Rebel FM
Rebel FM 48 -- 01/21/10
Join the regular crew along with Area5.tv's Matt Chandronait as we discuss your twitter topics (the good ones we didn't get to last week), as well as games and letters. Some of the games discussed include the newest Ratchet game, Divinity II, Star Trek Online, and some non-spoilery Dragon Age talk. Enjoy!
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ Nothing good on the radio ♪ ♪ Once again I didn't know ♪ ♪ It's your hard time to ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ - Mahalo, welcome to Rebel FM. - This ain't a fucking love line. - Rebel of them, 40 something, fuck you guys, it's 48. (laughing) - I love how antagonistic we are to our audience. - Ah man, I don't really care except I care that you guys thought that you had to bitch about that. Find something more important to bitch about. Bitch about my opinions or something. The minutiae of things you get to in your day, like I hate to imagine that you're sitting in your car and it bothers you enough that you have to get on the internet to complain about it. Like you know what I mean? Like I do not wanna bother you that much. You should be having a good day when you hear us. So I may think I hear us. - We should be your good day. - Frequent bother of your eardrums along with Arthur Geeze. - Oh hi. - Tyler Barber. - Hey, what's up everyone? - And area five smash engineer. - Hello, hello. - Who we lured over here with food. - Yep, and other works every time. - And other small treats. - Other favors. - Well, promises of favors, which I will expect you to deliver upon. And then you'll be at your door in the morning. - So I just wanna say that these new tattoos are fucking awesome. - Yeah, go tattoos. - I have not put a picture of them up. - You totally should. - I have not, I have not tweeted that they exist or anything like that. - Yeah, they're badass. - I'm just waiting for them to heal. - Tell the listeners what they are giving a little bit. - They're the ones that I've talked about before if you listen to the show, which is the Imperial and Rebel symbols on my forearms. 'Cause originally I was gonna get 'em on my upper arms 'cause my brother highly discouraged me from getting my first tattoos below the elbow. But I decided, fuck it. - Yeah, fuck it. I mean, that's just, those are so cool symbols to begin with. You know, they're very iconic. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah, screw it. - Yeah. That's done. - Word up is fun. - All I took was me forcing him to do it, essentially. - I heard a little bit more than I thought it would. - Yeah. - I'm okay with saying that. - Right. - It's not because it wasn't bearable. Like, at no point was I really got, we need to stop or something like that. But because I'd never had a tattoo and everyone I know that always had 'em was like, "Ah, it's nothing." You know, it's like, it's a little bit more than nothing. It's not like I'm bearable, but there's a couple of times that I was like, "Man." - Yeah. - This works. - See, yeah, yours is like on the sort of, the meaty part of your forearm flesh like right below your forearm crease, where you form your elbow meat. - That looks so fatty. - Yeah. - It's gonna say that looks like a sensitive spot. - Yeah, maybe that's what it was. It was interesting. But yeah, the whole experience was pretty nifty. - Cool. - Well, let's talk about games that we've been playing. - Let's talk about your arms more. - No, no, no, no, let's do that later. - Anthony, you guys all usually go last. Let's hear from Arthur and Anthony. - I'll go first. So I played a bunch of ratchet and clank future a crack in time. - Oh, man, how's it going? - 'Cause like, I played it a while back ago and I think I briefly talked about it. Arthur talked about it more 'cause he had actually played more of it. So I only played like the first hour and a half and it really didn't grab me, like the last ratchet and clank game which was also my first ratchet and clank game, future. That one, right off the bat, I was like hooked. Like I just barreled through it. Like I have a tendency also when I get into a game to then barrel through it faster than most everyone does. Like Arthur always points out, he's always like, Jesus, you've caught up to me in game X and it's just because like, I just go on some fucking mission. Yeah, where that's like all I do with my life is finish this game. - Right now I was actually thinking Jesus is someone fart 'cause it smells-- - I smell fart too. - No, it's actually, P.P. just took a dump. Anyways. - Oh. - I know I heard it. - God. - But yeah, so, so yeah, ratchet and clank, you know? I've been checking it out. - Oh, dude, it's bad. It's pretty loud. - I'm gonna go buried at you. - That's P.P. always buries are poo. - Oh, dude, I don't know, dude. I'm getting residual whiffs. - You buried it with a corpse. - Oh. - I'll allow you to edit all this out. - No. - Oh, it's like every time I-- - Oh. - So anyway, Ratchet and Clank Future are cracking time. That's what I've heard about those games though is that like, 'cause I've never actually played one all the way through either. But I've heard that if like you give them a chance and you really like kind of dig into it, that they'll hook you and they'll grab you and they don't let you go and turn into the game. - Yeah, like the first hour and a half sucked, but why didn't suck isn't the right word. It just wasn't anything super special. - Didn't grab you? - Yeah, and then once the story started developing more 'cause those games do have a really good story, you know, it's very archetypal, but it's super good. And so once the story really started picking up and it started introducing more gameplay mechanics 'cause when you first start out, you're like, Ratchet with a gun and a wrench. And then eventually when you start unlocking a variety of weapons where you can really, 'cause you know, in some of the acts always done great weapons. - Yeah, yeah. - So you can start mixing up the combat and then they pace it really well with like, you'll be on the ground doing combat and then all of a sudden now you'll be on the ground doing like the platforming, like the rail slides that he's done in the last few games and then like, they also give you these rocket boots which allow you to glide around the levels at like ridiculous speeds. - They're like rocket ice skates. - Yeah, and then-- - So cool. - And then on top of that then the pacing's also different in this one because now you fly around with your ship in space in different star systems and you can land on the individual planets to like go and search them. And the planets range from where it's like a big planet and you actually land on it in the spaceport to being like really small where it's like a Mario Galaxy planet where you land and you get off on it and you can, you know, you're walking and watching the world spin with you 'cause it's so small, so I don't know. - Yeah, I watched Fresh Play a bunch of that game and I was really impressed. It was kind of the first time when I looked over somebody's shoulder and really thought to myself, oh, this is a game I want to play concerning Ratchet and Clank and a big part of it that I watched and play was the part where you play almost exclusively as Clank. - Yeah, yeah, so they're also a really cool one. And it is, that's a totally different. Another way that they change up the pacing is because when you play as Clank... - It's a puzzle platformer. - Yeah, 'cause it's all about stopping time as well as in some ways being like that PB winner bottom game where you have to make clones of yourself to do like certain things. So it's, again, just another way they change up the pacing and, you know, I said it on the Game Spidey Briefings before and I'll say it now, it's like, I think I want to say it was like Ryan or you said it at one point that it's like, if someone else could do like an awesome animated movie, it would be like these guys. 'Cause their cut scenes and stuff are always so fantastic. Like, granted it doesn't, I mean, I'm not saying it's like Pixar quality and the way it looks because no one does Pixar quality in my mind. - The characterization is really good. - But yeah, they have just like such good characters and the delivery and the writing is like so good that if it was just like a two hour movie, I would probably watch it. - Yeah, yeah. - So, I don't know, it's just really good. Like, that's the game that now that I have played it, it's grabbed me and now I want to go back and keep playing it. Like, it's like my game that any time I free time, that's what I want to play. - All right, see, I played that game for a few hours and the ratchet stuff just never grabbed me at all. Like, the clank stuff I thought was way more interesting than anything that was happening in the ratchet sections. - Yeah, the ratchet stuff only grabbed me. Well, like I said, once I had like six different weapons in those skates, 'cause then that varied up the way I did combat 'cause I-- - Is that when you meet the other wallbacks? - Yeah, and so you have, and then you get the skates and by then you have like six or seven different weapons, so. - I mean, the weapons are still funny just like they always have, like the destroyer or whatever that you cast around that's always angry and-- - Yeah, I've missed it all the time. - Mr. Something, I forget, yeah, he just rolls around and says angry shit and blows stuff up. (laughing) And then, yeah, I've also been playing some oblivion. I started a new character. - Oh man. - You want to explain why you started a new character? - Yeah, why? - Well, 'cause my character that I was like 70 hours in on or whatever, even though I had never beat the main quest with him, I had beaten everything else pretty much, but I hadn't done the assassins or like the Dark Brotherhood quest and apparently I had killed the Dark Brotherhood guy when he visited me. (laughing) I turned down his offer and then I killed him 'cause I wanted, I don't know why I did it. - Which is funny because the only reason he ever comes to you is if you kill someone and call a blood. - Yeah, so you killed him. (laughing) - So, but yeah, because I killed him then that, you know, and the ability to do the quest and I didn't feel like going through all my saves and figuring out at what point that was. - Right, so I just started a new character. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Man, maybe I should pick it up with you too. - Start it. - Are you doing it on a 360 or PC? - Yeah, I'm doing a 360. I started doing the assassins quests and I did not pick a character that, I intentionally picked a character that was not assassin-like. Like, he's like a Nord and he's like a big, like, club-wielding Nord, he's like a human and he wears nothing but heavy play armor. Yeah, so it's like, you know, he's like a big barbarian that's supposed to be an assassin and I like that because I like the idea of like, you're not supposed to assassinate people, you're supposed to be quiet and I just like kick in the door and blood in the room to death. - Braveheart style? - That's like my way of doing it. It sucks because, you know, I have tried to do some of the bonus objectives to get like extra money or extra, like, jewels and whatnot. Some of them are really hard though, even if you are a stealth class, like, it's also mind you because I'm only like level four and I'm already doing these quests. Whereas like, if I was way lower higher, I would have really good sneak and stuff, which I don't at this point. So like, I was trying to sneak and there's like a part where it's just like fucking guards, man, they will see me no matter what. Like, it didn't matter. - That's why you need the chameleon rings. - I was looking for somewhere where I could buy, like, potions of chameleon, but I cannot find them. - You know what I did to increase my sneak and oblivion? It's totally-- - Just crouch everywhere you go. - Was that, but like, if I can get into a room and find a position that has sort of like a corner that's boxed in and like an NPC with his back turned, just sneak and walk towards the wall the entire time and that whole time you're getting sneak experience because they're not detecting you so much. - See, I just, that was the whole thing is I didn't really want him to be good at sneak though either. - Oh, okay. - 'Cause then if you do that a lot, then when you level up, it'll make that like one of your plus threes. - Right, okay, that's true. - And I didn't want that because I still want him to just be a big old bludgeon in here. - But you're right. I mean, you started another character to do these quests. - Yes. - I wouldn't you have a character that's good at that stuff. - But he wants to do them his way. - But I wanna do them my way. - So there's that bar, there's that. - I mean, it gives you the opportunity to do that though. - There is that other work that's in the dark brotherhood that he says he's all about that. Like he specifically, I remember he was having conversation with one of the female assassins and she's like, how come you don't ever sneak around and stuff, he's like, that's not how I operate man. I like to run in and see the terror on their face as I killed him. - Well, I bet he didn't get any bonuses either. (laughing) - But this is role playing, it's what it is man. You're playing a role. - Yeah, and so I just like being. - So you're playing the role of the assassin that always gets caught? - Basically, yeah, I always try and sneak in. It's like my armor is clinking everywhere and then they see me and then I beat everyone to death. - It's not, they just turn around and look at you. It's like that episode of Saffar where Cartman is naked and edging onto the stick. - I just, it's like I tell him. It's like, you know, as I'm beating him in blood swing or I'm just like, I didn't want to do this. (laughing) - Why couldn't you not see me? (laughing) - That's awesome. See, I've been doing that, you know. I also found out in that game, apparently, yeah. If you do the first part of the game, up to where you rescue Martin, you find him in the church in Kavach. And then if you never take him to Cloud Ruler Temple, you can beat every other quest in the game and he'll just be there with you the whole time and he can't die. So he's basically like an NPC that will always fight with you and never die. - Oh, really? - That's funny. - Yeah. - That's about where I stopped. - 100%. - Yeah, you can only be knocked out. - I mean, there are a few characters. - He can only be unknocked unconscious because he's crucial to the game. - Right. - Which is, I mean, I wonder what the play testing was like where they're like, fuck, we just have to make it so you can't kill this guy 'cause otherwise the game just won't go anywhere. - Yeah, so because of that now, you can just grab him and do all your guild quests, everything and he's always there with you. And he's always like, shouldn't we be going to Cloud Ruler Temple? (laughing) It's like, don't you make fun of Sean Bean? That is few voices, Martin. - Whatever, I'll make fun of Sean Bean. - He's boring, man. - Yeah, whatever, Sean Bean. - Why are you gonna hit on boring, man? (laughing) He's also the fucking wannabe and Ronan. - I thought, yeah, I know, that was really good. I thought he was good, and I thought he wasn't good as Martin. - No, he totally is. I'm just making fun of his voice, and then he has offenses. - I mean, the voice acting in the oblivion is good. - It is, in general. It is, it's actually really good. It's just annoying that there's only like six voice actors. - Don't ever, don't ever play a female elf. - 'Cause she sounds like she's like 75 years old. - Yeah, exactly, and like when you get in, she goes, (screaming) - She's like, whoa. (laughing) - Sorry, I probably just blew out some of these ear drops in there. (laughing) - Yeah, whatever. - So if there was a weird break in the podcast right there, it's not as cool. - If you leveled it, it'll be all right. - I don't like to-- - It's a leveled way, it's a nice weird shit to the audio. - Bust your ear drums. - Yeah. - We did it for years at OneUp, and it was just fine, Arthur. - Why is it a good enough for you? - I have to think that a lot of OneUp podcasts sound like crap. - Oh, snazilla. - Yeah. - So before we move on from oblivion, Anthony, how do you feel about, I mean, I don't know, there's been all these building rumors about the oblivion MMO. And today the court documents between interplay and Bethesda came out basically going on record stating, yeah, we're working on a world of Warcraft type MMO. - I'm not interested in playing more MMOs, to be honest with you. I've played a lot of MMOs in my life. - To me, I wouldn't be interested if it's a lot like World of Warcraft. I want an MMO that's just much more fast and accessible. - I really just have a multiplayer oblivion. - You want an MMO that's faster and more accessible than wow, do you want an MMO that plays itself? - And in my mind, that shit's not fast and not accessible. I mean, well, I'm sure they're-- - Do you mean like the grind for everything? - Yeah, just like, you know, and the actions and boring, and like, you know. - You know what people do when they get through all of an MMOs content, Tyler? - Well, they do. - They stop paying a monthly fee. - No, they roll a new character and do it all the way. - Yeah, they start all over. - No, but I mean, if they see everything, like, if it's-- - No one sees everything. Well, maybe like two guys ever. - I mean, wow, it's like the most successful MMO that's ever existed. The idea that someone-- - Yeah, I mean, I guess more like you're saying, Anthony, I would probably even enjoy just more like a co-op enabled oblivion. - That's what I would rather play. - Online co-op. - Even if I had to just tag along for the quest he was doing. - Yeah, yeah. - Like, there was a primary host of the game, but I was still at least getting experience leveling up. - Fable could have been-- - Yeah, that's what I was supposed to say. - Borderlands should have been. - That's what I thought Fable was gonna be. It was gonna be like, you know, you could have somebody just tag along for their quest. - And we were all super disappointed. - I mean, I was gonna say if it was just like Borderlands, they started the quest and I was there getting experience and hanging out with him. And I got to get some loot. Whatever else, good enough. - That'd be great, but I don't play that game. - The idea of, who is it? Is it interplay that's suing? - Interplay. - I mean, it has an interplay made a bunch of shitty and bugged out games. The idea of Bethesda or interplay, trying to do a massively multiplayer online game just terrifies me. - Well, I think Bethesda made the Fallout games. - Yeah, but yeah, I think Bethesda is in a better position to make a good MMO. - Bethesda and their parent company. - Yeah, it's in a max. - EPC is ripping into the paper bags again. This is like a running theme for me whenever I come on a whole event. - The PB just destroys the paper bags that Anthony very really is leaving around the living room. - I know she likes them. (laughing) - They're just not particularly good podcast background. - Yeah. - But anyway-- - Ah, professionalism smushback. (laughing) - But I'm not actually sure that I really want to play an MMO that's based in the Oblivion universe. - Isn't the nice thing about Oblivion is that it's sort of like an MMO without dealing with other people? - That's what I'm saying. That's why I only want to deal with like one or two friends. I don't know. Plus an MMO is in a lot of ways, probably too ambitious to have fully voiced dialogue all the time. I mean, Star Wars is going to have it supposedly. - They're going to have it supposedly. - But how big is that install going to be? (laughing) - I had to set up a rate array. - Unless they somehow like stream all the audio. - But so the other game I played was Divinity 2, which we were talking about 'cause you'd never tried it. - Yeah, well I played on 360 mind you. - Yeah. - What is this? - I don't mind how it'll be. It's a very European action RPG. - I was very curious about that because like I've heard mixed things about it, but like just reading like general information about it seems like the kind of game I would like. - It is, it's a pretty cool fantasy RPG. And I've only gotten like two hours into it, but the premise is that you're a dragon slayer. And so when you start off the game, you're a dragon slayer initiate. And so you have to go through these trials to become a dragon slayer. One of which involves taking on the memories of a dragon, which makes you like partially insane, but also gives you the ability to do mind reading. - Whoa. - And so then you take on certain classes, like the class to be like a warrior or a wizard, you have to pick one, but then you can always switch them from what I understand. You can always eventually go back and just do wizardry if you want. And so when you're putting points in when you level up, you put points into like warrior wizard or ranger skills. And so, you know, if you don't like what you are, you can always switch it back. - Right. Sorry, my cat's being particularly insane. - And I was just watching her go and open the closet door to get the back. - Get the back of the paper bag. - This is after she ate my cat's food earlier as well. - Sorry, but yeah, so it's a really cool game. I mean, I like a lot of the prims and it surprisingly has all of voice. - She's like a goddamn force of nature today. - She is. She opened the closet door to get to the second paper bag. - All right, sorry, sorry, so all the voice dialogue is actually voiced fairly well. Not great, but about as good as you would expect from a game. The biggest thing I'll say that will turn people off about this game, maybe not like PC players because I think PC players have a higher tolerance for lower production quality. Like a lot of people liked that Risen game or mountain blade. - I played Risen for like three or four hours and it wasn't terrible. - Well, you know, both of them were kind of like, not terrible, but not like the production quality you would come to expect from a AAA game or something like that. - Clunky, they're a little clunky. - A little clunky, but it's like, it's almost like one of those things that three years down the road, you can remember is like charming about it. And this game is like that too. It's clunky in a lot of ways. The animations are kind of silly. And when you see like characters walking at any distance beyond super close, it looks like they're moving with like half the frames that they should. - Right. - Almost like they're a little cut out animations. - Right, so there's like a level of detail on the animation as well. - Yeah. - And so it's like-- - I mean, that's pretty common. - But yeah, and you know, the frame, right, gets fucked up at times. They're screen tearing. Like, but it's still like all those things aside, like just as like a fantasy RPG. So far, it's been pretty cool. And the quests have been pretty interesting. And you know, it's, they're the quests like the big one I'm on right now, which you start off with is go kill this dragon. And so you're in this little village and you're going around investigating for everyone asking for enough information about the dragon that you can put together, general area that it's at. So then you could go quest and kill it. But you know, during that time in a typical RPG way, you get all kinds of quests like save this guy's pigs from these guards or these guards are like sexually assaulting this woman. And you have to like decide if you're gonna step in and do anything. And then I did. And then I could totally ask her to have sex with me. I'm pretty sure, but I went the route of, I did it just because it was the right thing to do. I'm hoping that she would still have sex with me, but she did not. - Story of Anthony's life. - She did not. So. - What life lesson did you take away from this? - I learned I should have said, isn't there some matter of payment? That's what I should have asked the option I should have chosen. So. - That's when you're helping me play the cross the street. There's some matter of payment. - This is the exact thought that came in my head. - Yes. So she, so just like in real life, she became your friend. - Yeah. - And that's all she'll ever be. - Yep. - It is, but yeah, so it's a pretty cool game so far. I mean, it certainly feels in a lot of ways like a budget game, but it's also like one of those games that like, I remember even when we were sitting around in the office watching Rogue Warrior being played, someone was stepped in. I think it was Pear and was like, wouldn't you guys be proud though, if you had made this, like, you know, if you had made this, we started to finish, even if this was your shitty little product. And it was like, and with Rogue Warrior, I don't feel like that's the case. 'Cause Rogue Warrior, I feel like that's a company that knows what they're doing, and they produced just a shitty game. Whereas this one, it's like, it's like, I almost do feel that way about it. Like, it's not, it's obviously not nearly as bad as Rogue Warrior, but I'm saying it's not as polished as it could have been and stuff like that. But at some point, like, if I was that team of these guys that are, you know, not very well known or anything, I would have been like, man, we made that. Like, it's a pretty vast world. - Yeah. - With a game with a ton of dialogue and something that you feel like they could genuinely be proud of. - Yeah, it's a game that could have used like another six months of polish before it got shipped, but that game was in production for a long time. - That game came out four or five months ago in Europe on Xbox 360. - Yeah, it just, it could have used, I just think it could have used more time. - Right. - And I think it's also a better suited to be a PC game only. - Have you come across the, any of the really awful glitches or bugs? - I haven't come across anything that kills the game or, you know, like any save bugs or anything like that. One thing I will say is it's got a lot of things that feel like UI things that game designers here are getting really good about, especially with focus testing. And again, this is a game where they obviously didn't afford to focus testing. 'Cause like whenever it quicksaves, it doesn't just quicksave, which is nicely quicksaves, right? All games should do that. But when it does it, an auto save, it pops up with a big old black box and screens that's auto saving and freezes everything. Every time it does it. - Whoa. - So it doesn't like just like a spinning thing up in the corner that lets you know it's auto saving. It pauses it. And then it's like to access all the menus and stuff to find what you're looking for. There's no tutorial to walk you through that at all. The first time it's just like, ah, you leveled up. Should probably find some of those points. - Good for you. Here's the sex part of the game. - So yeah, it's pretty intense like that. That's what I'm saying. It's so much more of like a PC game to me. These Euro guys in my mind, PC was definitely what they were making. And then they were like, we're also gonna put it in 360. And they're like, all right. So, you know, but. - That's cool. - Yeah. - Well, maybe I'll give it a shot once I'm done with it. - When you don't have like something more like super pressing to play, I would recommend checking it out. If you like, you know, if you read books about dragons and shit like that. - Here's the important question. - Which I do. - I haven't read the big page book. - Divinity two. - Arminity two. - Divinity two. - I mean, divinity two is a lot more fucked up technical wise than army of two is. But I like the content of divinity two more than I like army of two. - Okay. So divinity two over army of two. - I would have rather have reviewed divinity two than army of two. - Huh. - And you sent that to it. Did you guys have even reviewed divinity two? - No. - No. - And that's what you get. - But it's just like, you know, it's just a silly fantasy game, you know, and I am partial to those. - Me too. - So I'm a sucker for them. I admit it. - Do we anticipating two worlds too? - You know, it has a really crappy character creation though. Like you can pick male, female, and like three faces of each and your voice and that's it. You know what I mean? There's very like, you know, so that's a knock against it. - I mean, a lot of them have that problem though. - Did you play around with Risen's character creator? - Yeah, and it was like, again, it's super, super limited. - It's like the worst thing in the world. Well, it's not just that it was limited. It was like the things that you could do with it. Like, you know, it had some of the basic like mold your face kind of stuff. - You could make yourself hideous. - That was your only option. Was hideous or hideous or? - Yeah, it's a good thing in Risen that you basically never see your face though. It's almost always from behind you at all times. - That's how it is in most of these games, which is why you feel like it doesn't matter. - Yeah. But yeah, I mean, just, it's a cool game and the ability to mind read people's an interesting little addition that it has on it. - Yeah, so you do it like to anybody in the game? - In theory of those some people's minds are too strong and it costs you experience to do it each time. - Whoa. - But it'll unlock different conversation options if you do it right. - That's an interesting gameplay concept. Like, almost like you're spending a piece of your soul in order to read somebody's mind. - Yeah, so I do it very rarely. But I mean, I have done it a few times and, you know, you'll find out like so-and-so isn't really telling you everything they know 'cause they're thinking it. So, huh, right on. Yeah. - Anything else? - No, that's it. I haven't been playing a whole lot. - You saw spec ops today, right? - I saw spec ops, but that's embargo 'til next Tuesday. - Yeah, there you go. - But you didn't, I mean, it's not like you played it, you just saw it. - No, they're not letting anyone play that game yet. (coughing) You. - He's looking at Tyler. - No, but I want you to speak. - Oh. (laughing) - How's it feel, Matt? But he was looking at Tyler first. - Yeah, you do that all the time. (laughing) - Well, I finally, a year after I originally wanted to play it, which was when I first saw it at last year's UDC, was Osmos. I finally played that like later in the last year. - What is Osmos? - And some today. - Is it an IgG candidate or something? - You mean an IGF? - IGF. - Yeah. It was in the IGF last year, yes. - Oh, okay. - And I believe it won an award or two, but I can't remember what for. And then it was also on display at PAX. And yeah, super cool game. I'm playing it, you know, through Steam. - What is it? - In the very basic sense. - The easiest analogy is flow, where you're a microscopic organism and you're eating other organisms. But it's even, it's, but that's kind of where the similarity ends. Think of yourself as, you know, you're a single-celled organism. You know, you're circular and the art is really beautiful. Like, you're kind of glowy. It's almost like you can, it's almost like you can see all the internal parts of the cells and stuff like that. And basically the, the gameplay centers around you navigating your cell to cells that are any size smaller than you, whether slightly smaller or a little bit smaller. And then as you eat them, their mass is added to yours and you grow bigger and then you can eat bigger cells. And the way that you, when you propel yourself, it's like you just click the, click the mouse on whatever side you want to propel from and you move in the opposite direction. But when you propel yourself, you have to propel yourself by shooting out your own mass. So you get smaller as you move. So it'd be, and so you're flying around, so you're floating around in like a primordial soup, trying to eat other cells and get to a certain size. And then when you get to a certain size, the level is over. And of course, you know, like it gets deeper than that as any good indie game does. It has, it has like a really kind of simple, beautiful concept that it then, it erates on within the game itself. And there's like other cells that propel themselves to try to eat other things as well as you. And on top of that, the game has really interesting, cool music. And the music, the music is kind of, well, it's really interesting to me because you can speed up and slow down time in the game. And you can't actually reverse or anything like that, but you know, a lot of times you can be floating around kind of slowly and you don't want to expend any mass. So you just speed up time so you can get to where you're going quicker. But the music, this kind of ambion electronical, the electronical, this ambion electronic music works really well when it's slowed down or when it's sped up. And I was like, how does that even work? 'Cause you know, most music, you speed it up or you slow it down. It sounds terrible, but yeah. So Osmosis, it's a cool game. I definitely recommend it. I'm sorry, Tyler. (laughing) - Now Anthony's cat is laying on Tyler's hat. - You can pull her out. - He's a fucking terror. - She's a menace. - I love her. - I love her. - She's great. She has a lot of personality. - More than once I have used the C word in direct relation to Anthony's cat. - She has a lot of personality as how I like to put it in. Yeah, it reminds me what you're describing in this game, Solar, in a way, but without the time speed up, that's an indie game on Xbox Live. You should check out. - Oh, cool. - I wanna see, is this free or is it just cheap? - It's indie game cheap. I think it's 10 or 20 bucks, something like that. - Yeah, I was gonna ask you about the music 'cause the music when it comes to games like that, any sort of like whether it's flower or flow or any game where it's like just spending a bunch of time, like not focusing since the music has to be there to like grab me. - It does. - Well, and I feel like with a lot of indie games, they're really very much so into the music being integral to the experience. - Yeah. - And of course that happens in bigger games too, but I think it's more obvious in the indie scene. - Yeah. - Yeah, it feels like a lot of times in the indie games, it's like almost as big as, it's like instrumental in the gameplay whereas in something like Uncharted, it's like-- - It's there. - It's there, but it's there to drive it and it's like there to accent it but it's not like needed. - Yeah. - For that particular moment. - Right, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so that's a really good game. And I did get into the STO beta. - How's that? - I've been playing STO. Well, I'm a science fiction nerd and I've seen just about every Star Trek episode available. - Favorite Star Trek movie? - Favorite Star Trek movie? I don't really like the movies. - Why even first contact? - No. - I like twist contact. - You're fired, Matt. - I mean, I did like the Wrath of Khan, of course, 'cause like everybody does and I actually, it was actually well acted and well written but man, most of the movies I just don't like. - What a race are you playing in Star Trek? Or did you make your own? - I went Vulcan. I was gonna make my own but like I kind of have a secret nerd fantasy of wanting to be a Vulcan so I just went ahead and went with it. - Thank you for saying wanting to be a Vulcan. - I know one of the guys I play with, he made a character with basically an ass on his face 'cause there's like an alien race that allows you to look like that. - There is an alien race like that in the original Star Trek. - And he has like a butthole in the center and I think his, I want to say his name is something derived from the word sphincter and his ship is also called like the sphinctessence or something like that. So it's like the USS sphinctessence. - Yeah, like I'm such a-- - I wish that surprised me at all but it really doesn't. - Well, it probably won't surprise you either that I'm such a total fucking nerd that I have a proper naming convention for my Vulcan and everything. - Oh, I wish that surprised me too. (laughing) - And it was funny 'cause I was playing with Jason Wilson from BitMob and David Ellis and we were having a really good time. - Are you guys played together? - Yeah. - Like rolling around as a little fleet? - Yeah. It was fucking badass dude. - No, Anthony feels left out. - We were rolling around and going on one of our, wow, the rain is coming down. - Yeah, if you guys can hear the rain, sorry. - No, they won't be able to 'cause we're not recording over the fucking MacBook mic. - Not much we'll be able to do that. - Well, we were going tooling around like going on one of our sector exploration quests and like there's a lot of open space out there and it kind of has the metaphor of warping between sectors and then when you're in a sector then you can go to different systems and then when you're in the systems, you go, you know, you go under impulse power and it has a lot of the conventions that you, that you get in the Star Trek series for ship combats like having to put more power to your forward shields or your rear shields and having a, you know, photon, all the different photon torpedoes or your, you know, or your phaser banks or whatever, they have arcs so you have your forward and your aft banks and if they overlap the arc then you can broadside people with both your forward and your aft weapons and then you can get like a bridge crew and your bridge crew like you, you can get them as quest rewards and stuff like that. - I mean, they're essentially pets, right? - They're like gear. - They're like gear, they're pets with gear. - And you can send them off to do things too, right? - You can't, they're on, can make them perform specific tasks. - Well, on the ground combat, it's mostly just that they're AI controlled. Like I haven't really found a way that like you can make them use their abilities but you can choose as, you can choose what they spend their skill points in. But in space combat, they have specific abilities that help you out too. Like my tactical officer, if I hit that, then I get like a double yield photon torpedo. So it fires two photon torpedoes at once instead of just one photon torpedo and like my engineer has emergency power to shields, you know? Like so they did a really good job of importing the Arcana into the basic combat structure of the game. - For now you're just tooling around and like what, like a little like tiny ship or something? - No, you pretty much get something that looks exactly like a full on Star Trek. - Right off the bat. - Cruiser battleship like right away. And you do unlock more ships later on and I've seen some pretty cool ships but right in the beginning, like you start out with your first ship and you can go into the ship customization thing and you can like choose different kinds of nacelles and hall structures and some different kind of color scheme and that kind of thing. And you can also, when you get your crew members, you can totally customize their look too. You completely change them into a new alien race or something or you can like change them from a Vulcan to a different kind of crew. - Are you like an all Vulcan crew? - No, no. - I would want to be totally racist like that. That's a pretty good idea though, maybe. - Just have a big V painted on your ship. - But I totally did give everybody matching uniforms like 'cause I had my custom uniform and I gave everybody else matching ones but with colors that are appropriate to their station. - Are there tassels involved? - No tassels. - How does death work in that game? - You just respawn. - Okay. - Yeah, like if you're in space combat, it'll say respawn in 10 seconds or whatever and you. - Okay, I was wondering about that. I was like, you know, 'cause like in wow, okay, you go to a spirit world and you get your body back or whatever but in this I it's like, now you're fucking dead. You're ship got blown up. You were transported off the ship at the last second. They have very fast shipyards. - Yeah, exactly. It's basically what it is. And the space combat, especially when you're doing it with other people is a ton of fun. The ground combat so far, not so much. That's what I've heard. What I'm wondering is 'cause I kept reading articles about how we're really trying to incorporate the other stuff in the Star Trek universe, not just combat whereas exploration and diplomacy and all that kind of stuff. I haven't seen any of that yet. - It would have been nice if they could have finished the Klingon part of the game too, which they've admitted more or less that they just couldn't. - Yeah, well, I mean, that's how MMOs are. I mean like a year after an MMO is released, it's a completely different game from when it just came out. - That is such the part of the goddamn problem with MMOs that there's all this apologism and like poo poo-ing about anyone criticizing a game when it comes out that it's not finished. - No, it's just, well, I mean it's accepted for the genre because that's what it's necessary in order to even release games like this. There's such, I mean like, my opinion is a little bit biased 'cause I worked for an MMO developer for a little while. - And didn't you work for the MMO developer that was working on this? - Yes, I did. - Was it perpetual? - Perpetual entertainment. They were working on Gods and Heroes games. They were working on-- - For what happened to them. - Yeah. Well, and they were working on Star Trek online. And internally, I can't even remember the term they had for it, basically it was acknowledged that MMOs are released as unfinished products because if you wait until they are quote unquote finished to release them, you will never release an MMO and you spend so much money up front on the development of these games that you have to release directly. - At some point you have to release them to recoup. And it's just par for the course. Like the exception would be somebody like Blizzard. Like let's say Blizzard releases WOW2, you know? They come up with World of Warcraft 2 and they've secretly been working on it for 10 years and they put out a nearly finished MMO, you know? Like in that kind of situation, I can see it happening. But for everybody else out there who doesn't have more money than God, they have to do it like this, otherwise you just don't even get an MMO. - But I mean Blizzard was working on WOW for four years and they didn't have that kind of money before WOW came out. They were another- - No they didn't but if you played WOW in the beta and you played WOW like right after it first came out, which I did, it was annoying, dude. - I played WOW in the beta. - And WOW is a completely different game now than it was back then and thank God 'cause it's way better. - Well saying a game is a completely different game is one thing but saying like, I'm saying that they are releasing Star Trek unfinished. And not just, well, it doesn't feel finished. It's like they have said, oh well we just couldn't finish this but we're releasing it anyway. So what am I as a possible consumer supposed to think when they're telling me that there's this content that we just couldn't finish but we're gonna release half of it to you? That doesn't- - Well you're supposed to go and do it, try it out. And if the content that's there doesn't appeal to you, you either never go back or you wait until the actual content that's there that you wanna play. I mean, that's another strategy. - Except I have $50 to find that out. And they'll like the monthly fee. - Yeah, I mean, if you don't have the money then you don't do it. - I'd play beta. Try beta, it's open beta right now. - Don't you have to pre-order it to be in the beta now? - No. - Of course I know it's just open. - Yeah, there's lots of ways to get beta keys. Actually, I don't know how easy they are to get but honestly like I can't, right now having played as little as I have, I'm not sure how long I could stick with STO unless I find some missions at higher 'cause I mean, I'm still basically in the beginning of the game where I'm sure they're still teaching me how to do basic stuff and combat and things like that. So later on if I can get into more stuff where they do have like diplomatic missions and they have things that are kind of interesting sci-fi twists and it's more than just like kill-cling-ons which is all it's been right now is kill-cling-ons constantly and they're allies. If it's more of that other kind of stuff later on that's what's gonna draw me into playing it. Especially if you can incorporate the groups like let's say Jason and David were going with me and we ended up landing on a planet, we had to solve this conflict and we could decide as a team like, all right we're gonna do this and then we're all involved in the mission, great. You know, that's kind of a good selling point for me because as it stands right now, navigating the universe is a ship and doing the ship combat is almost a good enough MMO game on its own as long as you could do more than just kill-cling-ons. - That's pretty much exactly what I've heard. - Yeah. - Can I, I mean you guys, between Anthony and Matt, you guys have played a fair amount of MMOs. - Probably. - Well more than Tyler and I have for sure. - Well yeah, for sure. - Do you feel like WoW is just sort of lightning in a bottle that that's the kind of thing that's just never gonna be replicated? Or do you think that there's a formula that they captured that there'll be, it's someone else will figure out and be able to do again? - I think that WoW is going to inspire many more imitators before we see something that's gonna be truly revolutionary because people can't take the kind of investment risk. - Yeah, 'cause so far I think the reason that all these other games don't live up to it is they're all trying to copy WoW to an extent and then they never do it quite as well. And then they, or they run on a computer like H of Conan that requires like a beast of a computer. - It seems like they all depend on a business model that assumes that they'll have like a just gigantic amount of players that maybe they'll never have. - And I just feel like in some way, like it's also the fact that it's, I mean, well it's not some way it's that it's a Warcraft and that it's that universe and that it's so interesting and fun and they have really good writers and a really good atmosphere to the world that's more engaging to me. - Well, and like World of Warcraft is the Warcraft universe and fantasy like that Western style fantasy has a worldwide appeal. Like it appeals to Far East cultures as much as it does to Western cultures whereas sci-fi generally doesn't. That's why sci-fi MMOs have a hard time succeeding. - One thing that strikes me as odd about Warcraft and the success or lack thereof of other MMOs is like, if you put that same question to other genres, like say like the fighting genre for example, if you like transport back to like 1996 and you're like, why is Street Fighter II the only good fighting game? Well, it's not. There are actually others out there that do different things like, you know, maybe you're into King of Fighters or maybe you're into Tekken or, you know, as it became 3D like they sort of splintered off and went through on directions and sort of provided, you know, things that people could like about all these different games, but with MMOs, it seems like everyone's just trying to copy. Wow. - But MMOs have that moment. Like in the early part of the millennium, like there's definitely a point where there are a lot of MMOs simultaneously during the age of EverQuest. Like there was Ultima Online and there was EverQuest. - Well, there's pretty much Ultima Online and EverQuest and then if you were dumb enough to play one of the other ones, people wondered why. (laughing) - Which is, I mean, is there any different situation today? - Dragon's Carol also did well. Shadow Bane was one that tanked pretty fast. - That Korean company is bringing Hellgate London back to the States. - Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think that there are totally room for other MMOs, but I would, at this point, I don't want to play another MMO that does what wow does. I almost, it's like I don't almost don't want to play another MMO that has like a hot key bar or anything. I just want them to do something totally different. - Yeah. And this is exactly what I was getting earlier when we were talking about the Elder Scrolls MMO. It's like, I don't want something that looks, plays, or is anything like wow. - What about the fall at MMO? - Same with that, man. - That may not ever happen. - Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm not a game designer and I don't know what would be the solution because, you know, they've tried like, what if we did a first person MMO, but it's like really first person. But then it's like, people don't like the idea that shooting skill would go so much into PvP. People have never liked that about MMOs. Like whereas in wow, it's more about gear and, you know, the order in which you press buttons and stuff. It's not just about pixel preciseness, but I don't know. - I mean, the crazy thing is like wow PvP because of the sheer number of abilities that you have becomes incredibly strategic, but it's a strategy that people can wrap their heads around because they can immediately go to like, disability defeats disability, you know, or like if I can get into this situation where these particular cool downs are up, then I know that I can succeed against a comparable class, you know, like there, it's the kind of thing that you can wrap ahead your head around strategically. Wow, like you said, you don't have to have shooter skill on top of that. - I would like a, the only MMO I can see that's like wow that I could see myself playing in the future is the Star Wars one because even though it does do stuff, it's not just like wow, right? It does have like the Bioware style or not necessarily Bioware style, the old RPG style of branching dialogue trees and all that, but the only reason I could see myself it being so similar to wow and I would play it is just that it's in a universe that I actively care about. So I will like get into it because of that. - Well, I mean, you and hopefully about six million other park nerds. - I mean, and Bioware, they're masterful storytellers too. So it's like, you know, it's gonna be a great-- - I mean, in a way, maybe that is what will actually give wow right there. - That's what I was gonna say. Like I think that Kotor is the only, the only one that we can see currently that-- - You mean the Otor? - Yeah. - Or Totor. (laughing) - But yeah, I mean, that's the only one that I could see doing it, but even then, I don't know. I mean, I mean, Star Wars is, is all over, but it's just like, wow, just has such a mind share. I don't know. But I do feel like there are a lot of wild players who are, especially by the time Kotor actually, the older public actually comes out, will maybe want something different. I mean, if Blizzard's smart, well, I mean, maybe we'll see because Blizzard's gonna release that big expansion this year. - Cataclysm. - So we'll see how much-- - We're working on another MMO. - See how much there is not Warcraft. - Right, but I doubt that would be-- - 2011. - Right, well, what always happens with my friends and I that play World of Warcraft is, like right now, most of them have stopped playing and they're playing like League of Legends and they're, you know, basically it gets to a point where, all right, we've got as much gear as we can get because we're not a very large guild and we're not gonna be raiding all the time. And it's just too much fucking work. - But just give it until like two months before the expansion comes out and Blizzard will release a patch that lets you get all of that gear with like a five man group. - Right, and then we come back in and we get all of that gear. - And then you play the new content. - And we play the new content and we get to that point again, where we stop playing for two or three months while we wait for new stuff. - See, I wouldn't be surprised if, while there's no way in hell in my mind that Blizzard will release their new MMO in 2011. But in 2011, when in theory, the Old Republic does come out, I would not be at all surprised if Blizzard released some sort of free content expansion. You know, like how they do big patches, everyone's small? - Yeah. - I could see them doing a huge patch with the release of the Old Republic just to be like, don't leave. - I wonder at some point when the artistic consideration will come in and play for Blizzard where they want to do something different. 'Cause I mean-- - That's the impression that I get with their new MMO 'cause they're calling it a quote unquote, next gen. - I'm sure that, I mean, I have no doubt that they'll work on. I'm just saying that in my mind, there's no way it'll come out 2011. - Right, for sure, yeah. - I mean, not with them going to still put out. - No, they're dating it. - More Starcraft and more Diablo. - That's why I was gonna bring up. Yeah, I mean, they have that. - It's like, there's no way. - Blizzard will have that MMO in beta for like 18 months before it comes out. So, I mean, but I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, to see a big wow content. They do free what content and if they do a free content thing, right, what around when the old Republic comes out, it might retain some of those people. - I mean, the expansion is gonna retain a lot of people because like, there's actually a ton of people out there that are just wow players. - Yeah. - That's the only game they play and they have no interest in playing anything else. - You don't talk about we in casual gaming, fuck man. - Yeah, I mean, for instance, one of the guys me and Arthur worked with Gerald, his wife, that's all she plays. - Wow, it's the only video game she plays. But yeah, I mean, I could see what you're saying, Arthur, I mean, the expansion is supposed to come out, I think later this year, but I mean, it's not like people won't still be playing that too. - One, didn't they say that? - They're picking it up for a long time, it's gonna be free. Like, that you won't have to buy all of it. Like, the world is gonna change where-- - The world's gonna change for everyone, no matter what. It's not like, yeah, they're not gonna have two worlds for people to walk. - So no matter what, there's some content. - Well, what's gonna happen in Cataclysm is a lot of the original Azeroth is gonna be changed. So they're gonna be these zones that used to be 40 to 50 zones are now gonna be, you know, really high level zones, like your 70 to 85 zones. But you still won't be able to get into those unless you have the expansion. 'Cause there are people that still play, that apparently still play wow, that don't have the expansions and they can't get to any of the content. Same thing with Cataclysm, they're not-- - I feel like they've said that they're-- - I think Cataclysm is gonna give some because Cataclysm affects the regular game so much. - Yeah, there will be aspects of it that will be available to people-- - Okay, aspects of it, yeah, I'm sure. - Well, yeah, there have to be areas that aren't available to people who don't buy it, but-- - Well, not just that, but it's gonna add new races, new classes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. - For use. - Add Wolfson Goblins. - For Oregon. - Well, the Goblins, the Goblins and the Wargon, you wouldn't be able to play, though. - Right, that's what I'm saying. I mean, this is why people will buy it. - Yeah. - I mean, people love to roll a new character and especially if it's gonna change a bunch of the older world quests, it's like the excuse to roll a new character. - Totally, yep. - So. - Yep, I still will never roll a new character. I'm a one character dude. - I don't know, I could see myself rolling a group of Goblins and just being like the biggest dicks if I were gonna roll Goblins. - I would definitely roll a Goblins if I had a bunch of friends that were playing Goblins. - That's what I'm saying, I would wanna be a squad of Goblins, all of us be rogues, only rogues, so that we could just roll up on people and just kill them instantly and then disappear and vanish again. All of a sudden that's all we would do, roll around. - Start bringing in your slash cackle onto the chat. - Yeah, a little group of rogues, gnome rogues. I mean, goblin rogues appear, I know where to kill you and then just pull yourself the lollipop gang. (laughing) - That would be the gnomes. - So. - Matt, what else have you been playing? Other than Stowe? - Yeah, I was most in Stowe, we're pretty much it, although I did sit on the couch and watched, and had my controller on, I had my hands on the controller for a little while, watching a fresh and Ryan play Darkciders, and while I haven't played the game, I've seen probably 95% of it, we still haven't beat it yet, and, - Dude, that game was awesome. (laughing) It's so good, if that game had come out-- - How about that game this weekend? - Yeah. - I've been a-- - Dude, that game-- - Even though I only gave that game only, even though I gave that game a four out of five, which instantly makes people think that I only kind of liked it, I really liked that game. - Yeah. - I do think it's a great game. - If there had been an original fucking thought in that game, maybe it would have edged into a four point five. - But I do think that that game is so cool. Like, I bought it for my friend for his birthday specifically, 'cause I was like, dude, this is the type of game that like you will like because you like Zelda games, you like metal shit. - Heavy metals, it's co-hidden Cambria Zelda. - It's such, I like that game so much, I just did an interview that it will be going up on gamesby.com soon with a guy that's like the head of the studio, and it was so interesting figuring out the way that they made that game. Like it was nothing that they intended it to be in a lot of ways. - That's so cool. Well, the game, it really plays like a love affair to gaming in general. It's like somebody who's been playing games as long as we have and remembers all the good stuff about them and just put them all into one game. And the art style like doesn't really appeal to me that much. - It feels like a 16 bit game aesthetically. - Almost, yeah, but it's executed really well. Like it's really pretty to look at and it's almost always like a solid 30 to 60 frames when it's, and I hardly ever see it like go dip below 30 anyway. - How's the tearing? - The tearing is bad, but the weird thing is, is like I only really notice it right when we first put it in and go like, oh, it's so terrible. And I don't know if it's just like after a while I stopped seeing it. - It is, I mean, I don't think it's that noticeable. - Is it weird that the tearing doesn't occur to you on that as much as it did in something like the PS3 version of Assassin's Creed 2? - Yeah, it is weird actually. And you know, I don't know what the reason is because like the PS3 version, I think it might just be because I played the Xbox version on a debug first of Assassin's Creed 2. And then I played the PS3 version after that and I was so disappointed with the technical issues on the PS3 version in comparison that maybe it just accented. - Dark side issues is one of those games though that I feel like is pretty negligible. It's actually one of those games where it's fairly negligible to me. Like I played it all the way through on PS3 and there was no point where I was like, nah, it looks so bad. - No, it really looked a little soft. - They did a really good job. - But the content is super cool. Like I'm not so good at it, but Ryan's been playing. - It starts off so boring at first. Yeah, first you're like, all you're gonna do is swing one sword and then all of a sudden you got like a sword, a scythe and a pistol and you're mixing up all of them. - And you can mix them like on the fly. - Yep. - Like 'cause seeing Ryan play, he's pretty good at the combat and he really loves to mess around with different combinations and he's like switching weapons in the middle of a combo and stuff like that. It's really cool to watch. - Yeah, I liked that game a lot for everything it did and the developers are totally okay with that game being compared to other games. - Yeah, I should hope so. - They said it was super flattering to be said and to have their game used positively in the same sense as Legend of Zelda or something. - Well, how could you be depressed about that if it's your first game? - Such the thing though is I mean, like there are people that try to do the Zelda thing but they fail at it and it's like, - Like Nintendo. - Yeah, like Nintendo. - Aw, wow. - Like if you're gonna do it, you know, like do it right. Do it the way you know it needs to be done. - Yeah, Nintendo. - These guys, I remember I was talking to him too and he said that it gets a lot of comparisons to God of War and I think he said like when they first started playing it like he hadn't even played God of War. Like he was like, what? - God of War just doesn't feel like a fair comparison to make. - I mean, it's just an easy comparison to make because you're doing a bunch of combat and they're like swords involved. - Yeah, I mean, well there are things that are very God of War like like the chests and everything and it's third person action combat with these combos involved and even some of the, even like the fist weapon feels a lot like God of War's fist weapon. - And then I mean, there's the cinematic framing when you walk onto something that's sort of-- - How did you like when you saw him get a horse? Like that's one of my favorite things. - So fucking cool. - Is they did such a good animation of the horse coming out of the ground, sleepy hollow style. - Yeah. - They'll like it's so rad. It's so rad when you jump off a cliff and you're falling and then you just like hit the buttons. - And you land on your horse just comes out of the ground. - Yeah. - And it's just with you on it. - Yeah, that's so cool. - Or like if you're standing still and you summon your horse and it like rears out of the ground before you like start moving. - Yeah, there's lovely little attention to detail all through that whole game. - Especially for their first game. - Yeah. - It's their first game as a studio. - It's amazing. - And granted the guys have made other games they used to work. - They have it. - For who makes Guild Wars, that company. - Oh. - They used to work for NCSoft. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - NCSoft. - Yeah, so NCSoft, so that's why they're there. That's why they're their next game. Besides Dark Ciders 2, which I think they're gonna make. Obviously. - But NCSoft just published Guild Wars. - Maybe, maybe. Okay, so I know that they've worked on MMOs though. - Right. - Like this was their first console game. - NCSoft, I mean, it was a huge story a few years ago when NCSoft was hiring away a bunch of people from Blizzard to do a wow killer. - So these guys left and then formed their studio and now they made Dark Ciders and now their next game is gonna be, along with Dark Ciders 2 hopefully is a 40K MMO, or a 40K MMO. - Oh, wow. - So I mean, they have the art style down for what 40K looks like. - Oh, hell yeah. - So, but. - Yeah, no kidding. - Giant guy is an armor stumbling around. That's pretty much 40K right there. - Small heads, big fists. - Yeah, so, but yeah, yeah, I thought that game was really cool and it's like, it has no right to be not cheesy, but it's not. - Right. - Like, they did a really good job. Like, even though it's like, nah, demons and angels and betrayal, it's like, but it actually doesn't come across as like awful. - Yeah, well, the only reason, the only thing that the combat really seems to be lacking is you can get stuck in your combos. And like, 'cause a really important part to God of Wars combat was that no matter what combo you were in, you could cancel it and dodge out. And in Dark Cider, it seems like you can get stuck and you won't be able to cancel out of certain combos. - Yeah. - So, that's the only thing that I think could be really improved with the combat. 'Cause otherwise, it's a lot of fun. Like I said, I didn't get to play as much as Ryan or Fresh did, but what I did play, I really enjoyed it. And watching the, watching like high level combat in that game is super entertaining. - Yeah. - So, that's about it for me. - Aye, where? That worked out. - Really? What's up? Yeah, so, I played, I jumped back into Dragon Age, just started filling the itch for that. - After spoiler talk, 2010, last week. - That's actually the other game that I played this weekend. I'm just gonna say real quick, 'cause like I hopped back into Dragon Age just thinking like, yeah, I'm gonna mess around with this for a little bit. - 14 hours. - In like 14 hours, yeah. - Yeah, man, that game has a way of doing that to you. - Yep. - But I don't know if you guys experienced this, but I don't know if it's just me or what, but like if I have an active mission, and like I'm in the realm where the mission is supposed to, you know, be had, like how the fuck do you know you're supposed to go? Like most of the time I spend so much of that game just like wandering around. There's no like, on your mini map, it doesn't show you like, go here. - I honestly feel like Dragon Age during missions is so fucking linear that it's hard to get lost. - Really? - I, I, I really have no problem. It does have, it has happened to map. - It has map indicators if you're in the right area. - If you, yeah, if you're in the right area and it's your active quest. - It'll have like the exclamation point, right? But not like it has. - No, those are people that are giving away. - Yeah. - Yeah, if you go to your mini map, it'll have like an, an arrow on the map saying like, that's where your quest description is. - Maybe, I don't know, man. Maybe there's something weird with mine because it seems like I'm always fucking lost in that game. - No, that's a bummer, but. - That's pot. - Well, no, I mean, I, it's not a generally a, a problem that I have with games, but for some reason, Dragon Age, I can't find my way. - It's a little anachronistic. I mean, a lot of other RPGs now are much better about making sure you know where you're going. - I would say that's true. Like, I did, you know, I did find myself a lot of times having to reread quest descriptions. - Right, that's what I've been doing. Like having to go through and like read like, okay, what's the town? - Yeah. - Okay. - What, what section in the town? - Yeah. - You know, that kind of stuff, yeah. - But, what are you playing as? - Right now I'm playing as like the, the dwarf that started off like as a worker. It's sort of like a. - Oh, the dwarf commoner. - Yeah. - It's like a little dwarf. - He's really tan, yeah. - He's as black as I could make him. - He's questionable. - That's a cool origins. - Yeah, it is really, it's like crazy. - It was like a crime lord or something. - Yeah. - Basically, yeah. - That's his only option as an underclass dwarf. - Yep. - And then they want you to like, pimp out your sister and stuff like that. - Yeah. - Should you pimp out your sister? - Like every dialogue option I chose was like the most like hardcore thing I could say to him, but like I still never got a chance to kill the guy. Maybe I didn't do it right, but ultimately I was thinking like, "Man, let me kill this dude." - Can you play like a hardcore dwarf dick? - That's what I'm playing as. - That's what Anthony's interested in. - I mean, I killed a 10 year old boy. - That's correct. - Right off the bat with little. - Well, that's the thing with reservations. Well, that's the thing with Dragon Age, those that I bet, you know, I haven't played much as the dwarf. I just played the origin story, but all of the origin stories come back later in the game. So I bet later in the game, you'll get a fuck that guy. - Oh, really odd, yes. - And if you really want to know, you can always consult the Dragon Age wiki. - The wiki. - That is the greatest thing to happen to ridiculously complex Western RPGs in my opinion, is the wiki. And I got so much more enjoyment out of Fallout 3 than I would have otherwise with the Fallout wiki. - Man, yeah, I went to the facts for Dragon Age, but it's because I've been having so much fun messing around with the command orders. And so I went to the facts to try to find if there were any good suggestions, but I really didn't find any. - Programming your party. - I'm sorry? - Programming your party. - Yeah, yeah, I enjoy that, man. - Me too. - I think maybe it's like gratuitous space battles warmed me up to it, but it's like that whole thing. And then I know Final Fantasy 13 is coming out and like what I understand from it is like, you can program these systems and then on the fly, you can say, you can have like all these different ones and say like, okay, this party member is gonna have a ranged and a healing sort of set of action. - I don't think Final Fantasy 12 did. - You could switch them and shit. - That's why a lot of people got really mad at Final Fantasy 12 is because you could basically program the characters to play the game. - The gambit system. Yeah, but what I understand what's unique about 13 is the fact that you don't have to go into a submenu to switch your gambit or your party's gambit. And that's what I wish Dragon Age had, like a way where I could have like my mage like go from healing us to like, okay, now deal damage. - You know, I wonder if you can on the PC version. - The thing about this is me off-- - 'Cause that's such a PC like macro, programming macro sort of thing. - The thing that pisses me off in Dragon Age about that is that if you wanna do complex programming, you have to waste skill points for your party members to what to do that. - To unlock that extra tactical slots, yeah. - Yeah, but that didn't really serve as a problem for me because in those skill tree things, like I never used traps or like herbalism or anything. So I always had more skill points than I needed. Like once I got their combat one up all the way, then I just went for tactics slots. - Yeah, so-- - I just wish that they would have put something in that it would have been worth taking as opposed to that. So I mean, that's just so game breaking or not game breaking, but immersion breaking that instead of picking a new skill for your character to learn you basically make it so you can program their artificial intelligence better. It made me a little sad. - I don't know, when I actually read that, it made me think like, oh, that's actually a cool little trade off, like where it's like, you can have a certain amount of orders, but if you want more, you just pay for them. And plus it's like when you're leveling up, you do your, do you want your points to go into willpower strength? And then the next screen is like where you do the tactician or skills where it's also, they also give you the stuff like, you know. - I was always taking skill points to determine what weapon he could use. - Ah, I'm just having a bunch of fun with that, man. Just, you know, that's another one of these games where, you know, you mentioned like RPGs that have like just a charm with it because I mean, you know, Dragon Age, it's not like graphically, it's not the best game. But still it's-- - It sucks you in. - Yeah, it really does. And I don't know about you guys, man, but like when the combat heats up, I feel like there's so much going on. A lot of times I'll just pull the trigger and like while everything's like sort of like pause, just zoom the camera around, just kind of like see what the heck's going on. - Oh, I love that, yeah. - Because like, ah, I feel like sometimes like my tactical situations are getting away from me before I even realize they're there. - Yeah. - Like, oh, hey, look, here's this type of enemy, I can do this. Whereas like, oh, they got killed before I even knew anything was going on. - I like, I mean, sometimes it's kind of nice that it's almost like an action RPG on the consoles when you're playing it that way. - Yeah. - But unfortunately later on the game, you just cannot fucking play it that way because battles just become way too intense. - Well, I actually found that like after a while I was powerful enough that like, I was hardly ever pausing. Like, I was just, my, I would just walk up to things with my, with my rogue character and maybe use the mage to stun everything and then my rogue character would just take everything down and to max out. - On the PC, can you click on one of your characters and tell them to walk into a certain spot and then cast from there? - Yeah. - So you cannot fucking do that. - Oh, really? - Like, if you want to move a character somewhere, the action has to be going for everyone else and you have to tell everyone else to stay. Like, which means that they won't move of their own accord and sometimes they won't even fight back. - So you can't just like click on, well, like on the PC, you click on a character, then you right click on an area and like that counts as like move over there. - You can't do that when you unpause, really? - Yeah. - That's a bummer. - It's boss, yeah. - Yeah, that game is definitely best experienced on a PC. There's just no two ways about it. - I mean, if you, if you don't have a PC that you feel can run it, then the consoles are excellent. Like, I mean, or they will be excellent for everyone. - But it seems like, it seems like it would run on a lot of PCs, I mean, I'm a little ignorant about that. - Yeah, but some people just don't have that option. - Yeah, that's true. - Man, one glitch I run into on the, I don't know if this is a console thing or not, but a lot of times, if I press forward to walk and I let go of walk, my character will just keep on walking. - Oh, really? - Like, all the time and like it'll happen in combat where he'll just like walk right past the dudes and I'm like, oh, attack, attack, so from me. - It's because he'll auto-select a target and go for it. - But he'll pass the whole group up. Like he'll just keep walking. - He won't necessarily pick the ones that are closest. - Yeah, are you seeing like, everyone? Like, the buffet's going on behind me. And like, I have to turn my dude around and I don't think it's like a problem with my controller 'cause I don't experience it in any other game. - I'm sure it's just a glitch in the game. - Yeah, I mean, so that kind of sucks. It's like, I have to be real like on the ball with my character, making sure I put him in the battle and like I'm controlling him the whole time. I can't just hands off it. - I think I told you the problem I was having where I would walk him up to a group of guys and hit A to attack and instead of attacking like he would move to try to get him to what he thought was the proper position. - Maybe that's what's happening. - Like he would move for a good two seconds. Like he would completely reorient himself and I'd hit A again to attack and then he'd do half an attack then stop and then try to move again. Weird. - Balls. - I'm bored of your 2009 fantasy MMORPG. - Ah, this is gonna be a play. - Let's just go and talk about it. - Let's talk about 2005 RPGs like Oblivion again. - Or Fallout 3. (laughing) - It's only 'cause I'm not playing it. I really do wanna, I'm sure when I finally dragged into another one of those games, it's like Fallout. - No, no, no, no, no, no. - Since we spoiled the ending. - No, no, Fallout. - Fallout's one of those games you guys talked about for forever as well and Fallout's one that like I played the first hour and now I did not get super grabbed and then I went back to it and all of a sudden lost my life. - What I thought was funny was like after you played it, you said this may well have been my favorite game from that year. - Yeah, it was, I mean, it's just the year I played it when it came out, I tried the beginning and the vault stuff was so boring to me. And the same thing with Dragon Age, like the beginning part was like going kind of slow. - It's a little tedious, yeah. - But I know like once I get past that, it's gonna be like, I love the origin stories. Like I played, I went back after I beat Dragon Age the first time I went back and I played all of them. - I'd really like to go back and play the origin stories in Dragon Age. I just don't know when I'm gonna have time. - Yeah, yeah. They're not that long. - They're not that long. - Become a Grey Warden? - Yeah, exactly. - But the release schedule this year is so consistent that stuff is just like hammering over and over again. - So what did you say you were playing other than a dwarf, are you like a warrior or a rogue? - No, no, just the one dwarf character. - Right, but it's your class. - What's his class? - Oh, he's like a dual wielder, like attacking, like damage dealer, berserker. - Oh, cool. - I don't know what they're called in. - Do warriors do two weapons fighting? - They can, yeah. - I mean, that's like something that rogues. - If it's a fucking proper game they should be able to. - They both have it. They both have the dual weapon skills. - Just rogues should be better with their offhand in my mind than a warrior ever should. - Actually, Rangers are supposed to be better with their offhand. - Oh man, Rangers should not be able to do it. But well, Rangers are a specialized class in Dragon Age. - We're confusing our D&D and our Dragon Age rules. - Yes. - Even though Dragon Age definitely starts at D&D and just like fucking goes batshit insane. - So. - Tyler, anything else? - Yeah. Since I installed Windows 7 and now I can run DX10, I jump back into crisis. - How's that? - Man. Oh, it looks fantastic, like-- - How's that running? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Even going from like XP to, you know, I turned all the effects processors and everything up. And like, man, there's a noticeable difference. Like that game still looks damn good on DX9. DX10, it looks pretty fucking good. - DX10 just has like the really beautiful smoke effects. - One also, Windows 7 actually does have a performance increase for that game. - Oh, really? - Especially if it's in 64-bit. - Has a performance increase for my whole computer. (laughing) - Yeah, because like, you know, I actually tested it when I went after I installed it. Like I got into a really cool part where it had like a good shot of water, a good shot of like God rays coming to the trees and like, I fucked with the sliders just to see like how much of a difference it made. And like when you turned it on very high from high, it's like, but still, oh man, not that great of a game. I don't know. - That's what I've heard a lot is like people are saying, you know, it does a lot of, it's kind of like a stalker where it does a lot of really cool, interesting things, but the game itself may not be the best thing ever. - I liked it more than stalker. I think that the game is a lot of fun when you're fighting the Korean guys. Then once you start fighting the aliens, it's kind of a lot more boring. - We prefer it when it's racism as opposed to xenophobia. - Well, it's just that the Korean guys you fight, they do things like throw a grenade to blow up the house you're in, flush you out, try and flank you. Whereas the aliens have like, we jump towards you straight at you, only at you. And that's it. - You saw that Crisis 2 is gonna be in New York, right? - Which is not crazy. - That'd be cool. - That's the cover to PlayStation Magazine as well as for-- - Plus, I just think that a crisis, what makes Crisis so cool is that I mean, in the end, it's the suit, right? If it didn't have that suit, it would just be like a really pretty boring shooter. But the fact, I got so good at switching those suit powers the middle mouse button on the fly that I would just like, throw myself up on a roof, turn on armor, run towards the guy, turn on strength, throw him through the air. It really did do a good job of making you feel like a badass and giving you options too. Whereas other people I watch play, they would just use like strength and just sit there and camp a fludgeon and kill people all silent. - It's funny, they did a really great job of consulizing the interface in that game. - Yeah, I mean-- - Which is weird. - The radial menu and stuff. - Or PC game, yeah, like it would just translate so well to a controller. - But yeah, I mean, basically I'm saying that you're wrong. (laughing) - Or is I saying that you're right, I just said I got like a few hours into it and I'm saying I'm bored. - I mean like, so like, and it could be very small things, like I feel like the enemies take way too much damage. - They do, if you have a silencer under gun, cannot use a silencer, yeah. - The focus shotgun blast, man, it's like a fucking artillery gun. - Yeah, a shotgun's basically all I ever used. - And then I also felt like, man, I would have headshots lined up-- - I'm not saying it's like a 10 out of 10 game or anything like that, but I do feel like when Sean reviewed it, his score is browned, would I probably would have given it like an eight. - I might have given it a little bit lower. - An eight, which is what a lot of people give in it, so. - Yeah, it's probably-- - No, a lot of people give it a one. - I mean, I'm sorry, a lot of people get higher, but I would have given it like an eight, like, no. It was impressive for what it was. - It seems like, to me, like the kind of game, I hated these days when an enemy takes a whole fuck ton of damage. Like, especially in a game like Crisis, I would probably have been like, "Okay, you're going into easy mode." - No, that actually, that's what I did. I just got frustrated with them sponging up something bullet, so I was like, you know what, fuck it. Like, I can't see these guys through all the fucking leaves, but they know where I am. It's like that'll feel bad company. - It's not like they're achievements. - Omniscient AI, yeah. - It's time where if there were achievements in that game, would you have changed difficulty? - Man, I don't have any problem with playing on easy or normal or whatever, dude, it doesn't matter to me. - That didn't really answer the question. - No, no, no, no, I probably wouldn't have. I mean, there are times in Dragon Age where I switch it to easy if I'm having trouble. - Oh, yeah. - I'm just like, fuck it, I just want to have fun. - Yeah. - I don't care anymore. But yeah, you know, I've been playing through that and it's nice to see like, man, this is sort of a, my system working on full power right here, you know? It's still cool for that, like, and it still looks gorgeous. - Apparently, Dirt 2 on PC is another really amazing thing. - Yeah, it's supposed to use like DX11. - Yeah, it would use its tessellation and stuff like that and it was fucking amazing. - Cloth and crazy like, light effects. - Anything else? - Man, that's really all I've been playing. - That's a lot, though. - Yeah, I played a lot of Dragon Age. It's kind of inevitable when you start that game. - Mm-hmm. What about yourself? - Don't make us ask you to say-- - Arturo. - Well, I guess it's good that I haven't been playing like a ton that I could talk about considering we've been going for an hour and 15 minutes that I played a little more Dante's Inferno, but I figure at this point there's not much to say until that game comes out. - Right. - Other than I cannot emphasize strongly enough that they picked the ugliest part of the game to put in the demo. (laughing) Like I just don't like the ugliest and most boring, but also the least cheap part of the game in the demo. So it does end up looking better than that, but other than that, I can't really say a lot. I played, I saw, Anthony and I both saw a K&M which too last week. - We talked about that though last week. - No, we didn't 'cause I still barged. - Oh no, we were, but we just didn't bring it up. That's what it was. We recorded last Wednesday, so we could've talked about it. - Yeah, but it was embargoed until Friday. - I mean, if you want to talk about it, we can. - I'm not really interested in talking about it. - I mean, they're going for something different. Like instead of looking like a standard third person shooter, it's like framed, like it's being filmed by, it looked, they compared it to YouTube, I thought it looked like Cloverfield, like the way that it's framed. - It's very much closer to Cloverfield than it is to YouTube. - Is it the way Skate sort of took the camera and made it look like someone's holding it to this, like it's-- - Yeah, except imagine with the shitty or film grain. And on someone's shoulder. - It's like it's a DV cam in SD, like that someone is recording this with to where there's like, if a light is really bright, then it can cause like that weird sort of horizontal light banding. - Oh man, that's kind of cool, man. - And that there's like that digital sort of jitter in the picture where there are like squares that fall out of sync for a second. - Wait, so you're saying that's what the game looks like? - Yes, that is what the game looks like. It runs, it tries to hit 60 frames a second constantly. And that is what it looks like it's being filmed on a digital cam. - And while it may hit 60 frames a second, at this point it looks pretty rough. We're not worried that worries me 'cause it comes out this year. - Okay, they don't have a official release date. They were talking about targets, but they don't have any official yet. - Yeah, I mean, they had settled while back like May, 2010 or some shit. - Yeah, I don't think so. - You can't say anything about that. - But like, I mean, to me, that's interesting. Like I like taking an art direction that way where it's like saying like, okay, yeah, we can have all these like great graphics, but like what if we mask them up? Like, I don't know, it's like that. It's that aspect of like Alfred Hitchcock doesn't show you, but what goes on in your imagination is much more. - And then taking that further, like the extremely graphic moments in the game are mosaic out, like the kind of mosaic you see, like when they're trying to predict someone's identity on cops or whatever. - And see all that stuff is like, I agree with Arthur. It's like a really cool thing to do. - I think it's interesting. I think it's gonna work. - But it's like, it doesn't even explain like, like why is there mosaics? - Yeah, they couldn't explain what the, like how that would be explained. - You're not being followed by a guy with a camera. - Yeah. - Like, why is this a habit? - Because it looks cool. - Yeah, exactly. - That's basically it. - Which side? - Yeah, I mean, in a way that's fine, but even Cloverfield like contextualized that you kind of hated holding the camera the entire time. - At this point, the game to me just, it looks, it looks pretty rough. I mean, it just looks like it, it needs more, there's still working on it. - I think environments look, look fine. The environments are now destructible. The cover system is actually a traditional cover system now. It's not like the weird half-assed sticky cover system from the last one. - I don't know. We didn't get to play it though. - Yeah, we didn't get to play it. - I never wanna say how it feels. - The, I mean, the aiming looks like it works better than it did last time. But the character models are still pretty rough, particularly Lynch. - Like, who you were playing as the old time, I was like. - Yeah, Lynch is the main character this time around. Like, Lynch is who you play as. - And which one is he? - He's the one that's psychotic, the self-medicated. - When I saw that demo of me and Arthur walked out with like, Arthur was like semi-hopeful and I looked at it and I was like, man, not at all. But the one thing I will say about it is that I like, is at least there's online co-op. - Yes, there's that, at the very least. They're doing multiplayer as well, like the adversarial. But I think a different studio is working on that, which is sort of just the thing now. - Yeah, but I just like, there's online co-op. I mean, I would have probably played through the first one if there had been online co-op. - No, if we didn't finish Army of Two, there's no way in hell we would have finished Kane and Lynch 'cause that game gets so bad in the last third. (laughing) Like, it's just terrible. - You know what? The funny thing is that I got Kane and Lynch at a game giveaway and I'm still on the shrink wrap. I haven't actually done that. - You know, it's worth playing through most of it, but it just, the design, like the level design just really just falls apart. - It still feels to me when I played it, it still felt like, like if someone turned Hitman into a shooter, really. - Ugh, weird. I didn't like it. - Hitman did not. - To a large degree, yeah. And that is what it felt like, except the characters are much more fleshed out and the story was interesting to a point. - Oh yeah, I don't mean story wise at all. - But eventually, I mean, eventually they fuck up that too. Like, (laughing) - That's too bad. - And then, other than that, which again, we didn't play and I played some PB Winterbottom, but I talked about that last week. I played about 34 hours of Mass Effect Two. - What? - I can't really talk about that. - What, what? - I can't talk about specifics. - You asked, you know what you can't talk about? - I reviewed the embargo stuff and I'm pretty clear on what I can and can't talk about. - Prior to the embargo? - Yeah. - I won. - That game. - Yeah. - Oh, I won. - That game. - It's entirely in the room, so he can't hear anything? - No, he's leaning against P. - Okay. - You're written. - That's kind of a good excuse to leave though, 'cause I don't really want to hear anything. - I don't really want to hear anything. - Yeah, no, I'm not gonna say anything about the story, other than before I played it, one of my main concerns was how they would address the transition from a character that could be like between level 30 and 60 from the first one into the second one. - Right. - And I mean, they flat out said that your character is not gonna be the same level, that it's gonna be like, you're basically starting over from scratch. - Right. - And the way that they address that works. - Story wise. - Yeah, it works, it works completely correctly. It works completely, believably, story wise. It makes sense. It doesn't feel-- - But-- - Get all your implants removed and-- - And well, the cool thing is like, I would like, like, I remember in Baldur's Gate II, you know, like by the time you get up to level 20 or shortly thereafter, you're in D&D back, you know, in AD&D, that basically meant you were almost a god. And at the end of Baldur's Gate II, you really felt like one. So I'm hoping that like, I can understand them going back to the starting point for Mass Effect II, but I'm hoping Mass Effect III, the shit just gets crazier. - Yeah, so-- - And you just get more powerful. - That's the thing is that the way they do it in Mass Effect II, I can't see them doing that again for Mass Effect III, so I'm really, and they have committed in loading screens in Mass Effect II that your character will carry over into Mass Effect II. - It would have to. - So prepare now, once you start playing, be ready that that character will be used in Mass Effect III. - Awesome. - But the story is, I mean, like I tweeted last week, that game goes from zero to boner in about 60 seconds. (laughing) - Tom, when we got a debug copy in the office, last week Tom Price was just taunting me saying, "Dude, it has the most amazing opening "I've ever seen in the game." And I was just scoffing, and they were joking and teasing me about what it was. And when I finally played it, I was like, "That really could be like the greatest opening "I've ever seen." - Better than Half Life II? - Yes. (screaming) - We should just stop talking about it. I'm just scared that we're gonna say something can't be said. - No, I mean, I'm not covering really anything that hasn't been covered in preview stuff. I just have religiously avoided all preview coverage. What's going on in Mass Effect II? - Right, yeah, I've avoided all coverage of that game. I did get something spoiled for me when I went to the preview event. - Yeah, which is a shame, 'cause I think that's actually a big part of the beginning, right? - Right, but at the same time, I don't think it's gonna ruin it for me at all. - Yeah, I tweeted earlier that my space fish died, my video game fish died, and that was from Mass Effect II. My video game fish died in Mass Effect II. I'll talk more about it next week. - Poor fishies. - Yeah, don't talk more about your fish dying next week. - My space hamster, though, he's a fucking trooper. - You can talk about a lot about Mass Effect next week, but we don't need to go into length about your space fish dying. There's so much cooler things that I came to talk about. - I mean, I can't even talk about any of the characters, but it's just like everything is so what, like everything that you liked about the first one, I feel is present in the stuff that I think people have been playing about the last time around. I think that they will be happy without getting into too much detail. I have never driven it. - I think you can get into detail about one thing, though, which is in the last game, the big issue for console owners was the inventory system was terrible. - Yeah, that's not a problem. - That's good. - And I have not driven anything, ever. 34 hours of gameplay. (all laughing) If that gives you any indication of what you're worried here may not have been, I have not driven anything. - I can't awake the make-o. - I never had the problems with the make-o in the last game that people did. - I liked the fact that you could roam around a planet, but I just didn't like that there really wasn't shit to do. - Yeah. - Yeah, same. But I liked the make-o. - Welcome to space, Tyler. - Yeah, space is cold and empty. - The funny thing is, is the reason why I liked the make-o, though, it was pretty personal. It was that, have you ever read, came Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars? - No. - Those three books. - Nope. - Excellent stuff, but they talk about, like, he goes into, you know, materials, sciences, and the way vehicles would be improved in the future, based off the improvement of those. And like the make-o totally reminds me of a vehicle that could have come out of Blue Mars. So that's kind of why I'm playing it. It's like, I understand why this vehicle would work like this, because that's the way it worked, and Ken Stanley Robinson's book. - Yeah. - But it didn't. - Somebody buy-o, or it might be like, "He so knows what we got our source from." (laughing) - Like last year, I was just amazed why Assassin's Creed II. - Yeah. - Like in how I felt in comparison to the first one. And I didn't, I was so, so about the first Assassin's Creed, although I liked it. - Yeah. - Whereas I feel like my feelings on this as a sequel are similar, and I really, really liked the first massive fight. - Well, that's ringing endorsement. - I mean, not, yeah, I'm not finished with it yet. It could still drop off. - I think he used 10 out of 10, confirmed right there. - Yeah, totally. - I've never given anything higher than a 9.5, which was first Assassin's Creed II. I've been the low score, it seems like. - 9.5 is a low score. - Apparently eight is much too low of a score for Bayonetta, or so I've been told repeatedly. - Yeah. - But I mean, I wish that I could talk more about it. - Who's saying that? I'll go and punch them in the balls. - Oh, that's a neo-gaff thing. I was the lowest score on Metacritic for Bayonetta for a while, but I think the Onion AV Club supplanted me. - Our score as well. - Yeah, your score was four out of five. - Which is one of an eight to Metacritic. - Yeah, exactly. - See, that's probably what I would have given Bayonetta four out of five, I think it's a really good score. I didn't finish it, no. - Did you, are you finished with it? - No. - Okay. - But also don't think you have to finish again to review it, but that's just me. - I feel that game, you need to finish it to review it. - All right. - Word up. - Yeah, I'll talk more about Mass Effect next week, but I'm really looking forward to playing more Mass Effect too tonight. - Not bad. - No, I'm not, no. Just probably take a break. - Great. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - All right, we're back. This week, as far as our topic thing, we're just gonna use more of the topics that you guys gave us last week. - Cool. - Because we didn't use very many of them, 'cause it was a long show anyways. - It was a long for a second, 'cause Tyler appears occupied. - I'm listening. - He's listening. - He's just looking at a picture. - It was like a, you know, you wanted to talk. You were on your laptop last week, and we were recording. - That was for work. - And also just a picture. - This is for work two. So Tyler's doing work right now. God's work. (laughing) - The first topic is from Twitter user, Count Fenring, who says he wants to know, how will consoles compete with computers with the five year plus console cycle? So I guess he just means like, if consoles keep going for more than five years, won't computers get exponentially better? And therefore like, the games will be so much cooler. But I don't think that's the case, because I think like all these games are gonna develop for console first. So even if the PC equipment's getting where it could handle something way better, they're not gonna do it. - You know, it did. - Because the crisis kind of proved that that's dumb. - It totally makes me happy that game companies are developing things for consoles and PC simultaneously. 'Cause if they develop something that looks really good on a console. - That's gonna look fucking amazing. - It's gonna look fucking amazing on the PC. And it's gonna- - It's actually doing PC, April. - Oh my God, I still wanna play that on PC. It's gonna like, I'm gonna be in Venice. And then it's like, yeah, you play on a PC and you turn up the graphics all the way and it runs beautifully and it looks beautifully. So I think the good thing about this situation is just it forces game developers to make really efficient engines. - True. - But I don't think it's gonna be the kind of thing where like, you know, they keep saying that the PS3 is gonna have a 10 year lifecycle, just like the PS2, no fucking way. Like, that's just not possible. - I think the PS3 has more life in it than the Xbox will. - I think it does too. I think it's gonna take a long time for people to get all the power out of that system. - I think it's all Microsoft sort of bureaucracy slash future proofing that's making that the case because they're making everyone go through their SDKs as opposed to writing their own. Or is Sony pretty much through their people to the wolves right away and said, "Make your own sharpened sticks." But people are gonna make much more efficient sharpened sticks coating their own engines than I think that eventually the 360 will provide. But the next Xbox should be backwards compatible as fuck if that's the case. - Yeah, I think that's an astute observation. - So yeah, so I guess the answer to his thing is that, I mean, they don't need to compete because the console, I don't think there are gonna be too many people that develop solely for PC that are trying to push all the like the little juice out of a PC game. - I like to say the console subsidized PC development at this point. - Yeah. - That's a good point. And they leap frog, you know, they always watch each other. - Another Twitter user named WheelTalk had a much more simpler and stupid question, but I wanted to read it 'cause I feel like I could provide him some advice. What's your favorite handheld gaming position in bed? I get cramps and drop my DS on my face. - Does he like sit and hold it? - That's exactly what I'm picturing. He must sit on his back. Nah, well, when I do it, when I game in bed though. - Oh, thank you for saying that instead of just saying when I do it. - When I game in bed, I have a, what are those like back cushions called, you know, like with the little armrests and everything? - Oh, were you, they kind of sit you up a little bit? - Yeah, I use that or just do like a hospital bed setting where you put two pillows behind your bed, you know? - And fucking found another paper bag. - Ah, whatever. She's not making sound at the moment. Anyways, so you put a couple of pillows behind your back, you know, so that you sit up like, I don't generally lay down when I'm doing it. - Yeah, I know me either. - I mean, especially holding your game console over your face. Or, you know, I lay on my side a lot when I play games. - How weak is that guy's arms? (laughing) - Well, I imagine what happens when I play on his back. - She was laying on his back from us get really tired and then he's like, he's starting to nod off a little bit and then he's just like, dink. - If he has a normal day, like an old school DS, I suppose that could hurt too. - I'm sure he's exaggerating for effect. (laughing) - Maybe not. - Maybe not, maybe literally does drop him. - I mean, and maybe his eyesight isn't so good in which case I can understand that too. Like not making fun at all. - Yeah, I don't know. I just think that you should sit up both playing. Like for me, it's like, there's like a clearly a point where I'm playing games in beds, kind of half sitting up. And then I feel that point where all of a sudden I'm like, and I've hit that point where it's time to go to bed. Yeah, close, go to bed. Like I don't know, man. - Which is a DS luxury, just being able to close the lid and go to sleep. - Yep, as long as you don't leave it closed. - Another Twitter user called Django fetish. He says, that's a good one. - Why does the games press hate the idea of Dante's Inferno so much since when did everyone hold the poem in such high regard? I think he means like, you know, like why people are like, I can't believe they'd make this game off in one night. - I mean, I have a hypothesis about that. Go for it. - Me too. - First of all, I think they feel offended and pander too by the advertising. - The advertising is a big issue for me. - I absolutely understand because EA has run the advertising or EA's PR branch for that game has just destroyed any goodwill it would ever have just from start to finish. And second of all, they're taking Dante's Inferno and running it through the video game cliche machine. And I think that in 2008 and 2009, we were just hoping for something more than just saying, it's the ancient poem, except instead of a poet, it's a dude with a scythe and we've got tits. Tits everywhere. And I mean, I like Dante's Inferno, like what I played of it, I will defend it from a mechanical standpoint. And actually the story gets interesting, but it just EA has created that game's problems. In my opinion. - This other user, we're not gonna actually answer this question. - Ty, where you had a hypothesis as well. - Oh, well, I mean, I for one liked a lot of the advertising they did, like the fake protest I thought was rad and I thought it was rad when they sent out those boxes of Rick Rowling that the people had to smash out. - Those were awesome, but very few game companies, game sites actually got those. - There were hits and misses, you know, for sure. Like I'll admit that completely. - But like the booth babe thing and the Wii pray thing. - Yeah, yeah. - I thought the booth babe was hilarious. - Like that. - I thought that was hilarious. When I saw it, it was like this fake video game site that was like a trailer and everything for a game called Wii Pray, which was like a motion sensing cross that and it would like you would know when you were kneeling and you'd say the Lord's praying to them on board mic. It was like so perfect. - And of course the cross is shaped like the cross that Dante holds in the game, right? - Yeah, but you know, but it also looks a lot like a Wii remote. Like shaped like Wii remote with the cross part on it. You know, I thought that was that one was particularly funny. Like a lot of the other ones I could deal with out but that one was good. - Yep, but I don't know, I think when they announced like, hey, we're doing a Dante's Inferno games. Like a lot of people's mind went to like immediate to very literal interpretations of the poem. Like, oh, sweat this game is, you know, it's going to try to interpret this poem, like make a world around it. But it's like, no, they just kind of took a God of war game and put the dressing of Dante's Inferno on top of it, you know? - And I mean-- - Which I don't think is so bad. - To degree it's a double standard because I mean, fuck, Sony Santa Monica has been raping Greek mythology as they see fit to create the God of War games. - There you go. - So like they're paying much attention to a very established literary-- - Right, but I guess it's that they're not like basing it, even in its namesake off of like one particularly Greek book or something, whereas this is like Dante's Inferno. - Very specific. - The famous play, you know what I mean? - I mean, Dante's Inferno is based on common interpretation of the Bible. - Right, but they didn't just call it Bible interpretation. They call it Dante's Inferno. That's why. It's sort of like if they call it a street car named desire and then turn it into a third person shooter. - Yeah, it's a good point. - Yeah, it's just because it has that specific-- - I don't play that game. - I think it's just specifically because they call it the name that they call it. - I mean, again, EA has brought this on themselves. - So this is when we're not going to answer, but I just want to read it because there's one part in this that I thought was weird, which is just that his name's Chase and he says if you were tasked with making the sequel to an established franchise, what improvements or changes would you make, that's all fine. But in the parentheses, when he says to an established franchise, i.e. Kirby or Gears. Those are like the two franchise franchise. (all laughing) - Those are so-- - Does that seem weird to me? - Okay, my established franchise, I will take Kirby and Gears and make one game out of it. (all laughing) - We're a big old soldier with a gun that takes cover but can also suck in enemies and swallow them for their power. - No, Kirby is in cog armor. - That's-- (all laughing) - But yeah, just that's-- - I think I saw that game, it's called Quantum Theory. - Okay, I want to see a Photoshop of this now. - That just seemed like such a dichotomy when I was at Kirby or Gears. (all laughing) - Have you seen the, did you see the video for Quantum Theory? - No. - I've seen the screenshots of the Art Nouveau looking in soon. - No, it's not Art Nouveau. - Or what would you call it? - It's fucking Gears of War. Like, it's like Final Fantasy 8, Gears of War and shoot it out without chewing. - Oh. - So-- - The style they're implementing is Art Nouveau. - This guy has a question that maybe we could guess at, although I don't understand the real answer, but it's, or there's not really one answer, but Code 601 says, how do bad games still get made? You know the ones I mean, our victory in the like, he's once in a like, how do these games that are just like, so bad, like how do they get made? Like, start to finish, you know, public. - Do they get to make money? - Yeah, how does anything bad get made? - And in my mind, it's just someone who can pitch really well. - Well, not just that, but at some point, the investment is made to where they've put so much money into it, that they're like, well, at this point, we got to ship it and recoup. - I mean, most games start from the same place. It's just like the development cycle that determines whether or not they're good. - Well, and who's behind it, obviously. But yeah, I mean, it's like, at some point I imagine, it's just like, well, we've put $30 million in this game. We're gonna ship that fucker and try and get some of that back. I don't give a shit. - Well, it seems to be like, most bad games don't have a $30 million budget. - That too. - You know, they have like a $1 million budget, if they're working. - That's what I mean. But even that, it's like a lot of enough money that they're like, we can't just toss this away. - Right, yeah, exactly. - I mean, a lot of those games will make their money back, because it costs a lot. - Right. It's still a million fucking dollars, you know, got to put the game out. So yeah, that's a really interesting question. Like, I've always liked it when game sites and games media can do something, some kind of like post-mortem or retrospective with developers on games that flopped. - This week on, what the fuck happened? - Yeah. - So, this one guy just wants to know what podcast we listen to. - Am I the only one that listens to other podcasts? - Probably. I used to listen to a ton of podcasts before I worked at OneUp, even just because I had a job that I was in a car all the time. - Yeah. - These days, I don't, if I'm going to spend my time listening to something these days lately, it's audio books. - So, my problem is that, I think I've mentioned this before, is that I work in video editing, which means I can't work and listen to something else at the same time. I always have to be listening to what I'm looking at. So, it makes it actually hard to listen to podcasts, 'cause if I'm, the times that I'm not working, I want to be playing a game, and I can't generally be listening to a podcast at the same time I'm playing most games. But I actually, I subscribed to a few podcasts. I subscribed to Rebel FM, even though I hardly ever listened to it. - It unsubscribes you if you don't listen to a playlist. - I think I probably listened to, I don't know, probably one or two a month, maybe. - That's why you do that. - And then, I subscribed to this American life, but what I'll do is I'll have like, seven of those backed up, and then while I'm cleaning all day on a Saturday or something, I'll listen to a bunch of them in a row, you know, but that's really about it. Like, I don't listen, I don't subscribe to a whole lot of podcasts. - Yeah, me either. Not that there aren't great ones out there, 'cause they're over there. - I subscribed to the "Long Now" Foundation podcast, too. Those are really cool. - What is that? - Long Now, it's like a series of free lectures. - Oh, yeah, we're kind of interested. - Better that are online, just like all kinds, it's a little bit like TED, like TED talks. - Aw, are you, come on now, what? This sounds awesome. - Yeah, just go to longnow.org. - Or look for longnow on iTunes, and you can totally find them. - Okay, cool. - Yeah, they're good stuff. - Yeah, like one of the podcasts that I really enjoyed lately, I mean, they haven't been recording many is "Out of the Game" with Jeff Green, Sean Elliott. - Yeah, yeah, it's a cool one. Oh yeah, and of course Robert Ash, she's the light full-wave-- - Yeah, yeah, and Robert Ashlee's on there, too. I enjoy their discussions sometimes. - Yeah, definitely. - But they haven't put up a new episode since like December. - Yeah, back in the day, I used to listen to the cheap-ass gamer podcast all the time. I like those two guys. - Oh yeah? - Oh, cool. - TBD in particular is a really cool guy, and he's funny. - He seems like a cool guy. - And he has some gutter humor that I appreciate, just like me, so. - Arthur? - Fair enough. - No, I was gonna see if he was gonna skip me. - No, you listen to the bomb cast, right? - I do, I mean, I-- - That's like the one I need. - At this point, it's been an obviously, I made it obvious that I listened to the giant bomb cast. Occasionally-- - How was that? I've never actually listened to it. It's super funny, and I don't mean any disrespect to our friends that are still at one up, but it sort of captures a lot of the spirit that made one up yours good, except without any of the antagonism that was frequent to one up yours. It's like just four dudes who get along really well and understand their sense of humor, and there's like a definite sense of camaraderie and friendship there. And also-- - Those guys are really funny. - And I mean, they finish each other's jokes, and like, they'll totally just, they're all really funny dudes, and they're only-- - Yeah, I've listened to a few of their episodes. - I had a really funny one, where they drank a whole bunch of this-- - They usually-- - On energy drink from Houston. - Oh, drank, yeah. - That makes you tired, not energized. (laughs) And like, when they were drinking it, I was so excited, 'cause it's like a Houston thing. - Last year, for the first six months of last year, they did the drink taste tests for most of their shows, and they sort of tapered off. - Oh, okay. - You guys should also listen to the Game Spy podcast, 'cause-- - No, I don't listen to that shit. - I'm generally fairly happy with the Game Spy podcast. No, that's cool. - It's short. - And sweet, too, 'cause, I mean-- - It's like, yeah, it's like 40 minutes. We go in there just for a little bit, but-- - That's what I actually could listen to. - Exactly, in general, we have, we can be pretty funny, 'cause me and Ryan Scott kind of have an interesting dynamic. You know, it's Ryan when he's talking a lot more. - Right. - And then we have these two other guys from, you know, New York, New Jersey, who are so different from me and Ryan, but we have such great conversations about where our childhoods do cross, and it gets an embarrassing territory. We answer a lot of Game Spy Letters, which are sometimes even more embarrassing than the Rebel FM ones. So, I believe one of the key ones was, would you leave your wife if she lost all of her limbs, or would you stay with her? Such questions as that are the stuff we deal with. Or whether or not, how it is that lightsabers turn off and on. - I lost my train of thought, that's fine. - You don't know what other podcast you listen to? That's how you lose your job. - My big problem is that this year I made the resolution to not listen to podcasts, why run? I was gonna listen to audiobooks to try to expand how many books I take in. I don't know how long I'm gonna stick to that, because to be completely honest, I really hate audiobooks. - Really? - I don't like the pacing. - Yeah. - I make them listen to them every day in the book. - Yeah, and I just like to say that whoever they have reading the Dark Tower books, Stephen King's Dark Tower books, I fucking hate that guy. - Oh, man, our slavery. - Like, I hate his delivery, like in every conceivable way. - Oh, that's too bad. - Like, his inflection and pronunciation, and just his voice, like, makes me want to find him. - This is our secret way of telling me that he hates writing with me to work. - No, I mean, I don't, but I wonder if you'd get offended if I put in my earbuds while you were listening to the Dark Tower while we're driving into work. But I mean, I'm also listening to, I'm trying to listen to the Diamond Age right now, which is a Neil Stevenson book, and it's a really interesting story, but I'm just not, I hate, it's like 10 hour and a half segments, and that's just like so much time when I could just read it and finish it in a couple of days. - Right, yeah, I guess you really have to enjoy the delivery that's coming, yeah, you would. - Books are so much more of like a me and me alone kind of experience to me that I have a hard time listening to audiobook, so I don't know how, what, how long are that last? - Fair enough. - Oh, Smodcast, I was in the Smodcast. - What's that? - Kevin Smith and Scott Mosher. - Oh, nice. - Which is super funny and super dirty. (laughing) - No, ah. - Yeah, go figure. And they use way more copyright of music than we ever do. (laughing) - Yeah. - Um, is that it? - Yes, that's it. - Okay. - Oh wait, I don't interrupt you again. Zombie Puppy says. - That's all right, I'm used to it. - On Live is getting closer and closer to going live. We'll take over the download retail model. I don't know where he was telling him down. It's getting closer. - Yeah, I don't, is it? I mean. - Yeah, is it? - On Live will release this year in October, and we'll declare bankruptcy by next March. (laughing) - Yeah, you know, I don't know, man. I think someone's gonna hit this formula. You know, I don't know if online on Live is gonna be the first one to do it right. I mean, they got some pretty interesting things built in in terms of like, the way Microsoft did really good with the 360, like making the whole gamer score, and like, now with your avatars and stuff like that. Like, it seems like they're trying to do pushes in that direction. - I feel like at this point, we're at a spot where someone needs to do more than that, because those things are so entrenched. It's like if someone wanted to beat Steam in its own game, they would have to do not only everything that Steam does, but they would need to add more and do everything better than Steam was doing it. - Well, as a consumer, I want on Live to succeed, because I think the tech is the right idea, where like, I don't worry about hardware anymore, console or otherwise, you know, like it's not even my concern. And the only thing that they really have to deal with is pushing out video with as close to zero latency as possible, and my input is a control. And my control input, you know, is extremely minimal as far as a signal bandwidth goes. So that should be able to go to them easily, but what I worry about obviously is the output from them to my home, and whether or not that can be low latency enough to make gaming. - I, the other speed bump to online, in my opinion, is that more and more ISPs are moving towards tiered service where they offer a limited amount of download from-- - Which is why people really need to join the ECA. - The EFF. - And the EFF, and speak out in favor of net neutrality because the tiered service is one thing, but we're also talking about people, you know, limiting your bandwidth artificially. - The problem is that limiting bandwidth is, like bandwidth caps is totally net neutral, because they'll let you download or upload 250 gigabytes a month, and that's it. Everybody is treated the same. They have the same limits. That falls into net neutrality laws. That's one reason why a lot of analysts think that Comcast did that this year is because to fall into net neutrality, but to still limit that kind of service that they introduced bandwidth caps. - As long as it's limited for everybody and not, you know, who they favor and don't favor, but that's never the way it works. That was it for topics. - Really? - Yeah, I mean, there were a couple other ones, but we addressed, like, most of the really good ones, and a lot of the other ones were like, if you could design a game, what game would you design? - We already know what game you would design. - I know, that's what we've already done a lot. - We're too field medic. - Or some other ones would be like, "Why are the 90s?" One of the other ones is like, "Why are the 1943 servers laggy?" I'm like, "I don't know." (all laughing) "I don't know whether that we really wanted to go." - Why would you ask us that question is a better question, I think? - So, I mean, yeah, I think we kind of exhausted the ones that were particularly, like, thought-provoking, and then the Kirby and Gears one, which was just silly. (all laughing) - You know what I actually wanna know why it's laggy? Is I wanna know why Firefight in ODST is always laggy? Yeah, that annoys me. - Yeah, the netcode in Firefight is awful. - Did you have a couple that you wanted to do? - I mean, I'm sure I could look, but-- - Both of you, if you want, I can kill time while you look. (sings) (all laughing) - Kill time for about 90 seconds. (sings) (all laughing) - I'll do the "Grimlins" thing. (sings) (all laughing) (sings) - This musical break brought to you by After Nook by Ethan Tyler Barber, (sings) and their new duo, (sings) two dudes, (sings) on bikes. (sings) Please remember to buy the rel coming March 10th. (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) (sings) - When you see the waveform, it's going on this one big long hum street ring. - I saw one tweet in particular that just a friend of mine tweeted, but I retweeted because it is so great. It was that if you watch Pretty Woman backwards, it's Richard Gere turning Julia Roberts into a prostitute. (sings) (sings) - That's awesome. That should be a game. (sings) - That should be a game turning Julia Roberts into a prostitute. - That's the kind of game that Tyler would design. (sings) (sings) - So we can have field medics and pop two and turn and tricks, yeah. (sings) (sings) (sings) - Which actually reminded me of how there are, I don't think there are enough games out there that where you really deal with family, you know, like there aren't enough games where you have parents or wives and children or husbands and children, you know, to deal with this kind of stuff and it doesn't really affect the game other than like at the beginning of the game, your family dies and now you have to go and revenge, you know, there's stuff like that. Your family hasn't died, you're not taking revenge? - Right, exactly. So like, I just wonder what kind of motivating factors, you know, that could play into a game because those kinds of intense relationship conflict issues I think are fertile ground for game designers that they just haven't bothered to exploit. - Well that... - Did you find a couple of topics? - That did actually, it does actually lead into one I found, which is from what the fuck is Joe, this is Twitter name or WTF is Joe, asks will the success failure of, he says hard rein, but I think he means heavier than not a Christian Slater movie, hard rein, will the success failure of hard rein determine if more games will come out where a mature rating means more than just violence, et cetera? - That's kind of the great white hope, right? Is that... - I really hope not, I hope that that's not what affects that decision. - Why? - Because I don't think that heavy rein is going to be much of a success. - Well no, well what I'm... He's saying if it is a success. So let's... - Well he says, well the success or failure of hard of, he says hard rein, and I keep on saying it. Well the success or failure of heavy, he determined that. - Yeah, well I'm hoping that if it's, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm hoping if it's successful, then it will make that happen, and that if it's not successful, people will just kind of sweep it under the rug is another not successful game, but it won't prevent it from happening. That it won't be discouraged from attempting that content. And that's not, I'm not speaking to the quality of content of heavy rein because I've only seen it and I haven't played any of it, but what I've seen is not grabbed me. - Oh man, I played it at E3 and like I want that game more than ever. I thought it was... - Cool. - Like I realized we're talking about mature as in it being adult and not mature as in the ESRB rating, but like I mean the fact is that more and more games every year come out under the mature ESRB rating. - The Amrita games actually had their best year ever, financially last year I think is what I saw. - And I don't mean to insinuate that every game with mature rating from ESRB. - How would it surprise you considering one of those modern warfare? - Yeah. - What about Mad War, oh that's right. - Yeah. Well I mean the E rating still is the king of, the king of cash. - Yeah. - Yeah, I, you know, did you have any other ones that were particularly, I'll say that. - Considering that the average gamer is 32 years old, I think it's time that, you know, game developers find a way to market to and sell games successfully that are like what Tyler said mature is in, you know, for adults. - I would really like that to happen, but you know what, I'm just going to be completely honest, I don't think that the audience is the point where they'll accept it. I, as long as we're in a subculture that has a knee jerk negative reaction to any sort of discussion about anything negative, like about a game's portrayals about race or gender or like sexual orientation or anything like that, religion, like as long as we're dealing with a group of consumers that don't want to have that conversation that automatically say it's just a game, anytime that conversation comes up, I don't think that we get the games we deserve and as an audience, I don't think that, and there's enough of an audience that would respect that kind of content outside of indie games. I think that indie games can explore that much more effectively. - Anthony's cat is kissing my chin weird. Isn't there a. - If she wasn't, I would be. - Wow. - Isn't that kind of a chicken and egg problem though, is like, it's not just that the audience doesn't have it, it's that the audience has never had an opportunity to get it. - No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't think so. I think that the criticism comes first, like exploration of those topics and thought comes first and then developers say, "Oh, well, we can do that now." Because, I mean, gaming is such a chicken and egg thing where they'll only make something that they think they can sell. - Yeah, but I mean, I think it just, the reason why I love the idea of heavy rain so much is because somebody's got to have the balls to do it first. I mean, if you're just going to wait until you know you're going to be able to sell a game like that, then it won't happen. Somebody just has to take the plunge and do it and prove that it can be a success. If heavy rain can be that game awesome, if it can't be that game, I really hope that it doesn't discourage other people from taking up that mantle and pursuing it. - Yeah, no. I would love to see that. I think that any time anyone tries to deal with anything that there's just such a negative reaction or when the critical community has anything to say that it's a five or a seven or an eight or this game has bad graphics, like any time we step out of that comfort zone that there's this vocal group that tries to shut anything down. - That's true, but as though an attempted intellectual criticism is somehow belittling the rest of the gaming audience. - Yeah, I suppose, no, I think we are of a similar mind. I think you are hopeful, whereas I am pessimistic. - Well, and I think maybe where you guys are both looking sort of in the wrong place, I think we're really gonna see mature topics blossom in the indie game seem first before like the console games are really gonna warm up to that stuff. - Yeah, I think you're actually correct there. - As Tyler often is. - Tyler is a smart guy. - It's the new glasses. - Right. - That's what did it. - I know. They gave me intelligence plus two. - So I'll just read this one more 'cause I think that Anthony can answer this one quickly, which is-- - See, now you put the pressure on. - I think it'll be fine. AthanMags asks, has touting-- - That's the way to touch your balls. - There's a question like that, a couple things above. - AthanMags, do you ever put a rumble pack or dual shock, et cetera, under your balls? Please answer, honestly. - Yeah. - That went too. AthanMags says, "Has touting co-op gameplay become a shield against criticism for otherwise mediocre games? Are we giving them past for the co-op?" - I don't think that that's fair to say we're giving it out of a past, but let's just put it this way. Suffering with someone else is always better than suffering alone. It's always easier. - It didn't really protect Army of Two or its sequel from criticism. - No, I mean, but had Army of Two not had I not played it cooperatively at all the whole time, I probably would have liked it a lot less. I mean, that's true. It's just like-- - Co-op makes things better. - I wouldn't have enjoyed Resident Evil 5, I don't think, if I hadn't played a co-op. - No. - I don't think that it's something that gets it over like a free past, but co-op, me and Arthur used to joke about this a long time ago with Crackdown, co-op makes everything better almost always. - It's like chocolate and peanut butter, but I mean, that doesn't save a bad game from being bad. - No, I mean, for instance, let's say the original Kane and Lynch had had co-op, or the first Army of Two had co-op, and me and Arthur didn't even finish it. You know what I mean? It's like those games had co-op, which made us get farther in them than we would have if we were playing by ourselves. - Right. - So it's kind of like sticking it out together. - So it will always make any game better, but it only makes a bad game so much better, while it's something that may otherwise be a mediocre game, it can almost make it a good game if it's a co-op. - And I wouldn't even say that co-op always makes everything better like that. - I think it's just a way of like, it's like there are things you can do to make coughs or less disgusting as it goes down, but it's always still disgusting in the end. - Right. I mean, in the end, you know, the social experience of playing with someone else can make things just better, even if it's you guys ragging on how shitty the game is. - That's the meta game. - Yeah. - I mean, but yeah, definitely doesn't get it a free pass. - All right. - All right, let's take a quick break, and then we will come back with a few of your letters. Let's leave the person. - Great. - Yeah, we will go when no one ever knows that we will never do play the part, but that was the first time in the most depressing one is from a guy named Hunter. How is a guy like Hunter so depressed? - Hunter's a badass name. - Hunter that starts to kill himself. - Hunter not like a fighter. - He says, I have a very complex three word problem. I have no friends. And Arthur, don't you fucking dare say it's forwards because I is a letter. I wouldn't have thought of it if he hadn't said something, but it is forwards. - So I don't know why he wrote that out, guys. - That's awesome. - He says, I'm in high school at my New Year's resolution. I decided to make true friends versus just the superficial people I can scrape lunch money off when I forget mine. It's kind of complicated. During my freshman year, I lived in Roswell, Georgia from what I can tell it is similar to San Francisco and had friends there that I have known since preschool. I think he means San Francisco and there's a lot of liberal minded people and stuff. It's a big city. Anyways. - I don't think that you have been to San Francisco. - Then my sophomore year, well, maybe that's just in his mind. Then my sophomore, he's like, there they actually call black people black people, he's like, what? - Nothing. - What was that face for? - That wasn't a, you're offensive, that's just like such a terrifying concept that's probably accurate. And then my sophomore year, I started attending school in coming, Georgia, which is the place that is populated by two main groups, rich white people and poor white people, both of which seem to have never been around LGBT, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, African-Americans, Hispanics or Asians for more than their moments featured on Fox or Rush Limbaugh. And I hate these people. Now, it is my junior year and I'm sort of getting tired of actively hating my school student base. I plan to move to New York when I turn 18, but my questions to you are, I'm going to read these. - Yes, you're going to read these. - Okay, this will change, right? Two. Am I the only one who had no friends in high school? Three. - Fuck. - How do I make it through life? - Oh my god, two. - Daily life. How do I make it through daily life? Basically, the thing is when you're in high school- - Should we order to answer those backwards? - No, I just feel like the short answer for me is that when you're in high school, it's like a fucking Dawson's Creek bullshit. You feel like that's so important. High school is totally not important. You're going to go away when you're 18, and you're going to make some awesome friends, and New York will be a great place for you, especially the feeling, the way you do. - Just be ready for it to be expensive. - In the meantime, though, you can find places in people to talk to, like, you know, for instance, I have friends that I've never been in real life. Rory Mannion, one of the people who writes for games, but I play games all the time with that guy. I've never met him in real life. I would say that looking to video game communities online, whether it's message boards or other things, you can make some friends there that you'll probably have more in common with than any of the guys at your high school. Just a theory. I don't know. - I would have to agree that high school doesn't mean shit. I mean, you go back to the time when you were in high school, and you can remember how important shit was, because that was your entire goddamn world. That's all there is to it. - That's the most social aspect of your life by far at that point, because before that, it's like little fish, little pond, and now it's like little fish and big mean pond. - Right. - But definitely, like, the moment you can go away, especially if you're planning on going to college, college is the best place in the world to get your life in order and for it to be your life and for you to meet long-lasting friends. - You have to be willing to put yourself into that happening, though. You can't just expect to go to New York, and all of a sudden friends will materialize out of nowhere. You need to make an effort to get to know people, to make people to hang out. - Again, I think that message board communities and stuff can be like a great way to do that. - Especially if you're looking for fellow gamers to hang out. - You know what? I'm gonna tell, I rarely recommend this, but I feel like it is somewhere where you can meet people who are not complete assholes, as far as being racist, the something awful forums are incredibly active, and those people meet offline all the time. - Yeah. - They're called goon meets. - Yeah. I mean, there are online communities where I think you could find people with a lot more in common with you, until you moved to New York even. Just, I'm not saying that you should shut in, but I mean, if you don't feel like you're gonna be able to find real-life friends in high school, you know, maybe that's just how it is, you know, it's not the place for you. You know, there might be, I would encourage you to try and find some common grounds with those people. One of my best friends in life is a really conservative, actively evangelical Christian person, and I've managed to maintain a friendship with him just 'cause we've found common ground that we've managed to stay friends with for years. - Warhammer. - Yeah, it hasn't been tried at times, but I mean, I do think that there's opportunities there. You just have to, you know, maybe find a person who's open-minded enough not to fucking just call you a fag and walk away from you. - And if you are LGBT, I'm just gonna say flat out, I am positive that it would be better for you wherever you go in New York than it is in Georgia. - Oh, man, New York, yeah, I mean, you'll be fine there. I mean, and if you are a listener who's listening and you're not gay, et cetera, I mean, understand that these are the kinds of people that you are, whose lives you are making miserable by saying things like fag and gay over Xbox Live, these are the people that like, you're minimizing and tormenting. That's one of the reasons why I demanded Anthony read this letter. - Yeah, it wasn't that I didn't want to respond to him, I just wanted, I just wasn't sure if he would, you know, kind of be droning. - But you know what, like my mind goes to thinking, it's like maybe this dude, like maybe it's a good thing you feel alienated from all your peers, maybe that's your cue that you need to be some kind of artist or something like, you know, like people like Andy Warhol and stuff like that always felt like they weren't, you know, maybe you should find something else to spend all your time into. - Don't get shot like Andy Warhol. - Yeah, well, I don't think he could control, great, Andy Warhol impression you were doing right now. - I'm gonna move on. I'm gonna move on to Kyle's letter and he says to Anthony, "How does a pedicure feel? I'm half just busting your balls for ripping my man versus wild comment to shreds, I'm legitimately curious. It does make you feel like a little bit of a bitch, after I talk about how the man versus wild is so dumb and then he knows I got a pedicure. Actually getting pedicure feels quite awesome and it also makes you feel a little bit like an asshole in my mind because I had a pedicure and a manicure. And having two separate women waiting on me like that made me kind of feel like an asshole like one's going on. - First world douche, bro. - One's going nuts all over my foot, the other's going nuts all over my hands and they're just like talking in Chinese and I'm like sitting there. - People are struggling to survive and dig out their loved ones in Haiti and you have two separate Chinese women working on your hands and feet. - That would make you feel like an asshole. - But support your claim like I'm always telling like my brother-in-law, like my sister's always trying to convince her husband to get pedicures and I'm like, "Dude, if she's saying she's going to pay, you should do that shit." It feels awesome. - In general, that was the best part about it was the foot massage part. - Foot massage. - And did you get the massage chair? - Yeah, I didn't. - Like bad ass. - So I didn't. - In general, there's a bucket of hot water at the bottom of this chair that you just chill your feet in. Dude, there could be nothing more legit. - I fear that ticklish I can't. - It's glorious, but I mean the whole point of it is like I didn't even care about getting my feet pretty. It was just nice to have someone. - It feels great. - It feels great. - Working on you. - Anyways, man versus wild, it's still like, it's still a dumb show. - It's very dumb, it's just not, it's not as legit. - No, it's dumb. - I think I killed all kinds of shit for no reason. I still like man versus wild. - Well, you're dumb. - I just like survival. - I just like survival. - Dumb. - I just like survival man a lot better and for different reasons. - Thank you for real. - Yeah. Are there's going to look up a couple of letters that hopefully aren't depressing? - I thought that that guy would have been a letter that was bad. - Yeah, no we're recording. - Oh shit. - We can edit how we want, right? - I can manipulate time and space, but it's like this will never happen. - Not that depressing letters are bad. I mean, I was going to personally respond to them, but Arthur's right. There was a good reason to read that. - Yeah. - Read the fucking manual letters. - Oh man. - You thought that was too funny? - Not as mostly just coughing. - Zing. - Yeah, I guess it is just your use son of a bitch. Oh, this one's from Matt. - Oh well, I didn't read that one. - Because he's complaining about me. - Oh well, he just says like, okay, so the next letter is from. - Gamer Mandingo, which is actually extremely offensive. - Why? - Look up Mandingo later. - Oh, I don't know what Mandingo is. Why can't you just tell us? It's okay. - Mandong. - And we're going to fuck it up. We'll fuck it up. Mandingo. - Is it an ethnic slur or something? - Yeah. - Kind of. - Kind of. - Yeah. It's. I'm waking it up on Wikipedia so I can give you an accurate and I say accurate with finger quotes. It's about a slave. Mandingo is a slave name. - Oh. - Like a virile slave. - So he's a gamer slave. - That fucks white women. - He's a gamer slave. - I see. He just wanted to write gamer slave, but gamer slave was already taken. Anyways, what's his letter? - Um, alright, offensive email address guy. Thanks for not being a cynical douche, Matt, is the subject line to this letter. - Yes. - Thank you. - I'm not a cynical douche. - Yeah, correct. He said thanks for not. - Thank you for the slightly positive 3D talk last week. Most of the coverage so far has been very cynical and usually based around the previously crappy attempts at 3D, like red and blue grasses, grasses. - Glasses. - Red and blue grasses? - That was offensive. - Red and blue grasses. - Red and blue grasses. - That was offensive. - Red and blue grasses. - Red and blue grasses. - Red and blue grasses. - That was offensive. - Okay, Mandingo. I'm gonna make Asian language references. - Oh, this will be the last trouble, if I'm ever. Thank you for acknowledging that the tech is there now, 120 Hertz monitors and overpowered graphics cards and deliver a queer, judder-free 3D image. - Yes, it currently costs way too much and not everything needs to be 3D when it comes to games I think it's a perfect match. Not just for immersion but also for the fact that the hard work has already been done. Game developers already have taken the time to create these wonderful 3D worlds that we currently are only viewing on a 2D panel. It has to be the next logical step for games, somewhere between HDTV and the holodeck. - Wow. - You, sir, are correct. - I don't... - But you know what, Mand? - You contradicted yourself earlier. - You have yet to hand the controller to someone to have them not be blown away by playing Batman Arkham Asylum 3D on a 67-inch 3D HDTV, play that game in 3D and it will make you a believer. Thanks for not being a cynical douche man. - I saw it played on a 50-foot 3D display. - Fuck. - First of all, if you were playing at Batman Arkham Asylum in 1080p in 3D on a 67-inch 3D HDTV, you are not the average home theater consumer. - My exact point. - He said that though. - And you came out of the bathroom and you were like, "That popular science magazine cover is bullshit because until space travel is for all the people, it's not a burgeoning technology." It's like, "That's how I feel about that." - No, I didn't say it wasn't a burgeoning technology, I said it wasn't blown up. - Yeah, I don't mean it wasn't blown up. - Yeah, yeah. - 3D technology hasn't blown up, but 3D tech is the future. - I don't think 3D tech is the future. I think that consumer electronics companies are lucky that people are adopting HDTV much less. 120 Hertz HDTVs. - My parents don't have an HDTV yet. That's always my basis for when things have reached critical mass. When my mom asked me about WeFit, I was like, "There you go." WeFit. - Yeah. - WeFit's critical mass. - Yeah. - For reals. - Yeah, I just... - Just like the other day, my mom asked me what a juggalo was. - That was a real conversation. - Did you have a conversation with her? - Yeah, I had a conversation with her. - That's awesome. - Because she said that two of the kids at her high school that were threatening the local high school were threatening to kill people. And they were known juggalos. - She was like, "What's a juggalo?" - Yeah, you can imagine what happened. - Threatening to kill people as a juggalo is like saying, "Hey, man, you want to go to the store?" It's just like their language, their nomenclature. - Yeah, I don't know. It was just hilarious just because, you know, it's not like juggalos, like that's like their things, killing people or something, right? - Right. Like, my mom was, I was like, "Well, mom, there are people that put fucking paint on their faces and get together with a bunch of other stinky white people for a weekend. I'm like, "Dude, juggalo fast, I don't know what to tell you." Sorry. - We got a... Man, guys with names typically assumed to be female have been writing in and masterable of them. - That's awesome. - There's a letter that I'm not going to read from a gentleman from Italy named Andrea. - Cool. Andrea. - Andrea, maybe. I have to read this one just because of the subject line. - Okay. - It says 40 ladies. This is from Cody Hamill. "How do you tell the difference between flirtation and actual interest/attraction?" - I think that's attraction. Is there a certain length or duration of flirtation where duh, dude, she's interested? Thanks for the advice, guys. Fat penis. Cody. - So, I got my laptop back up. I'm going to read a couple more. And her hand is in your pants. - Yeah. I was going to say ask him the wrong looking dude. - So, Brinton writes in. - Wait, are we not answering? - Oh, sorry. John. - I did it. I am. - Holy shit. - Are you ever giving me shit for looking at pictures? - You know, we're not editing any of this podcast, an entire argument from earlier. - Stay in. - Breaker. - Just so that there's that payoff right there. - You know why this happened? Is because... - 'Cause you don't care what I have to say. - No, it was not that. But why you're reading the letter, I was trying to get my laptop to work again, so I wasn't paying any attention. (laughter) And I heard a pause in the conversation was like, "That means time to move on." - Ooh. - God damn it. - Why do I have to read this again? - No, no, no. Keep going. I just closed my laptop. I'm not going to read anymore. Do you know what the question is? - Oh, I have an answer prepared. - Go for it. I'm ready. - Do it. Okay, timer. - I just had you look between passive flirtation and actual interest. - You have to take the individual's history into account. Look at this girl. Is she like this all the time? - What if you don't know her? You can't bring a fucking survey into this. - What if you don't know her? - It's a fucking crap. - If he goes to school with her, just observe. And if she's flirting with him, I imagine he knows her. - At some point, you should just lay down the law and be like, "Is this flirtation or what?" - That's true. That might stop her interaction. - I'm not saying word it that way, but I'm saying at some point, if she pushed the envelope and if she responds well, she does, and if not, be like, "What the fuck?" - I would say, "Look for a pattern of being here." And 50 no's in a yes still means yes. - That was from family, yeah. - Good night, folks. - Like Matt, I suck at this. Like I can never tell. I can always tell someone who's flirting with someone else. - I can always tell when I'm being flirted with, and you can never tell what it's. - I can never tell. - To flirt with a penis time emphasis? - Yeah, exactly. The only way I know is what Anthony said and what Tyler said, actually, you've got to know some history and you've got to observe, so if I can see them around other guys and see how flirty they are, if they're like really flirting, I'm like, "Oh, I'm just another guy." - Sometimes you just gotta take a chance. - Sometimes you've gotta just take a chance, if you're interested, you've just got to man up, looking back, I would say, if their body language transitions to where they get closer and closer to you, that's generally a good sign. - Me? - Me? - Me? - I've had a girl with my shoulder. - I've had situations like that totally backfire I've had them succeed. There's no right answer. That's the problem here. - I hope to see that. - Just be cautious that you're just not acting as this girl's ego boost, basically. I'm flirting with you so you can play with my hair, and, you know, if you're interested in actually meeting girls, and having romantic rendezvous with women, you need to be prepared to fail. - Not to be a dick, but the other reason that I think I totally ignored you guys' question, and why I moved on, like a dick mouth, was that a... - No, no, abase yourself more, please. - Was that I had just seen that phrase in the letter I was reading, right when I wanted to read it? Yeah, yeah, so I got distracted by that. - You just fucking zeroed in on rendezvous with women. - Yeah, so I was like, I was like, ah, there it is. - All right, what did you have? - Okay, that's it. He had some stuff to you. - Brenton wrote in, and I'm not going to open my laptop again, but yeah, to sum up his letter, basically, he wanted to know, you know, we see a lot of games, journalists move into development, like Jeff or Sean, and then, but he wanted to say what about, he's heard about developers moving into journalism, and he doesn't really understand how that can work. Because, you know, like, how are they qualified to do it and stuff? - What does that happen? - I mean, well, you don't know, I mean, if they're good writers, they're good writers. And basically, all games journalists are, a lot of times, are good writers with an opinion. So if they're good writers, and not only that, but if they've made games, you know, then maybe that will bring an interesting perspective to the text that they write, you know? I mean, I've read, I mean, it's like, imagine like a guest piece, if you like, saw an article written by, you know, a famous, like, game maker, and he was writing about these games that have been instrumental to games, like you'd be interested in that because of the perspective he has. So as long as he's a good writer, I don't see how that's a problem. And Brenton ended his letter with rendezvous's and woman in parentheses, which made me wonder if he's like the guy that wrote in there with that first letter, like, was he the rendezvous's with woman person? I don't remember, but... - No, that guy did not speak English. - Yeah, well, it makes me wonder if Brenton was just fooling with us now. Because it makes me, that letter read like someone typed it out through into Babblefish, some language through, back in English through Babblefish, and put that into the letter. I think it's so broken. But did you have another letter? - I just, someone called me a player hater in the subject line, but never really explained why. - Just Arthur as a player hater? - Two questions for Anthony. - This guy. - And that player-hating Arthur. - Discuss. - Wow. - I'm just imagining, like, the professional player hater's in Chappelle's show. - That's all I can say. - Certainly your squad number. That is a really great skit, though. That particular day of Chappelle's skit. - Yeah, it is. - It's a great one. - Oh, man. - Is Snoop Dogg in that skit? - I don't remember. - No. - I don't think so. - Now you see why sometimes I stumble over letters because people write them with a wall of text. And you're like, "This is why." - This is someone that was writing about us making him feel stupid for reading his letter. - Ah, you shouldn't feel dumb because we read your letter. - I think it's the way that we reacted. - I don't remember his letter, but-- - Oh. - That happens. Well, sometimes we laugh at it when it's not really a laughing matter, I guess. - This is from Anthony Coachete, basically. He thinks it because we read a letter and thought that it was dumb, that we have no longer read any more of his letters. - Oh, I pretty much read every letter that comes in. I just don't necessarily-- - Really? I feel like there's a ton of letters we get that we don't read. - No, no. I mean, into the box, I don't read them out loud on the podcast when I'm saying I read them all. - I think he means read on the podcast. And let me just-- - Oh, no, let me-- - A lot of letters. And there's no way that we read all of them. We read maybe three or four-- - Not just that, but you probably don't remember people's names. Honestly, Anthony, that should tell you right there that I don't blacklist your emails because I don't even remember what your letter was. - That should make you feel better. - 'Cause I don't ever read last names hardly. I just think of them as a first name, just to protect the innocent. - Some people complaining about my bayonetta stance and trying to say, well, certain girls like it's a hug to be misogynist. - Ah, yes, a woman liked it. - Yeah, that's right. (beep) Says the bayonetta's not misogynist. Also, bayonetta's not misogynist. - We'll be gone. - I'm gonna edit that out. (laughter) 'Cause that comes a little too close to talking shit that I am comfortable with. - Yeah, fair enough. Is there any more letters there? - No, I think that, well, I mean, there's lots of letters, but I think that's it, 'cause we've been going for two hours and 19 minutes, and I'm gonna have to cut out a go. A good nine or ten minutes from the podcast. - Yeah, well. - More entertainment than Avatar. - Whoa. (laughter) - You shut your mouth. (laughter) - Avatar was brilliant. - I see. - Really, I liked Avatar. - I saw Avatar three times. - Really? Oh, that's right. You have. - I've seen it twice. I saw it once in IMAX, and I saw it once in normal 3D. IMAX was totally-- - I saw it once in IMAX twice in normal 3D. - IMAX is way. - Anyways, thank you for listening. - Do not listen to the Geek Box. - Well, you can listen to the Geek Box if you want. You can find it at GeekBox.net. - And you certainly shouldn't retweet when Ryan Scott posts about it. - And then you can listen to the mobcast at bitmob.com, and you can check out the area five video podcast co-op at area5.tv or revision3.com/co-op. And you should review us on iTunes. You should send your letters to letters@eat-sleep-game.com if you want to have them read. So that we can mock you, and you can feel like I'm more on. I guess I don't really mean that, but some people apparently must think that about us. - I mean, we're always glad that you're right. - Yeah. - You just may not like it, you know? - I even read the ones where they start off with, like, Anthony, you're a douche because-- like, I still read those, you know? - I don't. - And, you know, so thanks, review us on iTunes. And-- - I mean, I read the ones that say you're a douche. - We'll see you next week. - Love you. - Martha, you're a douche because-- - It's like an absolute douche. [coughing] ♪ Was the convert of a tradition ♪ ♪ But the fear that you were not that kind ♪ ♪ And it's a shame now ♪ ♪ Baby, you can't see yourself in everything you're running from ♪ ♪ And it's the same world ♪ ♪ Money that has brought you down ♪ ♪ As the one that's gonna pick you up ♪ ♪ And pick you up ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ You're one with the echoes of conversation ♪ ♪ You're one with the strangers you overheard ♪ ♪ You're one with the lesson ♪ ♪ It was the best one you've learned ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It was a faith line ♪ [BLANK_AUDIO]