Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 52 - 02/18/10
Clever greetings play on words! This week we're joined by Matt from Area 5 as we spend TWO HOURS talking about what we've been playing, which includes Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, Battlefield Bad Company 2 singleplayer, Command and Conquer 4, and X10 stuff including Dead Rising 2, Alan Wake, and Splinter Cell Conviction. Then it's on to letters, including one listener's professional psychiatric opinion of your faithful Rebel FM hosts. This week's music, in order of appearance: Autolux - Turnstile Blues; Failure - Stuck on You; A Perfect Circle - Gravity;
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Nothing good on the radio ♪ ♪ Once again, I didn't know ♪ ♪ Who should I turn to ♪ ♪ The Rebel F-L! ♪ ♪ The Rebel F-L! ♪ ♪ The Rebel F-L! ♪ ♪ The Rebel F-L! ♪ - Hello, welcome to episode 52 of Rebel FM. I'm Anthony Gallegos with me as Tyler Barber. - What is up, internet? Matt Changerine. - Hello! - And Arthur Geeze. (laughing) - I fucking hate you. - He tries to fuck us up by looking at the wrong person and saying the name. It's like that the S game, the brain training. - I actually did, that was me talking when you thought it was Matt. I just threw my voice very effectively. - Whoa! - I threw my voice into Matt's mouth. - Wow. - So we all played-- - Not the only thing you've put in my mouth, it's true. - We all played, I saw a lot of games in the last week, so this week's show is gonna be a pretty extended segment about games that we've either seen and or played, 'cause we all attended Microsoft's X10 event. - And there's some good stuff. - There was. - There was indeed, and then after that, it's just gonna be some fucking letters, most of the relationship ones, so you can just turn it off now. - There's no spoiler, Scravaganz is this time, 'cause I'd actually like to do something with my life after the podcast is done recording this week. (laughing) - You still did shit last week. - Well, I think he-- - It was 10.30 when we stopped. - Well, there were two episodes back to back in every 11. - No, I turned into a pumpkin at 12 when I'm fucking exhausted. - Yeah, man, you stay up later in me almost every night. I'm like the one who turns into a pumpkin, like 11.30, and I'm like, I'm not in bed yet. - Dude, I stay up til like four in the morning every night. - Yeah, well, it helps when you can sleep until when. - Oh, yeah, I mean, I usually have around like nine or 10, or 11. - All right, gonna talk shit. That was me until fucking November. - Yeah. - But I kinda wish it was me sometimes now. - Dude, but when you're unemployed and stuff like, you stay up til four, you sleep till fucking whenever. - I always felt guilty when I slept in late, though, like when I was unemployed, I was like-- - So you guys don't know about it, enjoy it, apparently. - I can't. - This one, the greatest is flow. - I've had too many years of being institutionalized. If I go to bed at three a.m., I'm still up at eight every single morning. - Don't tell us to enjoy the unemployment, man. You were one of the most miserable unemployed people. - It's true, but I slept a lot. I love sleeping. I would, man, every day I would sleep a lot longer if I could, every day I wake up, and I think to myself, what can I forgo? - It'd be like one o'clock, and you'd roll out of bed, and it's like, what's up doing unemployed? - Yeah, but still, if I could forgo, like some days, I'm like, I could not take a shower today and get to more minutes. I have those thoughts go through my head, I love sleep so much. - Man. - And the only real issue is that Arthur will have to deal with it in the car ride in. - No, I mean, I shower every day, no matter what. I'm insane about it. - I'm not saying you stink. - Yeah, showers are great. - You do kind of stink. - So we played games. Games, games, games. - Yes, well, there was the X10 event last week. - Well, who wants to, do we want to start with what we've actually been playing outside of a controlled Microsoft environment? - No, it could all be mixed in, but who just wants to go? - I would like to go for one, maybe we can mix it up. - Go, go, go, Tyler, go! - Share. - One of the most exciting games I would like to talk about this week is actually an oldie-goldie. - Oh shit, yeah. - So I don't know, just out on a whim, I was like, well shit, I always hear people talking about trials HD. Let me download the demo. Let me just see what you did. - Tyler never tried it. - Never tried it. - I haven't either. - I didn't know why, 'cause Tyler was too busy fucking going, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, in Battlefield 1943. - Yeah, exactly what I did. (laughing) - That came out. - You're completely right, sir. You get the golden star. (laughing) So, so I played the demo for like 10 minutes and was instantly unblind this game. Turned around, bought it. - Wow, bought it. - Well, go ahead, go ahead. - I know, I was just gonna say I don't get why you, like, it's so funny, I guess you just have to play it 'cause you watched me play it at E3 a little bit. - Yeah. - And I don't think it clicked there for you. - I don't think the majesty and frustration of that game translates really well until you're playing it yourself. (laughing) - Well, people say frustration. Like, I think a lot of people turned me off of this game by saying like, oh, it's so ball is hard. It's so frustrating where I think it's exactly the opposite. And to me, the reason why I think it didn't click when I was watching you play, there's something about how realistic that game's physics feel. Like, to the point where like, you're tired, if it gets in between like two pipes, we'll react the way you think it would. Or, you know, your momentum like shifting your weight, it feels so realistic. - So how do you mean that it's the opposite of frustrating though? 'Cause that's what I keep hearing too, is it? - So it falls out hard. - Dude, to me, the fact that the way it's not so frustrating is, excuse me, the way it has a such forgiving checkpoint system. So it's like, you know, you just hit B, you know, if you wrecked, and you instantly start where you, you know, where you were. And so, and for me, a lot of times, like even my wrecks and my bales and stuff would just make me laugh and just, which would be hilarious, you know? - But when you get to like the hard and expert levels, eventually you get so attuned to the physics in that game that you're like, the second you leave the ramp, you'll immediately know this is wrong B. - Yeah, for sure. - Like, I'm just like, like, I don't even let, occasionally you'll accidentally hit back, I think, 'cause that'll start you. - Yeah, and then it'll start all the way to the beginning. - Well, yeah, okay, so I'm in, I'm like, towards the lower levels of hard right now, about to be on it. - Oh, you still got a long way to go. - But if you can beat the last level of an expert, like, I know people can, I just never have, I've tried twice. - But yeah, and so it's getting to the point now where I'm like, doing like 20 to 15 tries to like, get to the next checkpoint, but still, like, the amount of genuine satisfaction I feel when I complete something, like, Jody knows when I'm playing Trials, because she'll always hear me in the other room. Fuck yeah, nailed it, like, select that. And I think we're-- - We're like a beer commercial. - Yeah, I think what I love the most about Trials is that the solution to every obstacle is an elegant one. It's one where your motorcycle, your physics, everything is smooth and it looks good. You know, it's what games like Skate and, you know, things like this, I think really try to aspire to, but they can do it because it's in a simple 2D plane. - It's not in the art of motorcycle sweet dreams. - It's true, when you do do it perfectly, you're like, oh, it's a never, it's never like a clumsy thing where you just kind of, well, you can get through things. - It does happen on occasion, but when you do it the right way, it looks like if you could watch someone doing like a flawless run, it just looks insane. - Yeah. - Nice. - They need to have the super meat boy thing where it's got like all your failed playthroughs layer and that's not the real system. - That would be great, yeah. - I was funny, I was thinking that when Tyler was saying and I was like, I want to see replays. - Dude, and to the testament of this game, you know, I immediately sort of told my friends, Gantron back in H town, I was like, dude, you gotta check out this game trials. He downloaded the demo and we ran an Xbox Live party. Like we were just shooting the shit while he was playing it and then all of a sudden he would just start fucking cheering and was like, oh, I'm downloading this game right now, man. - To do a, yeah, you need to download the expansion too because the expansion adds a lot of levels. - Is it free? - For medium notes paid. - But it's pretty cheap, right? It's like five bucks. - It's like five bucks and adds a ton of medium, hard and expert levels. - Oh, that's good. - You know, so you get a lot of extra content. - Yeah, but man, you know, I know I'm late to the game and there's probably a lot of people who are probably like, ah, you know, this is so old, but man, if you've never played it, dude, give it a try. - It's one of my favorite games of last year for arcade. - Yeah, I'm just waiting for the inevitable Natal trials HD. - Natal, you think I'm on this one? - We're all the rocking back and forth is actually controlling. - No, dude, that would be the most awkward workout ever. - God damn, my abs are sore after that course. - Stayed in like, straddle position the whole time. - We need, if that happens, we need the camera on Tyler doing this. - Yeah, yeah. - trials HD, HD, Z. - So what else you've been playing, Tyler? I don't know if there's something shiny over there, but go back to us. - I also have been playing, I downloaded the Darwinia Plus demo for Xbox Live Arcade. - I need to give you the code for that. - Yeah, how do you feel about that? - You know, I've heard good things. And it's from the guys that did Defcon, right? - I've heard I had really mixed things about the Xbox Live version. - Really? 'Cause I think it's from the same guys that did Defcon, right? The Defcon game. - I think so, yeah. - And I liked that game. That was a cool strategy game. - Yeah, so I mean, like right now, it looks pretty cool. - Some of the, 'cause in this one, I don't know how different it is from the PC game, but this one you actually control the unit and tell it where you want it to shoot and stuff like that. And it's just kind of, I don't know, it feels kind of weird and loose. The controls kind of feel a little loose. I don't know, maybe I expected to be more blown away because I know how long it had been under development. - Did you play the original Darwinia? - No, no, I hadn't, but I was familiar with it 'cause I really like the art style and everything. - Yeah, I dug the Darwinia. I was just wondering what the difference is between the two 'cause I don't even know. - Right, yeah, I mean, you know, so I probably wouldn't be in a position to tell you, but I know that like you are in control of actually like shooting more often. Like you have to like select your assault troops and like have them actually aim at the enemies where I don't know what it's like on PC if it's just sort of like you're clicking. - That is a reason you're not more interested in Darwinia on live. Like you say that you like the first one, like the PC one. - Yeah, no, no reason. It just, I haven't been following it, I guess. Yeah. - So, I don't know. Jerry's still out. - Yeah, I'd like to try it, but I mean, I don't have any, I don't know enough about it to wanna buy it without knowing. - You know, I wanna try it past the demo 'cause the demo is, you know, I'm really lukewarm on it. It's not like some other strategy games where when you start playing it, you know, you start kind of getting it. Like, okay, I see where you're going. You know, you start getting into a groove. I didn't experience that, but you know, I didn't play it that much again. So I just, I wanna give it a fair shake and play it a little more. Talk about it, you know. - Cool, yeah. - Playa, playa, playa. - So, so I've also been playing, I played this one. - Yeah, it's an indie game. And this one's actually from last year. - It's called indie game. - It's a game called a continuity. - Towers like the indie pimp with this little black book of games. - We wrote it up, we wrote it up on GameSpy at one point, actually I found out. - Oh, cool. - So. - So, yeah, it's, it was the school project from this design school in Sweden, the Chalmers University of Tech. I don't know if I pronounce that right, Interaction Design Department. But basically I made by these four guys. And if you're familiar with like slide puzzles, you know, like when you're a kid, you know, there's like three blocks and you slide them to make a picture. It takes that idea and imagine if each block were a layout for a platforming stage and you had to arrange the blocks in order to progress to get the key and to open the door. - So you, so you zoom in and when you're zoomed in, you're platforming and when you zoom out, it pauses the platforming while you slide pieces around because sometimes a character could be in like the bottom right piece, but then you need to use the top piece. Like he might have just fallen from that piece that's above him, but you also now need to pause it and move that to the right of where he is. - Cool. - Because that one would not be like a passageway. - And can you move the piece that the player is in? - Yes, that's awesome. - Yeah, so it's, it's all about, it's all about like manipulating the slide puzzle at the right times to make the level into the shape that you need it to be. - Nice. - The one thing I thought was a little, was a little odd about it was, you know, and I imagine this is probably like a design constraint they had to do is you couldn't necessarily solve the puzzles any way you wanted to. So like say you were gonna line two pieces up that had a plane on it that they matched up on the picture, but if the developer didn't want you to match these two up, you can't cross. You know, you can't connect over to the next screen. You can kind of only connect over to the ones where it's like-- - So are they like invisible walls? - Basically, like it'll just like bounce you back and won't let you go through, but, but still other than that, like it's still a really, really cool puzzle game. And they do, sorry. No, I was gonna say they do great stuff where like it'll be three Brock boxes, but they'll recycle use of the boxes by like splitting them down the middle. So you're traversing the left side on one and then you have to move it around to eventually get to the right side by dropping in on top of it or something. - And then the other cool thing they do is when you zoom in and out, it does like a, like a Doppler effect to the music almost. Like when you're zoomed in, it's like the music's like pumping over the headphones and when you go out, it's like the music is like muted. Like you're now hearing it through a wall. - No, I'm not actually part of that. You're like, right, like this person moving it around. - Yeah, the music's really rad too. So it's just a little free game that I just-- - No, I mean, I totally just stumbled on it. - That's really cool. - You know. - Those damn Swedes, man, they're really prolific indie game designers. - Yeah, man. You know, I got all their names here. It's four guys and I want to try and pronounce them just 'cause it might be fun. - Go for it. - All right, Elias Holmlid. - No, that's wrong. - Dimitri Curtinew. - That's wrong too. - Guy Lima Jr. That one has to be right. - That one's actually right. - That's got to sound right. - Although it's probably Gee. - And then Stefan, Mike Elson. - Mike Elson? - Yeah, and the music is by Elias Holmlid, the same, you know, from the, he's from the one I said earlier. - That sounds like a really horrible high school graduation. - Yeah. - Somebody needs to mail in to you guys like an audio file of these names pronounced correctly. - Right, we basically just needed the phonetics spelling of each one. - Yeah. (laughing) - I think that should be on the website to ensure I can't remember. - Continuity, there's nothing. I don't even know how you found that 'cause when you go to the website for continuity, it's just the game. Like it's just there. There's like no like about or anything like that. - Well, no, no, there is on a, it's continuitygame.com. If you go to the about page, that's where I got this information. - I didn't even see it about page when I did it was like, here's the game. - Yeah, maybe this is like version 2.0 or something. (laughing) - They're like, oh, maybe we should tell people we actually made this rad game. - It is a fantastic way to kill far too much time at your job when you're not supposed to be. - Is a real clever idea, man. Real cool. - Another game, I plugged in my PS3. - Wow. (laughing) - Why was your PS3 unplugged? - Well, 'cause I moved into a new apartment back in October. - That was months ago. - Back in October. - Are you fucking serious? You give me a shit about PS3 stuff. You haven't had years plugged in since October? - Yep. (laughing) - Yep, yep, yep. - Well, it sucked me to get a pixel jump shooter now, but let me say, I'm surprised you didn't plug it in as soon as the battlefield demo came out. - Well, you know, I wanted to avoid it back then for the same reason, like, why I kick myself every time I play it now, because I'm like, ah, just wait till the game comes out. Like, you're gonna love it. - Is it my fault that you're playing it now? - Oh, man, it's so good, dude, I'm still playing it. But like, on my PS3, I jumped on this PSN game, Crash Commando, you guys ever played it? - No. - Uh-uh. - It's one that they showed at like, - No, I work for an Xbox website. - Right, they showed it in their E3 Preston, it was actually came out last January, but it's kind of like sold at for PC. - No, no idea which time it. - Oh, shit. So it's like-- - You know a PC game that we don't. (laughs) - 'Cause I've spent doing a lot of research lately, so like, Crash Commando is kind of like a game where you're using a jet pack a lot, and it's a 2D side scrolling shooter, and it's just a ton of fun, man. And so you're always like flying your jet pack, and you know, your actual character on screen is like really, really tiny, and the levels are huge. It's like a, you know, like a big platformer-- - Is it physics-based where you have to like, slow yourself down and stuff? - Well, no, you know, when you're using your jet pack, it's just a burst, and like, you know, you got your fuel, and once it runs out-- - Sounds like an old Nintendo game, I think it was like, solar jet man, or something like that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, very similar like that, but like, multi-levels, and it's really fun. Like, there's a lot of weapons. I actually reviewed this game for oneup.com, when it came out, actually. You could probably find my review for it, but-- - So why the prolonged absence and sudden return? - Just to, you know, just to see how they, you know, do the combat and, you know, things like that, you know, I wanted to find some fun combat in 2D games, and they do this really interesting thing where like, the levels have two layers, so it's like, you'll be on one side, and you could see in the background the other side of the level, like them fighting, and you basically can go through tunnels that connect you to the other side, and like, you could jump-- So like, oh, I see a skirmish going on over there. I'm gonna jump through this tunnel, and I'll be above these dudes, and fuck 'em up, and it's a real cool multiplayer game, but I don't think it was popular at all. - Yeah, I never heard of it. - Yeah, me either. - Yeah. - I shall have to give it to try. - Yeah, do you not mention this? - Is there a demo, or? - It's like 10 bucks. Yeah, I believe there's a demo on PSN, but it's just pure multiplayer. There's no, excuse me, it's just death match. Or no, it's not just death match. There's even like a objective face. Ah, excuse me. - But it's like, it's like, what was that, that Unreal game that came out on 360? That had a single player, I think, but Undertale was mostly like a multiplayer game. - Right, yeah, yeah, kind of like Undertale. - That was Share's last game for Shadow Complex. - Kind of like that, but a lot better. A lot better, and with JetPax. JetPax makes everything better. - It's like Undertale, 'cause you're not bad. - I didn't think Undertale was bad. - I didn't think it was bad either. - But it was one of those games that I played for like 10 minutes and I was like, I can see why people would like that, but not for me. - What was that Smash Bros. clone on Xbox Live Arcade? - That was another one that I thought was gonna be really cool and then was again, 10 minutes and not for me. But even though I bought it, I can't remember. Do you guys remember, it was like a-- - It was a Smash Bros. clone? - I don't it, except it was like guns. There was tons of guns. Guns were important in it, but it was like weird. - Combat arms? - Is that what it was? - Combat arms. - Combat arms, I was like-- - Oh, okay, okay. Now I know what you're talking about. I never played it. - That was another one that I was like, I don't want that to be good and then it was like, yeah. - Yeah, it was okay. - No, like I said, it was a novelty. - Bulmer. - That's a bulmer. - Didn't have Luigi. - Have you been playing other shit? - Yeah, yeah, other than the X10 stuff. - Yes, we say that for last. - Okay, so I've actually been checking out, like if we're talking about stuff we've just seen too, there's an Xbox, an XNA game that I saw in development that I'm really excited for. There's a YouTube trailer for it. It's called Flow Tilla. And it's basically like a space strategy game, like a spaceship strategy game where you're, a lot like that game Frozen Synapse that I showed you, Anthony, where you're basically telling your ships where they're gonna go, where they're gonna position, what kind of lasers they're gonna fire, if it's gonna be like a strafing run. - And then you basically hit play, yeah. - So it's like, what was that game that you and I both liked and you liked it a lot? - That game you gave your battles. - You're two and his face battles. - So it's like that. - Similar. - Very similar, except it's like this is turn based. So instead of hitting play and that's it, yeah, yeah. And that's how Frozen Synapses as well. And both of those, I think Frozen Synapse is another game that's being developed for XNA. I could be wrong about that. But those are both games that are in development right now that are really getting me stoked. - Nice. - Yeah, I mean, it'd be nice to know about more of those 'cause I do occasionally pop on the arcade and find something like that game Solar that I played that I like. It's just like, oh, I have no idea that there was something here that-- - Yeah, I mean-- - That's the biggest problem with XNA is that like, there's nothing out there that's telling us what's great. - Yeah. - To grab there is an Xbox 360 side out there that could cover these things more in depth. - Ah! - I'm sorry, I'm too busy posting press releases. (laughing) - But Flotilla, like the production values are high. Dude, like the graphics look awesome. Like it's really, really cool stylized, like a vector flat shaded graphics. It looks badass, the menus, like I'm a big fan of their HUD, dude. They got a great menu system workin'. And then like, the people who pilot all the ships, like the avatars, they're like crazy shit, like cats with goggles or like-- - Of course they are. - Like one of them is like a horse or something weird, and-- - Horses are totally weird. - Yeah. - Well they are when they're pilatin' spaceships. - Yeah. Or animal flights. - No, it's not furry style, trust me. And a furry limber would have went off and I would have been like, stay away. (laughing) - That's what you say. - Yeah. - Man, but you know what dude, like when I look around, sometimes I'll go on message boards looking for things. - Why do you do that? - And I notice like, a lot of people have furry avatars. They're pretty popular. Like what the hell? (laughing) And you, and you, I went to the zoo-- - I'm just trying to think of a Star Wars metaphor that doesn't talk to you. - I went to the zoo for Valentine's Day with my girlfriend, sorry. - You were playing the zoo. - Yeah, go ahead and play the zoo. That was a fun game. - Which is which zoo? - The one in San Francisco, the big San Francisco-- - It's the SF zoo. - Did you get killed by a tiger? - No, like that one guy. - No, you won the game. (laughing) - Yeah, that was the game. - Right, so I mean, I guess we can move on to a couple other things before we talk about X10 stuff. - Yeah, let's do that. - Let's do that, let's do that. - Pretty much, let's talk about games that people don't, that other people won't really have been put on. I only had continuity just 'cause that was a random game I tried. But like if there's like something you've been checking out, like you can tell Arthur you should tell us about Dragon Age Awake-- - That I haven't been playing? - No, no, no, no. Everyone else hasn't already seen two that we won't all participate in. You know, like the X10 stuff we all saw, so-- - Yeah, and pretty much everything I have to talk about that's not X10 is stuff that none of you guys have played. - Yes, that's just gonna go. - Let's do it. - Let's do it. - I was playing a wonderful-- - I await eagerly, Arthur. - Now I just-- - Eagerly. - I played a masterpiece in gaming toward a forest called Alienverse Predator. - Wow. - Was it, was it, was it our citizen came of games? - When you say it like that, it sounds like-- - Citizen came with spines being thrown at-- - It sounds like you really hated it, but you didn't hate it. - I mean, there's, it's not, I mean, it's better than Rogue Warrior. - Well, obviously you gave it a six out of ten. - But there's only so many times-- - You gave it a six out of ten. - There's only so many times you can watch an alien's tail go into someone's asshole and out their mouth before you're like, okay, when is this game over? (laughing) And no, I am not making that up. Yes, I did shove my tail up someone's ass and it came out their mouth or through their chest. Or tore off an android's face. - I gotta say that actually sounds pretty awesome. - A six to-- - It is awesome for the first four or five times. - Right, so why did you give it the score that you did? Like what is it that the TU said like, man, this is really a mediocre ass game. - The controls are not very good and I've had people ask me what that means. First of all, the Marine doesn't, isn't very responsive. Like it's very, it's, I would say it's PC shooter from 10 years ago, but in a lot of ways, it's actually worse than that. Like at least those games had crouch or lean. Like just forward, back, left and right. Look, the aiming isn't especially responsive on the 360 version. Like the only reason you have a chance in hell of hitting an alien is because the auto aim is the most aggressive auto aim I've seen since Area 51 black site. - And I was gonna say, and didn't you also say that it basically has like, like there's no muzzle lift on the guy? - No, there's virtually no recoil whatsoever as a Marine. And this applies in multiplayer as well, which is why I completely dominated over and over again when I played multiplayer because I just play as the Marine and just lay a steady stream of bullets into whatever came near me. I mean, there's like, the shotgun is useless, the flamethrower is worse than useless. It's like they put games in there for them, the guns in there for the Marine that will get him killed. - I recall playing the old alien versus pettitor games and the part that made playing as human school was that they were, it was like genuinely kind of scary. Does it ever? - It's, the single player for Marines is really tense and that's something that they do well. Like they do establish tension and to be fair, they have like the single most tension driving sound effect in cinema history, like in there with the motion tracker because everyone who plays games at this point knows that sound and knows what it means. And they really fuck with you on that. And like they'll show something coming toward you and then stop and then slowly head away from you and stuff like that or you'll know when stuff is coming or it'll be used to build suspense. But there's not really any good payoff for the Marine because you're always in jeopardy. You're always like inches away from death and the gameplay is just the same thing over and over and over again. - Yeah, that's kind of what I said to you about that game in general was that it didn't matter which campaign I was watching. It seemed like-- - It's the same thing over and over and over again, right? - That's a bummer. - And then like with the predator, the controls are ridiculously complicated. Like you can jump just normally with A, which isn't very tall, but if you want to do the cool predator leaps from like far away or super high up, you have to hold down the right trigger to highlight an area where you can jump and then you have to move around to where it's unobstructed and then once it is you hit A to jump. So it's essentially like Assassin's Creed except clunkier. - Yeah, but that wasn't even like the craziest shit. Like I remember seeing you one time, you were like holding a trigger, a shoulder button and then like trying to press Y or some shit. I was like, what is going on here? - That was probably when I was trying to jump to a ledge or when I was trying to jump away from some aliens. And the melee combat system is basic, not particularly inspired and doesn't-- I mean, it's a very simple combo system and it's been done better in other games. Like after playing this, I remember thinking to myself, they should just really hand over anything predator-related to star breeze because they have done a licensed game that ended up being good and had good hand-to-hand combat. And it was like being a predator. - Yeah. - Which one are you talking about? - Yeah. - Okay. - Hey, man, that's not a bad idea. - There are little touches here and there where they clearly respect the fiction. Like they, there's love for the genre. And there's things where it's clear that they paid attention to detail. Like whenever you do stealth kills a predator, you always take out their ability to make noise. And it's the same thing with the alien. So it's always like tearing out their throat, which is what the alien does all the time. And like, by tear out their throat, I mean like their head tilts back. And you see they're esophagus like quivering. - That's what happens when I do it in real life. True. - The predator will also rip out throats or cut throats or usually he'll stab them through the lungs. - Also very effective, I've found. - And you'll just hear them sort of like gasp out air. Yeah. And with the alien though, occasionally you'll do a super loud and extended kill where you'll stab them through the midsection with their tail and they'll like scream and you're holding their arm and you pull them closer and they scream again and then you pull them closer and they scream and blood flies out of their mouth. And it's just the gore, I don't know if wearing is the word but it just desensitizes you to what's happening. And not necessarily and I'm gonna go like, shoot a bunch of people in the post office sort of what it just like. It loses all impact. - So you say. - After you send your tongue through like the 17th eye or you like tear off the fourth head. - Right. - Are the campaigns like still like different 'cause I always had the feeling when I played like two on PC back in the day that was like, the humans was like this really tense scary thing and like playing as the alien was like a survival game really early on when you're like a baby alien. You know and you actually had to hide. - Oh there's none of that. - Okay I mean 'cause yeah 'cause it was like three different really different feeling games. - No I mean as the alien basically you go from room to room and take out every human in there. - Which seems like exactly what you're doing as well. - It's just over and over and then yeah the predator does the same thing but occasionally he fights aliens too. Or actually in towards the latter half you fight aliens a lot. It's just the same shit over and over again and the alien is still clunky and it's still disorienting and it just feels like it gets tangled up in its limbs and occasionally it feels like you're a camera with arms attached to it. - Right. - It doesn't feel good. The game doesn't look very good. And this is on 360 like I've seen some PC stuff where it uses DirectX 11 where it looks a little better or like because it actually exploits some of the stuff that DirectX 11 does like tessellation. But it feels like a PC game from 10 years ago. - A lot of the screenshots that I've seen for it they look deceptively good. - It's because Sega has been sending out ridiculously high res PC screenshots for that game and DirectX 11 like they this is a new thing from companies I'm seeing as they will send out screenshots like I got a couple. - Well, I was gonna say it's not that new. - I got a couple this week from somebody and I won't name who that were 10,000 by 5,000. - Yeah, they've always sent way too big of screenshots that you could down res them and have them look incredible. - It's clear that Sega has been like giving out like super high spec PC screenshots as console screenshots for Alien Respirator this whole time. - And that's why people get like the PS3 version of a game or something and they're like, why does this look so different? It's like, yeah, it's because it took it on the PC build they were making the game on and they never actually took screens of the PS3 one ever. - But it's just not, it's really uninspired. It's the same Alien Respirator story that we've seen over and over again. It's like evil corporation does something it knows it shouldn't because someone is greedy. Human trying to escape Alien trying to protect the hive and predator there to clean up the mess. And there's been so much, so many interesting stories explored in that universe like through the comics that there's so much untapped stuff that Rebellion played it, not just safe but like they were going backwards at a time machine. - Or just remaking what they've done before, maybe. - It is, it's definitely remaking what it is before. - Is that why people are so up in arms about like this game not getting a perfect score? - Yeah, so there's that which is that this game has one of the most aggressive defense forces I've seen this side of Bayonetta this year. - Which I mean, it's kind of odd because like Bayonetta at least was sort of universally reviewed high. And it seems like aliens versus predators. - There is a subset of sites that are reviewing Alien versus predator very well. - Oh yeah. - And they tend to be European sites, British sites in particular. - Well, I wanted to ask you, you know, I mean, I know you're a huge fan of aliens. I'm a huge fan too, you know, I've watched it like crazy when I was a kid. I mean, how do you think someone who might, you know, a listener that maybe they don't play as many games as we do and they don't have to play as many that we do right now? Do you think someone who's like an aliens fan would just kind of see if it's all they were playing? Would they enjoy it? - It's funny that you said if Arthur establishes cred in the beginning of his review. - I know, I know. - And it makes sense because like we can look like right here and there's two aliens comic omnibus on the wall. - Like I'm not like I bought every aliens movie at least three times. I don't know. I mean, I like I haven't played an Alien versus predator game in the same amount of time that everyone else hasn't played it for an Alien versus predator game and I really enjoyed the PC game when it came out. But that was a case of a game at the right place at the right time where it was on the cutting edge of technology for what it was. It did something really different. - Yeah. - And honestly, so few people had had the chance to play the Jaguar game, which Rebellion also did, which was essentially the same game. - I played that game. That's the only one I've played. - That's Rebellion as well. - That's basically the only, I mean, if people will tell you the Jaguar had one good game. It was that we have, I still own my Jaguar and this game actually. - Hard core. - Almost tempted to want to see that, but. - Yeah, that's hot. - We have a lot of games. - It's just it was a case of the right place at the right time and there was this really aggressively insular multiplayer community that sprung up around it. And that's the only thing I can think of is that there are these people that have been desperate for that again with modern like stuff. - Graphic skin. - So imagine like the people that are passionate about Counter Strike that are just begging for a new Counter Strike. And that's like a similar level of fervor. - Yeah. - But it's just, it's not, it's not a good game. Like at the level design is boring, you're doing the same thing over and over again. You will see every environment that this game has to offer within three hours of playing it. Like everyone goes to the same levels. Just from different angles. And but I'm not saying like, oh, well, things have changed. It's not generally that things have changed. It's just that you start, the Predator starts from the end of where the Marine goes and goes toward the beginning of where the Marine went. - Right. - And the alien starts at the end of where the humans started. - I don't know, it seems like all these people that are out to defend the game just need to be reminded that this is the same company that just put out Rogue Warrior, you know? I mean, they may have been great in the past, but it doesn't seem like, what have they made recently that's been good? - I mean, and they made, yeah, they just, they don't have a good track record anymore. Like the last game I can remember that they made before that was the PSP Star Wars, Rebel. - I wanna say Rogue Squadron and it's not Battlefront. - Battlefront. - Yeah. - And they also made the PSP Alien vs Predator Requiem game, which was awful. And before that, they made Alien vs Predator. Like they don't have a good track record. I feel, and I just, I don't know. I'm surprised by how desperate certain people are to like it. Like I wanted it to be good. It's not like, and I mean, I don't think I ever play a game hoping it'll be bad, but-- - Is it on store shelves right now? It is okay. - Yeah, it's out. It came out Tuesday. It has a sweet PC only special edition, which should give you an idea of like who, where Rebellion's bread is buttered, that comes with a fucking face hugger in it. - Whoa. - A real face hugger. - That's PC only too. - You have to be careful when you open it. I think so. I've only seen PC versions of the Hunter edition, but maybe there's a 360 version. - Wow. - Jesus. - I was telling Arthur, I hope it sells well enough that Sega doesn't kill the-- - I just, I don't see how it will, because it seems like the PC audience is the one that's the most excited for it, and that's where things sell the worst. Like is this game gonna sell more than fucking call like Modern Warfare 2 on PC in its first month? - No. - Wow. - Or any other huge shooter that's come out in the last year. - I think we might be surprised by the brand. - I was gonna say the license is gonna give its list. - You know, I think it might be a surprise like UFC was sort of a-- - The demo was downloaded 14,000 times. - That is. - And that is the number that Sega was trumpeting as a success. - Oh, weird. - It's weird. - And meanwhile, you've got other companies saying like two million times this demo has been downloaded. - Right. - It's not like, I don't, I think that this signals a long and much needed rest for the aliens and Predator franchise, which is funny because we actually went a long time without new games from those. But we've actually, when I think back, there have been a board of attempts to restart that franchise in game form for a while. Like extinction on the Xbox and PS2, which was like a real-time strategy game. - I don't even remember it. - Yeah. (laughing) - So what else, Arthur? - I went and saw Dragon Age Awakening this week. - Oh, boring. - No. - I played it on PC, which I hadn't done previously, actually. - I guess it's an Arthur thing. It's a retail box on 360 as well. - Yeah, it's retail for everything as well as downloadable. - Me want. - And man, the PC version of that game, I feel is way fucking easier than the console version. - It's cause the controls are that much better. - Well, it's, I mean, they're just things that you can do on the PC version that you can't do strategically on the console version. Like you can't organize people into specific positions simultaneously, like you have to move everyone during combat and just man, man. - It is a PC RPG. - It is very much a PC RPG. - Have you ever thought about starting over and going on? - I mean, it's occurred to me, but fuck if I know when I'd have time. - Good point. - So this new content, just cause I'm, you know, obviously completely ignorant, it is like you pick up with your characters where you're left off. - You can pick up with your character where it left off, but you are composing, you're creating a new party, you gather a new party. And certain people from... - Oh, so the new characters aren't in addition to the old party? - No, they're new characters. And some people from the last game may make appearances in cameos or otherwise affect the story. They're, you're creating a new party. I don't know like... - I guess that makes sense from a development process cause there's so much of that, the value of that game, at least for me as far as the people in your party are concerned is that when you take them into random areas, they have banter between one another. So it's... - And I definitely saw some of that, like there are some pretty funny shit. - Right, so I mean, if the new characters, they're introducing in this game, if they were on top of the characters in the old game, they'd have to have a lot more, you know, an exponentially increased number of banter opportunities between characters. - Like one of the new characters is a dwarf from the Legion of the Dead. - Oh, cool. - Which you find when you go underground to investigate something that's going on. Because the premise is that according to the war of Dragon Age, once the arch demon is destroyed, the blight is supposed to stop, and the... - They start rebuilding for the next blight as they try to find it. - What do they call the dragons, the old-- - Not the dragons, the, how do I not know this? I really hope I have it in my notes. - You mean the old gods? - No, the monsters. The monsters. - The monsters. - The dark spawn? - The dark spawn. - Oh, I didn't know that was the word you were looking for. - I've been having this issue all day, like I've just been forgetting random shit. The dark spawn usually-- - What's my name? - Tam. - Yeah, wow, you knew it. Sweet. - So, the dark spawn usually retreat back into their underground, which is great for everyone at the surface and fucks the dwarves over. But now the dark spawn aren't retreating, and there's new dark spawn that are showing up that have never been seen before. So this area was under the dwarven kingdom and trying to help a group of the Legion of the Dead at the old dwarven halls. And so you rescue this dwarf and she's in your party and there's this banter that strikes up between her and the new human mage. - Cool. - That's the super Randy one that likes to drink and likes to do chicks. - Oh, fun, oh, but that's good. - And he's asking her about-- - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Well, no, I mean, this is just like a piece of incidental dialogue. He's asking her about the rights of being turned into the Legion, like, about joining the Legion of the Dead. - Right. - I mean, it goes into the whole, well, we have a, what's called a funeral for that person because they're now quote unquote dead. And then after that, she's all, and then we have an orgy. (laughing) - Wait, really? So are you kidding, right? Yes. - People in the Legion of the Dead aren't actually dead? - No, the Legion of the Dead are our castless dwarves that joined this army that patrolled the-- - They patrolled the decent one. - I thought you had like a zombie dwarf and I was like, that's awesome. - No, no, no, they're not actually dead. Is this a, is this content supposed to be like different or is it largely the same, but it's like, hey, you're getting more of what you already enjoy? - I mean, it's, no, the way that they're positioning it and this is the first time I've heard it, which is sort of encouraging, is that this is like a new book in the Dragon Age story as a sequel to Origins. So there's a pretty fair amount of content and they plan, it sounds like they're planning on doing more of this for this section of Dragon Age, but they have much broader plans for what they hope to do with the Dragon Age license as far as games that they put out. And I think that anyone that's familiar with the stuff they did for Forgotten Realms on PC in the 90s and the first half of the aughts. I mean, as I were calling them now, the aughts. - The aughts. - From 2000 to 2009. - Really? - Yeah, whatever. - Whatever, whatever. - I mean, double zero. Like, should be familiar with their sort of vast coverage of that fiction, but yeah, I mean, it was-- - Well, it makes sense because the Dragon Age fiction is pretty much the most generic kind of fantasy, so they can make it as broad as they want. - True, I mean, it seems like they've got big plans and they also have a lot of, I mean, they obviously have a ton of backstory that no one knows about. And I mean, it was, they said it was one of, it was a pretty hard part of the game because the party was low level, but I was just blowing through all of it. - Maybe they didn't want like the bad gamers there to feel bad if they sucked or something. - All I can think of is that like, again, it's just going from like the crucible of the 360 to the relative ease of the PC version. - Yeah, just made you a god. (laughing) - Pretty much I was like, "Holy shit, I can strategize now." All these ideas I had that I could never do before. Like, have my major stay behind the line. - No. - They just knew the controls was interesting, but-- - Yeah. - But I mean, you're re-founding the Grey Wardens. Like, so you're finding people who may be inducted. And that includes the joining. Like, you choose whether or not you want to send someone through the joining. - Nice. - That's hardcore. - Yeah, that's, I was like, fuck. (laughing) And it's all, so everything that you feel that may entail, and I don't want to say it because we've had people complain about Dragon Aid spoilers on the show before, everything that putting someone through the joining might entail is definitely a possibility for the people that you may or may not put through the joining. - Wow, that's great. - Yep, gonna play it. - I mean, it's out in like three weeks. - Gonna play it. - I'm sure most Dragon Age fans will. - Yeah. - Sounds like it is made 100% for them. - I'm sure I'm gonna do it, 'cause I'm the only person in the Team Xbox that fucking played Dragon Age. - I mean, you don't have to have played the first Dragon Age to play it. - No, if you have not finished, or if you haven't finished Dragon Age and you want to import your character into Awakening, you can. - But if you just want to start a whole new character and just be like right in Awakening. - Well, what that means is if you finished it, you can import, and if you haven't finished it, you can import and it assumes certain decisions. But if you don't import a character, it gives you a new one at level 18, but it's a completely different origin. - And I would go a little further, and I would say if you haven't finished Dragon Age, what are you doing? - It's a long game. - Go finish Dragon Age. - And yeah, you really should finish Dragon Age. Have fun with that last boss. - There's-- - I love the last boss. - There's new dragons to kill. - Sweet. - And it's including what is essentially the Dragon Age equivalent of a Draco Witch. - Whoa, nice. - But if you start a new character for Awakening, then you are a Grey Warden from the neighboring kingdom. - Or they? - Yeah. Which I believe were the occupiers for 80 years? - Yes. - So that adds a sort of new wrinkle to the way that people look at you. It's essentially a new origin story. - Cool. - 'Cause that's exactly what Dragon Age needed, is more origin stories. (both laughing) - But yeah, I try to go away, but it keeps sucking me back in. - It was a lot of fun. It's just weird going between console and PC for that. - Bet. - And it, God damn it looks so much better on fucking PC. And I knew it did, but fuck. Like the differences are so profound. - Yeah. - So profound. - Is that it? - No, and also I've been playing Battlefield bad company too for review. - Nice. - I can talk about levels two through four. - Single player. - We watched you play it. - You watched me play it. - That was fun. - And there was great moments. I mean, we watched you for like five minutes. - Like fucking Tyler walks in and he's like, "Destroy that wall." - Yup. (both laughing) - No, Anthony would say that-- - Or was it Matt were demanding you shoot this tank because it's like anytime you see something in that game and you know it can blow up a wall, it isn't like in the other games where you're like, "I'm gonna use that for strategic purpose." And that game, I don't even give a shit if it does something good for me. I'm just like, "Blow it the fuck up 'cause it will." - Well, like you're like some guy went behind the wall and it's like, "Blow it that wall." And I did and it's like, "That's right." - Yup. (both laughing) - So far it's a lot of fun. The way that I've been describing it to people is like, it is like the movie Predator before the Predator shows up. - The banter between the guys. - The banter between the guys, like just the general vibe of like just fucking shit up all the time is just really, really cool. And the game is a hell of a lot of fun. And the single player looks so much better than the demos that have been released for bad company too so far. - On both 360 and PS3. - Yeah, the PS3 version actually looks really good. - Yeah. - Like it looks a little fuzzier than 360 version. - Well, they've clearly got the PS3 one nailed. I mean, they released that demo first, right? - So... - Yeah, I don't know that that's because they have it nailed so much as they're trying to sort of get PS3 players buying software. Same reason why Dante's Inferno only has a special edition on PS3. But it's really... - It's a leaky. - It's a hell of a lot of fun. And I'm having much more fun playing it than a certain other first person mega release over the last several months. (both laughing) - To me, like one of the great things about bad company too, you know, and the first bad company had this as well, but they're audio. - Oh, the audio is phenomenal. - Yeah, they have stepped it up when you... - When you shoot a gun, it's like that fucker's dead. - Yeah, that's gonna fucking kill somebody when it hits them. - Yeah, and not just what's immediately around you. Like what I love that they, I think they do the best is the way stuff sounds in the distance. - Yeah. - Right, cool. - They do a great thing with like, oh, that's far away. But I'm coming up on this firefight. - And the spatial, like where they put the sound in space, like even in multiplayer, like I'm always playing with headphones, and you know, even when the attackers are coming into the base, like even their players will be chatting to each other, you know, with the game chatter, and you can hear them. Like, oh, I hear that there's somebody in the left over there, I'm gonna go get 'em, you know? - Nice. - Yeah, whereas I feel like Call of Duty games and stuff, when they made you feel powerful, it was because you'd be taking on like, like, I don't know, like six guys and you had some crazy gun or something, but in this, it's like, you can just be a normal guy with a rifle. And every time you fire, it's just like that gun feels stronger than almost like the BFG and Doom or any of those other games that have like really crazy special weapons. It's like a normal pistol, feels like a fucking hand cannon. - Like the encounter design in a lot of ways feels like the Halo games encounter design, and that they're these sort of sandbox arenas set up with environments of particular way and enemies that are not geniuses, but are reasonably intelligent. And basically, you're just giving these tools and told, well, if you figure out a way to do this, and it's liberating, and it's also nice to not have endlessly generating enemies coming out of monster closets until you move past a certain point. - I was gonna ask about that, 'cause that's my biggest complaint about the Call of Duty. - No, no, no, the first bad company was the same. Like when you killed the guys in less, like some areas they would respond, but like one of my biggest complaints with the first story line in the first battle in the first bad company was that all the stages were very, very wide open, as wide open as the multiplayer maps. - That's not the case at all. And there's a lot of confined areas. - Like the enemies would be able to spot you, like if your head fucking peaked over the hill, one pixel, and every eye is on you. - I only played the second level, but what Arthur's saying for me was true as well, whereas like you would still be in a forest, but it's like you were in a going through a neighborhood in this forest that was like a road that dipped down towards the middle. So it still kept everything focused on just this one stream. - Or it's like in a canyon or with like super high walls on either side with like all these buildings that you go through and blow your way through in a lot of cases. And it's just, that's not an issue. Like I have difficulty has not been an issue so far. One thing that has been occasionally is the checkpoints are really bad. Like really, really, really, really bad. - Yeah, you playing it on normal? - Yes, I am playing it on normal. I'm actually kind of feeling like that was a mistake. Like I should have played it on a higher difficulty. I mean dudes don't necessarily die super quick, but they die pretty easy. - Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that because I heard people complain about the first battlefield is that guys took too many shots to die. - Guys die, I mean, if you shoot a chest neck area-- - Yeah, I was watching you. - If you play like, if you played the multiplayer at this point, you should know full fucking well that you should not be shooting people in the body that you need to be shooting in the shoulder chest head area. But it's a lot of fun. It looks really great. It's really funny. The dialogue, like the dialogue in the story is really funny. The comedic timing is really good. And there's just really funny banter at points. - They feel like humans that actually know each other. - Yeah, they feel like a squad. And they make jokes that don't feel removed from our reality. Like there's a joke about CSI at some point. (laughs) Like they feel like military, members of the military, and it's just, they're really well realized. - Yeah, and it's like even when they exchange lines within the campaign, like they do a really good job of making it feel organic. - It feels like they recorded it with everybody in the same room. - Yeah. - Like, and another thing we were really appreciating was like the amount of, like when grenades go off or like when you shoot against the wall, like there is a lot of dust. Like there would be everywhere. And if you destroy the wrong building wall and you want to see through it, you really got to wait for the dust to clear. - Yeah, I mean, it's fucking rad. You know, they're dust. Or you just regret doing that 'cause you're like fuck, now there's somebody firing at me on the other side of that and I have no idea where they are. - Cool. - And it encourages you to pick up other weapons because you can sort of, every time you pick up a weapon then you then have access to that weapon from specific ammo refill stations. All the weapons feel good. It seems determined to always give you something that can blow shit up, which is, you know, good. - Blowing shit up is kind of the point of that game. There's a lot more ground deformation in this one from the first one too. - Yeah, and there's so far, I mean, granted, in the thrills I can talk about, there's been a fair amount of variation in environments. Like it starts out in snow and then it goes to jungle and then sort of cleared areas and lots of different lighting. The lighting is really, really good. - Have you done any vehicle stuff? - Yes. I mean, you saw me doing vehicle stuff. - Well, I know there's like a part. - Well, I haven't driven any vehicle. - That's what it has to be. - Yeah, I mean, I know there's like a part we operate at a turret or something like that. - I drove a boat down a river, but I wasn't shooting anything out of it. But there's definitely, I mean, I'm coming up on parts where I think that that's gonna be necessary. - I want there to be a part where you gotta fly a helicopter or something. - Oh, there will be helicopter, you know there will be. And just judging from the multiplayer, like all the vehicles feel like they have more heft and like more traction. Like the physics on driving the vehicles feel a lot better. - It's just man. - They don't feel like toys as much as they did in the first one. - That's kind of a field game. That's always been a problem. - Yeah. - It's like a car or Jeep or everything to send anything like some little kid ramping. - Right. And you could tell they've been getting progressively better at it because even from the first bag company to 1943, 1943 felt a little better. - Well, I mean, I think they care about physics a lot. - Yeah. And now they, I feel like they're getting-- - The destruction feels more nuanced than it did in 1943, for sure. - Yeah. - I just, I'm having a lot of fun, like way more fun than I expected it to be. I'm actually pretty excited for this game to come out, which does much sooner than I thought it would. - Yeah. I want that game to do better with modern warfare. - That's not gonna happen. - It won't, but it won't, but I wish it would 'cause I feel like it deserves it more. - Unfortunately, I feel like there's more skill required to play this than there is to my modern warfare too. There's more teamwork required multiplayer-wise. - Oh yeah, I mean, when I put modern warfare multiplayer, it's like I alone will fit the whole time and to shoot guys that are enemies. - And you and everybody else. - Right. But I mean, I feel like to win a game of battlefield, it does require a certain level of cooperation, which I like. - And even when you're not necessarily working together, like you're supporting each other because it rewards you for doing so. - Right. - But other than X10 stuff and just more fucking chime, which I just like play every day at work now, it seems like, and then my boss, instead of reprimanding me, comes over and watches, like trying to get strategy as I crawl up the leaderboards. - What did we play the author was fired? (laughing) - That gave me such the hotness right now. - Is it really? Because I didn't think it was doing very well. - He's got a lot of people talking about it, but I mean, a lot of people in the press doesn't necessarily mean anything. - Yeah, we are an enslaved group. - Like, I did not get a code for chime, I bought chime. - Well, I mean, it's a fucking excuse to buy, not buy chime, it's $5. - I'm sure that some people would say that they don't want to or would say, oh. - And it goes to charity. And it goes to charity. - I wonder if some people wouldn't buy chime because it goes to charity and because they do spags. - I don't support charity. (laughing) - Well, there are definitely people out there that say that they don't support charity. - But man, chime is super, super good. - It's okay, you can talk about chime some more if you want, that can be your captain forever. (laughing) Well, now that you've put it that way, (laughing) the thing I love about chime is, no. Chime is good, I'm probably gonna put together like a video strategy guide, since apparently my boss thinks that I'm good enough that game to actually tell other people how to play. - The video strategy guide just needs to be of your face when you go into like, like, it's like that moment in that old school when Will Ferrell all of a sudden gives that speech when he has like a seizure almost and just like, battles it out of his mouth and the debate and then they win. It's like, that's what happens to Arthur. Like some part of his brain just clicks where he's like, I am a chime master. (laughing) Seriously, it's pretty, it's pretty incredible. - I know it's senior talking about nine doors at full. (laughing) - I think that's it for me and I'm not, you should probably take a break and then come back and talk some more about more games in this time. - So I can pee with Tyler. - Well, we'll go at different times. - No, same time. - It'll be hard. - That's the point. (upbeat music) ♪ Oh my God, oh my God ♪ ♪ You're gonna know me, baby ♪ ♪ You're my new sweet nervous ♪ ♪ Your thoughts make me feel bad ♪ ♪ In the sun, baby ♪ ♪ In the sun, baby ♪ ♪ Oh, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake ♪ ♪ The clouds are, shake, shake, shake, shake ♪ ♪ The stars are, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake ♪ ♪ It doesn't matter ♪ (upbeat music) - My turn, my turn, my turn. (laughing) - Actually, Arthur was playing Dragon Age, I played Command and Conquer 4, for what? Well, it's PC only. - Yeah, so they haven't made any announcements or even in late then? - No, I don't even think there's no way it's gonna be 360. The game comes out in March. Oh, okay, weird. I just assumed that there was a 360 version. - The last two Command and Conquerors on 360 did not. - Oh, okay. - But this one's not a continuation of, like, you know the last one that they did, those series have always kind of been like spin-offs of the main Command and Conqueror storyline. - Red O'er's storyline. - A parallel world. - Yeah, you know, and they're much more over the top and silly. And the Command and Conquer games, the regular ones take themselves very seriously. So this one, I had no idea what's going on 'cause I haven't followed Command and Conqueror storylines. It's like the first one. - So there's no Tiberian son. - There's Kane and there's Tiberian still, but I didn't understand the rest of the babble that was going on. The story is very intense, so. - But actually, you know, the-- - Do they have FMV sequences? - Oh, of course. That's a Command and Conqueror trait at this point. But they are done pretty well. I mean, at this point, the acting on them is pretty good. I think as they've gotten more money, they've been able to do, like, sci-fi levels. - Like, as I say, it's like Stargate. It's like watching the Stargate show. Like, it's not like the best, but I mean, it's not bad. And so it was weird, you know, I just walked into the demo and they were like, just start playing. Like, they weren't like, you're gonna play this level and this level. It was just like, here's the game. Sit down and start from the beginning. - Huh. - And it's very different, you know. Command and Conqueror 4 is not the command and Conqueror of old. There's no resource management at all. There's no collecting of resources. - Wow. - There's no base building, 'cause the way it works is that you call in one of three commander buildings, basically, and they're all mobile. So they're like, big four-legged, well, two of them are like, at least one, sorry. At least one of the three has legs. - Four, two, one. - At least you can remember that they're tanks and they're like, one flies. - One flies, one flies, they fulfill certain rules. So if you wanna play aggressive, there's an aggressive one. You wanna play defensive, there's a defensive one. And if you wanna play a support role, like where you're gonna have to help out like non-player controlled units, a bunch of AI stuff. - So like Supreme Command. - You might pick support, a support one. And so then they can, each of these three buildings builds different units. - So is it a little don of war-like where you're just controlling these small units or do you control massive armies? - Right, so when you start the level, when you, it's definitely not massive armies on the scale of past CNC where it was like, you might just throw a hundred things at somebody and then not even watch the outcome. You just go back to your base and crank out more. This is very much like, you have like a unit limit of 50 and you look and it's like this unit cost three, this unit cost three and this unit cost three, this unit cost six. So then you'll build that army up to that 50 limit 'cause there's no resource management. - Yeah, sure. - And then you'll take that 50 in. And so, and unlike before, when like when you built an infantry unit, it's not like where you build an infantry unit and like four dudes roll out. It's like when I was playing as the GEI. - Wait, no, that's not how the last command and conquer was. It was like every infantry unit you build is an infantry unit, like one dude. - Right, but I'm saying, well, you know, in past command and conquerors, where it was just like swarms of guys, right? - Well, yeah, you just made them all individually. - Right, but okay, so in this though, like at any given time, like at most the infantry I had in the early levels that I played was like 15. Like, you know, 15 like a couple of vehicles. So it isn't like in the past where you might send like 50 guys quite literally into somebody's base and just watch them get murdered on it. - So they're not divided into squads though, like man or like company of heroes or dawn of war? - No, it's all individual units. - Okay. - Yeah, and so it's very much more about managing like a game of, you know, rock, paper, scissors. Like, oh, they have their tank, therefore I will use these on this and this on this. So it's, it is pretty intense micromanagement, I imagine a multiplayer, but at the same time, like I said, none of that resource management is there. You know, you can take over certain points in the map, I think to get like additional power to maybe build a couple of things. And the only person that builds any buildings is if you take like the support leader unit, they can build turrets and they can build bunkers, but only with very few of them. Again, because it takes up like power and you have very limited power. - Right. - So you have to build and decommission them as you move to make like, you know, if you know you're never going to come back to that one, just move on and get rid of it. - Cool, this reminds me a little bit of that one RTS universe at war that came out. And there was this one race called the hierarchy there where it was like this there. They didn't have a, you didn't build a base, but like the base was a giant walker. - Right, so when you spawn. - When the units want to build there, they have to land and like turn into a building temporarily. - Right, okay. - But they can just do it on the fly pretty much anywhere that's flat. And so the whole time is that it isn't like you just find that one base camp there and you're like, and we're never leaving from the spot. It's like at some point the commander unit always gets up and stays with the army so that when you run into a battle, if you start losing people, he'll squat down and start pumping out more guys right there on the spot. - Cool. - Yeah, I mean the early levels and stuff, I only played through the tutorial and like the first two missions of the nod campaign, like the quote unquote bad guys. And I mean, it was fun. Another thing, I don't know if they've been doing this for a while or not in a command and conquer games, but they had the ability to like, if a lot of enemy units you would down, if they were like really big mech ones and stuff, it would fall on the ground. And then an engineer could come over and fix them and take it over. And so you could-- - I think they did that in the last one. - Maybe, I wasn't too familiar with that. So you can co-op enemy technology and play with it, which I liked, you know? It gives you the opportunity to play with units that you wouldn't normally have. - Well, engineers could always take over enemy buildings. - I remember buildings they could take over, but I didn't remember-- - And that was a way to acquire the ability to make enemy units in occasionally completely new units. - Oh, well there you go. I did not play that much command and conquer. So, since like I said, since like the first one, but yeah, I mean, I was surprised. It was fun. I mean, I imagine it's like, we're gonna be one of those games that I play eventually, like when I have some downtime. You know, it has leveling up like Dawn of War, but it's not like the same thing where like, individual heroes in their units level up and you give them gear. This is more like your character, your overall like, character general levels up and then you just get, unlock some new units. It's like where you get to actually put talent tree points, which is kind of like what I loved about Dawn of War. But I do like that they're streamlining it, you know. There's none to like the, you don't have to worry about build orders and stuff like that. And I mean, it really is more like units are not so throw away in this. Like, because when you kill enemies, they'll drop little orbs and if you can tell which unit you want to pick up that orb and when they pick that up, it gives them like a, a veteran sea bonus. So, veterans-- - So cool stuff in this matter. So they really do want you to be more attached to a unit rather than like, you know, I think it's been Command and Conquer's MO for a long time that it was just like, you know, you were just sending people to their death all the time. - Yeah, is there, is there strategy in this? Like there is an, in Company of Heroes or Dawn of War where like you have to determine fields of fire and like where choke points and that kind of stuff is really important? - Yeah, that could be maybe why it didn't quite grab me the same is that it doesn't really have any of that. You know, there's no, there's, the only terrain things you have to worry about is like, like in the way like, Starcraft is like, you know, didn't and Starcraft even you got like a bonus if you were up on a cliff or something, even if you've never said it and this is the same thing. There's like, there isn't like boxes you'll go hide behind or anything, but you do have to worry about like if you're above someone. But, I mean that yeah, there's no arcs and a lot of times I was still, you know, just like, select all units fucking go mob on this thing. So-- - That's disappointing. - Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's, I don't think it, I didn't think it was bad or anything. I just, it's definitely not as, as like a strategy heavy. I felt as something like coming in. - That's for babies, that's what you're saying. - I think it will be hard later on. I have no doubt that the missions will get like, excruciatingly difficult. 'Cause mind you, I only played the first two levels after the tutorial and a lot of RTS games warm up. Yeah, like super, super slow. I mean, but, you know, I think it's cool that you can select which type of commander you wanna use for that unit and you can decommission them and like send in a new one if you need to. So you can change your strategies up on the fly, but-- - And it looks good too. - And what I've seen, it does look. - The graphics are really cool. - Right. - I've also been playing along with Matt, I've been playing the new Plants vs. Zombies on iPhone, the new Plants vs. Zombies on iPhone, which is new on iPhone, but, you know, I felt bad 'cause I really liked to support what PopCap does, I think their games are great. Even if people will say, ah, it's just a root of effects, like fuck you, they do a good, that's terrific event. - It starts so well. - And so, but I never bought the PC one 'cause I have a press account. So for me, it was like, it was like nice that I was able to buy at least like the iPhone one to support them and the iPhone one was $3. - That's what I know, that's why I said you didn't spend the $20 on the PC version 'cause you threw 'em $3 on the store. - No, no, no, no. I mean, should I've made up for it with PEGL, which I bought on iPhone, Xbox Live and on PC? - I don't know. - I don't know, probably like $40 on PEGL, so. - Did you buy the DS version? - I have not bought the DS version. - Would you buy it if you saw it? - I would buy it eventually. (laughing) - At this point it is eventually, it's been out for a year. - I'm just saying I have a lot of like the 20 minute kill time games and that'd be another one of those, you know. - PEGL is the 20 minute kill time game. - It's true, but I already have the best thing is that I don't know if I'll buy it on my DS only 'cause I already have my iPhone. - What about plants versus zombies on DS? - So, oh, plants versus zombies on DS I'd probably buy. But yeah, plants versus zombies, fantastic. Even on iPhone, I was really surprised. I was really worried about being able to drag the little things to the squares accurately, but it works. - It works great. - Yeah, I know. - That was my biggest fear. Like I thought I would drop them in the wrong spot. - In fact, I like the, I never played the PC, I just played the PC demo. I never played the full thing. And, but playing it on the iPhone, I love it because like you don't actually have to move a mouse. I just like click see, clicks placement, click see, click placement. Of course, it makes like the whack-a-mole type stages really easy 'cause you just can click on them with your finger. - Oh, I didn't realize that. I thought you still had to drag them to where you wanted to go. So I've been trying to do drag. - No, you can just tap. - Oh, oh, nice. - It's like instantaneous planting, you know. - Yeah. - Also, I mean any iPhone game that is like a fucking Korean star craft player. (laughing) - Yeah, that's not true. - I've enjoyed that quite a bit. So I'm glad to have that. - And they have all the mini games that are included. - I don't know, actually, when I click on it, I'm pretty, I don't know. I know it has a, it has a venture, but I feel like the menu is not as-- - Oh, man. - On the PC, some of those like were my favorite parts of the game. They're so good. - Yeah, I mean, but for three bucks, either way, if it's just the adventure. - Yeah, that's true. - Three bucks is killer. - I didn't play much more of the Plants for Zombies after I finished the quote unquote campaign. - Oh, dude, I never finished the campaign, but the mini games are wonderful, all of them. - I just got distracted. - Yeah, I know a lot of people really love those mini games. You can, apparently, you can always go back to them and it's still just as fun. - And then beyond that, I also, in the last week, decided to play through the Force Unleashed over the weekend. - Just 'cause? - Just 'cause I had that Sith edition sitting around for a while. - It's no any worse predator. - And yeah, that's the thing is like, I would tell people if you liked Star Wars and you never played it, like I did, like play it, but play it on the easiest skill because on the medium difficulty, like on the normal, whenever you fight guys, like if you're just fighting normal guys, they're never a threat anyways. They're pretty much just fodder because they're dropping health so much. And the only time that the game gets like infuriatingly make you change your fucking review score hard is like against bosses, like the bosses are like, the bosses are made like super Nintendo bosses or something, like they're trying to steal your fucking quarters. So, and so like all those, I was just like, there was a couple of them that I even looked up one on a fact because I thought I was doing it wrong. And even in the fact that guy was basically like, this boss is bullshit, he will do one of these three things that doesn't make any sense. - Wow. - And so eventually I beat that guy. - Is that the one I saw you on, like surrounded by garbage? - Yeah, so, but as far as like just a cool Star Wars story, like say what you love about that game, it didn't look as great as we all hoped. You know, some of the cool euphoria physics things they showed in like early like tech demos and stuff didn't quite come through as awesome as they wanted it to. - Got you. - But it's still like a cool enough game as a Star Wars fan and the story is enough, like there that it's like, it is worth playing. Especially 'cause it tells you like the story of what happened between episode three and episode four, basically and how the rebellion came to be. And the guy that does, I can't remember the name of the actor, the guy that does the voice and sometimes mocap of the apprentice guy, like he did a really good job. - I'm trying to remember his name, but people would recognize him. He was the wannabe serial killer in the first season of Dexter. - And he was the, and he was in the first season of "Battle Circle." - He was in more than the first season. - No, he was only in the first season because a guy shot his ass. - Yeah, he dies in the first season of "Battle Circle." - Because he's like the total dick on the planet. - No, he dies on that planet. - Like he tries to send Cali like with a gun off in front of a bunch of silent, like, centuries. - Yeah, I remember that episode. That's in the first season. - Yeah, and the curious. - I thought that was the second for some reason. - Yeah, he does. So he's only in the first season of "Battle Star." - I just made myself sound like way bigger of a dork than I like. - Yeah, 'cause I don't even remember that. - Who's waiting? - My friend. (laughing) - I do. - A reality check, I think, is it better. - Wait, so there's nerds on a gaming podcast? (laughing) - So yeah, so he does a really good job. And the story is, is generally pretty cool in finding out what happened to these Jedi, and you find out what happens to certain members. The Jedi cancel that, you know, if you followed that shit, you realize they never showed them die in the, they do show them die in the cut scenes, but they cut it in the scene so that they could include it in this game. - Oh, wow. - Like the other way they show it happened to Yodl, did you see that? - No, it didn't. (laughing) The specific guy I'm talking about, the Jedi Master Shock T, you fight her in this game, so. - Wait, doesn't she? I thought it showed her die. - No, that's an extended feature that they cut because she's involved in this game. - Oh, I just thought that I remembered seeing her get butchered. - No. - No. - Yeah, so this is, this is one of those things that I learned when I was reading about the game. And I mean, yeah, it is a-- - Could you Wikipedia the game? - Yeah, yeah, a little bit. So, 'cause I was curious about certain technology. - I would Wikipedia games. - So, yeah, but how do you little bit with your idea of something? - Right, so you could have a page or not. - I always looked through three different books. - Well, because I wasn't looking at general things, I was getting really specific. Like, I want to read about this one guy. Like, specifically that guy that boss or if there's something having all this trouble on, I wanted to find out. - I totally did that when you were loaning me those Star Wars books and they would mention some characters and stuff. And so, I was like, what the hell is with these people? And then I found the Wookiepedia. - Exactly, that's right. - And like, I got lost in that shit. - That's what I think there's-- - Two and a half hours. - You put the real link in that and you're like, oh. - Right. - She's like a Bible. - So, it is. - But yeah, the Wikipedia is awesome. - That game is pretty cool. One of the ultimate citizen stuff, which just includes all the DLC, is kind of like a fun twist because I'm gonna spoil the ending of The Force Unleashed for you. Which is just that you find out, just in the sense that your character was instrumental in making the rebellion, right? But he obviously doesn't survive 'cause he's not in 4, 5, and 6. - Right. - Maybe they did announce two. - Right, and so-- - Although he looks younger and two. - But so the premise of the ultimate citizen levels of all the DLC is that it's if the character chose to join the Emperor instead of helping-- - It's Marvel's what if. - So yeah, it's like a what if. So when you do it, it's like you go to Tatooine to find the two droids that have the Death Star plans. And so there is no, like, you are hunting Luke and Obi-Wan through Tatooine. And so there's like a part where you go to Java's Palace or like, you know, the second one of where you go to Hoth, that is like you attacking Hoth and the station instead of Darth Vader doing it. And so you're rolling around and you confront Luke and have a lightsaber fight against Luke. - That's fun. - Yeah, I mean, it's stupid little what ifs but I know. The game is fun. Like the Force powers and stuff are fun and they do a really good job. Probably sometimes too good of an extent of making you too powerful against the fodder guys. Like you just fucking throw them everywhere and then there'll be like one enemy type that's just like kicking the balls to fight. - I can imagine like coming up with the concept for those DLC what ifs was like just some of the funnest shit ever. - Oh, reimagining what we're asking. - They've said that. - All fan service. - Yeah, they said that much though. Like once you did that, it was like now they weren't bound by all this canon. You know, they could just do whatever they wanted. - Stupid continuity. - So there's a lot of canon. - Yeah, so. - But it was fun. I mean, like I said, I would play through it on easy again but it did actually make me like, like I, you know, I never thought that I would play that and then want to play the DLC as well. And then not only that, but now I would like to review the new game when it comes out. So, but I mean, it's not a great game. It definitely seems like a game that it sometimes was just phoned in. Like I think I was having this talk with you, Matt. - Yeah. - Sometimes it just seems like they don't care about their games quite as much as they should. - Yep. - Phoned in, I don't know, is fair. Aware of impending studio closure. Maybe perhaps. - I think there are some people there that are just like, they were not happy and so they just kind of were like, fuck it, it's done. You know, and it's just like. - That game was a development for a long time. - Kind of. - I mean, it was announced and came out during my tenure with OneUp, which was only like a year and eight months. - Yeah, but I mean, they showed the euphoria stuff in like 2000s. - Well, right. But who knows when they actually started development on the actual game? 'Cause they had to, I'm sure it's a, I don't even want to imagine what the process is like to write a storyline that's going to connect three and four and then have that get approved and then have the fucking continuity Nazis go over it and be like, nope, someone so was dead. You know, it's like, but. - They only have one guy that handles that stuff. - Right, actually he was in Wired, they wrote about it in Wired. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, I mean, I thought it was fun. I'm glad I didn't pay for it, but it was still fun to play. - Would you have been mad if you had bought the original version and then this version came out? - I was actually going to buy the original version. I was like waiting and then when I heard everyone at work talking about how much it disappointed them it like made me back off because I'm not, like Arthur said before, I'm not stupid enough the Star Wars games to automatically think they're going to be good. - Yeah. - Like it's quite the opposite. I usually go in there, expect to be bad. - I don't know if the super bomb bad racing copy on your shelf says otherwise. (laughing) - That's a lie. (laughing) I don't have super bomb bad racing. Like the only Star Wars games I own are like the, the shadows they empower for 64 and that's pretty much it as far as what I own. I mean, you know, I had the force unleashed for DS which was good, but I lost it. - Pod Racer was fun. I mean, there have been fun Star Wars games to have. - Don't raise your eyebrow. I mean, Pod Racer was fun. (laughing) I enjoyed the Pod racing game in Arcade where you got to sit in a pod. - Yeah, well that was fun too, but it also came out in 10 to 64 and that was fun in PC and Dreamcast and that was fun too. - So, I own the Lego Star Wars games. I always love those, so. - And now they're making Lego Star Wars the Clone Wars. - Yeah, that could be cool too. Beyond that, I'm trying to think, I feel like there's something else I've been playing and I can't think of what it is. - More mag, did you play either of the games you bought last night? - No, I haven't touched him. I bought Deadly Creatures and I bought Advanced Wars Dual Strike. - And then today you bought Miles Edgeworth. - I bought Miles Edgeworth as well. I'm excited. - Nice. - You look on his face, I haven't seen the look on his face like that. (laughing) - Do you have a phoenix for a long time? It's game for a long time. That's like my bedtime like glass of milk that I play just to go to bed. So it'll probably take like three months to beat that game 'cause I'll only play it for like an hour, but if that. - That's good though, man, I love playing games like that. - That's why I love handheld games. They're just like my, like I need it to put me down. - Yeah. (laughing) - So I'm really looking forward to that. - That's how you get tucked in every night. - I feel like there's, oh, I guess you know, there have been other things I played, but they're X10 things. - Yeah. - Right. - Wait, did you, I mean, is there anything else that you played that was embargoed or anything? - No, I mean. - You're reviewing PB Winterbottom this week. Have you played any more of that? - Right. - You care to speak about? - No, I mean, PB Winterbottom's good. I would encourage people to buy it. It's actually a really charming, really cool puzzle game and it has like such great personality. But another game I saw. - And it's a mechanical sound. - But I didn't play that I'm the only one who saw it was like I saw the new Borderlands DLC. - Nice. - But you can't talk about any of that yet. - Yeah, it's on embargoed Friday at 10 AM and this will be up and then, so I can talk about it. - You can. - Yeah. So it's cool. I actually thought it looked really cool. It's a, well, I mean, in the sense that like Mad Moxie's Thunder Thunder winner, you know, it wasn't that it was like horrible but it wasn't like a-- - No, Mad Moxie wasn't that good. - I still haven't played any of the-- - The Island of Dr. Ned was like a really cool story. All this like, you know, like it had like a beginning, middle, and end to it. And Mad Moxie's just like, fight a bunch of shit and this one's a return to that. Like here is a story. - I don't know. - You know, like in the game, in the game, you kind of oussed a certain faction and this is about like the Crimson Lance coming to retake the planet. And so you're constantly fighting Crimson Lance and it on top of, you know, involving some new things like, like the really things that they fully admitted they weren't capable of, like having characters that when they talked you didn't just stand still. - Right. - They've done some things 'cause they've been able to use memory better but on top of that, it has really cool things like four-player vehicles and stuff for those things. - Oh shit, I didn't realize that that was Saturday and I do know that there's a new tier of weapon which is like pearlescent. - Yes, that's like a super, super ultra ultra rare. - And then it raises the cap from up to-- - 61. - 61, yeah. - And they say that the pearlescent weapons are exponentially more powerful. - They're basically god weapons. This is the way they mean it's not. - Like oranges were often just kind of disappointing. - Yeah, they were. In fact, a lot of times I found myself if I got an orange and borderlands, it would have like one really incredible stat and it would have some other things that would just make it almost useless. Like it would have like a super low fire rate or something like that. - Something that I don't think that they fixed that was always a problem is that weapons have more attributes than you can see. - Oh really? - I don't know that I didn't see any of that in this but the four-player vehicles, those are bad at it. - That sounds awesome. - Yeah, so like one person was driving. I think there's only one four-player vehicle to be fair but the way-- - If it's not Voltron, I don't care. - No, it's like, it looks more like a fucking kind of big old tank thing and it's like one person drives, another person uses a little turret, another person can drop mines and then another person can make basically explosions burst out from under the tank in case anything gets close. - Oh, I got stuck with mine doing it. - So, but the thing is that I asked them and they said that vehicle combat and this expansion is going to be much more like a big deal. So that having all these people that can do these different things will actually be really cool because there's going to be a lot of vehicle combat because a lot of it revolves around traveling down, I got the impression traveling down this big highway to get to all these places. So-- - So it's more Mad Max. - It is like more Mad Max but again, this is a game with a beginning, middle and end and I think they said there's like 44 new quests. It will take you several hours. - Did they give a price point for that yet? - No, I imagine it's probably the same price as the Island to Dr. Ned. So, I think it was 10 bucks. - 10? - Yeah, they've all been like 10 bucks. - Are there new achievements? - I don't know if there are new achievements but-- - And I'm right-- - For what I saw, you know, as if someone who loved the Island of Dr. Ned and liked Borderlands, I'm gonna be all over this when it comes out, I thought it literally-- - I mean, the level cap or increase alone is enough for most people. - Right, and so people that, you know, you'll still be able to play with your other friends if you're like higher above them, but like, you know, that you won't be able to give them guns and stuff I think that you get from the new content, like if they don't have it, and I don't-- - That makes sense. - And they can't, like if you're the host, they can't jump into your game and play the new content. - Right. - And technically, continuity-wise, the new content takes place after the story of the game. So if you were to jump into it without having beat the game, it would kind of assume that you did. - So... - And you can't just jump into it from level one because it's like pretty much a minimum 30 level zone. You really need to be 30 even to go in it. So it's basically more in-game content. It's very much like an MMO expansion in that sense. - No, I should really just try to finish up the Dr. Ned stuff, which I never did. I actually think I played more Moxie than Ned. - Well, I still haven't finished the game. Like, Jay Fresh and I are on the last stage where I like on the last part of the game. - No, yeah, you should get that anti-comactic bullshit out of the way. - Yeah, and then the island of Dr. Ned 'cause it's awesome. But yeah, so that was really cool. I'm totally okay with like, as long as they want to keep cool borderlands DLC coming, like I'm okay with supporting it. - This has got to be near the end of the borderlands DLC site. - Yeah, I imagine, right? Like, if that's when I do an interview with them soon, that's one of the things I want to ask them is like, how long can we expect borderlands DLC are you guys just gonna like move on? You know, before you're just gonna be like part two. - Like at what point is Microsoft gonna be like, look, you guys are taking up like three gigs on our servers with your shit. - I imagine as long as they're making money off it, right? - Yeah. - You know? - Server space is cheap. - Yeah, that's pretty much it for games that I have played or seen that you guys did not. - Good shit. - Matt, don't look at me. I talked for way too long last time. - I played some games. Yeah, let's move on. - No, what'd you play? - No, I played Plants vs. Zombies, like Anthony said. And I'm really enjoying it. - You played something else today, jerk. - Yes, I did. But I just want to say that Plants vs. Zombies on the iPhone is kind of disappointing because when there's a lot of stuff going on on the screen, slow down. - Man, you showed me it. - Yeah, it really, really slows down, like a lot. - Maybe you shouldn't have the plebe iPhone if you had the watch iPhone. - I have a 3G, I don't, I mean I have a 3GS, but I mean, I think the 3G should be good enough. - Well, clearly it's good enough 'cause it plays it, you're an asshole. ♪ You're an asshole, an asshole, an asshole ♪ Why am I an asshole, I think? 'Cause you're farting on the podcast again. - He said fart. (laughing) - He's on a swear. - And I'm trying to get through Dragon Age with my alternate character because I started a human noble origin story and I just thought that I'd just play it every now and then just for the hell of it. I've actually started all of the origin stories just to see what they were, but the human noble one I've gotten a little bit further with. And then I just kept playing it and playing it and I realized that there is all this stuff that I missed and I'm actually doing, I'm playing the game better this time than I did the first time I played through it. So now I want this character to be my main character instead of the one that I originally beat the game with. And so I wanna get to the end, I wanna beat Dragon Age again with this character before I get the DLC. - Somewhere in an alternate reality, a character weeps right now, Matt. (laughing) - I know. (laughing) And then I beat Bioshock 2 last week, just like everybody else, I guess. - I still haven't beaten Bioshock 2, I need to do that. - Yeah, I never beat Bioshock 1, I only played the first third of Bioshock 1. This Bioshock 2 feels a lot like more of the same to me even though I never beat Bioshock 1. - Oh, that's, no, no, no. - But there are exceptions to that, of course. And the biggest exception is the drill, I freaking love the drill. - Yeah, I mean, where I got in Bioshock 2 and stopped the drill was fun. - I mean, it is supposed to be more of the same though, to a degree, I think that's what they wanted to guess. I don't think that's a bad thing to say that. - Well, I don't know, I mean, part of the reason that it's a bad thing is because they didn't improve the PC controls. Like the aiming with the mouse just, it's never felt right in Bioshock and it doesn't feel right in Bioshock 2. - We had some people in the comments actually suggest some links where people talk about how to improve the mouse controls. - Really? - Like editing certain ionized settings. - That would be nice. - Certain any settings. - Yeah. (laughing) That would be nice. And then the other game I was playing is, I don't know. - It's a sequel? - Yeah. - Part of the first one, I think. - Everybody's been going all up ons about over the-- - It's a sequel to a baby game made by a baby game company. - Yeah. Everybody's always been going on about this SC2 all day. And I mean, like, what, it's okay, I'll ever two, that came out forever ago. - I hear links in it. - Yeah. - No, it started to have two. And I got to play, I've only got to play one match so far, but I fucking owned at it. I walked into the guy's base and he surrendered after I destroyed one of his stupid protest pylon things. And then he was like, "Ugh, game over." And I'm like, "You probably didn't know how to play." Like you said you didn't really know how. - No, I didn't. - But he really didn't. And so then he was like, "Ah, fuck this game." Everyone was just a dick. (laughing) - How did he get into the fucking beta if he doesn't know how to play that game? - Because he's press? That's how he got into it. - Yeah, exactly. - And he like made the worst people that don't know how to play video games. - Made the worst choice of the game. - Learn more, goob. - The protos is the hardest race to play. - Yeah. - In my opinion, I don't know. - For someone that's new to the game. Yeah, it's easier to spam like Marines. I think Taren are the easiest to jump right in with. - Yeah. - And I was playing the Taren. - The protos have the best defenses. - It's true if you know what you're doing, right? This guy obviously didn't when he built like two Z lots and that was it, you know, he was probably like just sitting there trees like, "Ah, what do I do?" - Yeah, 'cause that's exactly what happened is like he sent a, he sent some sort of aerial unit into harass my base. And by then I was, 'cause I was like, I'm just gonna like march into this guy's base with like a bunch of basic units and see what happens. So I was like most of the way to his base by the time that that happened. And then, yeah. And then the moment my guys walked into his base, it was like, he quit victory. - He probably thought that he had won. He's like, "I got this one guy "and he can't even shoot me." - Yeah. - I was gonna see. - He hasn't made any troops. - Fuck him. He's not even doing anything. Also, he sees all that shit rolling and he's like, "Wow." (laughing) Maybe he made him stop playing forever. - So I played one game of starcraft. - Let's take our beta key. - I will be playing lots more of starcraft. - I was watching over your shoulder and also Jay Freshman and that. Dude, some people, you know, I know in that game surface like some people were decrying the graphics for not being advanced enough. I mean, I just remember people talking like saying it didn't look. - Where are these people that we might go to their house at the moment? - I think what they think is that they want it to, they don't want Blizzard's stylization. They want it to look super ultra realistic or something. - Something like, but I mean, I can tell you, man, it looks fantastic. - Oh, they've completely, like from the first time they showed that game, like when they announced it and unveiled it, they've completely redone every model. - And it looks, yeah. - When you see it, in person moving, not just that, but they always do that, like semi-cartoony style because they want it to be scalable. - Yeah. - Like the system requirements of that gamer are pretty low. - Considering what a lot of PC games are, yeah. - PC I had like four years ago. - Yeah, but Blizzard is great with that stuff. - I mean, they're fantastic, really. - They're fantastic, really. - They really want it to, but it can also play and look like shit and still be playable. - Yeah, I mean, the animation is so smooth and like things that are really impressive are like the way it does shadows. So if like a unit passes next to a building that's casting a shadow, like the shadow will cast on the unit exactly as it should, you know? Like perfect. - Yeah, and when I started it up, it automatically chose like ultra settings for everything. So like it can clearly run on just regular systems. Just like, wow, you know, like-- - Right, wow can look fantastic as well. - Right. - But it can scale back. - Yep. So, that's-- - Starcraft 2, good. - Yeah. - Starcraft 2, good. - Everyone's really surprised. - I don't know. - And that's, that's it for me. - So-- - X10 explosion time. - How about Halo Reach? - How about that Halo Reach that I didn't get to see because it was only available during the day? - No, no, they had the presentation tonight. - Yeah, they had a presentation. - That was not eight. That was not a presentation tonight. That was a, our buddy set that up to us 'cause he knew that was not a planned thing. - Halo Reach looks really fucking good. - Yeah, I'll bet. I mean, but all we saw though, yeah, really all we saw was the Vid Doc and then he flew us through a multiplayer map. So, if you saw the Vid Doc, you saw like pretty much-- - I like my, my thing about Vid, I actually, I like Vid Docs because I like the information that comes out of them, but as far as like a way to explore to actual, to see decent gameplay footage, Vid Docs are not it, at least not the way that people usually do them. And at least for our business, it's really annoying when somebody says, "Hey, come see the game and we'll give you some B-roll so you can do your own custom video preview." And the B-roll they send us is the Vid Doc. - Oh, that's-- - Yeah, it's already spliced up with interviews and shit, yeah, and this is useful. - Yeah, it's like the most useless footage ever. So that's just a personal little gripe. But how was Reach? I mean, like-- - So basically, the stuff you saw in the Vid Doc, they wanted to show us that it was legit. - Nice. - So they showed us-- - They showed it running an engine. - That it was legit. - That's cool. - Like something you hear people talk about is, they showed us the bolts on the buildings and they showed us the gun. And I mean, they did show us all that and it looks pretty amazing. - It does look amazing and it was less annoying than all the times you've sat in a presentation. We're like, "Look at our water." (both laughing) - 'Cause I mean, cool. - Like the new trick that they were showing off in particular was a revamped level of detail system to the point where it zoomed in on the gun and it looked like it had been modeled so that you're supposed to see a gun a close up at all times. - Oh, okay, interesting. - Instead of it being low texture, low, low texture account for everything that you're not gonna see much of. Made Halo 3 when they showed side-by-side models and made Halo 3 look really bad. - Good, until Halo 3 does look really bad. - I don't think Halo 3 looks really bad. I thought the lighting was particularly good. - The lighting is good in Halo 3 but I've never liked the models in Halo 3. - The lighting seems less stark in Halo reach than it did in Halo 3. - What about, that was kind of one thing that they did on purpose in ODST though, is the really harsh black shadows. Did they do this? - I saw it was all daylight. - Yeah, they showed us the multiplayer arena that they were talking about so none of that was there but I mean it all looked Halo but it all looked like what you would expect from a, if you would assume that Halo was a cutting edge game graphically all along, it's what you would expect like the next iteration of Halo to look like. - Cool. - Which is, I mean it just looks really good. - Cool. - I mean there was some frame rate. - Like I thought, yeah, I mean it's so early for that. - Yeah it's a development. - But I mean I thought it looked great. The thing I'm still like the most, the only thing I'm really skeptical about them delivering on still is like a story that really is like a character drama that they wanted to be or like tells like this narrative where you actually care about these characters and the way they interact. - Yeah. - I've never seen Bungie do something with that where they've proven to me that I'm gonna actually, that's gonna happen. - ODST came the closest. - Yeah. And I feel like, I want it to be true. - We have me too. - I think it's safe to assume that not every Spartan you see at the beginning of Halo Reach is gonna make it to the end. - I have question that, come on. - And possibly-- - I mean Halo Reach is about all the Spartans getting fucking wiped out. - Yeah. - You're gonna kill Aerith of the lore. - There are some Spartans that made it off Reach. - Right but obviously it would make sense for them to murder some of the people in your squad. - So I mean it'll be interesting to see who we get attached to and who gets aced. - Aerith. - Yeah. - But it wouldn't be the first time they've done that in Halo games either. I mean-- - Yeah but I never felt attached to anybody in the Halo games either. - It was a little bit of a bummer. - Except for David Cross. I always felt attached to David Cross. (laughing) - I always kinda said when Johnson got killed in three. - See, again I hope they can deliver on that character and all that stuff 'cause that'd be really rad. That's like the one thing that I've always felt like I like Halo games a lot but I've always felt the story has always been kind of, but if they can bring it through that and that man fuck. - Yeah, I know, it's just nice. It's nice to see that the trailer that they put out for the VGA is that everyone's like that's bullshit, like we have no idea what that game looks like, like not only does the game look like that trailer in a lot of cases, it looks better than that trailer did. - I didn't see that trailer but I'll take your word for it. - 'Cause you saw it in Poisson. - It was pretty good and they said that they're working to make sure that the beta rollout goes more smoothly this time than it did last time. - So was I the only person that saw Crackdown or did you see that too? - Oh I saw Crackdown. - I sat behind you. - I did not see Crackdown. - I didn't see the whole demonstration. - I mean it looks largely like more Crackdown which isn't a bad thing, right? Like it doesn't, it's not like the engine, it's like you look at it and you're like man, this looks like 20 times better than the old Crackdown. - That was a performance. - But I thought no, I didn't see any performance problems. And they were throwing a shit ton of guys on screen because of the zombie type units. - Yeah, there's no more transforming vehicles. - It's true but there are four player vehicles. - Right, yeah, and that was funny 'cause like, 'cause they were showing the helicopter and I was like, oh does the helicopter transform too? And he's like, oh we didn't do transforming vehicles but then he explained it was like, it was a conscious trade off. They could either keep the transforming vehicles and not do all the cool four player co-op stuff and not give you a helicopter or they could get rid of the transforming vehicles and give you all that stuff. And I'm like, okay, that's a good trade off. - This is where I would have crossed my arms and given him a good frowning. - And it's still in the same city and there'll be like noticeable landmarks but the city's been largely remade or destroyed in certain parts so. - Yeah, like they showed a different. What was the big skyscraper area? - Yeah, there's like a new-- - There's a new super skyscraper there and the old one that the boss that was in last time is torn in half and half of it's on the ground. That's really cool. So like, but yeah, we got a demo of Crackdown 2 and I thought it looked like a ton of fun especially when they brought in the co-op guy and they were like jumping out of the helicopter together and doing aerial maneuvers. - It's like, that was like the most fun me and Tyler had playing like a GTA 4 multiplayer was when we went in there and we just did stupid shit together like fucking dog fights and helicopters. - This sounds like stupid shit, the game. - And in this one, yeah, not only we're gonna be able to do stupid shit, like fly in a helicopter together but then we're gonna be able to jump out and use our wing suits to like soar around or fucking disappear at the ground. - They are not wing suits. - No, that's what they call them. - They're fucking flying squirrel suits. - Well, they call them wing suits and so we'll be able to use our squirrel suits, fly down and smash on the ground and make cars explode together. - We need a petition them to change the name to squirrel suits. - I mean, no way, the furry community will attach to it. - Like it, it doesn't, I got no bearing, like they didn't even try and emphasize it, right? There was like, no, like, and we're gonna have this storyline, like they don't even spend any time with them. - They just showed it all blowing some shit up. We have some more shit that you can blow shit up with your friends. What do you need? - You can turn these guys against these guys and have them blow each other's shits up. - Yup, yup, and now you don't have to go back to the agency every time you want a vehicle. - Yeah, you just summon it in. - Yeah, well, yeah, there's all kinds of-- - Places to get vehicles rather than always having to return to the same thing. - And well, it's the same thing that's like the, that's also like the weapon and ammo refit points, you know, that you always had to go back to. There's a lot more of those. - So it's not coming out anytime soon. Like, it's out this year, but they're saying this fall. - Right, I mean, yeah, I have no idea how early that build was or anything. So, but I mean, it is a game to look out for, especially if you were surprised they'll crack down. It's more cracked down and, you know, four player co-op now instead of two. - I'm gonna be bummed if this one sells worse than the last one 'cause it doesn't have a fucking halo beta with it. - Ooh. - Well, maybe this one will throw some beta in, though we don't even know about yet. - Right. Here's a four three beta. - Yeah, there you go. Who knows? - When it was funny talking to those guys, they're like about that specific point and they said they were completely open about it. - Oh, I'm sure they were. - They were like, you couldn't ask for any better way to get a new IP out there. They said, now we don't really think that we need that in order for this game to be a success, but we're extremely happy that it went out the way that it did and that Microsoft had enough confidence of the game to bundle it to get this IP out there. - Late in the strategy meeting, someone did suggest a free blow job with every copy. For a while, it was, we were thinking about it. - Of every game I played there, like there are other games that I think I will enjoy playing by myself more, but when you see crack down, like that is the game I will have the most fun with with my friends, like for sure. - Totally. I hope so. I mean, the netcode in the last crack down was fucking awful. - And even if it was bad, we still fucking played way too much of it because it was like, no matter how bad it was, we were like, fuck you dropped, get back in here. - Well, then there was the keys to the city mode where we'd see how high we could stack barrels or how many like remote mines we could attach to a vehicle. - Right, and they gave you the ability to basically use like a very edited debug mode. It was amazing. - And they said they're gonna do that for this one too. It's gonna be a keys to the city. - Cool. - Yeah, I mean, I can't wait. - And me either. - And then there was also Alan Wake. - Yep. - Did anyone else get to play Alan Wake? - I didn't get to see your play Alan Wake. - I didn't play it. - When's the embargo on that Friday? - It was Wednesday. - It's today. - It's today. - Okay. - All right. - Fire away. - That game I thought was surprising. - Yeah. - You know, considering that the first time a lot of us even heard about that game was like what, 2004 or five? When they announced it? - Sounds like that. I think even further back than that honestly. And then it was like on a computer gaming world cover, like the final computer gaming world cover was Alan Wake announced when I came on PC. It was like, the game has been in development for so long that I had like the lowest expectations for it. - Yeah. - Like I was halfway convinced until I played it that it would just never come out. You know what I mean? - Right. - And you're not alone in that. I mean, a lot of people used for that. - I mean, it's true. Like I've heard people joke around that it was gonna be like the next Duke Nukem forever. Like just continuing to iterate and fuck up. - Yep. - Yeah, you know, I played it and it was fun and it has like, I think you was, you were the one who said this that has like one of the most convincing like night time for us. - Yeah, it has the most convincing night time I've ever seen in a game. - Yeah. - Like other games that they just don't seem to get the colors and the shadows right to make something feel like night. And this one really does. - Yeah. I mean, it's just like super impressive when they shoot a flare in between like trees or something in the way the shadows, you know, branch from each of the branches of the tree. - It's just so important in this. They've done a really good job with it. I mean, it's, it's like a, I thought it was like a survival horror game at first, but it's, it isn't survival horror in the traditional sense of like, or at least not in the demo I played. - It felt. - It felt it's weren't that sparing. It was much more of a, of a survival action game. - Yeah. - It was more like Resident Evil 5 with better controls. - If it, it felt to me like a, it reminded me, not just because of the way that you're a writer in this, your main character is a writer narrating his own situation and his story is coming alive or whatever. Not just because of that, but I think just the atmosphere and the enemies and the sound effects really reminded me of a Stephen King movie. - I was about to say it's like, you're Stephen King who beats asses. - Yeah, exactly. - You are Stephen King who beats asses. - Yeah. - As is exactly who you are. - Yep. - With flashlights. - With flashlights. - Hang on. - Hand pistols. - Maybe Dean Coontz who beats asses. (laughing) - But yeah, I actually, I found out I was surprised but like the light mechanic and everything of having to like light guys up first and then shoot them. Like I thought that was really cool, especially because when you first do the first level, it's like in the demo, you're running through this forest and it feels kind of samey where it's just like China flashlights you guys, you know what I'm about. When you see the other ways they plan on using light, like having like a power box that if you can turn on the power fast enough, you know, now that's like a safe circle. - Yeah. - Or like having like a combat scene where they had you fighting on a stage and so like getting those stage lights to like fireworks and stuff to shoot off would be like a strategic thing for like when you would hurt guys when you're coming in. - Did you get a chance to see any of the environmental kill stuff or? - No, actually I don't remember any environmental kills. - Like just there, it seems like there's like some big environmental set pieces. - There are but those were generally used for like, I need to get from point A to B, I'm gonna have to use these logs to make a bridge. - Right, well then there was the one where you're in, you're at this construction, like this kind of construction lumber site and you're in, you know, a mobile office area and one of the enemies comes with a, with a bulldozer and pushes it off a cliff while you're inside and you have to get out the door just in time. - And it's not a quick time event. - It's not a quick time event. Like you act that, and I'm looking at this and they're like, yep, that actually happened. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I thought, it seems cool. Like it seemed, I went in, like I said with low expectations and even if I'd went into it with like, kind of like, hope this game's good, I would have come out of being like, yeah, it actually looks like it has a lot of potential. - If they, if they release what we played as an actual playable demo, I think it'll get a lot of people excited about the game, 'cause that was a good gameplay section. - It was, yeah. - And like the two times I've seen the game, the audio is really impressive. This is another game that to me seems really drenched. Like you can, you know, it's one of these games that's better served, cranked up, man. Just turn it up. - It's true, it's kinda like in the same way that dead, you know, people like, dead space wasn't a traditional server or either, right? That's like a survival action game. But it still had scary moments because the sound would be so intensive, like some fucked up sound in the hallway. This is the same way, it's like dead space, like you have a lot of shooting in it, you know, you're well armed, but the way it gets fucked up is like, in that first level that we did, there's like this main character of his story who's like this weird fucked up demon guy. And you can constantly hear him and it sounds like he's going in circles around you, but you're not seeing him. And he will come out every once in a while. So it fucks with you like, man, come on about to see this guy or not, like it is. - Well, and I like the way that he does the whole blur across your vision thing, like he'll come in, like he's some kind of shadow that blurs into focus and then he like moves away. But you still get the sense that he, you know, that this isn't some sort of movie with an alpha channel over the screen, this is actually some sort of in-game effect that they've been able to do with maybe some post processing on the image and it's really evocative. - Yeah. - I'm sad that I didn't get to play it. - Yeah, I mean, that was actually the game that impressed me the most there only because probably 'cause I had such low expectations. (laughing) I mean, it turned out to be really cool. And then the game that we all checked out, I think. - Well, wait, before we get to that, did anybody else play anything else? Did anybody play Perfect Dark? - What, do we have to end it with Splinter Cell? - We might as well, did anybody play Perfect Dark? - No, I did watch Ryan and Jason play Game Room. That actually looked like a surprising amount of fun. - What did you guys talk about a lot on this week's-- - We talked about a lot on co-ops. - Is it something that I can, like, that's the thing is when it comes to these Xbox Live games that I saw there including Perfect Dark, the only reason I could see myself getting them is to play online with friends. - Well, that was the whole point in Game Room, I think. Actually, you know, is Game Room online, or is it just multiple multiplayer? - I think it's-- - Blue? - I mean, local isn't the end of the world either. I don't know, it might be like, you know, on my 360, I will say, there's never been a game that I've had from my 360 that is the game, except for Castrocrashers, maybe, that is like, I have people visiting and they're like, what do we do? And I'm like, yeah, I have this fucking game, we should all play. - Right. - That's where I go to my Wii a lot of times. - True. - You know, so if there's something like that for the 360, that's something it hasn't really had. - The cool thing about it is that it really is like, you know, at PAX they have the Omega-thon, it's like Omega-thon the game. Because like, any of the demos, you can play any of the games that they have there is demos free for like 15 minutes or something like that. So I mean, I think that's the perfect situation. Like you're just saying, if you had people over, you could just be jumping constantly into these old school games. And those kind of old, sometimes broken mechanics can be really fun in a party setting. - Yeah, for 15 minutes, yeah. - Everyone is at the whims of that broken mechanic. - Right. - Yeah, I mean, the same way that like playing Mario Party is fun, even though those mini games are often like old-style mechanics in the port, but when everyone's there. - Dead Rising 2 still looked like it was gonna be zombie killing fun. - See, that seems cool to me, but I heard they still weren't answering the question about how save points work. - Yeah. - That is a big deal to me for the game. - No, they were too busy giggling an American journalist, strapping on a dildo. - Well, not strapping on a dildo, wielding a dildo. - Wielding a strappon dildo. (laughing) - So. - Yeah, but yeah, that's the big thing for me is like that first, like I still have the first game on my shelf and it's like, I've never gone back to it, just 'cause-- - That's the worst thing. - I got fucking frustrated losing progress. - You know, I beat that game once and the way that after everybody told me about the save situation, I went and I went to a fact and I found out the ideal way to go through that game and I followed the fact to the letter 'cause I'm like, I am not gonna get frustrated at the end of this game. - That's no fucking fun. - Actually, it was a ton of fun because like, I played that game the best way that you can play which is to load up on all the magazines which give you bonus to your melee and then I killed the clown boss and got the mini chainsaw and I always had too many chainsaws on me and I went through the rest of the game like just fucking up zombies. - See, that was always the fun part for me. Like when I played the demo that was like, here's 10 minutes to run around in the mall and fuck up zombies. - Yeah, but I mean, it was fun. - That never got over, like that being the fun is part of that for me. - The fun was experimenting with killing zombies. - Yeah. - Right, which for me, it's like the new game. Like, I really wish there was co-op in it. Like, how cool is that? - Yeah, it seems like you could go on your friend and be like, but also kill the most zombies in five minutes. - But look how many zombies they actually have on the screen. - No, it is impressive, yeah. And you know, it just seems like the, they need to figure out what the game is, right? Like, man, the save system it just seemed like was everyone was complaining about it. - It was very Japanese. - It is very Japanese. - But I feel like the reason they're hiding is 'cause they're gonna do it again 'cause they're like, we fucking love it. But it's a different, no, it's a different studio. - Yeah. - It's, I mean, it's a Western studio doing it this time. - Oh, it's not made from Japan? - No, I think it's a blue castle, right? - That sounds familiar. - Yeah. - I saw the weapon creation thing. - And that looks cool, like strapping chainsaws to a fucking paddle. - Yeah, and like-- - Right, I heard someone say something. - You rose through the crowds. - The way you would row in the paddle. - Yeah, yeah. - I mean, you know, we actually, we cut footage of Jason doing that. - I thought I heard someone say that there was like a paddle chainsaw wheelchair. So he was like, on a wheelchair with a chainsaw and a paddle, and just fucking paddle like through while wheelchairing. - What? - Yeah. - Amazing. - I mean, yeah, stupid shit like that is why I wanna play that game. - Yeah. - So I really wanted to play toy commander to get a chance to get a chance to get a chance really cool, yeah. - Yeah, that looked cool. - And it's nice to see that it makes everyone think of fucking, like, not, no, not toy commander. Toy soldiers is the X-Blog game. And toy commander is the fucking Dreamcast game. - Oh, okay. - So. - I knew what you meant though. - Did anybody see Fable 3? I don't think so, no. - No. That was only during the day as well. Fair enough. - You had to be V, at P. - Yeah, wow. - So I got tuttled. - Let's talk about Splinter Cell. - Splinter Cell Conviction. - Splinter Cell Conviction. We got to play that. Single player. - Single ball. - Single ball. - Single ball. - Fucking awesome. - Yeah, I have to go touch myself now. - I don't have any prior Splinter Cell to compare to, but I-- - Yes, but I do. You played through most a double agent. - No, I played through, like, an hour of double agent. - I thought you played up to, like, the cruise ship. - Oh, maybe I played more than I thought but-- - I played through all of double agent twice. - So, see, the thing is that I don't really have much to base it on, and to me, it was like-- - It's a new beginning. - I mean, Ryan, when I was talking to Ryan Scott, my coworker about it, he was a little worried, 'cause, you know, Ryan's not a big shooter fan, but Ryan loved the Splinter Cell games. And so when I told him there's more to me, it felt like a better third person shooting, but it's still not like a game where you're like, you're not stopping and popping and getting a firefight, it's more like, you shoot someone and if they see you, you're just using that to your advantage to draw them to that position. You still are, like, a stealth assassin. - Yeah, I love that mechanic where, like, if you move away from a spot, then it has a little ghost image, and that's where the enemies are going to look for you. Yeah, that's so great. That's exactly the kind of information that stealth action games have been missing. Like, you know that you knew that you could do that for games that would pay attention to audio cues or visual cues of where the player was at, but to have it visually represented on the screen, it makes me feel like I'm, everything in this game makes me feel like I'm inside of Sam's Fisher's head, aware of what a spy would be aware of in this situation. - I think more than any other game, like, you know, it's like, I said in the thing, I wrote for games by the, like, when I talked to the guy that was, like, in charge of making Splinter Cell E3, he was quite drunk at the time. And I was like, he was one word to describe your game, and he said, "Panther." And I was like, "That is the dumbest shit I've ever had." - Remember you telling me about that? - That's good, but when I was playing it, I was like, "You are a fucking Panther, man." - Like, he's a fucking killing machine. Like, you don't even aim over cover. Like, you put the crosshair over the dude. - And he just like puts him in. - When you're out of cover, you pull the trigger and Sam just kills him. - Yeah, you don't have to lean outside of cover to aim. - Yeah, the part that really makes me feel like, like, what you're saying is like, they really do make you feel like a predator with that last known position. Like, other games have tried it, right? Where it's like, hit man, you can throw a coin, you know, to draw people over, but in this game, it's like, it really does add the whole element of like, drawing people to where you want them to be. - It feels much more organic. - Yeah. - There's a lot more flexibility in how you approach the environments and how you want to take out certain situations. - And if you fuck up unlike other splinter cell games from what I'm told, if you fuck up and get seen, it's like an opportunity for you to do something different rather than like, the end of the line. - Chaos theory was that way as well. - Yeah, exactly. - And the whole like, ghosting of the image thing helps that because you know, if they do spot you and you get out of their sight, then you know where they're headed, you know. - Right. - Double image, double agent was that way as well. Like, you can, you know, you could break line of sight and people would go back to their route or whatever, but yeah, it's exactly like you were saying, since you have that ghost image, you could like, getting seen just sets up new opportunities to make stuff happen. And like, what Arthur said about it being organic that especially applies to the cover system because the way that you can move in to cover and then you can move to cover on just about any other, you know, vertical point that you can see by looking at it, it's, you know, how in most games we're used to having, like a Gears of War or Uncharted, you're used to maybe vaulting over something and going forward into the next cover or moving around something. And at the most for kind of creative cover movement, you have maybe a SWAT turn. This game is kind of like you have the SWAT turn, but you have it in 360 degrees. And so it's like, you can be pointing, you know, maybe, maybe at one or two o'clock and you'll be pointing at some cover over there and Sam Fisher will make some kind of cool diagonal move and he'll slide into it on his shoulder and be perfectly positioned right there. It's, it's- - And like what the game does that's really smart is when you're looking at cover, you actually see like a little highlighted display of where he will go to and like, what direction you're facing. Like there are little bitty arrows that denote these things. And like, they even do stuff like if you look at a pipe that you can climb up, it'll highlight it and it'll tell you- - All of it, but all like elegant, like not in your face. - All the interface things are elegant. Like you roll up on a light switch and it's like light switch, but it says like really small, it's not like obtrusive. - And it's right there next to the light switch. - Yeah, there's also, there's like just that very subtle overlay for everything that tells you exactly how you can interact with something. And instead of picking something from menu when you walk up to a door, whether you want to break it down or open it or look under it, it just says hold down and press A and it shows like the little, the mirror thing and I think it's like hold up an A and he'll like kick it down or something like that. It always tells you what your options are. You never have to go into a menu. - Or you can just look at those two different positions on the door that way. - Yeah. - It always presents it to you. It always presents it in a way that's like, like other games, the way they'll do it is like, you'll look at it in any time it gives you an objective or it tells you what you can do. It'll pop it up the center screen and be like, "Do this shit right in your face, blocking everything into this game." It's always like pretty small, but it's fine that it's small because it's always where you're looking naturally. - Or like the big objective text will be above a door that you need to go through. And you know, like there's one where, you know, I went down to this area and I was looking over this door and above the door, it said fine Sarah's killer. And I'm like, well, apparently Sam knows that Sarah's killer is through that door. - Right, but it's not blocking your vision and making you walk into a table. - Right. - Because like-- - Also, the interrogation stuff, which we've been shown before, and we soft trains their dudes well 'cause they always do the same fucking thing. - Yeah, but when we were playing, I like did totally different stuff. - Oh, exactly, like it's context sensitive. So if you like, I don't think I did anything different for the bathroom interrogation scene, but the scene where you find the guy who assigned the person who killed Sarah. - See, I didn't get that far, unfortunately, I had to grab my demo. - Well, he's in an area where there's like a bar and couches and-- - And a piano. - And like a second floor balcony that you can hang him over. It's like, there's all these options. - Oh, like I remember thinking, okay, I've slept around a bit, that's a piano. And bringing him over there and hitting the interrogate button and he just slams his face into the keys and it makes that a tonal piano. - Right. - I know, I'm like, "Gah, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh." - That's what needed to happen right there. - That is the game I'm really excited for. - Yeah, why? - It's weird because like, I keep saying that this, in that short demo, I feel like it's the most, it's the most cinematic interactive experience that I've had in a game so far. - Yeah, it's cool 'cause-- - Well, I was just gonna say like, but Ryan was pointing out, Ryan O'Donnell said to me, he was like, "Yeah, but when you say cinematic, imagine watching a movie and having this text pop up everywhere, like on the light switches and stuff like that, that's not cinematic at all." And I was like, well, maybe it just means that there's some kind of language or vocabulary or term that we haven't come up with yet for this kind of gameplay experience, where the interface is integrated into the environment so well that it makes it feel like you're having almost a cinematic passive experience while being an active instigator in the process. - I mean, Anthony made the Zombieland comparison last week, I think. - I haven't seen Zombieland. - Which you'd seen, that's like perfect. I mean, in Zombieland, they do it all the time, like it hits it, he'll hit a zombie with a car and like the text will pop up right on the bumper of the car. Like, yeah. - Oh, really? - It's sort of like Guy Ritchie directs a born movie. - Yeah, or like another example would be like a lot of the motion graphics they use in like Fight Club, where they do the IKEA magazine. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I remember that. - Yeah, you're right. - Yeah, I do think it's cinematic with motion, you know, the way they use motion graphics in movies now, you know? But, you know, there is one thing that I'm, that brings up a big question mark in my head that I noticed when I was playing Conviction. And that is when you are concealed by light and in cover and no one can see you, the world is black and white. - That's something they've been doing for a while though. - Yeah, you're black and white, but your enemies are still fully in color. - Yeah, but a lot of the world is in black and white too. And my worry is that it's just kind of like the same thing that Batman Arkham Asylum had, you know. - Well, yeah, the chronicles have predicted that. - Well, real spend so much of the time in black and white or like in Detective Vision, where you'll mess up. - Yeah, in a certain view that is not necessarily the full graphic. - Yeah, you're right. You know, I think you're on, I think you've got a really good point there and I guess it's gonna be up to the final game to see whether or not they can break up the stuff. 'Cause you know, there's that section that we played where you're walking down the street in like the market area and it's all fully in cover. And if they can put in enough situations like that, so you're not in black and white all the time. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. - I mean, I played the game for 45 minutes. - Yeah. - And that wasn't a concern. - I mean, I just didn't care about being in black and white, just like I didn't care about using Detective Vision though either. - So, even the tutorial section was badass. Like in fact, the tutorial section is possibly the most badass you've ever seen, Sam Fisher. - Yeah, well, speaking of badass, Sam Fisher, the storyline and everything that they put in like, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed to me like when you use somebody's a human shield, there was no option to knock them out. All they could do was kill them. - I only remember doing it once and like, it was so fast that I don't remember. I do wanna say that the story seems as much more important in the splinter cell than it's ever been. - And it's not just like names in your head. When I think of past splinter cell stories, that's what I think like just all these fucking last names they're throwing at you. - Well, 'cause so many of the characters that are friendly that you talk to, they're just voices in your game. - I always got the impression from past splinter cells that it was more like a James Bond movie where like the characters in that individual movie weren't what's important. It was more just about watching James Bond be a badass. And in the past, it was about being Sam Fisher being a badass. - There was some kind of combination of being a badass Sam Fisher, whereas at the same time they're also gonna tell you actually a really interesting story that reveals more about Sam Fisher than any of the games I showed up for. - I thought Double Agent went a lot, went pretty far in that regard too. But yeah, I think you're right. I think if the rest of the game shapes up to be the way that this demo demonstrated to us, then we're gonna get a lot more of that. - I don't know, I felt more invested in Sam as a person playing this game for 45 minutes than I did in playing about 50 hours of splinter cells. - Right, that's what I'm saying in previous games, I always got the impression that Sam as a person and as a cool character wasn't as important as like them just giving you missions to do badass things and you know, which is fine, I mean, that was awesome. - I mean, I found the premises, the premises, or premises is, is, is, is. - Premi, the premises of the previous splinter cells to be interesting and that there was interesting stuff that happened, but it wasn't like, and I know that you were a double agent, but I felt like double agent in particular, it's delivery was especially hamfisted. - Wrong. - In the way that unfolded at the end in particular. - Yeah. - But that doesn't seem to be a problem here. - Yeah. - One thing, this is a very minor thing that I did see and I was like, oh. - Well, you have to nase it Tyler. (laughing) - Nase it up. - That made me a little excited. This is not a nase at all. I was actually really happy to see like in the beginning, there's a bunch of civilians around you and like there are a few civilians that are smoking. Like a lot of people would pull back from stuff like that. - There's a French game. - Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, it is in Europe. - And they all run away, like when the shit hits the fan, too, that's awesome. - And the way, like going into the mansion level, like you were walking through streets with people. - Yeah. - Which is really the first time that splinter cell has done that, where like you were arriving, you're going to a mission. - I guess that's a remnant of the old conviction where you were like a homeless dude wandering in groups of people. - It's funny when I had to write the preview for this for Team Xbox, I was looking at the last single player preview we had and it was from 2006, or 2007. - Wow, I didn't do this a lot, I know. - I guess they didn't do one for me three. - No, apparently we didn't, but yeah, it's a lot of conviction. - It looks good, it looks like it's going to be good. - I mean, graphically, it looks really good. There's a lot of screen tearing in the build that was on display and it's pretty cool. - We're seeing all these things early build. There's no judging, I mean, this is actually pretty close to the shuttle. - Well, you're right. - This is actually the most excited I've been for Ubisoft's releases in a year for a long time between that and Prince Persia, so. - Wait, uncharted? You can talk about Prince Persia on Friday, right? - Oh, I don't even know. Yeah, but I don't know when on Friday. - Oh, okay. - New Prince Persia is going to be good. - Anthony, I'll talk about the New Prince Persia next week. We're going to take a break and come back and fuck you up with relationship letters. - I will break you. - All right, I'm gonna draw you. Go for it. (upbeat music) ♪ The last six stuck on you ♪ ♪ 'Til the end of time ♪ ♪ I'm too tired to find your life ♪ ♪ Stuck on you until the end of time ♪ ♪ You've got me paralyzed ♪ (upbeat music) - What the fuck is going on? - Oh, man. - Andrew. - What is that from? - Bill O'Reilly. - Bill O'Reilly. - Bill O'Reilly. - He's getting fucking raid, not. - Andrew writes in. - Andrew Ryan, is that what you just said? - No, Andrew writes in. This is Andrew M, who is actually the gentleman at PAX we had lunch with, who hung out with you for quite a large portion of that day. - Yeah, Andrew. - Is that the one that paid for lunch? - No, that was another guy, but Andrew was with us now lunch. I think Andrew helped pay for lunch. - The guy who paid was to do with the bad ass tattoo. - Yeah. So Andrew writes in, he says, "I love the rebel of him logo "that featured a skull wearing a leprech on that. "You know the one on the t-shirt. "I remember showing up briefly for a few episodes "as the podcast cover art. "Any chance it'll make a return? "I'd much rather see that displayed on my phone "the generic default iTunes screen for shows "without cover art. "I'm taking a guess. "You guys removed his part of your efforts "to stem the tide of insane leprechaun related emails. "Also any chance I can get a JPEG "of whatever that image emailed to me. "I'd like to use it as my phone's wallpaper." - I'm pretty sure-- - I don't think it's out of the question to make it a return. I think I just haven't been selecting it as like the file to the social podcast. - I mean, I have all the different colors as I'll mark 'cause I just like, "Oh, we'll cycle them through." - Okay, yeah. We can do that. - The t-shirt post, I think, has JPEG versions maybe. - Plus, I think if you just look it up, like Red Bull FM logo, I think it pops up too. - Possible. - So. - Hmm. - Fat city. - Indeed. - Okay, I haven't even looked at this one. I'm just gonna read it though, 'cause it says relationship question from a girl. That's what you're in in the title. (laughs) - Do we believe that it's a girl? - Her name is Laura in her Gmail signature, so I don't know. Okay, well. - Okay. - Let's do this. - She says, "I love the podcast "and I've been listening it to since the first one." I'll refrain from-- - I'm sorry. - All that. (laughs) I've got a relationship question that I want your opinions on. I'm 25 and have been dating my boyfriend for six months. My friends and family are very important to me. - Got it. - On Valentine's Day. Instead of getting me something, my boyfriend decided to pick a fight with me over some of my friends. This, of course, is after I give him a new video card for his Valentine's Day gift. Oh, I decided to let it go. He's entitled to his opinion. Then later that night, he starts an argument with me about my father, who is extremely close to me. He continuously talks shit about some of my friends and family and has for the last few months. I care about him a lot, but I don't know if I can keep dealing with his disrespect or how to get him from stop doing it. And he advice to be greatly appreciated. - I think that you care about him a lot because it's comfortable and it doesn't sound like this relationship is going anywhere except down the toilet. - Except in a way where it's like, I don't know, I feel like, "Eloria, do you think you can see yourself with this dude?" Like, really long term when he gets your fucking family. It sounds like you're the only one that's trying. - Six months, man. This is a good point to say that's a miss. - Dude, well, I'm the kind of person that gives people a second chance, so I would say tell him to stop it and then if he doesn't stop it, dump his ass. - Yeah, but abuse. Yeah, send him straight. - Yeah. - Give him an opportunity to say I'm still straight first and if he doesn't do it, then, you know. - Especially when you bottom a fucking video card and you go through nothing. - Yeah, oh my God. - Well, it depends on the video card. If it was previous generation, then maybe, you know. - No. - Let's be real here, guys. - Didn't even take you to the-- - Sometimes she needs to be sex straight. - No, yeah, that's bullshit. - So, yeah, yeah, we all agree with bullshit. When we were-- - Yeah, we can all come to that concept. - That's right, Laura, if in fact, that is your real name. - I'm pretty sure it is. - I know, I'm kidding. - When we took the train out to the zoo, we passed a squat and gobble, which for those of non-California residents, it's like a, it's a chain that I've only seen here. And like Jody had a few times have been like, oh, squat and gobble, like we should go eat there. And man, but like-- - That sounds particularly vegetarian-friendly. - It doesn't sound particularly appetizing 'cause like it makes me immediately think like squat, take a shit and then eat your shit. - Oh, I was thinking more-- - Squat and gobble. - I was like gay porn. - I was thinking more of teabagging something. - Yeah, it sounds like gay porn. - Like we just give a little dip. (laughing) Like it's the next, squat and gobble, squat and gobble, squat and gobble, squat. And when like you squat and gobble with a partner, you squat over their face and just shit in their mouth. - Okay, finish your story, Laura. - Jesse. - Slurpee machine style. - Jesse writes in and he says, "In light of Capcom, continuing the trend of putting out eight bit Mega Man games, I'm interested in hearing whether you think any other franchises would flourish under the same premise. I used to love Final Fantasy games in the SNES era and would love to see Square Enix make a new 16-bit Final Fantasy title. I also think the Zelda series would look great if they used assets similar to a link to the past. - No. - Arthur says no, but I can see it. - Oh yeah, that's my album. - Well no, he's not asking if it would happen. He just thinks if, or I guess he does say a food flourish if they would do well. - I don't know that Mega Man has a flourish. - For how little effort it must take? I wonder, well, I mean. - I mean, out of all those games Mega Man seems like it would take the least investment to create another one and looking at the robot names, Ryan Scott insists that they're not even trying. So. (both laughing) - I think Mega Man's one of those games that still translate and has an eight-bit game just because it's so iconic and it's kind of a timeless game. - And it also sucked after the 16-bit era. - Yeah. - He also asked why we have so many paper bags lying around when it becomes a problem. (laughing) And the truth is the reason that we have some paper bags lying around is 'cause I put 'em out 'cause my cat likes 'em and I try and make her happy. So, but now they're all put away. So. - And she's passed out on an extra receiver. - But I will say that the only reason that receiver is on is because I know she likes the heat. (laughing) - So that's why it's on. - Really? Are you serious? - Yes. (laughing) - Okay, so global warming is causing some fucking PPE could have a warm bed. - I care about more about PPE. - That's why you're just gonna see sparks flat at that thing. - I can get her off if you want. - I mean, I don't care. I don't use it anymore. - Okay. - I moved on. (laughing) - Yeah. - Zebra's are so 19. - A lot of that happened. - It doesn't matter. PPE's been slipping on my receiver for like so long at this point that there is a permanent dent in the time of her fat ass. (laughing) - And she still spills over the edge. (laughing) - Let's see. - Oh god, nevermind. That letter was awful. It was called Get You Some. - Oh no. - I tried to tell you a little thing about. - Yeah. - Like some, do I wanna know what? - That's why these things need to be pre-screened. (laughing) - Here's a funny letter that I think Arthur will appreciate. - Oh fuck. - He says, "Anthony, I was listening to Game Spidey Briefings "and heard you say you like to hear people's screams "and video games." (laughing) - Man, when I heard that company too has a fucking awesome scream. - So he said when I heard this I was like, "Wow, kindred spirit. "My all time favorite is tasering someone for so long "in the long time, long lost PS1 game siphon filter "until they burst into flames." - I have actually done that. (laughing) - I think I was talking about this in the Game Spidey Briefings specifically because I think we were talking about funny game sounds and how my funniest was Rainbow Six Vegas when every-- - How I would always encourage you to throw a flame gun. - 'Cause when you set someone on a fire in that game it's like the fucking funniest sound ever of them. (laughing) And it's always fire sounds, yeah, because it's not like a lot of games where they just die and so they make a grunt of death. - Right. - But when they're on fire it's like an agonizing like, "I gotta make this drawn out death." - The bad company too scream is better than the Rainbow Six Vegas scream. - Wow, nice. - Classic guy. - I heard it and I was like, I didn't see it but I heard it I was like, "That guy's on fire." (laughing) - That's what I like to hear. Go to people are not on fire. - You keep reading letters. - I would if our wireless connection didn't just die and so now my computer's fucking up. - All right, so since Anthony's computer decided to stop reading emails I have to pick one. - Uh oh. - Yeah, I know, right? This one is from Ryan Snow. It's titled "Psych Profiles". (laughing) Dear Rebel FM, I'm currently attending college in majoring in psychology. Logically I've decided to analyze your podcasting personas, personae, I would appreciate feedback on the accuracy of the profiles. - Are you an RGFM or whatever? - I think I'm INFP. - Gotcha. - Starting with Arthur, you are down to earth, a stonewall of confidence and set in your ways. Will you enjoy pissing off the hoity toity? I believe this is to defer the fact that you cannot cancel out of every animation you decide to initiate. (laughing) You despise the labels of your unbeknownst kingdom of hipsters. I'm not even sure what that means. - I don't know either, but that's pretty amazing. - That's an awesome phrase. - Is that a way of saying douchebag for a paragraph? 'Cause if so, you nailed it. (laughing) As for Anthony, you are a romantic at heart. Humility is your greatest weapon as well as weakness. Life isn't the role-playing server you want it to be, but at least you defer gratification by mastermating more than any normal human shit. (laughing) Your fortune cookies always remind you of the distant booty that awaits your pseudo-bootest humanism. - Man, so I don't know about Arthur. That's pretty good. (laughing) - Arthur's not down to earth. - I feel that that was pretty accurate. Well, I don't wanna speak for you, but I feel that that was accurate for trail, man. - You're like, I look at myself in the mirror differently. - I don't know, but last but not least, just Tyler. You are a beast in the bedroom. (laughing) - Is that all I said? - No. - Tyler's one of those people who speak thoughtful, worthwhile though infrequent statements. When asking people about Tyler, they say he be rowing. Yeah, that's pretty much it. (laughing) - Man, I feel like that guy put some fucking thought into me. Like, it's weird to me that someone's pouring over me. - Were you, it doesn't sound like thought is what you wish to put into you. - Well, I like the idea of someone pouring over me, but that's in my dreams usually. Orgard did many times that I'm abusing myself. He's so accurately pointed out. (laughing) - God damn. - Those were great, that was really good. - That was really good. - Very good personality assessment. - For really real. - Did you have one? - No. - I have, oh, this one's good. This one's quick. This one's from Nick. Why bitch is so crazy? (laughing) - What? Why aren't they just so crazy? - Because bros are so crazy, that's why. - 'Cause dicks are so trippin', I don't know. (laughing) - So somebody asked us if we had any tips for a first time cat owner, 'cause he wants to get a cat. - Is that the cats in GDC letter? - Yeah. He asked how much we spend annually. Cats aren't that expensive, man. People always think pets are super expensive. With the exception of when your cat gets sick or fucks up something in the house. - I think you are neglecting to think of a litter. - Yeah, no, but fuck man, I buy a lot of this shit for our cats, just like you do. I mean, and I buy fancy ass food. - Man, we buy a litter like every three or four weeks and it's a lot. - Yeah. - They also have two cats. - Each of those things, the litter is no more than $11. So I would say monthly cats probably cost us like $30 a month. Maybe, that's not that much. To have a pet, a companion. So really, and I spoil the shit out of my cats. So, you can get by with less. - He also asks if we're going to GDC or IGF. We're definitely going to GDC and IGF. - Well, yeah, it's the same award ceremony. I'm sure we'll probably hang out at some point. - I haven't been to the IGF award ceremonies and that's always an awesome kick in the pants. I'm really hoping I get to go this year. - Yeah, we should try to go to that as a group. - All right, hold on, can I just, I don't even know what this is, but I feel like I should read it. - Uh-oh. - It's just you're going to read this on the podcast or you will die at some point in your life. That's what it's titled. - Wow. - Do I dare? - Yeah. - Everyone knows that when a Jedi enters a battle, he/she is going to be virtually invincible and tear through everything. A normal space marine's head would be locked off faster than butter being cut by a machete swing. Yeah, I can rhyme. That being said, what if a Jedi, I'm not talking about any wannabe, we need a princess Jedi, matched off against a badass space marine master like Master Chief. Or better yet, if Samus Rand popped up and was like, what up bitches and was ready to throw down, who would win? - Samus versus Jedi is kind of a washed Jedi versus Master Chief Jedi all the way. - Stop, stop, stop. - I'm just saying. - Stop deliberating on this question. - I'm just saying it should be pretty obvious to everybody out there. - I think it should be pretty obvious that no matter what Jedi wins, how about we just move on? (laughing) - We could read the one entitled Pooters. Pooters? - I was actually gonna read one from Patrick, which is called a fan. - I was thinking the kind of pooter that you squat and gobble with. - Which is called fans in media. And it's a, he says I'm kind of conflicted about the relationship between video game podcasts slash website fans and the people they listen to and read. To me, it seems that the audience is both smaller and no offense and more personally evolved in this type of media than in traditional or mainstream media, i.e. newspapers, TV, et cetera. - Truth. - Is it, is it this that leads to the kind of angry and bitter personal attacks that I often see fans engage in? Or is it that a large portion of the proportion of this audience not rebel in them, in particular place themselves, somewhere in the autism spectrum? i.e. I'm very intelligent and love manga, but I have poor social skills. Sorry for all the parent parentheses, Anthony, try not to fuck it up too badly if you read this on air. Could I use a lot of parentheses myself, Anthony? I also do and a lot of semi-colons. There were time out this earlier. - But yeah, no, I mean a-- - Semi-colons are your friend, people don't use them enough. - I don't think it's that different. What he's wondering is describing. Like if you look at movies, like tabloid things, I think that's, it's the same sort of thing. - Well, I would say just read any of the comments on a freaking New York Times article and you see the exact same shit. - Right, he's just wondering if it comes down to like personal attacks to the people because of what we do. I mean, I guess I could only see it maybe because we reveal our personalities more than a writer for like the New York Times. - That's true. - So I'm gonna question my credibility about my AVP review because I switched my sticks. - Oh, to Southpaw? - Yeah. - But I mean, like, you know, I can just think of how many times I've been on the bus and hear people actively talking about Brad and Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. It's like-- - As long as they're next door neighbors or something. - I mean, I think it's like that same thing. - Yeah. - You know, just-- - Yeah, it's just basic. - Whatever. - Yeah. - He also ended that letter by asking Tyler for his favorite B.I.G. tracks. - B.I.G? Probably my favorite would be one that I would not say inward, plural. - That's the name of it, just that. - The name of the song. - Another one, probably another one in my favorite is beef. - Fair enough. - Ironic. - That's probably another one of my favorites. - Fair enough. - Awesome. - We can do a couple more, maybe. - We have an email from an editor at Go Nintendo. - You should pick up my Dead Space Extraction postmortem on Game Spy. That's the type of shit that I know you guys would like. Check it out. - There's basic-- - Go Nintendo? - Go Nintendo. I was told specifically that Go Nintendo would like that sort of thing. - This is from Eddie Fettig. I'm gonna try to condense this a little bit 'cause it's kind of long. There's something I really wanted to ask you about, but need to save it for later. Apparently he's not gonna ask that. I'm sure you've heard this. I don't understand why you would open a letter that way. There's something I wanted to ask you-- - I'm sitting here for a matter of-- - But I'm not going to. - I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight, you dick. (laughing) - All right Eddie, I'm sure you've heard of this already, but this weekend there's been a bunch of hubbub over some people outright discouraging, aspiring games press writers, even trying to break into the industry. - Yeah, I saw that. - I saw that too. Their articles have sent the simple message, trying to get into the gaming industry, quit, give up, none of you will make up. - Gaming press industry or just gaming? I remember-- - You say gaming journalism industry, I am an idiot and misread it. - Writing that game. - 'Cause my brain's fucked right now. - And what are they speaking on specifically? What was the-- - There's just several blogs from people that have been trying for forever. They were trying forever or that were in it and then got out of it, you know. - The one that set it off in particular was a guy who was trying to do a lot of freelance stuff, like a bunch of higher-minded freelance stuff. - Right. - I mean, the bottom line is he asking if it's true? - I mean, he's got more, he says from a business perspective, this is obvious right now, it's see us one year ago. He says, telling those of us who have been working at it for a few years now to just give up because it won't happen is pretty ignorant, in my opinion. - I mean, I agree to an extent. I mean, flat out, it is hard to get into this industry. - It is, but I feel like I'm like proof right there that it happens, like I didn't have a friend that got me in or anything like that. You know, I didn't like know somebody, like I just got a fucking interview for something that I was not interested in doing, you know, writing guides. - Something that I think is fairly consistent with a lot of the people that I've met, at least like the current crop, is that people find a sort of sherpa wherever they get their first gig or like a first gig, they find someone that's willing to sort of take them under their wing and show them the ropes. - Right, I mean, the hands down, like writing in this industry to a degree is like talent, as well as how you get along with people. That's the bottom line. - Networking. - And so like for me, like I don't actively go about schmooze, but I do great with meeting people that I work with and-- - Right place, right time also. - And so yeah, for me, it was just like the right place the right time I got an interview, got in, and was able to meet the right people, but I mean, it can't happen, but it's not easy by any means. I mean, I had to live off $10 an hour in the Bay Area for like over a year and six months. - I mean, let's also be clear, like that's not to say the Anthony didn't bust his ass because we were running like a small game, this gaming site on our own posting a ton, like for a long time. - Right, and then I also wrote free freelance, like really free reviews for Modoja, which is like a site I think owned by Hammersuit, who I think owns Go Nintendo as well. - I believe so. - Or just partnerships with them. So I did a lot of shitty time with like that. You know, I think it can totally work out. Like I know for a fact that we at GameSpy have talked about if we could hire someone we would hire one of our freelancers. So getting freelance and stuff like that is totally a way in to meet people. - I just, I mean, you've got to keep at it and honestly it's a job and you have to be willing to eat shit. - But one of those posts talked about, he's, you know, I'm, he said, I'm 33 years old, I have two kids, you know, and this isn't a job that can support somebody who is an adult and a family man and wants to be and wants to have, you know, more than just living from paycheck to paycheck. - And I could see that. - And largely, largely that's true. - It would be hard to get into it when you were in a family. You would have had to have got into it and then had kids-- - Well, it's not just that there are very few companies that you can work for that are going to pay you anything above, you know, what you could earn being a manager at a department store, you know? Or like, less than that, really. I mean, like, it's a notoriously low paid industry, but it's also, it also seems to me like it's one of those things it's almost generational because you think about the crop of games journalists that were around, you know, like 10 years ago, there's not that many of them left these days. They've moved on-- - On the bus again. - Yeah, they've moved on and they've done other things. And 10 years before that, they were mostly different people as well. This isn't an industry that maintains its current crop of writers. - Not very well, no. - Not very well. And it's because-- - I'm outside. - And it's because it doesn't pay. There's a few people at the top that make money and everybody else gets paid like a kid until they figure out something else to do with their lives. - Five years from now, I'm just gonna decide that it's time to leave and I'm just gonna have start having sword battles to the death with whoever will take my place. - I don't necessarily think that what I'm doing now is what I'm gonna be doing like 10 years now or whatever, but I'm also, I mean, writing is not an easy job. - No. - Like period. And this is just an extension of that. And the value of writing and the internet age has gone down in value. And all the freelancers I know that have been successful like busts their asses, like they hustle. - Yeah, I mean, even when you hear like somebody like, you know, someone writes a feature for SiteX and they get paid like $2,000 for a thousand word piece, it sounds like a lot of money until you find out that they also did like a month's worth of research and all these phone interviews and transcriptions and you're like, "Ah, it really didn't end up being that much." - No. - Like, you know, it's tough. - No, it's just one of those things where a lot of people are, I think the reason why there can be so many gaming podcasts and so many gaming websites that can have at least enough success to where the people that are involved with them can live and do the job, even if they're not even comfortable or wealthy. It's because the people doing it want to do it because they really like doing it. You know, and I think that's kind of the biggest thing is that if this is something you really like to do, then that's the, that should be your biggest motivator to keep doing it because don't do it because you want to get rich. And I think that's what some of these like people who are saying don't try to get into it, you know, or whatever, I think that's part of what they were saying is that like, if you're looking to make a, you know, a lifelong career out of this that you're eventually gonna retire from with a pension and everything, you're gonna realize at some point that this probably isn't it. - But I've seen plenty of people do it, have fun doing it and then move into something that does become that. - Yeah, exactly. - Because of where they were. - Or there are some people that move real high up on the chain and they end up being an EIC or something like that and they can make that kind of career out of it. But, you know, like, I think you're gonna know whether or not you're that person within five to 10 years of being in this industry. - Right. - We could just end it there if you want. Or you could read one more if you want. - Well, do we want to sum up what we just said basically that yes, it's hard to get into the industry. - I'll fucking sum it up with a fist. (all laughing) - No, I mean, it's hard to get into. Like, I moved with Anthony to the Bay Area with the same intentions as Anthony. And like, I ate shit in a different way. Like, while Anthony was interning at one up, like working a shitty job that paid more. And I do, I don't think that everyone can get into it. I don't, like, flat out. There aren't enough positions. - Well, and I thought it was funny when Chris Coler tweeted. He's all, have you noticed that a lot of these articles about people that say to give up on writing in the games industry are badly written? - And so the more. - And so that's the thing. Like, sometimes you just not successful at it because you're not a good writer. - Or, I mean, and you can't be high strung. - That's true. - Like, you can't be. - I don't know. - That's a strong. - Yeah, but you also, as we were discussing today, like, deferred to a higher editorial voice and seniority. Like, you're willing to take feedback. Like, you can't. - You have to be able to take feedback, man. People that can't take feedback. If you're gonna be one of those people and you wanna freelance, you're gonna bitch about every little change that you've made or you assume you come in and think your shit doesn't stink, that's like, fuck you. No one's gonna wanna work with you. - And you're gonna have to write about shit that you don't wanna have to write about. - You gotta come in with the understanding that when you come in, you are the lowest person on a total point. You gotta be thankful that you're there and willing to slog through shit. 'Cause that's what will get you recognized. Which is what I did, fuck. I've reviewed Naruto games and fucking. Prince Caspian, like stupid shit like that. That's how I-- - I'm actually super lucky that I've never really had to do much writing. I mean, it's like, I very much so lucked out in that regard because I don't-- - Us too. - I'm not as good a writer as you guys are for sure. So, I mean, if I had to be a writer, like, I don't think that I would make it. I think I would definitely not be doing this for very long. - I think video production is like, where a lot of jobs and gaming journalism quote unquote. - You would think that-- - I mean, I've got employees a lot of video guys. - Yeah, they do. - That's a lot of video guys. But, you know, there's one more and this is only because it's a follow-up from last week. - All right, let's do one more. - Stephen, the married for three years guy from last week wrote in again. - Made in a sex guy. - Yes, guys, just a quick follow-up. There isn't a word of a lie in the previous email. (laughing) - 'Cause we are all-- - Anthony is the only one that believed the letter due to his knowing friends in a similar situation due to religious reasons. I will say though that this is nothing to do with religion at least on my part. - Whoa, what the fuck? (laughing) - I don't have any religious beliefs, but my wife does. I don't know why things have been this way. There are so many excuses, but mainly the act of penetration is too sore. Anyway, I have arranged-- - It's the fucking doctor. - I have arranged some counseling sessions. - There you go. - Man, I was just listening to a lecture this week and about like-- - I'm not done yet. (laughing) - I'm not sure why I felt compelled to write back. I presume it is because I felt slighted that some of you felt the letter was a fake. I only wish it was, regards. I apologize, Stephen. - The only reason why I thought it was a fake is 'cause it's so fucked up. - We wanted it to be fake. - So it's good that you're getting a counseling and it's good 'cause you should definitely see a doctor 'cause if there's like medical things going wrong, there are things they can do to help. But if it's religious things, like she's somehow convinced that biblically, you guys shouldn't bang once you're married, email me at chuffmoney@gmail.com. And I will find biblical verses that you can show to her that says it's okay for you to bang it. - I'm just gonna say, find out that sexual compatibility is a big part of a serious adult relationship and that includes sexual compatibility. - It's true, but he's been married for three years. He obviously-- - Well, but he's saying that there's statements about it being to penetration is too sore. Like if it doesn't fit, if you can't have sex, and maybe you shouldn't be with that person. - Right, but I mean, I have dated at least one girl where that was a difficulty and it led to us not-- - 'Cause you're so huge, but no, but-- - So tiny. - But Kinsey, like for instance in the movie Kinsey, you learned that him and his wife had a problem with that at first and there are ways that doctors and stuff can help you figure out ways that maybe get around that. - Thanks Matt, now people are gonna say, via you that I thought I had a huge penis. - No, no, I'm actually confirming that you do have a giant penis. - So yeah, I still think that there are ways to look around it, especially if you love each other. Obviously enough to stick with her for three fucking years. - 10, 10 years. - Well, it's three years married, I mean. Three years married with no sex. That's the difference because they've been married and they're not having sex. - It's like that's part and gross point in blank where he shows back up at gross point. - 10 years! - I just watched that movie so awesome. - So, no, it's difference. Three years once you're married with a religious person. I mean, look through that religious person and she's like, "No sex till marriage, "and we're married in no sex." I'd be like fucking. - Unknowed. - So. - I'm sorry, Stephen, I mean, we just hoped that it was a lie. - Nah, Stephen, you need to see a doctor become a cast driver. - Yeah. - Moving on. - He said that they're seeking counseling. - That's good. - Remember to listen to our friends' podcasts, the mobcast@bitmom.com, the GeekBox@geekbox.net. And most importantly, you should watch the co-op live show at area5.tv or vision3.net/co-op. And then-- - That's the most important. It is the most important. And Tyler has something to say. - I was a guest spot on another gaming podcast this week. - Oh, what was it? - It's called Sanctuary for Gamers. - And that's what it means for a funny, right? - Yeah, yeah. - It's funny. - They're British, right? - Yeah. - And they made you do a British accent. - Yeah, we get real silly in it. - All right, I gotta listen to that. - It's a fun, silly, silly. - You should check that out as well. Remember you can send your letters to us at letters@eat-sleep-game.com. You guys, ask every week where that fucking letters is. And that's what it is. (upbeat music) - See you guys. (upbeat music) ♪ I am so remembered ♪ ♪ To have a year beyond no ♪ ♪ Catch me ♪ ♪ To be of me ♪ ♪ Let me back up to the sun ♪ ♪ I choose to live ♪ - But even then, we usually put something up on Friday. I think the only time we might've missed one entirely was before the Brian's moved out here. - Oh, I can talk about the Dragon Age expansion too. - Awakening? - Yep. - Oh, cool. I actually don't know anything about it. - Yeah, that's why-- - Except that I want to play it. - That's why the show's gonna be different just because there's a lot of games to talk about. It's kinda demo season. - So why don't we do like two people, like what we've been playing, and then break, and then do two people, and then break, and then letters? - What else? - Is that? - Sure. - I like it. - Tyler reads it two months later. - Whatever's quick, 'cause I got fuckin' things. - So do we have any consensus on Starcraft? I mean-- - I haven't played it. - It sounds like you could talk about it. - I mean, I would assume that if one up is live streaming-- - It's not just one up, I mean, it was Giant Bomb as well, it was live streaming. - I mean, live streaming and fielding questions. - Yeah. - Oh. (vocalizing) - This is a case where it's better to apologize afterwards than it is to ask for permission first, right? - Yeah. - What is that saying? - Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Check, check, check, check. Tyler, speak. ♪ Hey, um, there's so much fun games ♪ ♪ 'Cause the season is the best ♪ - Call the mic a little closer to you. ♪ There's, uh, it's usually closer ♪ - That's good. ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ - Matt. ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ There's so many games this season ♪ ♪ I hope some of them are pleasing ♪ ♪ Gonna play me some games tomorrow ♪ - And that's when I turn off Matt's mic. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - So yeah, Rubble, I come and brought to you about Miller Boyette Productions. (laughing) - Nice, nice reference, Tyler. (laughing) Anthony. - One thing, Tyler's notebook, and it's got a bunch of babble in here that must only make sense to Tyler about things he wants to mention. - Is it written backwards and upside down? - No, but it's like a, one's like a URL, one's like a fucking school, and then there's like several names that aren't connected to anything, and then Sweden. (laughing) They're like Sweden- - Sweet, Sweden! - So, that's a teaser for what's coming. (laughing) We're not recording right now, shit. - Oh, we are recording. - Oh, teaser. - But it's not really. Spoilers. - I mean, we'll see if I keep anything. - We'll see. - You know what we could do in the middle segment? It's just talk about how we feel about what's coming out on 360 for the rest of the year, since that's basically what X10 was. - Yeah, but X10's also part of what we've been playing anyways, so. - Bitch, stop that. - What? - She just rubs her face on the pop shield. (laughing) And it makes noises. - That's what cats are for. - All right, everybody talk at once. - Um, there's lots of stuff to talk about. (mumbling) ♪ Wapap, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop ♪ ♪ Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop ♪ ♪ Pee pee is a cat ♪ ♪ On top of a stereo receiver ♪ ♪ I do, boop, boop, boop ♪ ♪ Pee pee ♪ ♪ Tyer Pee ♪ - You need to stop. - Stop what? - Doing that. - Doing what? - Man, I remember that all the time though. He isn't that far away from it. - Come on, come on now. It's just that much of a duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh. - I wish it wasn't so that you could do that when you talked all the time. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - That actually sounded pretty bad. - Pop a seizure. (laughing) - Yeah. - That's bad, yeah. - That's definitely doing interesting things to the waveform. All right, I think we're good. Let me stop this.