Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 50 - 02/04/10
Aloha! This week it's the regular trio as we talk about Dante's Inferno (probably for the last time), MAG, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and more, then move on to a discussion about your thoughts on sequels, and close out with letters. Cold and rainy penis (it's cold in here, sue me)!
This week's music, in order of appearance:
Massive Attack - Dissolved Girl;
God Forbid - Empire of the Gun;
Spoon - Stay Don't Go
(upbeat music) ♪ The revolution, the revolution ♪ ♪ Once again I didn't know ♪ ♪ She brought her true ♪ ♪ The revolution, the revolution ♪ ♪ The revolution, the revolution ♪ ♪ The revolution, the revolution ♪ ♪ The revolution ♪ - All right, power. - Hey. - Hello and welcome. - Hey. - Hello and welcome to Rebel with him episode 50. I'm Anthony Gallegos with me is Tyler Barber. - Hey. - And Arthur Geese. - Fucking Mass Effect book. - It's like the coffee table book that no one just leaves the alone. - Dude, I mean the Mass Effect concept art is so awesome. - It's like a coffee table book people read. - Yeah, unlike our cat one. - You read the coffee table cat book. - So what you talk about video games? - When we're not busy being pretentious. - When we're not busy being pretentious. - And talking about farts and pussies and dicks. - So I hear, that's what I hear on the internet. - In the car we just talk about J.D. Salinger and dicks the whole time. We just have to go back and forth. So. - We didn't talk about either of those things and I totally wish we had. - Yeah, that would've been it. - I couldn't talk about J.D. Salinger. I'll be the first to say I don't know shit. - Phonies. - Yeah, I mean I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna front. - You never had catcher in the rye? - I have not read catcher in the rye. - Really? - Wow. - That was not one of those things that we got assigned in high school. - That is totally funny. - In a lot of classic literature if it wasn't assigned to me on high school or college I didn't read it. - Catcher in the rye just goes by like that. - Yeah, I've read it after high school. I read it in college because like you, I missed out on it. - Yeah, but it's just not one of those things that I've ever thought to myself when I need like a book to read for fun. Like I'm gonna pick up catcher in the rye. - That is absolutely an Anthony book. - I think that you would relate to that character and not in the sort of cliched alienated teenager way. I just think that you'd enjoy it. - Oh, well maybe. - Yeah, it still holds up. Someone gave me almost like... - No, I don't want to go to the store and buy it. - Oh yeah. - Because people are gonna think I'm just going and buying it 'cause J.D. someone's your diet. - I mean indirectly that is sort of why you'd be buying it. - I didn't even know this happened. - Yeah, he died. - Wait. - Him and Howard Zinn and Zoe Rubenstein all died last week. - Damn, I had no idea. - He was at least pretty old, right? He was like 87 or something. - Something like that, yeah. - I mean he, you know, that's good. - I'm hoping to make it 37. - Don't let, you know, when people a lot of times if something's over high, people will be like, "Ah, I'll never check it out." You know. - I've done that before. - Don't do that to the catcher in rye. It's good, dude. It's quality. - That's quality. - That thing is it was him and Howard Zinn that died last week, did you ever read People's History? - No, I don't know what that I've read that either. - People's History. - People's History. - It's probably one of the most famous US History books. - Because it basically says, "All of that shit is our lies." - Yeah. - Like there's a pretty big movement among professional academics to speak out against our history curriculum. - Don't know much about history. It was another great US History book that breaks it down into all this shit that was like, "Man, when they told you that, totally not true." - Just remember kids, the same school districts that determine the evolution should not be taught in schools are the same school districts that are determining US History curriculum 'cause they're the biggest textbook market. - Yeah. - Oh. - Welcome to the liberal propaganda cast. - Yeah. - That was like, we're just here to talk to you about literature. No, not at all. Let's talk about shooting things. - Yeah, that's much better than reading. - I think, well, I don't want to go first. I don't know. It feels weird to go first. Let's show and tell. - Are you never go first, though? - Yeah, I know. - So go first, bitch. - I hear you've been playing some Gam. I mean, Mag. - Yeah, Gam. I've played Mag. I finally reviewed it. - It's like a men's magazine from the '30s. - Just to be totally upfront. My final clock time, I think, before I reviewed it was like nine hours, nine hours a month, things. - A multiplayer. - And I had a level of, I believe I'm 18. Which is weird to me because I would see other people that were level 18 like me, but they had like 21 hours logged. And I'm wondering if it counted their beta time, and then they reset, and then it counted their time up until now. - Weird. - 'Cause I don't understand how it could take you 21 hours to get to level 18 unless you suck really badly. Even if you suck, you get enough experience just through playing that I feel like maybe it would take you 21 hours if you just joined games and didn't do anything. 'Cause I don't feel like, I'm not like in the top squad every time or anything, and I lose a lot. - So, would you give it? - I gave it, I gave it on GameSpy. I gave it three and a half, which is a good three and a half out of five. - Why so low? - I mean, it's not a great game. It's fun, and I think it's like a total worthwhile purchase if like, that idea of playing online, like that totally appeals to you, and if you're like burnout on games that want to make you like the individual, like where you can be like the individual hero, like a halo, or a Call of Duty, where like one person can really sway a match. - If you're obsessed with your KD ratio and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, this may not be the game for you. - Yeah, it's like in this game like kill deaths, they hardly even matter. Like, I'm always looking at my overall score rather than my kill deaths, and a lot of times my overall score gets severely boosted when I am on the top, like squads in that game. Like, that's the whole thing is it doesn't even tell you top players, it'll always tell you top squads. Like, it gives credit to the like the top three people in a squad rather than the top dude. And it's like, for me, whenever I'm in that, it always comes down to the fact that it was because I healed a ton of people and kept like a front line moving, you know, and that's like where that game is great. Like, when that game is great, it's great because everyone's cooperating, cooperating, cooperating. I said it right the first time cooperating, but for some of my brain farted naturally, and the front is just naturally moving forward, and you have a good squad commander that's issuing orders that are keeping your guys moving in a certain direction that makes logical sense, because then when he's issuing those orders, you're getting additional experience and the experience is good enough that it's pretty much double whatever you get the experience for, it doubles it. So it's like, it's 100% worth it, you know, in that game because it's such an experienced grind to really go and follow what he has to do. And occasionally you get commanders that give you some like bat shit insane order where it's like we're about to lose the game if we lose this one point, and he'll be like go repair the mortar battery because he wants to be able to call on mortar strikes, which he can only do when that thing's not busted. So he's like doing that out of his own selfish things. Right. Because he wants to see a explosion or something. Right. Because calling him mortar things and stuff like that is a good way to rack up points. They should just take the kill death information out of that game and just make it all like how good a team player you are. Yeah. I mean, it does have a good rewards for healing and repairing, but it's true. There's nothing like there's no like continual bonus like plus one point for everything you do as long as you're within X meters of your squad leaders. I mean, well, is there, is there like a stat to track? Oh, well you like res this many guys or you like killed this many points of damage per game. There are awards. Like, I don't mean awards like stats that are tracked like kill death. Like, like you have healed this many people. It tells you, you can look at your overall stats of like guys healed throughout the course of your play time. And there are medals that you get in the game, like not trophies, like medals in mag that when you look at a player's service record will show you all the medals he's earned. And there are certain ones that are like specifically for resuscitating X amount of down players. And like, they're hard to get. I mean, you got to play for a long time. You know, it's like the top levels, level 60. I have seen guys that are level 50 and stuff, but the reason I played up to where I did before. Yeah. The reason I played as much as I did before I reviewed it was because I wanted to get to level 15 and be a squad commander. And I was being in squad commanders. It's a lot of fun when you get to do it. You know, you have to, it is really cool the way that you can call on things like artillery and bombing runs. But, you know, if you're going to call on a bombing run, people do it just like, I have the ability to call a bombing run and then they mash it. And then the bomber gets shot down by an A gun. So it's like really cool. You have to be smart, like take out that A gun. Then you can issue bombing runs. Oh, nice. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really cool game. It's just that when it's like going well in cooperation, everyone's cooperating, it's good. And then when it gets really bad at times, it gets really bad. And it just turns into like this epically large messy call of duty deathmatch where people are just like trying to score a few last kills before they lose because they know they're going to lose no matter what they do. And so they're just trying to get kills for points. And it's like when that happens for like your whole team, it's just like a mess. Yeah, that to me seems like it could be real problem. It could be real problematic in that game where you could have one team that's so far ahead. And you as an individual, there's only so much you feel that you can do to help your team because there's so many other players. It's true. I find that actually the games that have the most cooperation, the other 256 player ones, the biggest ones you can do. Weird. Just because you have to be at least level eight to play. And I feel like people are there because they want to like try and win because, I mean, they're different. I mean, it's harder to stand out in those big matches too. So you have to figure that they're in it to win it as opposed to in it to say, I pwned you noob. Yeah, because the matches can last like a half hour. And if you do them right, you know, like if you're defending and you manage to last the whole half hour in those 256 player matches, the amount of experience you get, you'll get like a whole level in one match. Like if you really make it as a defensive team and you really cooperate, like the opportunity for huge amounts of experience are there if you listen to your squad commander, you know, but. Do you find that attackers typically succeed more often than defenders? Man, I feel like so far it seems like the faction sever, that one is like unstoppable in that game. And I don't understand why. Like I play as Raven, which there are quite a few listeners who also for some reason picked Raven. And I kind of picked Raven arbitrarily. I didn't really, wasn't like it spoke to me or something like that. But the vast majority of people seem to pick sever for whatever reason. And whenever we've played against those guys attacking and us defending on 256, like the guys I was playing with from Gaff basically told me they've never seen them lose an attack on a 256 thing. And it attacks and wins and losses and those determine who's defending on the next one. So like because they keep successfully attacking, like when we do it, then we have to like take it from them or something, you know, like it switches who has what? I mean, I think it said that certain, certain factions, like each faction is a differing difficulty. I mean, to hold things like Raven is middle of the road or something. I looked and like as far as weapons go, everyone has the same weapons just reskinned like as far as their stats. But that wouldn't surprise me because the maps aren't exactly the same. Like our defending map isn't the exact same defending map they get. Yeah, that's what I mean. And I have heard that people are like, how come our bases turds don't seem to be able to shoot right out to there and theirs do? And it's like, so I don't know. But yeah, I mean, it might have some balance issues, but I'm not totally sure about that. For a lot of it, it just seemed like our team would just fall apart. That's the thing is like sometimes you get a team that's really good and organized and it sounds really cheesy, but it actually is kind of funny when they're all talking military speak the whole time and stuff like Roger, we got two tangos, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it actually when it happens well and everyone's actually not making fun of it, it is pretty fun. When it's the role playing server on mag? Yeah, basically. But that doesn't happen that often. That being said, I think that the online community mag has so far been really awesome. Much better than say a shit talking like Call of Duty thing. And again, I think that might just come for the fact that people while invested in the faction that they are aren't as invested in their personal stats as much to sit there and talk shit. So they are encouraging each other to pick it up to make a victory because I think people after playing mag for a little while understand that one person will not win the battle no matter what. Like I've never seen it come down to an individual's performance ever. So because I mean no matter how good you are in mag, you die pretty easy. So even if you're like super good one guy, you're going to get killed if there's like six guys because even with the enhanced reload speed and mag, it's nothing like in Call of Duty where you could reload super fast. I mean, it's a very, very different game, but. Are you going to keep playing? I want to. I have other games after review, but I don't want mag to be that game that I like talk about how cool it is and then never touch again like I did with like Uncharted or Killzone. So. I'm so glad that you said both those things and I did not. Yeah. No, admit. I thought both of those multiplayer are great. Yeah. It's just I kind of moved on from them and then didn't have friends to keep me coming back to it. I just had zero interest in Uncharted multiplayer. Yeah. I mean, I think it's super fun. Uncharted multiplayer, the cooperative is to me the best one. Like, I don't know, like the horde mode, but yeah. I want to keep coming back to it. I mean, I would like for that game not to die when bad company comes out, though that is a worry, a concern of mine. That sort of team based game will take away from mag. Yeah. I mean, like in some ways mag does a lot of things to me that sounds like this whole thing like, oh, before I call on the airstrike, I got to make sure and take down their AA guns. Like, that's some saving private Ryan shit, you know? You do have to like in theory, the battlefield, like the officer in charge should be talking to the platoon commander who should then be talking to the squad commanders and they should all be figuring out how the battlefield as a whole is going to progress. Mm hmm. But I mean, and to me that sounds awesome, but then at the same time, like I can just automatically see sort of the problems you've said, you know, when your team falls apart. They're a huge clan. Yeah. It was like super organized against another huge super organized clan, which I'm sure they're already are forming, right? They're not playing the GAF clan. Okay, cool. And that's very big, but yeah. I cannot support this madness. The GAF clan, the reason I liked it was that once you're in the clan, you can jump into anybody's game and jumping into other GAF members games was a lot easier than finding games. Like it was even faster. So but that's cool. And then I mean, how much did you feel like once you got to a squad commander, how much do you feel like that sort of changed the play for you? I did like that it allowed me to give orders and set objectives like that totally made me feel more important. Mm hmm. And that is like a certain sense of accomplishment that like you don't get the same feeling. For instance, when you unlock the ability to use like an air strike and call a duty, as you do is being able to actually issue that people then listen to because it gives dis, you know, being able to give people additional experiences like such a totally different feeling. Yeah. Or being able to call an artillery and stuff like that and actually see it falling. Yeah. I mean, to me that seems like a lot of a, I mean, there's a lot of great potential there. I mean, you feel like you're, I mean, you are giving orders to other live players, you know. Yeah, that being said, I still wish there was a way that people could vote you out of command and give it to someone else. Right. It almost seems like there needs to be something like that. Meaning you wish there was some way that you could vote someone else. Or maybe if I'm doing a terrible job. Yeah. But like there have been times that I've played with squad commanders. Like I said, who are just like setting this fucked up objective and then like no one's listening to them anyways and they're not actually talking on the mic at all when people are asking them questions and it's like, yeah, you know, it's probably not the best for the team. You had a lieutenant dike. Yeah. I just had a guy that was like, like this guy's going to get us all murdered. So he needs to fucking just stop. We all stop listening him anyways. Yeah. But then once we stop listening to everyone's just scattering and doing whatever and they're all just kidding. We're just losing him like this is horrible. You guys needed a spears to come in. It's true. Exactly. There's no way to give away command or to take command. I can't kill that guy to take command from or anything. There's like nothing like that. There needs to be something. Something. But uh. You can just pull out a gun and shoot the commander. I was going to say it's like straight up like dual style. Like if I can take you. No, you actually have to be level 17 before you can do that. Yeah. I would be nice. Yeah. Something like that would be awesome. To get rid of the terrible commanders that are there. Um. Yeah. And then I also been playing Metro 2033. Whoa. You can talk about that now, right? Yeah. I don't know how much I'm allowed to talk about as far as the game. I thought all of what you played so far. Yeah. I played like the first three hours. Um. It's cool. You know, it's got a lot of the uh. The things that when I would tell you like this is a game being developed in the Ukraine by a studio. It's their first game. And they probably don't have a huge budget. So all those things that instantly pop in your mind that you might assume about that. Like, stalker things are probably true. Right. They're using the Quake II engine. There are a certain set of like, you know, values that one thinks of. They have this engine that they made themselves. And it looks very much like an unreal sort of engine. So the engine looks really good actually. I mean, it actually looks a lot like the Aurora engine like the Fallout 3 and oblivion engine. That's true. It actually looks all like that actually rather than. Um. But at the same time, it's like there are other things that they've paid less attention to or put less time into like uh. The same like there's like 10 male characters throughout the game. So even though you'll go into city with like 100 people, there's only or going to be like 10 dudes. So the dude in your squad who's like your best friend throughout the game, then you might see him as a merchant later on, you know. So it's like. They have a lot of snazzy hats to distinguish them from each other. Yeah, you know, it's Russia said they got like the fur hat or no hat, you know, or bandana. So, alright guys, that means we're up to 16 character models. Keep thinking of ideas. So yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, but it's like these are like those little things that because I know like the story of this game coming from the Ukraine being about like this Russian book that most people haven't even heard of yet. It's like, you know, all these things, it's like those are like the little things that in some ways in another game might annoy me, but in this way, I almost find them like strangely charming. Even though it's, I mean, it does take away, it does take you out of it a little bit when you're like, wait, why is my best friend selling me stuff now? Ah, yes, he has a different voice, not my best friend. But at least I have different voices. Yeah, I mean, he does have a lot of actually really good voice acting. But that being said, I still think that like the coolness of the game is that the environments really are like, there's so much character to it. Like, I've gone from being in one city, like a metro city to being in another where this one is like completely controlled by like hardcore communists who are still fighting Nazis for some reason. There are Nazis in this game, I don't know why, because the game doesn't exactly make clear how the world got fucked over. So I'm not quite sure. Which is kind of cool actually. I mean, somehow I think it was something nuclear, because there's clearly like... Something what? Nuclear. Thank you. That's just a channeling built at George W. Bush there for a second. But yeah, it makes it clear that something like nuclear warfare must have happened, because they're still like, and the way stalker is, they're still like anomalies. Weird things that people can't explain, and you still have to worry about your guy or counter, there are still gases that will choke you to death. But yeah, I'm not quite sure, you know, and so a large part of the game is how you are finding out, you know, you've grown up the whole time in your metro, so now you're finding out that the rest of the world is like this fucked up place where there are communists who are still sending tons of people to die against Nazis, who are also having to worry about these anomalies and these tunnels and these other monsters that they might believe might be the next evolution of human. So is 2033 the year, or the name of the metro? 2033 is the year. Okay. So it was like 2013 when whatever happened to the world happened, and your family took you into the subway, and so you were like an infant. And so now it's like 20 years later. Is the story, like, or details about the story sort of slowly revealing themselves to you? Because that's what I'm kind of thinking. No, I think the game's a lot longer than I think, because they told me this is only like the first, like, fourth of the game or something, and the demo hasn't even stopped, and like I said I'm already like three hours into it, so, you know, I think that they will reveal certain things about the world. But I think that it's very much more a story of this boy and what he has to do, like, to save his metro. Because, uh... Your journey into manhood? That's the whole thing is that you're worried about these creatures, these dark ones, that are like some people think are the next evolution of man, and you're convinced that if something doesn't happen to take care of them, they're either going to wipe out humans eventually, because they can do these weird psychic attacks that your character is. So these aren't the weird, like, liquor mutant things that I've seen? Yeah, no, those are just like, those are just mutants. Dark ones are very much more like aliens, like, they have, they're smart, they're not just like mindless monsters. Do they look like monsters? I think they look more like aliens, kind of. Like, aliens, alien? No, like, like, graze? Yeah, like, graze. Okay. Like, without the domed heads, but they still have the lanky bodies and stuff, um, but uh... Yeah, and... So albinos. Yeah, like albinos. You're shooting albinos. And so... Okay. But yeah, and you're somehow partially immune to psychic attacks, so you're somehow special, but... So the game does deal with a lot of paranormal stuff, like, I've been in the tunnels and I was traveling around with this one guy, and at one point, we were having to watch out for, like, things in the metro and this one tunnel that would kill us, that were just, like, psychic, like, memories of people who died on the day when shit went bad. So there was, like, this train that would come and it would look like something out of Ghostbusters, just, like, two lights with, like, a very faint outline of a train that would come by, and we'd have to, like, hug the wall. That would be all it was. There was, like, nothing, no actual train there, but if you hit it, they just don't get hurt. Or there'd be, like, workers, like, working in the tunnel, and if they touched you, it'd hurt you. So you just had to, like, avoid their shadows, like, these burnt shadows. So, I don't know. Whoa! It just, it gets pretty out there. But, uh, supposedly the game goes in some really weird places, I've been told. But, you know, it's just, it's, it's still very cool. I was having problems with ammo being a problem in the demo, but I've been told since then they've made the ammo a lot more abundant. Because before, it was, like, worse than, like, hardcore survival horror. Like, you were, like, I have three bullets. Fuck. So, how did I just save one for myself? Yeah, that game was super hardcore. Man. I mean, it's out fairly soon. Right. Yeah. Like, imagine you'll be reviewing that shit within the next three weeks. Uh, yeah, probably the first or second week of March. Um, yeah, I mean, they're doing some hardcore balancing at this point. That game's content complete. So, I think what's crazy about this game is, uh, the trailer, the first trailer just came out in, like, December or something. And it's already coming out. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, uh, I don't know if it was just that THQ only picked it up in the last few months or what. Because I don't know if THQ is publishing it in Russia. It wouldn't surprise me if it was, like, 4C or something like that. But, uh, you know, it's, uh, I think that we're not this game's intended audience. You know, they're like... I think you might be surprised. America, they're expecting it to sell, but I think they want it to sell. But I think the intended audience is Russia and Europe where that book has a lot of buzz for a long time now. So, they're hoping, 'cause, I mean, apparently, I've been told the book and the game are very closely related. Like, with the exception of a few places where they leave the plot more open, it basically follows the book, like, page to page. You know? So... And this is a really popular book in Russia right now. It's super popular in Russia, and the author worked directly with the studio to make the game. So, he's had a lot of direct input on how it goes and what the character would be like. So, I think that's, it's pretty cool. I mean, I think, to Russia, this book is kind of like their Harry Potter. You know? So, in Russia, they don't have, like, happy stories about a wizard becoming a man. And there, it's, like, fucked up world where nuclear shit destroyed the world, and Soviets are fucking everything up. That's, like, Russia's mindset, I guess. Fun times! [laughs] So, but yeah, it looks, I still think that game is gonna be super promising. I don't think it's gonna, like, win awards or anything like that. I feel a little bad for them because they're releasing it on probably the worst date they could have picked in March. Yeah, it's at the same date God of War comes out. Yeah. So... But I mean, honestly, like, the first, the beginning of this year is just getting so crowded. I'm really surprised they don't move until, like, May or June. I mean, if they can keep it in stores, right? Then maybe people will pick it up later, especially if it reviews well enough, maybe, then down the line. People will be like, "Oh, this game got a lot of good reviews." I was kind of sitting on the fence about it. I mean, maybe. I don't know. I hope so. I'd like to see another THQ original game do well, you know, from a new studio. I mean, their earnings call today stated that they feel like they pretty much recovered from the state they were in. And they do own Vigil. Oh, yeah. That's, I was wrong about that. They did buy Vigil shortly after they were created. So... Anything else? Those are the two big ones. I've also been playing Bioshock 2, which I'll say at this point, but I can't talk about. So, should be able to talk about that as of next week. Yes. Yeah. Tyler. Fun. You guys are going to hate me right now. You've been playing nothing but Mass Effect. Nothing but Mass Effect. Nothing but Mass Effect 2, dude. So, I haven't heard anything. How is that game? Fuck. Well, I, you know, I have two characters going. And so, I finished it with my main character who is like this. The evil woman. Yeah. She's like a renegade, badass chick. The Terminator. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, I immediately started up the game with my good character. And, you know, I won't go into any spoiler territories, don't worry. What is your immediate impressions of the ending of that game? That it's put me in a place that no other video game has before in my life. It's a bold statement. Yep. And that place is, in video games, we're so much, my thinking is so much of, uh, I can solve this, I can get around this, I will make it out of this. Um, when I watch Saving Private Ryan for the first time, I was nervous the whole movie because you don't know when someone's just going to get shot, blown away, taken away. I mean, they established that pretty quick when they just kill Vin Diesel. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So stuff like that kept me anxious the whole time. And so like that feeling, and I've never had that in a game. I've always felt like, well, if there's going to be a continue, I can reset. But here it's like, oh shit. Clutch. The timer seal of approval. Dude. Eh. Okay. And clutch. Dude, it's more than an okay. I don't know, man. And, you know, when, uh, when I heard a lot of people talking about how they made the shooting control so much better, I was just like, what, you know, what does that even mean? But it's like, fuck, dude, you realize, no, do the game controls like a shooter? Really, really good. I don't know. So the more I hear people talk about, the more I'm like, why am I going to move on to two? Like, why do I want to play one? Just because of the way that your consequence is from one unfold. And I still feel like you were approaching the point in that game where you start to, to really have to make some, some decisions. The thing is, is people tell me I'm pretty far in the game up to Benese, but man, I, I don't remember shit, man, up to Benese. I thought I was like an hour in the game. There's a lot. There's, the first Mass Effect has a really slow start. I remember doing a bunch of shit on the Citadel before I ever did anything else. Yeah, a lot of stuff in the Citadel. Yeah. A lot of talking people out of being mad. And honestly, like there is a lot of good in that game after where you are. There is. It's just, you're just at the point where it's clear that like all the level design shit they were talking about at GDC last year, how they're like, like stuff ballooned at the end of the cycle and nobody was checking in and no one was keeping a, keeping track of resource usage and that's why it performs so badly. Like, that part of the game is where it's the most obvious. And really, to me, the most significant thing about Mass Effect as far as like, in its place with video game history is, is how impactful it is that like, because I feel, I feel invested into my character, the, the female renegade. You're shepherd. Yeah, the, the male paragon I'm just kind of playing through. But this chick, I don't know, man, this might be blasphemy, but I feel like BioWare has given me the chance, the chance to rewrite the Darth Vader origin story. And I, and I don't mean like directly as in like, I pretending that I'm Darth Vader or whatever, but to me, you know, in my mind. You do a little bit though, right? As you play along, you're like, what would Darth Vader do here? You're the hero that's paving his own path to hell essentially. Exactly. You know, but, but the thing is, is it's my path that I am making though. I mean, that's what's so significant is, is that like, I actually have like an arc for my character that I'm thinking of where it's like, I made a certain amount of good choices in the first game because my thought is like, well, you know, they wouldn't be completely bad at first. And then like, this game is where I started to turn bad. And like, the third one I'm just going to be. You sound like such a goddamn Dean Dean. You know, he was the evil person of all time. Yeah. And, and I'm loving it. And, and you know, there are certain visual things with Mass Effect 2 that really played into that, that I did not expect at all. And I'm like, this fits perfect. Like, I'm getting to recreate Darth Vader in my mind, you know, by replacing Anakin with Shepard. I mean, that might sound really dumb and, you know, I don't know, but that's just sort of how I feel. Which has nothing to do with the story so much. It's just the way that you're making your way through that world. Exactly. Yeah. Like, you know, a character arc, you know, going from one point to another. In this dark middle chapter. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's like, I don't know. I've never felt so attached to, to a character or any NPCs before or anything like that, man. This is, like, I've never felt nervous in a game like this. We're going to have to do that, that Mass Effect spoiler cast at some point. Maybe we can try to do it this weekend. Yeah, man. I'm going to get together some people. I'm going to talk some details. And somewhere that's not this apartment, so Anthony doesn't have to listen to it. Yeah. I can just sit in my room like last time. Right. Well, is that it? That's why we... No, I played one indie game. It's called Strangers. Founded on the independent game source. It's just like a, it's like, it's like a little platform shooter game. It's just real cool. There's these two guys made it. And the cool thing about this is it has like a really funny angle on like humanity. Like you show up on this planet and it's like a little planetoid. Almost like, it's like a, almost like a 2D Mario Galaxy. I mean, you're not jumping from plants to planet, but in that you're on a ball that rotates. And so like you're shooting all these things and you meet this big creature. And he's like, oh, you're so friendly. You killed all my children. You know, this and that. It's just supposed to be this crazy statement on a, I don't know, humanity. But it's got a really cool art style and fun little jet pack you can fly around with. It's a neat little game. I'm a fan of fun little jet packs. I like jet packs. Yeah. It seems to jet pack. Yeah, jet pack. And this one, I don't know if I was controlling it wrong, but I think it's cool because the jet packs were limited. Like it just gives you a little boost, I think. So, but I didn't play it all the way through the end though. So, but did play the sum of that. So, and it's free. Do you have anything else like lined up now that Mass Effect 2 is partially done? Oh. Although it sounds like you're just like diving head first back and do it again. Right. You know, I did sort of jump back into it with my, with my good guy. Damn it, Tyler. You're on a podcast. I know, man. You mix it up. It's so good though, dude. It's like, I don't know. Yeah, I'm a little sad that I haven't had a chance to go back to it. Really? To me, I'm thinking like, man, how do people not have two characters? Don't look at me like that. How do, why don't you have a, why don't you have an evil character? That is a good question. Can you just not bring yourself to be like that big of a delight? I mean, I started another character in Mass Effect 2, like right after I finished it because I wanted to see how the game started without the first playthrough for the review. And I did occasional dick move things, but I just like, I don't have it in me. Yeah, I don't think I do that. And luckily there's no, like, there's no achievement for playing full on renegade or full on paragon in this game. Like, I don't, I don't think I could go play Bioshock as a dick. I don't think I could play. Because it's not just a dick in Bioshock. You're a fucking little girl murderer. Well, you know, just, I like, even, yeah, I just, I just don't know that I could, I just don't know, even after I've seen the good ending. I'm like, I'd rather just YouTube the bad ending. Right. I don't know. Um, yeah, I don't know. So, does that it? Yeah, that's it, man. Just Mass Effect. There is a lot of game there. There is a lot. How long was your playthrough? About 21 hours or right around there, 20 something. That's it, really? Before 30. I beat it before 30 hours. Huh. Didn't you beat it before 30 hours? No, my playthrough took about 39 hours minus what I guess is like an hour and a half of pause time. No. I mean, there were a lot of side missions I didn't do. Oh. That, but I'm. That's too bad, man. You're missing out the side. Well, no, I, I, yeah, I went back and did a bunch. I've been doing them. They're, they're fun. They're really good. Did you, did you use, I eat it all? I, since I'm borrowing your copy, I don't have fun. That's fine. I can, I can give you a code for that. Oh, really? Clutch, because I have the blood armor from Dragon Age, but I can't get it because I don't have the fucking Cerberus network, because I'm borrowing it from you. Really? Yeah. It won't let me get the blood armor. Unless you have servers. You guys are all speaking in alien language. Oh, just Dragon Age came with a free armor token. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was armor that worked in Dragon Age, and then armor that worked in Mass Effect 2. Yeah, it was available for both. How does that make sense? It wasn't like the same piece. Okay, I was going to say it was like. The collector's edition of Mass Effect 2 I bought comes with a, like the, the main bag guys are, are collectors. Like, it's said that over and over again. Blah, blah, blah, collectors. Like, you get collector armor and a collector energy rifle. Oh, cool. Oh. Okay. Cause that makes sense. And that was one thing that did bum me about Mass Effect is like, I'm like type of gamer. I do love to paper doll. My avatar is like, that's a pretty significant chunk is like going back and like fucking with all my colors. But I mean, you could do that more in Mass Effect 2 than you could Mass Effect 1. I agree. Yes, you can. But, um, my place, since I don't have Cerberus and I don't have all that DLC stuff, there's not very much armor. True. But I mean, I didn't play it with Cerberus stuff either. Oh, really? Any at all. Um. Yeah, you do find a healthy amount. I mean, I'll definitely agree. You can have like bright green armor if you wanted a bright purple. Love it. Give me more paper doll options. What do you want fucking virtual Barbies in your Mass Effect? Uh. Don't answer that question. Uh, man, if I could design my own armor, I would. I'm sure a lot of people would. Yeah. And by a lot of people, I mean both of you. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, that leaves you. Uh. Uh, I've been playing a lot of Battlefield Bad Company 2. Oh, man. I am avoiding that just because because I know I'm going to play it when it comes out. I mean, already what's there is really good. Really? Is really good. Coming from you, you're not a big. No, I mean, like I enjoyed 1943 just fine, but I was never like into it like the two of you were. Um, but Bad Company 2 definitely like just the additions and the additional classes and like the just the vehicles and the emplacements just add so much to that game like. Have you chased anyone through a building by blowing shit up? Uh, no, usually I'm the one like I'm there. There are still the people that try to play the game like Modern Warfare 2 that try to mix it up just to like in the center and just try to take out dudes like I'm the guy that circles around and bats clean up like I will take out people that aren't paying attention and I will be the guy that's hiding waiting for that tank to roll through so that I can either fire RPGs at it or if I'm out of that like sneak up behind it and use my repair kit on it to destroy it, which is awesome. Yeah. Um, could you do that in 1943? Uh, in, uh, I ever tried. In Bad Company, if you used your repair kit on an enemy tank, it would take away from the health. Yeah, like I totally killed three or four tanks that way. Damn. Um, or like it'll be sort of stalemated in the center and I'll swoop around and and go into their building and take one of their replacements and just start annihilating everyone up the middle of the map. Bad man. They just let me. No, I mean, that makes sense. I mean, that makes sense. I mean, I mean, streak doing that until finally someone came up behind me. Why play Battlefield exactly like Call of Duty if it offers you all these other things to make it a Battlefield game. It's just, it's just so much more active and interesting than the fights in Modern Warfare 2 are like, yeah, that's what I loved about bad. You used an offline vehicle? No, I have not after the, the experiences we had in a in Battlefield modern combat. I have not touched it a helicopter. I'd be like, Arthur, getting a helicopter. It would just crash and I would just destroy us in like two seconds. Um, and I actually, I'm a helicopter nemesis now too because I managed to learn how to shoot down helicopters with unguided RPGs. How do you do it? Very fucking carefully. Man, dude. That was like. Wait till they slow down and then you just aim ahead of them like you would a sniper rifle except a lot more luck is involved and I have totally like, like I clipped its tail and it went down and crashed into the ground and it was like super gratifying. Yeah, man. Like that's one, one thing I'm real worried about because I noticed they did a lot of things into, to make some of the vehicles more difficult to take out and I always felt like the helicopter was overpowered in the first bad company. There's just so many emplacements all over the levels that take those and like guided, guided mounted AT and stuff like that. Oh, that's good because emplacements were really the only way I could take them down last time. They had big AA guns but it's just like modern warfare two is only rewarding in a specific way which is you kill other guys and you get points and you kill other guys in different ways and you get points and if it's search and destroy then you plant the bomb or don't get killed and you get points and that's it whereas like there are so many different things that you do in bad company too that are rewarding like, oh I threw a med kit on the ground and someone picked it up well I guess I get points for that right. I'm constantly bringing people back as a medic and that's giving me just as many points as a kill. What's the point of getting points? Points rank you up, it has a ranking system just like modern warfare two does. Is it ranking in the sense that you unlock additional guns? Yeah, you unlock additional guns and gear. The first one is like that too. And yeah like as an engineer I feel useful and I'm even more suited to being a tank commander as an engineer because if it takes damage I back it up fix it and get back in. And just the way that the way the HUD is laid out like it's very clear like if you're a support class what you need to be doing like there'll be like the little flat lines with a blip on them for someone that's downed that you can revive or a wrench symbol for someone for a vehicle that you can repair. And in some ways the HUD is like a complete opposite from the HUD and modern warfare two where it got really really cluttered in modern warfare two whereas from what I've seen the HUD in bad company is clean. I love the design very streamlines. This used peer-to-peer or is this through EA servers? It's through EA servers. Yeah they've come out and said that. Which I mean it has its pluses and minuses as 1943 showed. Yeah. But so far just it's much more smooth than 1943 was to start off with which is why I'm glad they're doing this demo. And it seems like there are a lot of people playing and that with the exception of the people who will just pick recon and stay far away and not really do anything there most players seem to be working together towards the common goal which is good. But yeah it's a hell of a lot of fun and I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought it would and a lot more than I did the first day. Yeah the first day you didn't seem too hot on it at all. No there's a learning curve totally and coming off modern warfare two that that curve probably seems more steep but I went from like a kill death ratio of like 0.6 or 0.7 having something like two to one now. How does it work when you're downed in that game as far as being brought back? You lay on the ground. I mean you might as well be dead you're watching the guy that killed you for a while and then there's a respawn screen and then if someone sees you and zaps you with the defibrillator you come back. Which still counts as a death and a kill but the attackers only have a certain amount of respawns and that restores that respawn. So far my only main complaint is that in the demo there's just you're either in a long match or you're going to quit before it's over because it's always like or you join in the middle because a match from start to finish just like attacking or defending is half an hour. Yeah they are like the four different phases of it. Yeah like the four different areas it's like we lost those bases move back. Yeah it's a ton of fun and begrudgingly I will be excited to buy it when it comes out next month. Yeah I was thinking about trying to review but at the same time it's like I don't want to play the single player. Like I really don't want to play them multi player. Yeah I mean maybe the single player will be alright. I don't know how to touch it. I mean it seems like they're really putting, they've said that they're putting a lot of effort in the single player. Yeah I mean it seems like they're going to try and right the wrong so the past. Yeah I'm surprised that I'm the one that's into this because the two of you are the ones that have been a giant bad company too but I will buy it eight months with you. Yeah I will be there. We should pre-order a game stop so we get the fucking squad rush mode. Oh yeah it's a it's a different mode. There's a new mode yeah and basically unless you pre-order a game stop you have to wait a month. It's another fucking army of two situations. I will not pre-order a game stop unless you're in the unless you're it's only in North America. Well is it everywhere else like they everyone gets squad rush day one and the man EA did that you know like you said with army of two the 40th day man EA please stop doing this. I was wondering to myself like is anyone even playing army of two online now like because after it came out like I heard nothing from anyone. But someone bought that on day one and couldn't access a part of the game. You know. Yeah. It's bullshit. Stop it. Yeah I I mean EA has just been like fucking up over and over again with pretty much everything. Like it's a miracle that Mass Effect 2 launched successfully in my opinion. Yeah. That's right. I said it EA EA's entire advertising arm should be fired and replaced. Well. This is the tugging of my car. And I don't think that that's a particularly controversial statement. I mean on it ironically the best ad campaign that EA has had in the last year has been the army of two ad campaign which I don't like it's it's it hasn't been like a bunch of spoiler filled trailers although there's not really a ton of story to spoil in that game. Right. Okay. It's just been Salem and Rios doing stuff. Yeah. Like in various trailers. Yeah. In the airport Salem and Rios are GameStop employees for a day. You know. Like stuff like that. Like that's funny and gets you interested in the characters whereas like it seems like everything they tried to do with Mass Effect 2's videos was like here are these characters that you will not like at all because they're extreme and none of those characters are like that none of them like even I won't finish that sentence because this is not the Mass Effect 2 so I would cast but like they just portray everything so obnoxiously and so hard core all the time that I think it's turning people off and that segues into fucking Dante's Inferno which is a game that they just relentlessly previewed over and over and over again with bills that didn't look like the retail version and turn people off of it completely because they struggled with that game for so long like getting the difficulty curve to where they wanted it and getting it cleaned up and balancing it correctly but that's a game it seems like they've spent an obscene amount of money trying to build up awareness for yeah and it seems like the money that they're spending has interfered with the creative process where in some regards there's some really progressive stuff as far as the the combat in it is really good and I will I'm sure that I will get people who hate me I feel like it's progressive though or is it just copying no I feel like there's this sort of basic foundation of a character action game the God of War helped cement which is that I mean you have weapons and you move around and you like try to control the battlefield and you can block you can roll and it does all those things but it it it does them more fluidly I think than God of War has and the upgrade mechanic is very specific and plays into your actions throughout the rest of the game like absolving or saving people gives you bonus experience in different tiers and you have to fill experience in a tier to get the next level of powers in that tier and there's a lot of different really interesting powers that you can take that that make the game play differently and there's there's one point in that game that's about two thirds the way through where it's a battle where shit just keeps coming for like a good 10 minutes like it's this super long extended fight where there's this giant like I think you saw the part where it's the dude whose head you're on is he's going through the lake of fire and then he raises up right yeah yeah a lot of and then yeah then you go on to the bridge and he's next to it like slamming his fist down or blowing fire or whatever like there like there's a part there where the fight goes about 10 minutes long and stuff just keeps coming and that's where the game just clicks like if you have figured out the combat system if you know what you're doing if you like have learned his abilities you will just continue fighting and keep these massive combos going and just and just have a lot of fun if you're into those kinds of games and then you have the puzzles in Dante's Inferno which are fucking awful like every after a certain point every puzzle in Dante's Inferno will kill you if you fuck it up and you will fuck it up and you will have to redo it again and again and several of them are multi-tiered this is kind of sad with what what you twittered today about how they sort of played it safe and didn't take any chances like how else makes me feel like does an action game need puzzle well I mean I mean maybe like as a palette cleanser cleanser from the action sure and I mean when you're exploring the world and not fighting there there's interesting stuff to see but it's like the money that they were spending on Dante's Inferno maybe it's like the the sort of middling successive dead space made them think okay well we really need this one to be be a hit like the way the dead space kind of wasn't so that money that they were spending on marketing and getting it out there made them afraid of veering away from the conventions that they thought right okay God of War established yeah I could say they're like well God of War does this what we're going to do that harder like in God of War you just hold down the right bumper to open a chest if I recall correct or maybe it's the right trigger and you don't have to do anything but that and in this you fucking have to hold down the bumper and then hammer beat or whatever and the reason they'll say they do that is because there are points where they'll have a bunch of enemies in a chest on the other side and you need to knock everyone down and give yourself enough time to where you can open that chest and get the souls of the mana that it has and that's not fun like the constant hammering on stuff is not fun it's stupid and I mean like Anthony was saying earlier in the car then you have a game like Dark Ciders where you just you hit B and he punches the chest and runs away and the souls follow you and that's it and that's glorious yeah you don't need to overthink it it's just like they wanted to out God of War God of War on everything like oh well God of War can't keep a frame rate above 30 we're gonna do 60 even if that means the game looks kinda not good in spots and it's just it's a game that was derailed by its marketing message and by the money spent on it I think there's stuff to like for people who are into God of War and those kinds of games I think the combat is enough to recommend it like it's not just oh stupid God of War clone like Viking or Conan or like Ghost Rider or any of those other games but it fails I think in part because they were afraid to take chances and that bums me out because the parts I've always I've played a demos and like different like events I know you've been championing that game is a hopeful thing for a long time yeah like I like we teamex box gave it a 6.7 and I don't think that's a fair score I think that's low but well you it's not what you would have given no it's it's not I mean and there are certain scores that I that I understand but I don't I don't agree with our score but I mean I wouldn't have given it higher than an eight I didn't I haven't finished it like I'm three quarters of the way through but where it stands now like and knowing what I know about the rest of it I don't think it would cross and it probably be closer to a seven six point seven is only point three away from that seven are there point three yeah and I also played interviewed chime chime chime I saw you tweet about that today to small game Tyler interested small game what is this it's you you you've heard of one big game it's like the nonprofit game publisher where the proceeds of their stuff goes to charity oh yeah yeah so the starlight foundation and save the children okay yeah so chime is published by them and developed by zoey mode who did sing star and some other stuff okay and they also did you're in the movies I don't even understand how chime works when I watch it because it seems like you I always see you throwing blocks and it looks so random and then when they disappeared also seemed random I'm like wow does this work so luminous meets Tetris is sort of like how it's been it is the easiest way to describe it but it's in its own way it's much more open with what you can do than those games because it's not stuff falling from the top to the bottom it's just like it's like you're standing overboard with pieces that you you can put down and wherever you want like how do they get cleared once there's a three by three group of things they start to clear and if you add another row to that then that it resets the clearing and it starts again and the longer it goes the more points you get and the more of the board that you've you've had that you've covered which is called coverage go figure the higher your multiplier and the more the more blocks and cover and more quads that you clear the higher your multiplier and when you clear a quad any pieces left over from like that are sort of like orphan bits of other pieces they can only be hit by the rhythm line that goes across the screen so many times before they're destroyed and if one of those gets destroyed your multiplier resets and then you lose what by running out of coverage space no you don't there's it's just a there's a time limit oh and that's it like once that time limit is done the what the stage is done is there a point to doing like bigger combos does it do different music you get more and more points first of all and yeah the music changes depending on what you do like every cube is a certain kind of note whose state is influenced by coverage and whether or not it's something being cleared or something that's been hit by the beat line a certain amount of times etc etc like there's a ton of variables that are not present in lumens like it makes lumen lumens look simple in the capacity for what the music does and the music is much more musical than anything lumens but it's it's really good there's some weird polish issues like if you clear really huge quads sometimes like the game will stutter and the music will fall out of sync and in weird shit will happen did you have did you give it a score was I did I gave it an eight okay because it's it's really good it just lacks polish and there's like certain like each level gets progressively more segmented and segregated like and that's still what you have to work in and some of those just don't work very well and the I think that the pieces use five five squares each instead of four like Tetris so there's more unpredictability and stuff doesn't fit together as commonly but in general it's definitely worth the 400 points that's only 400 points yeah it's five bucks and it goes to charity yeah and it goes to charity you get it I mean and if you care about this kind of thing you get an achievement as soon as you hit start for just having donated because you bought it you did something nice oh and there you go which is kind of cheesy but I'm willing to overlook it because they're donating to charity yeah that is it for use I think so yeah I can't think of anything else I mean I played some more dark ciders but in freedom force yeah and that too and I also played some sound held the original that was balls that was balls yeah the very first one on ps1 I played it on my PSP that game is impossible to go back to just want you to know I reached the first save point and I was like yeah that was five dollars I've never played again so I found that game impossible to play when it came out I remember playing it pretty far the first time but nowadays it's just like no this is ugly I'd rather read a Wikipedia page for the storyline and just play Silent Hill shattered memories instead I was gonna play it through that plot again so not good it's good to know we're alienating giant chunks of our audience at the end of the segment I love Silent Hill I know I'm kidding I just tried to go back to it and I'm like there's no point and if you didn't think shattered memories was at least kind of cool then you're no Silent Hill fan of mine like to me you're just dumb anyways now that I've called you dumb stop fucking listening or come back we'll be talking about sequels with your comments I'm gonna be talking about it and I'm gonna be talking about it and I'm gonna be talking about it and we're back now that we've alienated the other half of our audience I didn't say which one so that we wanted to talk about sequels and the post I put up on the site said for this week's show we'd like to know about how you feel about sequels these days sequels this is me saying this sequels feel more like what we would have called expansions back a few generations ago with more and more franchises pumping out the next part of the franchise within 18 months prior to the games or to the prior release and then I asked people if they agreed or disagreed you know what do you miss about old sequels or rather what do you think the word sequel even means today and I disagree with your your thesis right off the bat I mean I don't even necessarily agree with me I just kind of put it out there just to a provoke thought because they're clearly games that come out within 18 months of each other that I've enjoyed the shit out alright so what did I put things out there to get people to discuss I mean I'm gonna have to bleep that out levels and I you know I think that's a valid point with you know and that a lot of sequels just take the bigger batter approach and we never see many complete revitalization I know this wasn't intentional but as an example I'd like to draw on is the Super Mario's one and Super Mario's two like I'm completely aware that Super Mario Brothers two that we got in the US was a completely different doki doki panic yeah and that's why it's so different but even still or even Mario one to Mario three even Mario one to three is still pretty big sea change I see I feel like like I I throw around with the eye roll the whole bigger better more badass thing like as a way as a as an insult more or less as a pejorative but I first off Gears of War two was a really good game and a pretty big improvement from the first Gears of War which you I mean if you play the first one and then the second one then try to go back to the first one it should be clear that a lot of stuff got a lot better and I mean I feel like we're actually in a sort of a period where sequels actually have been pretty good yeah it's not that they aren't good it's just I was just wondering if like people think that there's these days is there still the jump that we used to see from sequels or is it just that maybe you know like I'm not even like I said I don't even necessarily agree with what I wrote is like maybe was it just like Mario three to Super Mario World the reason it was such a big jump right was because it was also a console jump and nowadays sequels happen a lot more frequently and one on the same console so it's like it's like the idea of what a sequel is is changed but it's not like they're bad they're just different now it's like it isn't necessarily sometimes it's a continuation of a story and a minor improvement upon mechanics that are really significant you know like Halo one and Halo two both came out on the Xbox but man that is a fucking proper sequel as an aside I think it's funny that you mentioned Mario games considering that the next quote unquote pro or actually new Super Mario Brothers Wii is basically new Super Mario Brothers with four player co-op right and Super Mario Galaxy two are a bunch of fucking levels Super Mario Galaxy that they didn't get finished in time that they're releasing together as a game right and see I have no problem with that like I like I had a lot of people said like they don't have any problem like actually Bruce Chalupa who comments quite a bit yeah yeah you know he said I don't have any issues with sequels being smaller in scale when it means that I get the next beloved game in a franchise sooner of course this is assuming that the said sequel actually presents something new and worthwhile it isn't just a visit to a world like a map pack I'm nervously thinking about a shock to when I say this if companies want to do this then they'll need to consider different price points I'm almost sad that we're doing this topic this week before we can talk about buy a shock to yeah but I mean that's the thing is like I have no problem with it like you know like I enjoyed Ghost Recon and that's like the quintessential what I was pointing Ghost Recon advanced warfighting mean and that then Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six Vegas which people actually pointed out are two of the games that I was pointing fingers at when I made that because you know like those were a couple games when this when I was like second ones out coming out soon yeah I was like they were so they were those ones were like so close and they were not very good and they weren't as good you know and it's like those ones really did feel more like expansion pack let's put it on the table like Rainbow Six Vegas - not good like it had bad level design I enjoyed not good story this to the story wasn't near in the story in the first one wasn't great but the story in the cycle was not very good at all but yeah that was like an example where I was like those felt like really bad expansion packs and expansion packs in the way that you just want more of the game yeah the game you played here you go yeah it's it wasn't even like they were like you know that weird mechanic that was they didn't even really do anything like that but there and then there are clearly games that are proper sequels that still if people were to look at them could be like oh that no looks just like a map pack like if someone were to see Mass Effect right and they would be like oh it just looks like more of the game but the game is so different so I work for Assassin's Creed Part of me wonders if we're gonna see more like direct to retail sequels that seem like map packs because I don't I feel like the Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC is sort of a grand experiment that resulted in failure this generation like that was the big test like oh can we do like this huge sort of keep the engine would be retail like release content as DLC and and see it succeed and it didn't like it it just did not sell well I mean it sold well for DLC but it didn't sell well for something Grand Theft Auto right yeah but you know yeah I don't know I think one thing that that that that is at least nice about video game sequels is they don't face the problems that movie sequels do like movie sequels tend to suck but real games sequels do tend to improve elaborate yeah well I was gonna say I mean one of our commenters Jesse base or bass base miss a base says unlike movies the second game of franchise is usually better it's when developers take what's good and refine it that makes it better rather than like in movies it's like how can we extend this plot line out a little bit longer yeah rather because there isn't mechanics necessarily to yeah because stories just not as important typically in games it's just like that's true I mean that is like a danger with some times gaming sequels that are like like a more story heavy game like Metal Gear Solid games where they've all been focused on story it's like eventually man you're beating an old horse fucking death yeah insane death by the way you just can't increase increasingly more insane I mean those games are always insane but now they're just fucking off there you know and I but at the same time you have something like Mass Effect where you know I was telling Jody man I was like you know I had my analogy of the Darth Vader story and then also kind of felt like since it's this one giant story arc with all these characters that you know I feel like it's sort of the first successful giant story told over like all these games it is to to sort of steal an analogy in a way it is the godfather to a video game sequels I like that have you seen the godfather and the godfather to I've seen I've seen they're one of those movies where I've seen bits and pieces of both me they're never the whole thing through mother fucker those are all in my list we need to have a fucking godfather weekend yeah I know I need to but basically it just Matt I Mass Effect 2 is a sea change in the way I think the video game sequels can be viewed just by virtue of how it goes about being a sequel well Assassin's Creed seems like it too right Assassin's Creed 2 is also I think Assassin's Creed 2 was it's not as big a deal in a way because it's just taking the things that were like wait it's a foundation and developing them more and it's it's taking the story and doing something more interesting with it but it's not and it's core Assassin's Creed 2 isn't that much different like they didn't they took some chances but they didn't sort of radically change the game so really what for you why Mass Effect 2 is so much more of what a sequel can be is because of the importing would save the importing the save it definitely affects its impact but also they took some pretty major risks with just radically changing big parts of the game mechanics getting rid of the less RPG making it less RPG is making it less what people like I've taken to calling it less about the sort of symptoms slash baggage of what RPGs have been over the last few decades like loot and gear and all that stuff as a definition of quote unquote character progression yeah like how do you fucking define a character by the armor he's wearing yeah exactly I mean to sound like real douchey about it it's like a post-modern RPG or whatever in that sense that it like trims a lot of the fat at first I thought you're joking that does sound kind of douchey yeah but I can see where but you know I'm getting it I absolutely do moving on from old standards I had lots of douchey post-modern art history so I it is absolutely what that is it's funny because the two games since Creed Mass Effect you guys are pointing out like a lot of our commenters also pointed out that's like an example of sequels that are good what about uncharted to and then uncharted people said mostly was the same game but got away with it because it was a great story you know the story was so good that they were okay with that that like the story alone carried it to where it's okay to have that as a sequel I think that's fair although I I think it's a little unfair to gloss over the mechanical it was definitely significantly improved and then that's it but I think it's unfair to say the the story and uncharted to was good I think it's fair to say the characterization and uncharted I think it was then narrative was like it just dragged you forward yeah yeah yeah games that people pointed out as being examples of bad sequel making were the Tony Hawk franchise yes pointed out like people were like when they played one and they played the second one it was like like totally like the improvement from one to two was there when sequels go French and then and then yeah and then went after two after two was yeah it was just like why it's like the second McDonald's is fine and the third McDonald's is good but once you get to the fourth or fifth McDonald's there might be a problem right and uh and yeah and another one people pointed out with skate was kind of going in that same way where we don't know that yet but it's a little weird right well it's just yeah it just seemed like like and what people also pointed out just sports franchises in general just being like these things where they feel the pressure to pump them out year after year and some years like two years ago Madden or something wasn't it where it was like it was actually like a pretty significant move and then but then a lot of times it's usually just like roster changes in a couple of new like many things that they had you know like real uh finite like a real not finite real uh minutia right granular I mean yes yeah I mean it's like uh you know I guess the thing is that it's like some sequels nowadays like I will still play Mario 1 and I will still play Mario 3 because they're very different games or you know I could see myself playing like you know I don't know like Doom 3 and Doom 2 are not different you know they're totally different yeah those are very different but it's like Ghost Recon 1 and Ghost Recon 2 there are some times that I play games like that where there's like no reason to ever go back to the first again because they're pretty close like I think that Left 4 Dead 2 is a true sequel but it's just better enough and still similar to the other product enough that I don't ever feel like I want to go back and play one ever again like I feel like sequels nowadays neutralize like a lot of times will like make the other ones kind of a lot more pointless like also yeah yeah like a lot more than they ever used to I don't know in some ways yeah um there's something I want to say and I can't say I mean people did point out that you know 8-bit era and 16-bit era were just as bad about pumping out franchise things which is true I mean look how many Mega Man's came out right do you have any idea how many rocket night adventures games there were no I don't you know it's so I mean people did I mean they are right these things got pumped out just like Super Mario 2 and in Japan was just more Mario it was just here's some new levels that are really hard so I mean uh you know Resident 1 to Resident Evil 2 pretty much even those two aren't like that significant I mean I don't know I think I would disagree with that example really I mean Resident Evil 2 the scale was bigger but it was still like the clunky controls but they also I mean Resident Evil 2 did something which nothing else that I'm aware of had done before which is where it was the same story but you could choose from two different characters that's true and it changed with either one and then you could play again with the other character and you would be playing opposite of your original playthrough so like if you would take ammo that sure wasn't just character swap yeah that's that's true that that that is a good point that's right it's still a pretentious gaming moment right it still wasn't the same as the leap from like two one three to four no not for Nemesis 4 not at all 4 was like a 4 it's almost like a it was a quantum nowadays it's like the ways that some sequels used to get pumped out it's like we envisioned that as like a reimagining of the franchise at this point like it's like a completely new it was like like Tomb Raider Legend was a complete reboot for the series yeah and I feel like old sequels in a lot of ways sometimes they were like like reboots like Doom 2 to Doom 3 that was like a reboot the thing that's weird to me is that like now we're getting to the point where companies are talking about rebooting like franchise that aren't even old we have seen reboots of this generation like like Idos and Square are working on a fucking reboot of Tomb Raider that is the second reboot of Tomb Raider this generation yeah yeah I mean I just think that that's I mean the last one performed really not up to I don't I thought that it performed fine I don't know I I've talked to some people that I thought it sold a few million and it was not it would they were not happy with the overall performance for how much ever went into it is wonder if Idos had way overblown expectations for what a Tomb Raider game is supposed to do now yeah I think it's just because there were so many different versions of it and they worked different games and they had multiple studios working on the other versions so I think that there was a lot more investment there than then maybe they were hoping the return for I don't know maybe Laura Croft is like a mascot of the whole symptom of this issue of just like I mean that's people not like I only got beaten to be symptomatic yeah uh I mean and and I don't know do you guys feel like now more so than ever developers are really taking in feedback on the first game and implementing into the second one yeah I seems like that is more yeah this is probably going to sound weird in an age of gears of war too but sequels sequels this generation have felt a lot more thoughtful but I think they have the past I think it's true because nowadays they can look on message boards and just be like man people hated that part of our game hated it right but I mean again is a good example of that I mean the you know the you know the web's been around a while I mean the ps2 xbox era you know we were all on yeah but I think it's reached like a critical mass now we feel more confident that this isn't just a fringe this is like representation of like like you know everyone this is who we're selling to yeah I mean like uh like like uh prince it's funny that I'm sitting here talking about how in some ways I'm nostalgic for these sequels that really change things but there are certain game franchises that I I've hated when they've changed things too like like I could not get into the new Prince of Persia game for instance and like there's a significant part of me that would love a new like new-looking version of Prince of Persia that goes back to the same old thing that is what the next Prince of Persia is basically you know and it's except you're gonna be looking at Jake Gyllenhaal but I you know and it's like I'm okay with that so I mean I am okay sometimes with franchises to do that like you know I bought purchased and played through all three of those Prince of Persia's they were essentially just like a story change but pushing that you played through Prince of Persia God's Mac I played through Prince of Persia God's Mac yeah I did play God's Mac all the time or at least God's Mac-esque music but yeah I mean to some extent I'm okay with that you know just like I would play Advance Wars 1 and 2 for some different battlefields you know I I'm not immune to it either there are certain things that when you play a quality product just getting more of that quality product sometimes is enough to get me a purchase like a Dark Ciders 2 were to come out a month from now with a whole new storyline and it was like new dungeons but still the same game I would probably buy it. I owned four guitar hero games and three rock band games. There we go I mean yeah I own Silent Hill 2 3 and 4 which are all like pretty much not that different. I have two and three. I have two and three. So and homecoming yeah I mean they're all you know. I am the new one. And the new one. I own all the Silent Hills except for no I own all Silent Hills. There we go. So yeah I'm not immune to it either it's just you know. Let's read some more comments. Okay. Ziax who also comments frequently. He says as long as the experience is fulfilling the distinction between expansion and sequels pretty mechanical. I think what we're seeing now is more of a design iteration than expansion. Take existing mechanics and existing characters tell a new story. Or he says Assassin's Creed 2 sequel in parentheses or in the case of less story driven games refine the mechanics and possibly expand them. Skate 2 for example. To me and his expansion is something that can't stand on his own. It rated versions like Street Fighter 2 champion edition aren't sequels but they don't feel like expansions either. They are expanded true but someone can come into the new version fresh and not be missing out. Trying to play just the expansions for Fallout 3 with no context would be practically impossible. Some things are more like traditional sports franchises. Guitar hero is more like Madden than anything iterative releases. I don't know that I would call them sequels when I think a sequel wise you don't really think of something that has a story. There are like installments. Yeah so I think nowadays maybe it's like as you know story in games is much more of an issue that is much more of what sequels are about like Uncharted 1, Uncharted 2, Uncharted 3. I'm not expecting all of a sudden for it to be a driving game or something like that but it is going to be still another story of Nathan Drake rather like more like an Indiana Jones movie. You know it might as well be called Nathan Drake the game but it should be called Uncharted. I mean are there any sequels that you guys can think of that you're sort of concerned about? Well I mean I was concerned, Bioshock 2 is still you know one of those ones that I think is on everyone's mind right because of a different studio. I always wonder if it is like at this point it seems like a lot of people would just stop talking about it. I have heard from sources off the record that that that game is already making money. Like pre-orders things are enough that the studio knows they won't make money on it come day one so they're not worried about that. Yeah I mean I imagine it'll do well just based on the success of the first game. Just wonder how much they'd have to make to make back the investment that it took five goddamn studios to do. Yeah well apparently a hype has been okay for them. Yeah other sequels I was worried about it. I mean I'm, I don't know, I'm a little curious about Dead Space 2. I mean I'm not necessarily worried that I'm just like I am. That's reading Patrick Lubbock today to talk about how he was disappointed that they're going in a more action oriented direction than a horror oriented direction in that. I still felt like the first one was pretty action oriented to begin with. I mean I was never like horrified in the traditional horror game since except over a few few times in the first one. I mean but it seems like you don't get scared by American horror stuff so much to do Japanese and Asian horror aesthetics. I get a horror, I get scared more by like ambient sounds and stuff rather than like boom moments. Like the boom moments and stuff get old to me but like when there's like the thought of something that could be impending but never actually comes that bothers me a lot more. I think that like for Dead Space 2 what I'm hoping is the action then like it's like aliens was more focused on action than alien was. Yeah I think that's I would actually I wouldn't I wouldn't doubt that that's the analogy that they're running in the studio. I'm sure that if it isn't they're working on that right now. Yeah um but yeah I'm trying to think I mean I'm a little worried about Spun or so I guess. I just want to. Not because I don't think it'll be good. I really want to. That's my problem. I want that game to be good so bad. And this is an example of exactly what we're talking about a game that is very different than the ones that have come up. Well it's very different than even it started out being a cave change. It's own game. Yeah yeah. Boy and it's also an example of something else that's been happening a lot this generation is that a game will start with one developer and will be handed off to someone else. For the second one like Crackdown 2 isn't isn't real-time worlds. Yeah I mean that worries me slightly about Crackdown. Although to be fair ruffian the guys who are making Crackdown 2 are largely composed of ex-real-time worlds employees. You had Splinter Cell Double Agent which was somebody who we saw Shanghai after Ubisoft Montreal are the ones that are responsible for quote unquote the good Splinter Cells. And now Ubisoft Montreal is working on Conviction 2 so that's like I'm hoping that it's that's its salvation. But then you have like Army of 2 I think may have changed development teams. The second Rainbow Six Vegas and the second Graw I think we're both different studios than they're than they're next fall outs coming from a different studio. Well yeah that's from the sequel studio like that's what these guys do make sequels. Granted I mean they're they're usually very ambitious and interesting but they're usually fucking broken. Yeah buggy is not even appropriate a word for most the stuff that obsidian is released. I think one is one pretty significant sequel that was pretty ballsy. Grand Theft Auto 4 pretty big game franchise and um I feel like they did some I don't know what do you guys feel like you know the driving and a lot of stuff. I mean I feel like it is a sequel it's not like an expansion right I mean it is very different but I'm not the person to ask because I like I'm one of the few people who just didn't enjoy any of the Grand Theft Auto games last generation. I didn't need it but I thought it was I could tell that like you know there was a lot of work put into changing things. Yeah a change in direction both tonally like the tone of the whole game and the only Grand Theft Auto 4 I played was Lost and Damned and I enjoyed it up into the point where the story stopped and went back into the oh okay we'll now go do a bunch of shit for a while stage of Grand Theft Auto and that's that's I was like oh that's right this is a Grand Theft Auto game yeah I don't like these yeah then you have games like Red Faction Gorilla which just do something completely fucking different yeah that was a not a sequel out of a random place like continued that's like a reinvisioning right there it's not even I mean that has basically nothing and we will see a sequel to Red Faction Gorilla by next April. See and that that one sounds like that's gonna be more like a content expansion but that's okay because just don't fuck it up please volition don't fuck it up volition in my opinion have me and they've always made pretty good they're a solid man they're someone to watch the first thing throws good the second same throw was even better and I feel like I liked the first two uh red factions so I feel like the first two red factions were really gimmicky but I mean the the second one was really gimmicky and campy and the storyline was kind of silly but I still enjoyed them like those were some of my introductions to FPS console games and they were both really good I don't know for when the time I don't know they hold up but yeah but for me now when I hear volition man my ears peak like what do they got working on they're also working another Saints Row nice so my game was good dude Saints Row 2 I just heard it was super buggy I probably it was charming yeah no I don't know just because it's got a poop truck doesn't make it charming um but yeah I don't know I you know again a lot of people were like I don't think that it's true that sequels nowadays or what we would have called expansions I don't necessarily think that either I just wanted to provoke discussion in people because what are some major expansions you can think of that nowadays games don't really have expansions unless they're pc games like and pretty much even in pc games it's only real-time strategy games exactly those are the only games they get expansion packs or wow or sieve you know has to be like like some sort of strategy game or yeah MMOs MMOs get expansions like crazy I mean every quest is famously had like over 25 or something now but you know uh yeah most games don't get expansions these days unless you want to view DLCs expansions yeah in which case you know well there is did have some considerable expansion I mean they consider the Shivering Isles an expansion yeah and I mean the return to Oskar exactly no not return Oskar Oskar Oskar Oskar is DLC awakening yeah yeah I mean so right and now we're getting to into like semantics right but I think in you know in a way I mean I mean this is like saying a very obvious thing but like the DLC really is the new expansion right I guess expansion is just like that other guy said it basically comes down to can it be played on its own or is it dependent on this other thing even some expansions like were were iffy on that I mean there were some expansions that you could play by themselves and some that required the disc yeah I mean I guess that's true right because technically there's only been one uh company heroes and then there's been two expansions but they were standalone so they could be played on their own I don't know but they're still expansions they're not sequels do you have any more comments that you want to read um that's Arthur giving me the wrap it up no I want more um more comments the nicks says I almost feel like the word sequel has become obsolete they are either left for dead two-style too late for an expansion too early for new iteration or overhauls of central game mechanics answering nearly every complaint from the first entry a la ac2 or me2 the second variety sequel makes the original feel like a rush to play rushed pay to play public beta which works out for the player in the end but makes me wonder if they shouldn't start releasing beta as earlier if developers are ultimately going to fix everything we bitch about for number two why not wrap the whole quality control process into the development cycle I mean they I know why he says money but I can dream no they they do do that like most developers do some focus testing right they try to anticipate people's complaints it's not like they're like fucking cares with the players thing sometimes I'm sure they do focus testing I'm sure some games like Mass Effect probably had focused testing I mean Halo is a good example of a game that had a lot of focus testing like for the multiplayer stuff hey yeah let me see I'll try and find another one I saw people talking about dead rising yeah it's not a sequel that's a sequel I'm not too excited that's a sequel I'm worried about like I was not that big of a fan of the first dead rising man it just did not get me I liked it but they're just I like to fuck around in it there are so many fucking problems in that game that make it hard to play you know it might be an assassin's creed to situation but I don't know I you know will will the developer listen it's a different developer it's a different one it's a western developer doing dead rising too I didn't know that I didn't actually listen people I think it's the same guy overseeing the team but different different well I wouldn't have any problem with it as long as it's fucking got a safe system that has a system a bathroom that's got about 3000 zombies between you and it um let's see and it had that crazy thing with like timing right where if you didn't also true beat it in a certain time you were fucked here's what I want to know if you agree with this is from Romain who says uh the biggest burn I've ever had with a quick sequel was a barely year turnaround between splinter cell Pandora tomorrow and chaos theory I picked up Pandora tomorrow for the multiplayer alone and loved the hell out of it but a few months and it was busted as hell due to balance issues and exploits by glitching into mercs spawn zones and spawns camping them for example chaos theory released less than a year later leaving me feeling like I paid 50 dollars to play a multiplayer beta test which was quite a bit to pay at the time because I was in college and my wife we were both working to get by but I'm that was a little side but uh did you feel like like those two were like too close and I splinter cell has always been about single player to me so it's never been about multiplayer so I didn't feel that way I just thought oh man another splinter cell game fucking sweet holy crap this looks so much better than the last one yeah a sequel I really didn't get into that was mostly like more of the same different story was Metal Gear Solid 3 that was one like I loved to went to three and was like nope not doing it really that my I was the opposite like loved the first snake eater Metal Gear not snake eater the first Metal Gear Solid didn't like to that much but really loved yeah I mean I again I will say that I never played the the real version of three I bought it the day it came out I have them for good and I played the one that was like the borked camera version yeah I yeah I played through you didn't play the splinter cell version of Metal Gear Solid 3 so I don't know what that's like yeah that that one's not good I played through that one first yeah let me find one more comment to read um sorry um so Kufal says uh well most sequels are great improvements on the original or previous sometimes the extra details extra attention to physics or improved graphics are less beneficial of all the rollercoaster titunes I prefer the original I like this one because you talk about rollercoaster tycoon evolved all right the simpler rule of graphics left more to the imagination I know it's a super super popular game and it was easier to make up my own restrictions when the scenario goals were too simple the later editions put me off when they added too much realism then again I'm a person who enjoys way older NES as NES graphics to be able to achieve expressions concisely and so little pixels is very impressive all this guy just likes old games but I mean the point he's making is that sometimes like making it bumping it up to like a new engine doing all kinds of crazy stuff takes in his mind takes away from like what the core of the game yeah so I mean that's not just that some people are complaining that Mass Effect 2 is too dumbed down I mean I guess sometimes I mean the the like need to feel like you need to get more realistic because the engine allows it and stuff can be something that's more annoying or something I don't know but yeah I mean it's like uh you know keep it simple stupid you know it's that sort of idea um yeah you know I love the hell out of Captain Forever but Captain's successor I didn't take too as much because you know it added more pieces it complicated things more I felt like the simple rule sets were like where the magic was you know and on that note let's take a break and then we'll come back and lead some ledgers well of course [Music] hello welcome back to our letters um yeah you just heard a kalamactic ending to our break and we're and now we're back to read letters the first one is from Gabriel and he says help a red ring victim out oh jeez and I first I thought he was gonna ask us to buy him a console or some shit and I was gonna be like we do not have that much money bitch but he just says uh I was playing water war for two last week and there was a knock on my door thinking it was my girlfriend I shut down my 360 so we could spend some time together but it turned out it was UPS with my collector's edition of Mass Effect 2 excited I turned on my 360 only to get the E74 message it had been acting up for a few days so it was only a matter of time but what a hell of a time it chose to crap out anyway everything is taken care of and it will end in any end or arrive in a month my question is what games can you recommend for Wii or DS that can occupy my time until then I own and have completed all the standard Nintendo first party games Zelda Metroid Mario's and beat SMT Devil's survivor on DS shit I'm not that picky when I know it's like the only game Arthur's played in a while DS that he likes I'm not that picky when it comes to games I just need help finding something good to play so on DS I would recommend also Mario and Luigi Bowser's inside story if you haven't already played that but it sounds like with your record you might have um that's basic extraction any of the ace attorney games if you can still find them what about that one game that's basic extraction uh boy this blob a boy that is blob would be cool for DS that puzzle game that everyone's real hot on right now it came out in December it's criminal it's no the uh it's like RPG oh mixed with puzzle game come on I fuck up the title it's like might and magic magic might oh might magic clash of heroes might magic clash of heroes that one seems really cool to me you should check out um puzzle quest if you can find it the Professor Layton games on DS are also really cool uh if you're looking for more of like an RPG you know you could always go back and play something like Chrono Trigger if you haven't done that in a while but uh I've also heard that Spirit Tracks for Zelda was good but again with your record it sounds like you probably already have that um but yeah we uh we I would totally check out Dead Space Extraction or perhaps uh I mean if you can find it an old copy of Zack and Wiki which is a game that a lot of people can buy but you can probably find it used um it's really cool we wear titles too we wear stuff yeah that's true downloadable games um I'm sure I heard no more heroes too was good if you liked the first one so I've heard it was really good so that might be one worth checking out as well and I mean this should be enough because honestly if Microsoft's turnaround time under pairs is usually like a week and a half two weeks and then you should have his console back but yeah you should also get Silver's Civilization Revolution on DS and that's all you're that's all you need for the next month true uh I have a letter to read okay did I get sent directly to you I it looks like it did yeah um so last week I think we talked about prices for games and how I didn't think that they were gonna go down and that I thought that they were justified in costing more now than they did last gen does this ring a bell yeah um ignoring the fact that console games in the 80s and 90s routinely cost to 70 to 80 to 90 to 100 dollars the wild west yeah um this is from brian quad filter uh subject price jumped to 60 dollars justified half life was released in 1998 for 50 dollars and sold 8 million copies by 2001 modern warfare 2 released in 2009 for 60 dollars sold 7 million copies in its first day and is currently sitting at about 16 million sales on the PS3 and Xbox 360 alone if we assume that PC sales were terrible I think it's safe to say it's the game is sold 18 to 20 million copies so far I disagree I don't think it's sold that many copies on PC brian uh he goes on to say half life 8 million dollar 8 million copies times 50 probably a 5 million budget equals 395 million dollar profit over a three-year period modern warfare to 18 million 18 million copies times 60 minus 200 million budget equals 880 million profit in less than six months stop spreading corporate FUD if anything games should be getting cheaper now that more people are buying them well not every game is modern warfare too I mean that's just an easy answer to that let me tyler how much did you pay to see avatar 10 bucks or 12 whatever the 3d um how much did you say pay to say see Jurassic park probably about six dollars if that like if you're going to a prime that I might add five dollars six seventy five at a night showing maybe um prices for things are going up dvd prices are going down because dvd sales are going through the toilet and blu-rayed prices are going down because blu-ray sales aren't so hot and same thing with music CDs but games are more successful there is the cost of living increase in inflation games were a static price for like 15 years at the exception of the games that would cost 60 or 70 or 80 or a hundred dollars so no I mean I'm sorry you're wrong it's not FUD in some way you could argue that games are getting cheaper in that we now have more options for cheaper games like we have we have more like 20 dollar games 10 dollar games 15 dollar games than we've ever had and game retail prices are dropping more quickly it's true I see games that have only like I won't be surprised to see darksiders for $40 I don't know it's already popped up for that I mean Assassin's Creed 2 popped up for $40 within like a week of release yeah I'm just not just like as a sale thing though I just mean like I was a permanent perm style yeah so and and and and also you know the the reader and the listener you know could consider to like you know back then there was just so many there just weren't as many factors as there are now like I'm sure marketing now is a lot more expensive I'm sure all that shit um there's so much more involved websites that they have to fund yeah I just it's not FUD to say that the games are justified and costing more than 50 dollars it's just the way it is it's not like I enjoy paying 60 dollars for games I miss paying 50 dollars too but well they probably ain't going nowhere um not at release a listener Mark wrote in with a quick question that I cannot answer he just said he wants to hear my impressions on Blood Bowl and that will be next week because it's sitting in my room and I have not tried it yet so I will try it and find out how that goes um to see you know where it's coming Mark I'm not holding my breath though so I don't know oh really the handheld ones I think are turn based I think the the the the console one might be real time I think it can be turned okay because it needs I think that's a game that needs to be turn based otherwise it's just like gonna be crappy me and league football that so um as in a crappy version of you'd leave football yeah okay because if you were saying you'd leave football as crappy no me and league football was like one of the only football games I was ever into it was totally broken like that game would not be playable now online like because you could totally just get a penalty uh after someone scored and while they were trying to kick an extra point keep going off sides and tackling their players and killing them and they can't call another penalty on like an extra point so you just keep killing them and keep killing them kill their whole team yeah you'd kill them until they had to forfeit now we've gotten a lot of really uh insane or otherwise like the relationship letters in this last week like you know we answered like one or two last week which whenever we do that it's like everyone's impetus to be like the club games have opened again but yeah sorry I mean I do you want to read one uh if I can find one that's not going to take like an hour I've wanted to read this one real quick though it says uh he is just from brine with the why and he says I appreciate the very vocal stances you guys take on issues such as misogyny and the use of the word fag it is needless for me to go into detail about how these things are pervasive in gamer culture so it comes as a great pleasure to me when any of you take a serious stance on these issues and formula listeners that they ought not to call people these names or that bayonet is actually misogynistic or a few to play it on such grounds you know I I mean we have opinions and you write a letter of appreciation we get plenty of letters of uh non-appreciate yeah you're that we're a little bit of idiots so I mean don't think that just because you post on a message board what you're saying is not heard yeah I mean uh we generally a lot of it all gets back to us um because sometimes people just like linking me on twitter to think that's another person who had a letter that all it says is have more j-fresh the end that's it i would like it that's advice for life yeah how much a uh a open invitation to him it's just that like it's they're busy guys yeah I mean we get matt to come out fairly regularly which is nice but I mean the rest of them you know it's it's a it is a rare treat well I think we've set the matt precedent okay here's a short relationship letter and I'm not saying that you have to write in short to get them read because I don't want everyone to write like twitter relationship questions but Spencer writes in he says this is my first question but is coming from a longtime listener I am a sophomore and recently I found myself smitten with this girl I've known since my freshman year which is one year ago since you're a sophomore so don't make it sound like it's that long it's long for him but up until now we have been very casual friends there's one major problem though she has a boyfriend and they have been dating for eight months now who that's a long time for a freshman girl although I find that they have a very slow relation with each other and they don't see madly in love with each other now I am twiddling my thumbs wondering what to do without looking stupid I'm trying not to look stupid so I'm not sure if I should leave it alone or tell her share how I feel please help me guys or girls if they're there man this is a tough one because like I know I've said before in the past like even if they're they have a boyfriend to go for it but what I really mean is like like uh think of like the office like Jim and Pam you know they were definitely meant for each other and uh you know Pam's boyfriend was just a douchebag so it's like yes like Jim should should have fucking nut it up way before he did spoilers sorry were you just talking about the office yeah so this relationship with yeah so I mean okay just check if if you definite fill a chemistry between you and this girl then I would say definitely pursue even though she has a boyfriend yeah yeah well even if hate guys like you but I mean fuck it like dude I believe we only have one life and that's it no I believe karma is a bitch after life or anything and it's like man if that's the person that that you could picture yourself loving and being with for the rest of your life like you got to go for that shit in 10th grade well maybe not then I don't know I thought this guy was a sophomore in college I'm sorry I mean I didn't listen to guys before he doesn't say so I guess he could be I was assuming he was in college and it's closer to see you want to know what has an exponentially higher chance of occurring if this girl leaves the guy she's seeing to see you she will leave you to see someone else she'll upgrade yes yeah you do have that to contend with as well like I don't necessarily believe in the one to cheater always a cheater thing right but yeah okay hold on this is a good letter this is a really good letter okay you set you're just wiggling in around in your chair so because he gets into something that I have no fucking opinion on but Tyler will and you will probably to Arthur Adam my friend and I are junior is in high school and we are making an Xbox indie game for our independent study I would gracefully greatly appreciate your opinions on the following what font should we avoid in the menus I was thinking of using system or terminal Tyler seems to really know his fonts terminals sort of cliche at this point is nice you know it's sort of is but like you could definitely pick it's no comic sans but which one should they avoid comic sans there's a lot train and I like writing an aerial because it's easy on the eyes I would recommend aerial that's you know if you want your game to look Dutch yeah I mean like if I'm designing a website like I will choose aerial because it's the closest to like Helvetica and it's just a clean sans serif you know I mean it's not the greatest piss you another font he also says that he wants to include something in it to represent each of his favorite podcasts but he doesn't want to put a fat penis because his teachers have to see it so he wanted to know if there was something we thought he could put in there there's a few different rebel of film memes you could mine from you could put a leprechaun I mean that one yeah that'd be a cat we got a look I got a letter this morning from someone asking this guy lives in Ireland and has like the most Irish ass name I've ever heard it's like bran egg or something like that uh if he could get our t-shirt design tattooed on him it's funny to me I felt like he should write into us and ask us that dude it's my honest design is the design is good I don't have it's a rebel if exactly just get the cool leprechaun skull thing not and it's not because we're like oh god some retard has our name on him it's just like and yes I said retard I'm an asshole I just think that the idea of getting like a band name or any group name tattooed on you is always what if someday we say something that pisses you off bran egg in fact I would be willing to bet we will so if the podcast history is any indication we will say something that will get the fucking symbol but but you know what I want to get back to the font I want to say one more thing about it yeah most important thing I don't know what type of game you're developing so it's like the font should fit with the look of the game so like that's a very common sense very important yeah thing or trade um but but I would recommend go to defont.com there's a lot of free amateurish fonts there but there's some pretty decent pixel looking fonts if you look in the pixel category there's some nice or I mean I think look great something else is think of an adjective like that describes your game and type that in plus font in google and see what you find yeah I think Adam should tell us more about what his game is and then we could give him some better advice definitely because at this point yeah it's like are you making a shooter is it a platform or like what is it in the future is it in the past like I like our font like the rebel from the font that's going it's a car it starts with a Kremlin yeah it's Kremlin yeah um so he said john writes and he says I heard you guys make a dark tower reference on last week's podcast this is one of my favorite series of all time and I was just wondering what you think of J.A J.A. Abrams turning it into a movie and wondering if you'd be interested in a game based in the series like maybe a border borderline style at RPG FPS I've not gotten far enough into the series to say what type of game it would need to be but to me it was gonna say to me a picture of being like a really hardcore RPG traveling around with a party so Mass Effect type game does sound more like it because it'd be dialogue heavy and I'm only familiar with the title this is like it's like a western fantasy game right or a book sorry it's like western meets fucking post-apocalyptic dark meets stuff meets weird fantasy demons and everything yeah that's what I assume in my head it's portal traveling meets lost I'm whatever J.J. Abrams can can do what he wants I mean I I think I thought Frank Derabant wanted to do it but I guess that project fell apart and now Frank Derabant is working on Walking Dead instead Frank Derabant is the guy that directed Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile and The Mist that's right all the good Stephen King movies have been done by Frank Derabant like the best ones I won't say the good ones but I will say the best ones no I think all those are good like Shawshank Redemption is Stephen King yeah I know I'm saying the best ones have been done by him not necessarily all the good ones there have been other good Stephen King movies that yeah Frank Derabant but the best ones have been Frank Derabant I want to say there's another one misery that was Stephen King right yeah that was a pretty good one and that it made me fucking free pal I mean the shining is obviously like sort of like the gold standard but yeah Stephen King had so many issues with the shining when it was made because the tone deviated so much from the book the miniseries as well that was good the shining is fucking amazing I think it was good because it was so long that they didn't have to cut out a bunch it's a brilliant ass movie I don't know how I feel about a dark tower game I am indifferent to JJ Abrams directing a dark tower movie man with movie games and stuff like that dude I just wish like somebody would have the balls to not make to not try and make some kind of next gen triple-a game and would just make a live arcade like shoot small but great they tried that with the last Star Trek game oh really and that didn't work that's well I mean you know it depends on genre and you know Star Trek DAC yeah that's right yeah but that battle star Galactica live arcade son of a bitch there well yeah these are there's a certain sect of nerd though that that these would appeal to I'm talking about but yeah I mean there could be really cool ones I mean not necessarily necessarily even moving from I heard the uh everyone I know that's tried it said the Dragon Age flash game was really cool like the the thing that fills in some pre-story it was like a super cool flash game so I've heard that as well there are opportunities to make smaller things that can be really cool on their own right and link them to a bigger franchise you know I mean uh I've actually heard that the Avatar iPhone game is the best Avatar game that's out there so awfully a little bar right but the other ones are bad that I've heard the Avatar iPhone game which is like an eight or ten hour game is supposed to be really good right so I don't know but yeah you're right I mean I don't think they always need to be these triple-a blowout things sometimes they can be like the coolest Star Trek game I've played in a long time was the DS one which was just like a basically like everyone talks about this the shit battles being the coolest thing in Star Trek online and it's like for me the coolest thing and this one was that it was just shit battles right that's like why I would want to play Star Trek thing I could care less about visiting planets and all that I just fuck your away team yeah I just want you crazy Starship battles so but uh yeah that's all the letters I'm going to read really no more yeah the other ones were all very very very lengthy relationship ones and one was are you excited for Bioshock 2 which we can't really talk about at this point um I mean uh I could I could do one more relationship letter if you want do you want to yeah let's do one more I one more Oliver I picked him just because of his name he sounds like a Russia he says been dating this girl for over a year now and lately she started to seem way less in our relationship it's just the little things like not seeming enthusiastic about spending time together replying with I guess and whatnot and making comments on reason she might not be able to go other odd things like cutting down on the number of times she said she loves me not living together we spend a lot of time on MSN and even recently despite instant messaging being rather cold and heartless to begin with things seem more so issues like this might not be weird on their own but things didn't used to be like this I'm not quite sure what's going on I brought it up casually on several occasions she's responded saying that everything's fine the one time I brought it up seriously she said she felt bad for me thinking that and that everything was fine I don't know what's going on could this be the beginning of the end she's mentioned that she thinks the level of reliance we have on each other is unhealthy could this be our overcompensating could there be something wrong that she doesn't want to share overall lack of enthusiasm is traveling troubling and I don't know what to make of it I'm a friend things could be sliding downhill I have experienced similar things so far in a long distance relationship we all have and it was the yeah it seems like she's laying the foundation to uh break up with you it was things going downhill but what I will say was my worrying about it and pressing the issue exasperated it even worse like exponentially because the more I worried about it the more it made her seem like she didn't care about our relationship which then really did make it happen it was like I wish fulfillment I see I think that that I don't think that that's I realize that you believe in your heart that's what's true but I don't think that just from the stuff you've told me about the relationship I think you're telling me about I think that that's just you projecting well this I'm talking about the one actual relationship I had like the girl yeah no that's exactly and I just from what you told me about that girl that was not your fault right well I mean I mean well I mean not saying I don't think it was my fault either I think but it definitely doesn't it may have accelerated that's what it could have aspirated it made it worse faster you know because I I kept on like rather than just like going with the flow to see how long this shitty relationship would go for I would open up the scab every once a while and be like so what the fuck's up you say there's nothing up but there's something up like you know because see I've been on both sides of the fence where where I've been the one doing that being like hey man where is this going or where I've been on the side where like the girl is telling me hey man where is this going and that kind of put me off when I was in that position I mean at the same time you know there is a point in a relationship where after a while you've been with each other it gets over that lovely w phase and you kind of get comfortable with each other yeah you know I think that sometimes that happens at different speeds for people this doesn't sound like that no it kind of doesn't I mean let's not let's not cloud the cloud the issue or cloud the water for for young all over and that being said though I have seen girls that feel like when they feel like they're all of a sudden too dependent they'll go way reverse but that that signals like issues yeah yeah it does and if she's not willing to talk about it then yeah me I mean I'm sorry young all over we all have the red lights going off right now we do the only other thing that would make me question is like maybe she's experiencing like depression right now or like really bad and then it's really changing her behavior I don't know I mean he didn't say how old he was right yeah so um I'm just going to say right now if you guys if your sex lives have essentially dried up then that's number one this relationship is over yeah and in the beginning the faster you can sort of start accepting and like kind of taking those steps the better man because it's it's a tough step to take I saw the signs in this relationship that I really wanted to keep going man and I had to be the one to be like you know what I could tell well I'm sorry Oliver it's not what we wanted to tell you but I think well no the fact the matter he writes in a letter like that kind of tells me that he sees the writing on the wall anyways you know the fact that she's told him twice that everything's fine and he obviously does not buy that you know I mean yeah like if she's saying over and over again that it's fine and you keep asking then that's going to annoy her because if she won't tell you then you asking her isn't going to convince her to tell you but one you're not going to be able to convince yourself obviously the things are actually fine so I mean maybe it's just maybe it's just time it's time to reboot the game of life with that relationship which is way easier to say than to do for sure like it's man breaking up is honestly harder to call her on the phone right now and then put the phone up to the speaker Oliver is breaking up with you and moving on with his life the end uh don't really do that don't you just set it up so that he could the only way for me to do that is to like put static over it or something touch Oliver's penis I don't know well at least one more time at least more time yeah um yeah man that sucks sorry I don't know we don't have any good advice on that no I mean I think that well advice saying that it's probably over is is perfectly sound advice nope I think you see it um on that note you've been listening to a love line and we're and you can email us at rfm no or no uh at letters at eat dash sleep dash game dot com yes and uh yeah and then you can listen to our friends podcast the mob cast a bit mob dot com the geek box at geekbox.net and you can check out uh the area fives video show which is now a live show yes and uh starts next Tuesday next Tuesday is when it's 30 p.m. and you can see that area five dot tv or vision three dot com slash co-op 4 30 p.m. pacific time next Tuesday yeah this is the premiere and even though it's live if you miss it you can still watch the show yeah they'll put it up it's just if you actually want to see it as being made legitimately live fuck up and all messy like people talking over each other and stumbling over their words now no editing you'll get to see it you'll realize we aren't as smart as we sound as they make us sound or as good looking as they make us look so see that i don't think what i do think they make us sound smarter i think i look fatter on co-op well everyone looks fatter on camera so it's like they put that special chud filter on this from nine so yeah thank you for listening animalistic human underdweller and i'll see you all again i'll see you on next week chat with talking back chud back were later back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back back [MUSIC]