you were saying, I just had to finish my thought. I mean, it seems like what you're saying they do in the single, they, they do that in a lot of single player. It seems like the way that they've tried to overcome some of the issues that they've had with the engine in the past because it's the same engine that they've used for a grant of Dotto and, and it has its roots in the grant that Dotto engine from last gen and bully, et cetera, et cetera, is that they sort of mitigate the effects of having to do certain things like instead of having to aim a lot of times, you just hit the left trigger and it goes to that guy that you need to shoot or instead of having to maintain tight control of your horse with somebody else in a mission, you just hold down A and it goes with him. And like, that's all fine and good, but I'm still not. I actually tried to play Red Dead for about three hours this week and I'm not feeling it at all for the exact same reasons that I haven't liked a grant of Dotto game pretty much ever. What are those reasons? The metaphor I used to describe it to Ryan Gettys at work was that I like the house and I like the neighborhood, but that house and that neighborhood are built on really poor mechanical foundations. The underpinnings of that engine, I don't feel work very well. Controlling a horse is still frustrating. They still get caught on geometry. Turning is still a pain in the ass. They're not super responsive. Aiming is still floaty and not particularly accurate, which is like I said, mitigated a lot by the fact that you hold down the left trigger and it zooms in and that certainly makes it more bearable to me. I would disagree about the aiming. Like I feel, yeah, it does have the lock on with the L trigger, but I feel like when I'm also just holding my gun up and doing it normal third person shooter style, it feels fine to me. I think that it is, if this were a shooter and you did that, then people would just rail on this game nonstop about how piss poor the controls are. Well, it's not Call of Duty, of course, but yeah. I don't even want it to be a Call of Duty, but I've already played a couple of other open world games this generation that managed to do shooting really well and that includes red faction. Like I never would have finished red faction if the controls had been so far. Yeah, they're shooting as super solid. I mean, who else does good shooting open world besides red faction though? I thought. Well, yeah. Well, other than volition. Yeah, other than volition. I thought Crackdown came up with a novel input, a novel way of handling it where it was never a problem. I mean, you just locked on. Yeah. Well, you locked on and then you would flick it a little bit to target a specific body part. That's exactly what I do with Red Dead is like I lock on and then I just barely flick up with the right stick. I mean, even in Crackdown didn't control particularly well in that regard. I can't. I don't know. I guess I can't think of a lot of other open world games. Yeah. I was going to say pretty much just volition. Yeah. Just cause. I didn't really like the shooting. The shooting and that's pretty bad too, yeah. The shooting in mercenaries too was okay. I felt it was better than it is in Grand Theft Auto. Obviously, there are a lot of other problems in that game. Yeah. Yeah. The shooting was better, but the open world was not. I mean, I get that people love, I think it's great that there's freedom to do so much in every rock star game. I just never find myself having very much fun doing any of it. That could just be a sort of fundamental difference in the way that I enjoy games. I tend to enjoy games that are more focused, that have the focus on doing one or two things mechanically very well and go from there. Like Ninja Gaiden is an example of a game that isn't as necessarily batshit over the top as some of its competitors like Devil May Cry or God of War, but the underlying mechanical foundation of Ninja Gaiden is more solid and more responsive than any other character action game that I've ever played with the possible exception of Dante's Inferno. And that game had awful level design, so that just shit all over it. And Bayonetta came the closest to it after that, but I don't have fun doing the things that other people have fun doing in Red Dead Revolver. I like the world is interesting, except for the fact that a fucking cougar came up and killed my horse. Man, the cougars dude, they're a threat. Yeah, the bears are even worse. Man. I appreciate that they put fast travel in there, I wish it was a little more intuitive to use. Yeah, the fast travel is kind of awkward, and you know, that's typical rock star style is that like their menus and things are always awkward. Yeah, there's always really weird menu awkwardness. Right, and I mean, like there's a lot that's awkward in the game from what I've played of it, but most people don't care because you can do so much stuff. I feel like the menus are awkward. I feel like, you know, how you were saying you like games that are focused, I would say that, you know, obviously it still doesn't appeal to you, but I would say that Red Dead is the most focused of any of rock star's open world games, except maybe bully. Yeah, I actually, yeah, I thought bully was a better game than Red Dead has been. And the time that I spent with it. And again, I haven't spent a ton of time with it. I did going in, people told me, I had two different trains of thought about the game, which is that, oh, it's totally different than Grand Theft Auto, man. You should still totally play it. It's so much more awesome. And then a couple of other people that are like the voice of reality saying, dude, there's no reason you're going to like this game if you didn't like Grand Theft Auto 4. Yeah. I definitely think it's a better game than Grand Theft Auto 4. Yeah. Sure. Like I don't ever picture myself going back and playing Grand Theft Auto 4 again. This game, I'm hoping at some point in my life I will have the three plus hours to set aside to play all the way through Red Dead again, because the missions in Red Dead and the characters in it, and I actually think the controls are even better than in Grand Theft Auto 4. Yeah. I found, I did find seeking cover on objects. It's really awkward sometimes. Yeah, sometimes that, yeah, that can really fun. There can be things that are clearly set up for you to take cover on, and like you'll set cover on them, but you'll be like kind of off to the side or whatever, or like you'll go on to the wrong side of the wall. Oh, yeah. You can take a lot of damage behind cover still. Yeah. Like I've, we've, or I have said the words encounter design on the podcast a lot, and I feel like the encounter designs that I've experienced thus far haven't been very good. It's not laid out like an action game, it's laid out like, oh, well, this is where these dudes would probably be standing in real life, right? That's good. You can ship it. Right. And I get that. I just, I don't have a lot of fun with it, and I, it's definitely a more nuanced game than Grand Theft Auto is. Yeah. I would say that that encounter design definitely changes up and gets better. Like in the beginning, it's kind of straightforward, but later on, they definitely have things that are positioned very deliberately to guide you through and like you'll have AI team members with you sometimes that are actually worth their salt and are a lot, it's a lot of fun to go charging into an area with one or two other people, sometimes six other people with you. Right. And you do feel like you're in the center of kind of this chaotic battle, and that there's like this action movie going on around you, it can be really enjoyable. And I, I mean, the other things, I told us my train of thought for a second, I appreciate although some people apparently bitched about this, that they sort of drawn a moral line in the sand as far as what he will or won't do character wise, like he won't cheat on his wife. Right. And after hearing the way that people reacted to Nico's fucking 180 shift and Grand Theft Auto 4, I think that that was a good call. I think so. Yeah, you know, I wonder if that's just more of a rock star San Diego thing coming off of bully. I wonder if it was, was it rock star San Diego that did bully? I thought so. I thought it was established last time it was, it was, it was the same team that did bully that does this. I could be wrong. I wasn't hairless, but, but, okay, well, um, you know, I, I put, I put up on my Twitter that I, I do feel like the missions are just much better. And I've, you know, I've said in the past that I feel like rock star is really learning how to make better missions. I mean, they're sort of, they sort of like take baby steps forward with each game I think that they make. And, you know, like I, I was real proselytizing on Liberty City stories and all those, but um, submit Sarkar actually sort of responded to one of my tweets and sort of probed me on the questions of like why I thought the missions were better and red dead. And I like that question because it's, did you come up with any conclusions? I mean, it's, it's tough because in, in, in a lot of ways, what I would come up with is you're doing the same exact things like, Oh man, yeah, I mean, you know, you're on a horse and buggy. Well, you know, the guy's driving the horses away and you're turning around clipping off the dudes that are chasing you down or, uh, basically it comes down to the fact that there's cowboys. Yeah. Right. And, and so yeah, submit, you know, he was saying, is that just a setting that makes it better? That makes me want to like it more. I mean, I think, especially after gun, like we're all like, okay, well now we need another fucking Western game. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to give it a chance and I might still play it a little bit more. So yeah, and that blows my mind too, because we played through gun and like this is, this is definitely a better game than gun. But it's gun, I think in some ways was more focused. Yeah. Gun was a better action game than this is an action game and gun is fast. Yeah. Just clips along. Yeah. Unless you don't want it to. But if you want gun to clip along super fast, gun clips along like a third person action game. Yeah. And I guess the other thing is like, I've just been really realizing that I, I, I spend a lot of time in open world games and that those games are really the type of games that I like, you know, like I stopped playing Dead Space. I just never came back. I stopped, I stopped playing Alan Wake when I got this. I'm afraid I might never go back. I'm less of a linear kind of guy, man. And I mean, I get that I just for me, it's like, like I don't like camping. I don't want to go hunting. I don't want to go hunting virtually, much less physically. Yeah. I would never want to go hunting in real life either. I'm not a, I'm not a hunting person. I'm a vegetarian. I feel bad. There's just, these things don't, these things don't interest me, like riding a horse doesn't interest me. Like the, the thing that interest me about, no, because riding a horse doesn't interest me. You know, I think you say that before you've actually ridden a horse. Riding a horse is actually a pretty incredible experience. Yes. Well, the same exact way and when Jody and I first started dating, her birthday president she wanted was to go ride horses. She wanted me to try it. And it is badass. Yeah. I actually, I just, I need to apologize to people listening that this is becoming a podcast of animal pandemonium. Yeah. There's like cats meowing because they're upset to be locked in a room and, and poor admiral running around like panting and all these are puppies. Got a lot of energy. Rubble of films is going to appear next week under the animal planet banner. I, I just, but yeah, I like, my, the early part of my childhood was in Idaho and some of my family members have a ranch up on the Rockies and I actually spent a lot of time on horses as a kid. It's kind of funny, like when I was really young, I actually got bucked off a horse and it broke my arm and I was like scared to ride horses after that. And like now these days where like I totally wouldn't be scared to ride horses anymore. And like I, that's not a part of my life that really happens. But I still remember the times as a kid when I loved being on horses and I remember what it was like and it is a pretty incredible experience. And what I really like in red dead is that the horses don't just feel like a car that sort of animates differently. You know, they, they feel somewhat like a, like an animal like though they, they try to shear away when you're getting close to a cliff, even like before you see it, you know, or they get upset when you're, when you get near deep water or anything like that. I think given the way that you have to kind of like constantly monitor their stamina, like when I like that a lot, I like that. I think that's, that's smart. And I think that's a good way to handle like to add a little bit of realism to the whole concept of. It makes it feel organic. Right. I just, that's for me, riding the horses in red dead, that's the only part that feels natural. Like, yeah, I, I mean, did you have to pound the A button and grant that out of four to run? I don't remember that. Yeah, you did. And then you ran it. Single player. And in single player. Yeah. And then you actually, if you pound the A button, then he would run out of stamina and have to catch his breath. And in this one, Marston, you can spread forever. Yeah. You can go on as long as you can. So there are, and, and there are so many like minute changes like that. Yeah. There are a lot of them. It's, but at the same time, they're the thing where you run, you want to smash your head against the wall because it's like, why are there, like, why are you doing these weird ass menus? Like, when you know, when you go to skin and animal, it's always just like, why, why do I get caught on rocks and all of a sudden have to back away and slowly turn my horse completely in the opposite direction, then move to the right and then turn in the opposite direction? We're going to have a cat beating the shit out of a dog on this, this week's podcast. But man, one, one thing I love about, I don't know if I said it last episode is the map. I love the way the map takes away and adds information as you zoom in and out. It's just stylized really nice. Yeah. I think so too. It's a nice little touch. I do wish that you could scroll around a little faster. I mean, I realize you can zoom out to move faster and then zoom in, but I feel like overall it just doesn't scroll fast enough. It's huge. But I mean, it's, it's, you know, once again, it's the, for some reason, rock stars, awkward menus and like, just things, and it feels a lot of times like when, you know, every time I hit the start button, there's a pause when I hit a submenu, there's a pause, you know? Yeah. It's, it's almost like it has to load a menu every time. It does. Have to load a menu. I mean, like it has to, it's, it's like it has to load from disk every time, which is really annoying. I installed it on my 360 and I actually find that it loads super fast. Are the menus any quicker? They don't seem like there are, there's a drag to me. I feel like I can queue up commands for the menu. Yeah. Like if you hit start and it's not quickly after, it'll go straight to the map. Did you install it? Oh. Yeah. You can totally queue it. I install everything on my 360. But anyway, somebody, somebody asked me on my Twitter, like, how do we fill about skinning the animals? I thought that might be fun. Yeah. Somebody asked me that too. Yeah. I think, well, maybe it was the same guy. Yeah. It was probably a game I could care less. Yeah. Exactly. It's kind of like if you can justify killing a human in a game, like what's the, you know? Oh, it was this guy, it was this guy, Trevor, the, uh, a bit of pack slats. Yeah. Good buddy. Yeah. He's like, as a fellow vegetarian, you know, like I feel like the skinning in the game would bother me. Like the animal killing and skinning. And I'm like, you don't have to kill animals. You don't have to. Yeah. I mean, unless that cougar is coming straight for your horse in education, you really want to kill that thing. But I mean, like, yeah, I don't feel anything when I do it because like it is a game and it's also like, it's appropriate to the time period, you know, and like these, these were human beings that didn't really think anything of killing and skinning animals. You know, it was just. And it was pretty necessary. Yeah. A lot of times it was necessary. You know, a lot of times it was just like, you know, I'm going to go out and kill some wolves. And there was just so many of them. Yeah. And it looks so funny. I think the only thing that bothers me a little bit about the skinning is that you just leave the skin carcass behind. Right. That makes me, that makes the, it does seem like like elk meat, like you picked up one elk meat or whatever. Right. But there's still like the skin carcass just laying in the middle of the day. And the carcass. Has physics. Yeah. You can still bumble around. I'm not saying that it's a bad game. I'm not saying it's overrated. I'm just saying it doesn't appeal to you. It is what it is. And at this point, I just need to accept the fact that Rockstar has a design philosophy that focuses on things that are of a lower importance to me than the things that really stick out to me, that they seem to invest less in. Well, what bums me out is that like, that you're going to miss out on, I think the best story Rockstar has ever done. Man, the story is good. That includes bully. It just, it really is that incredible. That's what I hear. I do, I have sort of come to the point where I'm like, okay, so the houses idea of social commentary is A, to say that everyone is racist and B, that religion is stupid. See, I don't know if this is a, man, that game just fucks you in the eye socket with racist white people and classist white people and God in Jesus. In the opening, because where the game sets, but you know, when you start moving to the different lands, you start dealing with different people, like in Mexico, you don't get any of that. Right. Yeah, the whole, the whole like. It's more their, their sort of assessment of America. Right. Like right in the beginning, like those, those people that you see on the train that you see in that opening sequences that feel like, I felt the same thing too, like, oh, they're setting up the whole, the whole thing, the whole mood for the rest of the game. And those people that are on that train are taking care of kind of in the first act of the game. And then it just totally, it's not that way for the rest of the game. And then the, and having beat it, I finally beat the game. And my God, the way that that game ends is it's so appropriate and so extraordinary at the same time. Like they, I don't think they could have handled it any better. It's probably one of my favorite endings to a game ever. You've been pretty lucky, I think in the last seven or eight months to have a lot of really good games that have a lot of really good endings. Yeah. Yeah, it's priced. Yeah. I mean, and I was thinking about that today too, when I was like, all right, I finally beat this game. And I love this ending. And I was thinking, man, do we, I, it's so easy to go back and remember throughout most of my gaming history, how every single game was a letdown when you would beat it. Right. But I, I can't remember the last time there was a game that I was super excited for that and disappointed me with the ending, like Mass Effect 2's ending is fucking unbelievable. Yeah. Assassin's Creed's 2's ending is good as long as you invested time in those characters. Right. Alen Wake's ending disappointed me a little bit. I wasn't disappointed with Alan Wake's ending. I'm still not sure I get all of Alan Wake's. Yeah, exactly. That's part of the reason that I'm disappointed. But I don't want something that I have to sit there and think about for a long time. That's so consistent with the kind of story that that is with its supposed influences that I'm like, I'll, I'll chew this over a little bit and if, and I could end up being more disappointed in a, in a week that is a, that's puppy growl folks. Like Bioshock 2's ending I was very ambivalent about, but I wasn't, I didn't really enjoy that game. It wasn't bad. It wasn't a bad ending. No, it was probably better than the first ones. Yeah. I was like God of War 3 ending. You know what? My understanding of the God of War 3 ending is, is that it was fine. I haven't beaten that game and I haven't gone back to it since I quit a couple months ago. Yeah. I thought the, I thought the ending of God of War was fine. Bad company too. Ends pretty cool. Yeah. I, I thought the whole campaign was good. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's weird though, cause I, there was so many games in the past where it was almost like a game would just end or it would end with a boss battle and then it would just go into credits or whatever and no epilogue or nothing and like it's a, I think it really has been there are all, of course there are notable accessions, exceptions throughout all of gaining history, but it seems that like the standard has really become this generation and towards the end of the last generation to really focus on a quality climactic sequence and a, and a satisfying ending. You think this generation that is focused on that? I feel like, I feel like it's like, well, I, I feel like that has really come into its own, like that whole idea that like our game really has to end well, people have to feel that they've, you know, accomplished something or gotten something out of it rather than the game just plain ending. I feel like we've hit the point in this generation where developers think that they can focus on narrative satisfaction and so in addition to solid gameplay fundamentals like they're like, that's essentially what I'm saying. Right. Okay. Yeah. All right. Then we're together, Matt. Yes. I love you. Let's gather dialogue. Speaking of endings. Yeah. Yeah. Ty, where did you have anything else? No. It's funny that you mentioned Dead Space because I've actually been playing Dead Space again. Oh, yeah. That game is so good. You're playing on hard though, right? I am playing on hard. Man, I don't know if I could do that game on hard. That game on hard stresses me the fuck out. See, that's just it is like that game on normal stresses me out. Like, I, I, I jumped out of my seat several times. Nothing even has to be happening in Dead Space on hard for me to be stressed out. All of a sudden, the audio will just kick in and surround me with all this, all these fucked up noises and the implication that something is there. And I was like, I just put down the controller and walk away for a little bit because I need a break. Yeah. And I had to do that. And then during fights, like Anthony came in last night while I was in a fight and the whole time I was running out and saying, I'm going to fucking die. They're going to fucking kill me. I'm going to fucking die. It was very, very close. I'm hard with the level two suit, which is what you had at the time. You could only take like two hits from anything. And that's the kind of game where they don't do you the service of knocking you down to red before the last it kills you because I've totally had like a bar and a half of health and one of the black slimy ones comes up and just cuts me in half. Oh. And the deaths in that game are so brutal. Right. Right. And I'm not, I'm not jokingly saying you cut me in half. Like my body goes into two or three pieces. Right. And also there's just things I never saw last time around that I'm seeing this time like Necromorphs playing possum after I shoot them. Not before. Wow. Like I will take them down to the ground and they will stop moving and I will walk by and they will jump back up at me. Holy crap. I didn't know that happened. Yeah. I didn't either. Like Necromorphs that you walk up on on a hallway, they jump up. That's normal. Like if you see a Necromorph and you haven't killed it, you should shoot that fucking thing. Right. But I'd never saw them play possum like that after I'd engaged them. That's awesome if that's something that they put in into the AI code with the card. I asked on Twitter and some people acted like they saw that all the time. I felt like that sounds familiar to me and I'd barely played the game at all. I think maybe it just happens because they take so much more damage. Yeah, you're not killing it this week on normal. Yeah. Ammo management is much more important. Like panic firing is trouble. There is something going on behind me and I'm not sure what. The puppies tossing around his bed in his cage. That dog is determined to derail our show. But it's been keeping himself occupied. It's been so long since I played that game. I finished it when it came out and I haven't played it since. Yeah, me either. I mean, since then I have a new TV and a new sound system and speakers and it's like Jesus Christ. This game A is beautiful and B has the most effective use of sound in a horror type game. Totally. Dude. Ever. Yeah. It's period. That's another game, man. I talked about the level design and Killzone 2 last up. Yeah. I've seen recall you mentioning something about that and everything about the design in Dead Space just feels so fucking deliberate. Yeah. It's so, so rich. I mean, I say I played Dead Space. I probably spent six hours of Dead Space and I probably did one hour of mission. I probably just looked at the walls the whole time. Right. And I went to, in GDC of 2009, they had a design presentation on Dead Space and Killzone as well. And one of the things they said is that they did a lot of homework as to how they wanted the game to look and the kind of senses they wanted to evoke and the stuff that they could do with their engine because it uses a similar kind of engine to uncharted in Killzone, which is where it doesn't necessarily render skin very well and it can't do hair very well, but it can have a fuck ton of lights and shadows, which is what Dead Space does. Okay. And a lot of other horror games will sort of ape horror movie conventions and not really understand why. They'll just sort of take these things that they've seen movies and throw them in the game and hope that it sticks, that it hope that it reminds people of that. But whenever I see that stuff in Dead Space, it seems so purposeful, like you go into a room and the lights are blinking and flashing and strobing and you're like, oh, this reminds me of Alien or Aliens and then you're like, well, this works this way exactly because there's so many lights going off that it distracts you and you're not sure if you see what's moving or not. And the sound effects are the same way. And so playing that game, it's very immersive in that respect because everything feels aimed at evoking a particular response, which is to make me shit my pants. And it works too. It does. You have to buy new pants, but it's kind of nice to go back to it. When you play on Hard, do they let you do like new game plus or do you have to start a play? No, that's only on the same difficulty. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Whew. Man, talk about stressful. Seriously. I don't think I can do it. Seriously. It's really, I've been doing it for about a week and a half and I managed to play about four and a half hours. Right. It sounds about right. And that, I mean, Dead Space is a pretty long game as far as actually games go. It's like 16 hours. Yeah. It's a good like hour and 10 minutes or so per chapter. Yeah. Is he behind the gate now? Yeah. Oh, okay. You don't have to whisper. He's going to bark in a minute. I'm trying to stymie my anger at the moment. At him or me? No. At Arthur. At him. Okay. He's a puppy. It's cool. He's just excited. There's so many people here right now. Well, somebody pissed on our bath rug and our bathroom. Oh. It could have been one of the cats too because they're terrified to go to the bathroom. So anyways, it might have been me because I did have to go really fast. Yeah. I don't know when he's had the chance either. So anyways, I just have to listen to the headphones see how much he's coming through. Oh, man. He cuts through that perfectly. So anyways, you guys were talking about Dead Space. It's like you guys are in the room with us. Yeah, just that Dead Space is intense and awesome and still intense and awesome. Yeah. Man, I want to play the second one so bad, especially after seeing like that quick preview. What would hope that you would be able to see or play Dead Space too a little sooner than the rest of us met? Doesn't work like that. Jay Fresh is the community manager. He's not the PR manager. He's people who know people. Yes. That's true. Well, I'm sure he's responsible for getting us one of the appointments. Lots to see that preview that everybody talked about. Yeah. I haven't seen anything of Dead Space too in person and I feel like there's a gaping hole in my heart. Yep. What's the release window for that? Is that it? Next year. 2011. Okay. Oh, you know, in the very open first quarter of 2011, you know, with fucking everything else that's coming up and new Christmas. We have not seen the last of games from this year coming out in the beginning of 2011, I assure you. No, not at all. What else have I played that played some Red Dead? I don't know how much more Red Dead I'm going to play. Yeah. I played Alpha Protocol. Also do not know how much more Alpha Protocol I'm going to play. Is that good, huh? We can talk about that. Yeah. The embargo is tomorrow. That game looks bad. You cut me off. I was going to make my poop from a butt comparison. What is it? Alpha Protocol is the spy RPG from Citian. Citian are guys who made Fallout Fallout 2 and then they formed a team and have done a number of high profile follow-ups to popular RPG games that have almost universally been broken and incomplete. Yeah. The most notorious of which is co-tour 2. Yes. Which people are still trying to fix. I know. It's funny. There's always people coming out. There were mods right away. Here's all the hidden content that they meant to put in the game and then- Six years later, still waiting for that game to be finished. Yeah. Kind of nuts. I don't know. I guess it's good that most people won't link the fact that they're making New Vegas because if I was the people that were releasing New Vegas Bethesda, I'd be a little worried. Like, people are going to see this and think that they suck, but most people would just assume they won't even think, "Oh, they just think it's the new Fallout." I would hope that they have a little more pride in working on Fallout considering they're the ones that created it in the first fucking place. But Alpha Protocol is an original IP and it is bad. It is not good. Oh. It has some really bad animation. Yeah, the animation feels like it's- it feels like it's from early PS2 era. I mean, are there any redeeming qualities? I mean, it's scary. There are. And that's what makes it so weird. It's got dialogue trees and stuff. The way the dialogue trees is interesting. You don't select dialogue options. You select a posture to have your guy assume as he's holding these conversations and people will react positively or negatively to you depending on how you approach them. That's kind of cool. Cool mechanics for the lock picking is really cool. The lock picking on console is cool on PC. I guess it's super easy. Yeah, I can believe that. Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, I heard another thing that they try to do with dialogue is sometimes they'll give you a certain amount of time to respond. Every time. Oh, that's all. For every conversation. They only have a certain amount of time to pick a type of response. And then it is a choose for you. Yes. Got you. Well, I mean, you have a default posture, right? Right. And then when you add on stuff like, you know, you're going to level up your guns or your ability upgrades to your guns and you buy new guns and it's very much like an RPG except with modern day shit. The combat is terrible, like worse than Mass Effect by orders of magnitude. Wow. And you didn't put it to the end of that. No. You can't win. Really, you can't. There's no winning. Did you put him in the bathroom? He tried locking him in the door. Yeah. There's too much energy in that dog to be contained by a bathroom. I know. He's the island. That's ain't the geek box. I wanted Alpha protocol to be awesome because a city does have a pedigree and you know what? There were some awesome stuff in Cotortu. There was. Cotortu, people universally agree and well, not universally because I hate me. Most people agree. I think. Most people agree. Blanket statement. Blanket statement. Exactly. Right. Cotortu started out so strong and had so much potential and just fell apart. It ends in a car accident essentially. Yeah. Exactly. And it because like, I remember thinking like I got Cotortu and everybody was saying like, oh, it falls apart. It's so awful. I can't believe they screwed it up so bad. And I'm playing Cotortu and I'm like, man, this is better than Cotortu or one. Seriously. It's so awesome. Six fucking crystals in my lightsaber. Are you serious? Yeah. Man, I can like make my crew members jett eyes. I can like influence them to the lighter, the dark side. How awesome is all this? And then just no, actually, none of that actually really happens. It was such a big bummer. It's going to be a fun two weeks of podcasts. Somehow you'll have to train, add and roll that podcast time is quiet time. So anyway, I mean, you level up and you gain levels and you add to skills. It's just so far, none of it seems to matter very much. Yeah. That's too bad. But there's enough little stuff in there that you're like, okay, well, maybe I'll come back to this and play a little bit of it. Right. And then you'll just spend the whole time thinking, oh, God, this is awful and stop. And then a day or two later, you might say, okay, well, maybe I could, maybe I can do this for a little bit. Right. And then you want to like it. I really want to like alpha protocol. Yeah. I really do. And I can't because it is not good. I'm playing the PS3 version, which is the worst looking version of the three. So although I saw the 360 version today and it's like, it don't look good. I don't know. Like the character models are universally horrendous. The animation is terrible. The environments look bad. The collision detection looks bad. On the console versions, the brightness is so fucked up that you may have to turn it all the way up in order to see where you need to go. Wow, really? The shooting is bad. The controls are shit. Mm-hmm. Hey. Yeah. There's a laundry list of problems and Jesus Christ. Just pet him. Just pet him. It doesn't help. Oh my God. The more noise you make, the more riled up he gets. Today, I was listening about to about Tasmanian devils and how we get tumors on their face. This is going to be a train wreck of a podcast. We are definitely not going to finish by 10. Get this right. We need some children's cough syrup. Just put them in the bowl and let them lick up. So yeah, I do. I really want to like alpha protocol. I wanted alpha protocol to be good, but Sega has been in damage control mode on this game for at least a year, and now it is abundantly apparent why. Right. I think it's out in Europe tomorrow. I hope this goes up before a bunch of people in Europe buy it. That's just, it's such a bummer when stuff like that happens because you know, I feel bad for the people that worked on the game. I feel bad for, you know, the publisher. I feel bad for like, I don't know, anybody that has anything to do with the game. I mean, imagine being like the PR marketing people on that game and thinking like, man, we have to try to make our money back on this, what's obviously going to be a bombshell of a game. Right. Well, this game is so bad that it makes me worried about Fallout New Vegas. It's flat out. Well, do they have different teams working on the two games? I doubt it. I don't think obsidian is that big. And I mean, like everyone has talked about how amazingly Fallout New Vegas is demoed and how impressive it looks and how together it looks. Right. But people said the same shit about KOTOR 2. Yeah. Yeah. So now I am not, I'm not, I'm no longer sold on New Vegas until I start seeing reviews. Right. Until we get it in the office and I can see that game. Right. And talk to people who are playing it. The people in the office who have played it, they said it was good. Again, though, KOTOR 2 demoed awesomely. Mm hmm. But KOTOR 2 ended up still being game people really liked, even with the bugs. I think a lot of people, it wasn't just bugs in KOTOR 2, like the ending was broken. And there were like pieces of the story that just were not there. They were cut wholesale and no explanation. Oh, well yeah. It had the most loose ends of probably any RPG I've ever played in my life. I mean, there was so many story lines, it just like stopped. Right. I was like, what the hell happened to all of these people's stories? And it's like, oh, that's right, half the game isn't in. Yeah. Yep. So last week I went to Judges Week, I can't talk about very much of it yet. Yeah. Talk about Namco, which is unfortunate because it was Namco. I saw Enslaved and I don't really have anything to say about it because if you've seen a trailer or a video of that game playing, you know about as much as I do about that game. I did see the trailer. I wasn't, I have no idea what to think about it. I want it to be good. The visual design is interesting. I think it's an interesting take on a post-apocalyptic world, or it's like a post-apocalyptic world where things are moving on and humanity is being left behind. I played Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 and that game is gorgeous and kind of stupid. So fighting games has always been like pretty decent as at least as far as being like really simple, easy to learn fighters. And I think it's actually more simple than the Naruto games you played on 360. So they're more like, so they're kind of like just brawlers really? It's a lot like Power Stone without the Power Stones. Well, there's still one-on-one fighting games, right? They are, but you have like a co-op partner that you can bring in to help you. Okay. And there's a lot of environmental stuff going on. I think there's an adventure mode, but they weren't talking about any of it. Right, of course. I played Clash of the Titans, which is, stop me if you've heard this one, an action game in third person where you have multiple weapons that you can use against enemies by mixing up heavy and light attacks. Did it actually say attack? Yeah. I've never played a game I know, right? It's a novel idea. That's extraordinary. The nicest thing I could say about it is that it's competent and it is. It's not the worst third-person action game I played. It's not the worst license title I've played. It seems like it's missed the boat a little bit. Maybe it'll make the raft because that game is coming out or movie is coming out on DVD in July. Damn. Oddly enough, a listener on Twitter suggested for me to check out this one PC game and it was also called Clash of the Titans. But it's just like a little indie game and it's almost like a cross between an RTS game and a tower defense and it's got this really, really rad art style, like kind of eight-bit like style and it's, I don't know, I just saw the trailer, I haven't played the game yet. Is it PC or? Yeah, I think it was like PC Mac and Linux but yeah, I'm gonna download the demo and check it out. Yeah, for real. I just thought it was funny you brought it up. I also saw fear three. Nice. Yeah, I cannot talk about- Is that still being done by Monolith? No, it is being done by Day One Studios. Day One Studios did Megasalt. Oh, the Xbox One? Megasalt 2, I believe, yes, the Xbox One's. Those weren't bad. No, they weren't. I never played them. I cannot tell you whether the game plays well or not. It sure looks like a fear game. Obviously, the big new thing is co-op and that which is a sort of asymmetric co-op in which each person can do different things. One person plays is the point man who still doesn't have a name but has a rather amazing beard. And they added something called active cover which is where you're on one side of cover and if you're getting flanked you just tap the A button or whatever and you flip over to the other side and immediately are pointing in the other direction. Well, that's awesome. Which is kind of cool. It's something that I felt cover systems needed for a while. Right, and you're not the only one I've heard say that. It is probably a pretty good idea. We'll see how it pans out when the game is playable. It's like a first person cover system though. Yes. Well, because that was the whole thing about fears that the enemy AI would always try to flank you and they had level design specifically made it seem as though the AI was awesome because they would just have padding to flank you. They looked much more aggressive this time, the AI. Cool. It was already aggressive in the fear games. That was kind of their hallmark. Second player plays as the ghost of Paxton Fettle. Who was the bad guy from the first game? Right. He's the guy you kill in the first game. Who is your brother in the first game? Right. That character's name alone is reason enough not to care. I can't believe you're playing as a ghost too. It's like a ghost. Seriously. What the fuck? How does it get hurt? By bullets. You take damage. You do. He's a ghost. Right. Well, so they released DLC for fear two last year and that actually added a section of game completely separate from the single player campaign that details the rebirth of Paxton Fettle. But I can't tell if that contradicts the Paxton Fettle that's in fear three. They have done so many things with so many other people and so many studios working on these games, but I don't even know if they know what the fuck is going on. Project Origin. Yeah. Project Origin. Perseus Mandate. Extraction point. Oh, I forgot about all this. Wow. That's right. Motherfuckers. I've read all about it. I have a preview going up tomorrow. Well, when this will be live, you'll hear this and the preview will be up, which is why I can talk about it. Yeah. But you take over people as Paxton Fettle. You possess people. Yield possession mechanic. Yeah. When you weave a body, they explode. Cool. You can throw people up in the air and the point man can kill them. It just could be interesting because they both have ulterior motives like the point man is trying to stop Alma from giving birth and I think Paxton is trying to rejoin her and take his place next to her. It just seems like who still cares about this franchise, right? I think someone does, but I think this is Warner Brothers' big push for fear. I just don't get it. It's not like it's... The shooting seems interesting. Like the levels and stuff. The combat has always been good in favor. The shooting has always been pretty good. As a shooter, it is fun. They talked about stressing the importance of outdoor environments, but the developers behind the second one stressed that same thing. And it really just ended up being outdoor environments in a broken down city where it was linked corridors anyway. Right. The corridors are bigger this time. Yeah, but it was outdoor in a city that was burnt out, so it was still corridors. There's no ceiling. Yeah. There's sort of semi-randomized spawns for paranormal enemies in some places. Was it scary? How about that? Because the first one was scary. The second one was not. The first one was scary. No, it seems so far to rely on a lot of combat. The first one was scary in the same way that Doom 3 was scary. Like now, I don't think it would be scary. But Doom 3 was scary at the time because other games weren't doing that. You didn't expect that one moment to be a first-generation shooter. They weren't doing it effectively. They were so dark. That was the other thing. Games hadn't been that dark before. So, I don't know. It's hard for me to get a beat on how scary it is. There are parts where that game looks really, really sketchy. Really? It looks like it's running in sub-HD resolutions. It looks like certain elements look like they're from a playstation game. Wow. So, I am concerned about parts of that game, but it could be cool. Right. I just really don't know you. Well, and who knows what's going to be improved and tweaked and finished by the time it comes out? As per the usual. So what you're saying, Arthur, is there isn't much to fear about fear? With the Elite 3 for the E. It could be a bloody good time. Dude, you're right. Yeah, it's fear. F3 AR. Yeah. I, you know what? In my preview, I just say fear 3. Yeah. Fuck that noise. I capitalize fear. That's all they get out of me. The first encounter in Salt Recon. Yeah, it stood for something quote unquote. Right. Who cares? Yeah. That's pretty much it. Like, I can't even remember if there's anything else I can talk about right now. In the coming weeks, I will talk about more. Yeah. How was E3 Judges Week? Was it fun? It was in LA. It was LA. I'm sort of ambivalent about LA. Yeah. The weather. I mean, like, was it, I mean, the process or anything? Was it enjoyable? Was it annoying? Yeah. I mean, if you can't talk about it. No, we didn't see any. There were no professionals that I saw. Professional ladies tonight. It's always nice to, like, I got to see Sterling and Patrick and Skip for G4 quite a bit. That's always good. Yeah. Got to meet some people from IGN LA. This is the part where one of our coworkers would go cool story, bro. Is that like an inside joke to say? I don't know. Apparently, that must come from some video clip I've never seen online. It sounds like, so is that, like, shut up? This is boring. Let's move on. I guess. People do it all the time at work. You don't actually. I don't actually know where it comes from. I mean, there's not a lot that I can say about it. Like, I can't say, oh, it was awesome or awesome. Well, I don't know. I was just curious about it because, you know, sometimes those processes are kind of belabored. It was a lot of shit. Yeah. It was like 65 games. Wow. Did they have open bar? Yes. Definitely. The entire time. For everything. Dude, so just -- you can read it now. Arthur was completely wasted 24/7. Well, I'm not. We didn't know Arthur doesn't read, but -- There was not a moment that went by that I was not completely destroyed on brownies. But just special brownies. No, that's regular brownies, man. That shit goes right to my head. Oh, yeah. I always do cater those things well, though. Sometimes. Man, did we already talk about it? The Activision event had fucking amazing fried macaroni and cheese. You said, "Oh, no, it would have changed your life." It's impossible. Cool story, bro. I love it. That's a cool story. That was a dumb trend to start. Did everyone else already talk about their games that they played while I was on point? That was anything else other than Red Dead? I just wanted to talk about a couple Xbox indie games that I played. There was one called -- I think I talked about it before, actually. It's called Groove. It's fun. And it's like it's not the geometry wars. Only it's time to music. Yeah, we've pimped that on the show quite a few times. Okay, yeah. That one's pretty good. And then I played -- But it's another pimp, but I mean -- And there's this one Japanese game and I'm totally going to get it wrong. It's like Mamuto or Mumato or Mumoto or something like that. And it's one of those combinations of letters and vowels. And the problem is, is that you're going to have a really hard time finding it if you want to play it because it's in -- the title is in Japanese. So if you go to the Xbox Indies, the only way to find it in their freaking arcane annoying menu is to go to all listings and scroll all the way down to the bottom where the Japanese titles are. And then you have to look for the one with the right cover art. And the right cover art has like these four dudes like kind of around a -- like coming at you, they're kind of around a princess. And it's based off the concept of the game. So the game is -- it's full on 8-bit. It's 8-bit color, 8-bit music, and it has a really awesome 8-bit soundtrack. And it's single screen, and in the middle of the screen is a princess. And then she's surrounded sometimes by like pits or mountains or whatever, but there's like these wooden -- like these wooden forts, like the -- like wooden walls or whatever. And then monsters are just coming in and trying to break through these walls and trying to get at the princess. And you -- you're running around like attacking the monsters, you know. It's kind of like overhead Zelda style, you know? And you can be one of I think five or six different classes. And each class has its own different way that it attacks its own weapon and has its own different special power. And the killer thing is that like at the end of each stage, you collect hearts. And the more -- the higher combos you get when you're attacking enemies, the more hearts you get. And at the end of the stage, you spend your hearts on upgrades. So you can upgrade your weapon or your magic or, you know, your speed, and then I forget what the fourth one is. But you upgrade and the stages get harder and at the end of every stage is a boss and it's always different. There's always different enemies. And the game can actually be over pretty quick if you're able to just bust straight through it. And -- but the cool thing is is that you can play four-player, it's single-screen four-player. And man, we were just having a freaking blast with that game. It's super, super good, like really fast-paced. How much is it? Is it like something stupid? Like $3 as well? Yeah. Yeah, it's super cheap. Any spacebox it was, but yeah, it's really cheap. So yeah, I mean, if people get a chance to look up the proper name for that game and go play it, I highly recommend it. If someone figures it out, please feel free to put it in the comments for the show. Yes. Yes. I'm sorry, I should have looked it up before I came on the air. Good one. I know. It's either pomuto, mamuto, mamato, mamoto, tomato, potato, grape. But yeah, that's about it, other than redid. Well, man, I haven't played anything. I played voodoo dice. And that was it. Yes, you did. And I'll just talk about voodoo dice long enough to tell you, "Don't buy it." Would you care to tell everyone what the strap for your review? Someone in the office was like walked by and was like, "More like doo-doo dice." So that's what I said. So it's published by Ubisoft. It's a... Uh-oh, you're never going to be allowed in their building. It's basically a game where you play as a die and you roll around as this little die. You are a die. You're not dropping dice, you are this die. And so you go through a series of worlds that I guess are supposed to be voodoo inspired in the sense that they're like tiki masks and torches and a tropical theme. And sort of like the enchanted tiki house at Disneyland. Exactly. And so somehow it's supposed to be voodoo. And there are also like curses you occasionally pick up. So you roll this dice around and it's like a grid. Everything's a grid. And you have to think like there might be a block in your way that has like a four on top and to get it to dissolve. You have to roll your dice in such a way that the four is on top. And so... It sounds like kind of a cool puzzle. It could be a clever... Yeah. And so they'll introduce like a new mechanic where there'll be like a block that you can go by and if you match your number with it, you'll magnetize to it and then you have to roll together. There are cool ideas like that. But for every level they have, it's like a cool idea. There are like five others that are in there that are just like to make the game longer and they're just boring. And there's so many levels too where if you screw up like one thing like you push a stone the wrong way once as it restart the whole level. Oh god. And it's just... Yeah. There's like, there's so many ways that it's just like you're not going back. And the multiplayer is really not that cool either. So you would not recommend this game? No, I gave it a five out of ten. Mission on the IGN scale is like a zero. Right. I'm just kidding. This is a downloadable game? It is an Xbox Live game and the main reason for me, like if it was like a cheap game like if this was an indie game or something, it'd be cool. But this is like, this is a ten dollar game. Yeah. It is 800 points. Yeah. You know? That's what the big boys. Yeah. It's like if you're going to go spend ten dollars, man. I don't know. I was in ten dollars sort of the median now. Like 15 is the new ten. Yeah. That's the thing though is like if you could, I could tell you like 20 other Xbox Live games to spend ten dollars on before this one though. Right. Right. And even if you did end up shelling out ten bucks for this, like I did spend ten dollars of this and I probably will be too lazy to expense that and for me it's like I played it and like I know I will never touch that again. I might as well delete it off my hard drive. Right. So that's too bad. It's just, it's not a terrible game. It is, there are good ideas in it, but it's just really boring. Yeah. So it's alpha protocol. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the thing is is that it exists for iPhone as well and I have, I bet you on iPhone, it's like a pretty cool game to kill time with. We're going to say it kind of sounds familiar. I wonder if I've seen it on the iPhone. So yeah, this just looks like a, like a, I said something about it looks like a mobile game, but that's insulting to mobile games. So I don't want to say that, I don't know. So it's just not very good. Right. Boomer. Beyond that I haven't really been playing a whole lot this week the way I haven't talked about the death. You know, I played some effort to play some Red Dead. I could talk about how I started getting obsessed on Geometry Wars II again. Oh, you know, I guess I didn't talk about and I guess I can't know as I talk. I did review Blur. Oh, right. Nice. What did you think? It's a minor game. I liked the beta. Well, I gave Blur the lowest score it received on the internet. Wow. Anthony doesn't like to brag, but he's one of the best gamers he knows. That did get edited by the way. That is not exactly how I worded that. Who edited that? Well, that doesn't matter. But I did say that I do think of the people I know. Was it the person to your right at work? Yes. Of the people that I know, I am one of the better people at games, just in general, right? And I don't mean that to brag. I just mean that having worked with several members in the press, we've all seen people that work in the press that are really bad, just bad at games. Yeah. Can I just say, I've seen lots of people that are bad at games and it doesn't affect their ability to review a game correctly? No. Right. Yeah. I'm not saying it does. But the whole point of me saying that I'm pretty good at games in general is that it has been a long time since I played a game where I repeatedly failed at the objectives. Like I'm just not used to that. And Blur is a hard game, man. Like you really have to be really good at drifting. Is it harder than Motorstorm? No. Motorstorm, I don't think is particularly difficult. I mean it can be right on some of the harder races, but this is like really hard. Like I did bump it down to easy for some of the later tracks just because against the AI and stuff, it's just brutal. Like I said, if you're not really good at drifting, that game is really hard. And I've never been great at drifting and the drifting in that game is pretty challenging to begin with. So I ended up having a car that's very grippy. But the thing I didn't like about that game was I felt like that game, it was at its best when you were either just driving or just having to focus on shooting things. It was never, I did not think, yeah, it kind of fell apart for me because when you were worrying about like shooting people and driving, you wouldn't be able to pull off those awesome drifts that they want you to pull off. Right. Well, was it a controls issue? Like did you have to move your fingers off the thumbsticks or something in order to shoot while you were trying to drift? Well, I do feel like, I mean, you could change things, right? But the default controls have the handbrake on the B button instead of the A button like most games do because the power ups are on the A button. But so much of the game is surrounds the idea of fans getting fans and fans are basically like points. You get them for doing things like shooting guys are doing a really awesome drift. And so you're so concerned with all these different objectives all the time that it gets really challenging to just like winning the race, just focus on winning. And sometimes you can't win the race without shooting guys as well, right? Because in that game, man, all the other enemy cars a lot of time seem way faster than you. So it can just be like, I found that game to be totally challenging in the battle modes online. I know I wasn't the only one G Ford and particularly enjoy the game as much either. And like in the battle mode on that, when you have 20 players on a track and let's say it's either a race, let's say it's a race with weapons or it's like the battle mode with 20 players, it's like, imagine Mario Kart where like 20 people are launching red turtle shells. It's just insane, right? It's just chaotic. Yeah, it's just like to the point where it just wasn't fun. Like I can appreciate that. Like when you're and that was the other thing, it was like, like I said, the battle modes where you're just driving around in a arena and fighting each other, that was actually pretty fun. Your dog is trying to eat the floor. But uh, sorry, and the team based ones weren't as bad either because then when you're in teams, it breaks it up and so there aren't as many people shooting at like everybody. Right. And you can play hardcore racing mode as well where there aren't weapons, but in general, like I just found like they wanted that game to be like basically like the call of duty of racing games and for me, it like, it just wasn't that appealing and I do like like arcade racing games. Like I really like my nation racer. I like Mario Kart, but like as far as like arcade style racers that have come out, like honestly, like I said at my review, are you going to say something now that will piss a bunch of people off? Yeah, I already said it once and the reviews all piss everyone off again. I mean, if you're going to pick one like if I was, you know, as a consumer, right, if I was going to go out and pick one right now, like it's hands down. It's not even down my mind. It's split second is the superior game. Wow. I know that they're not exactly the same, right? Right. They are different, but that's like such an easy comparison to draw. Yeah, but they're two arcade-ish racing games that came out at the same time. Right, where you're killing your opponents, that sort of thing. And split second is like in my ways, just like better in almost every way except for the fact that I think that blur does a much better job with like persistent online benefits, as far as like ranking up and getting perks and that sort of thing. They call mods. And split second isn't going to last as long as workload if you decide you're really into boring. Yeah. I mean, you could, if you are really into blur, like it's like I said, man, you can drop hours upon hours about unlocking all everything in that game. Like there's a shit ton to unlock, but yeah, split second to me is just like the more like jump in immediately and immediately have that sense of gratification and fun. Like, you know, in blur, you stop to think about things like the speedometer and stuff like that. Sometimes in split seconds, like you're just going fast. That's what I needed to know and I don't know. Yeah. So like, yeah, I mean, I haven't played either of them, but I mean, I've been to the, you know, to all the different conventions where their booths are literally next to each other or not where, but you know, they're right. And yeah, I mean, I would just look and split second. So it's like visually looks way better too, but blur isn't a bad looking game. I just think that like blur does a good job with the cars and everything else is kind of where I split second, like they did such a great job with the cars and the environments because the environments are blowing up and everything. So you know, they, they really focused on the way that they look. And that being said, I still gave blur a seven, like I still think it's like a totally fine game. It's just for me, who was also not the hugest project, Gotham racing fan either, like, right, like, but you know, I do like arcade racers, especially where you're shooting each other and stuff. Yeah. Just to me, this just, this just wasn't the game that I thought that it was going to be. Yeah. Well, this is not like a game you had that much fun with. No, I didn't. I, you know, like I said, man, when it comes down to it, if I'm going to spend time playing an arcade racer, it's going to be split second, especially lately. And if I was going to spend my money on one, it's not, it's not even a game. All right, let's take a break. I'm going to come back with a middle segment. I'm going to do a new bridge, let's just say I can't hear something about this. I'm going to do a new bridge, I'm going to do a new bridge, let's just say I can't hear something about this, let's just say I can't hear something about this, let's just say something about this, let's just say I can't hear something about this, let's just say something about this, let's just say I can't hear something about this, let's just say Alright, so due to starting late and this fucking dog being insane and derailing us, we're just going to skip to a letter segment. You're going to have until next week to now comment on the topic that is on eat-sleep-game.com about, you know, game that you've enjoyed the most so far, you know, in your biggest disappointments for the sure. So we're just going to jump straight into the list. I mean, there have been so many fucking amazing games already this year, so it's like, we might as well just call this 2011 now. Okay, so the first letters from Conrad, well, he says Chuck, but how do you approach someone you've only known as an acquaintance? Don't see any of your activities but have become infatuated with based mostly on style and musical taste. The situation feels, makes me feel like a major creeper and I don't like that feeling. Yeah, it's weird. It's like you either need to say something like, the pressure is to say something smart, something funny, right? Or something interesting, right? And that's not easy. Or just with the pretty girl. Ask her if she wants to get coffee. Jesus, the worst she's, the worst she can say is no. But a complete stranger. It's weird. Complete strangers. He said he said they've, they're at least acquaintances. Oh, hey, would you like to go with me? So it isn't like he just like saw this girl wearing like a music of a band that he liked. And so he became infatuated from afar. But in which case, I would just say just hey, if you like the bad, hey, that's cool radio head shirt. I love it. Let's go make out the pyramid song. One thing I can suggest like I don't have any any notion on how to like actually approach women because I'm bad at it. But I can say that one thing you shouldn't do, and I know this from experience is invite her to a concert. Like, right, don't take somebody that you barely know to a concert because then you'll spend the entire time standing next to each other, not talking because you're watching the music. And it actually turns out to be this really awkward enterprise. I have also done exactly what Matt said. She's a good girl. There are totally other dudes that will try to swoop on her. Yeah, I had a concert flat out. Just ask her, ask her out. Just ask her out. You dummy. Oh, if only I had taken your advice, Arthur. I know that it's super hard. Like maybe even when you think a girl is interested making the first move is super hard. Yeah, like flat out. Like I am always terrified. I do wish it was more okay for women to make the first move. I have actually known a lot of girls who made the first move. So in that respect, I've been lucky. I've never known any. Maybe it's just that they don't make the first move with me. Walk, walk, awkward silence. That was your awkward silence in the podcast. Sorry. I just got to check it out later. It wasn't particularly good. But both of Jodi and I, my first dates were concerts. Oh, really? MIA and six inches of blood. Oh, Jesus, did you watch it? Did you read all the shit unfolding about MIA today? No, I didn't. I don't even know what's happening. There is a profile in the New York Times on her by Lynn Hershberg. And apparently she didn't like it and tweeted Lynn Hershberg's phone number on just. Oh, wow. People call her and talk shit and claimed how interviews and news stories aren't facts, et cetera, et cetera. It's just opinions blah, blah, blah. Possibly because that whole story just makes her look like a totally self absorbed plot. You know what? I've heard stories from people who have dealt with her because I know people used to work in Converse PR and she was a converse rep for a while or a converse rep. I don't know how she had a deal. Yeah. And man, I, yeah, dude, I heard some stories about her being a B. Like she's totally superficial and manufactured and. And all that fucking like rebel shit is all manufactured. I mean, it doesn't all seem manufactured. It doesn't seem particularly well thought out. Yeah. I love her music, though. Anyway, okay, the next letters from Abby. And he says, assuming you guys are talking about Mark Mario Galaxy 2 this week, which surprisingly we didn't because apparently no one's played it. I really want to though Ryan says it's fucking amazing. So he says, this might have already been discussed, but in case it hasn't, he says, what is it that Nintendo does that makes him exempt from the horrible Japanese games, i.e. Lost Planet. Also, what about T. Michael? Uh, simplicity, like executing really well on some very simple designs and doing it well in good level design. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's weird. It's like, yes, where they do simplicity is like a, you know, I was watching this video of this, um, of this guy who, what are you doing to that dog? Oh my God. I'm sorry. I know he's just chewing out Anthony's hat. He does smell like a person. Oh my God. It sounds like a child. Stop. Hey, buddy. Akbar. Aktak. You ruined that catboy. Oh Jesus Christ. He blew it up. He ate it. All right. Are we still recording? I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. Pause. Okay. Oh no, that's all staying in there. Um, so anyways. Yeah. I don't know. I, I feel like Arthur's right that the thing that Nintendo does is they have an idea and they know it and they iterate on it and they iterate on it where it gets a little bit better each time. They don't actually beat it into the ground usually. I hear you say that again. One more time for posterity sake. What they iterate on it. Well, no, once you said before that they, they beat on it. No, just that you said I was right. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. For the last time I actually heard you say that. You're right about a lot of things, man. I was actually, I think I just died. Um, yeah. So, you know, um, now he's eating paper. So yeah, I just think that those, those games in general, they are really good because they find a good idea and they can stick with it and make it. And if you like just want an idea of how much Nintendo pays attention to detail, like there's this good YouTube video where they break down the camera in Super Mario world, like all, all the different sort of camera logic they have, like when the camera snaps to the lower platform, when the camera like floats with you when you jump. And like all these little bitty things are the tiny things that sort of don't disorient the player. Right. Yeah. That sounds. Well, no, sorry. Well, I was just going to say some other things that that Nintendo doesn't do that a lot of other Japanese developers have been doing for the last few years is they're not super obsessed with animation. They're not determined that you're going to see every frame of animation that they did for a character every time you do something. Like when you hit a button, something happens right away. There's good feedback. Although I were waiting for stuff. Although I know some of the people that that are like Scott Bromley that we know that our enemies said that Mario Galaxy 2 has some of the best animation of a character and all quite a while. But it transitions quickly from thing to thing. It's never like, oh, well, we did this. We have to wait for the animation to end before he'll do something else. That's true. He can break animation totally. Um, and Matt, you were going to say something. I'm sorry. I was just going to say that, um, from what I've been told is that Mario Galaxy 2 kind of carries on the Mario tradition and that it's constantly introducing like new gameplay elements. Yeah. And that, uh, and Mario Galaxy 2, especially, at least what Ryan says, he said, he feels like he's seen everything that the game has to offer and then the rest of the game is just going to be variations on the theme, but that each new world he goes into and stages within those worlds always changes up things. There's always like new, new ways to do stuff and he's just completely blown away by the amount of content that's in there and how it's all executed extremely well. Yeah, basically, I've just what Nintendo does. I was going to say, basically, I've heard Mario Galaxy 2 is in a lot of ways, just a complete build upon everything. The first one did right. But even better in a lot of ways. I mean, this is all academic for me because I'm not interested in Mario Galaxy or Mario Galaxy 2. Like, I just haven't been able to get into a Mario game in a really long time. Like, new Super Mario Bros. Wii just didn't grab me at all. I had fun with it, but I didn't actually play through the whole thing at all. I'd be in the whole thing. But it also comes down to me that's a co-op only game. Like, I would never play it by myself. Yeah, exactly. I think if I had somebody to play it with, I would play it. Right. I just, like, I'd be interested to see what Ryan means by doing new things all the time because everything that I've seen at Mario Galaxy, and I've seen a fair bit of it at work because people work fucking love that game. The 10 was not a surprise to anyone. I just, I'm not seeing anything that just leaves me in the sort of sense of awe that it seems like a lot of people are. Well, I'm probably, I'm probably going to play it sometime within the next couple of years. I think, I think in general, the Mario Galaxy games, the only reason like they just strike people is because they're one of those few games you'll play nowadays and an adult that still strike you with like that, that little bit of wonder as like you had as a kid playing 64 for the first time or something. They bring you back to that child place. Well, their Nintendo is ruthlessly evocative of its past. Like, it's always like, but we are going to reference the shit out of that time. You were happy as a kid. But in a really good way that actually, but that's the thing is they're so successful at it to where it'll make people like Sean Elliott say the word call games like the first Mario Galaxy a delight. Like, something he would never say about a game. It just, it causes people to lash out in ridiculous fury when someone like GamePro has the temerity to give it a four and a half stars out of five. Or GameSpy. Or GameSpy. Wait, Ryan gave it a four and a half? Yeah. I'm a little surprised if I worshiped at the altar of that game. Yeah, he does. A four and a half. Don't go uncharted on me. I'm not going to. I mean, Ryan gave Batman Arkham Asylum five. Yeah, but he also seems like Ryan liked to Mario Galaxy as much if not more than he liked Batman. Oh, no. So this is why review scores are dumb. I don't think these scores are dumb. I think that it's totally fine to to rate something as long as it matches the text and as long as they're contextualized properly. That's my problem. I mean, it's contextualized anything. Yeah, I just, I don't mean that review scores as a concept or dumb. I guess I just mean that it's like, that's always the argument is like, this person rated this game is this, but he also rated this game is this and it's like, how could they do that? I'm totally fine with comparing a person's past scores to their current scores. It's saying, well, this site gave game A whatever and gave game B whatever. So you mean to tell me that game B is worse than game C, which got this score blah, blah, blah. I mean, those are all different. I haven't read Ryan's review. I wonder if part of it is just that it wasn't like he's seen it before. Maybe and Batman was like, so like, holy shit. Okay. Sean says, my question involves a recent crush that I think I may have on a girl in my class, junior in high school. Wait, I think I may have? Yeah. Well, I'm a junior in high school language to me. All right. So there's a nerdy girl 4.0, 2,400 SAT. All that good stuff. Well, I like that already. Who's not really my type, but I've still been really into her. I didn't notice it at first, but after a while, I noticed myself looking for opportunities to get close to her. Help her with homework. Even brush hair out of her face. If I'm feeling courageous. The thing is, I'm just like picturing this guy, like never, never, never engaging this girl. He's just like scoots next to her. Like, she's in line with the snack bar, scoots next to her, brushes her hair. The thing is, he says, I'm scared of what other people might think. If I'm noticed making moves on a girl who's probably never had a boyfriend in her life. I know it seems shallow or douchey of me to think, but it's hard to deal with the social slander in high school. Any ideas how I can get close to her and be how I could avoid gossip? Live in a house and never leave. Yeah, really. Dude, fuck worrying about gossip, man. Like, yeah, it does sound shallow because it is shallow. Yeah, that's, sorry. There's an astute analysis of the situation, Matt. I mean, I know that makes me sound kind of like a condescending asshole, but it's true. I just, you know, if she's really, if you're really into her, I can vouch that the smart girls are the best girls. Yeah, it's true. So, like, it may be the kind of thing where it's, it could be something that you will really enjoy and that the rumors won't mean that they won't mean anything to you. I mean, like, if you're actually really into each other and you're having a good time, I mean, like, what people say isn't going to concern you at all. It may concern you now while you're thinking about it, but like, if something actually happens between you two, you're probably going to be glad that you went for it. Word. Word. All right, and I wanted to find a non-gaming related, or a gaming related question. Okay, I thought that sounded a little backwards. So, well, I believe Admiral just farted in Tyler's face. So bad. All right, well, it's like garbage comes out of his butt. Yeah, we'll just end. Yeah, this is definitely a shorter show this week, guys. Sorry, I guess. It's just been, it's just been like a turd was put in my nostril. Okay, we could make that happen if you'd like. So, Jeff writes in and he says, the recent release is a red, red dead redemption. It just costs two or fun. It still seemed to be lacking in significant development of the open world approach ahead of previous titles like GTA 4. It seems that beyond the technical achievement and grapple hook mayhem, there's still something about the actual gaming aspects of this genre that are not fulfilling to the player. Maybe this is something Arthur feels. Where do you think, or where would you like open world games to go? I think open world, I mean, I said it before. I just think that a lot of open world games focus on having this massive amount of stuff that you can do and a lot of it isn't very fun or not particularly well developed. I guess that's just a problem, right? It's like they give you a giant open world. The fear is if they don't give you enough to do, then you'll just be like, I have this giant world and no reason at all to go around. And they're right because that's happened in some old people. I mean, that's me with every grand theft auto game. I think a lot of people get lost in grand theft auto. I think a lot of the problem too is just in the technology. I think just the way, like to me, a lot of the fun I get from open world games, you know, I kind of mentioned it earlier, it's by applying a context that the game developers aren't necessarily intending to imply. You know, like, hey, this car just fell off that roof and it was funny because it did this, that or the other. I think what technology catches up to where, you know, developers can, you know, program in this contextual way, it's where the game can have context. And, and sort of a hierarchical system of like, you know, what, you know, what, what, what are some sort of important things happening? You know, I don't know, like, and maybe that can help some of the more emergent game. We'll see what elements of open world better. I think that that's true, and I hope that that does happen. For me personally, it's always been that I want somebody to establish an open world game and treat it like a platform that they iterate on as opposed to, like, then making a whole new game. Like, I would love it if GTA's for Liberty City, if they made, you know, like they, yeah, they have liberties, the, the, the DLC that's come out for it. But what I, what I want is I want for, you know, it would be awesome, in my opinion, if, if they released the GTA 4 engine to other developers and said, here's Liberty City, now make something happen in Liberty City. Right. I mean, I would almost like to see it as a platform of development, because, you know, like, have their blogs for the PC version? There have been, yeah. In fact, there's ones where people get super into our peeing, where there's like cops, yeah, that was mostly for, uh, of which one the, uh, San Andreas, that one has a big mod community. Yeah, exactly. And so like, but what I, what I want is, because, you know, like, all open world games are, there's various systems that are interacting on different levels. Like, you have, uh, uh, like in GTA 4, you know, you have the traffic system, you have the pedestrian system, you have, uh, you know, the combat systems, and, well, I'm not really thinking about the combat systems. I mean, more like the things that are AI controlled and they're interactive, can all interact with each other in various ways, and like, you know, they're like big Venn diagrams, basically. The ecosystem. Yeah. Exactly. An ecosystem in a game. And so what I want is I want, I want a platform of an open world game to continue to add nodes into that ecosystem. Right. And so it's like, what if in Grand Theft Auto, okay, so like, um, uh, Rockstar released a patch which made, uh, which added in a bunch of new clothing store brands. So there's a bunch of clothing stores that you can go into now. They added in like, you know, uh, apartment buildings that you can go in and then like the something interesting is in those apartment buildings, you know, and they just kept expanding like what the systems that are in the game that interact with one another. Like, you know, the, the clothing brands, if you go to the particular clothing brands, now people treat you differently on the street, you know, there's like, just keep adding into the systems and make that ecosystem more believable, because that's the, the thing about GTA four and about the Liberty City is that like, I feel there's so much city there that I'm just going past. And like, I kind of don't care what's really going on. And, you know, in Red Dead, you know, you'll, you'll be riding your horse down a lane, uh, down a, down a road or down a horse track or something. And there will be somebody off to the side and there's something interesting that comes and happens. And like, I would love to see that like all the time, you know, like what if, um, like a big thing in, uh, Morrowind and in Oblivion was that all of the NPCs had a home. They had a schedule, you know, like, what if somebody did that in Liberty City? Like all the NPCs had a home, they had a schedule, they had a place of business, you know, they had a, they had times where they went to eat, they had times where they went and drank. And, uh, you know, I'm not saying that this is like an easy undertaking. It's just the kind of thing where I want to see open world games going. I don't want them to be, I don't want them to just be mission points where you go and you talk to somebody and then you complete a mission. Then you go and talk to somebody else and you complete a mission. Like, that's the standard now. I want it to be more open interactive systems. It's kind of like what, Will Wright was talking about in the early development days of Spore about like these ecosystems that, you know, that overlap in these really interesting ways and how, you know, how to develop that kind of system. And, you know, I don't know, I assume someday somebody's going to make that kind of game. Yeah. I just, man, I want the doing to be fun and not just seeing what happens after I do to be fun. Yeah. All right. Tyler, you were going to say something and I cut you off. I'm sorry. Oh, no, no, I was just going to say, uh, Will Wright has a great talk that recently went up on the internet. You can find, uh, he did a talk at a military conference. Oh, wow. And it's very, it was very much like his meta metaphysics of gaming talk that he gave at GDC. If you just look up Will Wright and, um, army games 2010 and he talks a lot about these things that we're talking about like systemic gameplay and, uh, it, he gives, it's a super long talk and like, I love lectures. I mean, it's over an hour. So nice. Yeah. I highly recommend it. We actually walked past him today on the later lunch. It's true. Oh, shit. I was totally nonchalant. It's because I think he was walking the current, which is right around the corner. Was he smoking? Uh, no. Does he smoke every time I've ever seen him outside of you? Um, he had his head down. He was trying to rush and he was going through a bunch of Giants fans. Um, so thank you for listening to the show. We apologize. Yeah. Uh, you can send us at letters letters@e.sleevedestgame.com. You can find us on Twitter. I'm Twitter.com slash Jeff money. Arthur's Twitter.com slash AGIS. Tyler's Twitter.com slash dirty tea, like the drink and Matt's, uh, Twitter.com slash talking. So you can find us all doing things. There's an Admiral Ackbar going to have a Twitter account now. Admiral Ackbar is going to die on a fire and all the Twitter account, all the posts would be like item destroyed. All right. We'll see you all next week. [Music] Tonight, our dream will win. Take you out your car. So why can't you love your world? We'll keep it close to fire. All right. You'll find tonight. Sorry when I lose my eyes. So why? Our dream will win. Take you out your car. Tonight. I love you. We'll keep it close to fire. All right. You'll find tonight. So why not lose my eyes. [Music] He's like, you just said something to me in my own language. Yeah. Huh. The lag on Audacity is way less than it was last time. So that's good. Check, check, check, check. Check, check, check. Anthony, you want to speak. Hello. Hello. This is me speaking about the level I assume I will be speaking during most of the show. Right. Tyler. Hey everybody. Excited levels. I laugh kind of loud. Yeah. Turn that one down. Turn it down. And Matt. Hey, this is Matt. I'm saying some stuff with some other things. This is my loud laughter. Do you have a tone for deeply revealing personal statements? Yeah. Yeah. That's good. I didn't want to really get into this, but it burns when I pee. What is that? More of a professional statement than a personal one. I think we're. If I were a general. Let me.