Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 56 - 03/24/10
Hello and welcome to the 56th episode of Rebel FM. Join the regular crew along with Matt Chandronait and Robert Ashley as they do their best to stay on topic and discuss some videogames. Games included in the discussion this week are: God of War III, Dante's Inferno on PSP, Perfect Dark for XBLA, Tilt to Live, Cortex Command, and Lost Planet 2.
After the game discussion -- and, quite frankly, during it -- things get a little off topic with an extended letters segment. Relationship letters are intermixed with gaming related topics into a suicide of Robert Ashley induced insanity. Enjoy!
Remember to say hi if you see us at PAX East!
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Nothing good on the radio ♪ ♪ Once again I didn't know ♪ ♪ Who should I turn to ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ - Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Rebels of episode 56. - The catastrophe edition. - This is the city. It's been a long time since Robert Ashley, our special guest has joined us. - I'm not even here. - Wow. - It's like 30 episodes or something, which means 30 weeks, which means a long. - All it really is is it's a sound board. It's a Robert Ashley sound board. - I've just been at my house napping the whole time, too. I would get up and get a beer and watch the little TV and then go back to bed. You finally got me out of my apartment. - Well, I told you you have an open invitation at any time. So I guess it just requires active invitation. - We put up the Robert Ashley bat signal in the sky. - We actually sat down a trap with beer in the world. - So I think I guess you're hearing Tyler Barber, as well as Arthur Gee's. - Uh. - Hey, internet. Matt Chandernay. - Who's not a really a special guest? He's just... - Not really. Damn. - I'm just a little special. - So we're gonna talk about games. - Make your cat talk. - Well, I could make her Yodle, but I would actually have to be holding her. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, we ought to get to that at some point. - Arthur's cat's like sitting in his lap right now, looking like he's seeing some crazy, like, drug psychedelic freak out thing. She can see into the alternate dimension. She can see into the fade. She's really intense. Anyway. - She's just-- - So we're gonna, we're here to talk about video games and then after video games and cats, we're gonna read a whole bunch of letters, including some really intense relationship letters. - Nice. - And I thought you would be especially helpful in helping us deal with Robert. - Robert is the only one in the room that's actually married. So, like, true. - Yeah. - So I have a lot of valuable advice for everyone to do. - 'Cause didn't you marry the same girl that was like your first girlfriend? - Yeah. - Okay. That's my advice. Marry, marry the girl you date in 10th grade. (laughing) - That's definitely the way to go. - All right. So kick it, somebody. Who's been playing? Who's been playing some games? - We've all been playing "God of War III." - Yeah, start with that. - Yeah. Go, Tyler. - This is Tyler. - This is my very first-- - This is my very first "God of War" cherry. - This is my very first "God of War" game. - What? - That's what we said. - Yeah. And so, like, I totally get why everyone's telling me that I should play the other games beforehand because two goes straight into three. I fully understand that. - Right. - And then you, I imagine you started it up and then died 15 times and then changed it to easy and then died like five more times. (laughing) - Well, no. - And you were like, what the fuck is going on in this game? There's like a 10-minute boss battle in the first five minutes of the game. - Yeah, that is really-- - I don't really fit a 10-minute boss battle into the first five minutes of the game, but definitely have. - You know what? And last week on Rebel FM, we sort of started talking about "God of War III" because Ryan and played it, and I think Arthur, you played it? - I played a little bit of it. - And y'all were, they were really hyped on the beginning and while there were some really cool shit with that intro, I didn't like it. I did not like it. - Why? - I didn't like the reason. - Because while that shit was totally good, I thought it was totally bad. (laughing) - It's, I kind of felt the way I feel like when I see a lot of CG action scenes in movies today, where there's a lot of action and it's hard to sort of tell what's going on. And I felt like I sort of started to click of what made "God of War III" so amazing later on because then you started to get into level designs where Kratos was a little bitty dude and the stage was huge, whereas in the beginning, I felt like maybe it's the scale that Kratos was on the screen all the time. He was so big. - Why does Kratos have to be big? - Right, yeah, but yeah, and I just felt like they didn't really throw me into the combat immediately. Like it was a boss battle right off the beginning and I kind of don't like boss battles anyway, so. - Oh man, you're playing the wrong game if you don't like boss battles. - You really are. - I don't know, I think just like the everyday combat in that game is pretty strong. - Amazing, yeah. - Robert, we went over the rules before you got on the show that you wouldn't contradict me. - Okay, sorry, sorry for breaking up every minute then. - Sorry. - But yeah, but like, you know, so like I totally understand why the game is amazing combat-wise. Like I'm feeling it like, you know, the way. - Don't mind the Buffalo upstairs. - Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I wasn't too hot on a lot of the things with that intro. Like there was some really weird stuff. Like when you would climb up the side of the God that you're climbing up and it's sort of. - That is a Titan? - A Titan, sorry. - You're a shit straight man. - Yeah, yeah, I didn't follow it, so. - It's got in the name. I would think that you would be more familiar. - Yeah, are you climbing up the side of Gaia's though? - Yeah, yes. - Okay. - You know, and just things like the trees look kind of weird whereas like in later on in the game, I feel like even like the environments look better than they did in the beginning. I don't know if everyone else. - I don't know, I was kind of, I don't know, playing like the first two games, and the PSP game to sort of religiously. I was kind of blown away in the early stages of the game because it's, you know. - It's the first time we've got to see the world of God of War in such lush. - Right. - It really does sort of fuck you in the face. - Yeah, it's a splooch fest. But I get what you mean about like, they don't establish the sense of scale at the beginning that you would think it would for the fact that you're like, you know, climbing around in this giant Titan thing. But I think that's one of the things that you just sort of know if you played the second game, like you know where you're at. - Exactly, and that's why, and that's why obviously now so many people have told me I need to play the other ones because I felt like I just didn't have the vocabulary of the game when it started. - You should definitely play, I don't know. I'm like, I think I'm maybe about six hours into this, into the new one, but I got to say it. At this point, I'm thinking the second game is the best, it's kind of blowing three away. As much as I'm enjoying the game and it still plays fantastically, and like I get, I totally get off on like ripping people apart in every way imaginable and seeing that and like I'm melting, you know, HD. But just the big battles and the story and the voice acting and everything. It's just not grabbing me like, yeah. - It feels really by the, I'm totally shit. I can't believe that we agree on this 'cause I totally thought I was going to say, I'm not feeling it and Robert is going to say, fucking spectacle. - You still, I mean, it's not that Robert doesn't like it. - No, I love, I mean, the thing about God of Wars, it's like pizza, you know, you might take a bite of the slice and be like, eh, it's not as good as like the best pizza I ever had but fuck, man. - Pizza. - I'm going to eat that whole pizza. As soon as someone turns their back, I'm going to eat the whole thing. - Yeah, I'm just, I don't know, I don't know what it is. I'm just just not-- - I still feel like it has the best moment to moment combat of any of the God of Wars. - The combat is amazing. - Yeah. - I just love it. - It feels, I don't know, to me, it feels like pretty tightened up from my last experience. - I think so too. - I'm going to get ridiculed for this but like after coming off Dante's Inferno, like the only thing that that game did right for the first half of the game was combat that was super responsive and just really felt nuanced and I don't, I feel like this feels like combat from a game from three years ago. It doesn't feel particularly changed from God of War II and Matt, if you say you're wrong, I'm going to throw my phone at your head. - Dude, you are so not not wrong. - Wait, wait a minute. - I haven't played Dante's Inferno but you might be the only person that I've ever heard. - I probably am the only person that I, the funny thing is I say that after like reviewing Dante's Inferno on PSP this week and fucking aiding it. - Yeah, yeah. - But you're saying like the combat in that game is great. - I didn't have-- - In the combat, in that game is really good. When it's not super like hard. - So, like maybe one 100th of the time. - No, like maybe half the time. - It is really hard from what I understand. - I mean, God of War isn't a cake walk by any stretch of the imagination either and it certainly kills you more often than this as it has in any other God of War. - Like is it arbitrary stuff though? Like, just jump, you double jump. - The double jump is really annoying. - The double jump is just me. - The double jump, yeah. - They've tried to make it like realistic. They won't let you realistic. There's nothing realistic about a double jump. But for some reason, they won't let you double jump once you've started to fall. - Yeah, exactly. - Like you have to jump immediately. You're already on your downward arc. You're fucked down on a white desert. - It feels like you're gonna stop registering. Like you holding down the button too. Like you'll be floating along and all of a sudden he'll just drop. - Yeah, I don't know what happens a lot. I think it's like, it seems like you jump and I think you can jump a little bit if you're still on your downward arc. But if you go kind of like down to almost where you, the level that you jumped off from, excuse me, the horizontal level that you jumped off from, then it's like you don't get the second jump. And I don't get that at all because. - I feel like it's way earlier than that. - Yeah, to me, the rhythm, it seems like you have to do it quick, like tap tap. - Yeah, but I don't know. I don't know what the idea feels weird. - It feels really weird. - That is weird. - But I can explain the new linking combos in the game. - Like switching between items. - Yeah, well, and that grab, the pull one circle. - The grab that pulls you toward the enemy. That's totally reinvents the game for me because all of a sudden you're just like, like you're just going around from like enemy to enemy to just ripping people apart. - You don't even like, I didn't even realize. - It wasn't on the ripping people apart. - I didn't even realize that that's what was, I didn't even realize that that's the thing that was missing and got a war combat until they had it in this game. I was like, oh, that's so fucking key. - Was Ryan talking about that last week? Is that what he was talking about? - Yeah, about being able to close the gap. - Yeah, yeah, that's better. I just feel like-- - And then that other throw that lets you run around into people. - Yeah, where you got it. - So you feel a lot more immobile. So things get faster and the combat sort of connects together in a more flowing way. I feel like, but yeah, I don't know, otherwise, it seems to be lacking a bit of the juice. - How do you feel about Kratos as a character? 'Cause everyone generally, I've heard feels like - He's a dick boy. - He's like a dick that you don't even like anymore. - Well, I don't know that Kratos was ever really likable. - I felt that he was understandable. Like, you could sort of grasp his character. Like, he's pissed because this shit happened. And now it's just like, he is massacring tens of thousands of people to be an asshole. - I did feel really weird early on in the game. And I don't know if this is like a spoiler alert, but this is like in the first two hours of the game. There's this whole, there's this whole situation where you're supposed to free this guy who's tied up in a chair behind some burnable, like, bramble. And it's not a moral choice or anything. The only thing you can do in the game is to like grab this fire-breathing beast and burn this guy alive. And it's kind of, you know, it feels to me like kind of like scary and immoral, but I kind of like that. - Well, the thing though is it's not, like it's totally predictable. Like for the, at least for the first six and a half hours of the game, if you can call the first, like 70% of the game, the first anything, but like, there is never a problem guessing exactly what Kratos is going to do in any situation, which is like the most fucked up thing you can think of is what he's gonna do for no reason whatsoever. - Well, that actually like, I don't wanna really spoil the end of the game, but it makes some of the stuff that happens towards the end of the game. Like, I don't believe his motivation at the stuff, with the stuff that happens at the end of the game because up until then, all he's done is like, massacre everything in his way, use anybody that's in his path to get him toward his goal. - Yeah, like the-- - I do think they've lost touch with the original idea of the game where you had this guy who had like done some horrible thing to his family. - There was a tragedy to it. - Yeah, yeah. - And then even like the PSP game, where does the PSP game fall on the timeline of this? - I think before the first one? - I don't remember exactly what that changed. - But it has to be after the first one because there's this whole section. So like-- - I think it's between one and two. - There's this whole thing in the original God of War, which is like this amazing crazy thing that happens where a creatus comes back from war and he kills his own family. Or he kills his own family as part of the war. - He's in a rage or something like that. - He goes into a rage, he's like, imagine something. I forget what the deal is, he has some-- - I think he's like attacking a village. He was sent by Ares to attack this village. - And his wife and his kid are in this, and he was sent in there to massacre everybody. And his wife and kid are inside this building and he goes in there and just massacres them without even looking and then realizes afterward. - That it was his wife and kids. - Yeah. - And so that's why he wants to kill Ares. There's sort of the central conflict of the game. But later on in the PSP game, which for the most part was story wise, not very interesting, but at the end of that game, it had one of the craziest moments in the God of War series, which was that you were down in Hades and you have this opportunity to save your daughter. But he chooses between either saving his daughter or killing Athena, I think. I can't remember which character it is, but it's like he's either gonna exact his revenge and kill someone or save his daughter. And there's this crazy section in the game where your daughter is grabbing onto your leg and she's like, daddy, no, daddy, no. And you hit the, you know the sort of classic God of War thing where you open something by jamming a button like that. You jam this button to knock her off your leg. And she keeps on grabbing it and you knock her off and you just like pushes her aside. And it's this really kind of creepy scary thing that he does. And I feel like the new game is Kratos at his absolute moral low. Like he's given everything away just so that he can kill the people he wants to kill. And so maybe that's where this is coming from. But I feel like it's not performed very well. You don't get a sense that he has any underlying like guilt or pain associated with it. Now he's just like, where can I kill the people? Oh, here, knife you, you know? It's just, he's just looking around. It's like he's in a hurry. He's like a guy on a cell phone. He's been up to 7/11 and he's like, do you have any people I can kill? It's just really weird. It's like he's looking to smoke a cigarette after a long flight or something. Yeah, he doesn't have any, you don't get any sense of like why it is that he's so fucking angry. So yeah, I don't know. - It doesn't feel like the game has the heart that the last two did. I don't know if that makes any sense. Like it feels like it's very comic booky. - By the numbers, sort of, well, this is what has to happen now. And it's a boss fight. So here's this quick time sequence. It doesn't seem like it's very, it varies at the levels very much, but that's just where I am so far like, and God of War II. - No, the level design is definitely kind of weak compared to God of War II especially. - God of War II takes you through just like a fucking ridiculous amount of space. Like from-- - There are exceptions, of course. - From Athens to fucking Hades to the sky on the way to that island. - And all this amazing, like huge epic, sort of pullback camera moments. Like where you go to those, to Apollo's steeds, those big-- - Yeah. - And that's one of the moments in both of the games that's down at the most for me. - Yeah, yeah, like a-- - I mean, you spend a lot of time in caves in this one, it seems like. - Yeah, well they're trying to show off that lighting. They have some lighting effects in this game that are incredible, but I don't think you should design a game around your fucking visual effect. - Well flat out like Kratos is the best modelled character in a video game I've ever seen. - I don't know about that. I feel like his animation isn't as like amazing to me as-- - Well I'm not talking about that, I was saying like as a character in a video game, like it is the best character in a video game I've ever seen. - You know, like one thing that's really weird about his animation for me is like, I guess everyone has their own sort of like amount that they push the analog stick to like what is walk to them. So like what I push when I want Kratos to just kind of like naturally walk, it's like sort of in between his run, so he's like moving his arms like more than he should. So he's like walking or walking. But he's like, yeah, looks like he's like ready to go mall walk or something. - I love that, I always wonder if other people do that. I think it's funny, sometimes I want the character to just look normal, like to not always run. - I do that all the time, especially if I'm in a game where I'm like supposed to be having a conversation with someone that's walking and they're not forcing me to walk, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna walk with you. - I think it's so funny, like voluntary role playing. You know, I always imagine that everyone else is just running around like crazy, but I'm always trying my best to, it's like when you play Half-Life and you play cameraman, I cannot help playing Half-Life in any other way than to like try to frame the scene in the best possible way. - And it makes me feel like such a dork. - Like doing videos for Game Club, like I used to doing that while I played so that I would have better footage to sort of cut videos too. - It's funny that you say it at the moment because I only do it when there's no one around. Because for instance, whenever Arthur would come in my doorway and stand and watch me, like I would, that's when Arthur can attest to this and I'll just start making the character spin in circles like crazy, 'cause I'm just kind of like ha-ha-ha-ha. - You're like, I'm totally not role playing. (laughing) - I'm not one of those dorks, I'm in love. - It's kind of embarrassing. - But that's why it's like, my wife makes fun of me so much while I play video game. So it's really like, it takes a lot of courage for me to play games the way that I play them. 'Cause I'm like, "Shh, no, no, that's awesome." - But that's kind of like-- - So he'll test the human spirit, huh, right? - You know, it kind of like gets like, something I had mentioned earlier, like why I liked Assassin's Creed so much was because it allowed for that amount of minutia expression, like stuff that really didn't matter. Like, you know, how fast you walked through a crowd. - Yeah. - Like that, like, then you don't like matter, but-- - They make it feel real. - Yeah. - Too bad they couldn't just make a game setting the Renaissance age and had to like throw the sci-fi bullshit in. But anyway, that's a different-- - I mean, Robert, is it just like, it's like an ice cream sandwich, except instead of cookies, it's just like more ice cream, it's just-- - Yeah, I don't know, you know, I haven't played enough of it to say like, what I totally think of God of War, I think that it plays really well, and I really wanna play the shit out of it. It's like, all I wanna play right now when I'm turning my machines on. But yeah, it just doesn't necessarily have the storytelling that the original or the second one had. - I think that's the big thing that's missing is the storytelling, like that's the biggest thing that's missing. But, you know, storytelling for me is always kind of icing on the kegs. I'll take my porno straight. - When you were-- Matt, you finished it, right? - I did. - And I think that you and I are probably the ones that were most far along, like, did you ever experience issues avoiding and sort of getting caught on geometry and just generally sort of getting stuck? - Oh yeah, I ran into quite a few geometry-related issues as well in my adventure. - I'm on the scorpion bus, right? - Yeah. - In particular, I'm having a lot of fucking issues with it. - No, I don't remember having any problems on the scorpion bus. - Like just getting caught on its legs and not being able to go anywhere. - I would have some things where I'd go up to, there's a lot of invisible walls in this one too. - There's no physics in this game. - So I found myself walking up to a lot of invisible things that I thought I could jump over, but it turned out to be an invisible wall and I would jump and then crate us who would get stuck in the air and I would spin around in circles until I could wiggle myself out of whatever I was caught in. - I have noticed that just little things that had always been so nice in the game before, like opening chests, all of a sudden it's fenicky about where you're at. - Yeah, it would go all the small areas down, R1, like all of a sudden. - Yeah, yeah, that's weird. - There's some stuff, I feel like that has gotten sloppy. - I heard some people say actually that the only way they could solve it was by plugging in the PS3 controller. - Oh, because they lose the Bluetooth signal. - I have no fucking idea. - That happens to me sometimes with my PS3, like my control will go out of whack for like a moment. - Like for that I am not gonna make that accusation because people will assume I'm bashing the PS3. - That used to happen to me but I don't know if they fixed it from where it went. - Yes. - I thought all those kids grew up. - No. - Yes, and then they had kids. - No, they all grew up physically but mentally. - They're still goddamn man babies. - Exactly. - Like I just frequently hear about how I bash everything Sony but like the easy fact of the matter is that Microsoft only released like two or three first party games last year. - Oh yeah, it was a great game. - So give me a chance and I will shit on something from Microsoft this year. - Wow, so what else you've been playing Tyler? - On a spot. - Yeah. - Also playing, man, I actually haven't been playing very many games since we spoke last because I'm on a design crunch before we go to PAX. So just like regular old Battlefield, my Battlefield bag company. - That seems to be the returning staple for most. - Yeah. - Battlefield bag company too is really good. - I still haven't played that game because I guess I'm not a man. - It's super good. (laughing) - I feel like everyone's playing that game and I haven't even heard of it. - I actually never really see you play much in the way of shooters to begin with. - I like shooters. I don't really play games online very much but I have some friends that really try to get me to play online. - You know what, you should try just 'cause aren't you a big stalker fan in the past? - Yeah, I've heard about the- - Metro 2033, I think you might like it. It's not great but I think- - I think I could be interested in that. - You're like Eastern European video games in general. - You have a new computer, don't you? - Yeah, I have a decent computer. - Can I run games? - But yeah, yeah, yeah. - You can always get a match on press account, don't you? - Yeah, yeah. - Oh yeah, it's on there then. - Yeah. - You know, Metro 2033? - You should also play Just Cause 2, which just came out. - Yeah, I- - I really wanna play that game. - I feel like I'm at this moment right now where I have only a certain amount of time to game and I have to really pick what it is that I'm gonna play because I just don't have- - What do you mean? - I just like, why? What the fuck? - You just said early on that y'all you do sit around drink beers all day. - Well, I was being sarcastic. (laughing) - What is this sarcasm? - I don't know. - No, I honestly can't say what it is that I, that where all my time goes, but it doesn't go to anything game related. - I think that Battlefield is a pretty good introductory game to go back into online just because people are working together much more. - Yeah. - Than they have been and also you get points from doing things other than shooting dudes. - That's cool. I mean, I can play, the only thing that keeps me from playing online is the feeling that people expect me to show up. Like, I will give you like a thing where, I want to play games online with some friends, but then after you do that a few times, all of a sudden, you know, it's nine o'clock at night and they're like, dude, why aren't you playing games? It's like, fuck you. - No. - In a read book. (laughing) - You're fucking fired from gaming. (laughing) - Nah, I know what you mean. I actually don't even get that much time to play games lately. If I don't do it at work, obviously, then it's like when I come home, it's like I got like three or four hours before I go to bed, it was me time. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, I really want to play games. I have a lust to play games right now. I'm in the middle of Mass Effect 2, which is really the only bio-aware game I've ever really played, and I'm kind of loving it. - Which is my year. - Which is fucking amazing. - I never played the first one. - What are you liking about it? - You know, I really like the almost as good as a decent television story. (laughing) A television show story. - Almost as good as a decent television story. - It's very well serialized. - Yeah, and I find it's a game that I'm playing, you know, it's been years, not years, but it's been a long time since I've reviewed games for a living, and I'm really enjoying just kind of meandering in this game. - Yeah. - Just sort of any random thing that I feel like pursuing, like I'll get some side quest mission and I'll be like, you know what, I'm just gonna go do that. (laughing) I've gotten very, I don't know how far along I am in the main story, 'cause I just keep on doing all this like side stuff that interests me, and I talk to people for way too long. - No, you don't, that's a big part of what that game is about. - We spend more time in that game. That's one of the few games I can think of where you spend more time talking to people than you do shooting at people. - Have you played Dragon Age? - Actually, you know, I should say that is the first Bioware game I ever played, period. - Oh, wow. - And the thing is, I kind of hate fantasy. - Yeah. - I know that's like a weird thing, understandable. But it's just not my cup of tea. Like I can totally play sci-fi games, but fantasy is something that I never liked growing up. - Yeah. - And so, I think it's a testament to Dragon Age that I actually, I probably played like 10 hours of that. - Well, like the thing about Dragon Age is like the fantasy in it is, it's really generic, but the story and the characters isn't like, is a generic game. - They're very well developed. - They're very well developed as opposed to like, you wouldn't expect it when you think about the world that they're involved in. - Yeah, and the thing that always got me about it was that I think because I was raised in a time with, raised, I mean, I grew up, no one raised me. (laughing) - I grew up in a time in video games where like your only choice in a game was to be like the goody, goodiest hero possible. - Yeah. - So whenever I have the choice to choose whether or not to do the right thing is the wrong thing in a game, I invariably, even though I don't want to, choose to be the fucking uber white knight hero, like I can't like, I cannot stop myself from doing it. - Stupid, scruples. - Yeah, but I love how in Dragon Age, you pick the thing that you think would be right, but then sometimes it ends up being the totally wrong thing and you do something terrible. - And there's no moral compass. There's no moral compass in the game. - No, I vastly prefer that because I just can't, like I can't get into being a bad guy. I can't in like Grand Theft Auto where it's, where the decisions are in real time. It's not like, would you like to be a worse character in this game? It's more like, yeah, I guess I'll run over some people. - Yeah, it's just sort of, well, this is cat doing. - I've got this cat that weighs about 75 pounds above my head and I'm afraid that it's about to take a big old shit on me. (laughing) - She weighs in. - It looks like she's getting ready for something. - Yeah, she weighs about 18 pounds, I think. - Wait, wait, wait, you didn't say that you were playing the other game? You know, I've been playing, (imitating music) shooter, shooter, pixel junk shooter. - Oh, yeah, what do you think of that? - Oh, yeah, what do you think of that? - That's a cool game. - I totally think that game, man. - That's a cool game. - Have you been playing co-op? - I played a little co-op. - It's awesome co-op. - The co-op that I played was a little inebriated and I was having trouble explaining it to my friend, like how to do it and so it was sort of like, like every time we would find any guys in the cave, they would just shoot out of them. - Shoot them immediately. (laughing) - I always feel like you have to explain what you're talking about. I'm sure that everyone has heard of this game, pixel junk shooter. It's like, you're down in these like caves on an alien world, saving people. And it's all about these sort of interesting reactions between different materials that are kind of liquid and gaseous. And sometimes you get the ability to shoot different elements, like fire to melt ice. - Yeah, yeah. It's a really interesting game. It's not very fast paced at all, but it gets by on kind of some, a little bit of thinkiness. - Yeah. - What I should say is like where the stress factor comes in and where, 'cause it'll suddenly get fast paced, like it'll shoot through a barrier and then all this lava will start pouring out and you're like, oh fuck, oh fuck. I gotta save those guys before the lava hits them. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Or like when you're playing co-op, I love it because you'll get hit by lava and you're about to die, but your partner can grab you with the grappling hook and like can save you before you die and drag you over to a pool of water so you can cool down. 'Cause that's how you die in that game is you overheat. But if you start to, if you overheat, you start to crash, but then your partner can cool you off before you heat if he drops you in some water. - Nice. - That sounds like a very complicated relationship. (laughing) - The vibe I totally get from that game is like that movie from like back in the '70s or something where they made like a spaceship, like microscopic and like injected into somebody's body. - You're fighting your father's face. - That's from the '80s. - That's hilarious. - That was so old. - That was amazing. - I saw that movie and I was like 10. - No, no, no, no. - But there were two movies there was a comedy and then there was a, - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Oh. - You're thinking, you're thinking, oh, what the fuck is that movie? They actually had a Disney ride based off that movie. - There's 20,000 leagues under the painter. (laughing) - We need to get funding for that movie right now. (laughing) - Yeah, it does feel a little like-- - Wasn't that like the dumbest movie? Like, they fall in love. - Inner space? - Just like a tiny guy inside her and so when he comes out, they actually make out. - Oh, no, no, no, no, no. - It's like she falls in love with the voice in her head. - Oh, that, no, that was her husband or something before her. - That was her boyfriend who stuck in like the body of Martin Short. - Right. - Forgive me for fucking up that lot. - For fucking up that lot, fucking short, dude. - Dennis Quaid was the pilot of the-- - Yep, yep, yep, yep. - I loved that movie. I liked a lot of bad shit when I was doing it. - Oh, come on, movies like that were great. That short circuit, stupid shit like that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You said to me. - You said to me, taste though. - I just remember thinking when I was a kid, like, Ghostbusters too is so much better than Ghostbusters. - Oh, man. - It's just so just terrible. - Okay, a full disclosure. I think I also went through that phase. - Oh, yeah, I did too. I mean, especially 'cause there was toys coming out and I was like, fuck yeah. - Yeah, right and like seriously, Ghostbusters too had a Bobby Brown song. I mean, that was kind of hard for me to resist when I was-- ♪ We can't take it on show ♪ ♪ We gotta, we gotta, we gotta take it on ♪ ♪ We gotta, we gotta, if it's up to us ♪ ♪ We gotta take it on ♪ ♪ Gotta, gotta take it on ♪ ♪ Gotta, gotta, gotta take it on ♪ (laughing) - Yeah, and they could show Statue of Liberty with an NES advantage. - Yeah, it went like-- - Like that was Taylor made and was like a 12-year-old nerd hard. - Yeah, I would just like to say that a Tyler's girlfriend, Jody, is here. She is sandwiched between Robert and Tyler on the couch. That was-- - As they go into their musical interlude. - Is there like, have you ever hung out with your girlfriend and like with a friend and you start talking about video games and she starts to glaze over and feel bad for her? - It's sort of like that, except she's stuck in between guys like talking to microphones. (laughing) - That was terrible. - We did a dance. That was better. - I can't believe you remember all the words to that. - I know, that's part of your shit. - I can't believe you both remembered all the words and you was watching them burn. - Too hot to handle, too cold to hold. Dead to ghost butts is in the ink control. Gotta throw in potty, four, a bunch of chums. But all the done, what is it? So they packed up, came equipped, grabbed us something. - Why do you-- - The idea of time backs on the backs and they split. - Whatever. - I had that tape, dude. I fucking broke that tape. - The best part about that? - The best part about that is halfway through, he's like, what's the next line? What the fuck would we know? (laughing) - I had some pretty shameful times for you as well. - I don't even understand why you know what that is. - I didn't have to go as a poster subject, but I did have-- - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming out of their shells is what it's called. (laughing) And I was like, Ninja Turtles doing rap and rock songs. - Go ninja, go ninja, go ninja, go ninja, go. - It was the traveling live show. - Yeah. - And you could get that tape for $5 when you order a Pizza Hut Pizza. - I listened to the shit. - This is like a seriously important time in my life. (laughing) There are a lot of products that I have fond memories of. (laughing) - Wasn't there like a song about like riding an inner tube down the sewer or something? - Sure there was. - Yeah. - Fuck. - Man, this is the total aside, but I remember I was a theater geek among being geeks in various other ways, but in middle school, I remember we were in charge of having auditions for the talent show, and I remember this sixth grader showing up to do the talent show and singing coming out of our shells. (laughing) Which is this fucking terrible like Broadway musical song about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it was so embarrassing 'cause you're supposed to, everyone else is trying to do like vanilla ice or something super cool. (laughing) But like doing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles song, not-- - What were the lyrics like? - I don't know. - We're coming out of our shell. - No, it was done like an 80s power belt. - Yeah. ♪ Coming out of our shells ♪ - I did it. - Yeah. (laughing) - This girl, I don't know. - It might as well have been-- - It might as well have been-- - Just imagine like a really shy, mousy girl with like a chili bowl haircut holding a microphone going, ♪ Come in and have our shoes ♪ (laughing) - And that was basically-- - Sounds like a Tim and Eric's kid. - Yeah, it was. (laughing) - Yeah. - The thing about Tim and Eric is, all it is is it like the Scratch my life before I was like 16. Everything my life was pretty much Tim and Eric before then just-- - Hopefully not the most recent-- - Emiliating, terrible-- - Robert and your neighborhood, have you seen the Doctor Steve Broul mural? And was it-- - No. - No. - And with Jan and Wayne Schuyler. - What? - It's on university-- - It's on that. - It's like on this thing called like Lindbergh Lickers or something on the university. - Do you know where-- - Where Feline is? - Yes, it's the Lickers store across from Feliney going down university toward the school. - Why? - And on the side it was just this huge mural, a mural of Steve Broul and a Jan and Wayne Schuyler for your help. - Is it an advertisement? - No, no. - Well the other day on Twitter, I actually saw Eric Warheim, the guy from the show. He actually was posting pictures of them painting Steve Broul murals. So I don't know if they came through Berkeley and did one or what, but-- - Wow. - But yeah. - That's awesome. - Yeah. - Even though Tim and Eric season-- - Three. - Shut your mouth. - One. - Five. - It's been pretty disappointing lately. - The most recent one-- - It's a lot of-- - The most recent one went to a pretty dark place. - Yeah. - Oh, I haven't seen the most recent one. I like it when they go to a dark place. Sometimes I think I don't wanna laugh and I watch Tim and Eric, I wanna cry. - You will have a boner, if that is the case, you will have a boner by the end of the song. - Great, I like it. I want Tim and Eric to make me feel really uncomfortable. - Has it ever gone to a darker place than it did at the end of this episode? - What about clown Emporium? - Yeah, the child clown Emporium where you, where they ship you a child clown and then you like feed it refuse and then you make the child clown dance for you and if it falls asleep you use the bull horn that comes with it to wake the child clown up. - No, see, that's sad. This is horrifying. - Oh, okay, so as long as it's not so many fucking pee-pee-poo-poo jokes, which is what the first like couple episodes of season-- - No, this one was pretty diverse, even I who don't typically enjoy a lot of Tim and Eric. - So ostensibly we talk about games here. - Oh, sorry. - Have you guys played that Tim and Eric game? - I wish that there was. - That's awesome. - Dude, they need a game. - So Tyler, you've been playing battle field, have you been playing anything else? - No, it's all, man. A little bit of cortex command, but you know. No more cortex command. - Fuck is that, that's what I have, no more ideas. - Son of a bitch, okay, talk about cortex command. - I think a game you might enjoy. - I like any game called command. - Tyler, you have 90 seconds, sell cortex command. - It's really hard to sell it. It's a lot like lemings, meat, swarms, 2D side scrolling, and it's like four PC, you download it. - And solar jetman. - Yeah, a little bit like solar jetman. Like basically the whole idea is that humans advance to the point where they no longer are physical bodies, so you gotta protect these brains and jars, and the brains can shift their consciousness into like these dummies. So it's like, you basically control these like dummy robots to sort of like fend off other dummy robots, but it's all like stream physics space, like to the pixel, like physics. Like if you destroy a robot and the head's there, and you like walk on the chin, it'll like crush the chin, and not the rest of the robot, but like, you know, just let little things like that. And then there's all the kind of like the pixel junk shooter where different materials can cut like some rocks or thicker than others. - And it's extremely modifiable. - Yeah. - Is it like a steam game or is it like a free indie game? - It's an indie game, it's not free. - Okay, it's just not a paid for indie game. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay. - All right. I will check that out. - Robert Arthur's so hard when you talked about that, he was using his phone. - He's like, "Go!" (laughing) - He's so tired of court experience. - It's hard to describe what that game is because it is one of those playground games. - Yeah. - Robert, anything else other than Mass Effect 2 when you go out of war? - Just a fucking ton of iPhone games, which I, I will pick one iPhone, man, when I say that. - Yeah, I would like you to pick the one. - When I say that, like, Anthony got this face like, "Oh my fucking God." - No, no, no, I'm actually, I haven't, I found it. - Well, have you guys tried Tilt to Live? - No, and I want my, I don't wanna play Tilt to Live. - Tilt to Live is the shit. - Yeah. - Like I play a ton of my very descriptive, Robert. - I probably, seriously, I want them to put that on the non-existent box. Robert Ashley said, "Tilt to Live is the shit." (laughing) I mean, I play a ton of iPhone games. I probably, you know, buy like four a week. - Well, that's the thing, tell me like three or four that are good because I got to go on a flight tomorrow. - Well, let me tell you about Tilt to Live. Tilt to Live is basically like geometry wars, minus the dual stick, so that basically you control a ship by tilting your iPhone, which, you know, sometimes can be sort of imprecise. But the thing about this game is you, instead of using like guns that you shoot yourself, you run into these power-ups that act as weapons in the environment. So you like run over a bomb icon and it explodes around you. - Sounds like pacifism in geometry wars too. - Sort of, except it's, the thing is, it ends up being way more aggressive than geometry wars because there are so many power-ups, you're basically rushing from one to the other without trying not to get killed. And so you like grab this power-up that turns your ship into like a chainsaw and you run it, you kill a bunch of stuff, and then you grab like this big, you know, shooting power-up that's this giant beam that shoots across the screen. It's like when you play it, it's super fast, super aggressive. It's not about dodging so much as it is about like maintaining your like aggressive speed in the game and just like running around without dying. And it's super fun. I mean, it's like playing through a game takes like three minutes, but I definitely, I took it, I had my phone in Costa Rica and I played an abnormal amount of that game instead of like looking at rainforests. (laughing) - Fucking nature, man. You can see nature wherever. - Tuck nage. - Is it cheap too? I bet I'm sure like-- - It's like a Buck 99. It was on sale for 99 cents. - Oh, you missed out. I think you made it way to the next thing. - I know it's got about 99 cents. - Is absolutely nothing. - Yeah. - Any other notable ones? - One more, I feel like. I'm really digging a PC adventure game port called Broken Sword. Have you guys ever heard of the game? - I've played the one. - Yeah, I've played the DDS. - Oh, okay. Well, I'm playing that on iPhone. I got it for like $3.99. And it's just really, really rad. - I thought it was great. - Yeah, it's made by the same, not made by, but published by the same people who published the Benita Steel Sky on the iPhone, which is also great. It's a classic-- - Yeah, I haven't got very far into it. - I haven't got that. - I beat that. - Yeah, I played through it. It was really fun. - It was good? - Yeah, yeah, cool. I just like the way that they do it is nice 'cause they have this like hint system where if you're on a plane or something and you can't look up game FAQs, they have like a hint system that will just be like, hit the red button or whatever and just tell you. So it's nice. - Look, Reid's hard. This is what you do. - Yeah. - Exactly. - Like they did with Montgomery Allen. - Exactly. But yeah, I play a lot of iPhone games, but I think that's kind of all that I've been playing. - All that I've been playing lately. - I bought Heavy Rain and it's still underneath the passenger side seat of my car. It's been for like three weeks, like knocking around down there. And I keep on thinking, like, I just remembered it while I was sitting here. I was like, shit, I've got to take that out. Every time I remember, I'm away from my car. I'm gonna play it. I just haven't had a chance. - You should. It's great. - Yeah. - I started playing a little bit of Metro 2033. That's pretty good. I played God of War, obviously. I've been playing Dragon Age Awakening 'cause I just got that yesterday. And that's fun. It doesn't have as much character development stuff. Like, you don't, you can't have like really long conversations. - Wait, what is that? I got that in the mail the other day, was it? - It's an expansion to Dragon Age? - Okay. - It's like a full retail expansion. - Oh, weird. - Dragon Age, colon hyphen. - It as soon as you beat in it. - It as soon as you beat in it. - If you play with a new character. - Yeah, okay. - But you don't have to, you know. But you have like whole new party members and everything. And it's like, it does pick up where the other game left off. It's very much more combat focused, it seems. But it seems like they also, to kind of make up for the fact that you don't have extensive dialogue trees with your party members, they say a lot more stuff in their banter while you're walking around in the world. That's kind of cool. It's a lot of it's really funny. - So yeah, that and Metro 2033 and Bad Company 2. - That is gonna go nowhere with Bad. - That's, and Robert is stacking beer bottles. - Oh, oh, oh. (laughing) - I have a special skill. - And I know I've been playing some other games but I can't think of them right now, so fuck it. - Well, okay. (laughing) - Anthony, Iaigos. - Iaigos. - I've been playing a ton of iPhone and indie games. I'm not really, I'm just saying that to a noi Arthur. (laughing) 'Cause apparently those aren't real games. - Yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna be out of here the whole time. - I finally got to start Clash of Heroes on my way back from South by Southwest. - And you were like, finally it's great. - Yeah, exactly. So like, I don't really need to talk about that 'cause everybody knows it's awesome, but anyway. - Yeah, it's a DS game that's a lot. I mean, the quickest thing people will snap to and judge it as is like Puzzle Quest, but it's, it is, it does involve color matching of things, but it's not like Puzzle Quest where you're matching gems to get mana. You're actually matching guys to do an attack. Like if you match three of a color, like the red guys will do an attack against an enemy force in front of you. - It's like a turn-based tactical strategy puzzle game. - Yeah. - I've come to over, nobody ever does one of those games about like interior decorating. (laughing) - You're not even matching Japanese swatches. - How do you know they have it? - Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, there's everything I wanna play when I'm like, let's Pilates, you know, there's like all these games who knows. - I haven't played a DS game since Scribblenauts. - Oh man, have you, I mean, have you ever played the Phoenix Wright games? Like just for some of the likes of venture games? - I'm not super into Phoenix, right? - You should play the newest one. - I would actually be most of venture games. - Until I realized that Wario where DIY was about to come out, I honestly thought that I would probably never play the DS ever again. - You should really get Might and Magic Clash of Heroes. - Or-- - But it's coming out for Xbox Live-- - Oh, it is coming out at Icebox Live Arcade. That's the only reason-- - I would also remind you that I don't typically play games called Might and Magic. - I know, actually, like, Magic or-- - See, like, I totally wouldn't have been-- - It's fantasy. - And for me, the double whammy, too, is the art style's all like anime, like, kind of stuff. But I hear it's great-- - But it's made by-- - And it's like-- - Right up my house. - It's called Happy Barra Games. - In Canada. - Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. - They did, Critic Crunch. - Critic Crunch. - Yeah. - I know this, guys, but what is this? What is this game? - Might Magic-- - Oh, now you're paying attention. (laughing) - I feel bad. - No, I have to pay attention. - I feel bad. - No, I mean, there are plenty of good games to play on your DS. I mean, for instance, Broken Sword was out on DS long before it was out on iPhone, so. - Yeah, but the iPhone's in my pocket right now. - True. - Yeah. - Although, I would argue that I bet it controls better on DS than it does on iPhone. Just 'cause when you're trying to point with your finger, it can be a little annoying when your little pixel hunting. - Bullshit. (laughing) - Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. (laughing) - Has anybody played the Mass Effect 2DLC yet? - The, like, the tank stuff? - Yeah. - No, I haven't had a chance to yet. - I'm just curious. - I just thought that I'd clarify what you're talking about before I said no. (laughing) - Yeah, I really haven't been playing all that much this week. I've played some Perfect Dark on Xbox Live, and that's-- - What? - The best example I've heard of that is that it's like, it's like what Tom said, I think. Tom Price that we used to work with. (humming) - I don't know where we have to-- - Yeah, it's like Perfect Dark on Xbox Live, let you play Perfect Dark the way you remember it, which is like when we played it, we were like fuck, these graphics are awesome, it's pretty, and you go back and play it right, and it's not pretty anymore, even with the up-res graphics. But it's not like when you try and go back and play 64 game now where you're like, ah, this runs 15 frames a second. - Yeah, and we're on the, the N64 just looks like, like someone smeared shit on your TV. - Yeah. - Before you turned it on, it's just so blurry and nasty. And this is actually like, like how you remember it, it really is how you remember it. - Well, I mean, it runs only 1080p at 60 frames a second. - But yeah, that's the other weird part, is that it actually runs at like such a high frame rate, and in the fact that you have a second analog stick is kind of weird too, just because when you played it on the 64, you only had the one. - I always did, did it have the gold knife thing where you could use two controllers to control one character? - No. - What the fuck, I had no idea. - I had no idea you could do that. - That was how I play, always played gold knives. Like you could set it up so you could-- - Man, that would work so much better. - It was so fucking cool, yeah. You had one controller on the left hand and one on the right, and you know those N64 controllers, how they had like that middle stick, so-- - A trident? - Yeah, so basically you hold the middle of the, you hold the trident in the middle of the middle-- - The middle time. - Yeah, Chuck. And you have one in each hand, you have your dual analog control, it was fucking great. - Grouping Poseidon's dick. - It's really weird, you know, I love the shit out of gold knife, like anyone my age, and when Perfect Dark came out, I remember waiting up and going to, I was in college, made my roommates went to Walmart and bought it at midnight, and that day I had made myself some vegetarian tacos with like that stupid-- - I like what this is going. - Yeah, the soy meat. And you're waiting in line. - And we got the, no, we got the Perfect Dark, we brought it back, we played it for an hour, and I suddenly-- - Put it in my mom, we got the Perfect Dark. - Yeah, the Perfect Dark. - We got the Perfect Dark. - I ate my vegetarian soy protein tacos, or whatever kind of shit I used to eat when I was an idiot. And-- - Are there several idiots in the room right now? - Yeah, no, I know. And then after playing it for an hour, I felt so sick, and I went into my bathroom, and I threw up like a gallon of like-- - Soytail. - Texture and vegetable protein into my bathtub, okay? And from that moment-- - Why your bathtub, how far away was the fucking toilet? - I have, okay, look, I have the serious problem with throwing up, like I've only thrown up like three times in my entire life. I hate it. - Me too. - And I'm not gonna put my face in a toilet, okay? Like it's just not something that-- - Yeah, but then we're such a bizarre prima donna, you never think you're such a bird about this. - I don't throw up, like I will suffer and not throw up. - Oh, I do the same, but then when you throw up in some like a bathtub, it doesn't have anywhere to go. - It makes it wonder-- - I gotta say, this was a surprise throw up. It was like, oh my God. I was playing perfect dark. - I really had to shit, fuck going in a toilet. - But anyway, anyway, because I was so sick, I was never able to play that game. I wanted to play it so bad, but from that moment on, whenever I tried to play it-- - You're associated with-- - I felt terrible, like it was like, I associated it with being sick, and it was such a choppy game, it played at a really low frame rate, and I've never had problems playing first person games, but that game just fucking killed me, I could not play that game. So maybe I should actually play it now, maybe it won't bring back-- - You can actually play the old golden eye levels on multiplayer online. - She, I would just foreplay you in this level. - Yeah, only if you play one hit kills first of all, 'cause that's the only real way to play it. - Yeah, that's the only way to play it. - Okay, I just wanna make sure-- - With pistols. - With pistols, man, it's like it's amazing that all these kids came to the same place. - Yeah, that's because all the weapons fucking sucked. - Well yeah, but-- - So the only way to play that game was one shot kills with pistols. - Yeah, and how to wait and turn it off. - Yeah, exactly. - Okay. - And I love for remote minds. - No, the remote minds were for the people who couldn't actually play the game. - That was something we do as like a pallet cleanser, like after like the seventh hour of playing it straight. - Yeah. - It was just like we need something. Minds and fists only, fuck you guys. - I, I, the thing I liked about Perfect Dark and that I don't know if the new one has is that specifically me and my friends thought it was so cool that you could name yourself when you were playing. So my friend always used to name himself. Well, he's the name of something I want with people. It was just like me, you asshole. And that was his name, me, you asshole, because it would always say you killed me, you asshole. We used to think that was the funniest shit ever. - Yeah, it was like-- - We were so serious about GoldenEye that we, like my friends and I had a chalkboard where we kept track of our wins. - Whoa. - And I mean, it was the source of incredible strife. - Oh, there was, I almost gotten some like, like there'd be times that it would be like the game be over and instead of us being like, good game, I'd just like have to like walk out like, I'm fucking done here. - Oh no, we had this fight. Like, not like I'm leaving. - It was like, I'm gonna fucking punch you in the face. Like, it was Texas. - Yeah, it was Texas. - Yeah, lucky no one got really shocked. - The chalkboard got erased several times. - Was it just because like in our case, it was always like, we'd be like, we had a house rule of no crouching and then someone would be crouching be like, you motherfucker, we said-- - No crouching. - How is it a house rule? How do you make that house rule? - It became so cheap. - It was no crouching and you couldn't pick a odd job 'cause it was time. - Odd job was only for people who like, - Yeah, you're like, okay, you can play with minds and odd job. (laughing) - You ever handicapped the good players by having them pick a Jaws because he's bigger? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, that game definitely had targets the world. - Like how we still wait until we're a perfect dark and it's like my gold man. - With the Hawaiian shirt. - Yeah. - And my big friend Ian always played the big guy. - I still think that like the reason that Halo was so big was just because everyone, all, everyone loved gold and I, and so the bar was just so fucking low. (laughing) That when somebody did like, first person shooters competently on the console, it was like, oh my God, this is amazing. Like I loved gold and I, but come on, it was like a total piece of shit. That game was a total piece of shit. Like all the weapons were terrible. That's why we always played with pistols and one shot kills. Like it looked terrible. - The actual like first person game was like ridiculous. - How did you aim up? I forgot. - You had a button. - How did you aim up? - You had the C button. - Yeah. - Yeah, you held down the, that's why like people played, people played on the fucking Xbox. - Use your second control. - Two analog sticks. This is amazing. - Yeah, most people, I don't think knew about the whole like two controller thing. - No, I had no fucking shot. - Plus I would never have done that multiplayer 'cause then that would have meant someone had to sit out. - Yeah, you gotta play four player so that you can barely tell what the hell is happening. You're trying to divine what's happening in a 3D shooter by looking at a grid of 100 pixels. - As you can see, I had to say too, the back and then we used to do this, it wasn't like any of us had the TVs, the P.L.A.P. - It was like a 26 inch TV map. S.D. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Not even RCA, whatever. - You need the fucking, do you have GoldenEye? - I have GoldenEye. - You need, we need to break out the fucking N64 so I can see this two controller bullshit in action. - Yeah, I had no idea. - I had no idea. - That's crazy. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Do you have anything else? - No, I can think of one other thing you do. - Well, I play this shitty, well not shitty. I don't want to say shitty because I didn't - They're looking for somebody in your neighborhood right now. - No, I wasn't talking about rooms. - You hear the helicopter? - We're in Oakland. - Yeah. - What were you talking about? - We played Lost Planet. - I'm gonna get me very briefly last week. - Oh yeah, I did play Lost Planet 2. That seems like, did you like Lost Planet? - I thought that it was like so satisfying in some ways and so annoying in other ways. - I think the thing that could make Lost Planet 2 super cool is that one thing is just, it's just four player co-op throughout the whole thing. The whole game is four player co-op. And it's made to be four player co-op so you're always rolling around as a squad even though it tells various storylines. Every storyline you play is always like your character in three dudes so that a friend can just jump in and take over one of the dudes. - Yeah, it's awesome. - So, I mean, that alone almost makes it like a must buy for me just 'cause co-op games with my friends are usually really, really fun. - I just drop in and drop out. - As far as I know, yes. - Oh yeah. - I just like the way shit explodes in that game. - Yes. - Oh yeah, beautiful explosions. And, you know, the suits are pretty badass and they've thrown in a lot of things like instead of like full on big old suits there's also like little baby suits that are almost just like little tiny exoskeletons you put on to do certain things. - Yeah, that's cool. - And different environments now, it's not all snow all the time. There's jungle stuff and you're still fighting bugs sometimes but it's also a lot of human on human combat. - Why is it either snow or the jungle? - Because they terraform-- - It's like, you're going on vacation or bust. (laughing) - I mean, they do give reasons. It's like they're terraforming parts of the planet. So other parts are still cold. - Okay, yeah. But we're turning it into tropical environments. Yeah, with the T-ang or whatever it's called. - Yeah. - The thermal energy. - The T-ang, yeah. - The T-ang. - The T-ang. - Yeah, I would play that game. - Man, that helicopter is right over the top of your house. - I know, some guys is gonna burst in the window. (laughing) - I need somewhere to hide nerds. (laughing) - That would be incredible. - Thinking of that game and of God of War, like these games would have these very satisfying acts of violence. Do you think you would have been a happier teenager if you had had access to games like these? I think that if I could have ripped someone apart and got a war that maybe I would have been a happier person. - I feel like we still had access to that kind of shit. Like for us, like primal rage or killer instinct, or fucking moral combat. - With that shit wasn't satisfying. - No, not the same way anyway. - Although there was a little bit of satisfaction. - I feel like-- - Remember when you'd uppercut someone in Mortal Kombat? Like that was the first time I can remember there being this like really satisfying like-- (groaning) - Like yeah! - Or like dudes, like green shook. - When you'd kill someone in Doom, they'd basically like split apart. - I mean, I think a lot of the ways my life as a teenager would have been more satisfying if it was right now because of two things. One, we'd have the awesome games like you're talking about that are really tough. - And so you'd have a girlfriend. - No. (laughing) - That's why I have a girlfriend right now. - Oh shit, that's sad. - Internet pornography. - Exactly. (laughing) - It's the back of the day when I was a teenager, I had a 56K modem, the best I was doing was like a JPEG, while I was like very low volume so I could hear if my mom was coming out of the room. Now it is, it's like high speed internet, whatever. (laughing) You know, nowadays it's like a city of hers coming. - You'd probably be a first comment. (laughing) - You'd be in like all kinds of crazy shit. - Why? - I worry about kids now. Like when I was a kid, like access to pornography, you get like a magazine from someone's dad or something. - Or from a dad. - But now you could just end up at some like insane website where you'd be like, maybe I should really dress up like a stuffed animal and have sex with other stuffed animals. (laughing) - Oh, we're like the worst thing that could have happened to us in our childhood is like, we grow an affection for like poofy hair. - Yeah. - 'Cause all the pornos were for me. - Now you're talking about being a Texan though. I don't think that was a universal experience. I think you were either in Texas or New Jersey. (laughing) In the 80s, if you liked girls with giant poofy bangs. (laughing) - That was kind of the thing. So yeah, I'm sorry, I'm trying to derail. I haven't been playing around you. - Review? - Yeah. - I like, man, this is like cathartic for me because I can only handle being on, my life being on a track all the time for so long. So Arthur, what have you been playing? - I suffer through all of Dante's Inferno PSP, which is broken. The metaphor I had for it was basically, it's like they, Yae got A2M to do the port. - Which is people made wet. - Yeah. - If you need some background on that. - So basically it's like you took something in English and then put it into Google Translate and got it in Japanese and then translated it back again. - Worst developer name ever. - A2M, yeah. - Astomalf? - Yep. (laughing) - How did that not occur to little people? - I never heard of A2M. - You never heard of A2M? - But how does A2M not occur to you? - What do you mean, like? - You never go astomalf. - No. - Well, what do you, what? - It's a morning movie with that one. - You know, what do you know about my bedroom? (laughing) - More now than I did a minute ago. (laughing) - I haven't heard of A2M. I gotta say, I'm a little out of it. - I'm a little out of it. - Well, it's just because wet is their first game, right? - I know. - No. - No. - Whoa. Sorry, backtrack. Wet was not the first. I'm not sure if it was. - So it's not bad for first, oh, it's not the first. - Oh, it's two mouths. - Oh, but it's fucking two. - It's just really bad. It feels broken. They tried to cram the console version. - On my mouth. - Goddamn, you are so loud whispering in the mic right now. It's just, it's broken, basically. They tried to cram the console version in, and to their credit, they did in most respects, but it's pretty bad. - Well, I guess we should all play that. - Nah. (laughing) - God of War III and more battlefield since I have to write something up about it. - And I think that's actually it. I mean, I got a new computer at work, so I've been throwing random shit on there through Steam just to see how it runs. - Have you tried Metro 2033 at highest settings? - I haven't, but I tried Crisis Warhead on highest settings in 1920 by 1080. And it runs. - Did you feel like a fucking man? - No, I was actually, I was disappointed. And also-- - You felt impotent. - Really, I do prefer console games to PC games, so. - That's all right. - Some people are just gay. (laughing) - I did actually go look for a dick to suck afterwards. - I just mean, like, seriously. Some people just like to enjoy penises, and some people just like Kayla. That's cool. - I like both of those things. (laughing) - It's a big open world for all kinds of possibilities. - It's substitute world for mouth, and we're in business. (laughing) I think we're gonna take a break. - Yeah, we'll do it. And then we're gonna do some letters, which can, which will be mostly off topic. And some will be on topic. - Awesome. - We got a topic. - I got dids on feet. (vocalizing) (upbeat music) ♪ Well, I guess we're gonna have to take control ♪ ♪ We got, we got, we got, we got, we got, we got ♪ ♪ We got ourselves to what we've got to take it all ♪ ♪ We got to go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go ♪ ♪ There's a whole bunch of them in each world ♪ ♪ Well, I guess we're gonna have to take control ♪ ♪ We got, we got, we got, we got, we got, we got ♪ ♪ We got, we got, we got, we got, we got, we got ♪ ♪ We got, we got, we got, we got, we got, we got ♪ ♪ We got, we got, we got, we got, we got ♪ - So Tyler, Jody tells us you pee sitting down. (laughing) - Oh, really? - Yeah. - Tyler sits. - Yeah. - That's your reaction. - That happens really? - Yeah. - That happens a lot. - There's a couple of reasons. (laughing) - Number one, it's actually a funny story. My dad would always tell me, he'd be like, "Son, he was like, you wanna make your wife happy?" It's like piss sitting down. (laughing) - That was a hard time. - And that's literally the only piece of advice my dad has ever given me. (laughing) I figured that's the one I'm gonna take. - Nah, to be fair, Tyler, I have an even worse thing which is just that I'm extremely P-Shy to where I cannot, for the life of me, this is true, I cannot pee in a urinal, if someone else is in the room. - I can't either. - I will be peeing in a urinal and someone else will enter the room and all of a sudden it's like, gone. (laughing) - Here's the thing. Once I opened my mind up to peeing, sitting down, once I sort of stepped down from that, I realized it's so carefree because you don't have to aim. You just fucking sit there. Sometimes I put my arms above my head 'cause it looks extra good. (laughing) - The aiming is the fun part. - Yeah. - Where's your sets of competition? - I guess, I can't touch it. I actually shit standing up, so. (laughing) - Just standing straight up in front of the toilet. - No, you just like, you stand on the seat. (laughing) - Yeah, like a crane or something. (laughing) - Wow. - Boy. - I do everything standing up. (laughing) - I don't like to sit. (laughing) Bad back. - The first letter comes from Jay, and he says, this is actually a not, yeah, it's a serious question. Do you guys ever take breaks in between writing a review or do you always burn through the entire thing in one go? Thanks. That's what he wants to know. I don't think anybody beats the game in one sitting. - Unless you're Hillary Goldstein. - No, is he saying like, do you burn through the game or do you write the review in one sitting? - Oh, take breaks in between writing a review? - Or do you always, no, I guess I am. - In between writing a review and writing. - No, I think he just means like, I think Matt is right, actually. - Can you take breaks while writing a review or do you just sit down and write the whole thing right at once? - Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of fucking like game critics out there who just sit and write an entire review without clicking over to look at their email or their Twitter or-- - I don't know why it's her twice porn. I have to be really sure about what I'm saying before I can fucking do that, and that's really rare. - I normally always do my rough trap with one time all the way through. I just like shit out on my ideas. - I almost, whenever I, like I don't write reviews, but whenever I have to write something in general, I always have to write the whole thing all the way through, like start to finish or I just won't finish. - All right, Anthony. - All right, so the next one-- - Do you not have a response to that? - No, I mean, I don't know, it depends. It's all over the place for me. Sometimes I write it and one if it's like going well, but it's like sometimes I think it was Sean or Ryan that once said, you know, sometimes you'll sit down and you'll work for an hour and an hour's time, you'll get five minutes of work done or you'll get it like a whole day's worth the work done. You never know, like it just sometimes doesn't happen. - Usually-- - Sometimes it doesn't. - Usually five minutes. - Yeah, it can be really agonizingly slow. The next letter is from Anders, and he says-- - My favorite character in Dragon Age Awakening. - I was wondering if you, I was listening to you read Harry's letter and I felt inclined to agree with lower your standards response, which I think Harry was a guy that wrote in about like we were telling him the lower standards about girls or something. - Oh, what were the standards? - I don't remember. - A chapter. - However I wanted to ask you, he says, when have you sacrificed sex on the alter of your values? I've done this several times and here are two when I was still in school. First was a girl who was recommended to me by a friend as someone I should talk to. After chatting online, this was in the early days of AMICQ. We decided to meet up. It was only in the days before this meeting that my friend told me she was a sure thing as she'd blown half the guys in her class at the school she went to. - Oh, totally. - Rather than fist counting saying fuck yeah, and getting a piece of that action, I made the decision that I didn't need her that badly, even if she was interested in me. So when we met up, it was a nice civilized coffee at a cafe, not a hot coffee at my place. Ho ho. Second was a girl who I met under similar circumstances introduced by a third party. All was going well and we were set up to meet for the first real day until she revealed that she was madly and I mean obsessively into Jeff Buckley during a talk about music. After that, there was no meetup and certainly nothing else. Despite the fact that this girl was a Jeff Buckley fan from a small town in Tasmania and really didn't come to more of a sure thing than that at that point in my life. So there are two of my many fumbled plays during the early part of my dating career. Harry, take my advice and don't let stupid standards be your own personal cock blocker. He just wanted to know. So his standard was Jeff Buckley and not getting with the girl who'd blown half the guys in his class. I believe you've distilled it to its ex and CS. He just wonder if there's ever time we passed up on sex for-- Yes. Yeah, me too. Definitely. No, from it's like, well, I don't know. I married the girl that I dated when I was 15, so-- No would be an answer. I mean, I didn't pass up on anything before that and I didn't pass up on anything after that, so no. You were fist bumping and saying, fuck yeah, instead. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Tyra, you don't have anything to add to this? Yeah, no. I don't think standards, whoever it is, you. [LAUGHTER] I don't think that sounded the way you meant it. How does that feel, Jody? [LAUGHTER] I got no standards. Oh, no. Well, standards are wet and warm. [LAUGHTER] You fucking beat me to it. [LAUGHTER] No, I mean, actually, what I meant was, I never had a problem not getting something within my standards. OK, I was about to say, Jody, you can be so excited to put that on your tombstone. [LAUGHTER] We got me back, so. [LAUGHTER] All right, so, Spapstein writes to us. No. And he says, out of the following three portions of a game, which do you get the most enjoyment/entertainment out of? Single player, co-oper multiplayer. With the slew of games coming out, I'll tear through the single player and move straight to the next game, giving the multiplayer data, too. But quickly realize it's keeping me from the next game. Occasionally, I'll tackle a co-op campaign if I can find a friend for split screen. But this is where, because shooters aren't my favorite genre, when you get a game, regardless of genre, one that includes all three components, I guess, which one do you guys tend to favor the most? I guess probably single player. Yeah, I mean, I'm more likely to play all the way. No? Robert, it feels OK. I just, like, I don't know this question. It's kind of empty. Do you play left for dead single player? I mean, some games you play multiplayer, some games. For me, like, whatever a game has a-- But he's saying specifically games that have, like, all three. Well, for games that have all three, for me, it's like, whenever something has co-op, I'm always the most excited for the co-op. But I always find that's the one that I play the least, because it's hard for me to find other people that want to play it when I want to play it. Yeah, because, like, co-op, it's just you and one or two other people, whereas with multiplayer, it could be you and, like, four or five of your other friends. For me, like, I love multiplayer games. Like, you know, it's the way I stay very connected to my friends back in Houston. Like, I mean, we get together almost every night on Xbox Live and play games together, so-- But isn't it hard with, like, the time difference? I feel like it took a two-hour difference. I mean, we're always on, like, chat and stuff, so it's like, "Hey, man, we're going to get on in a minute. Do you have time?" How old are you? I'm not saying that in a derogatory way. No, no, 28. 28, okay. You're not that much, you're three years younger than me. My feeling is that younger people are more willing to be, like, constantly in connection with their friends. Like, I have this, like, I am phobia. I don't use I am-- I know, I've never seen you once on aim. I don't, I hate it, because, like, whenever I go on, I feel like it's very distracting. And I don't like people being able to demand me to, like, stop working and talk to them. That's irritating to me. I've just trained everybody that, like, when they aim me, it's a crapshoot whether or not I'll answer back. And if I do answer back, it's a crapshoot whether or not I'll reply to their reply. So, wow, it's just sort of like they have to realize that-- That's just let everyone know that he's an active dick. Yeah, exactly. No, you just always have your way message up, so you always got that possible denial that you could have missed it. Yeah, it's just a-- I think of it as truly asynchronous communication. Yeah, well, I like asynchronous communication, so that's why I stick to the email. I know, I noticed when I sent you a text message, Robert, that, like, in the total time I've known you, we've had, like, two text messages exchanged, and it was always like, I'm here, all right. [LAUGHTER] I didn't start text messaging until I got, like, an iPhone. I couldn't do it with the regular phone. Which was recent, that was not that long ago, right? Yeah, like five or six months ago. Yeah. Or it was packs right around packs. Yeah, you were on right after packs. That was the last time you were on the show. Yeah, all right. I got a-- I got another relationship list. Let's do it. OK, man. Here's some history. I'm a freshman in college, and I have not had a girlfriend since junior high school. It's not a mystery. That-- I barely feel like that qualifies as a girlfriend. No, he says, I haven't had a girlfriend. I know, I'm saying that anyone you're dating in junior high school-- True. It's not a mystery. OK, fast forward to two weeks ago, and my friend got one of these girls that I liked-- that liked him to talk to me. I started talking with her, and we realized we had a lot in common. I took her to see Alice in Wonderland because she thought it would be trippy, and it ended with us holding hands. Oh, geez. Three or four days later, I go to her house and spend the night, and she's pretty much begging me for sex, and I had to tell her no. Not because I didn't like her, but because I didn't have a love glove, that's what he calls it. So we ended up just doing everything except for sex. She tells me that she really likes me, but she is conflicted because she still loves her ex. She and her ex broke up a month or two ago because she cheated on him. This is a good one. She's been telling me she still likes me, but that she's not good enough for me. She's been going to see her ex-boyfriend for the first time since they broke up. She's going to see her ex-boyfriend for the first time since he broke up tomorrow, March 22. What should I do? Am I wrong for hoping he doesn't take her back? Well, way to be the classic fucking nice guy palate cleanser. Yeah, exactly. She's the asshole guy and you're the nice guy. He's like, I can't have sex with you because I don't have a condom, so I guess I'll just go down on you. [LAUGHTER] And then she's like, you're too good for me. I'm just going to go meet my ex-boyfriend. That is the fucking kiss of death. Anytime a girl says anything, I am too insert adjective here for you. I'm too bored with you. Let Anthony tell you for probably more experience in this particular field of I am too good for you because you are a nice guy ex. I think Matt's probably the only other person that might. Because you always lend yourself to you. That's nice of you to loop Matt into your cycle. No, Matt always tells me that he's had a lot of the nice guy thing. And I've had it a lot. So I'm not saying Matt's had nearly as much as me because, man, that's like the story of every girl that I meet. There was a reason. I'm also older than you. I've been invented for GFW because we all knew it was going to be a disaster from the start. [LAUGHTER] But yeah. So I've had a lot of horrible times with that. But yeah, so you've got to man up for both of us because I never do it. So I need you to do it. If I can next time, just get a Prager's. [LAUGHTER] Just go anal. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, why did you think of that? Well, he said everything, but sex maybe doesn't consider anal sex sex. That's true. That's what that's called the Christian. Hang on, a lot of kids these days actually are all, man, but anal sex is on the rise. So he might have just been like hey. It's a good way to keep your virginity. Yeah, that's what all the Christian girls in my high school used to say. There you go. I wish that's what all the Christian girls find. [LAUGHTER] Christian girls in my school used to just say no. Time has changed, man. Anal sex isn't real sex. All right, the next one is from-- From the whole you show? And I almost want to read this guy's whole name. Thank you for describing anal sex for us, Tyler. For the one guy in the audience that wasn't sure what we were talking about. OK, this is from Bertrand. And he says-- That's a good follow-up name for you, Tyler. I'm a high school senior trying to structure my educational path through college. What the fuck? How do you follow that letter with this letter? Because I'm just going down the list of good letters I picked. This is a good one. And this is one I actually felt that you might be able to answer. As opposed to the sex one. So my ultimate-- well, this is one I specifically-- Well, obviously, man. I asked kind of everyone, but I picked this one specifically because I thought-- He's got a cat question for you later. Oh, no. What's up, Bertrand? He says that. My ultimate end goal is to become a college professor that studies and analyzes video games, much like people who interpret literature, movies, art, and comic books for artistic value. Gross industry. I would gladly settle for being a professor of English that's literature if the whole video game is an art movement. Doesn't really pan out for me. But what do you guys think I should major in if I were to go for this career? And I thought that this kind of is maybe something what you kind of looked at when you were in school might be good for something like this, which was-- I studied technocultural studies at UC Davis. Yeah, very-- stuff like that. Wow. It's very cutting edge to the point where-- That's a bullshit hippie degree. Yeah, fuck that. Get an English degree or some other classical liberal arts degree that isn't so specific. You know, I was watching Sid Meier's GDC talk, and one thing that I always felt bummed out when I talked to game designers is how much game designers don't take into consideration psychology. So if you want to get an undergrad that could maybe stir you in a direction, do an undergrad in psychology? Accounting. Just do accounting. Give up on your dreams. I mean, it's never going to happen, kid. There's actually a lot of crossover that's starting to happen with that sort of study with English. But in general, I would say there are a lot of really interesting programs that you can do. But I really think you should keep it general when you're in undergrad. Like, I'm sure that you can do cool things in undergrad. But if you keep it general and you get a good education, like a good liberal arts education where you learn about the world and about things outside of your limited hobbies and experience as a teenager, then you're going to be able to go into grad school with a better sense of what you want to do. And that's when you get specific. Yeah, and I did make fun of your degree, Arthur. But what actually did you study? I was theory because I had all the technical stuff from Art Studio already. So I mostly studied just sort of like in English, it was 20th century literature as a response to the technical which started with Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court and the jungle up to neuromancer and the gravity's rainbow and stuff like that. And just like one of my teacher worked with the Yes Men, I don't know if anybody is familiar with the Yes Men. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, I am. Yes, yes, yes, yes. There's actually a really cool documentary on this, like, substance. His name is Bob Ostertag. He actually does his own stuff. But a lot of artists, a lot of documentary filmmakers, a lot of sociology and humanities people just sort of studying the effects of technology on culture. And also, not only, you know, another branch they could go down that way is the discipline where they sort of take technology and art and marry them. Like when I was at, I did this short study at Parsons. Yeah. And there was this whole course and that was their thing. Like they would sort of make art projects out of technology. That's just sort of dicey though, because that sort of crosses over into the whole, like, contemporary art and, like, very... Yeah, so, I don't know. But that's where, like, augmented reality games and stuff, like, that are really prolifically... Which is a lot of that stuff makes me feel a little oogie because it ventures into fucking contemporary art. Wanky, academic, beard, strokey shit that isn't... The "I" isn't really going anywhere. There's two names that I can give Bertrand is it, that I can give him to Google. Google Catherine is Bister. That's I-S-B-I-S-T-E-R. And Google Ian Bogost. Ian I-A-N, and then B-O-G-O-S-T. That's his last name. And those are two people that have made careers kind of in the stuff you're talking about at university. So, like, just look them up. You also, I just gotta say, if you're 18 and you think you really know what you want to do with your life, you're fucking wrong. You were wrong. Seriously, like, try a lot of things sexually. The podcast is just our MacBook messed up. We lost barely anything, but it actually was a great time for Robert to change his whole entire-- And they won't even know if we hadn't said anything. It'll end it on such a way that it'll be fine, but now I just have to keep fucking eagle-eye on this laptop. Yeah. Yeah, the humanities are good for sort of cooling you into the world and letting you know what maybe your place would be in it. I can tell you, stay away from computer science. Um, Jesus, maybe not from experience. And then if you guys know about a movie called Technolust. No. Yeah, it's like an underground, weird sci-fi movie that a professor I had directed. Hmm. Random. That major attracts a lot of, like, crazy people, although I saw one of the professors at GDC last year. The next letter? Yes. It's from Will. And Will says-- Total. Will, right. It says, Will-- it's Will C. Right. And he's from-- he says he's in high school, but it could be Will, right? It's Will, right. We'll say it's Will, right. All right. He likes to play tricks. Will, right, says, hello various people attending the Taping of the Rebel FM podcast. And thank you for reading this letter on the air. I'll be very disappointed in you if it's not. Now to-- See, I told you it's Will, right. Yeah. That's exactly right. Now to mildly more interesting stuff. Such entitlement. My name is Will, right. You don't have to be right. I'm a high school sophomore. And I'm not getting anywhere with this girl I really like. I took this girl, Katie, to a homecoming dance last October. And we had a pretty good time, but nothing really happened after. Katie's current-- Didn't fucking try. Katie's currently single and hasn't really had a serious relationship in about a year, even though he's a sophomore in high school. [LAUGHTER] He's-- This guy's in high school. The last person was in college. It's Will, right. She-- yeah. So-- I want to know what real rights do in taking out high school. She's a great girl. And I would hate to give up on-- Would you like to see my robots? --on one of the few girls in my school that it's actually a good person. Also, we both attend Catholic school, so we've had that weirdness going for us. Oh, fuck. That's all he says. Wow, this guy can't-- this guy can't bet a Catholic girl-- a Catholic high school girl. Like, what kind of, like, sad state is that? Have you tried-- We went to a dance, and then nothing happened. For real, it's like-- I think you're outside of the statute of limitations for anything happening with that girl. So Will-- Will, right. Have you tried anal? You wouldn't have to. I mean, if they ever had a condom problem, it wouldn't be a problem. That's actually what they mean by dance now. When they say dance, they mean anal sex. OK. [LAUGHTER] God. OK, so I had to follow up letter from additional pylons. Do you remember that guy? I do remember additional pylons. So-- I don't remember what his question was, but I remember his name. He wrote a-- he was a relationship letter. And he said-- Oh, that arrows it down. He says, thanks for reading my letter. I just finished listening to your Microsoft sponsored podcast. [LAUGHTER] OK, the moment we were all about the tall. It was a mutual breakup, nothing dramatic. The two of us just drifted apart in the couple of months prior to the breakup. Her mom is depleted of both investing gas and minerals and sleeping with her friends would be a complicated task with significant rewards since they're also not high. This is the guy we said sleep with her mom or her friends. No, this-- Ty said Tyler would say sleep with her mom. And Ryan suggested fucking her friends. Fucking your friends, yeah. And so he said that basically-- And David suggested something we had to bleep out. Basically, he said they're all not. What do you have to bleep out on this? Yeah, that's the main thing, yeah. He suggested murder, suicide. [LAUGHTER] Which I am also going to have to bleep out. Because it's now David Ellis of 343 Industries. Oh, OK, OK, OK. So we, in the end, we told him either-- we also took it to the front, and then my response was like, just tough it out until high school's over. Because that's when it's over. Because that's the typical pussy response that would come from this chair right here. OK, OK, OK. And he said I will just tough it out for the next few months since we're going to different schools in September. So you failed for taking my advice, apparently. I didn't say that. It was just sad that you called that pussy kid. The sad thing is, I feel like the easiest time in your entire life to get ladies in high school. I know. I never get to be hindsight, though, and do not feel that way. For me, it was college. College. But then he also says-- College-- additional pilots also had a lesser question. He just said, "Dear Anthony, I want to know which is the best view of pinata games." And I think-- and I'm not the only one who's qualified to answer that. I would say two, trouble and paradise. I mean, well, the only thing is two really just assumes that you played one and jumps right the fucking do it. Right, but there is a tutorial, I'm pretty sure. I would get trouble and paradise. They're both cheap. And he also said the handheld one, but that's only really good. If that's like your primary system, it's good, but it's not as good as-- Holy shit, I totally forgot that was on DS. Yes. So I got here to go to GameStop tomorrow. So this is actually like a positive letter. This is just someone saying thank you to us, but it's not like-- No, like HIV positive? No, it's-- So this is from Anand. And he says, oh, it says Anand is the person that sent it, but it actually says, hello, this is Mickey from Belgium. And this is going to be the most satisfying but honest letter you've ever had. I wrote in to thank you guys for what you've done for you. I used to be a lazy guy. I used to spend my days either gaming or watching TV. It got so bad that my girlfriend, who I live with, was thinking about leaving me for a few months until I grew up. I never did the dishes. I never cleaned my room or any of the other rooms in the house, and I never did any repairs or chores that were necessary. Rebel FM changed everything. What? I started listening to this podcast from the very first episode, and it was the first podcast I listened to. I noticed that sitting in a chair for more than an hour got kind of boring when you don't have anything interesting to look at. So for the first time in a long time, I did the dishes. But it got crazier. I started doing all sorts of chores every time a new podcast came out. OK, so-- And I got hooked. Hold on. I started listening to other podcasts as well, giant bomb, the joystick podcast, and many other. In very short amount of time, I became a fucking workhorse. Yesterday, I unlocked the repair all achievement and the achieved adulthood achievement, according to my girlfriend. So he said, so thanks. Wow. So that's awesome. Guys, I got so bored listening to your podcast that I started doing stuff. No way, dude. I watched the dishes when I listened to podcasts, too, all the time. Yeah, sitting in a chair, just listening to a podcast is the most boring thing in the world. I listened to the giant bomb cast while I'm running. Exactly. See, you need to be doing stuff while you're listening to podcasts. Which means that, yes, my resolution to listen to audio books while running fell the fuck apart. I think if you're listening to a life well wasted, you shouldn't do anything but listen to it. It's just that. Except maybe jerk off. So exactly. There we go. No, when I listen to the radio, I'm always-- I listen to the radio all the time. And that's what I call podcasts. I mainly listen to NPR. But I wake up in the morning, and I put on morning edition, like I'm 65 fucking years old, and I lay on the floor, and I do some sit-ups and some stretches that I make my breakfast. I think I speak for Anthony as well when I ask this question. Can you listen to "Forum," or do you have to turn that shit right off? Like the show "Forum," for me. I hate that shit. What show is that? I don't know if I'll talk about it. That's the one that I have people calling in. It's a BBC show. And they have people calling in. The people that call in are just like so bad. The most pretentious-- Yeah, it's the worst. No, I don't listen to that. It's like-- Maybe it is "Talk of the Nation." "Talk of the Nation" is great for Science Friday. Yes, Science Friday is good. That's the geek-friendly one. Yeah, "Forum" is the one. "Forum" is terrible. I reflect, oh, yeah. Yeah, "Forum" is good. I listen to the morning edition-- Michael Krasney, and all things considered at night on the media on Fridays. It's not that I have a problem. This is American Life on Saturday. I don't have a problem. Michael Krasney, but man, does everyone that calls him to that show? Yeah, exactly. He always has to cut him off like they're insane. And he's just like, all right, hey, thanks for calling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny, actually, as it happens, even though it's Canadian, I haven't heard that. Ah, I'm not into that. I'm not into that. I don't know why I get a kick out of it. I hate how it starts off with that fucking, like, hippie music with a flute solo. [LAUGHTER] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] It's like these, like, I don't know-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] Yeah, but do you like fresh air? Yeah, hell yeah. Fresh air, the music and that used to bother the shit out of me, and then that's become something I actually like. What always bothers me is, I'm Terry Gross, and this is fresh air. Fresh air, fresh air. No, that's-- you're totally fresh air. That's why she always snaps. No, I love-- Terry Gross is a great interviewer. I admire her. Her reflection is occasionally really super irritating, though. Yeah, I mean, she's totally like a super stereotypical librarian, liberal arts school lesbian. But she likes good jazz, and she's an amazing interviewer. Have you ever hear her, like, Gene Simmons in a movie? Yes, the one where he's like, man, you just need to get laid, basically. Yeah, I loved it, though, because she totally-- Took a stride. Yeah, yeah, and she was basically just like, fuck you. I loved her Bill O'Reilly interview, too. Yeah. That was really good. It's too bad she didn't do it recently, because then she'd say, well, maybe you should keep your son from plagiarizing in entire comics. It's good if you actually want to hear what we're talking about, so you can hear all these-- they are podcasts on iTunes. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever noticed that, like, all things considered sometimes has really amazing musical breaks? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the other doesn't do it very, it does a really good job. Like, I think I heard a piano version of heart-shaped box one time. Dude, that's awesome. And they do a lot of rat-a-tat and stuff like that. I'm just like, in general, if you like listening to podcasts, you might just be an audio person. I feel like I like to get in my news verbally. Like, I read a lot, but somehow things sink in better for me. NPR is the only news source at this point that doesn't make me want to smash myself in the face. Yeah. I mean, you could read some things that wouldn't make you, but as far as-- But like, local news is universally god-awful in MSNBC and Fox and also CNN now is awful. Cable news shouldn't even exist. I wish Science Friday were like three hours long. I wish Science Friday were Science when they do credit. They always have to cut it way too short. Yeah, totally agree. Anyway, so the next letter is from Zach. And I'm only reading this just because-- This is Zach from Saved by the Bill. Yeah, and these are my favorite weird type of letters just because, for some reason, people love to send us their game ideas. Maybe it's Zach, OK. And this one's just like, I recently thought of this idea for a game and I wanted to hear your thoughts. OK, this is a game. The game is a government sim, example, civilization, and tropical set in a post-nuclear Holocaust world like Fallout or Stalker. You would start as a leader of a small settlement dealing with issues like food water management, bandits, and mutated wildlife. And banishment? Food water management. Oh, sorry. Water banishment. Sorry. As your civilization becomes larger, you have to deal with other civilizations. There will be some morality stuff thrown in, like whether you restore the world to its former glory or become absolute ruler. I think that is a good idea, but it may just be because I made it, so I wanted to hear what you think of it. [LAUGHTER] Zach, I think that's cool. It's like, I mentioned I was watching Sid Meyer's talk at GDC, and he actually mentioned that one thing they were trying to do with Civ 4 was have your civilization fall, and then you have to bring the rise. And he said that players really didn't like that. They hated having their civilization crumble. But this is interesting because you start with the civilization. With the crumble civilization. I think that's a great idea. It sounds like a civ expansion. Yeah, rather than its own game, really. Yeah, if someone could skin Civ with Fallout sort of go? I mean, Civ 5 is going to be a huge, modable thing. All the Civ games are modable, but it's like a huge thing for them. All the games, all the engines are designed to be able to find them. Civ 5 has mods integrated into the game. Yeah. I'm kind of done with the apocalypse. Can we get cheery? Do you have any room for all of the games? I feel like we've reached the nader of our national malaise. [LAUGHTER] I can kind of see maybe in a year maybe we won't all feel like-- That was a great fucking phrase, by the way. Yeah, seriously. I feel like the dark times are almost over, and I would like to kind of have some nice-- Have a little bit of hope for once. Yeah, yeah, I think in a year maybe we won't all feel like depressed teenagers. Well, that's what-- Go play Flower, you goddamn hippie. That's what, at his South by Southwest thing, that's what fucking Lionhead Studios guy, Molinew. That's what Molinew said. He couldn't get through. He thought Heavy Rain represented a future for interactivity in video games that could appeal to the mainstream. And so he really admires the game, but he said I couldn't play more than two hours of it, because it was just too intense and too depressing. It is fairly oppressive. Yeah, there was too much negative emotion coming out of the experience, and so it's like I couldn't get through it. But you can kind of see that in Fable. Fable too has some really dark moments in it. But overall, it's kind of a positive experience, and I think that's just the kind of games that he wants to make. But Fable 3, you can now grab somebody by the hand and forcibly drag them into slavery and shit. Right, but give you, I mean, there's the potential there for something more positive, at least theoretically. Like, totally good slavery. It's like they're my slave, but like I taught him how to read, so that's totally cool. I thought about Jesus, so it's fine. He was a savage until I rescued him. Yeah, exactly. Wow, that was all incredibly sarcastic in case anyone was wondering. You don't have any room in your heart left or fall on New Vegas this year? No, hold on, I got to say, I love Fallout. And so I'm taking a contradictory stance that while I want to play Fallout, I don't want to see like more apocalypse. I'm going to see more robot unicorn attack. Exactly. More robot unicorn attack. You're making John Carmack very sad when he flies off on his rocket when the world explodes. He's not going to let you in. That's OK. In the world explodes, I don't want to be around anymore. Hoping around. I think that's problem that will resolve itself. No, I see. The next door, I thought maybe Matt Arthur might have some good recommendations. No, it just says it's really short, actually. It's just a could you please recommend books that are some way unrelated to gaming? I don't know any of that, man, if you guys do, maybe. In some way, really, like-- Like as in-- That is some big extent of his letter. Like, smart bomb? That is all I got, yeah. Yeah. Everything bad is good for you. Yeah. Sure. Flosterman stuff is all kind of tangentially gaming related. Feed? Well, I mean, if you're looking for fiction, feed, which is labeled as young adult, is pretty interesting. It's super fucked up. William Gibson. J-Pod. Coke Coke. That's a book Jody has. J-Pod. J-Pod? J-Pod, yeah. Douglas Copeland. School, school. Oh, I mean, I haven't read Douglas Copeland in a long time. And a lot of his novels are kind of tech related, but from the early '90s, I'm a little distracted by the cat right now, but-- Sorry. She's not distracted by the cat. She's distracted by me petting the cat. But yeah, Douglas Copeland is cool if you're into mid '90s. And J-Pod's about a development studio, right? Gosh, I don't remember. It's been a while. Dude, I totally remember. It's about basically an analog of EA studios. It's in Vancouver, and they're making this game. Oh, with a skateboarding turtle? Yeah, well, it starts out being an RPG. And then the marketing guys decide they want to turn it into a skateboarding game. And they use the same RPG world. And they just sort of change the skin into a skateboarding world. And then they change the character into a turtle. And the developers get really fucking cynical about it, and they hate it. And they decide to include this Easter egg in it in which Ronald McDonald comes out from a secret kitty porn layer and kills everyone in the world. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's really fucked up. I feel like there's a side story in which the marketing guy who does all this stuff in the game goes to China and gets hooked on heroin and ends up working at a Chinese sweatshop in which they just inject them with heroin every five hours so that he'll keep on working. It's darkly comic. It's not Douglas Copeland's best book. But it's maybe the best book that I've read that has anything to do with the video game industry. And then he also did Microsurf, which is probably my favorite one that I remember, so. Yeah, Microsurf is like set in the '90s in the Bay Area. And it's all about that kind of right before the internet explosion tech company thing. It's about people working at Micros-- well, it starts off in Seattle, so it's about people working on the Microsoft campus, and then they moved down to San Francisco to start their own startup. You shouldn't tell the whole plot, though, because that's the whole plot. I was going to say that last one. Like, I don't even need to read the book now. Yeah, it gets heroin. No, it's still surprising, I'm sure. Yeah, see, I'm not so much-- I mean, that's the extent of my nonfiction. But yeah, like, fiction-wise, like the Diamond Age-- I read a book called Lucky Wonder Boy that was about a guy that saw the world through arcade games. It was kind of shit. Got a lot of really good reviews from people who I think don't know anything about video games. William Gibson. William Gibson. You can pick up most of the popular William Gibson books and find a relationship to games. All right, see? There we go. Did have some recommendations I knew about. Oh, the only person that knows anything about William Gibson in this room. I know William Gibson. I know Debbie Gibson. I know William Gibson and Debbie Gibson, so-- [SINGING] --spookery and electric youth. Spookery is a great fucking book. Spookery, you'll never look at iPods quite the same way again after Spook Country. Spook Country was cool. That was oddly declarative. Yeah, OK. I just wanted to-- so this is Steve writing in. Steve says, here's some interesting information to add to the discussion at the end of the podcast 52 during the letter section. When you were discussing the issue with a guy who was married, whose wife would not have sex with them, and you mentioned the size and penetration problems. Whoa, recap. So there was this guy who's been married-- or known score for seven years, been married for three, and they still haven't-- No, no. They've known each other for 10 years. 10 years. Why did they-- why did they keep coming back up whenever I'm on your podcast? I don't know, because people are already-- You're on the show a lot, man. And so they haven't had sex for three years. And it's a case of religious guilt. And he felt that, yeah, she came back and said that it hurts. She's afraid it'll hurt, so she doesn't want to. 10 years in no sex. And so this guy just wrote in this strange, strange, strange response about the natural cure being the gliding action of foreskin can act as a natural rolling bearing to assist in comfort of penetration. Like, as if you're not circumcised, you know? I just thought that this-- and he would link to me to a medical document that states this. And I just thought that was so weird. Did you click on the link? Someone-- yeah, yeah, it just says, masters and Johnsons observed that the foreskin unrolled with intercourse. However, they overlooked a prior observation. The intermission, i.e. penetration, was there by Made Easier. To evaluate this observation, an artificial entroitus was mounted on scales. Repeated measurements showed a 10-fold reduction of force on entry when initially unrejected foreskin. Compared to entry with her target force. Who was it that study? Masters and Johnson. OK, that's what I thought. Masters and Johnson. You know, Mr. Masters, Mr. Johnson, I don't know. I have my Masters and Johnson, you know. Masters and Johnson are famous sex researchers. They worked with Kinsey, right? I do believe. But so have some foreskin guy who can act sex when he's been married to for three years. And also, get a fucking divorce. Jesus, there is a reason why divorces are possible. That's not having sex with the person you've been married to. He doesn't even need a divorce. Like, you can get that annulled. Yeah, straight up. Oh, he was consummating. Yeah, exactly. I wonder if that's still on the books. Yeah, really. Stephen wrote in, and he says, I felt this was a good follow-up, because it says, the relationship stuff is good. But since you all work in gaming journalism, have you ever thought about doing a podcast about gaming? Sincerely, Stephen. No, not really. We made this podcast, especially for you, as a matter of fact, Steve, just so you know. Do we want to take a quick break, or do we want to-- I mean, there's really only a couple more. We could really just do a couple more if you want. OK, let's do a couple more. Unless anybody needs to pee. Robert, you did just finish beer number three. Oh, I'm good. OK. This one is just at-- I'm going to do just one of these of a code someone wants to give away, because why not? You listen to all this relationship letters. You get a prize. Man, I've got a ton of codes in my room. I could just read off the podcast. Thomas wants to give away a copy of Xenoclash. I have no idea if that's good on Steam. Xenoclash is great. Xenoclash is awesome. So it's OK, so-- It's a 360 version. So here you go. This is your chance to get Xenoclash. It's K532EC4WIZ4WHXZ6SMGG55XB. Good luck. This reminds me of that episode of Tim and Eric, where they have the thing where it's like the dad programming the MIDI music. Dude, that's so bad. There's a skit in Tim and Eric, where it's supposed to be like a TV commercial advertising MIDI music in the '80s. And the dad and the family brings out this giant phone book of code, where he's like, we could program in all our favorite songs, like Happy Birthday. And then they cut over to the little kid reading to the dad from the book, like what to program in. And the kid's like, 7, 8, 5, 7, 8, 9, 7, 7, like just reading all this shit so that they can go. That's great. OK. Anyway, so I'm going to deal with-- we're going to do, I guess, one more. I'm going to do one more. I mean, if there's more than one more that you think is awesome-- Well, this one's kind of a heavy question. And I think it's kind of interesting. No, no, it's not like a heavy relationship question. It's just titled Racism and Heavy writing. And he says-- and he's from Mike. And he says, there's this character Mad Dog who's like this kind of big old black dude. And he says, Mad Dog calls Agent Jaden a cracker when he confronts him. It was a bit jarring at first. I'm a black guy, and I've never called someone a cracker. Then it brings the whole double standard issue to light. I haven't heard one bit about the scene in the news, gaming or otherwise. Is this due to white guilt? I just wondered if it bothered you guys like it bothered me. I haven't decided if I think that it portrays back people negatively, probably not. It's like-- I think if we lived in a society where cracker was used to subjugate an entire ethnic group for hundreds of years, we might be a little more offended about it. Exactly. I like being called a cracker. I like to call my friends crackers. I think in fact, there needs to be more cracker calling in the world. Yeah, the crackers cracker that ever cracked. It's funny that he mentions that scene, because when I was at South by Southwest, I went to a panel-- The race and games. --the social justice and gaming panel. And that was-- I heard that that's part of communism and the cancer of progressivism. That's a cracker ass cracker blimbed. That's a cracker flow. We're all crackers at crackers. That's something a cracker would say. And so I went to that panel was with LaToya from "Racilelicious" and "In Guy." And I can't remember the third press. But anyway, they were bringing up the lack of black protagonists, the lack of any non-white protagonists in games in general. And about how there's so many great advancements in games. And yet, apparently, heavy rain is supposed to take place in Philadelphia. But-- The Frenchist Philadelphia that ever was. Exactly, because Philadelphia is like a majority black city. And-- Fuck, I never even thought that. And you go through the police station, and there's like no black people in the police station. Yeah, actually, that Mad Dog guy is like the only black person. And the Mad Dog guy is-- And he's a criminal. So there are two random black people at the beginning. Yeah, but you guys know right that the French are fucking racist. That is. I don't think they're incredibly racist. I thought that they hated the shade of brown between a black person and a white person. No, they're just not down with anything, like any shade of non-white. Sounds true. We're not trying to be inflammatory. If you're in France and listening, I don't think I just-- No, if you're in France and listening, then you realize that the French are fucking racist. Seriously, everyone thinks that Americans are racist, but Europeans are the most racist people in America. Robert, every now and again, I'm concerned that you don't feel comfortable enough to tell us what you think. [LAUGHTER] That's not true. I feel comfortable telling you what I think. [LAUGHTER] You just went waiting for a chance in the past 10 minutes. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] Hey. [MUSIC PLAYING] We entertained your fucking three-minute Bobby Brown. [LAUGHTER] But you know what? [INTERPOSING VOICES] That's exactly why any chance I get to pick what race my character is. That's why I always pick a black guy, because like, man, we need some more-- That is not why you pick a black guy. If you pick the black guy, it's like some guy with a huge disco afro. [LAUGHTER] It's always like the most ridiculous stereotype. But it's true. I love-- or actually, in a game like a bioware game or something, we can really get serious about the creation of your character. I love picking someone who's just gender and race ambiguous. Really, what the fuck is this? Almost all of them are somewhat gender and race or gender ambiguous anyway, because they talked about how, at that point, everyone had just sort of started mixing. Hi. I always felt like the default shepherd looked pretty-- He's got sort of Middle Eastern Persian Lebanese-- Oh, but he's got-- So he's racially ambiguous, but not gender. Yeah, yeah. You said gender, but you mean race. Did I say gender? You said gender. Abiguous, as you might imagine, like humanity being at the point in which you can zoom around the galaxy in the spaceship. You had to imagine that we would have just found a brown. No, I mean, it's 150, 200 years after now, so it's not like-- It's not like Star Trek. It's supposed to be 150 or 200 years after now. It's because they found alien technology in Mars that leapfrogged us forward. Yeah, they found the Mass Effect and the Mass Effect enabled us to find other aliens and the other aliens. Excuse me, Tyler. Excuse me, Tyler. They're Mass Relays. Mass Relays, sorry. That's what they say, by the way, wherever you shut up. OK. There's a fucking Codex. 200 years from now, I'm surprised if we still have electricity, but that's great. OK, I have one final-- You're the one that wanted Happy Rainbow fucking games. God damn. I need-- where's that fourth beer? Open your eyes. I have one less letter. It's from Craig. And Craig says, hey, guys, I have a pretty stupid problem, and I was wondering if you guys have ever come across something like it. Doubtful. He says, you see, I have an extreme fear of spiders. I scream like a girl when I see even the tiniest spider. That isn't strange in itself. What is strange is the fact that I can't even bring myself to play games that include spiders. I literally turn games off and never play them again if I find myself up against spider enemies. I have missed many quality games because of this. I know this probably means I need professional help. I have not even started games if I had heard there spiders in them. The only game I have recently completed with a spider, and it was Ghostbusters, and that is because I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan. My wife literally rolled around laughing as I screamed like a child throughout the whole battle. Have any of you had to face phobias in the gaming setting? I kind of doubt it, and I am even more ashamed after putting my situation into words. I like to think that we are all off in one or two ways and that this is just one of my allotted quirks. Well, you should not be ashamed of having a phobia because a phobia is not you being a coward. It's a psychological condition. I know people that are afraid of things like-- And if they see that particular image on television, they can't look at the TV scares them. We have a good friend who is paralyzed by clowns. Yeah, exactly. People just have phobias. It's just how it is. So you shouldn't be ashamed of it. But I do think it's a bummer because, man, there's a lot of fucking games out there with spiders in them. Craig. Aren't you surprised, Craig, that this is the letter that we don't make fun of? No, I mean, you know, spiders are serious business. Yeah, no. One of my best friends in the spider. Houston is hardcore arachnophobic, as well. I mean, the best way to get over phobia is exposure and through the guidance of a professional-- So find a box of spiders and put your hand in it. That's why they call flooding. You would kind of think spiders and humans-- That's why they call flooding. And expose yourself. Because you just destroy them. Yeah, exposing yourself to spiders in a game, that seems like it'd be the safest way to get over your phobia. I mean, you know, I'd imagine if he went to go see some eye that they would say, like, movies. Yeah, he used to play deadly creatures for we-- Also, I mean, you should think about how spiders are fucking awesome. I mean, spiders are really cool. Very few of them will bother you or bother you. No, they don't. In fact, I like spiders, so I never kill them because I figure they're in my house. They're killing the other bugs. Yeah, they do bother me. Spiders are breaking the social contract when I see them. Therefore, they die. No, no, I love it. What do you mean? I just say, hey, you stay over there and we're cool. And they always do. OK, that's fine. But once they come with them like a certain radius, I'm like, well, I guess it's on. Look at me wrong. I mean, it's like a spider in my bed. He's in. He's crossing the demilitarized zone. But overall, I have a good relationship. I always cup and a jack spider. Yeah, yeah. I usually do, yeah. I like spiders. Like, I like the way they look. Like, I like how more exotic ones that will probably kill you, they're really pretty-- His question, though, was, was having-- you guys encountered, like, a phobia you have in the game. And actually, I have. It's just that I don't really have, like, a strong phobia. Like, I'll actually go swimming in the ocean, no problem. And all, like, goes-- like, I've been snorkeling stuff. That doesn't bother me, surfing. But I have a really hard time playing games where there's monsters in water, for whatever reason, including Super Mario 64. There was a level net where there was a monster swimming around in this part of this water. And I couldn't do that. Do you have a really hard time in the second mission of Ninja Turtles? How do you see we'd paint? No, no, no. So it's specifically only in, like, murky ones where you can't see it coming. And that was also a problem. And, like, Turrock Dinosaur Hunter had some problems like that. I'm remembering. You couldn't see anything given in that game. And actually, a side-schooling game that wasn't murky water, Echo the Dolphin, that one I had a hard time with. Huh, though. And actually, it's the reason I haven't played Lost in Blue 2. It's because I know there's sharks that'll come towards you. And that bothers me. Have you played in a shark tearing you apart in Lost in Blue 2? No, but just the fact that it'll come at me in a menacing manner bothers me. Have you played an endless ocean? Oh, that's one time. In the ocean, too, sorry. In the ocean, too. Has sharks that come at you, and that's why I haven't played it. It's on my shelf right now. Gotcha. Indian Jones was terrified of snakes. But Indiana Jones was a fictional character. Right, what about me? Right. I can't think of-- actually, the one thing that does make me nervous when it comes to games is, like, wow. It's like a fucking fart symphony here. Is it like one man fart symphony? No, it was the Anthony first, and then it was you. It kind of sounded like Anthony more. It sounded like Anthony made me-- No, it was Tyler. Yeah. It sounded like Anthony made a deposit with that one. I got to say, one thing that grabs me is I don't have an incredible phobia of heights. But sometimes, games with a crazy sense of height make me feel really nervous. Did you play Mirror's Edge? Like, what was that? Do you play Mirror's Edge? Yeah, I played Mirror's Edge. That didn't really-- somehow, that didn't bother me. Games that exaggerate your sense of exposure in heights really do it like Assassin's Creed, sometimes. And Infamous, Infamous for some reason. Infamous really, like, freaked me. Crackdown? Well, I specifically-- Crackdown, not so much, because-- You're fucking invincible. I specifically know what you're talking about in Infamous. There's a part where you have to climb the junk tower. And that part in particular is just like, because falling can be such a big deal in that game. And you kind of feel a little bit out of control as it is. So you're like, oh my god. I like that in games, because I like that in real life. I love going to tall buildings in real life, and then doing the Ferris Bueller thing, where you stand next to the window and put your head in the window and look down to me. I can't do that shit. Oh, I love it. It can't. And then I don't know if I'm a heights junkie or whatever, but I dig that sense of vertigo, and I dig it in games. I thought I was over my fear of heights until I went rock climbing fairly recently. And I was like 35 feet up, and I'm like, this is way higher than I thought it was. I didn't say two people whose parents died rock climbing. Just remember the next time you-- This was indoor rock climbing. OK, so see, the bottom line is that we totally all have our own phobias. Yeah, no, it's not weird. But games do seem like they'd be a good way to help you get over that. I was wondering, as games get more and more real feeling, the psychological impact of things that will happen, we always poo-poo the idea that violence in video games is bad, that always seems stupid to people who play video games a lot. But I can imagine a level at which the psychological impact of the things that you're doing becomes so-- I can actually-- Sorry, what we're going to say? No, you were first. I was just going to say, I can see that in some ways, because there's a part in heavy rain, which I've talked about. Not necessarily. I've heard about this part. But yeah, that part made me physically uncomfortable. It did elicit a physical response from me, where I was actually like, I had to get up and be like, that was fun. Well, so you got of War III. They kind of pushed that envelope, too, actually. It gets pretty good. Yeah, but the way God of War pushes, it makes me feel like it's a teenager trying to push the envelope. Yeah, but that doesn't make me feel better about it. It still makes me-- It's just a thing where you're not killing people. You're brutalizing people. Yeah, yeah, well, that's true. But I disagree that violence doesn't have-- the violence in games and violence in media doesn't have an effect on people. I think it absolutely does, but I think it has the opposite effect of what people think. Because they always say that kids playing violent video games turns them into violent kids, and yet violent crime has only gone down the more exposure kids have had to violence media. So I mean, I think it's more of an outlet than it is, like-- And of course, at some point, you can cross the line into being totally desensitized. But I think that that's actually far rarer than people make it out loud. Let me just be on violence, just thinking about games that do things that pull your strings psychologically or create situations that can make you feel traumatized. Like, if a game could really make you feel like you were somewhere or something really insane. Post-traumatic stress, isn't it? Yeah, I could imagine something like that happening. What were you about to say out there? I was just going to throw a slight monkey wrench in Matt's theory, simply because the military is increasingly putting an emphasis on virtualized representations of battlefields, because they find that that helps desensitize people to the act of killing. Like, it's easier for a soldier to fire on something that's abstracted, but they're using that as a way to enable better performance. Because over the last 400 or 500 years, the biggest problem on battlefields was that people wouldn't shoot or they'd run away. And when they did shoot, they'd miss wildly. And one of the ways that there have been quote-unquote advancements in warfare is that people are more out to shoot when something is slightly frustrating. Well, that's kind of what I just said, is that generally it's just a cathartic experience, but that you can go past that point and to be desensitized from it. But in that sense, it has to be, I think, it almost has to be a concerted effort. I mean, the military training isn't just putting people in front of murder simulators. It's putting people in these situations constantly where-- I mean, all of your whole idea of basic training is to train you to kill. So I mean, it's not just the simulator that doesn't-- With the whole package. I also wonder the impact of the culture of the military and the all-volunteer army being what it is now. I mean, you go into the military now and you're a fucking man. And you're going to go to war and you're not going to fucking pull the trigger. You're there with all your bros. And they expect you to man up. I feel like there's a different-- Well, and that's one of the big revolutions in the way that-- --back in the sort of draft world bar-- That's part of how America trains its army. That's why one of the revolutions is that they break people down and get conditioned them to all orders. But it's also just like the people who go into the military now are all super alpha guys. They're like seriously fit, seriously trained. That's not true, right? They're actually lowering the standards. Well, they're lowering the standards. But compare that to the people who went to war in World War II. And you're going to still find that these guys are super men compared to the people who were going to war. What's a little known fact, though, is that amongst all those people that for hundreds of years fucked up and ran away or just couldn't find themselves to shoot, not one of them was Texan. Just wanted you guys to know this. Oh, I'm sure we don't decline to shoot. [LAUGHTER] That's what I heard. Did you know people back in your time in Texas that had had guns in them at all times? We were having this conversation the way over here. Yeah, I have an uncle who has a cleaning business who has a shotgun rack in the back of his truck that's just in the cab that always has shotguns in it. Multiple shotguns? Yeah, you never know what kind of shotgun you're going to need. [LAUGHTER] That's an excellent point. I wouldn't know what kind of shotgun I'd need. Yeah. So yeah, thank you. I don't even know what the fuck we were talking about. Yeah, don't even worry about it. So thank you for listening. Thank you, Robert, for coming out for what hopefully won't be your last time here. Do you have a perpetual invitation to come out any time? Man, look at your cat right now. I got to say, like, yeah. She has no dignity. Arthur's cat is laying on her back being petted right now. Anyway, say it. Well, yeah, invite me back some other time. I can't invite myself. So yeah, and thank you, Matt, of course, for joining us. Thank you for having us. You should also listen to our Friends Podcasts, the mobcast at bitmob.com, the geekbox, the geekbox.net. And you should also check out Robert's podcast, The Life Will Wasted, at lifewellwasted.com. What can we expect the next Life Will Wasted, Robert? Yeah, yeah. Not to put you on the spot, but here we are putting you on. But here's a fucking spot, and you were on it. It's all the interviews for it or in the can. I had all kinds of, like, technical problems, and I have all this new software that I'm working out. Do you have anything to offer? The real thing is that, like, I went to-- I went home for Christmas after the last one, and then, like, the month after that, I just kind of, like-- I don't know what I did, man. You sat on the couch and drank beer. No, I mean, I worked on the band a lot. I got several things I'm working on right now. It's not that I'm being lazy, but it's really-- I haven't been able to focus. I've got a focus issue. But I'm really trying to-- also, I've been traveling everywhere, so I'm trying to get the next one done before I go to Jamaica. Wow. Do you have anything to offer that aren't excuses, Robert? No, not really. Not really, the next one's going to be really good, though. Can you give a hint as to what it is? Let me think. Can I give a hint as to what it is? You can't say no, I mean. Yeah. No. No. Well, I can actually-- I'll say-- I think I can actually say that the name of the next episode will be big ideas. OK. Cryptic. Yeah. Does your vacation have anything to do with your shows or your projects? Yeah, I mean, I went to New York a month ago and did several interviews, some of them for big ideas, episodes, some of them for later ones. One good thing is, during this whole big break that I've been on, I've got a lot of interview material, and I have like three or four planned episodes-- In the can, kind of. They're not all in the can, but four episodes that are at least partially in the can. Cool. Yeah. All right. It'll be good whenever it actually happens. All right. Well, thank you guys for listening. We'll see you all next week, where we'll be back to talk about packs. And maybe we'll see some-- Yeah, and if you're going to pack, sorry, yeah. Meetups Saturday, I don't remember where the details are on IGN. Actually, IGN's website has the details for the meetup. It's 21 and up. It is 21 and older, though, 6 to 9. But if you want to see us also, we'll be at the one at meetup that's Saturday as well. Because we're having it in a bar. We did not pick this location. So we'll also be at the one at meetup that night, so you can check one up to see where their meetups going to be as well. All right. And if you guys are at packs, I'm going to be in the quickly. All right. We'll see you later. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] All the gold and the guns in the world. Come on. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC]