Rebel FM
Rebel FM 47 -- 01/13/10
This week's show features the normal crew as well as special guests Ryan O'Donnell and Matt Chandronait from Area5.tv's Coop (the former 1UP Show). Join us as we discuss an array of games we've been playing (including several indie games), as well as your Twitter topics and some letters. Enjoy!
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) ♪ There's nothing good on the radio ♪ ♪ Once again, I didn't know ♪ ♪ There's your hard time too ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ ♪ The rebel of hell ♪ - Hello and welcome to rebel with him some odd number. - 47. - 47, the important thing to know is that you've just threw both in podcast and I'm Anthony Lagos, with me is Tyler Barber. Hey, what's up guys? Arthur Gies. - Well, I'm sorry I was doing something. - Yeah, that's what I fucking thought. - I wasn't ready, I wasn't ready. - No, okay, that's Arthur Gies. You heard him talk, he's doing shit. And then-- - Well, I wasn't, I just fucking with you. - And then there's Ryan O'Donnell. - Hi. - And Matt Chandranet. - Hello, hello. - In some ways this is like a baby reunion show of our one year show from-- - Oh yeah. - And we first got the very first episode up. - Yeah. - Awesome. - Because I mean, Phil Collar is in Minnesota, gaming former, and Nick Stuttner is a loss to us. - God. - He's on the island. Oh, different loss, sorry. - As far as I'm concerned, this is like, this is like the original podcast without the fat. - Oh, she prefers. - Can I mean that because they're both fat people. (laughing) - They're definitely fat with hair. - Yeah. (laughing) - So anyway-- - Here they have lots of hair, these two guys. - Yeah, so anyways, let's talk about games and since you were playing games right up to the second, we started recording Ryan, what have you been playing? - I've been playing lots of stuff, lots of games. Let's move on. (laughing) Sorry, I hear you've been piloting robots. - Yeah. - Sex robots? - No, although I saw a picture of a sex robot today that looked like a chipmunk, but-- - Her name's Roxy. - Yeah. - Roxy. - That's pretty bad stuff. - Have you been playing with Roxy? I don't actually wanna hear about it. - No, I've been playing with the video game equivalent of Roxy, which is a steel battalion. We pulled out the steel battalion. - Is that even possible to pull that out forever later and still play? That game's intimidating. - So I, someone spilled a Coke or something on my controller and so it has been sticky for a great many years. And I saw on Twitter today, Michael McWhorter was talking about how he thought steel battalion was gonna be the secret unannounced, but not so secret, Natal project from Capcom. Like they've said they're working on a project for Natal. - Did they make steel battalion into that? - Yeah. - They're saying they're making a gamer's game, right? Was that something that said? - Yeah, it's an old school franchise that we haven't seen for a while. And there's no way anybody will ever guess it. - Yeah, Chris Kramer has said there's no way that anyone will guess it, but when we announce it, you're gonna be like, holy shit, that's awesome. That's basically what he said. - Man, I'll be down for that, I own it. - No, I don't. No, I actually, I don't think it's steel battalion at all. I have no idea I went and looked at a Capcom. - I thought that that's what you were about to tell my truth. - So I went and looked at a Capcom wiki and looked at all their games and I couldn't figure it out. I'm like, I have no concept of what they're gonna announce, but it reminded me that I have steel battalion and that the startup sequence for the mech is like one of the most, I mean, the game is fucking hard. It's super intensely hard and I have never gotten further than maybe like the third or fourth level or something like that. - Yeah, I think that's about as far as I've got. - You're about to die and you don't eject, it doesn't it delete your safe? - Yeah, we had to have a ghost today. And the funny thing is is like my little brother was up in Montana with my cousins and one of my cousins has steel battalion and was letting him play it and he posted on his Facebook status. He was like, yeah, I gotta play steel battalion for the first time and I gotta say, it's probably my favorite startup sequence in a game ever 'cause of the way you start up your mech in that game. - It's not even that it's like the best, 'cause I can't even think of another game that has like a startup sequence but it's that this thing that you do. - Well, it's also 15. - That has nothing to do with the game really is one of the coolest things you can possibly experience in video gaming if you happen. I mean, just 'cause it's completely unnecessary. Like you hop into this, the game starts and you're in a cockpit of a mech but it's not started yet. So instead of like hitting the go button or hitting a start on your controller, you have to flip five switches, you have to hit a bunch of buttons, you have in time and then like every single button on the device lights up in this in sequence and it like it's part of a boot up sequence. - Exactly, it plays like the sound that sounds like a, like a max startup sound and like the thing starts. It's completely absurd but it's really freaking cool. And then you start playing and you realize, man, there's three pedals on this thing, two joysticks, a thumbstick and buttons for every little thing including zooming and changing the size of your mini-mapping. - Wiper. - And shield wipers. - It's a structure robot jucks boner. - It's basically, it's really super immersive, you know? Like if that game was in 3D and had good modern graphics and you know, if the controller was a little bit-- - One thing I had to say from playing it, the graphics may have aided it a lot because I felt like the scale that they would present. Like when, you know, like there's like that first level where you're sort of storming the Normandy beach and like when you would fire a machine gun and like just see your, the tracers of your bullets like take forever to get to the beach and then like little sparks in the background. - Yeah, stuff like miles away. - Yeah, like the visuals almost reminded me of that like AC-130 look, you know, like it's real grainy and man-- - I mean, 'cause you're not looking out of a window, you're looking, you're supposed to have a monitor in front of you in your cockpit of your mech and so they'll do like, what's that? - I'd prefer a porthole myself. - Well, that's not what they were going for here and so you get like cool distorted CRT graphical effects and stuff, like when you, there's like a pedal, one of, there's three pedals and one of the pedals, you slam it down and press to left or right on this one particular stick and you'll do like a jumping dodge move. - But if you like do it too fast, you'll fall over. - It's so fucking punishing. - So it's really punishing, but it is like super immersive and kind of cool and it was just fun to go back. I wiped down my controller so it wasn't as sticky and we had a few hours of fun with it, reading through the manual. That's the other thing is it's got this giant manual. It's not, there is a manual inside the game case, but it's like, turn on your Xbox console and plug in a controller. The real manual is this giant book and it's the actual manual for a vertical tank. Like in the way it's written is such that you actually purchased, you know, like you are the pilot of this new walking tank and so-- - It reads like army field instructions. - Yeah, it's like pretty hardcore and intense. So Matt was like commanding, was piloting the thing and I was like sitting there with the book reading him parts out of it. And I don't know, it was pretty fun, but it made me want to play something a little bit less punishing when I killed our character by not ejecting. So I wanted, and this, the reason I decided that we should play this was 'cause I had played the Dark Void demo recently, which just felt like a lot like Crimson Skies, the game we were playing on Game Club. - No, it was fun. - Yeah, I only played the demo so I haven't played enough to make a judgement, but I felt like it didn't feel very visceral. It was the main thing, like I didn't feel like it was very fast. So it got fresh and I talking about Zone of the Enders 2, which we put in also today, which is another hard game, but we played it on Easy and it's much, much more forgiving that way. And that's been really fun and super hilarious 'cause it has like the worst English dialogue that I've heard in a very, very long time, but I highly recommend if you need to laugh checking out Zone of the Enders 2 or if you like good games with robots and stuff. - Yeah, the combat looked awesome. It's super cool. - Do you own that solely because at the time you bought it so you could play a demo? - That was a good one. - That's the Zone of the Enders 1. - Oh. - Now we were specifically making fun of people 'cause I have that too and we pulled it out. We're making fun of people who just bought it for the demo. I'm not saying you shouldn't, the demo shouldn't have-- - I would say about 80% of that game sales. - Totally, it was when I worked at EBE or GameStop wherever at the time and it was one of the most heavily traded in games that I've ever seen. What do you think that the Capcom game with Nutalas? - Shit. - It doesn't even have to necessarily be a franchise that's diet, it could be something-- - They just said it's a franchise that it hasn't seen. - Oh, it's a revival? - It's a revival. - It's a revival scene in a while. - And they have so many IPs, it's like-- - Yeah, I don't know. - Or do you even-- - A lot of people are saying strider, but that seems like an obvious choice. - It could, you know, yeah. - This is like a weird one. - This is like a weird one. - With your hands. - Man, that'd be so dependent on them getting the latency down with Nutalas though, which is something that seems like they've had trouble with. - I feel like, I mean, do they do, you know, like sort of any sort of sports games? Like, I mean, they don't really, but I'm trying to think like-- - Like some sort of-- - If there was some sort of-- - Like some sort of-- - Super dodge, but you know, they don't make super dodge from all of the tech. It's techno's I think, right? But if there was a game like that, that seems like it would translate to Nutalwell. But maybe they're doing a whole different gameplay mechanic for it that we've never seen before. - Maybe we're due for a biodeck command or revival. Oh, wow. - Well, I wanted it to be steel battalion because can you imagine, like, instead of the controller, you just have like this virtual interface. - Well, not having to spend $200 to get the game would be right. - Yeah, my new report meets steel battalion. - Well, in the biotech mythology, that's how they actually pilot the battle meds. - It's by like touching the air. - Well, it's through like movements. - Yeah. - Just like pantomiming. - I like having the controller. I think it's kind of neat. - It's super, it's super mechanic in this world. - Super battalion is the Antian at all. - Yeah, it kind of is. - And, you know, it's an Xbox One controller, which, so it has that funny, I mean, it's technically USB innards, I guess, but it's like got a funny connector on the end. I kind of wish, I don't know, I kind of wish they made a game that used a different interface that didn't require the controller, but for all the nut jobs, you spent all the money on the controller that you could play a more modern game with it. - I have a mech warrior four mod for the steel battalion. - Whatever, if it had a USB output for it, you could play, you know, people could mod the shit out of PC games and use it or something like that. - The USB adapter strikes flex controllers. - Yeah, but I mean, does anyone use them? - A lot of people did, actually. - Really? - Maybe I should look online for that sort of small ones. - Have you been playing anything that was made in the last two years? - Yeah, I've been playing Clash of Heroes for DS, which is a... - How far are you in that, pretty far? - Very far. - Do you like it? Does it hold up farther? 'Cause I only played, like, the prologue. - Yeah, I think it's great. It's my favorite DS game of last year, probably. Although I didn't play all that many DS games. - That's fair. You can still say that. - Yeah, I played... Yeah, it was my favorite. I played Spirit Tracks and I didn't finish that and I played, I don't know, not that much else. I guess Rhythm Heaven a little bit at the beginning of the year, but I didn't play many DS games, but this one stuck with me. - What about those things, that story? - I didn't. Fresh played that, so. - I still keep meaning to do that. Keep forgetting. - I've been, I have a sort of weird relationship with the Mario RPG games, some of them I like and some of them I really don't. Super Paper Mario, I thought was like one of the most disappointing games of the year that it came out and so. - I have a quick question for you. - Sure. - Just 'cause this came up earlier and it seems like you would have an opinion about it. - Yeah. - Mega Man 2 or 3, which is better. - Ryan doesn't have opinions. - Three. - Three. - Fucking three. - He says three. - Why do you, just because you could... - I actually have no opinion in this. - Take the second controller and, like, tape down some buttons so you could jump really hard. - All right, there goes his. - Yeah, you could do that. - I actually do remember that now, but no, that's not why. - Well, because this conversation came up earlier and Ryan Scott was the only one that was saying two. - I think two is a better design game. Like, all around, I played more of three because my friend had two and I convinced my mom to buy three. So I definitely played more of three. I know that game better. But I mean, in terms of music, the actual boss characters and the level designs and that sort of stuff, I think two is definitely a more classic game. - And two had a book written about it. - Which, really? - Those are really. - Those goastic. - Oh. - There's totally a Mega Man 2 one. - God, wow. - I just, I mean-- - Shadowgate one. - Mega Man 2 has your master one. - Outstanding music. - Yes, it does. - And really, really, I mean, I felt like at three, three is still a really good game, but it's where the boss characters kind of got less and less iconic. It's kind of like Street Fire fighting game syndrome. Oh yeah, definitely. Like think about Street Fighter I. Who was it that brought this up and had a-- - Was it me? - Was it you, Tyler? Oh no, it was David Hellman. So David Hellman, the artist of braid is a friend of ours. And we were talking about Street Fighter the other day 'cause I was playing Street Fighter IV. And-- - Who was that? Who was at your house on Monday? - Yeah, that was him. And he was mentioning that, you know, the Street Fighter II characters back in the day were like really stereotypical. He said something like, Elforte is the best new Street Fighter character because he's like a stereotype, you know, the best like stereotype of like a Mexican sort of, you know, what you think. - He's the racistest street fighter in the world. - Yeah, he's the most racist new character. And I was like, I was thinking about it. He's like, yeah, you know, that's how it was. There's the Fat Superwoman guy, if you want to play the Japanese guy or you know, the Chinese girl, if you want to play-- - He went to Brazil. It was really surprising. - Yeah. - It wasn't green. - That's exactly what I said to him. - The Indian yoga guy. - Yeah, I have. - So where was I going with this? Racist characters and-- - Iconic. - This has something to do. Iconic. - Mega Man. - Mega Man. - Characters are coming up. - Sorry. - Iconic. - Yes, thanks. - So, you know, the original Street Fighter II had these really iconic characters. And I feel like with Mega Man 1, Guts Man, Cuts Man, you know, it was, they were, the characters were really straightforward. There's a fire guy. There was an Iceman, you know, that sort of thing. And like anything else, the more you keep iterating on that, the more detailed and specific each of the characters need to be. And I feel like it makes that game less interesting when they have to try-- - I feel much harder. - And three were more interesting though. Like the seeking snakes and the Gemini lasers and stuff like that. I don't know. - They're kind of cool. Metal blades are in two, right? - I didn't mean to derail this podcast and do an episode of the Retronauts. - All I know is like, I like both those games that if I had to make a gut decision on which one was like the better, more important game, my gut would say Mega Man 2. That being said, have you checked out the boss list for Mega Man 10? - I have not. - One of them is Pump Man. And he has like a water pump on top of his head. Now my question earlier when I heard that was like, what do you shoot when you kill him? Like what gun does he give you? Like what do you-- - Don't you shoot. - Like are you just gonna shoot Pump Handles? Like I don't understand. Like what is it that you shoot? You pump anti-bacterial movement. - That's not what I'm thinking, but it's on me. - I don't know, as you expect, I heard Ryan complaining about how stupid those names are. I'm like, the most popular one that everyone knew about so far was fucking Sheep Man. - The Sheep Man. - There's Sheep Man? - Yeah. - See that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. - Yeah, so what is that name? - I also think that that is like poking fun at Mega Man. - No, I mean, I get it. I just, you know, that isn't classic. You know, that's not something-- - It's no oil, man, I'll tell you that much. - I'm poking fun at Mega Man History is releasing Mega Man 10 looking like a Nintendo game. - Which is-- - Still making people buy it. - Yeah, I mean, I would like to be able to buy more 8-bit games. Like the other game I've been playing a lot lately is Derek, you Spelunky. Have you guys heard about this? - I wanted to try that. - It's an outstanding game. It's a roguelike platformer that's highly inspired by Zelda, the original Zelda. It's really open-ended and is there pumping going on upstairs? Is this pump man upstairs? - He's pump man upstairs. It's actually that we just live above below, actually, a pair of really large people. - Oh, okay. - And so when they walk the whole floor crease-- - Got it, got it, got it. - And they move furniture at like two and three hours. - Yeah, I feel like they're doing a meth lab up there, something that's constantly-- (laughing) - That's what I had. - That's what I had, yeah, that's true. - Got it. - I guess they don't dip into their own stash. - Anyway, Spelunky is a roguelike. So every life is super short. You have very, your health is hearts like Zelda, and you start with three or four of them. The only other things you start with are bombs, three bombs, and three ropes that you can use to climb vertically up a short amount of this cave. And the idea is that you start at the top of the cave and you work your way down through these caves, and as soon as your health is gone, you die, and that's it. - Bomber man meets Zelda meets a dig dog. - That's the end of the game. When you die, that you die, you die. - When you die, you die, and you start over. So in no single life or play through this game, well, you ever possibly see everything that this game has to offer. So there's just a different, you know, when I'm playing a game, usually my goal is to gather all the items and see, you know, use every ability and see everything that the designers have put into the game, you know, as I play through it. But in this game, we have to have a different sort of mindset because you don't see them all in one life. You see them piecemeal as you play through every little bit of the time. And because the levels are generated, they're randomly generated, always different. You never know what you're gonna come upon. So like the first time I was playing, and I got to the second cave, I was like, holy shit, what's this? And I walked over and there's a store there. And the items in the store are like something that looks like a flipper. And I'm like, dude, I'm in a cave. You know, there's like boots that have spikes on them. I'm like, okay, well, those probably let me stick to walls. There's boots with springs on them. I'm like, okay, those probably let me jump higher and fall further. And there was like a golden cape. And I was like, man, okay, this is really, this is really super cool. Like all this stuff is gonna add new gameplay to every single one of them's different. And I can only really afford one of these things. So I went and like, how do I buy this? I picked it up. - You got the golden cape. - I picked up the golden cape and I was about to, I was about to go buy it, but I didn't know what button to hit. And I started to walk away with it. And as soon as I was about to walk away, I was like, I probably should pay for this. So I started to move back towards the shopkeeper guy and tried to set the thing down, but he registered it as me throwing it at him. And instantly pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and shot me and I was dead. And I was like, holy shit. Okay. And then, you know, the next time I played, I kept trying to get back. I was like, oh, next, I want that golden cape. I gotta try it out. Well, I didn't see the golden cape. - That was the one that got away. - The store again for another 10 tries. - So we don't know the route of the cape does. - I do. I got it later and, you know, it lets you float. And it's cool. You can like float and jump longer, you know, that you go further. - But I want it. Will you a little disappointed that it didn't do more? - No, no, I was really happy because, you know, it's a very, the core gameplay is very simple, but every time you're just constantly coming upon new kind of gameplay things that you can do. Like there's spiders, they're really terrible enemies. You walk underneath them and then they drop down and start kind of following you and chasing you wherever you go. Randomly this one game, I saw this giant spider that was like four times as big as the normal spiders in the game and there were two spider webs sitting below them. And you have the bombs as they were saying, you can drop them down or you can toss them straight in front of you or you can toss them up. So I was like, fuck, I wonder if this is gonna work. I tossed a bomb up and it stuck to the spider web and then it blew up. And I was like, sweet, that totally worked. And then down drop this jar with a bee on it that looked like a bottle of milk with a bee on it. I was like, what the hell is that? And I walked up and grabbed it and it was like, you have now received sticky bombs. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. Like I did this gameplay thing and then it's rewarding me but with the ability to stick my bombs all over the place now. And so there's tons of little things like that where you're just, it's constantly blowing your mind with things that you just had no idea would be in there. It would have been like the coolest NES game ever if it came out during the NES. - A PC only? - For now. So it's coming out on Xbox Live Arcade this year. - Sometimes this year, yeah. - The art style will be different. And I'm sure that he'll add more stuff. - What do you see though? Is it like free to play or? - Yeah. Download it for free at sponkyworld.com. Mad of you heard all about this game already. - Yeah. - Okay, that explains it. - He has, I've been talking a lot about sponky land. - I've washed over his shoulder. - What else has this, have you been playing anything else? - Shit, yeah, I mean, I've been playing a lot of stuff because we were just doing some game of the year stuff for co-op. So I've been going back and playing all my favorite games from 2009. I've been playing lots of Street Fighter IV again, as I mentioned, and I went back and did some of Batman and Assassin's Creed and Uncharted. And I played through Flower again. And so basically, I've been playing lots of Pixel Jump shooter and this new, or not new, new to me Xbox Live indie game called Groove, which is-- - I've heard of it, but I haven't had to show that. - Basically Geometry Wars. - That was the one that the listener gifted to me. - Oh, that's right. - And I talked about it and it's like really awesome music. Like I was saying, I wanted to flow to it. - Yeah, the music's the best thing about that game. - Yeah, it's basically Geometry Wars with where every shot you fire-- - Changes of the soundtrack. - Play is an arpeggiated sort of baseline in the song. - Like everyday shooter. - A little bit, but everyday shooter has a completely different feel because every stage is-- I would say everyday shooter is a much more developed game than this game. This game is much more like Geometry Wars 1. There's actually three, but there's basically one gameplay style where you start a game. It's always the same music song. It's always the same like waves of enemies and you fight through them until you die. There's no like level structure or anything like that. - And unlike everyday shooter, this one is even much more tied to the fact that like you're making the music by shooting and everyday shooter, that was more of like a thing that just-- - Happens. - Yeah, and it was more ambient sort of sound. - If you play the original mix or whatever it's called, then it starts out and you're shooting kind of slow and the music is building really. So there's only like, you know, a couple of drum instruments and it's really cool because you hit the enemies and they turn white and then they explode on beat according and then according to the enemy type is the instrument that they are in the song. So they all explode at different times according to when they should in the song. - So at the beginning, you're fighting like one specific type of enemy, like the baby enemy that doesn't do anything and every time you shoot it, it's always playing this specific instrument. And then all of a sudden the tempo kicks in and instead of firing like five shots per second, you're firing like 20 shots per second. And of course the song sounds like it's speeding up now because every shot you fire is like part of the bass line. And then there's all these different color enemies that start popping up and everyone's a different sound effect. You're shooting a yellow thing that's making the horn sounds and you're shooting, you know, three different types of drums and all this stuff. And because everything like Matt said turns white before it disappears on beat, it's quantized correctly. So the song just like plays perfectly and everything you shoot is what you hear. It's just really cool. - Vocal samples enemies. - Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah, come on. - Yeah. - So it's really cool when you're just strong. I wonder if that guy's making anything now, man. If you are email us, let us know. - Yeah. - How much is it? It's like just a few bucks too. - Oh yeah, it's like 80 points or something like that. It's like something really low. - It's really good. - Yeah, definitely highly recommended. We didn't have a chance to cover it on the show 'cause I just found out about it. But yeah, when I said on Twitter that I was playing it, the guy who made it was like, oh, I'm glad you like it. So he's definitely out there and yeah, it's a really good game. - I understand you've also been playing Japan the game. - Japan the game? - Otherwise known as Bayonetta. - Oh yeah, yeah, I have been playing that. I forgot. Man, what a ridiculous game. I mean, seriously, freaking just absurd. - Japan the game. - Yeah, it's Japan the game. But it's hard to argue with the combat system. - Yeah, the mechanically speaking, it's really good. - And not me. - Hold your way. - To me, it's not just that. - You've been playing a lot more of it too, right? - Yeah, I've been playing a lot. - I saw you keep going with it. - To me, it's not just the combat. Like, I love the combat. I feel like that they've done a lot of things with the game design where they really moved forward with the action genre where they're saying like, we don't need a lot of these just old bullshit punishing arbitrary rules. Like there are things, you know, like with like multi-stage boss battles where the last thing is a quick time event. And like their quick time events are really, really shitty. But if you die on the quick time event, you start right there at the quick time event. It's not like Heavenly Sword, where you have to like fight the whole boss over again. - You know, the checkpointing in that game is good. - Mm-hmm. - Unfortunately, on a quick time, sections are bad. - Oh yeah, I've heard them. It's like one side from everyone. They seem to not be very good. - There's a lot more mad world in it than I thought they were gonna be. - I mean, what makes the quick time events like bad? - They randomize and if you fuck them up, you die. - Oh, randomized? - I didn't notice they were randomized at all. - They're on this. - I've done the same sections multiple times and it's like switched the pair of buttons that it expects me to hit. - Oh, oh, when you have to hit. - Like, it's never constant. Like, it's never like, oh, well, like, B or B has always jumped to the right. Sometimes it's like the left sick will be what you're supposed to do. Sometimes it'll be up. - That's weird that you mentioned that because God of War does a lot of that and I hadn't noticed any of it in this game, but I'm not that bad as far. - Honestly, to me, like the quick time events, when I heard people dissing them, I thought it was because they'll like, what I've experienced so far is they'll present you with like one button press. And like, that's the quick time event, like hit X. And you did it, good. - It's really straightforward. - I'm cool with that. - Like the coolest shit you see her do almost universally is like a quick time event. Like she does this ridiculous, crazy, powerful shit. And it's just like, why couldn't I do that? - Well, that's, I actually feel the opposite, which is that because their quick timer events are like one button and it's just this crazy animation, you know every boss battle is gonna end with one of those? So you lose a lot of the satisfaction that you would have in like a Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden that don't have the quick timer events because you feel like you actually did them. In some ways this is just a friendlier action game because the quick timer events let you know that you're moving on to the next stage of the boss battle. And you often just have a much better idea of whether or not you're hitting and damaging a large enemy that's much, much bigger than you, which is something that's sometimes pretty difficult to know in like a Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden style game. So I feel like it's really friendly and it's more straightforward and so it's easier to play and definitely, I'm sure, I'm playing on normal and not the easy modes where it's all automatic or anything like that, but. - No, far into it, are you? - I just got the whip. So I don't know how far along that is exactly. - I think I forgot the whip. - I'm gathering every, I, you know, I'm definitely gathering every item and fighting. I killed pretty recently this giant upside down head baby thing where they blast a hole in it. - With like dragon dreadlocks. - Is that the one with the-- - How ridiculous is this? I love its mouth. - Yeah, and he says like, he says like, oh, I was just a sacrifice from the gods or something like that. - How ridiculous is that he describes that? And Arthur's like, oh, yes. So they're drying upside down and maybe head with-- - 'Cause that's a fucking game. - With 10 rolls and-- - Yeah, game and stuff. - This game is seriously freaking, I'm telling you, like the only, if I had one word to describe it, it would be either ridiculous or absurd. Like completely just over the top, ridiculous. - I stick to Japan. - In USA, Japan. - So far as like someone like the, like Arthur I know was playing for review, so you played on normal, right? Like-- - Oh, yes, yes, I did. - Did you play, are you playing on normal? - Yeah, I'm playing on normal. - Okay, I wasn't sure. I know you're one of those likes to punish yourselves. - You can't even play on hard at first, I think you can only play on normal easy and more very easy. - You have to finish it before you can play on hard. - Yeah, Jesus. - Well, if it's like-- - I mean, Ninja Guidance is the same way, which really fucking annoyed me this way. - Bad annoyed me too, because I'm actually good at Ninja, like I'm not very good at dubmer cry games, but Ninja Guidance I've played so much of because they've released it so many times. - It's just that Bayonetta's combat lends itself much more to like the Ninja Guidance style fighting than it did double make cry. - No, I still feel like it feels like double make cry. It has the cancels, you know. - It feels more fluid to me than double make cry ever did. - I don't know, definitely cry. To me the main difference between the two is that you have the kind of split second counters in Ninja Guidance, and of course like from very early in a Ninja Guidance game, the AI is very difficult and they're like humanoid ninjas, so they do a lot of the same shit that you can do. And of course wall jumping, whereas double make cry is more about chains of Tekken like combos, but the ability to kind of cancel off actions at any time, and so you always feel, it feels really fast. Bayonetta is super impressive when you're fighting, like in the main combat sequences, those look like, if you're doing it right, it looks like a CG movie. Like not the best looking one or anything like that, but I mean it looks like what used to be a pre-rendered sequence in another game, like it's that impressive looking. So that when it, to me when it cuts to the like quick timer events, where they clearly are, you know, you're not doing any interaction at all, it's like, yeah, this is kind of cool and my hair, you know, my hair turned into a giant dragon that's eating the fuck out of this guy, but who really cares because I was, I stayed up in the air for 45 seconds, just a minute ago, slashed 500 times and killed three enemies without hitting the ground. So, you know, I already look like a ninja, I didn't need space air magic to come and kill the boss for me. - And then there's also like the cool thing of the whole dodge mechanic, which I think like, they succeeded in that whole, like when the Matrix movie came out, like everyone was like, oh, the bullet time effect is so bad ass, but like, this is the best bullet time effect. - It feels really good, yeah. - It feels so amazing, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's mapped to the trigger button. And that feels like a trigger pull. It's so awesome, like when you dodge something that's like super close, like super on you. - It feels quite enemies and we'll let you invoke it. - Oh really, that happens? - Yes, they'll spare about me specifically where you'll fight them and they won't let you invoke which time that's fine. - You know, I mean, you know, I hear it's a long game, I'm not that very far in it, but so far, like I'm the type of person, like, I will get frustrated at boss battles really quickly, but I feel like so far I'm paying at it, like I've understood how to beat every boss immediately. - And the boss battles were never my problem with that. - Yeah, yeah, I'm not having a problem with them. They're not a cakewalk, but they're not, I don't feel like they're unfair. - Mini bosses or what? - They're just specific in count. I mean, once you cross the halfway point in Bayonetta, it all of a sudden said, you know, fuck this guy, and it decides to confront you with enemies that will literally take off half your health bar in one combo. - Man. - Man. - And I'm trying to remember their names, but they're the dudes with the claws in particular, then we'll fuck your shit right up. And then later you meet versions of them where you can invoke which time and they're way faster and do way more damage. So that puts you in even bigger disadvantage. And there are just moments like that where it presents you with these scenarios where it's extremely difficult to pass them. And it's virtually never a boss, except for the very last boss. - My favorite things about it are the way that, I mean, I haven't been playing, it doesn't feel like that long, but the combat really has changed a lot as I've been playing through it because of the weapons that I've unlocked. So, you know, you do start with like guns and you get shotguns pretty early on, but after that, I got a sword and like I just mentioned a whip. And so when I got the sword, it started feeling a lot like Devil May Cry, because, you know, I could do a lot of the same sort of moves. And the whip feels totally different. It's like slower and it'll like stick out and like kind of hit, you know, you kind of throw it out and then it like goes, it hits the guy a bunch of times. So it does feel totally different. But I just, I can't help but love unlocking. I mean, I think they're really expensive in this game, so it does take a while to get them. But unlocking the different abilities and maneuvers has been really fun. You know, you get the ones like the Stinger and Devil May Cry, which rush your character forward. And then I have one where I tap, right after I tap jump, if I hit one of the attack buttons, it does like a kind of vertical and forward knee thrust that looks like that takes you really high up into the air. So it's great for starting up air combos and that sort of thing. And yeah, the combat is crazy fun. - And a lot of those unlocks are like multipurpose, like that one you also, that one also has the option where you can do that move while in the air, like downward too. - Yeah, and you can pay for the like blocks or whatever the, which time blocky dodgy sort of move, you can pay to get that in the air so that you can, you know, air dodge and start time, you know, the, which time thing. It's really cool. And the game is just crazy. And the story makes no sense. And the character is ridiculous. - You guys are aware that you can put weapons on your feet, right? - Oh yeah. - Not just guns. - Yeah, yeah. - Or you can put swords on your feet. - And you can, and you can, you know, using the L trigger swap between your two different available weapons sets. So I usually have one whip, one in one with a sword and both of them have guns attached as well. So it's fun. It's different. - Dude, it is a rad game. And it's really, like I said last time, like it is really surprised me that I am enjoying this game because as we all know, Tyler hates Japan. - I put the demo and I thought it freaking sucked. - There's a lot more to the game too. Like if you play through it again, there's way more to unlock. Like there's so many more weapons and like Nunchucks, for example, and apparently she screams like Bruce Lee. - Yeah, I wouldn't do Nunchucks or ice skates where she literally fucking skates around and does her moves. - Oh man, we don't get those on the first play through. - No, you don't get those on the first play through. - Well, Devil May Cry for anyway, you built up your character over the course of multiple play through. So you know you were, every play through you did, you kept unlocking more and more and more and more. - It's just funny that it's a singing game because it's so fucking a Capcom game through. - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's very much Devil May Cry. - I do find Devil May Cry. - So, it's cool. - You have a Sega needed a hit. - Doesn't, I don't feel-- - I'm kind of wondering if Bayonetta is gonna sell, so honestly. - Oh no. - Who knows? - What if, or sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. Do you've been playing anything else of note? - Damn. Not really, I guess. I mean, I have been playing more, but that's mostly everything. And now I'm just trying to finish up as much as possible. Like it's a clash of heroes, I put a lot of hours and I wanted to stick fork in it so I can move on. I haven't played Darksiders yet and obviously there's a lot of big stuff. - I'm glad that Splinter Cell got moved back to the end, so I don't have to worry about it when I'm playing Mass Effect. - I'm still mad about that. - I can't. - I have plenty of stuff to keep me occupied between me. - I was really excited for that too. That does upset me a little bit. - I'm really upset about that. And it's all money, it's not like it's not finished. - Yeah, no, I'm fine with this. - Oh no, our baby games didn't sell well enough. We had a soft quarter on Avatar 'cause it sucked, but, and everyone knew it. - Yeah, I mean, you have every reason to be mad about it. It's just like, for me, I have too many games to play. So, more times. - Tyler? - Yeah. - What are you been playing? - That's what I was gonna say. - Yeah, yeah, so, I mean, so a lot of Bayonetta, but then for PC, I downloaded the demo of World in Conflict. - Wow. - The RTS? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a box copied out here, you can have-- - Really? - Dude, I do, I like it and this might-- - I mean, it got like a RTS game of the year from several sites. - I mean, this might be heresy, but there's a reason why I'm enjoying it more than I enjoyed Company of Heroes because-- - In the podcast. - And it's because my efficiency is Anthony, like think when we would play together, the thing I had the most trouble with was like, what should my build orders be? What buildings do I need? It's like, World of Conflict, World in Conflict? - Yeah, World in Conflict. - You don't have to worry about that. - There's no base building. - There's no base building. - It's just pure calling and reinforcements and capturing points. - Russia invades Seattle all hell breaks loose, go. - The thing you have to learn about Company of Heroes though is that you only ever have to build three buildings ever. - What's fun with that? You're not gonna utilize all those troops? - If you just follow Anthony's five-step process, you need to be a co-master. - You know, I'm very new-ish with RTS and stuff like that and I just found it very easy to manage my troops and manage, you know, get the types of armaments I need on the battlefield, you know, without having to worry, like, do I have the right tech tree? Do I have the right building? - Well, now I don't want to play World in Conflict, now I know it's co-for babies. - You might as well work too. - I know. - I mean, big win, damn it, Tyler. - How the fuck have you not played Dawn of War II? - I don't know, I don't know- - It has no base building sets, sleep, sleep. - I gotta download that demo too. I know, but, but yeah, man, I- - And there's achievements. - It does? - Oh, yeah, that's right, this one is attached. But, man, the explosions enrolled at war. - That's like one of the last Sierra fights, right? - Yeah, it was, actually. And then Sierra disintegrated in the Xbox version, never materialized. - Yeah, it was last year, are you sure? 'Cause we covered it in the one up show, so- - 2008. - Okay. - I'm just saying it wasn't the last, it was one of the last Sierra games. - Oh, Sierra games. - I thought you said last year. - No, no, Sierra, Sierra, the company. - I remember them. They made games once. - They did really good games, actually. - I think they're gonna put out the new Tim Shafer game. - Yeah, they were, but do you lose? So, I mean, is it just that the lack of base building, or is it like, do they have cover and stuff in there? - Yeah, well, not as much as, not as much as Company of Heroes does. Like, their cover would consist of like, hey, here's like a bunch of trees, you can hide in the trees, or like you can send your guys to buildings and stuff like that. But, in terms of like, lining guys up on fence, I'm not seeing cover indicators, because like, when you scroll over the forest, you'll see positions where you guys will take cover, but I mean, it might be there, I just might not be seeing it. - No, I mean, that makes sense. It just sounds like it's more like a, like a, I don't know. - Say what you want to say. - Formulate in a way where it's like, you run up and guys jump automatically in these spots where there's a co, I feel like it's a lot more procedural. - Is this a co-we enough? - Basically, it sounds really dumb in a closet. - But it has a lot of the same out this month. - It has a lot of the same stuff where like you can like, choose like the direction that you want your tanks and stuff, because you want to play as Russians. - Is that what it is? - No, because you play as Americans. - You play as Americans. - I just feel like what's missing is more relic. - Yes. - Maybe if it had more relic. - There isn't enough space marine in this game. (laughing) - I don't know, I really love the explosions, like. - How does that run on your computer? - It runs really well, like, 'cause I just installed the Windows 7, too. - That's one of the few games, real time strategy games, I can really give co-run for its money, as far as how hard it is on the system. - Dude, it looks good. It looks really good. - Not as graphic as hard wise, but processor one. - This month, though, I do think, though, that I am gonna play a little bit more co this month, 'cause, yeah, that Russian pack. There's a mod coming out, made for free. I mean, of course, it's free 'cause it's the mod, but just made by this team of guys called Eastern Front. So the website's easterfront.org. Did you see Sean? - Yeah. - Link this at the other day on this. - Yeah, I'm not a company of heroes here, but I think-- - I mean-- - If he's interested in that, I know what's gonna be awesome. - He's working with a lot of assets that are already there, right? Like certain color palettes and stuff he's building within the co-engine, but the guy went and recorded and uploaded and put in his own sounds for all these Russian guns, his own art for all these Russian tanks and all that, and then not only that, but he also, well, I don't wanna say this guy, 'cause it's a team of people who have invented also like a rule set for them. Like, you know, Americans have special rules, so the Russians have special rules. And some of them at first, I thought, were like, I was like, why would they do that? But then, they actually seem really cool. Like, they totally do the thing you would expect where Russian rifle squad comes out. Four guys have rifles, four guys don't. - Oh, that's insane! - And so it's just-- - That's what it is. - That's what really clicks me, 'cause I fuckin' Netflix sent me enemy at the gates this weekend. - Exactly, so it's like total enemy at the gates of the thing, except now it's like, four guys have rifles, four guys don't. And so, you know, you're still only fighting what you fight pretty much with every squad and co, where four guys are firing at once, like Germans only get four guys. So they're firing with, like, almost 10. So, except you have to kill eight guys. Yeah, you still have to kill eight guys, so they take a lot longer. But then they've done other things, like, Russian guys cannot retreat against a machine gun if they get pinned down ever. They have no retreat option, unless they're with a commanding officer, then he'll allow them to retreat. So if you send Russians in without an officer, they just will just get mauled by machine guns, and there's nothing you can do about it, 'cause they won't retreat unless the officer tells them they can. - Wow. - Yeah, it's just really cool things like that, where, like, Russians can all jump on top of tanks and ride on them and fight from them, because that's something Russian soldiers used to do. They would all hop on top of tanks and roll with them. So it's just these little things that-- - They're blowing off. - It's just a really cool mod that this guy has really put a bunch of time in. When you see it, it's like, it looks like something relic could've very well have made themselves. I don't know. - Yeah, that's cool. - I'm supposed to get an early build of it, so I can try it. I'm pretty excited. - Oh, dang. Sorry, Tyler. - Anything else of the world and conflict? - I know you weren't put on crisis, unfortunately. - I know, I know, I know, I know. Other than that, playing even more gratuitous face battles, like, 'cause now I'm going through the whole campaign and playing it on X-- - There's no multiplayer in that, right? - Well, there is, but it's like weird. I haven't really experimented with it. It's so weird. - Can you play against your brother, potentially? - What I think you do is you set up a line, and it's like a challenge, and someone could download your-- - I see, so you would make a fleet. - And then he would try and make a fleet to take it down. - To take it down. - Play by mail role-playing game. - Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like. - I mean, you know, like I said, I didn't experiment, but when I jumped in and was looking around at the menus, that's the impression that I got, but still loving that game, man. Loving it. (laughing) - Matt. - You all right, bro? (laughing) - He used to pick off. - Yeah. - Matt, you look like you're in mastermind right now. - Can't make cats sleeping in his lap. - Yeah, have a cat lounging next to me. - I'm at least stroking with one hand. - Yes. - You're with Matt's. - The world will be mine. - I've been, while I played Steel Battalion today with Ryan, as we already talked about, and that game was awesome for many reasons. - To hand-beefed it with the director seat. - Yeah. (laughing) And then, yeah, I think I was the one that actually got the furthest in that game today. - Yeah, no, I mean, Matt played for a whole eight minutes. (laughing) - Actually, it's so interesting that that's something that the living room for me is a video game memory. It's like, yeah, we were playing, and then Ryan didn't fucking inject it. (laughing) - Well, the funny thing was, is I actually got used to the controls really quick, 'cause I mean, it seems really complicated, 'cause your right stick can move your guns separate of the hat on the left stick, which can move your view, separate of your robot turning left and right. So, you can basically have things pointing in three different directions at all times. - And then-- - And I found out that can actually be really useful, 'cause you can lock on to somebody with the, you can put your, your reticle on them, lock on, hit the lock on button, and then you can turn another way, fire your guns at somebody, while you're still firing your missiles at the guy that you were locked on behind you. So, it's like, you can be attacking multiple targets at once. - That's complicated. - You lost me just describing that, since you're complicated. (laughing) - Yeah, that was complicated. - You have no idea. There's this whole communications module. There's like three pages of the manual-- - Oh, God. - That's a described communication-- - It's totally complicated. - And you realize there's no, like, headset, you know, chatter, I mean, in the second game, there's multiplayer, but this was steel battalion one, but no multiplayer-- - But no multiplayer is like piloting a submarine - There's like five different communication buttons, and then there's a chart that says like, if you want to call for supplies, hit button three and turn the knob to this, and then use call and response on these buttons and-- - Wait, describing it makes me wish that there was a game. We could also down and play, there was like steel battalion, but even more hardcore, I'm talking like a $500 control set up, right? Where it's like four player cooperative, playing as like a Russian tank team in World War II. (laughing) - Well, we have to like perfect loading the-- - I mean, all Tyler would do is load. Hey, Tyler, will you come over to my house to play the game with me? You can load the game. - Part of the controller is just a breach that we have to load shells in. - And it can actually cut my hand off if I do it wrong. (laughing) - Well, what reminded me, what this reminded me of is like way back in the day, near where I used to live in Orange County, this was like 94, 95. There was one of those battle tech centers that had like, you know, a bank of like, I don't know, a dozen simulators in it. And-- - Fuck yeah. - Yeah, it was fucking intense and awesome and you had to manage your heat and your weapons and you bought a little card that you put your handle on that kept track of your score and everything. My several friends of mine and I and my roommates in college at the time, like we'd go down there, I don't know, once or twice a month as all. 'Cause it was kind of expensive. - I'm sure. - But we'd go down there and it was like, it was like the ultimate, you know, mech simulator, land party experience in this one location. And I mean, it lasted for probably a good, I don't know, three or four years and then it died, of course, along with all the rest of the arcades and the graphics were like way outdated by the time it died. - And that was like in the virtual reality hey day. - Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And-- - But like the cockpit closed and everything. If it's the same one I'm thinking of, like you're in like a dark room. - We were in a dark room, but this one actually, they were just like pods that you got into the side of. Like you didn't actually get into a cockpit that closed. But it was that kind of thing though. And they would have events where it would be like the one in Costa Mesa against like another one in Texas. And like they would be like these virtual like 32 player versus 32 player battles or something. - I really ask clans where you're like, we're a battle tech clan. - Totally, it happened. Like there were people there that were clearly hanging out together matching t-shirts, you know, like all that kind of stuff. It was like, it was its own online gaming camp. - Who had like cut their minds into the sides of their head to like be like, yeah. Like they were like I'm living in the future 'cause that's what they thought it'd be like. - Yeah, but think about like, you know, online gaming communities and what they have now. And this was like that before you could really have that without being super into like some-- - Without being a thousand times more nerdy. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, and like today, like at the end of a modern warfare two round, you know, you hit like the B button to check out your stats. But like at the end of those games, like they would print you out. - They would. - Like a couple sheets of paper. Like write off your stats for one game. - It was great. And so anyway, that's, that was just a memory that this brought up and I hadn't even thought about how I used to play that back in the day. And then I've been playing Groove for the reason we already talked about. And there was another game, the developer, I can't remember his name, which that's why I was like looking at my iPhone was I was trying to like find the email where he, where he sent it to me with this. So I apologize, I won't be able to remember your name, but the game is called Leave Home and it's an Xbox indie game. And it has a, has super cool style to it. It's a, it's a scrolling shooter. You know, like our type style or whatever. But not that style of art at all. It's like got these really cool, almost like Geometry Wars and the way that everything glows, but it's polygonal, you know. So it's, it has like a more high res look to it and everything. And basically it's just the cool thing about this game is the entire game is over in five minutes. Like you go through the beat, you go all the way through the game in five minutes and it's a score attack thing. So you're trying to kill everything that you can and then they drop little glowing blue square pixels that you pick up for extra bonus points. And the better that you do, the harder the game gets. Even though the stage doesn't change, the game gets harder and they throw more enemies at you and they throw more like bullet hell kind of situations at you. And, but if you die, it like lowers all of that like down to the, down to like beginner level. So, you know, if you want to get the highest score, you have to keep doing really, really well. And then at the end of the game, it has this cool graph that it brings up that it looks almost, it almost looks like a waveform or something like that. But basically it's just a graph of how well you did throughout, throughout that five minute experience, you know? And it has really cool music. The graphics are super cool to look at and yeah. So that's, that's a fun game. - Unlike Groove, which is really straightforward, like Geometry Wars, where you're just on one kind of rectangular map and it just spawns enemies all around. This, this game leave home has more like a grattius or art-type style, like level design and bosses. I mean, it's all over in five minutes, but it feels like you've done a lot once you get there, you know? - And it does some really cool things with the stages. Like it's not just scrolling left to right. Like you'll have, you'll be in this, it think of like several concentric rings that have like breaks in between them. And they're all like rotating together and you're, and it's really zoomed in and you're flying through the breaks in those rings. And that'll be like one of the stages while it's rotating. So it has a lot of really interesting stuff. And then if you hold in the, you're firing out two streams of bullets in front of you, but if you hold in the trigger, the streams of bullets will arc out from your ship. So eventually they're firing up and below you. And then if you pull in the trigger harder, then they continue to arc till they're shooting behind you. So you hold in the trigger to kind of like control where your bullets go around your ship. - How much angle there is on them. - How much angle there is on the shot. Like think of it going in front of you, the two streams. - Yeah. - And then in splitting like a V and getting wider and wider until they completely reverse 360 degrees. And how far you hold in the trigger is how much that V splits. And you know, of course you're using that to try to always get more points by shooting things that are above you and behind you and everything. So yeah, it's a really cool count and sentence. It's a really fun little game. And then I played the second of the Tales of Monkey Island adventures. - Adventures, the episodes. - Are those? 'Cause I've been talking about it recently. I've been playing through the Secret of Monkey Island. - Yeah. - And that game is hard. - It is. - The puzzles are really hard. Like I'm not sure if it's that I've lost that ability to do that or if it's that the tip system is there so I constantly use it. But like I constantly, I'm playing an iPhone. I'm constantly shaking it for tips 'cause I just do not understand like, like it's like go grab this cup of shit. You never grabbed it. - I was really glad when I played it that I played that game so much back in the day. I remembered everything. - Yeah. - And I was like, how the fuck did I know this? You know, how did I figure this out? And I remembered that like, well, right, the way that I figured it out is that I walked around. And I could find everything with everything and did everything with everything. You know, it's like there, it's a, and yeah, the Tales of Monkey Island does have some of that where you're like, there's no fucking way I would ever figure this out. So like I've had to turn to a fact a couple times because it's like, you know what? I've just spent 45 minutes wandering around really a very, very small game world because these episodes are really small locations, you know? And I've been running around this constantly and I can't figure out what to do. So a couple of times I've had to go to a fact but still I still really enjoy the games. The humor is great. The voices are really well done. And the, it's just so in keeping with the whole Monkey Island universe. Those guys really know what they're doing. - It's kind of crazy how you keep those memories. Like they don't ever go away. - Yeah. Come on. - Mine fish with gel and slather on a rope. - Well, I mean, it happens in a lot of games, whatever you played a lot as a kid, like after playing Spirit Tracks. And like, I just have some problems with modern Zelda's. And I think all Numa is not the best game designer. But so I've been playing a lot of the... (gasping) Oh great! It's called Nintendo Switch for now! Oh my god! (laughing) - I haven't really enjoyed a modern Zelda, so. - So I've been going back and playing the games that I think do it right, which I've been playing a link to the past on GBA. - Fuck yeah. - And Link's Awakening on Game Boy, and I'm gonna go back for the oracles, and I've got a copy of regular Zelda around, which I can be in like two hours. But that's it, the Zelda, the original Zelda, and Link to the Past, those things are just like so in my skull and in my brain. Like I don't even think, and go back and just like tear right through them. - Link to the Past is just a better game. - It's a, oh, it's one of the best games ever made. - Link to the Past is probably, yeah. - Like easily in my top, whatever. I'm not gonna say a number, because I can throw a bunch of games up in there right now, if I started doing it. - Link to the Past is the only Zelda game I've played. - Really? You should really play the original Zelda. - And I never beat Link to the Past. Well, I played it, okay, but I've never. - I mean, really. - I mean, like, I. - You should sit down like that. - I never owned it so I just sort of. - As a man. - As a modern old man, like me. - Link to the Past I've gotten to the end of it. I haven't beaten it though. - The Legend of Zelda. - You know, I actually, I've never played Link to the Past. - Oh my God. - All right, we're done. - I know. - Right now. - I know. It's awful. - So, what makes a Link to the Past? I'm not asking this question. I'm going to tell you what makes a Link to the Past better than modern Zelda games is, is, well, a lot of things, a lot of little things. But the Overworld is a lot better in the older Zelda games. There's a lot of puzzles. And, you know, if you're playing something like Wind Waker, when I was playing it, I really liked the dungeons relatively, and I liked the main town area. There were cool like puzzles that you saw there. But, all the other areas that were off the beaten path felt really throw away. And, you go there and there's like one chest full of some rupees or some random item that's like one of three collectibles. Anyway, there's not anything that really changes the gameplay experience. So, when you get there, you don't feel like you're really finding all that much. Whereas in something like Link to the Past, if you run to the other side of Lake Hillia or whatever, you'll find an ice rod over there that you don't even need, but that, you know, lets you fucking freeshit, you know? Like totally... - You have to know that world so much. I mean, it encourages you to go back and really explore that world once you get more items and to get into places that you weren't before. - Yeah. And they, you know, it was one of the first games to do the dark world light world thing. And, man, how well they pulled that off. Like, it's so awesome to see, you know, you little Link turn into a bunny rabbit at the beginning when you go to the dark world 'cause you don't have the moon pearl. And, you know, how the way the enemies totally change. I mean, I-- - Just do you remember that? You turn the bunny 'cause you don't have the moon pearl. - Or pink, can you? - Dude, I'm playing it right now. I know the name of every fucking item in that game. But it's little things too. Like, the art in that game is so good. Animations on basic things, like, you know, 'cause I'd been playing the newer ones. When I started playing, I was like, Oh, I just love the way that rupees pop up and like the sheen on them. Like, just looks so good. Like, you know, a little basic things. I just thought there's so much polish in every little D-style-- - It's just so stylistically perfect. - Yeah. It is, it's basically, in my estimation, it's essentially a perfect game. I mean, there's a lot of things that are kind of obtuse in old school about it that you probably wouldn't figure out as quickly now without tutorials and that sort of thing. But that's why it has part of its charm. And I love, well, Link to the Past. I love old school Zelda. New Zelda is like, it's still good. They just should have changed the name and changed the character a long, long time ago. So they can still make those games. - It's my understanding that other than Assassin's Creed 2, which I think we both agreed is sort of the modern day Zelda that we've always wanted. Dark Ciders is also very close to the modern day Zelda that we've always wanted. - That's what I'm hearing. I haven't had a chance to play anything. - It makes me wanna play it. - I haven't had to play it yet either. - It is. - But I do plan to play it soon. - Yeah. - It is, it's just a Zelda with way harder combat, a way more challenging, I should say. Not to say hard, yeah. - I just, you know, I know it's like a sort of darker and more kind of like adult, I guess, in sort of the terms of the art direction. I wrong about that. - Yeah, I mean, it's like a, it's drawn by this comic artist named Joe Madera, who's known as Joe Mad, who did like a bunch of-- - He got famous for doing redesigns of the X-Men and the Age of Apocalypse X-Men and the Battle Tracers. - But if you just think like, like almost like it, I don't wanna, I mean, people are gonna probably cry when I do this, but it almost looks like, if the spawn guy were to draw a bunch of characters, like, you know, they're all big beefy, covered in armor, everything's covered in spikes, big old demons, the way you'd imagine like, when someone says like, "I'm gonna draw a fucking demon, man." (laughing) That's what those are, those things are fucking-- - If he just like, that kind of sensibility with the Japanese sensibility, as far as proportion and stylization, but that. - I like it though. - I'm really interested to check it out, because I haven't seen very much of it all, maybe like one two minute video, like five months ago or something like that, I just haven't been following it. - Everything they've shown at events has been so non-indicative of the game. - Yeah, the events all made it seem like it was just like a competent God of War clone, and it's like, they didn't, 'cause the demos were always like 15 minutes, they were never able to show you like the times like when you're gonna spend like an hour and a half never even fighting an enemy, just doing like really intense environmental puzzles. - Yeah, I mean, I think for even early on, I got the impression that Zelda was the source material, but it just visually, I thought it looked kind of, you know, whatever, it's just not my sort of thing, I guess. But I'm interested to play it and see what I think about it because, you know, I guess it reminds me a little shadow complex where it's a title that's very clearly paying homage to a different brand, you know, a different, totally different game. And I played through and did, I mean, I didn't do all the elite challenges and stuff that you can do in shadow complex, but I did basically 100% the game and get every item that you could possibly get in that sort of stuff. And I enjoyed my experience playing through it, but it still just didn't have the soul, like I don't know, there's something about it that it just didn't have the soul of like a Metroid game, like I don't feel like a connection to that game, like I don't care about the characters of the story or even the worlds that I was in the same way that I had a connection. - It's 'cause it hates the gaze. - What's that? - It's 'cause it hates the gaze. - Maybe that, I mean, honestly that, you know, maybe that the whole controversy did plant a few seeds in my head before I played it, 'cause I did play it after all that, but. - Yeah, so did I, and I mean, I still, I feel like it's a well-executed game. - It was, but I just didn't grab me that one. - Yeah, I don't really care about it, and I don't know how to describe that. To me, Dark Ciders, I feel like not having played it. That's what I'm afraid of, is that it's kind of like that, but I also think that it could be a very, very competent game on top of it. It just won't have that sort of long-lasting appeal, like that, you know, tugs in my heartstrings the way that a-- - Yeah, I mean, it's cool. - We'll see you back here in three weeks when you come back with your gush fest of Dark Ciders. - Really? (laughs) Matt, was there anything else? - No, that was it. - I did think of two more indie games real fast, I'll just throw 'em out. You should go to the letter V six times. - Oh, I've been seeing that pop-up all over Twitter. - VVV. - Yeah, VV, actually the URL is theletterv6tim.es. Like, like, instead of .com, so it's the letter V six times, just put the period to spaces in. - Okay. - That game is really, like this crazy platformer, very simple, the only thing you can do is switch gravity by pressing the up button, up and down, and then you, they add more sort of elements in environmentally that change that dinette and the way you, you know, use the gravity changing, but it's basically a really hard platformer with really good checkpoints. So you're dying constantly, but then just spawning right there. - The other one is Run Man, I assume. - Yeah, Run Man. - Yeah. - Which is, oh, fuck, their URL is so good, do. It's, what, what are you weight.info? So what are you weight info? (laughing) Very good URL. What are you weight.info? The game is called Run Man and it's basically a, kind of a, it's a, it's a size-growing platformer, kind of a mix of Sonic and Mario. In fact, really, Sonic-y, 'cause you're running really fast through stuff, but the graphics are all like MS paint looking. You're this little star guy and everything, the levels look all ridiculous and hilarious. And the music is bluegrass music that is what royalty free bluegrass music. So it sounds hilarious and looks hilarious. And when you're little star guy gets up to top speed, he says, "Oh snap" and fun stuff like that, so. - All I like, it's like some old girls look out of time. - Oh yeah, don't get my, don't get my, come on, come on. (mumbling) - Playing archero. - I'm gonna stop my cat real quick, go ahead and keep talking. - I finally, I beat Dragon Age. - Nice. - Whoa. - Congratulations. - That's a big accomplishment. - My queer time is so much less than I thought it was gonna be when I finished. - Oh listen. - It's like 45 or 46 hours. - Wow, that's amazing. - And I mean, people were like, "Oh, you just, we're not a Dragon Age noob." And I'm like, "Fuck you, I killed three dragons." - Yeah, no, you. - It is no longer the age of Dragon. (laughing) - You're like, "I killed one of them." - Yeah, that's, I have no doubt that you could get through that game in 45 minutes if you played it different. - 45 minutes, huh? - That would be impressive. - That would be impressive. - Hours. (laughing) - I might actually be, I'm all for short, tight narrative experience, but I might be able to talk about that one. - So, but let's just insert a spoiler warning right here, 'cause I wanna ask you questions about the ending. - Oh, Jesus. - Oh God, I'm closing my answers. - I don't care about the story enough to care about us. - All I wanna know is like, what characters did you end up still having at the end of the game? 'Cause there are several that you could lose. - I never got the female rogue. - Gotcha, right. - We talked about that, but I mean like, there's characters that you can lose right at the end of the game. Did you end up losing anybody? - The only one I lost was Morgan. - Gotcha. - It's a bummer, man. - As far as I know, there's no way to keep Morgan at the end. Like at all. - Well, I mean, like for the, she can leave before the final battle. - Yeah, she can leave before the final battle. I had her all the way through the end of the game and then after she leaves. - Right, right, that's inevitable. That part's inevitable. - But other than that, I kept everybody. - Right, well, right on. - Even Zevrin, and I really had to work hard to keep Zevrin, and the thing that sucks is like, when the opportunity for Zevrin to leave you pops up, like you had, there's no warning at all that that's gonna happen. So I just lucked out that there was something in my inventory I could give him that would make him like me at this day. - Is he the prisoner? - Yeah. - He's the elder prisoner. - That's, that's Sten. - Oh, okay, then I haven't met this yet. - Oh, well. - I thought you take Zevrin prisoner just before you invite him into the party, but you haven't got that far. - That's, that's a different, I don't want to ruin that, but Zevrin is essentially Inigo Montoya as an elf. (laughing) He was totally willing to do you, whether you're a male or female. - Yeah, he's just down. - Yeah, he's down, he's down for whatever. - Yeah, everything. - Yup. - But I liked Dragon Age, I thought that the ending was good and long. - And there goes your cat after the game, right? - I felt like the final boss, the final fight against the Arch Demon dragged, like it was just grind. It felt like an MMO grind. - Really? I really liked that whole end. - Oh, you mean against the dragon or leading up to it? - Yeah, I guess the dragon. - Leading up to everything else, it was hard, but the dragon just felt like a grind. - Yeah, are we spoiling things right now? - Yeah, we put up a spoiler, Warner. - But I mean, it shows you the Arch Demon throughout the entire game, which is the giant dragon. So it's like, what are you gonna fight if not the giant dragon that you see everywhere? - Yeah, okay, that's fair. Let's not spoil anything else, though, for me. - But yeah, the only weird thing about Dragon Age for me was that the credits had played a 30 seconds to Marson. - Oh my god, that's right. - That seemed like a really weird-- - I forgot about that. - I mean, it's kinda like epic fantasy music. - There is epic fantasy music, and there's a lot of really music to drive in. - Your cat is finding every paper bag in this room. - Well, he put it up there. He needs to throw it away. But they started playing what is probably the only song on their new record that I don't hate. - Yeah. - So it was fine. It was just, I was like, what? I hear a guitar. Is this like a police song that I've ever heard? (laughing) I was like, what's that? Jared fucking Leto singing at the end, Dragon Age? (laughing) - It looks like they didn't Mass Effect do the same thing where they put some kind of like, poppy, bullshit song of lyrics that-- - I don't remember-- - Yeah, they put a Mass Effect did that. - Put a really weird bullshit song at the end that made no sense. - It's no-- - I think it was called a-- - It's no saliva. - It's called The Thing. - It's no saliva song. - Yeah, sure. - Yeah, they did that at the end of the thing too. - Yeah, it was for the first modern warfare, right? - I know that Siaops used a song from Cold. (laughing) - Why do you know that? - It's funny 'cause they were advertised on the front. They had a fucking music video. - It's funny 'cause we shot a big, long thing yesterday 'cause we're gonna-- - Pimp it. - For like our 2009 year in review thing. So, okay, I'll pimp it. We're gonna do like a two-parter year in review. That's what our next two episodes are gonna be. So we had a bunch of people over and we shot that for like three hours. The second one of the topics that came up was cool endings for games. Like in cool credit sequences, like Fat Princess has a great one, you know? - No, be no people. - No, be no, be boy. Yeah, there's just like-- - Where's the Dragon Age credits go on forever? - Yeah, yeah, modern games have longer credits than fucking movies. - 15 minutes. - Three rules 'cause you get to do a fucking sweet battle during the credits. - Yeah, it's true. - Swoo, I mean, idiots. - So that, more modern warfare, but there's nothing really to say about that other than they really need to fix the network code on that because if Anthony and I are playing literally through the same router, one of us should not say strict to the other moderate, especially when our not is open. - And then not be able to join each other's games. - Yeah. I decided to go back and play Ninja Guide in Black because I love that game and playing Bayonetta made me think, "Man, I really need to play Ninja Guide." - I thought you were gonna say, "I love that game and I hate myself." (laughing) - Unfortunately, I was not given the chance to hate myself because every save that I had for Ninja Guide in Black is corrupted. - What? - You're so safe. - You can't play-- - How does that happen? - Master Ninja, unless you fucking beat in the game once. - Yeah, but how does that happen? How did it, I mean, you beat it on your 360, right? - I'm pretty sure, yes, that I have and all of my sales are corrupted, so I had to start over on normal and it's fun, but it's not-- - It is not the kick in the balls that I was looking for. (laughing) - I think I might have a save file for mine. - We need to hire someone to beat it for you. - Yeah, so that was kind of balls, but Ninja Guide in Black still holds up really, really well and still looks perfectly fine on Xbox 360. - Cool. - Army of two, I don't know how much we wanna say about Army of two other than-- - Oh, we haven't said anything about Army of two. - Yeah, we've never been able to, but Anthony and I both-- - We just got that in. - I was thinking about playing it. - Yeah, again, I would recommend if you decide to do so. - How do you finish your second play through a Mass Effect yet? - Yes. - Are there any other games you would have-- - I was gonna say, I mean, Army of two. (laughing) Like, I think me and Arthur, like, you know, from what I saw of our reviews, like both of us kind of feel that it's not a bad game by any stretch, it's not a bad game, it's not. It's just that it's not special in any real way. - Okay, so imagine-- - It is a game. - Imagine, like, a line graph with my first dot starting, like, 8.5 and Anthony starting at, like-- - Six. - A six. And my line's slowly going downward. Downward's and Anthony's even more slowly going upwards and then meeting-- - I'm gonna meet in the middle. - At about seven or 7.5. - Gotcha, yeah. - And that is, he gave it three stars and I gave it 7.5. It's a competent third-person shooter that's better than the first one, but unfortunately third-person shooters have improved a lot since the first start. - It's just generic and it has, like, an overly complicated cover system. Like, I think I was, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. - No, no, I mean-- - It's like, you know, it's like, if you run up and you take cover into something, it does it automatically. But if you were to, like, walk up to a set of low boxes and you haven't clicked the stick into crouch, it won't take cover. But if you are crouching when you run up to it, he'll automatically take cover. If you are facing, like, with your left shoulder against the box and you try and back up to the other edge, he doesn't, like, intuitively, like, turn around and go around the cover. He just backs up off the cover. You have to actually click to where the right shoulder is now facing the box. - You have to manually switch shoulders to aim correctly. - Yeah. - Everything you do will show the sleeve cover. - Everything you do and cover is manual. - And the fact that, you know, when we're in the review event, you know, one of the people that's on staff for the game actually had the gall to laugh and mockingly say, "Haha, this isn't Gears of War." It's like, yeah, I mean, you know, maybe it should have been. - Yeah, Gears of War has a better cover system, at the very least, you know. - Yeah. - And the morality moments are just bullshit, honestly, because a lot of times if you're trying to pull the dick move, you'll accidentally make things better. And if you're trying to make things better, you'll accidentally pull the dick move. - Yeah, it's like the game's trying to teach you always. Like, you make a decision, and then before you move on from that moment, it shows you what will happen in the future thanks to your decision, which is presented through really cool art. - Yeah, like, it's like these motion comic cutscenes. - But it's always like, yeah, remember that girl you saved from being rape will turn out-- - Let's stop. - Oh, well, sorry, I don't wanna spoil things. - That's like the biggest morality moment in the game, and you were about to fucking ruin it. - So I'm gonna go in the podcast and edit it out. - Oh, well, that morality moment I almost spoiled, I almost wanna say it again to see if it edits twice. (laughing) But I won't, 'cause I be fucked up. - Yeah, it's just, you know, it's just like a-- - It's competent. - It's a competent, but it feels like a very generic third-person shooter, and it's like these days, like, you got so many other games to play. - The weapon store is fun. - Yeah, it's one thing they didn't prove, and the first game, it was like, you would end up committing to one weapon, 'cause you had, like, you were like, oh, I've already put so much money in this, and this, they hand out money so commonly, it's just like-- - And not only that, but your weapons carry through between playthroughs and our independent of characters, so if you pick Salem playing through Co-op, and then pick Rios, it's like a player, all of your stuff is still intact. - So how about pimping your weapons? - Yeah, 'cause in the last two games-- - 'Cause in the last two games-- - Can you ride some of the shit out of those things? - In the last game, I never did it because the pimping always looked so stupid. - It does look stupid, but I mean, if you want to be the guy who pulls a ton of aggro, you-- - That's why I did it. - Because it works. - It significantly makes how much aggro you cause in that game. - To the point where you can buy a diamond and crested grenades. - Yeah, that is not great, diamond and crested grenades. - 'Cause why wouldn't you? - I'm not right. - That sounds almost as ridiculous as Bayonetta. - You can also zebra-stripe your weapons. - There's nothing in gaming that is-- Katamari Damasi looks at Bayonetta and says, are you fucking crazy? (laughing) - No, I know. It's a crazy game. - Yeah, I mean, it's just not, I mean, the story's ridiculous. - The story is nonexistent. I mean, basically, it's like, they drag out establishing that something happened for five hours and then expect the last hour 'cause it's a fairly short game for you to suddenly care about what's going on and they never really explain it. It feels like giant chunks of this. - The best part of that game is that it features Nolan North as a voice actor. - We totally talked about in our game of the year, review around up how Nolan North needs to calm down. It's not Nolan North. - It's not his fault. It's not his fault. - Man's got to eat. - Dude, you know, it's to calm down even more than him, though, is Steve Bloom. That guy's in every game. - Who's that guy? - That guy, Steve Bloom is-- - Apparently that guy doesn't need to calm down 'cause no one knows who Steve Bloom is. - You guys all know who he is. He just didn't know him by name. If, for instance, in Dragon Age, he's your second if you play the Dwarf Noble route. - Oh, really? - He's also the guy that does the voice of Super Joe in "Bionic Commando." - Every time you bring this guy up and then you use that example, I'm like, oh, that guy. - Yeah, he's just like, he's always that voice in all these games. Like, go look up, Steve Bloom, IMDB, and you'll be like, I must have heard this man speak a hundred thousand times. - There's another guy who's name escapes me at the moment, but he's the guy who is, like, Leonardo in TV3 Ninja Turtles was when I knew him as a child. - Oh, yeah, that guy's in all the anime games. - He's in all the anime games. He's in, well, like, pretty much every RPG as well. Like, any game that has, like, a bunch of famous voice actors in it or whatever needs a bunch of voices, he's always in that game as well. - When they send over the Japanese code to be localized, he's actually in the box. - Yeah. (laughs) - He's one of my favorite voice actors. Oh, the guy, he's fucking, he's liquid snake. - He's like, you know, he's like, wow. - So, uh, and then I've been playing some Dante's Inferno that unfortunately I can't. - Get heavily into it? - I can't get, I mean really, there's nothing that I can get. - Nothing you haven't said. - I could talk about the demo. - Nothing I've said before. Like, Dante's Inferno is a God of War, ask God of War game. (laughs) - Sounds about right. - I'll be able to talk more about it next week. - Fair enough. - And we, not actually, I mean, I don't even know if I'll want to talk about it next week 'cause we are getting Mass Effect 2 retail in the office tomorrow. - Oh my God. - Dude. (screams) - And it will be difficult for anyone to maneuver around the office trying to get past my erection. (laughs) - Anthony, I think-- - Wow, I've never found it that hard. - Yeah. - Well, you know, the way you handle it, it's just, never mind. Anthony, is there anything else to use that thing? - When does Mass Effect actually come out? - 26th. - 'Cause I'm going to play it with like the rest of normal people. - 26th. - That's a long time. - I'm going to play it on PC. - No, that might not. - We should probably have to wait. - No, it comes out day and day. I'm pretty sure. - Yeah, no, no. - It's a wait till retail. - Ooh, sure happens. - No, I'm saying I'll have to wait till retail. - Well, you'll have to wait till retail 'cause no one cares about PC gamers. - But yeah, I mean, the only game I've played that we haven't already touched on in one way, shape or another, is PB The Misadventures of People. - Oh man, that game was so awesome. - We can only talk about the first three areas, so you know. So I don't know how much that means, but-- - What do you mean, Becky? - I think. - Do you want to talk about it? - Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want to save it till next week? - No, we can talk about it now. I mean, the show isn't going to go up till tomorrow, which is when the embargo's up, so. - Yeah, we're just in an hour and 20 minutes. - No, well, or I could just not talk about any games. - I think I'm in charge of that. - I want to talk about-- - Do you want to talk about-- - No, I could be wondering about it. - Do you want to talk about it about a desserts to be talked about? - It does, it's actually a really cool game. I mean, it was my first time seeing it. I wasn't one of those people that saw it forever ago, a D3 or anything like that. So, but it is a, like, people will see it, and they'll probably, if they've played a lot of Xbox Live or Kid games, they'll see it and be like, "Oh, it's kind of like braid or something." 'Cause at first, they think it's like winding back time, but it's not. I mean, you're this guy, and the whole goal is that, it's really silly story, you're like a pythief, you get collected by some crazy magical pie that makes you then-- - The Cronaberry Pie? - Yeah, which then gives you the ability to make clones of yourself, and then each stage you enter-- - Not just that, but the conceit is that it's like the ghost of Christmas past that takes you back to all these shitty situations that you've caused in your endless quest for pie. - So, but now that you can create clones, you'll enter a level and it'll tell you how many clones of yourself you can have going at any one time, and a lot of 'em's, it's usually only one or something. So you have to, like, holding right trigger makes a recording of what you did and letting go, then makes that clone repeat that activity. So you can just make a clone that'll just sit there and swing your stick, which will fling you. If you just, like, swing your stick and hold it real quick into the recording, then he'll just sit there repeating that one action. But you have to sit there and think about ways that, like, while that one clone is existing, flinging the stick, you'll do, like, another recording, and then, like, run back to the one that's doing it. Let go, like, you just have to think about the ways that you can combine clones and loop them into another to then create this menagerie of, like, use that are going around completing everything. - Awesome. - You know, and then it fucks it up by making, like, pies you have to get in a certain order. It won't be just get all the pies. It'll be doing all in a certain order in a certain amount of time. So they could be really challenging. - And it does, it actually, they showed me some late game stuff that we can't talk about, but it gets much, much crazier in order. - I'm sure it does. - And not just that, but it has, like, crazy music, like, like, really good. Like, it almost sounds like, you can tell, like, to me, it sounds like the person's, like, heavily inspired by, uh, what's the space that does Alton Burton's music? Like, Danny Elfman. - Danny Elfman. - It's very, like, rooted in silent film and Buster Keaton and stuff like that. - Yeah, everything's presented, you know, with, like, the framing, like, the sound film. - Yeah, the Edward Gory, sinister, Victorian aesthetic. - And when you're, like, doing the recording yourself, it puts that grain on the screen like you're doing a winding film, film machine. - And, like, one of the cool things about the puzzle mechanic is that there is no, like, one solution for the puzzles. It's really whatever path you can think of. Some, I mean, some might be more or some of the-- - Some of the super, super complex ones, I imagine there's gotta be maybe one or two. - Right. - 'Cause some of 'em, it's like, well, I could be wrong. But for me, it seemed like there was, like, the way they required, like, this, and it was, like, you had to be perfect on time. - See, see, I don't know, 'cause when I was checking out, it was at PAX, I was talking to the one of the guys who created it, and he was saying, like, no, like, we've been totally surprised, demoing it by all the ways. - Yeah, I was interviewing him yesterday, and they said that they were blown away by some of the solutions that people came up with. - I mean, I don't doubt it. - They showed me one challenge level in particular, and he said, so we had, the way they did the puzzles is they essentially came up with a puzzle and reverse engineered a solution. - Right. - And they said, so the way I was looking at this map is I figured, you'd have to use at least three clones to do this right, and he showed me that way. Then he said, then when we went to PAX, this kid did this, and all of us could not fucking believe it. And he made one clone, and by knocking it back and forth, like a volleyball, like, collected every pie. - Yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me. It's just like portal, right? You give people portal long enough, and they'll find, you'll see videos of people that are like, did you know you could do this bullshit? - They'll solve it so quickly, they go back in time. - That's good to hear, because, you know, like Tyler, I'm sure you mentioned it on the show here before, like, I've been judging a lot of the IGF games for the IGF finals that's coming up, and so I've been playing a bunch of sort of puzzle-based platformers, and a lot of the ones I've been playing seem to have only like one solution to solving each of the stages, and, you know, it's still fun, but it feels like sort of trial and error when you're going through trying to like, get at that one solution. So a game where there are multiple solutions, like a portal, or like, BBU Winter Bottom it sounds like, is much more exciting to me. - It's just the first puzzle game I've played like that that has like as much character too, as since maybe World of Goo. Like, World of Goo has like a lot of character with the music and the way the world is, and this one's kind of the same way. - Well, I mean, I think that's, I'm hoping when the IGF comes around next year, and not all these games are finalists, but like when people see closure and start playing that for real, and when people see Limbo finally, which is a game that people have been talking about for years, like once people actually see those games played, and know that they're real, and like, have cool black and white art direction, and all this sort of stuff that makes them sort of stand out, I mean, there will be plenty of like, cool platform games that are puzzle-based with good art direction coming out in the next year, which is good. It's just some of them are a little trial and error-based that I played, and that makes them less fun, 'cause you basically play them once, and then that's it, you know, after that, you know the answers, and what's the fun in that? - Yeah. All right, take a break. - Yeah. - Well, yeah, we'll take a break. - That'd be good. - All right, we'll be right back. (upbeat music) ♪ In the night when I dream my head off ♪ ♪ No reason in that I'll help me, help me, please ♪ ♪ In the summer when we stood out, out ♪ ♪ Stood out on the floor when we tried out ♪ ♪ Everybody arrested at our arms ♪ ♪ And right when we reached each ♪ ♪ And then you said everything else ♪ ♪ Don't you know me, don't you know me ♪ ♪ That's what I mean, this is the only way ♪ ♪ This is the only way, this is the only way ♪ - I'm back. - We'll get a Tyler Handelman, and welcome back. We'll be with him, welcome back. - Well, I've always wanted to introduce, but why don't you introduce? - No, no, don't encourage it. (laughing) - A trap door opens up under me. - I'm not gonna empower you, Tyler, you don't have to work with one white devil. (laughing) - Well, Tuttleman. - So we're just going through some fast Twitter topics, because that's much easier than planning ahead, honestly. So, friend of the podcast in Destructoid correspondent, Sumit Sarkar, says, he wants us to talk about Nick Suttner's thoughts on game reviews, whether or not writers should use comparisons to other games. And this boils down from, or comes down from a, a couple of days ago, Nick Suttner, former Rebel FM podcast host. So that every Darksiders review, what was that? - Every Darksiders review except game daily. - Made comparisons to other games extensively. - Does Zelda, right? - Zelda got more. - Zelda got more. - Got more, okay. - Among others. - And my argument to him was that, you know, making those comparisons wasn't just like an easy way out, it was more like, I was trying to write a very concise review and not, and so therefore using these comparisons made it easier for me to help people understand the point I was trying to make in a more concise way. - I think, you know, Nick's complaint. Probably, I don't know, he's not here to defend himself. - That's good. - But my guess is that he just was, he felt like he was reading a bunch of reviews that felt exactly the same. So, and we've got dudes like, doesn't Brad Shoemaker say that he tries to review every game in a vacuum? - Yeah. - I am the exact opposite of that. - Yeah, I think that's an admirable thing. I just can't imagine how you would do it. - Yeah, and that's just it is, I feel like, why not have all those different perspectives? Like, they're all good, and like, you know, I don't wanna read the same thing every time. Holy crap, PP's mad. So I, you know. - Took a bigger bag. - I mean, I feel like it's kind of like, if the game is clearly ripping off another series, or being inspired by-- - Ooh, much. - We prefer Ooh, much, whatever you know. If it's like so directly, how can you talk about Dante's, I mean, I haven't played Dark Siders yet, but how could I talk about Dante's Inferno without talking about God of War? - I mean, it wasn't that I was even like, when I was making these comparisons, it wasn't that I was trying to make the game not stand on its own merits, 'cause the game is great. I mean, it draws inspiration from these things, but what makes it like what I thought what made Dark Siders a great game was that it took this inspiration and it fulfilled on it. It wasn't like a lot of games, it's like Viking, Battle Flare Asgard, or whatever, that's like, I'm gonna ape God of War and do a really shitty job, and this game's like, I'm gonna ape God of War and I'm gonna do Zelda, and I'm gonna do good enough of it both to make a game that's actually a competent composition of those two, where you're like, "Wow, that's actually, you did it." - And I mean, that's one of the reasons why-- I'm sorry, man. - Oh, hey. - That's one of the reasons why I'm actually, like, I have like, what I've played of Dante's Inferno so far, even though it does shit on the Divine Comedy, in spots like from start to finish. Mechanically speaking, it is extremely tight and very, and on par with a lot of what God of War has had to offer previously. So it's the execution that I appreciate it. - So did Nick actually say that it was wrong or bad? - He just thought that it was like boring and I think that he didn't necessarily, like, it kind of just seemed like an easy way to write the review, you know, rather than like writing about the game on its own merits. - Well, I get kind of that impression a lot just from Game of Reviews in general. Like, it's almost like, you know, cable news stations and stuff like that. You'll hear kind of the echo chamber where everybody's saying the same thing. Even if, you know, like, if you're not, if you're delving into things and like, honestly, considering them is, and like reading them as deeply as you can, then there's probably a lot of subtle differences between a lot of Game of Reviews, even though they say similar things. But, you know, especially on a surface level, they tend to repeat each other. Like, they tend to say the same things. And, you know, I can see how that can be. - It's probably part of the, I mean, I don't go to the preview events, but wasn't that part of the marketing and the, you know, what they were trying to sell this game as like a Zelda game plus God of War. And we're gonna try to do both of them really well. Like, we really like these franchises and we think we can come on. I mean, I'm sure that's something they were trying to get across. - I mean, we're sure somehow it's gotten in our heads. - Right, well, also I feel like it's, I'm sorry. - I mean, I guess it shouldn't have been any surprise. I mean, if that's all the reviews we're saying, like, I didn't read, I don't read reviews, so I'm probably not the best person to ask about this sort of thing. But the, you know, if the entire review was like, this game is like Zelda in this way, but it's, and it's better in, you know, at, 'cause the health system is better. But then, you know, what's not as cool is that the inventory system isn't as good as Zelda. And, you know, I like the way that God of War does magic better than I like this one. And the whole thing is just, yeah, but that's just boring writing to begin with. And I feel like a lot of reviews, you know, like I said, don't read many anymore. But part of the reason I stopped is 'cause they just felt like they were all the same and bad writing anyway. So it doesn't seem like it's any sort of surprise that that's the type of reviews that would be out there for it. I think it's always more interesting if someone can find an interesting angle to write about. But with review deadlines and trying to hit first and that sort of stuff, usually the more interesting, more interesting reviews don't come as reviews. They're like a blog post that comes later from some guy who, you know, had an experience with it that inspired him, guy or girl. And they decided to write about it, you know? Those are the more interesting things to read about when it comes to a game, usually. And it generally doesn't come about during review time. - I think in this case, I feel like any review that didn't mention the Zelda God of War similarities would be, it would be disingenuous. - That's kind of what I was getting. - Yeah, not to specify those comparisons. - Well, it's part of our vocabulary now. - Well, yeah, in this. - To my mind, it's almost the same as saying like, this game is a platformer. - Yeah. - It was the same thing as saying this game is Zelda-like. - Or, well, with platformer, it's like this game takes inspiration from old Mario games or whatever. - I mean, yeah, it's just another way of saying it. And then it's not like a good review rule. So then go and explain it. Like they want to say it's like out of war. They'll mean it's like out of war because it has combos that bubble up. But when you say God of War adds a second layer of meaning to people that understand what you mean by that. - But I have a feeling that Nick Suttner's complaint is more along the lines of what Ryan was saying before. And you know what you were talking about Arthur, about like the, it's, you know, he probably read several reviews that are just like, it's better than Zelda in this and worse than Zelda in this. - Well, I bet the first paragraph of like four reviews in a row had the word Zelda or God of War in it. And like when you see the same kind of setup and closing paragraphs for a bunch of, you know, from a bunch of different reviews that probably bummed you out. But yeah. - Something else he brought up is, I mean, Anthony's response that he wanted to be concise and using terminology of games was a way to sort of shorten that description. He said his response that I think riled Anthony in a certain way was that it's the internet. There's no limitation on word count. - Yeah, I mean, there's not true at all. - He said what's the point of concision to the interwebs? - Which I understand to some degree because I definitely think that there are some people that are interested in reading like 2,000 words about the game before it comes out. But I just... - I mean, yeah, for me, I worked at a place where it's like, you know, IGN already does that, right? They already write a 2,000 word review where they detail like every little bit of the game. That's not what I'm trying to do. You know, and so for me, it's like I set, I set some pretty harsh word counts for myself, you know, and in a way I think that that it's, I'm not saying that you can't write 2,000 words and be good 'cause you definitely can, I see it. But having a shorter word count and forcing that sort of like limitation on yourself does make you make every word count. Like, you know, and it does help you as a writer. So for me, that's the reason to do it. I mean, you know, I feel like a lot of times when I go back and read something where I've written like 1,500 words and been like, why do you want me to shorten this down to 1,000? I can go back like two months later and look it and be like, eh, I guess a lot of that shit was pretty superfluous, it wasn't needed, you know? - Well, it depends, I mean, like, I've written the super long review where I needed to detail every feature because it felt like for that game, like every single thing, if I had left it out, I wasn't explaining something that I thought was an important part of the experience to me. Generally those were wipe out game reviews and I'm hyper obsessive about that, so, you know, but not everyone wants to read a hyper obsessive account of every game. And so that's just what I was saying before, like I'm glad there's a bunch of options, like if you want to read the very long review, you know where to go to find it, if you want to read something shorter, you can probably find a good place to go do that. I understand Nick's complaint about, you know, the same thing, seeing the same thing over and over again, but I mean, yeah, how about he write the thing that he, you know, like, let's see his, I guess, you know, make a blog, right, a review. - Yeah, well, what about a, I mean not, you know, I don't know the conditions of the Dark Ciders review, like when the embargo was up, but like-- - It was a day off. - So, like, I know when I'm writing review, I don't, if I'm, if I can go pass the embargo date, like, I know I don't read other reviews, so I mean, why was the case is that like, you know, everyone's saying the same sort of thing. It's like, you got consensus, you know? - I just think, well, it's just so glaringly obvious, like even just from watching the game being played. - And I think that you literally find the boomerang in this game, you find it the bomb in this game, you know? - There is a portal gun in this game. - There is the shoots, orange and blue portals. - Nice. - I mean, you can shoot a portal through a portal. - You know, like something a lot of people don't talk about that much anymore is like this idea of gaming literacy. Like, you know, like what we're talking about earlier. Like, you know, a vocabulary that we can all just sort of know, shorthand, and that's, you know, it's like a double edged sword, you know? - Well, that's why that's why it's so easy. - I think if you're gonna use it, you should use it the way that I tried to do in mine or other people did, which is like, you're gonna say it's like God of War, say it's like God of War, but also explain that. Like, and then it just gives an extra layer meaning to people, I think. - I mean, this is maybe going a little too general on this point, leaving reviews, but in terms of gaming is such a group art form, you know? Like, I mean, not, it's not that one person can't make a game, obviously, that happens a lot now, but generally, especially when it comes to big budget, AAA games that are coming out, retail releases on consoles. You know, they're in a genre, even if they're blending them that we've seen before, and so generally, you know, we're gonna build upon what other developers have done in the past, and if someone had a, if you have a new idea, you're gonna work on it, but if you have an idea that's the same thing that's appeared in like 20 other games, you're gonna use the best version of what people have done before. And we just, in other art forms, whether it's writing or making films or photography, you know, people share tools and ideas, but it's not like this. This is a whole new beast where like, literally, someone comes up with a better version of health system, and then boom, every game after that for the next two years has the same health system until someone comes up with a better idea for it. - So relies more on like the Auteur theory of like a single directing vision, like pushing the movie, I mean, that's what the director is, it's the director shepherding a project into completion in a more personal-- - Certainly, but anyone who's made, worked on films, knows it's like an extremely group oriented process as well. I mean, it really is like a cinematographer, has a lot more control than I think most people that watch films realize that they do. And of course, that varies on project to project, of course, and the same is true of video games, but in video games, even though they have those directors, I mean, it's different because it's more about gameplay and when I'm in a gameplay, such a throwaway word, but I mean like mechanics. - Mechanics and generally, it's about interactivity, right? You're not just presenting the linear thing, you can't be that exact with your vision, like you can in a film or a book, because it's a linear medium, because it's interactive and because it can be non-linear, you have to standardize more, or else you have to teach, you spend so much time teaching players new systems or having them not know what the hell's going on. Generally speaking, I don't know, maybe it's kind of cheap and makes games more boring in a way, but sometimes it's nice that they just work. Like I've been playing the saboteur and I like that when I hopped in the car for the first time, I hit select twice and it hopped into first person mode, just like it would in Grand Theft Auto 4 if I was playing it, because I wanted it to work that way. - But then conversely, when you're climbing buildings, it feels like punching yourself in the crotch over and over again. - It certainly does, it wasn't the best, but that's 'cause Assassin's Creed II wasn't out yet, you know? Well, they should've learned. - Assassin's Creed I was. - Yeah, that's true. - Matt, did you have anything you'd like to add to that? - Oh, no, we can just go on the next topic. - All right. - They're bowling upstairs now. - So a Twitter user named IJ Helder and another one kind of brought at the same point, but this one's a lot easier and less, I think, esoteric of a topic, maybe. It's like a, with CS over in 3D TV discussions abound, does 3D have a chance in the gaming space to really make it that much better? - I'm just wondering-- - Do you think so? I was gonna say, okay, 'cause I've seen, I've only ever seen one game in 3D. - What game? - Well, no, I've seen two. Some Namco Ninja game that was like a side-scrolling one. And then I've actually, I've seen Avatar as in 3D as well at PAX. They had that-- - Nice presentation. - I've seen Avatar and I've seen Wipeout in 3D and I can say, first of all, it's inevitable. It's gonna happen. And second of all, it does make games better. It's, and a really good example of that is Avatar. When I was playing Avatar at the event and I was playing it in 3D, I was, the 3D was enough of a thing for me to overlook a lot of the mediocre gameplay. And it made the graphics better. Like textures that in the flat 2D space just look like kinda crappy ground wall textures or whatever, when they're actually mapped to a 3D perceptual surface. At that point, it immediately gave it an extra level of realism. So it's like you don't have to have art that makes up for that third dimension. The third dimension is already there. - And you had the nice experience of being able to go back and forth between the 3D version of the game and the 2D version of the game right next to each other. So you can really see like, oh yeah, like this is blown my mind in 3D, but I go to 2D and it looks like not as good. - Yeah, exactly. And then it's also when I saw Wipeout at a-- - GDC last year. - Yeah, it was at GDC when I saw the Wipeout. And then I didn't realize that the boost pads along the ground were actually raised, they were actually raised up, you know, they're actual 3D objects. They looked like flat textures to me the entire time I'd been playing Wipeout on the PS3. And then when I saw it in 3D and saw them raised up, it totally changed the gameplay for me because at that moment, I could see where they were from further off. I felt like I was lined up better on them. It actually made me a better player to see it in 3D. - The only game I played in 3D was Wipeout HD at GDC this year. And David Ellis who just came back from CES, I was talking to him yesterday when he said he saw Wipeout at CES and it wasn't one of the games that was impressive to him and somehow Superstar's HD is the most impressive 3D game. - Yeah, but I mean, you know, we all agree that it's kind of impressive, but do you think that it will actually become something that will work in the gaming space? - Yeah, I mean, I would be a fad that'll go away. - I want Wipeout in 3D now. Like if I could be playing it that way now, that I would play more of that game right the second. Now that I've played it in 3D, I kind of just like want to wait until I can play it in 3D so that it'll be as fun as it was that time. - I guess I'm just wondering, how long it's going to take for it to be affordable? 'Cause right now for 3D home setup, it's like you either have to have a DLP TV or a 3D-ready TV and then even then you need like those Nvidia things which are like $200 per person. - Well, I think it's longer off than a lot of people would think it is or want it to be. But I think it's just the natural thing where games are going to go. - See, I don't know that I agree with that. I think that I feel like consumer entertainment is moving honestly consoles and high definition movies in 3D are all moving in the opposite direction that every other trend and consumer experiences of entertainment are like it's all about mobility and good enough and how can I tailor this to my experience as opposed to 3D which is I have to sit in front of my couch in a specific position with these giant glasses and the special TV and the special content to watch the TV. - Yes, now, now. And like in the next couple of years, yeah, that's going to be the case. But the question is like where the trend is going to go. And I think once we move past the point to where that stuff become, past the point where that stuff is cumbersome and unaffordable and to the point where it's affordable and easy and maybe the glasses are really lightweight and all that kind of stuff. - I read a story in gadget saying that Intel was showing off at CES, a non-3D or non-glasses 3D television solution. - Yeah, there are 3D televisions that require glasses that have multiple screen that are layered on top of each other. - But what the guys at end gadgets said, I don't know how much I, you know, whatever put as much faith in them as you want, but they were saying they had the glasses experience on one screen on the top and the glasses 3 experience on the bottom and that the guy that was there said you could have had to stand in one of eight places to make it work or something, you know, very specific like that. But that the 3D effect that they were witnessing was better on the glasses free TV than what they were seeing on the one with glasses. - And at that point, it's no different than sitting in front of your television now, except that it's in 3D. - Yeah. - I mean, yeah. - I just feel like it bears more focus than people are increasingly willing to give to media now. Like we're all about time-shifted culture and taking stuff with us. - And not only that, but like, you know, like, I don't know, like a big thing about playing games. You know, you have friends over there watching you play. It's like, if you don't have enough pair of glasses, like a bunch of people are looking at this blurry ass screen. - But that's just it. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's gonna be, it's gonna take that much to make it an option. You know what I mean? To like, have it be able to flip on and off. And obviously in some cases, maybe that won't be the case. But, you know what I mean? Like you should be able to play both the 2D and 3D version of the thing. - Yeah, for sure, yeah. - And when I'm, I don't know, I'm a sucker for new immersive experience. I'm the guy who talked to them, you know, no more than an hour ago about hooking up steel battalion so I can play with fucking 40 buttons and three joysticks. And, you know, to quote my buddy Phil Fish, like, we are still touching computers by tapping them with our fucking pinky finger, when instead, you know, like, I wanna be swimming around in the computer like a dolphin. Like, you know, virtual reality, the reason that we thought it sounded so cool in the 80s and early 90s is 'cause that would be fucking cool to be able to like turn your head and see, you know? It's just like, the tech's not quite there yet. - But, you know what, I think virtual reality is like the perfect example of what I think 3D in the home is. It's just like, not gonna happen a fad. Like, it's gimmicky, I played Resident Evil 5 with 3D glasses at PAX. I got a headache in like, in like five minutes of playing it. - I just feel like it's being pushed by these companies that have a very vested interest in continuing this extremely expensive hardware upgrade. - It just comes down to like two different, how you see the features going. Arthur sees it more as like, you know, people not wanting to have this big setup where it's like they're committed to doing this thing at home as, and Matt, I think is much more thinking in the terms of exponential technology where it'll get to be this thing that's just so casual and not that expensive. - Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, I'm not thinking of like, you know, next year or something like that. I'm thinking, you know, like five or 10 years down the line, 3D is gonna be so easy and so cheap that it will not only be in your home, it will be mobile, you know? It'll be on your glasses or something like that. It's gonna be, it's gonna be something that's gonna be right there with you and it's gonna be an easy thing and games are inevitably gonna take advantage of this technology 'cause it's just more immersive. - I, I, just pulling out of my ass, I feel like we will leapfrog flat panel display technology before 3D would gain-- - Hey, I'm okay with that in 3D mobiles. - No, I mean like holographic displays and things like that. Like that don't work the same way that flat panel TV and therefore are what we understand 3D television to be. - I think for certain types of gameplay experiences, not every type, but certain types, it's gonna be really cool to have it. - For sure, yeah. - And for me, like first person racing games like Wipeout, it's fucking really cool and it's super immersive. I'm already like wearing 5.1 headphones and using a dumb motion controller, which makes me have to sit in a certain way on my couch when I'm playing it. So I'm already the type of gamer who will contort myself into a funny position and put on a bunch of random wacky shit to make the game whatever slightly more immersive to my brain. So I'm probably not the general audience for this sort of thing, but you don't really develop necessarily for the general audience, you know, some companies do, but some companies like Sony are constantly reaching for the kind of bleeding edge and it hasn't always worked out for them financially. But as a gamer and kind of gadget guy, the gadget loving guy, I'm glad that there's someone that's reaching for it and who knows how much I'll be able to spend on that sort of stuff, I'm super poor, but like I'm glad we're constantly pushing forward. And even if flat panel 3D technology isn't the answer, it's all baby steps to getting us to-- - Jacked into the Matrix. - Jacked into the Matrix or holographic screens or whatever. We have to pass all these steps to get to wherever the next big awesome technology is. - Something that we should do, one more topic. And then I am gonna copy and paste a bunch of these into a word file 'cause there's quite a few good ones. - Yeah, we should just do this again next week. - Do you have one? I have one too, so it's up to you. - I had one, basically, well, a lot of people were asking this, what do we feel about Ubisoft's delays and Spunnersales delays? And I guess we could factor in Capcom's delays into that as well, which of all, and Gran Turismo 5 was delayed today, too indefinitely, so. - Wow, that was supposed to come out like-- - March in Japan and summer in the US, and now it no longer has Japanese release date. - That game has been so dodgy with its release dates. Like, I jokingly said years ago, like, oh, that game's not even gonna come out this generation. Like, it might be true. - There have been three fours us in the time that it's taken for us to get a demo of Gran Turismo 5. - But hey, man, it might be fun. - There have been like four fucking demos of Gran Turismo 5. - Yeah, it's true. - I don't know. I mean, I'm not necessarily like opposed to game delays when they're being done for the sake of making a game the best it can be. - For sure. - But when it's like a financial thing, that makes me sad as a gamer, but at the same time, I understand like, like, you know, all these companies that pushed it back into next year, maybe like they did it the first, with the first couple of people, and then all of a sudden everyone did it, and they're like, fuck man, now everything we were trying to avoid in Christmas time is fucking happening all over again. - The only delay I've seen announced so far this year that seems like it was delayed to get the game done, and this could be Gran Turismo 5, but I don't really know. Is it Red Dead Redemption? I think it's probably gonna get pushed back with all the shit we've been hearing on the last week. - I mean, it sounds, all the shit we've been hearing the last week makes it sound like the demos that we saw were very rare. - Vertical slices. And I mean, even the demo that we saw, it packs had some pretty fucking serious issues where they had to restart it a few times. - Yeah, I predicted that one too. Red Dead would get pushed back even more. - That makes us sad. I mean, that's a game that I really want to get finished, and then you hear all this shit throughout the week about how troubled it's supposed to be and whatnot. - I actually don't mind any of these delays really, and I think it's partially because I have so many games to be playing Mass Effect Edge. - Yeah, to be fair, I never even played Dragon Edge. - You know, and I still gotta play Darksiders, I'm working on Bayon, and now I feel like I'm already late on 2010 games, so these delays give me more time. And as a dude working as part of a very small company right now, who's-- - No longer receiving games for free. - Well, no, that's not what I was getting at. We have very little money, very little, and we're constantly having to make business decisions that maybe aren't the ones that we want to make. You have to sometimes do something that you don't want to do in order to stay alive. And last year was undoubtedly hard for everyone, including game companies. And so if they need to push their game three months to like whatever, make it work for them and make their company last longer, as long as I get to play Spinner Cell Convictions sometime, and it's a good game, that's fine with me. - Yeah, I approach it from kind of a selfish place too, where I'm just like, okay, thank you for delaying Splinter Cell Conviction, 'cause now it means I can spend more time with Mass Effect. - Well to me, it's not like a matter of the fact that I can't play it now. To me, it's just the pure and simple frustration of these games who are getting several delays. It's like, yeah, I just want them to say, okay, do not put a release date on this game. Tell us when it's ready, and that's it. Like, stop giving us these decoy release dates. - Listen to Dennis Dyak. - This is a problem that we used to have all the time, and like, honestly, it hasn't been that big initiative, and maybe it's 'cause of how many big-name games come out these days, but I used to be much more bummed out by games getting pushed, but-- - Me too. I think generally-- - I think generally-- Like, it felt like somebody stabbed me in the heart. - Yeah. (both laughing) - Which, you know, I mean, the change in the position that I'm hearing from you guys might be from the fact that you're in the industry now. You know, the people-- - I bet that is, yeah. - Playing at home probably do feel that. Still feel the staff. - Yeah, I don't know, I've seen both reactions. Like, on Twitter today, from people who are like, or like, I'm relieved that Splinter Cell is delayed to people like me, that is like, I would like to stab you, ski 'em out in the face. - I mean, it just comes down to maybe those other people that feel relieved. - The fourth goddamn time. - Maybe those people that feel relieved, they had like four other games they wanted to play, but they also wanted Splinter Cell, but for you, it's like, you had Splinter Cell, and these other games you'd play. - And unlike the drug dealer in Friday, when you play with my money, you're playing with my emotions. When you play with my release dates, you play with my emotions. - I just don't follow release dates as kind of as closely as-- - I wouldn't if I wasn't a charge of reviews. - It used to be so important to me, you know, I used to care so much, and now I generally know when games are coming out. - I mean, I knew when Splinter Cell was coming out, but I just assume there's just too many games stacked up at the beginning of this year, like logically speaking, you couldn't, as a game reviewer, you can't possibly play all of them, so-- - As a gamer, really, I'm-- - Well, that's what I mean. That's what I mean, like, I'm trying to think of, well, high school kids or students who, you know-- - Dropped out. - Yeah, even if all you did was play all that, you would seriously, you probably wouldn't have any time to do anything else if all you did was play the Just the Games that are gonna come out in 2010 between now and June, like, there's just too many. - Who would've thought, like, three years ago that we'd be bitching about how many games we have to play between January and June? - That's just it is, I'm not bitching, I'm glad. It's cool, and like I said, I just think the delays kind of help us out and gives us a little bit more time to focus on the ones that we would've, you know, not had as much time to think about. - Yeah, the kind of the downside to this glut of games that we're getting over the first quarter of this year is that the last couple of years, this was like a really good time for indie games to shine. And I'm a little worried that the smaller in the downloadable games that kind of had, they used to really get their stars shown bright in the first quarter, and I'm a little bit afraid that maybe they won't shine as bright this year because we're gonna have a year round AAA release schedule that's gonna use up all the marketing. - It's possible, but I think PB Winterbottom, I think in particular, signals a shift from certain publishers that they really wanna try to push these games. - Yeah, that's true too, yeah. - Like the 2K play released Axel and Pixel, but that was just sort of like a trial run whereas PB Winterbottom is definitely like 2K saying, this is our big test to see if we can start publishing these quirkier independent games and make a success out of them. - Yeah, make a bigger splash with them. - And I mean, the live arcade last year definitely showed last that there could be some big successes. - And of course, we've got GDC coming up in a couple of months with the IGF, and so that's always a press. - GDC always builds a lot. - A press sort of spectacle, yeah, like the finalists at least will get talked about. - And PAX East, PAX East can be a good place for little indie developers or larger indie developers. - You know what, I kind of wonder about that. I feel like PAX is more and more becoming where the big publishers are deciding that they wanna break. - It's true, but I'm saying that the little guys can still get a booth there for-- - Right, I mean, you still see small teams. - The most talked about game from last PAX was Shank, in my opinion. - Well, Shank and-- - Pretty popular. - What's his face is? Ron Gilbert's game. - Yeah, that one too. - That's me. - That's me, yeah. - And those were both smaller games on the small ones. - But then you go on the show for him, the biggest lines are for Left 4 Dead 2 and-- - Well, of course, because, you know, I mean-- - And honestly, the onus is on us as gaming press to decide whether or not, I mean, it's easy sometimes to focus on the indie games that are getting published by big-name developers, 'cause they're the ones that are coming on a tour to show you Splinter Cell, and maybe they're gonna show you some other little game that they have at the same time type of thing, where, you know, if you just, I don't know, go to ticksource.com every once in a while, or, you know, kind of check out some of these-- - Or just pay attention to-- - indie games and stuff that talk about it. - Or Twitter people, you know, like, follow, go read Brandon Boyer stuff on Boing Boing, or whatever, like, there are tons of awesome indie games coming out all the time, a lot of 'em are free, assuming you have a PC, you can just check 'em out, and some of the ideas there, you know, they're all, say, as an IGF judge, I played many games that are freaking sweet that have lots of good ideas that are not IGF finalists. - And we'll never hear about them. - And you won't hear about them unless people talk about 'em. So, it's a bummer, it's a really, it is a bummer, but, you know, they're still there. So, all you need to do is find 'em. You just gotta look. - On that note, I think we're gonna take a quick break. - And then we'll come back with a couple letters. - Letters, the letter A. (upbeat music) ♪ We want, we only like you 'cause you two and you ♪ ♪ You gotta work with that and get your son ♪ ♪ Go on and show me that you know how to use it ♪ ♪ And do your duty and get on the floor ♪ ♪ And don't let the boys just do it ♪ ♪ The power of fixing the thrill ♪ ♪ We know you're averse ♪ ♪ Why's all the boys just do it ♪ ♪ I'm a mixin' the thrill ♪ (upbeat music) - Yes. Okay, the first letter is from Jack L. And he's talking about PAX East. He says, "For Christmas, I got a three day pass "to PAX East." So, my dad, my dad pays no attention to games, knows nothing about them. Will there be anything for him to do, or will he be confused the entire weekend? - Go to the concert. - On average, that's what he wants to know first. He has this, I don't know. I think you and your dad, well, your dad doesn't know anything about the games. But if your dad has, I mean, unless your dad's just going to like show for you, if he shows an invested interest in the things you're interested in, I think you guys could have a little bit of fun with the spectacle of it all. - And it's like more than any other kind of gamer convention I've been to. People that are really friendly, and accepting, and everyone just wants to like talk nicely to everyone, I don't know, it's a little bit different than going to like, I don't know, any of the other conventions. - A little board game room. - I mean, if nothing else, if you're gonna get a, I don't know if you're gonna have a hotel or what, but I don't know, your dad can always chill while, I don't know, I just don't, I think maybe, I don't know why your dad's going with you. I feel like I need more information, but I mean. - I mean, that's pretty sweet that like, Eddie gave you that and be, he's taking you. - Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you're from Boston. But yeah, I think your dad will be able to see things to enjoy. He might be bored out of his brain a little bit here and there. I would tell him to bring a book just in case. - I was also the possibility that he will see everyone at this place and judge you forever as one. (laughing) - In my experiences at PAX, and I haven't been in a couple years, but there have been plenty of people that were there with someone else. You know what I mean, like, there's a, there are a lot of people that are there because they're significant others there, or because their son is there or whatever, you know. - Did he have any other parts to his questions? - Well, he did, he wondered, but it's something that I don't think we can really answer. He just wanted to know on average, how much, how many hits articles we write for our sites get, and that's not really something. - I don't think we're allowed. - Yeah, I don't think we are either. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, you go look on IGN's corporate site and they'll tell you, you know, they have like 30 million unique visitors or month or whatever. So you can imagine it's quite substantial. I'll just leave it at that, yeah. - A better question would be how many of them are idiots. - So hold on, this one's totally not game-related, but this one's something I think me and Tyler can speak against, which is, this is from Kyle and he says, "In the last few podcasts, you guys are professed "your love for survivor man." Why? Man versus wild is such a better show and almost everyone. - What? - What? - And tell survivor man, gives himself an enema with water littered with seagull fecal matter to rehydrate himself or sleeps in a hollowed out camel. He's a bitch. - I'm just going to say right now, you have no idea the kind of worms you just opened, sir. - Oh, man. - Dude, first off the reason that what's his face does all that bullshit, Bear Grylls, is because he has a camera crew there. So if something goes wrong, he's going to be immediately taken care of. survivor man goes out there by him fucking self for like five days. - Man versus. - Films by himself. - He's actually surviving. Man versus wild is just showing you absurd shit. - Yeah, man is like shit, how does it survive while doing the most breakneck crazy shit if you're a super crazy athlete that can rock climb? - Yeah, don't get me wrong. I love man versus wild and I love it because of what you just said, like the crazy berserk, like I'm an ex-special forces guy and I can actually do this shit kind of stuff. I look at it like I look at an action movie. This guy's performing awesome stunts, but that's not survival. - I watch the effect. - You watch survivor man versus wild for spectacle. You just see shit like that or to see him randomly bite into a snake. But you see the shit he does, that's exactly the shit that you learn like through watching survivor man and through just using common sense that this is the type of shit you would never do because there's too many opportunities for an accident for you to break your leg and for it to all be over. But again, he has a camera crew there with him. - I've seen him say like, oh look, I'm going to try to go down this waterfall because you know, it seems like there might be a cave at the bottom and then going down the waterfall is like the most stressful crazy thing. - He and his cameraman almost break their legs and then they finally get down there. - And it's amazing. - Oh yeah, it's cool but. - But I mean, and here's the bottom line. In the inevitable event of the zombie apocalypse, survivor man will give you the practical knowledge you need to know to survive in the wild. - That is, that's like practical. - True thoughts that you need. - And that's just that. But if you wanted to call the survivor man a bitch and then say that Bear Grylls is better, you should look up the various web pages that have like documented the fact that when Bear Grylls will talk about how he's out in the middle of nowhere and shit, like there have been people that have visited those same places and then like turned the camera and there's like a road right there. Like he's not always, like his is very much a spectacle. - Well they even. - It's like an illusion. - They even say like in the credits or the opening or whatever that like occasionally survival situations are staged to illustrate. - Simulated. - Simulated. - Simulated. - I mean, you know. - That sounds less fake. - The survivor man, that's just it. He goes out there, you know, and he does it for five days. He doesn't eat and stuff. Yeah, he doesn't do something funny. Like rip open the head of a lizard, need its brain or something like that, but that's because he just isn't eating, you know, which is the reality. - I've seen him rip open the heads of carcasses before. - I have too, but I'm saying that he did like, in man versus wild, it's like, you know, it isn't like he just stumbles upon a lizard. It's like they knew it was there. - And it's not like he was hungry. - And it was started filming. - And like, I haven't eaten in days where a survivor man's like, if I don't get this food, I might die. - Yeah. - Okay. - Sorry. - Yeah, that guy. - We're going in circles now. - You're so wrong, sir. Man versus wild is the inferior. - I respect your opinion. You're right to be wrong and have an incorrect opinion. - I don't even respect that. Don't ever fucking write us in with that thing again. (all laughing) God damn you. Okay, we're only gonna read one more letter because it's already been a longer show in the other segments, but this one is kind of a question that's, I don't know, you might not have an immediate answer for, but it's from Adordo. And he says, "My question for the podcast is this. Is there gaming-related trade or swap you've done that you've come to regret over the years or even the second after you've done it?" For me, it would certainly be trading a working game gear with a bunch of games and accessories for a Neo Geo CD that broke shortly after I got it. - Oh, that's the only reason you'd regret that, too. - Yeah. - 'Cause the Neo Geo CD's battery lasts longer than the game gears. - My big regret was when I left for college and at some point had come back and no, no, it wasn't even college. It was towards the end of high school and just I hadn't touched my Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis for a long time and they were still taking us trades at the bad baggages that I lived by before they were bought out and I just took it all down there and traded all of it. Every Super Nintendo game I had, including I did at some point with my NES as well. You know, I regret not having my NES or my SNES. - That's mine, too, is that I didn't actually trade this in, but when we were kids, we had an Atari 2600 and my brother and I, we got like, well, not only that, we had an original Pong game, Pong Home Game, and then we got an Atari 2600 and when we moved to California, we gave them all to our neighbor friends because we just thought of them as toys. We didn't think of them as like, you know, these things that we should be archiving. - Yes. - And we had an Atari 2600 during the time when Atari 2600 was going way down the tubes and all the games were suddenly like three and $5. So we had stacks and stacks of games and I can't help but think in my head how many of those games are like so fucking rare and I would have loved to have had them today as well as our system and we just gave it away and like it wasn't, it was like 15 years later when I actually regretted that but I regretted a lot now. - Yeah, it happens to me especially with old handhelds just because I've, in the recent years, become something where I wanna collect most every handheld I can get my hands on even if it's like some bullshit I'll never play. Like the other day, IGN, GameSpy, Team Xbox, we all just cleaned the offices 'cause we're getting ready to move offices and someone cat at Gizmondo never touched just been sitting there. I swooped and I was like, I will never play this but I want it so badly. So. - You wanna use GPS technologies? - I think you can use it for playing ROMs as well. - Nice. - For filthy piracy. - Hey, I can't support those old ass games anymore. - Dude, I have a trade in regret that was pretty big time and pretty recent. I traded in Oblivion and I looked at my achievements and I have like about half of the achievements that I almost earned but traded it in and like and it was when my roommate was the only one that owned the 360. So it's like I played Oblivion on his 360 and all my saves are on his hard drive. So it's like I can't even get Oblivion now and then like pick up my game. It's like I have to start over from the beginning. Like I almost had the thieves guild done and all the guilds almost had those done but. - I just gave you a copy of that game recently. It's time to man the fuck up. - I know and man and I started to go through and I was like, Jesus dude, I'll start over with you because I just recently discovered that I can't do the Assassin's Guild 'cause I must have killed the guy when he first appeared and I don't even remember. I just popped in the game like two days ago to try it out and I was like, I can't do the quest. So yeah, well, I have more like buyers regrets than trading regrets, although it's sort of related. Back in the day when I was young, NES era, Game Boyer, that sort of thing. I had one of my best friends of all time, my friend Alex kind of was really, he was really convincing. Like, I don't know. (laughing) And he would school me sometimes and then give me shit about it. He would get away with a lot of stuff. Like we were into basketball cards at the time and in a pack, I got the David Robinson rookie card where he's like holding up his jersey in this pack hoops which ended up being a card worth like $150. And I got like seriously in my first pack of basketball cards that I opened and he had the other David Robinson card, also a rookie card from the same year but the more like normal ass one of him shooting at a jump shot or something like that. And he traded me and told me how much better it was. I knew somehow deep inside that it wasn't but I ended up going through with the trade. And then he was a total dick about it and kept making fun of me for going through with it and never gave it back to me. So this, he's still my best friend. I love this guy but he was kind of a dick sometimes about that sort of stuff when we were young. And one time I had gathered up about $30 and was gonna go to the store to get a new Game Boy game. And he convinced me, I don't know how, to buy this like a NFL football game for Game Boy even though I hate sports games. I don't know anything about football. I don't know, I like could have gotten Metroid Prime, or not Metroid Prime, Metroid 2 had just come out and I ended up getting this other freaking football game instead and then had to go back and get the Metroid game later. I think I traded it. I think I did end up trading it in because I was like, this is awful. And so this sad story is that I, one of the things I lost, I have my NES, I have my Super NES, I have most of my Genesis games but I don't have a lot of my Game Boy stuff because I let my younger brother have it when I was young and he just didn't take the same sort of care of the stuff that I did. So I lost a bunch of Game Boy games. I was looking for an old school Link's Awakening cartridge a couple of weeks ago and I just couldn't find it. The other regret was buying Assassin's Creed 2 on PS3 rather than buying it on Xbox 360 which I knew is what I should have done. That really did, but I hadn't, I seriously got depressed. I went to bed that night and I couldn't think about, I kept thinking about the dumb mistake I made of buying the PS3 version of the game and had to wake up the next morning and convince myself that even though I'm really poor, the thing that I had to do was go and get half credit back at EB from, you know, to get the 360 version. So I bit the bullet and paid the extra money and got the 360 version. - And I bit a bigger bullet by sticking with the PS3 version for the good of our show. - Yeah. - Oh yeah. - Well, I was the only one I had in my room. - Was it the PS3 version? - Screen tearing, it had a lot of technical issues. - Oh really? - I didn't know it was all graphics related. - Yeah, it's all graphics. - It played fine, but it had like a worse frame rate and screen tearing. - It's the type of thing where if it's the only one you play, you won't notice it, probably. But I had played like 80% of the Xbox version on a debug unit and I just couldn't go back. It was like, I had seen the face of God and then I saw the face of God after even punched like 12 times and I just didn't. - I thought it was Assassin's Creed 2 God. - Well no. - I don't know. - I'm offended. - Says the atheist. - I was just, it was just a metaphor. - Okay. - And Assassin's Creed 2 is a lot better than... - Assassin's Creed 2 is a lot better than Jesus. - No. - It's a lot better than you think it is, 'cause I know you don't like that series. - I know, I really wanna play it. - I think Anthony will wanna play it at some point, but I feel like we have all talked, it's a game that we have all talked about so much that they're definitely gonna be people that are like, just fucking shut up about Assassin's Creed 2 already. - Yeah. - I am. - No, seriously, shut up. (laughing) - I'm so, I try to be anyway over the, that whole high school-ish sort of feeling of like, just because everyone says that it's cool, it's not cool anymore. - Well, I'm not gonna get worse, because we're supposed to get Assassin's Creed 2 DLC this month. - I know, and I actually was, that's the question I wanna answer today with all the Zoobysoft news is like, give me a fucking solid date. I don't wanna hear-- - Instead, we got thinly veiled, and now we're gonna make a half non-sequel? - Yeah, non-sequel Assassin's Creed game. - I did not like that news. Not that I'm not gonna, I'm sure the thing they'll put out will be something that I'll like and it will be good, it just doesn't feel like the right direction. I just wanna play Assassin's Creed 3, I wanna finish the story. - If Assassin's Creed, multiplayer, or whatever it's called, is developed by Ubisoft Montreal, then I will be there to try it. If it says Ubisoft Shanghai on the box, I will pass. - I will try it no matter what. - I will go on the list of skipped games with End War. - There you go. - All right, all right. You've just wasted far too much of your life listening to us blab about games. - No, I didn't tell my trade-in story or my lost story. - Oh, I thought you didn't have one. - Tell it, I wanna hear it. - When I went to college, I lost my dream cast in about 25 games. - What, lost? - I left them with my younger sister, and she just lost them and never found them again, so shit's in a game's like power's down. - Sold them for drugs? - Not that sister. (laughing) Yeah, she's, all my dream cast games were lost. - We don't talk anymore. (laughing) All right, well now you've wasted two hours in like 15 minutes listening to us blab about stupid shit, but should you choose to want to listen to other people blab about stupid shit, you can go listen to the mobcast bitmob.com, the geekbox@geekbox.net, or you can watch the Area 5 video podcast at co-op, which is at area5.tv or originally3.com/co-op. Yeah, if that's what you wanna do, which you can soon see their two-part special about Game of the Year Test stuff, so. - Or go back and watch anything else we made this year. - I like the Assassin's Creed II Spectacular. - Or this, I'm really happy with our shooter special that came in a couple of weeks ago. - Oh, I need to watch the show. - Which I made during Christmas week, so I'll hook that up with Matt's help. - So yeah, do all that. Remember you can mail us letters or not mail, but you can email us letters at the email just as letters at eat-sleep-game.com, so. And then yeah, I guess we'll see you all next week. - Hey Matt, where can people find you on the internet? - At twitter.com/talkingorange. - Arthur, I ended the podcast. (laughing) - In the area, five.tv. - Tyler. - I write on gamespot.com, and then Twitter at dirtytea.com/ - You do what? You know the-- - Twitter.com/pothead. - Dirtytea. - Hey, if you wanna find me, Ryan O'Donnell, all one word after the Twitter thing. - That's, I write on Twitter a lot, so go there. Or our website, which they've already mentioned. - Twice. - Yes. - And you are there. - Twitter.com/AEGIES, and I will have a bunch of previews going up this week on teamexbox.com. - I write for gamespot, so you can read my reviews on gamespot, as well as you should check out Julian Murdock's piece about the role of religion in games. It's not like a, it's a very fair balanced piece, it's not just talking shit about any religious group or anything like that, and it's actually really good, and it's the first of the things GameSpy is gonna be rolling out to make us hopefully look like one of the smarter and stupidest places on the internet at the same time. - Too long, didn't read. - Along with those hand, those humor pieces that are obviously on the stupider side of things for reason. - I'm gonna tell the Brian, she said that. - This has been our mission statement, stupid and smart. So that's for the stupid, but you can read stuff like Julian Murdock's. - We are the SS. - Wait. (laughing) - All right, I like that message. - We'll see you all, next week, when I'm tickling at your drums and you're asleep. - Do you do less games? (rock music) (rock music) (rock music) (rock music) (rock music) (rock music) - Do you have any other racial epithets you're throwing around? - I have a program, I have a program and plans versus zombies. - Don't make stuff up, Arthur. - You know, don't try and make me into a racist. - I didn't make you into a racist. - That's totally different stuff. - Genetics make you into a racist. - Yeah, all Mexicans are racist. - Yeah, all Mexicans are racist. - Yeah, all Mexicans are racist. (laughing) - But now I have the ability right now to pick up walls and look around. - Do we do wap, yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen to and rebel FM, woo, yeah. - That's it.