Rebel FM
Rebel FM 61 -- 05/06/10
The regular crew is joined by Matt Chandronait and Robert Ashley for a lengthy episode about games we've been playing. Should you choose to listen, you can hear us babble on about such games as Lost Planet 2, Alan Wake, What Did I Do to Deserve This My Lord 2?, Toy Story 3, and Halo: Reach. We conclude with a letters segment. Due to technical difficulties, we have lost a portion of the show. We apologize! Enjoy!
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [SOUND] [MUSIC] >> Welcome to Rebel FM. >> Hey. >> Is it a Rebel FM? Is that what you were doing from? >> Yeah. >> [LAUGH] >> No, really, it's the Rebel FM Train Club. >> [LAUGH] >> Hey, welcome to Rebel FM. Episode 61, I'm Anthony Gagos, with me is Robert Ashley. >> Greetings fellow challengers. >> Hello, Tyler Barber. >> Summertime is almost here, and just to make Arthur feel special, I made him go last, and special guest Arthur Geese. >> This started as a disaster, and it's pretty much just gonna go downhill from here. >> He's always on the, such a pessimist. >> I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. >> I'm just gonna say, I'm sure the guy on the BART station that's like, it's the end times, it's like, I'm just a realist. >> [LAUGH] >> Robert, realistically, it's the end of the fucking. >> Robert, for the record, how many containers of alcohol do you have open next to you? >> Well, two. >> Yeah, it's like one of them did from the second one. >> Okay. >> See, that's how you make the good sound. >> [LAUGH] >> And that's the sound that means go get me another beer, Anthony. >> [LAUGH] >> That's what you do to your wife too. >> Yeah, honey. >> No, I don't miss you. >> [LAUGH] >> He respects his wife. >> Come on. >> Anthony will actually go get the beer too. >> Man, this is weird. I was actually just listening to a podcast you and I were on last night. As a matter of fact, how weird is that? >> Were we on it last night? >> Well, we've recorded, I was listening to the old GFW and I recorded in your apartment that one time. >> That was weird. >> It was weird. >> Yeah. >> Anyways, just thinking of that, because we're sitting here talking in front of microphones again, just like we did that night. >> It's true. >> It's true. >> And you're playing footsy with me, which is the other weird thing about that. >> How do you feel it through those boots? >> [LAUGH] >> So Robert, since you haven't been here in a while, what games have you been playing? Tell us about Alan Wake. >> Tell us about all the games in playing. Well, yeah, I played Alan Wake. >> Have you finished it yet? >> Yeah, I finished it. I actually-- >> Don't spoil anything, asshole. >> Everyone dies. >> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, you joke. >> But that could very cool be the end. >> Steve King comes in the bugs. >> Yeah, he shows up as a special character. >> [LAUGH] >> I don't even know. >> No, I got-- >> He could make fire with his mind. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Turn around. >> I got kind of sick, like, a week and a half ago, and the day that I started feeling really ill, and I couldn't really work anymore, I got the game in the mail, and I was like, sweet. >> How convenient. >> [LAUGH] >> And I basically played through the whole thing in two days. >> Yeah, it can be done really quick. >> Yeah, I'm sort of obsessing over it. It was very easy to just sort of sit there and go through it. It's very kinetic the way that they set it up. >> Did you--was it scary to you? >> It was scary to my wife. I don't know why she was--I think she was freaked out by the sound and didn't really like to have all the crazy sound going all day. So I played it with headphones. I found, you know, there were some scares. Mainly, it was atmospheric to me, you know. >> Yeah. >> Had a good creepy thing about it. You know, I would actually say I'm not much of a horror gamer and horror games typically make me very nervous. >> Yeah. >> I mean, I'll go out of my way like I played through Resident Evil 4. But there are parts of Resident Evil 4 as like game-y as that is or whatever that scared the holy hell out of me. >> Wow. >> [LAUGH] Whereas this game didn't really have that per se. What I really liked about it just tone-wise was that instead of being just a straight ball to the wall horror game, it was a little bit lighter. It has a sense of humor and a quirky, you know, obviously they went out of their way to sort of emulate Twin Peaks in some ways. But it has these sort of fun, interesting, different characters. And it's not just, you know, like a cliche horror thing. >> Right. But because they didn't have a character like Pyramid Head come in and, you know, like saw somebody in half and ripped their skin off in front of you. >> I haven't seen anything raping anything else for us. >> You know, yeah. I mean, yeah, they don't go for those kind of bag of tricks. And I'm the same as you, Robert. Like I really don't like horror games. >> They're called bag of tricks. >> [LAUGH] >> But, you know, for me. >> I've never been able to play through a Silent Hill game. Like every single one of those games that I ever tried, I tried like one, two, and like whatever the very last one was. >> Honestly. >> And they just freak me out. Like I cannot play them. >> I usually, because I get freaked out with horror movies. >> So I usually think I'm going to get freaked out when I play horror games. But for some reason, horror games like as soon as I start doing it, I'm okay. >> Maybe it's because you're in control and then move your life. >> It would be. >> Along with the agency. >> See if that's what it actually gets. I can watch a horror movie, but like the idea that I'm responsible. >> Right. >> And like that, that is what freaks me out about a game. Is that like, I'm going to die. I got to figure out what I'm doing. >> I have a little aside that was just like, one time, me and my friends used to get together and play all the Silent Hills together because that was the only way we could do it because we were also too scared. And we were playing three in my friend's basement room. And so since it's a basement room, he has the windows that are kind of like ground level. You know, like our heads are like at ground level. And I just remember one point, we're all sitting on the couch in the basement playing the Silent Hill fucking dark dank room with the swamp cooler. I just feel like you got to know the atmosphere in there. It's like fantastic. It's a swamp cooler. All of a sudden his fucking dog runs through the screen in the window. And I remember we were all like, this is it. We're dead. That's fucking dog. It's just like, I just wanted detention, man. Sorry. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, you know, but if it doesn't have scares per se, it definitely makes up for it and just pure sort of, yeah, like it's hectic. And one thing that surprised me about the game is really, in a lot of ways, it's a shooter. I mean, they definitely go out of their way to create this kind of modern, you know, 30 second loop of action. >> Yeah, totally has a shooter style thing. >> Yeah, where you have these things that you do over and over again. And they're pretty interesting. I mean, I think the shooter elements of the game are good. Sometimes I feel like they artificially stretch out the game a bit. Like, you know, if you're really into that part of the game. >> Oh, because stuff just keeps coming. >> Yeah, and that's just sort of like, I don't really feel like I need for it to be so action-packed. >> In that sense, it always, when I played the one chapter that I have played, it came across to me as like a less clunky, resonant evil, modern, resonant evil in that way. Like, less clunky because resonant about the shooting controls are kind of clunky, but in the sense that those new ones are so much more action-focused, like, about killing zombies that are coming at you, you know? >> Yeah, yeah. Just the basic gameplay fundamentals of the way that combat works, and it makes it interesting, and they have a way of sort of developing that over the course of the game and making it, like, adding one thing that makes it a little different and throwing enemies together that behave differently to make it sort of a different experience at most points where there's sort of the major combat of it. >> Yeah, it's kind of a formula, an action formula that I didn't expect to succeed. Like, I expected when I played this game to be like, "I'm gonna enjoy the story and the characters and the atmosphere, but the action stuff I'm just gonna have to slog through to get through the parts of games that I enjoy." And that didn't turn out to be the case. >> So you thought I was gonna be heavy, right? >> Yeah, kind of. >> Man, we gotta talk about this. >> I will say one thing that surprised me that works really well in that game is the sort of defense mechanism that you have in the game. You have a dodge in it, which took me forever to get the feel of, because it's sort of unusual. >> I still haven't gotten it right. >> Yeah, it's always getting hit. >> It doesn't really work like any other game that I've played. It's the sort of, if you use the dodge at the moment at which someone's about to hit you with an axe or something, and you have to dodge in the right direction. >> Right. >> But if you do that, it goes into slow-mo and you get away from the dude. And it actually works kind of amazingly well, and when you're on a roll, you can sort of deal with these big crowds of people ducking out of just being a little ninja. >> Yeah, it turns very ninja-like. And if you get really good at it, it's kind of ridiculous. But yeah, I mean, the level of action is kind of unnecessary, if only because I enjoy the story interactions a lot in that game, and just sort of the slower moments. We're totally fun and interesting to me, and I was kind of wanting more. I found myself always, you know, throughout the game, you'll find radios and televisions that you can, they have these different television programs that pop up. >> Neither. >> Night Springs. >> Night Springs is like a twilight zone. >> Outer Women's kind of funny. >> Yeah, yeah. That's pretty funny and like kind of low budget, but like it gets the idea across, and then there's some sequences where it's Alan Wake, the character as a human, actor that you watch, and then there's some radio stuff. And I found myself standing around to get all that stuff, and like going through all the manuscript pages and everything. I was surprised that I had the patience for this because I normally don't. >> Well, in the manuscript pages, at one point it also says that, like, the story was rapidly turning from a thriller into a horror. So I think that's like kind of what they're trying to say, is that this game is both an action thriller as well as a horror game. >> Yeah, and they're deliberately trying to combine those two elements. >> Maybe they're justifying how it altered over five years of fucking... >> I was gonna say, yeah, I hope it does well enough to make back its money. I don't even want to think how much they've spent. >> I'm sure that Microsoft helped them out. >> One of the things with that game, I actually, Alan Wake was a game that I covered for... >> So that was the final cover of CGW. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually went to Helsinki and saw their studio, and they, people wonder what the fuck was up with that game, but they were trying something really strange and unusual with the way that they were producing it. Their team was only like 20 people. >> Wow. >> And they outsourced all of the art to a couple of studios in China, and they would dictate the art by, like, they would cast actors. That's why they had that Alan Wake guy already. >> Oh. >> They had cast him, and then they took elaborate digital photos and just shipped the photos off to China and said, "Make this." >> Into a digital character? >> Yeah, exactly. >> Wow. >> When I was there, they had Alan Weeks. They had Alan Wake's Blazer. This was like, you know, five fucking years ago. >> Yeah, that was before this was commonplace. >> It was 2005. >> Yeah, yeah, and it was like, they, you know, they had his blazer and hoodie, like, hanging up on the wall, because they had taken digital photos of it to have it made and everything. And they did, all the nature stuff was, was, was generative. So it was all, all procedural programming that would, like, create the environments. And one thing that makes me interested in knowing, like, how they went about making the game was, I'm pretty sure that they were making a giant open world. >> They were. It was supposed to be like a GTA horror game in a lot of ways. >> Yeah, and so I, but what I think that they're doing is, I think that, that open world is in the game, and they're going to update with new episodes. >> Yeah, they've already, there's, they've already said that there's downloadable content coming soon. >> Oh, but you're saying that, like, I think the original idea has been turned into this thing of episodes instead. >> Yeah, well, it was always going to be episodes, but it was supposed to be an entire season of episodes. >> All in one game. >> Yeah, and six episodes is not an entire season. >> And, and really playing through it, it feels like the episodes are too long to be called episodes. >> Yeah, there it is. >> Like, if there's ever the episodes, it should be more truncated. >> Yeah, like, but, but I do. >> Well, wasn't that also like the start of the episodic gaming craze, too? >> It was. >> It was back then. >> I mean, could it be that they're mini-series episodes? Mini-series episodes are sometimes longer. >> It was like right after episode one, Half-Life came out. >> Yeah. >> So it was definitely early. >> It was kind of in the middle of the whole episodic gaming craze. >> That's when Sin was going to be the next- >> Yeah, I am. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, see, I honestly thought Alan Wake was going to get canceled for a long time until we played it at X10, just because it had been so long. I was like, how long can this game really go? They keep saying it's coming. >> I wasn't interested at all. >> No, it was like when we heard about it E3 last year, I was like, who cares at this point about that game? It's like a, it's definitely weird after all that time that it finally came out and that it's surprisingly like, you know, nice on the eyes. >> Yeah. >> It's beautiful. >> For having been, or like, it felt difficult. >> I mean, do you think, I mean, do they re-virus or something? >> I'm sure they had to. >> It feels like they've added stuff on top of it. Like there's a, there was some debate before it came out by the Pixel counters. You know, the guys that presented Halo 3 is not in HD. >> Mm-hmm. >> Saying that it's running at sub HD resolution, but what it looks like is that it's running at several different resolutions. Like, sometimes certain things look super jagged and other things like razor sharp. >> It probably is a mixed art, like from earlier in the development process. >> I think that's exactly what it is. I think they've got, because it looks to me like there's certain things that are totally outdated. >> Well, I don't even mean textures. I mean like- >> A really small number of polygons, you know. >> I'm talking like polygon edges. >> Yeah, I know, like alias edges and stuff like that. >> Yeah, but in general, if you don't have a bug up your ass about all that stuff and you're not like a total freak, it just looks really nice. >> It does look really nice. Well, it reminds me a lot of Stalker. >> Like a really nice version of that kind of like super atmospheric, like smoke pouring through the woods. I can't think of another game that does the woods as well as this game. >> I can't think of another game that does- >> Yeah. >> Like the night is wood as well either. >> I can't think of another game that takes place in those kinds of woods. >> This is probably the best game that I've ever seen that can do night. Like I really feel like it's nighttime. >> Yeah. >> The lighting is right. The feel of it is right. The view distances, right? >> Yeah, sometimes as you approach the light, you feel like you were in the pitch dark. >> Yeah. >> Some of the clever thing that happens where they create contrast, but like the closer you are to a pool of light, the darker, the dark that you're in. >> Mm-hmm. >> When you're further away from like lamps, it's a little bit lighter. >> Exactly. >> Which is exactly how it should feel. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, it's how it is in real life. >> Yeah. >> It's like your sense of contrast and stuff. >> Yeah. >> I think one of the most interesting things about what you were talking about earlier, Robert, with the way it was sort of meant to be an open world was, you know, some of the things that got me excited about Alan Wake when they first started showing it was, I remember they had that time elapsed video of the sun rising and setting over the city. And it was so dramatic. And it was so dynamic that I really wanted to experience like Alan Wake as an open world game. I just wanted to sit, I wanted to stand in the middle of the street like as a whole 24 hour light cycle went on, you know, went around by me, you know. >> But as you play more through the game, like you totally do get the sense that it actually is a real geographic place. Like when you drive cars. >> Yeah. Well, and when you're looking down in the valley and you're like, oh, I recognize all this geography. I know where I was in relation to where I was before. What they do with it makes total sense. I can't imagine how you would ever reconcile a go anywhere kind of world with the constraints of a horror and a story of like the elaborate story that they set out. >> Right. >> Which has constant voice over like you never really hard. >> I mean, apparently they didn't either. >> Yeah, exactly. >> But I mean, what does make sense to me is that they would go out of the way to make a world in which they could have a lot of different episodes happen. They've built the world. >> They don't even need to use the same character to tell episodes in that town, in that area. >> No, yeah. And that was one of the things that they talked about early on in the game, was that it was supposed to be an ensemble drama. And they definitely gave out the impression that you were supposed to, at some point, see the story from the point of view of other characters. >> Have you seen the video prequels that they put out the bright fall? >> Self first, too. >> Yeah. >> I haven't seen any of them. >> The production value in some parts is kind of cheesy. >> Yeah. >> But if you think of it as like a sci-fi original? >> His acting. >> Yeah. The guy's acting is pretty bad, dude. >> At times, yeah. >> Like he's got one expression. >> But there are some really weird, creepy parts. >> There are. >> Yeah, he's got one expression, just like the character models. >> Oh. >> Oh, China. >> In general, the writing in that game. I would say like the voice acting isn't mind-blowing or anything. >> Yeah. >> But the writing is really solid. >> Yeah. >> Like easily TV quality. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> The voice acting strikes me as like an adaptation of a Stephen King novel. >> Yeah, it's not that bad. >> Like the miniseries that you always see. >> Yeah. >> I particularly liked the jab at homeopathy. >> Homeopathy? >> Homeopathy? >> Homeopathy. >> Yeah, you tell it, Tyler. >> Without spoiling anything? >> No, Alan Lakes just talking about this game. >> Yeah, Alan, he's not a believer. >> Yeah, he's talking with his agent and his agent. It's like you even lectured me on an hour about homeopathy. I don't know. That was funny. >> What the hell is going on? >> It was the world's loudest transmission. >> Or it's like a base of some car because we live in Oakland. >> That's someone who's parking downstairs. >> Wow. >> One thing that I also really enjoyed about the game that wasn't just a gimmick to me was the way that they broke things up into episodes so that there was rising and falling action all the time consistently, and then they would sort of end the episode in some sort of dreamy music way, which sometimes the music selections blew me away. Sometimes the music selections, I was like, "Ah, God." >> I couldn't believe that someone would put Poe in that game. >> Yeah. >> Actually, I mean, I like Poe. >> Yeah, her in particular, I could have done without. >> But Roy Orbison popping up in it, and I don't want to spoil it. The last song in the game is a song that I never imagined hearing in a game, and it kind of freaked me out. >> So here's my only problem with the ends of the episode. Is that it just goes to end of episode number and doesn't show credits. >> And then you're just stuck listening to the music. >> Yeah. >> It's like, I wish there were credits going on. >> I was such a fucking mess opportunity. >> Credit credits would have been, you know, would have been vibey, I guess, but it's not necessary. >> No. >> But what I actually really liked was the previously on. >> Yes. >> So they recap after each episode, and while it seems like kind of a gimmick to make it feel like a TV show, it actually serves a great purpose, because I often find an interesting story, especially with, like, a lot of plays. >> Yeah, because you get, like, you get story for five minutes, and then you shoot dudes for an hour, and then after a while, you know, I'm just talking about any typical game. >> Right. >> You get story for five minutes, you shoot dudes for an hour, and then by the time you get back to story, you're like, what the fuck is going on? And you're always forgetting in games, you know, why you're going, where you're supposed to be going, or where your motivation for anything. >> And you're always totally drunk and high every time you play video games. >> Yeah. >> And you're sort of shot anyway. >> And put, I want to wake is pretty good about, like, maintaining the story all the time, whether it's by his narration and voiceover or finding a manuscript page. >> Definitely. >> That's giving you a sort of different view on things than you would get, otherwise. It's sort of like the best of both worlds between seeing a movie and reading the book. >> Yeah, I mean, it's not a game, like, you know, like the typical sort of five-minute cutscene followed by an hour of blowing people's heads off. But even then, it was handy for me after being, like, out and about and not having specific, like, reminders about the plot itself to go back and tell me where I was at and, like, what I was doing at that moment. It just made it click in a way that a lot of games, you can just easily get lost. >> I could say that that Siren game that came out in PSN was the same way. Episodic, at the end of the episodes, though, on top of having the, at the beginning, they would be, like, previously on, but they also did on the next. And it would be, like, that lead, and it would be, like, awesome. >> It's also convenient, like, if the vaginal companion walks in, like, three-quarters of the way through, and it's like, what's going on? I don't understand. And you say, just wait a few minutes. >> Is that all they are to use of the vagina? >> They're my vaginal companion. I just feel-- >> My vaginal, I'm not vaginal. >> Because I think vagina is more fun to say than vagina. >> Vagina. >> And he, because he enjoys reducing women to their girlfriend. >> Exactly. Because, you know, girlfriend is much more respectful. >> Use the skin around the vagina. >> Right. >> Yes. >> I'm 28 years old. I feel a little old to say girlfriend. I'm sorry. >> 28's not too old. >> And vaginal companion is just kind of a funny phrase. >> It is. It's fun. It's fun to say. >> By 28, you should be seeing ex-wife. >> This is California, not Texas. >> This is kind of the guy who married his high school sweetheart. >> Yeah, exactly. >> My, my, my, my, my. >> So Alan Lake is good. >> Yeah. >> I will say, just as a disclaimer, because I sort of hyped the game up to a friend of mine, and I didn't tell him, like, all the things that were kind of rough about it, I would say that the biggest problem with the game is Alan has a pretty iffy relationship with the physical world. >> Yeah. >> His sort of contact with objects is pretty rough. It reminds me a little bit of games that should be played in first person, like a, like, a Bolivian or something, you know? Like, sometimes he goes over to rain and it's just like, oh, you were in a video game. >> Yeah. >> You're trying to jump on something and it just ain't happened to run. >> He runs like a toddler learning to walk. >> Yeah. >> There's some stuff like that that really just doesn't work that great, you know? >> Yeah. >> But it doesn't matter. Really, I mean, I can't imagine, you know, it being vastly better. It's just after you play a game, like, Uncharted or something, and you play this game, you're like, wow, this is kind of rough. >> Yeah. >> It's like a game that was animated several years ago. >> Yeah. >> Cool. >> But definitely worth playing. Kind of the most exciting thing I've played. >> What else have you played? >> Long, wow. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> You've been playing a bunch of iPhone games? >> I think a bunch of iPhone games. >> No one cares about it. Just being a dick. >> Yeah. >> Actually, I really-- >> Have you been dominating the tilt-to-live leaderboards? >> No, you know, my interest in tilt-to-live kind of dissipated a little bit. >> Really? Did you try to download? >> No, I got the new thing, and I enjoy, I enjoy, like, the code red or whatever. >> Yeah. >> I got distracted by this game. I should really know the name of this game, because I've played-- >> Because your phone is in your pocket and you can just check. >> Yeah, I have played this game an embarrassing amount of time. >> I'm going to look at it. >> Robert's other groping his balls or grabbing his iPhone. >> Exactly. >> I tried all the games that you recommended from last time, though, including beneath the steel sky, which is excellent. >> Yes. >> Really good. >> Very, very good game. Well, the game which I had forgotten the name of, and this is why I forgot the name of, because it's called Action Buggy. >> Okay. Now, this sounds like exactly the kind of game that, like, your mom would play a lot, and she probably would. And it's like a super simple game. It's an endless mode arcade game, but it is actually like a really deep, fun, challenging game. It's 99 cents. It's like cool pixelated style. You play kind of like a moon patrol style or like a blaster master style, you know, missile equipped car. >> Right. Buggy. >> In a low-- yeah, buggy. In a low gravity sort of extra earth, you know, planet. And the whole point is they sort of generate this terrain in which you need to, like, jump over or destroy, you know, mountains and missiles and various obstacles, fire and things. But it's like incredibly well balanced, and there are a lot of, like, sort of high level techniques that if you spend a stupid amount of time playing it on the toilet every morning, you get really good at it. And, like, the shooting in the game is trajectory based, and it's based on, like, how long you hold down the screen. So it's, like, has a very kind of weird feel to it. It takes a little bit of time, but once you get good at it, you feel badass, just sort of lobbing these missiles at things in the distance. >> Yeah. Well, I-- [laughter] >> Choke. >> Choke. >> Choke. >> Choke. >> Choke. >> What am I saying? Candice never performed live. >> Oh, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, you know, I work on that for, like, 20 hours a week, right? Son of a bitch. Yeah, I don't know, the game just makes you feel, like, a total badass because it has the super trajectory aiming, not super trajectory aiming. It has, you know, it has-- >> I mean, if they fit out a box, that would be on the box. >> Yeah, super trajectory. >> Yeah, you know, instead of direct aiming, you have to basically determine the speed and angle of your shot as you're going to-- >> It's like working. >> Yeah, yeah. Except it's, like, off the cuff. >> Cool. >> And so it's, you know, you feel like a badass when you hit something far away and you get the feel of it. >> It's like throwing a grenade in an FPS, usually. >> Yeah, basically, except everything as a grenade. >> Right. >> You feel like Angelina Jolie and wanted. >> Is it value-priced? Is it priced right? >> He said 99 cents. >> Oh, yeah. It's 99 cents. That's fine. >> It's ridiculously cheap. It has stats in it. If I had it open right now, I'd tell you, like, the embarrassing amount of time that I've played, it keeps track. I think that I've put, like, three and a half hours into it, which, when you consider that even when I'm playing really well, my games last about 45 seconds, that's a long-- >> Yeah, but I mean, how much time do you spend going to the bathroom, right? So-- >> It's a lot of time. I do too. >> Why did you buy this game? >> I bought it before-- >> I don't know what the game is. >> I'm sure they enjoy the free plug, they just get it. >> I bought it right before I went on a trip a couple of weeks ago. So maybe-- I've had it for maybe three weeks. >> So you've gone to the bathroom for three and a half hours total than that three weeks? >> You know, I've played it outside of that. I also tend to play it in bed at night when I get weak and drop my rule against playing iPhone games in bed. >> You had to start a fucking rule? >> Yeah, yeah, three and a half hours. >> So what is the rule that you have about not playing like iPhone games in bed just because you're like, I should read or something? >> Yeah, well, first of all, using my iPhone in bed with the lights off is, like, way over stimulating. Even if I'm not playing a game, it's just if I'm planning on sleeping any time, like, ever, it's a really bad idea. >> That's been scientifically proven, actually, to be sure that Bright Lights before bed can fuck up your REM patterns. >> Actually, there was a study just done that showed that that has no effect at all. >> There have been more studies showing one than the other, sir. And it's not video games, it's not like watching TV in a lit room, it's like staring at a bright screen. >> All I know is for me, personally, if I use my phone for any serious amount of time, like, over, like, a couple of minutes while I'm laying in bed in the dark before I go to sleep, I'm going to have a really hard time sleeping. >> Wow, I can totally pass out, no problem. >> Yeah, man. I wish. >> I wish. >> You're just not drinking enough, Robert. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah, maybe that's the thing, too sober. That's typically why I can't sleep. >> Well, I can tell your wife that. >> Well, like I'm saying before, I always play games while really drunk and high, so I just sort of pass out every night. It's the easy way to go. >> Yeah, I mean, it'll help you along there, but this game is fantastic. Another game that I've played a lot of, that's awesome and I am saying game that's a lot of fun is called Rise. People have described it as a vertical version of Cannibalt. It's like a single touch jumping game, like a platforming game. But you play sort of a Japanese businessman, or at least that's how I interpret it. >> Oh, yeah, yeah, I've seen this game. >> Yeah, right. >> Yeah, it has really great art. And you're this guy carrying a briefcase and it's sort of this dreamy thing where like you start out in a city and you hop on these sort of Donkey Kong platforms and go up into the sky. >> But after a while, there's like shorter platform to start moving and he jumps and like when you press the, and he moves automatically left to right and all you can do is jump, right? >> Yeah, he moves left to right and you control his jump and you control how high his jumps going to be and you run into all of these different kinds of platform obstacles and it's all about, you know, seeing how far you can get, which is for some reason just one of the things in gaming that I love right now is my job to yawn during the iPhone discussions. >> That was a legitimate, it has nothing to do, I like. >> I was legitimately bored, okay. >> It's good to know that Robert won't have any trouble falling asleep tonight. >> Aww. >> No one listening to the show will have trouble falling asleep. >> Yeah, it's all about like the kind of awkward platforming as you're trying to dodge things, but it turns out to be really fun in spite of its awkwardness or maybe because of it, I don't know. >> Yeah, well the animation is definitely weird in that game, but it feels really good. Like, you can get good at it and spend a lot of fucking time. >> But I totally know what you're saying about like these games that are sort of endless. >> Yeah. >> And it's kind of the thing that I thought I was done with, you know, like, oh, that's just the way that arcades were back in the day so that you would just keep spending money to try to get a higher score, but it's like, oh, wait, this actually still works on me. >> Well, people obviously still care about score. >> Does this game help leaderboards? >> Oh, yeah, yeah. >> I'm sure it does. >> That's probably one thing. >> I mean, just people obviously care about scoring the sense that we care about achievement points. >> Sure. And I think, you know, I think that the big difference between now and then is that all these games have come up with ways to keep that sort of endless thing fresh because it's all generated, you know, it's not scripted. Every time you play action, buggy, or rise, you have a different experience because the pieces of the game removed around, you know? >> Yeah. >> And I think that's the really compelling thing. It's like geometry wars. That was the big breakthrough for geometry wars was that it was like you could play it a million times because every game was going to be pretty different. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Well, that's, you know, same thing with Tilt to Live and like any of these other games can't evolve. >> Yeah, sure. >> It all makes sense. >> And for some reason, that's the stuff I'm really attracted to right now. Like, you know, there was a game called Warpgate that came out like three weeks ago that got a lot of hype if you read a lot about iPhone games, it was something that had been in the works for a long time. It's this kind of, you know, your cat is going nuts. It's this kind of spaceship, management, battle, RPG, open world game. It's a $5 game, which is a little bit out there, but it's a pretty, it's a pretty like quality big game. But you know, I got it and it's interesting, but I don't find myself playing it that much. I'm more attracted to this sort of like, I guess I'm more of a crack smoker than a drinker of fine wine. >> You're not so much a mushrooms kind of guy. >> I'm the same way, whenever I do buy an iPhone game, I never just buy one. I always go on and see like, what's in the top 100? What are people saying about this one? This one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one update? And then I'll go try like all seven out and be like, well, that's $5 wasted for $2 of cool game. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> It might as well be like a little captioned bubble next to you that says part of the problem. >> Yeah. >> That's not part of the problem. I, you know, I overspend on iPhone games all the time. >> It's not the overspending on iPhone games. It's the I look at the top 100. >> Well, except I got to say that lately the top, the top games have actually been fairly representative. Like I noticed the other day that Angry Birds is the number one game. Angry Birds is one of my favorite games of all time. >> You know, that's funny. That's one that Ron Gilbert told me to play. >> Well, Ron Gilbert, Ron Gilbert's my girlfriend and I introduced him to that game. >> Like I went to see, I went to see his new game and like in shockingly he was the one doing it. You know, I'm used to like PR people demoing the stuff, not like the actual designer, especially not a Ron Gilbert. >> He's like a pretty unassuming guy. >> He is. And he was super cool. >> How do you add he talks about this? >> I'm going to play this game. >> Can you talk about it? >> That's right. >> But that's maybe interesting. >> I don't think we can actually talk about it. >> I saw it in the past and it looked badass. >> All I can say is that I saw it and that it looked great, but I can't really talk about it yet. >> Okay. Okay. >> Yeah, well, just to capture our iPhone discussion. >> Weekly cock. >> Number one, number one game on the iPhone best seller list right now is Angry Birds. Which has been out for a long time and has been one of my favorite games forever. It's another 99 cent game. It's basically something like boom blocks, except like way more character, way less cheesy. It has this really cool universe in which these really grumpy sort of mean birds who you use in the game want to kill various green pigs. >> Those aren't Angry Birds, they're Angry Birds, but it's basically like a slingshot physics game where you need to take down various structures, but it's really compelling game. That's a stupid cliche to use, but you really feel drawn to finishing it and keep updating it with new episodes all the time. >> Nice. I love that. There's so many iPhone games that are just updated all the time. >> For free. It's like it's already a 99 cent game. I already played it forever and now you're just going to give me more of this sort of unbelievable. >> And here you are telling everyone to buy it. So it's working. It's working. >> Yeah, it's working. >> Otherwise, what has everyone else been playing that isn't an iPhone game? >> I played Toy Story 3, which sounds like a really dumb thing, but the game's actually pretty cool. I played yesterday at Pixar. >> I'm better about that still, by the way. >> Well, so I went there and I had heard people saying that this -- I had been heard people saying that it was a little big planet. That's what everyone was saying all around. It's a little big planet. You create your own game. It's not quite like that. You don't go in and create your own levels and people aren't going to be doing the crazy things with a little big planet. You can't really share what you're doing with other people, but there is a story mode to it. A traditional licensed game would have, but that's a tiny portion of it. The crux of the game, at least as far as the 360 and PS3 versions are concerned, is like they wanted to get in touch with that idea. They showed us the first couple of minutes of the movie, and I won't spoil it, but a big part of the movie of what you see in a film from what they say is that you see the way that Andy perceives the world when he's playing with this toy. You always see Buzz Lightyear and those guys running around in the world as toys in a big people's world. When Andy sees them, he sees them like when it's a cowboy and he's playing with it, he's picturing in them being like the West and that sort of thing, and in this world he does have guns, and he can shoot and stuff. They give you access to a character that you play as your avatar in this open world, and then you're basically participating in a world with toy rules, basically. You're like the sheriff of this town, and so you get to customize the town and add buildings when you get money and build up this town and unlock new lands, like a banjo kazooie. There's all these quests you can do, but if you don't want to do quests, you can just gather things and then outfit all your little people in the town. They really wanted you to feel like a kid in the toy box, the mode's called "Toy Box." Wow. That's super cool. Yeah, so it's like, and you know, there's all kinds of tools around the world that you get that sometimes serve a purpose, but are also just there for kids to just have fun with, because they did a lot of focus testing with a lot of kids, because that's who they're mainly gearing it towards, and for instance, they would try and do all these quests and have all these really guided quests, and then they said the kids would just go in there and pick up a cow, because you can pick up most anything in the game, and just find the highest point they could and throw it off the cliff, and that's all they wanted to do. Obviously. So they tried to just make quests that were around those ideas for these kids, too, but they know that people just want to do these silly things, so they give you all these tools like a machine that pumps out goo, and all the goo does is shrinks or makes things bigger. That's all it does. So they took the sex drugs and rock and roll out of Grand Theft Auto, and gave you kids. Basically, yeah, and there's quests if you want it, but at the same time, it's completely playable, split-screen co-op, and you guys don't have to be doing the same thing. Cool. So the guy was saying when his daughter and son play it, the daughter will sit there building the town and changing the windows and the houses and stuff, and customizing all that while his son's off shooting people with a lightning rod and stuff like that and watching how they react. [laughter] That's cool. That sounds good. I was invited to that. I should have gone to that. Yeah, and the event was also really cool. Of course, it's Pixar. You passed up a chance to go to Pixar. But the animations are also really good, because they just worked so closely with Pixar. Sure. Like, obviously, Pixar cared enough about the game to actually show it in their studios. Right. Right. Yeah. But it looks like they do that with the Cars game, too. I don't know. I think they actually showed it in their studio, showed the game in their studio, and brought people in. Yeah, but who cares about Cars, except for the billion dollars a year that they pull in in revenue? Oh, shit. Right. Yeah. I'm not exaggerating. I know. This just looks cool because it's just a really cool use of the license. The game's called Toy Story 3, and it does have that story element, but really when I was talking to the guys that made it, it's more just a Toy Story game. Like, that's really all it is, because they said they have characters from all three movies, even some that aren't really important in three. And so really, it's just like that there's that story mode of people really want that, but that was just kind of thrown in there because they kind of ended up having to. Right. Like, when they went to pitch the game to John Lasseter, the guy that is like the God of Pixar, like they had two pitches for him, one which was this Toy Box idea, and one which was this traditional story mode. And when they told him that about both, he was like, "Well, I want both." So they were like, "Well, if he says both, we got to fucking do it." Right. So that's why they ended up doing both. But yeah, they said the story mode thing is totally just like a compliment to this Toy Box thing, which is like the crux of the game, and like a really cool thing that they want people to spend way too much time with, and they do have plans for like DLC for it and stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, it's not like a story mode or anything, it's just about playing as one of these toys in like their toy world, where they do have lasers and all that sort of thing. Awesome. And it seems like it could be really cool. It seems like Grand Theft Auto meets Viva Pinata or something. Yeah, in a lot of ways that when I was asking the guy, he compared it more to like to Viva Pinata, because he said it's like a game that kids can play, but there's enough there for adults too, where like if they're playing with their kid, they're not going to be unhappy. Like it's like totally like, for both, it really is like they tried to make it a game for everyone. It's like a Pixar mode. Well, here, I mean, it's not like Viva Pinata, because that shit is not accessible to kids at all. Sure is. I know a guy who plays with this kid, but he, I know a guy, but not fucking playing the game. Like adults can barely wrap their head around, which means it's better for kids. I know a guy who plays with his kids, and it's just like, you know, he gives his kids and Viva Pinata, he plays with the limited permissions for his kid, so his kid kind of dicks around while he does the thing, they still fun together. This is that same thing. People can be doing quests while the other person is just like walking around with a lightning rod. There's like no penalty for that, you know? Right. Cool. So it does seem like, and it's been in development for like two and a half years. So that's always kind of good when you hear that. It's not like they rushed it out in like the last nine months to like the movies release date. Yeah. So. Will the game also be in 3D? No. I don't think they didn't even talk about the movie, but in 3D or anything when I was there. So, um. I'm so done with flat. 2D. I also have been playing. So what did you do at Pixar? Oh, just. Do you steal anything? No, I just saw some interviews and I saw some like old concept art of Woody. Saw some interviews? Like what? You participated in this movie. I mostly watched actually. He also failed at the only fucking task I gave him. No, I looked and they didn't have it. So they didn't have it in any of the toys you wanted in their store. Wow. I had no idea that you were such a Pixar guy. It actually wasn't for me. So. I was supposed to go to this and go outside. This is for your vaginal campaign. It was for the vaginal campaign. But we had. They did have some really cool concept art all over the place. They wouldn't let us take pictures of of course. Man, it's like crazy like how much some of the characters in Toy Story change. Compascate your phones. They did when we first got in for the watching the movie part. Like you could not have anything that was electronic on your body. Wow. It took everything. So yeah, it was pretty crazy. That's ridiculous. Like pacemaker. God damn it. Yeah. But I mean, you know, in the movie of course looked really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as expected. But yeah, I also have been playing this last week. I've been playing black. If you guys remember that. Yeah. I've been thinking about it. I totally played that. And I was like, I want to go back and see if it's like fun still. And it's still fun. Of course, it's like rough. It's like a product of The Times. Like very much so. Like the animations look really silly. Like the guys like almost like jumped to their deaths when. And I forgot how non-violent that game is too. Oh yeah. It's like there's no blood whatsoever. When you hit a guy, all it is like a spark pop. Yep. And there's just like a spark. Oh yeah. I remember them like lighting up like Christmas trees. It's like a machine gun fire. Right. And that's how you-- That's a game that I actually never managed to play. I didn't know anyone who was really into it. I loved it when it came out. Yeah. I thought it was pretty. The story is completely throw away. It's awful. And it's like-- And it had for plot at all. And it totally had like destructible cover. That was the thing. It was like the first game that had like crazy, like destructible cover and crazy particle effects even for PS2 and Xbox times, especially for the PS2. Like you would, you know, walk up and shoot a room and all the woods exploding everywhere. And that game also is just like gun porn because every gun they give you has like a clip that's like three times larger than it is in real life. So you get an AK-47 to hold 100 bullets. And every guy is dropping 100 bullets. So as long as you're like moving forward and holding down the trigger, you basically never run out of ammo. It's just constantly shooting. But I also liked how in that game they made your crosshairs it was just a single white dot. A single dot. Yeah. But I mean, it makes you incredibly precise. Yeah. But that game is just like, it's still really cool. Of course, really rough in a lot of times and it's really, really linear. And like the AI is pretty awful at times. But the music in that game is still really cool too. Which is done by Steve Tilton, I guess people know. Chris Tilton. Chris Tilton. Sorry. Oh, weird. Yeah. Chris Tilton did that. Chris Tilton. I don't know. He does fringe. Yeah. He's. What's funny is I met that guy at, um, I met that guy at a, at a GDC like to, not, not last year, you see, but the GDC before that and he gave me a USB drive that had some music on it. Cause, uh, I don't know. Like he was just, it was like his business card or whatever and I was like, oh, thanks. Um, but now like I use that, I like, I deleted all the music and I, it's, it's my main, like moving stuff around from my recording computer to my downstairs computer thing. So it serves a vital, a life well-wasted function, but thanks dude for the USB stick. But yeah, that, that game black, I still think is a, a really cool game, a product of its time obviously, but still really cool. Nice. That's on, that's on downloadable, right? Like, uh, Xbox. I don't know. I think you can get it on Xbox. I don't know if it's an Xbox version. I don't think it's an Xbox version. I don't think it's an Xbox version. I'm pretty sure because I thought about getting it. Uh, I would recommend playing the first- Motherfucker. I'm pretty sure. And then there's like one part you get to it that's just like so hard that it just makes you want to quit. So I quit. I stop playing. All right. There you go. Yeah. Um, oh yeah. That's really, really hard this last week. But really cool. It's called, uh, do you have a PSP? Robert? I do. I feel like you would like this. If you, well, I haven't played my PSP on a long time either until this and, uh, it's called, uh, what did I do to deserve this? My Lord, too. Which is like, what? It's the sequel to holy invasion of privacy bad men. What did I do to deserve this? Yeah. Do you remember that? You had like a crazy title, holy invasion of privacy bad. It may not have come out here with that name. I think they got in trouble. Yeah. There was, there was a lawsuit going on. It did come out under that name. What? Yeah. It really does look really cool. Yeah. At least that's what it is called on IGN in the review. So, but, uh, but so, yeah, it turned on the, what the fucks iron. So basically what it is is it's like a really tongue and cheek game, uh, published by NIS, which does all these really weird tongue and cheek games from what I understand from Japan. So it's like the game, the game's humors is awesome. Right? The bat first. Cause you're like, you're like, you're like this god of destruction, but there's like this overlord guy, bad man, who's always telling you what to do and really you kind of figure out through the game that he's the one that's in control, even though he always talks about you, like you're a god, but it's just so funny the way he'll be like, this is a classic RPG. Let's go kill those bitches and he's like, or like, or like, uh, or like if you start spamming through his text when he's talking, he's like spamming, and they knew game, it's like they knew you would do that. So all of a sudden you'll read the text and be like quit hitting the X button so fast. You're going to break it. It's just like, it's an RPG or, well, and so the way it works, it's actually like the best explanation I've heard, it's like dig dug in a way. Whoa. So it's like, okay, it's like a grid, it's like a grid of soil and, and, and you have bad man who you have to place somewhere. So you dig through the soil as a little pickaxe and then when the enemies finally come, you have to place bad man in a spot in the dungeon where it'll take the enemies the longest to get to him. But the reason you're using the pickaxe to dig very particular routes through the soil is because soils have nutrients in them and hitting us a block with nutrients in it unleashes a monster. And so the, of course, the most basic monster can pick up nutrients from other blocks of soil and carry it to other blocks. So you need the most basic monsters to basically spread nutrients throughout your dungeon. And as blocks get more and more nutrients on them, bigger monsters will come out of them. And the next bigger monsters eat the base monsters. So you actually have a little like ecosystem of life going on. So you have to make sure that it's balanced between like the highest medium and lowest level monsters so that they can supply food to each other. Do you ever have a monster that inadvertently causes an oil spill that kills all the smaller monster? You do have monsters that will get way out of control like like the third higher monster lizard men all of a sudden just start eating way too many of the other ones and you'll have all of a sudden have a beast lizard men who move really slow. It's like this really quirky, really insane game the way that like you have to think, you have to think about making these base creatures so that they can spread the nutrients throughout your dungeon. And so basically, you can't fight the heroes that come in to take bad men at all. You basically have to build your routes the right way and break the blocks at the right times to make an army that will stop them before they get to him and pull your hero out of the dungeon. Or your bad guy out of the dungeon. So here's how long it's been since I've played PSP. Do they still make discs? You mean these? They do. And I am playing this game on a game. Okay, okay. I was wondering if it was a downloadable. You can download the original one off PSN for your PS3 as well. So you can play it on the PS3. Yeah, at least the first one. I don't know if you can play the second one. Oh, the new one. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure the first one was just basically the same game. I just love that I understand. I've just loved it as a sequel. Yeah. And it's just the writing and it's so like it's and it's ridiculously hard building the right type of dungeon because you have to think exactly about how you etch it out in the right pattern that will make your nutrient guys like the most valuable. It's really hard to explain in words, but if you play to you to understand, yeah, but it's super down sort of tower defense. It is kind of in a way except it's just incredibly complex, but the writing in it and the personality is so cool that you just want to keep playing like I love like there was like one part when I got to the second world. And when you start it, it's like Batman asks you he's like, does it bother you that this world looks exactly the same as the first, even though it's world to yes or no. And I was like, yes. And he's like, well, if it really bothers you, go get a piece of piece of colored plastic and put it over the screen. It's just like the guys acknowledge stuff like that, it makes it like have so much personality. I mean, of course, when you see a game that's like, what did I do to deserve this, my lord too? It's like, obviously, but they have a really good sense of humor. Yeah, I'm sure that game will sell horribly here. Not only because it's PSP exclusive, but just because it's like so weird. But it is. It totally feels to me like, you know, totally different game, but it feels to me like the same kind of school of thought and vibe like Barkley's shut up and jam guidance would come from. Oh, yeah. Right. It's totally like that. It's just insane. Like this game is just made by insane people who know that the product they're making is just fucking bizarre and for a cool audience. Right. Yeah. So that's super cool. That's it for me. I'm out. I'm out. Anyone else? Anyone else played a video game? Go ahead, Tyler. So, you know, back in it's time before time before World War II, there was really no paratroopers militaries because they really didn't know about falling back then, you know, like they do now. Is this a cat back? With Einstein's general theory of relativity is now confirmed, you know, it was argued over back then. I'm sure there are some people around here who would still fucking argue about a flat earth society person probably would probably and so they were trying to figure out, you know, how they can do this new paratrooper program in the army. So they figured they would contact some people who might know from the local wizards guild, some old old man and when they got wizards, I'm going to let you pass on wizards guild. Keep going. And so they got him to come sort of instruct these future parachute troopers, you know, about falling and you know, you've seen like they have the dummy airplane and the people jump out. So they practice their form. So the old man's there and he's got a big covered, he's got a big bunch of covered cargo. Joanne structure calls everyone around says time for the lesson to parachute. And so the wizard starts throwing cats out the plane and says land like that. Cat fact, cat fact. Now I will say though, it is true that cats have a natural instinct that if they fall from more than two floors, they naturally change their dynamics to take the fall. But yeah, yeah, that's why they were using them as examples. Wow. What the hell is that Robert? Drawing cats out the plane, drawing cats out the plane. Okay. So it's either what games. That's for the podcast ended. I played Halo Reach. Yeah. It won't stop. Drawing cats out the plane. So Halo Reach. Halo Reach. How do you like that so far? I don't like it at all. I'm done with Halo. I played like three rounds and was just like, you know what I. That's definitely enough time to really get a feel for me and because, you know, I was just thinking about it like this. It's like, think about Doritos. All the time. I already do. As long as they've existed, think about like how many different packaging's they've thrown on them or like how many different varieties of just nacho cheese, extreme nacho cheese, double X. I love the moment. It's not choches black, nacho cheese white. It's like this is just another fucking, it's another package of nacho cheese Doritos, except it's with more spice, so it's more delicious. I remember like going on my post-college stereotypical European track with my girlfriend who became my wife and after being in Europe for like three months, we went to stay with my grandparents who live in Germany and they bought from the local army like PX, two bags of Doritos and some like paste pecante, so they said it out for us and we ate like all to like everything on it. It was like meet me and her and we ate like the entire bottle of salsa and two giant bags of Doritos. In one night, we were just like, oh my God, that's so good. That's the start for anything that you might categorize as like the American food or American food. What I'm saying is that he likes Halo Reach. Oh no, no, I'm saying if I were in a world without video games for several years and someone gave me Halo Reach, I might play it for a day and then throw up. Sure, I could also agree that, you know, if I lived in a vacuum where there was no progression and shooters at all. Oh, James Christ, Tyler, stop. I just think in general for me, like I'm not, I don't know, I'm not that interested in like ever playing another first person shooter online unless it's something like really particularly special. Like left for dead was a game that's like, oh okay, this revitalizes the whole idea for me. And until there's another one of those things, I really don't care, like I didn't care about modern warfare, I don't care about Halo, I'm not going to play Gears of War online with people. I'll play like single player games or co-op games, but as far as like put me in a room with a bunch of fucking 15 year olds and go to town, I'm not interested, like not going to happen. So maybe you'll play Halo single player? Maybe, I don't know, is it going to suck like the third one did or hell. Because that was terrible. Oh, yeah. I didn't play it. I didn't play it. Yeah. The single player was really good and especially you play it co-op, you know, and that's really the only thing I'm excited about for Reach is the single player stuff just like, you know, the co-op stuff. I mean, that's interesting but like, you know, I was playing online with one of my good friends and listener, H2O, shout out, whoa, whoa. I'm really just trying to flicker, sorry, I was doing the, I was doing the Ollie G, Booyah Kasha. Anyway. It sounds so painful. Yeah, you have to like get your index finger to loosen up a lot. It's tough. You got to practice, you have to practice. But anyway, it's like, you know, he made a good point. You know, we were talking about it. Like, I mean, you only get, you only ever get a kill in Halo Reach off of some ice scraps. Like all the weapons are so fucking weak. You only get a kill in Halo Reach off someone else's scraps. No, don't try to know. You know what I mean? Are you about, are you for being the guy who's really good at hitting him? Yeah, exactly. Because like, look, look, look, I'm going on a high level. I'm going on a high level. You make your dismissively fucking reductive Dorito argument on Halo and then you say something stupid. Like, oh, the only kills anyone ever gets in Halo or scraps, but they have to be someone good scraps. No. Yeah. No. Let me tell you the truth of what happened. When I joined the game, my team started winning. So hey, but anyway. But if you're only getting scraps, they're not winning because of you. I was the highest scoring player on my team of randoms. But what scraps are you getting? Everyone else's. What you're saying, what's I was trying to say is that the kills that you're getting is because someone else shot them enough that then they died and you finished them off. Someone had an assault rifle apparently with, you know, full metal jackets inside and they unloaded the entire clip onto one of the players, but that didn't take them down all the way. So I had to come along and unload my entire clip and a grenade may lay attack, and then maybe they die. They're robots. It's an exaggeration. But Halo Reach is read the weapons are ridiculously fucking weak. Or is the armor ridiculously powerful? You know what? It's probably the way they are doing the shields. I mean, they are doing them differently this time. Yeah. With the way they actually have health in this game. Yeah. Partially, though, that Halo has never been about just shooting people. Yeah. It's about, you know, it's always been a combination of grenade gun. You know, and here's what I came to. Halo is getting more of a sport than it is getting a war game, and that's why I don't like it as much. I mean, it is a sport. That's why I like Battlefield more than I like Halo right now. I think actually that's pretty much it explains why I don't like it. Which is like, Halo is just like football. One of the reasons I want another jock dude thing to do, you know, one of the reasons I like, you know, the reason it's a jock thing to do is because it's the most fucking marketed first person shooter on the planet until modern warfare. Totally. And because warfare is, you know, at least has like the team, like sort of a team fortress rip off elements that are interesting to say, well, well now it kind of does. You know, the reason that Halo caught on is because it was so easy to do a fucking land game. Yeah. And you know what? And, you know, I was trying to think like the magic of Halo for me was the first Halo. To me, it embodied the sort of like pushing of a new generation of gaming. I mean, everything from like the loading screen in the first Halo, like just ooze, like this is the most technology is being pushed. Like these are the best graphics we can get, you know, like when you're in that warthog and you're flying over the hills at the end and some dudes playing like a Celtic melody on a really nasty electric guitar, you're like, whoa, I believe there was a time when that was like really next level shit. And then it was like last level shit about six months later, but like it's been last level shit for a long time. Like Halo has been behind the times for a very, very long time. See, you know what, I, this is going to be the point where I finally call someone on this because I keep hearing that argument, but I never hear anyone elaborate on that argument. Halo is tired. Halo 3 sucked. Why did Halo 3's campaign suck Robert? Well, because it was incredibly inconsistent and had no real story beyond that, you remember the moment in which you land in that spaceship and you start facing the whatever like incredible alien snipers that kill you in one hit. Right. Yeah, the things that hang on the wall. Yeah, and they look kind of like a shrimp like some kind of incredible annoyances that kept that game from having the sort of epic feeling of the first game or even the second game. Like to me, I played, I played through the game twice because you know, you could play online with people and it's just, I don't know, it just wasn't. I think the problem is when you have a world and a character that is so simple, it's really hard to do it again and again and retain that the same sort of magical feeling, you know? Like, Halo is great because it was so friggin simple, but after a while, you're just some robot with a mask and you're fighting random bad guys and yeah, I mean, it's just like you said, it's the magical feeling and I don't think you have to say what it is. It's an X factor, it's there is something about the first Halo's campaign that they have not managed to capture since. And I don't have to say what it is because I have a Halo 2 with the greatest one for me personally. Halo 2 was fun online because it was like, you know, you could, well, I think you were talking about the Halo, you're trying to campaign. Yeah. Yeah. I still think the Halo 2 campaign was the best as well. Halo 1 campaign frustrated the hell out of me because it was the cut and paste level design halfway through. Yeah, if you want to talk about what I want to say, I feel like the original Halo is level design is fine. Like library. Okay. Sure. Not only that, but Halo, the original Halo, after the silent cartographer, you just have like good level shit level, good level shit level. Yeah. And whereas I feel like just Halo 3 was much better about maintaining like these giant sandbox combat environments in a much more interesting way than the original Halo ever was right down to the point where you have two scarabs and you're flying around or riding around on a Jeep. And I've never played a game that allowed you to pull off such epic shit on the fly. I will say that like the game always had an amazing thing for this sort of, you know, battles that you run into that could play out differently every single time because they were like said like open and they did have this cool, um, loop of things that you could do in the game that you would wanted to do over and over again. But I mean comparing Halo, any of the Halo games against just Half-Life 2, which I realize is an incredibly different game, but like if I'm gonna play a first person shooter and I've already played Half-Life 2, I don't really care about playing another Halo game. Like, give me something that matches that, you know, and it's been a long time since Half-Life 2 came out a few years ago from that conversation when we first started the podcast about what is a better shooter and what's a better experience. Yeah, Half-Life 2 is not a bad shooter. Half-Life 2 has a play out in the same way as the like Halo does, you know, like all the sort of interesting fun, like tell your friends how you blew up five grunts with a It's true. There would never be a weekly video series of cool Half-Life kills as there is on IGN for weekly Halo kills. Oh, Jesus Christ. Let's not talk about that. No, there's something to Half-Life, I'm gonna be the middleman. I'm not gonna go totally Tyler on it and say there's nothing to it. I get what people like about it. Oh, sorry. Halo. I get what people like about it. The thing that surprises me about your hate for reach is that one of the reasons I like bad company too is because there is something very Halo-like in a lot of the way that it's combat dynamic unfolds and that you have so many options. In so many ways to affect the battlefield except your options are more directed at killing things from a distance like melee and bad company too is usually just a way to shoot to someone that they really suck. Or an OSHA button. Yeah. Where is it? I mean, Halo Melee has always been extremely important and they just made... It's a part of the arsenal. Not only that, but they've added a class in reach that essentially makes you a fucking freight train, which is where you hold down the sprint button to close the gap and just melee the shit out of someone. I did used to really love playing co-op in that game and meleeing my co-op partner right before... Oh, yeah. Yeah. The checkpoint lines just because you could. But I just feel like you're judging. I mean, you say that Halo is like a sport, but to me that just speaks to a certain balance that's present that... I don't know. Yeah. And to me, that's it. It's the fact that I feel like Bungie's weapon design philosophy is make it weak. Let's think of a cool idea. Make it weak. So the people don't get close. Well, it is a beta. Let's say that too. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It is true. And so I really don't even want to get into weapons balancing discussions because that's whatever. I don't think they're ever going to get into weapons. Yeah. Yeah. Really. For real, for real. I don't think it's make it weak. We don't want one person to be able to annihilate a room full of people with a clip like you can in Modern Warfare or Bad Company too. It's a different sort of game. Yeah. And the reason that I'm like, my RPM meter raises so high is because Halo has become the game where it's okay to be reductive and say this game sucks without explaining it. Like at least with Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2 when you say, oh man, the campaign and Modern Warfare 2 really sucked, you'll have like this laundry list of reasons why you don't like it. Like, oh, it's the endlessly responding enemies that spam grenades. Oh, it just funnels you in the same direction all the time. Oh, perks ruin the game. I do. I do think that a lot of it is like cultural that like Halo is for 12 year olds and it's kind of red state and very not good. Well, it's just the accessibility means that people who aren't typically the nerd that got beat up in high school can get into Halo. And yeah. Like one thing I tweeted, I feel like Halo is like line dancing. Like sure, everyone can join in, but it's like it's soulless like you're not like it's not dancing. You're just like jumping in and doing the motions that everyone else is doing. That's so fucking disingenuous to call the game soulless. It reminds me like, you know, there was a lot of that in GoldenEye. People loved GoldenEye back in the day even though it's kind of a terrible game. It's so fucking disingenuous to call game soulless because it doesn't have a gameplay mechanic that you don't like. For me, it just comes down to the fact that I haven't even downloaded the beta yet even though I have a key, even though I got a key early all comes down to the, that it seems like it's close enough to the old one so far that I just haven't been like excited. What I mean when I say soulless is there's nothing exciting anymore that can happen to me in a Halo game. Like I, I, I, I just, I want to see the game that happens when, when Halo and red faction make love for when Halo went like with like insanely destructive. Bad company too is sort of what happens when Halo meets. Say like I really disagree with your Halo and Bad Company 2 comparison and it's because like Halo is a lot more about controlling a map where and what I mean by that is you have to know where all of the proper weapons and items are and then you're trying to control those particular locations and you're running around in circles around in the same small area. And battlefield the way that you control a map is it's a lot different it's not about where weapons are placed it's about like you know cover and placement and choke points. And so like I think that there's like some separate design philosophy. Well yeah and you're much more fragile in Bad Company 2 than you are in any Halo game. Yeah, yeah. And I do think that I, at least I'm hoping that something that will change and reach somewhat is that the different loadouts eventually will carry different weapons. Like for now every loadout has the fucking assault rifle and a pistol. Yeah, but that's kind of what I'm saying is that like if you I don't really feel like you can do that in Halo because there are weapons that are clearly better than other weapons to have on you you know like if if one class always starts out with a rocket launcher let's say then everybody's always going to choose that one. Well yeah, but I mean there will never be a point where one class always has a rocket launcher and that's always going to be something that's a limited resource on the map. So I understand what you're saying and yeah it gets frustrating when people are camping like the beam rifle or the sniper rifle or the Spartan laser. I mean Halo for me is always but that's just again that's just me that's always just been what Halo is about. It's about controlling a map but you can ask and holding a map exactly and that particular kind of map control has never appealed to me. That's why I just think like you know when are we going to get over all these doom clones? I think the armor abilities go a long way toward making those things more interesting because there are new ways to react to the things that people were doing. Can you guys join with me in trying to rebrand First Person Shooter as Doom clone? I really want to bring back Doom clone as the genre name for First Person Shooter. I'm just going to start when I start reviewing every First Person Shooter I'm going to be like up here we have another Doom clone. I mean meanwhile like there are huge elements of bad company too that are lifted straight from Halo that are very different from the original Battlefield games. Like regenerating health and deviating everything. Regenerating health isn't everything now. Well yeah and like regenerating health is an Alan Wake. True. Everyone wants regenerating health. Regenerating health keeps things moving. Yeah well I like it. But Halo Reach you have to get health patches too but most of your health still regenerates. And I'm not saying everything in Halo's throw away shit I would love Battlefield to have Halo's matchmaking. Fuck I would kill to have that. Oh yeah well just about every FQ out. To be able to hang out with eight of my friends and about the game. About every Doom clone out there was just a hat. Halo's matchmaking. What else have you been playing so that Tyler? Have you played any other Doom clones? Yeah. No no other Doom. Unfortunately like I boxed up my 360 to send it off to get repaired this week so. That's what you get from talking shit. Like how many times have you done it? Twice. Oh man. You ain't got it. Dude. Earlier like just to sidetrack us for saying Robert were you laughing because my cat made a head hammock out of the court of Matt's microphone. My cat is so fucking fat and lazy. She was using the mic cord like a head hammock. Yeah the mic cord is you know it's attached to the mic and then it's attached to the stand and so and now people are looking at her so she stops her and so she sort of like rested. Actually my thought was that she was trying to very slowly kill her. Tyler do you want to hear something that will drive you slowly insane? What's the Anthony has had a spare 360 sitting at a UPS warehouse for at least the last five days. Cause I say it got broken so it just went off and it came back and he's been he's been to occupied. I'm glad though dude man my fucking 360 you know I set it on the show it fucking etched a perfect circle into my Assassin's Creed 2 disc where it's like unreadable and I hate that man. You should take it to go get you should just take it somewhere to get rebuffed man yeah like a like go to an indie video store yeah man hook me up yes but you would have you been oh well I played some reach to I don't hate it as much as Tyler I I hate it because I suck and I like I get my ass beat because most people hate games just cause they suck at them yeah I mean it certainly doesn't help enjoying a game when you suck at it yeah but I actually I'm sure that's part of why I don't like modern warfare 2 anymore right exactly but I actually super enjoy the the the class mods like sprint and you know the jet pack and I think it's I think it's the the shield thing where like you can shield yourself and then you emit an EMP burst and you can do it at any point but you stop while you doing it yeah I think that that's a super is that what it's called yeah that's a super brilliant piece of game design that nobody has ever thought of before at least to my knowledge and I think it's fucking awesome okay the who is he to say no to be a number three okay I was funny is I was like oh Anthony's having a beer no he's not he's bringing me a beer I know I thought there was something wrong with that picture when I glanced and I thought oh wait he's getting a beer right he doesn't drink so you want to know why I'm not getting any a left always to done tonight it's Anthony's yep it's all Anthony's fault we have to go Anthony what a jerk continue and but and I did dig the jet pack but the jet playing the jet pack in halo all it really made me want to do was play tribes so I started playing some tribes totally sucked me right back in and like this last saturday I seriously played like five hours of tribes man man man what it's my turn to talk about games I'm going to give you the biggest boner in the world and then let's see I'm I think I'm almost beat clash of heroes so that's awesome and I got the new DLC for tilt to live and like I totally love gauntlet I've been playing a ton of gauntlet it's just such that it's not a game mode I ever would have thought to put in this kind of game like those guys explain gauntlets is until to live yeah so it's like okay you say gauntlet I think gauntlet yeah well yeah so it's not an obstacle course it's an obstacle course yeah and so like the stuff is coming at you constantly from right to left and you have a meter at the bottom like an energy meter a time meter however you want to think of it it's constantly decreasing and you have to pick up the orbs on the screen as they're coming across and to refill that bar and as soon as that bar runs out you're dead or if you run into things too many times you're dead you have like three lives or whatever and so but it's really clever like it like the red dots come together and form weapons that and then they throw themselves at you there's ones that are kind of like there's little mazes of red dots that you have to carefully tilt your guy through they'll they'll have like these spinning spoke wheels that all cross over once another and you have to carefully tilt through them or in order to pick up the power-ups to keep your time meter to keep your timer health never you look like you should have Marlboro's rolled up in one of those sleeves so it's just one of those things where it's like a super clever addition and it's a free addition to the game so if you've got tilt to live you definitely got to go and if you don't have to live it's only like a dollar yeah exactly yeah well they don't make it for blackberry boo no they should make it forever come out of blackberry there are a few like games on blackberry but not really man I can't wait till they make it till to live iPad version so I can see it in HD on Ryan's who knows man I can have an iPhone by the end of the year we'll see go for it dude I'm waiting till Windows Phone 7 comes out so I can weigh all my options yeah that makes sense because achievements man achievements but dude like a iPhone iPhone and you know what Android of course emerging are proof positive that mobile platforms are they are a video game platform now you really have to you have to treat them as seriously as you do any other platforms be honest we're never going to see this kind of shit on Android we'll see a few games on Android but we're never going to see anything like the the iPhone marketplace for games maybe I mean I think I think and I think you're right in in the overall the app store is and and the iPhone is going to offer more but I think we're going to find that there's going to be some things that are going to come out on Android now or eventually as the phones get more powerful that people are just going to go like man I kind of want an Android just so I could play that game I'd be like an Android exclusive I just I feel like for companies to feel like they can be successful they need a closed platform to sell games on it's true just like if if somebody wants to make an mp3 player with a music service that's going to be successful it has to be a closed platform which is why I mean there's a reason that Microsoft just fucked overall of its partners a couple years ago when it did the zoom yeah of course the place for sure I didn't think so but yeah that's that's all I really been playing I've actually seen a lot of stuff over the last couple weeks that you can't talk about talk about more tell me why just as a total aside since you guys were talking about the zoom why is it that there isn't just some you know Taiwanese made mp3 player that vaguely feels like an iPod that lets you share music with anyone else I'll tell you why on the street and it's because the cell phone companies have a lockdown on the manufacturing components for the LCD screens the touch screens in the smartphones like one way that they're preventing sort of a you know device piracy is to basically buy out all the inventory from these companies they're completely vertically integrated yeah exactly I'm just surprised at this point that there isn't a device that people could have in their pocket that lets you share music with people in person because I would find that to be like so cool you can if you jail break your iPhone yeah well if you're made out of money you can do a lot of there are these things called record companies and unfortunately they're still around and still like suing people wait what's the deal with jail break and I finished I thought that was I was thinking of like buying you know when you buy it without being a sister oh no no no no no no like seriously there's an app that you download and you run it and about four or five minds actually a legit iPhone but like I know some people that have done this and it's like you can that sounds like the most that's covering state it totally was covering it totally was and I'm not ashamed Ryan one of those things like there's a you just run an app and it just makes it so that your iPhone is now an open platform it can run unsigned code you can not get like updates and that sort of thing no you have to wait for the hacked update see that's scary will it brick it or will it just lock it again if you try to update it yeah like if you plug it into iTunes and try to update it or whatever um I think you know I don't know actually I think it'll just update the firmware I don't if your iPhone is Joe Birkin and you don't know I wouldn't suggest finding out changes are someone's jail iPhone is jailbreak thing they know they're like yeah yeah exactly like I was a broken iPhone who didn't update who didn't update the firmware who's never updated the firmware and finally the whatever the hack software that he uses that comes with an install because it has to come with its own installer that will install the apps on your iPhone because that's basically what iTunes is it's an iPhone app installer and so this hack software has to have that and so he didn't update his forever and then they finally released an app installer from the hack that he had before with the updated firmware and so he did it and then it took like six hours for his iPhone to like update and re-syncing everything like it took so long you know 18 months ago I would have said I'm sure there's no with a jailbroken iPhone that isn't savvy enough to do it but they have sold so many iPhones at this point that there gotta be people jailbroken iPhones that have no fucking idea how to do it yeah well and well what I'm saying is that it's super easy there's an app that you download you run it and boom it's jailbroken hmm Arthur you um speak I go Arthur go about 19 hours over the course of the weekend playing long planet - 19 hours it is that long that it's just long that's what she said true it is it does have girth basically it lost planet - is broken down into six episodes each episode has chapters and each chapter has missions there is no save for mission to mission really if you don't finish a chapter you start right back at the beginning of a chapter a chapter can take anywhere from half an hour to an hour and a half and frequently at the end of chapters there is a large boss that will kill you in a couple of hits over and over again and then you go back to the beginning of the chapter that that I would just never play that I would I didn't have that luxury that would happen to me that would happen to me twice and I would never turn I would turn the game I would happen to me once if I if I would even sell it I would fucking break it in half to estimate that happened to me about five times yeah Jesus man the worst thing about the first lost maybe six or seven times the boss battles so lost planet - is a beautiful game like from a visual and audio standpoint lost planet - is an extremely impressive game first and always look great too yeah except this one isn't just an ice this one is yes this one is a ton of different environments it's jungle and desert and snow and space but and I mean the V.S. are still cool and they're they're acred that are way bigger on a regular basis than the last boss Wow from lost planet Wow cool like so from that standpoint it looks beautiful and I'm sure that's part of the reason why people are so angry that I gave lost planet to a six because it looks so beautiful it does look beautiful unfortunately it is everything that is still wrong with Japanese game design from having to wait through these excruciatingly long animation and activation sequences for everything everything interrupts you uh oh now remember the first the first one had a real bad problem like when you would get knocked down yeah so you'll get knocked down by an acred and it'll just keep stomping the ground over and over again and Anthony is farting which is why no one is talking because they're trying not to laugh and failing Matt so you'll just give a really concerned looks like you'll get knocked down and over and over again and not be able to get back up there like bosses will take almost all of your health away and to reach fill your health you have to hold down the start button which takes about a good two or three seconds to get rolling and then takes another five or six or even eight seconds to fill your health again and you can't do anything while that's happening except for walk around so I know and we were just kind of lamenting that everything has regenerative health but I mean would would would we just want it here I mean why do we have to eventually your health will start to slowly tick back up by taking away from your tang from your tang if you will I want to play I want to play a Japanese like action game where you only regain health by drinking a cup of hot tea like in real life that would be so amazing I'm probably about to die and you like run and microwave a cup of tea and then you have to drink it as fast as possible you know that could very well be no more heroes three but I digress I would love for that to happen the controls are are very are very strange and very different from those third-person action games in ways that don't make sense even when you set the controls to quote unquote resemble a third-person action game do you still use B for everything like the the melee attack button is also the button you hold down to run or the button you hold down to pick up guns or the button you hammer to activate data posts it's just it's a really clunkly design game the co-op is it gonna pour poorly well I can kind of see the melee and the the run button being the same I think that could work but like having it do everything else because there's an x button just right on the other side of that B button right I'm just saying like I think it could work I'm trying to think of what the x button fires your anchor which you can still only do when you're standing on the ground right and not moving yeah you can't do it while falling and it also activates mechs and that is pretty much the extent of what the x button does meanwhile the B button is pulling some crazy duty yes I just said duty Tyler yeah it's just it's just not it's really really not good and co-op is implemented poorly like there's no jump in jump out co-op you have to wait in a lobby for them to complete a mission then you'll join in the netcode seems solid until you get into a vehicle that traverses the world quickly and then the other the person that's not driving it will experience a pretty serious lag and they really emphasize vehicles that hold more than one person right so it's supposed to be a feature and it feels like it's kind of thrown in um and multiplayer is just feels like the last lost planet well I did like multiplayer in the first lost planet yeah the last last planet came out three and a half years ago yeah so we had evolved somewhat from there I um so it was just it's just not a good game it's a beautiful game it's a shame that it's not good would you say it's the same person doom clone totally I really wanted the co-op to be good because I remember when we had heard about like a four-player co-op four-player yeah because the idea of taking on these let like giant acreage or being in suits together yeah I want to play it doesn't work very well though the levels aren't set out like levels in this in a campaign it's like their multiplayer levels where you're trying to get from the one end of it to the other so it's just that was a problem with the first game though is I just remember so many like having played through that game I remember slogging through giant open fields yeah where you have like random enemies you can fire at you from a hundred feet away or whatever and the first cover the first last planet just came out at a really opportune time in the Xbox 360's life cycle it's like there wasn't a ton of other stuff like it and it was really pretty it had a fantastic demo great explosions yeah seriously some of the best explosions ever just really amazing particle effects like the snow in particular also looked really great and that's all still intact at least on the 360 version yeah but um this reminds me of like Matt we were having a conversation when we left the last show last week we were talking about like Japanese no we weren't I only talked to you on air I've told you not to talk to me in real life right I know you do the entire time the whole bar right home I just sit there quiet but yeah we were talking about you know our frustration with you know eastern design games and I was like you know a lot of Japanese games it seems like the more you learn about them the less you'd like them and like with this situation like yeah cool up that sounds badass well uh you have to wait um the levels you have to do this whole super long level actually to complete it and it's just like oh god like can't you just make it fun like don't do this the shit that sucks like when you're playing in the campaign if you die you respawn at a data post right there are literally points in the game where the enemy AI will camp your spawns wow you think it's Fruster it's like there are points in the game where I felt like it's a feature man where I was it was the war of the machines and I was losing I don't know I can I can relate to some stuff like that sometimes I like a game to be just incredibly brutally punishing I think I think everyone likes that sometimes I understand that there are clubs that offer that if you know the right person in San Francisco I'm not a Republican but Robert judging from what you like I mean to me it seems like you're talking about a game more like trials or or like a explosion man then something that's hard because of the design those are so nuanced of control that they're that they demand absolute perfection in your execution yeah that is not this fucking game but sometimes I'm trying to I know that there must be a specific example in my mind what about um the zombie game Dead Rising which had a ridiculous save system just like that game is a lot of people hated it yeah like Anthony like I I can't defend that game as being like perfect but at the same time as much as I was frustrated by that game the having like your nuts on the table basically the whole time like made it um really really um invigorated you know you're like any any minute you all the time you just spent on this game could be completely wasted well Robert I've got great news for you because Dead Rising 2 has the same save system dude I can't believe you like that game like I mean are there actually to be fair I like to say right now that I saw some of the enthusiasm in Robert's face drain when I told him that right now oh no no no I um and they feel the same way it's a design feature not a problem and I gotta I gotta say I gotta say I like that they're kind of sticking their ground on even though it's kind of a stupid thing to stick your ground down I'm gonna be honest kid I got spunked I thought both Dead Rising and Lost Planet both had fantastic demos like those two demos sold me on the game Lost Planet especially but Dead Rising just being able to 15 minutes to run around the small fucking up zombies I was like sold that's all I wanted to do it came out at a really opportune time but again except the except the dead Dead Rising to me like played way better than than the boss played Dead Rising recently no you should try to go back to it they control surprisingly similar late to Lost Planet actually well you know the funny thing is if I can plug some of my own shit here um a couple days ago I just put up uh an interview that we did with Inafune which I think I mentioned right on Twitter at barrier5.tv yeah and uh it where Inafune is talking about you know all the he says you know why Japanese game design is failing and how they need to take more from the west and uh how internally at Capcom it's an uphill battle for him that he's like unfortunately a lot of people internally still don't seem to understand this vision and they want to just keep doing the same thing that they are doing so I do kind of have to always be the guy with the megaphone trying to shout for these new ideas and unfortunately when he gets caught in the middle what we get is like the fucking video game equivalent of Engerish yeah but but see here's the thing it's like so good but then like you still you look at games like uh Dead Rising and Lost Planet and what I see is some I see progress you know yeah Lost Planet 2 feels like a step backwards from Lost Planet 1 yes really there are problems in Lost Planet 1 that people that were pretty much universally acknowledged including poor enemy balance uh controls that felt a little stiff uh the whole flipping the gun over your shoulder if you turn too much the wrong way uh the lack of a proper zoom in button which this game still isn't having even though even though they claim it does that they didn't fix and the enemy design or the encounter design and this is worse in a lot of ways where it seems like it's their intention to kill you over and over again because they'll just respawn you at a data post I don't I don't mind like the Japanese crew being like the traditionalists in gaming um I sometimes wish that they would just get even more traditional and just give up on the whole like 3d mega block buster how does it play demons? whole worm uh I've I've played a little bit of it um and it seems it seems cool not not really my home base in things you know but uh I could be talked into giving it more of a shot but uh but I'm thinking like you know okay Capcom why not just do 2d games like let's just give up on all this modern stuff I mean I go back to where where you guys used to do a lot of great stuff I don't need a game to be forgiving I don't I mean I love you all know that you're a pussy I love like love it yeah and that includes ninja guide and on its hardest setting true because at least at least with that I know that I'm given the tools to succeed even and if I'm too weak sauce to do it then I can get better whereas this just feels like I'm not given yeah we're good tools yeah there's different I can succeed yeah there's a difference between acquiring skill in order to overcome a challenge and fighting against bad game design yeah it's like it's not hard to hammer a nail into a piece of wood with a wrench it's just not very satisfying right and that's what lost but lost by the two feels like hammering a nail into a piece of wood with a wrench weird and also in afunae didn't produce or direct lost by it too it was takaiuchi that didn't um who is also weaving the resident evil series he's also the person who is in charge of resident evil five so that could explain some of these sort of weird idiosyncrasies of that game as well did um did Capcom publish dark void yes they did you know um it wasn't that British or gay it was american I think yeah or is airtight American and honestly I think even I'm pretty sure they even know it's a bad game well what I was gonna say about that is like dark void oh yeah they definitely what I think is interesting is I I don't know and I don't even know if it was reviewed but I would have to wager that dark void zero was better received than the full oh absolutely game oh dark guys know what I'm talking about I didn't care I didn't care about dark void at all and I totally downloaded their void zero see right here the best part is here it's kind of like a almost like a like they're like like mega mega man yeah it's dark void the the only good part about dark void was a soundtrack which was an archive I actually like the flying way mmm I like it was lying in dark void I thought the soundtrack to it totally got me that's crimson skies vibe I liked it man the flying crimson skies was better it was not saying it wasn't I feel like it not only was it better but it was like six years before seven years yeah I know like I couldn't believe it um bear McCreary uh the guy that did the music for battle star Galactica did the music for dark void yeah it is really good so I yeah I don't know um I was I was concerned that I felt that way about lost planet 2 because it was being pushed as this huge game but I am not the only way that felt that way and occasionally it's nice to see that you're not the only person that didn't like something right because you don't like something and other people do you must be wrong true that's what the the internet tells me right um I also play transformers we're for Cybertron is that the one that you're talking about that's gonna give me a boner so you like jetpacks do you and you like robotic looking things well and how would you feel about turning into a jet sir that can also hover so imagine trying to rock it across the fucking map whenever you want to can you also build bases no oh you can shoot a healing gun well that's cool as a transformer because being uh healing grenades that's awesome can you like throw inner john anthem uh yeah if you want to consider my star wars books you can I can I say am I the only person who is incredibly surprised at like the cache and and and and like popularity in the modern day of transformer not surprising all of me like five years ago like transformers is going to be this is gonna come back transformer no transformers never went away transformers has been a huge toy license since the day it's okay okay but like you know but now it's a huge huge huge huge it was an interesting for a long time you know I think the movies did thrust it pretty probably back just the fact they made movies and now they're making games I mean when I was a kid I would have killed for a transformers come on robber gi joe the movie come on I mean they just reach back in the bag you know we got 18 the movie come out transformers warfare Cybertron feels like the culmination of every transformers toy fantasy you ever had they're making a magic eight ball movie if i had to pick between seeing the magic eight ball movie or the asteroids movie I'm going magic eight ball yeah they're gonna run out of stuff okay no it's okay because in 15 years they'll remake the asteroids movie yeah yeah so tell me more about so remember when you were kids if you were playing with other people of transformers you'd say bang bang you're dead and you say no you didn't get me I flew away right like that right there's no arguing in this because you flew away or you didn't right um so there it's a class-based shooter nice there's uh the third person yes so imagine the sort of gears perspective except marcus turns into a jet or a tank or a truck or a car this is for the neo geo pocket exactly i'm just i'm just realizing as arthur talks about this that it just sounds like this and toy story all these games are basically about make bringing out the baby side and us that wants to play with toys but putting a controller in our hands sounds good so this arthur's right it's like shoot shoot bang bang no i got away you're really doing it no no but i fired up countermeasures you didn't get me it's like no there's no argument so like how do we're having any arguments around as a kid that i fired counter measures you didn't have a great difference i'm playing with exo squad toys that's for sure what was that question Matt i well how does uh how to like i always felt when i'm watching the cartoons as a kid i was like well the decepticons should really always win because they can fucking fly except there are autobot jets well i mean there's some autobot jets but yeah but what if you transport what if you transform into a car how does a car beat a jet the cars can actually be pretty fucking fast and maneuverable i mean so there are four classes there are scouts which are like bumblebee right class cars and coupes and they're also snipers uh there's scientists which are the jets which fly and have a lot of support shit and also heal uh there are leaders which are trucks which is like optimists and yes sound wave is a truck okay so even when you see them transformers just gonna ask if there is a deep class for sound okay it's gonna be an easy sound wave they basically needed to figure out a way to fit everyone into those four classes there is a point in the single player game i've been promised where sound wave takes the form that people expect he would take so but but that's what i was gonna ask you is that it's it's done like uh the cartoons right not like the movies this is officially canon origins for the cartoon right this takes place before this because it occurs before they come to erythron they don't look like earthship they're cybertonian vehicles okay so it's not like a semi-truck it's like a it's a space truck yeah it's not like an earth brand that you would recognize and right right so he's not it was so he's not he's like a bumblebee is not a beetle he's not a beetle dragon like no but i mean there's some sort of the visual resemblance he looks like he looks like a hybrid you know man i i i check out the multiplayer trailer and man i was immediately my boner man got stoked it's like it's like because the second i sat down like i i had this idea in my head of what i wanted to do so the first thing i picked was a jet and the match starts and i just take off running jump in the air click in the left stick which turns me into a jet and i rocket off to the other side of the map that's pretty awesome and then i see some dudes and so the first thing i'm thinking is i'm gonna fucking kill those guys click in the stick so yeah well you can change it okay they say they go yes god the sound effects are so good the sound effects are actually a lot like the movie but ask them about it they talked about how the sound effects in the movie are very successful and sort of getting that shit across so i fly over i fly just behind and way above one of the other team and transform again and fucking collide with the ground and melee attack the shit out of him and fucking break him into pieces cool and then i jump up into the air turn into a jet and find somebody else yeah man i mean to me one of the most striking things about that trailer was that the how cool it looks when you're just running as a robot dude and you jump into your vehicle form or vice versa right like they nail it if you're if you're like a scout like you can like zoom to a corner of the map like do a fucking hard spin transform into a robot zoom in with your sniper rifle and cap somebody sweet or if you're a truck like you run turn into a truck and just run someone the fuck over so if you kill one of the leadership class can you steal their matrix of leadership no but you can what does this give come out you sold it you can i mean they're like there are different weapons on the ground and the way that even the way they use weapons are cool like they don't like just hold a gun it integrates with them like so like they've just got one hand that's a gun until you hit melee then it transforms into their melee weapon which is like optimists or like the robots that look like optimists have axes and others have like giant maces and fucking swords and shit like that it is cool it is bonertown like this is like five-year-old bonertown it's so funny saying the transformation that occurred on Robert because it's exactly like back in the day when you and Sean our old co-worker did that thing where you guys went and told people about fake video games and sold them ideas aren't there fucking sold you through this conversation like he was like and then you transform a fly and you're like yeah awesome and i like there people talk about games it always sounds cooler than it actually is yeah that's how i feel you look at the trailer because the trailer dude and i just want to have cool game types too yeah so like there's obviously deathmatch which is super fun and there it's a class-based shooter with leveling up so you slowly unlock more abilities and new weapons and as you play through the campaign you unlock new chassis so like you can change the shape of your of your robot for your different classes can i paint my robot totally you can paint your robot cool so if you ever wanted to see a very an optimist that was gray and black you could totally do that dead optimist dead-optimist yeah dead-optimist yeah that is dead-optimist it is actually and and they also have the the chick auto bot i saw in the trailer rc rc is in single player i didn't i didn't realize that they were going to tell people about that until i fucking saw her in the trailer she was in the multiplayer trailer though wouldn't that imply that she's going to be there or see as a tiny little robot though yeah but she would be a scout hmm are there any like modern day you know transformers like a transformer that turns into an ipod or no no they i was talking i was talking to uh to matt teacher who's a producer he's like there are certain auto certain transformers obviously they just wouldn't fit no matter what we did like perceptor it was right the microscope right and i mean even sound wave the only reason sound wave is in it honestly is because he's so iconic that you couldn't leave right because the decepticons had uh a mac truck guy i don't remember of course they did they did well they wanted bad toys wanted a mac truck too and the funny thing is like for the autobots the autobots did have a tank it's just everyone thought he looked like a douche with a giant dick hanging off of his chest oh he had like orange parts on his legs yeah i think he was great he was warpath warpath wasn't wasn't convincingly human enough like his his like you know form with legs and right in arms did not quite seem not a tank right so it's they've done a really good job of taking their their design philosophy was to take things that work in a in a multiplayer shooter in it just a shooter in general and then to layer the transformation stuff on top of it to add options and it really succeeds in adding a lot of different options in combat and the perks do that as well like the perks it's not like you use a perk and it's all okay well that's just like an extra seven kills like in modern warfare too it's like well this is a way for me to support my team like if i activate this one no one on the other team can transform for like 15 seconds which is crippling yeah no one can use skills or here's my sentry can and or here's a giant energy energy shield so it's it's very intelligently designed and there's something to be said for a game that lets you turn into a jet from a run and then turn back into a robot right my my question is at what age does it become embarrassing to be enthusiastic about playing a transformers video spare me this mockery of justice there is no age it's really really graphically violent um they get away with a lot with the tea rating because it's robots right right to the point where we made this miraculous transformers high moon who did a dark watch and the more less well received components in the game and there is there's still stuff they have yet to announce i only got to play a tiny little bit of single player that's the part i'm worried about that is that i i'm not concerned but i i have so little opinion on single player because they should i'm only concerned in the sense because i the multiplayer isn't enough to make you want to buy it but if the single player is cool and the multiplayer is cool i mean the the single player has three player co-op um for the entire thing it's got the Decepticon's campaign and the Autobots campaign um they showed i'm trying to remember the name of the Decepticon that they showed that was the Decepticon answer to Omega Supreme sorry we're all laughing at Anthony's tonight is a serious cat night over here the cats are just my bonkers every night i think there's like some cat nip going around um what's the do you remember the Decepticon and call one of them i guess you're on the other state or are you know it's the space t-rex yeah oh can i can i tell you can i tell you when i'm at the great tragedies of my life sure please do i love tragedies when when i was when i was like eight years old for uh for Christmas i got Metroplex which was the the Autobots yeah was that like the headmaster era no it was before the headmaster era and it was like the ultimate transformer it was fucking huge to get it was huge and i think it cost like a hundred dollars i'd say are you sure it's not a mega supreme no Omega Supreme was like uh like a space like a space yeah this is like getting the the aircraft's energy i was like the air is like the aircraft carrier yeah i got it and like a week later i took it over to a to a friend's house no he panned and there was there was uh he had over at his place they had a space heater like one of these on the wall i have a fucking version of this story and and i sat Omega Supreme next to it and melted it it just melted it and i was so afraid of like what my mom would say if she saw it and you just left it at my friend's house and i never said anything to my mom i thought i was like seven or eight i had gotten a power master optimist prime mm-hmm the one that goes into his fucking trailer and turns into the giant robot yeah so i woke up super early because i'd also gotten wizards and warriors so i got up i walked down the stairs and i set optimists on the first flat surface i could find and sat down in front of the tv which was a fucking heater right and i go over and i look at it optimist and i had had him in truck mode attached to the trailer so like the part of the trailer that optimists fit into like had started to fold over like a piece of cheese and optimists's feet were permanently stuck in the fishtail mode like that never bend up again i was so it's so like amazing that this is like like imagine the scarring of that went way beyond losing your toy it went beyond shaming your family like you're spending so much money you left that hundred dollar item i know i was so right with your friend and man going on a vacation that's like two or two hundred fifty dollars no it was it was incredibly expensive it was it was extravagant it was extravagant yeah god have you ever told your parents that no you can call your mom and tell her about that she just doesn't talk to him for a month oh my god she probably doesn't even fucking remember that thing but um but yeah man transformers multiply i was not expecting much multiplayer as i was expecting campaign to be what sold me and multiplayer is pretty fucking amazing it's 10 players but i think that other games have showed that and it there's a definite sort of unreal hecticness to it right never to the point where it felt like i couldn't manage myself and everyone can be so mobile that it doesn't really feel like there are periods of silence um and man being a dread is awesome well man i'm about to hear it now all they need is to put you in urban maps and let you go all red faction on them and just destroy buildings it's got good style we will never see anything like that this console didn't know what those generations do yeah is that it yeah well yeah we're gonna let's take a break hour and 45 minutes we'll take a break then we'll come back and leave a few letters and then that's it for you guys because it's already been a long show fuck you so to destroy the evil forces of the this sets of cards auto bots range the battle to destroy the evil forces of the decepticons transformers robots in disguise transformers more than meets the i got the transposed bit whatever oh man the first letter comes from comes from mirin that's not even gonna be an outtake that's just in the show the first letter the first letter comes from mirin it's very short i get the feeling it's very young so i feel like he needs our advice yours especially robert okay i recently started dating a girl that i've that i've really care about for years that i've really care about for years she also happens to be my first girlfriend the problem is the problem is that i have trouble physically interacting with her every time i try to kiss or hug her i become nervous and pull away is there any advice you can give me about how i can get over my anxiety issues first like don't think of her as like a pda like i'm having interactivity and she i want rendezvous with the woman she's not a fucking touch screen like basically he's having trouble getting past the quick time events of the relationship if this is heavy rain he would have failed them on it i keep trying to hold her hand but i just the button i don't know how you i don't know how like you lean forward to kiss somebody and then stop like what is that amazing that little awkward for her oh man i you know i don't know you know you could you could be there's an age at which you know taking the bold steps to uh to like make a move of any kind is it's fucking nerve wracking all i would say is uh 22 i think is that age yeah 22 there you go i would say is that you know it shits awkward especially you know starting out and i think if you if you like someone and they uh and they're nice and they're a nice person then they're gonna accept your sort of awkward attempts and and uh and then pretty soon you'll get better and you'll be like ron fucking jeremy or not or not just keep in mind that she's probably just as awkward as you are or in my personal experience maybe maybe she um thinks you're a total pussy and you should have made the move and she's gonna dump you and go after some guy who wants to like make out yeah was there a period where you weren't seeing your wife robert yeah i mean earlier than when i was 16 i i had a girlfriend in in middle school and i remember like i was really nervous about trying to trying to make out with and i couldn't make the move and i would like fantasize about how i'm gonna i'm gonna make out with her and then she ended up just dumping me and like going with some trashy dude down the street who wanted a finger bang all day or something man the the one really got a forehead slapping going on right now the one like it's not a podcast with robert ashley so there's forehead slapping the experience i had that was similar to that like i was dating ron and i i didn't want to kiss her because like she had just come back from a skiing trip and her face was so badly sunburned dude her her lips look like she had come out of like the nuclear holocaust tires let's be honest it's because she was with a black guy once wasn't i'm referencing a little letter robert doesn't catch the joke yeah i am totally racist yeah you can't it was a funny all right yeah and that that that's why i didn't because it was kind of her lips look gross and then she break it and and like because she had goggles uh her eyes were like super white around them but then her face was super red she's like raccoon did this end up raccoon raccoons are good kisses all right they always have like a trip the next letter sometimes he says like garbage he says uh i'm a seven-year-old australian my last year of school and i'm looking for a few paths for the future number one is a short-term thing but nonetheless an important one the next year i could go on an exchange for a year to scandinavia probably den marker sweeten do it fucking i'm wondering if this is a good idea or not yes and i have other possible i've had opinions on both sides on the one hand i imagine the experience would widen my culture and understanding and also allow me to bang a lot of hot sweetest chicks but i'd also be restricted as i'm sure they love that kind of family and still go to school um right my second problem relates well first up let's do with that yeah everyone here seems to do right dude in my experience you're a Canadian anytime you any chance you have to go abroad in your life especially on somebody's australian especially on somebody else's life dime you fucking do it but the weird thing is like why sweeten like it's we said anywhere in scandinavia why not somewhere in scandinavia why scandinavia i mean i'm sure that's cool just it's sort of like you're gonna be on an exotic adventure to like the least exotic maybe he really likes straddle field but from there he could go wherever really yeah i mean once you're in europe in europe you know yeah yeah and i'm sure that you know being an australian you'll have like a nice accent and it'll be a hit with the ladies and and you're australian like it's like required that you go on holiday i mean and bang sweetest chicks do it yeah okay my second problem relates to video games at the moment i mainly play in the weekend he says let's see i am now actually less interested in games themselves but i really enjoy listening to you guys and following the community gaming press so should i sell my gaming pc and buy a macbook and focus on study writing social life and girls b keep everything it is playing games only occasionally and go get some other job or c try to become a member of the press and pay a hell of a lot of video games i should say some of the main reasons i don't like c or because i'd worry for my health and because i feel i should do something more constructive with my life i think that's a valid worry yeah um i should also mention that while i may have sounded like some kind of major player i have never been with the girl i got my first kiss when i was 12 and had did nothing since i i'm not overly worried though i used to be a major nerd but i have escaped from that whole thing over the last 12 years i'm very outgoing um so and that's putting man now he really needs to go to scan yeah is there a d which is anything but c yeah exactly i i was going to say that he should do like all of the above at the same time yeah exactly like that for the journalism thing what's that yeah so he should bang sweetest chicks while playing video games is what you're saying on a macbook i'm saying he should he should get a mac book or you have some games to play on it and do all of his studying and writing and everything while being in sweeten i mean really i think land at this guy's age like games are the least of your worries i really think you know games will always be there if you take some time off you'll come back and they'll be even cooler you know totally i didn't play like i definitely took some time off from gaming and college and and unfortunately guys i'm sorry the podcast cut off from there for some reason i will be working with our macbook to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again for the record you missed about 15 letters of letters and dick jokes if i remember correctly but uh you got a long show anyway so somehow i think you'll manage and uh we'll try to have Robert on again soon uh from Anthony and Tyler and matt and robert i'm arthur thank you for listening i don't think i can save myself i'm drowning here please and anyone i don't think i can save myself i'm drowning here please and anyone i don't think i can save myself i'm drowning here please and anyone i don't think i can i'm seeing myself (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]