Rebel FM
Rebel FM 46 -- 01/06/10
This week you can listen in as Anthony progressively loses his voice! This episode features talk about Darksiders, Ghostbusters, Dragon Age, Bayonetta (a little bit), and a few other games. We then move on to Gaming Resolutions for 2010, including several from the community. And finally, we close out with letters (surprisingly relationship free). It's a shorter show because Anthony's quite sick, but we wanted to take this opportunity to say thanks to those of you who have stuck with us through thick and thin through the year, and hello to those of you who are new (we like new people, too). Enjoy!
[MUSIC] Hello, and welcome to Rebel F.M. 40 something. It's like we're working with Patty or Selma. I'm Anthony Davis with me as Tyler Barber. Vela Komen and Arthur Gies. I'm really tired. Yeah, and I'm really sick. So, good-bye. Suck it up. That's the podcast this week, folks. I'm so tired. I think the only video game I played today was the seven minutes- Long day work sitting in a chair. The seven minutes of dark void that Capcom saw fit to put on Xbox Live. Is that along the demo? It's short. It's the part right after you get the jetpack that works, like the one that you fly with, and you disable the shield and that one floating thing. And then right after that is the ship tries to take off and there's the scorpion. It stops. Yeah. That's not about dark void, though. Yeah. That's about as much as I have to say about dark void. Yeah, that's all everyone should say. Yeah. You know, well, there was one other thing that I thought was noteworthy was saying, like, when I saw the commercials for dark void, it reminded me of the birth of this generation. When the Call of Duty 2 commercials were all going out and it was all CG. Yeah. If I sort of made it look like a game, that's what the dark void commercial is. Oh, this does what they got sued for in the UK. Yeah. And they're doing the same exact thing where, like, they're doing the CG stuff to look like gameplay, but it's definitely. They're in-game assets. So we're going to keep doing the show until either today, either until we run out of things to talk about or until I can no longer speak. Or until the apocalypse. Whichever comes first. So let's talk about video games. And then gaming resolution. No, no, no, no. We don't tell people what's coming. We want to surprise them. Everyone loves a surprise. Yeah, well, let's talk about some video games. Starting with Tyler, because last week you didn't have that much to play, and this week I suspect it might be similar. Well... Because you've been traveling? Yeah. Yeah, you know, I went back to Houston for over a week. Where you saw Avatar? Where I saw Avatar. What did you think of Avatar, Tyler? We'll give a two-minute geek box break. Alright, alright, dude. Let me tell you, let me set up my experience of Avatar first. Oh, that's right. I was walking into the theater, wiping a smudge off of my glasses, my seeing glasses, not the 3D glasses. And they broke right in half. No, don't hold that against Avatar. Huh? Don't hold that against Avatar. No, no, no, I won't. So, so I had to watch the whole movie without my glasses, but that was fine. And, you know, I went into the movie expecting all style, no substance. And the movie ended up being pretty much all style, but enough substance, you know? No, that's fair. What I told Anthony is that it seems like James Cameron had something to say, but feels like the people watching his movie are idiots. Yes, and the exact point I realized that was the moment you met the army sergeant leader named Scarface Guy. It wasn't when they said, "Here's Unobtanium." No, no, it wasn't that point. Honestly, something called Unobtanium wouldn't even surprise me, though, because people have named shit that they've discovered the stupidest stuff just because of how they discover it. And, you know, he finds it, names it. So, assholes are like, "It's called Unobtanium." And then they're like, "Oh, well." But, like, yeah, I had a couple of beasts. I don't like beasts with the movies, but just, you know, when you compare Avatar to other movies that I consider that are really good, you know? Think of, like, right at the beginning of Avatar, the humans touch down on Pandora. And apparently, like, it's this, you know, fearful place. And these Navi people are these savages. And, you know, we gotta watch out for them, and let's go get the Navi. But we never, ever see the Navi and the humans have any sort of conflict other than what eventually happens. No, but there's like-- There's indications of their conflict, like, as soon as they walk in. And that's all they do, is that's what I'm saying. Like, like, all they say is like, "Oh, yes, these Navi are dangerous." But we never see anything. And likewise, like, the Navi are these, like, really intense-- It's true, but you never see them encroaching until they're coming to actually see them. Yeah, you never see them as a threat or anything like that. And then also, you know, there's supposed to be this really, like, staunch, you know, naturalistic sort of people. And you never see anyone from within side their group sort of turn, really, even against their own group, sort of like, you know, insurgencies in Iraq or something. Like, they even, you know, there's even that scene where there's two straight allusions to the current war in Iraq where they talk about, "Oh, it's a shock and all campaign." "Oh, you know, a preemptive strike is the only way you can, you know, nab these guys in the butt." Well, why wasn't there any Navi that were also villainous and also, like, I mean, the brother, they tried to paint him a little bit like that of the sister. But to me, I felt like at that point, you know, James Cameron just wanted to make black and white, lowest common denominator, like, "These guys are good, and these guys are bad." Whereas, like, you know, when I think about movies, like, "The Valley of the Wind" by how Miyazaki or, or like a Princess Mononoke where every player involved, they're sort of like a shade of gray, you know, they all have their own motivations in this thing. And I don't know, I was hoping for something a little bit more, a little deeper than that, you know, than what he presented. That's fair. I felt like it was archetypal. Very archetypal. A lot, some other people would just leap straight to cliché, and I suppose that's fair, but I felt like... Oh, there's definitely some places where it steps in the question. Yeah, I mean, yeah. The thing that really just pulled me over was, like, Navi as the name of the people, and how Navi means the people. And I mean, Navajo means the people. Well, not dementia, I mean, they're just stylized, like, native people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's very transparent in that regard, but I still thought it was awesome. I thought it was funny. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was definitely entertaining. There was at no point in the entire movie where I felt, like, offended at the fact that it wasn't entertaining me on some level, but it didn't have that depth that I hoped it would have. And there was another point that I feel, especially coming from James Kimman background that I felt Avatar seriously suffered from. And if you think about James Cameron's work on movies like Aliens, there was not a single memorable sound in all of Avatar. Think about Aliens and all the iconic sounds that come from. That is a... Think about even the soundtrack of Aliens. I will. There is nothing audibly about Avatar that is. It's true. I think of Aliens, I think of two sounds. I think of the sounds the Aliens make when they're dying, and I think of the sound that the machine gun makes, which I can't imitate by any stress imagination. Or the pulse... That's true. Or the way... I mean, so much. I felt like Avatar was a movie that they filmed... I don't feel it suffered for not having that. No, I think that they were much more interested in having everything be seamless. As seamless as possible into a large degree they succeeded. Yeah, but I don't think that it wasn't seamless in Aliens. It's just he saying that there were memorable sounds. Those are just two polar opposite examples of how to make a movie. Aliens was made for nothing, essentially. And that definitely factored into how it was shot. I know, but I'm just saying, again, this has nothing to do with his point of just that there's no memorable sounds. I mean, you know, he's trying to create this world, but yeah, I don't know. I felt... Well, I was trying to think of other James Cameron movies that had memorized aliens. And Terminator. But that was the soundtrack. Yeah. I mean, the soundtrack to Aliens is also extremely iconic. Yeah, it is. It has the most used Q and trailers, I think, ever. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was just stuff like that, or like the fact that they chose Papyrus as the font for the subtitles. I was just like, the graphic designer, I mean, was just really revolting at that. Because Papyrus in the design community is one of the most god-awful fonts in the world. This is a design nerd thing. I'm not even specifically a font nerd thing. Yeah, fuck that. Come on, Tyler. I understand. I understand that certain fonts are offensive. Yeah. I even saw Papyrus. Offensive. I will not go so far as the say of fonts. A lot offensive. We'll find Helvetica offensive. Offensive. Offensive. Jesus Christ. Dude, I saw Papyrus in my eyes rolled. And it's on its own. I just think that calling anything like a font offensive unless it's composed of like dicks. I... There's something you know that's made of dicks. Yeah, then I can see you being like that kind of offensive. Those are letters made of vaginas. I'm offended, sir. But my calling offensive is like such like an escalation. No, Anthony. You see other people wouldn't find that offensive, so you have no right to find that offensive. I just think it's funny calling it offensive. Or so people in our comments from the last episode would have us believe. Oh, man. Like even the stuff I see at the modern art museum, there's something that shit is dumb to me. I don't find it offensive. The string of light bulbs. I'm never going to forget that a fucking string of light bulbs considered art. I'll punch the person that made that. Likewise, I'll punch the person who made the decision to make papyrus as the title font. I think that brings back the lowest common denominator thing. Yeah. Like it's something that the general public thinks is exotic but familiar. Oh, yeah. Like I can't tell you how many like design clients come in and they're like, "Yes, I'm making a candle company." And I like this font and it's papyrus. Like, "Oh, of course you would." Yeah, but I mean you're the only person in a vertical plane about the font. I'm sure there are other designers out there. No, I've actually seen several people complain about it. Yeah, but the places that you read shit are there. You would see people that would complain about font. I mean, I'm just saying, you're not going to see that on time or news week or anything like that. You're going to see it in like the hardcore communities where there are people that are just like that. I mean, it's funny. I mean, because there are a few fonts that are really overused. And like another one in movie poster fonts particular is Trajan. Like that's one you see all over the place. But like papyrus in particular is one that a lot of designers are just like... I imagine I think he's Trajan. Almost every movie, almost every single movie poster is Trajan. It's redundant. What are the rings I think, doesn't it? Probably. It's probably something. Sometimes it still looks good. We're moving the fuck on. It can. Video games. What have you played? So video games. Yeah, like basically, I jumped back into gratuitous space battles because I bought it from my brother for Christmas. You know, I figured he would like it. And he's never tried Steam or anything. So I had him download Steam. Now you connected to the internet now? No, not at his home. He has his computer back at his parents house. It's, I don't understand it. It's a complicated family situation. Yeah. So anyway, like I figured he would like it because I don't know if any listeners there are going to remember this game for the SNES. But there's a game called that he loved called PTO. Pacific Theatre of Operations. Some kind of simulation naval fighting game. You know, there was like a part one and two that he loved. And that's basically all that gratuitous space battles is about. It's like making your clutch ass fleets. But the reason why I started playing it again is because the version that I played was like a beta version. And the retail version like had a bunch of components and shit like that that I hadn't even played with. So I was like, oh fuck it. So I went and actually bought it. Like at a store or on Steam? No, I bought it on Steam. No, I bought it on Steam. Isn't that a problem though if he isn't connected to the internet? No, no. He's connected at his parents. Like, you know, he lives across the street from my parents. So he put his computer at my parents house. He's got to go to your mom and dad's to play your two in his space battle. Yeah. Well, that's where he uses his computer. Yeah. Oh, well. You know, I guess he saves 60 bucks a month. Whatever. I don't know. And my throat does farted by the way. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. So I jumped back into that. And I, you know, I've been having a lot of fun with gratuitous space battles again. And then I also bought, or not in buy. Sorry. It was sent to me. A copy of Bayonetta. I got in a melody yesterday. Speaking of gratuitous battles. Yeah. Dude, I got in a melody. Rolled my eyes instantly. I was like, what the fuck is this? That's how I was when I walked in Arthur's room and saw it. I was like, what is this? Dude, dumb shit. That was a game made for your brother. Yeah. I put it in my Xbox though. And man, I've probably put it about three hours into it. And I got to be honest, man. It has not stopped impressing me with little things that I'd find very refreshing and glad that they chose to do them. And like, okay, for example, you never see anything that's out of the game engine. I assumed as soon as I popped in the disc, it's going to be some long, crazy CG cutscene. Oh, they definitely have stuff in the game that's not in the engine. Well, I mean, it always, most of the game, see, I guess it's to my untrained eye. But to me, most of the game looks like all the cutscenes are sort of in engine stuff. Like the way Metal Gear does all the stuff in engine, it doesn't look rendered to me. So yeah, that's really cool. Like the way they start you off right in the game. And instead of setting up the story through like long winded exposition, well, it is still long winded exposition, but you're actually fighting these demons like while they're sort of like setting up the backstory. And they just do a bunch of interesting stuff like that. Like, you know, all the load screens, you can practice all of our combos. And it lists all the combos in a vertical column on the right side of the screen. It also counts how many times you successfully pull off the combos and it shows you a lot of little things like that. And even their little dodge feature like... Do you think you'll keep playing it? I think I will. Like, I want to keep playing it. You know, the combat is really fun, you know? And again, like Preface this, if you guys don't remember, I've never played a God of War. So for me, like, this combat feels really... Have you ever played a Devil May Cry? No, no, no more than a demo. You know, no more than I would have got a war. But I'm enjoying it, man. I'm enjoying Bayonetta, like, despite, you know, despite sort of the really cheesy story. It's by how dumb it is. Yeah, it's actual concept. It's actually kind of cool. Like, there's these battles that go on between these witches where they, like, stop time. So it'll be something like a car accident or like a plane crashes into the highway. And as the plane is crashing into the highway, they stop time. And then so basically, instead of like a ninja guide where it was these static scenes that felt lifeless, at least they're like these scenes that are frozen in time with, like, a fireball that's, like, frozen as part of the dressing of the scenery, you know? It's just like little things like that that I'm really enjoying with the game. So, I mean, really, I walked in rolling my eyes thinking about the fuck. And pretty instantly started having a lot of fun with it. What chapter are you on? Um, how far did I get? Um, I definitely got past the part where she started even, like, having flashbacks and shit. And you start fighting her in her memories. Oh, so you fought Jean? It was a big head, a big face thing with, like, dragon. Oh, yeah, I don't even dreadlocks or something. I don't even think you're out of the first chapter yet. No, I'm definitely out of the first chapter because it does the, the cool chapter, the little sealed thing where you save or whatever, right? Yeah, that's, well, no, because there's a pro-log. And then chapter one. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure, but I played about three hours today. That's all I played. But it's fun, man. I'm having a lot of fun with it, I have to admit. It definitely, I mean, like I said before, it's mechanically sound in most ways. And the best way I could think of it is also, like, incredibly sexist. Like, like the most offensive, like, like the equivocation I've made for a game. So that's why I haven't said it. But yeah, it does have a lot to offer. Assuming you can look past just the hyper-sexualization. Right, yeah. The just relentless bat shit. We're crazy Japanese! Right, right. Yeah, but I'm enjoying it. Bayonetta, who would have thought? Yeah, all right. You. Uh, I'm trying to think of anything new that I've been playing and coming up blank. It doesn't have to be new. I spent about 32 hours over the last week playing Dragon Age. Nice. And that's not including the last three days 'cause I haven't played it at all since I went back to work. Um, and I'm pretty much at the end of Dragon Age, which is a little surprising 'cause I keep hearing 80 hours. But I'm at 45 and I'm at the sort of last section of the game. You guys are some speed-ass gamers, dude. I'll play through games quick. I mean, there's so many little things that are fucked up about Dragon Age. Um, that are sort of borked and broken on the console versions. Like, I'll constantly go up to a group of enemies and if there's more than one person. Or even if there's just more than one enemy, like my character will move to attack, stop, try to move to the right or left to get into what's considered the correct position and then move to attack, but not quite do it and then try to move again over and over again to where I'm just pounding on the attack button trying to get it to do something. Um, and frequently I'll position my NPCs a certain way and try to get them into fight and all of a sudden, as soon as I take control back of my main guy, they all run right back to where they were to do what they want to. Um, and I guess maybe I should have spent more time in the strategy thing, but I didn't, like, I didn't want to have to sit there and write scripts for how my characters behave. Uh, although you can do that if you want to. Um, so yeah, I mean, but that being said, and I mean obviously the visual sort of lacklusterness of the game, it's just, it sucked me in, just, it has that same sort of just one more quest. Or let me just finish this one last thing and pick up another one that Oblivion and Fallout 3 did, and that Mass Effect also had, and that just really great PC-style RPGs and Western RPGs tend to have, like, just one more quest kind of thing. Like, Japanese RPGs, or it seems like every arc is epic, like everything is like, you do this one big thing and then you're onto the next big thing, and Western RPGs feel more granular to me, and Dragon Age. Like a bunch of little things. Yeah, like, strung together, and like, you can always branch out and do something else, and that just feels more satisfying to me. Um... Are you still finding the combat, like, holding up, I mean, other than your, you know... I mean, the combat is janky, which I think is mostly just because it's the console version. Um, and, I mean, the console versions are clearly inferior to the PC version in this case. Uh, but that being said, I'm still enjoying the fighting, and it feels a lot like an action RPG, even though, for all intents and purposes, it is the Knights of the Old Republic. Yeah, exactly, and they just stop every other second. No, um, they'll do it all real-time, but they just, like, queue up actions and do their shit. Uh, if you want to pause the, like, I have to hold the left trigger to pause the game. It's, you know, to be fair, you could still, you could play co-tour sort of the same. Queuing up stuff. Yes, like, you can queue stuff up in co-tour. Um, we like up to, like, three actions or something. But, um... But yeah, I was actually having fun sort of going in and trying to, like, some of the stuff that you were, you're avoiding was, uh... You know, trying to think of, like, program behaviors that you think would be really advantageous in battle, you know? Yeah, I mean, I had to do it sometimes because, like, my, uh... The dwarf that I found, O'Grinn. Uh, every time we got in a fight, he'd just run off into, like, the biggest number of enemies and just get annihilated. So you can tell him, like, do not engage more than... Yeah, I had to change his rules of immediate engagement, like, not to run to the nearest enemy or, like, the most powerful enemy or, like, anything like that. Um... And I guess, if I play through it again, then there's a chance that I might, because there's stuff that I just didn't see, like, the female rogue character I never found. Because there's a town that you find her in, and if you don't find her in that town before you leave, uh, that town is raised to the ground by the dark spawn. So basically, she's killed, I guess. Wow. At least you didn't kill the one healer. Like, I did. Yeah, how's that? How's that been fairing for you? It's not. That's why I play the game on Easy Now. Is that win that you? Yeah. You know that Morrigan can heal, eventually. This is what I'm told. Like, you can... Do you level up your NPCs by yourself, or do you just hit auto-level? Uh, uh, it depends on my mood. Like, if you auto-level Morrigan, you can start selecting healings, but... Really? I haven't played that much after I killed her, but... Are you playing evil? I can't remember. Well, yeah, you know, I'm kind of channeling Marlowe Stanfield. God, that guy. The most hateful character in all of the wire. Yeah. Like, everyone else, like, it seems, they seem vaguely human. Marlowe Stanfield is the least human character in the world. It's the one like, "Oh." This is where dudes like Napoleon and fucking... He's more like a precursor to Clay Davis, I feel like. Yeah. Shh. Shh. Now we're merging Dragon Age and the wire. Two things that I don't know much about at all. Just like... The reason that I keep talking about the wire and the reason I restarted it again is because I'm going to force you to fucking watch that. Dude, it's so good. You should watch it. I will watch it. It's not that I don't want to. It's just that I get in these moods where I... All of a sudden decide to watch a show, and then I'll just, like, watch all of it in one sitting. Or all you want to do is want to survivor man. Yeah. Dude, I've been watching a lot of survivor man. I bought my dad seasons one, two, and three for Christmas. So you could watch them with him? No, I have him on Netflix, but he likes those stuff. Oh, more like I couldn't make far that way. I don't know. It's got a good skill. What else have you been playing besides Dragon Age? Uh, we've been playing a lot of Modern Warfare 2. It's true we've been playing a lot since you've been gone. Online? A lot. I figured that now that Tyler wasn't online and couldn't play, that now would be the time to play. Who knows how to play with this stuff? The Nat settings on that shit are so fucked. Really? Like it keeps saying that we have like moderate settings, and ours are like as open as they can be. I get that all the time too. But then the problem comes that people are friends can't join us all the time. Sometimes, yeah. It's like so annoying. Like I don't remember ever having that problem with the first one. Really? Her friends couldn't join her party. Yeah, I mean I think it's like anti-cheating stuff and anti-glitching stuff that they're trying to enable. I read a tweet from 4-0-2 from Robert Bowling, the community guy for Infinity Ward, and he said that they're working on party fixes right now. What makes you think that it'd be like tweak and like glitch and cheat stuff that would be keeping us from being able to connect? Just trying to prevent certain network behavior, probably like package shaping and stuff like that. Which is how people have cheated in the past. And it still seems on a fairly regular basis like people are fucking with their network stuff. Yeah. Like where they'll just sort of zoom around or like someone will disconnect or like the person with one red bar has the most kills. That being said, we played a lot and it was good. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah, there were definitely times where I just have to quit for a while because like a game would go so one sided that you're like God kill streaks suck bad. They're dumb. Right. Like it would be like all of a sudden on the enemy team they have a Harrier helicopter and lucky UAV up all at once. And it's like you guys cannot do anything. Yeah, I don't know. Except hide underground and hope it passes. And people will say take rockets, take rockets, but hardly anyone these days actually takes a rocket launcher as their alternate weapon. Well, and you need to be level 30 to have a rocket that can actually take something out in one hit. Yeah, because the RPG sucks. The stinger. The stinger missile is the best anti air thing. The javelin missile? No, the stinger. I mean, the javelin's okay, but like if you're going to use the javelin, like when, you know, when they call in the jet. I'm not sure which jet it is that hovers the Harrier. Okay, so it moves a little bit. If you use the javelin, a lot of times the javelin will miss the mark even if the Harrier is like floating and moves a little bit out of the way. Yeah, whereas the stinger, you know, because the javelin has to arc way up high in the air and come down. Well, yeah, I don't think you get the stinger until level 30. Yeah, the stinger. Well, you get it. The javelin is until 50. The javelin is high, but I think you get the stinger pretty early. I actually want to say you start with the ability. Man, that thing does not take out shit. Yeah, the one you start with is just like a standard anti-vehicle. Point shoot. Yeah, man, there's one that I quit pretty early on that I keep and every time I hear a UAV up, dude, I bust it out. Well, UAVs you can take down with the starting launcher. Yeah. But UAVs are not my fucking problem. Yeah. The problem are Heinz and choppers and Harriers. Or when they actually get to man the chopper gunner. Yeah. Like that one, it's like not only do they get to see thermal vision of where all the enemies are, but it puts big red boxes around them. Yeah. So fucked up. I don't know. And that's when that game starts becoming like, like I did. Like I think that it sucks that there is an aversion. I can play with that where there are no kill streaks. Really? Like just straight up. There weren't kill streaks in modern and Call of Duty 2. Right. And I enjoyed that. Yeah. Just fighting each other. Yeah. But then again, I'm almost always running around with the one perk that makes you invisible to all, pretty much all of those. That's called Blooded. Yeah, almost all of my setups have that on. So they don't bother me that much. And to be honest, like I probably play more rounds where I am overwhelmingly winning than I play than I'm overwhelmingly. And it annoys me to know into that while I'm playing a lot of times people will party chat and invite me. And I'll be like, what are you doing? You know I can't join that. Right. Yeah. Goddamn you. Yeah. Is that it for you? Yeah. A little more army of two. The Dark Void demo. And yeah, that's it. I mean, it was Christmas break and I just wanted to catch up on Dragon Age because I felt like that was my one chance. And I almost finished it. I was up until like three or four in the morning, like every night last week playing Dragon Age. And I almost did it again on Sunday night before I went back to work. But I was like, no, I should probably try to get some sleep. What about you? I played dark sliders. Yeah, dark sliders is pretty much the only game I've really been playing that much. I mean, I played Ghostbusters as well, but dark sliders is like we're all my times I've been going to, which, you know, that game surprisingly good. It showed very poorly at places like PAX and stuff. I mean, I thought the combat was fine. But it comes off like just a generic God of War clone if you played like a demo of it at PAX or something. And it was just like roll up and beat on things. But the game's so much more of a dungeon solving puzzle where there would, towards the end of the game, there was definitely points where it wouldn't be uncommon to not fight anything for like an hour. And just sit there and figure out like a dungeon puzzle where you might have to like, you know, use a portal gun to put portals on the wall to then throw a bomb through a portal to blow up a door that would unlock a hook shot thing that you could use to grapple to a place. You were slowly murdering my desire to play this game describing the sequence to me. I don't know, it sounds like, you know, like you were saying like some of those old Zelda puzzles mixed with portal, which I felt like a lot of the Zelda levels were. And a lot of the portal levels were like Zelda puzzles. The portal gun in this is very, it's only comes towards the end of the game and I don't feel like it's a spoiler. It's because it's not like a big deal. It's not like how you defeat the boss or anything. It's just an example of one of the various tools you get in this game. And it's very, I mean, don't think of it as the portal gun in Portal because it's very, very limited as to where you can only shoot on these windows. It's more like an item in Zelda. Yeah, I mean, so you get a lot of those, but it's really cool and I actually like the art. Instead of a bow and arrow, you get a gun. And a boomerang type thing. Yeah, you get a boomerang type thing. But yeah, and you have a badass horse at one point. Like the game is like really pretty polished for a company that is their first game ever. So, and it's a long game too. It'll take, it takes like 15 hours to beat. And that's not a bad thing. But then it also has really good combat. Like at first the combat just starts off where all you're doing is mashing. Like basically, I guess X or square. And then eventually, you know, it turns into like a really, a really complex combat game where you're, where you're mixing in like heavy and hard attacks. And then in the middle of a combo, you'll just pull out like your secondary weapon, whether it's your gun or your boomerang style weapon. You'll do all these little things just to mix it up. You know, and they do find pretty much ways to involve everything. Like even like the grappling hook, you can grapple the things and pull them to you or even the portal gun. They'll find ways to integrate that into combat. So, you know, they just do a lot to make the combat actually be really interesting. Even though to me, the environmental puzzles were a lot more interesting. My issue with the combat in Dark Ciders, like when I played it, and even now when I've watched you and Tom at work play it a lot, the thing that I noticed that sort of breaks my interest in a little bit is that there's like a softness to impact where like when you hit with the sword, it just sort of like slides through them. Is that like they don't react as much as I would expect? Oh, they shake. I mean, it stuns them. But I mean, there's not as much of a reaction physically to being struck as... I guess it depends which attacks you're doing too, because I pretty much always do lie to attacks. You can do the super strong ones where it takes them and they are stunned afterwards. But a lot of them, yeah, I just tend to always do the ones that are just... I like to stab them a hundred times and watch them die rather than just like hit them three times and watch them fall. I mean, that's just a common combat issue in these kinds of games. Right, I mean, the whole point of this is that the combat isn't supposed to be like you're doing these really big attacks where you really feel like, "Oh man, I just murdered that fool as much as you unleash fucking an oozy blast of sword slices." Where you build up to the win button? Yeah, I mean, you just go at them and all of a sudden, you know, one second, you're just hitting them like eight times in a row with a sword and then just transitioning straight out of that, you're pulling out your scythe and spinning into them and then pulling out your pistol to finish them off. You know, it's very much more devil may cry like that than it is like a... I don't know, like a Ninja Gaiden. You know, where it's like you really feel like, "Man, that fucking sword kit, that was it, you're dead bitch." So, it's really cool, and the story is like a little... I mean, it's a, you know, you could say it's clichéing a lot of ways too, like, especially in these days. It's a little game-ass video game story. It's especially these days where it's like, you know, all these apocalypse shit. Well, yeah, this is like apocalypse things to guy getting revenge the game go. But it's actually told really well. And the open the cutscenes are done really well and the story, the way it ends, it ends like... Leading like very much like there will be a sequel. And it's even when it ended, I was like, "Man, that was badass." Does it end satisfyingly? It does end satisfyingly. There is a, there is an end to the story arc, but it does, it leads it open to like, now, there's another arc that could easily happen. So... Do you feel like they were did at a disservice, like, showing it at a press events and showing it at events, like, as a combat, like, an action game? Yeah, I think that was a mistake because, uh, then all these people probably read these previews and thought, "Oh, God of War clone, I'll wait for God of War to come out." Or, "I'll wait for, or even, uh, Dante's Inferno to come out." Like, you know, there's these other combat games that they've probably heard more about and have heard more positive. But yeah, and it's like, it's like this game, if it was just a combat game, would just be really mediocre. But, but it's not just a combat game by any stretch. So it's like, it really needs all those other components of it to be shown. I would say, I'm seeing more interest in this, like, amongst the critical story and amongst the gamers in general than, uh, than Bayonetta. Well, I think people are a lot more curious about this because it's kind of only in the last few weeks if people actually started talking about it and being like, "Oh, this game's actually scoring really well." Because they tried to make it a big deal at things like E3, you know, at E3, they bought this fucking gigantic, like, 200 by 50 foot banner for it and stuff. But even still, at that show, no one really paid that much attention to it. And then they had the mechanical horse that packs. Yeah, and, you know, and again, it packs, it was just a demo of, like, the first, like, 20 minutes of the game after the intro. And it's like, again, nothing that shows, like, what the game really is. Like, you really, to really see what that game was, you would have to have, like, an hour and a half to two hours to sit there and play it. It's sort of like showing the first 20 minutes of fable or something. Right. I mean, yeah, except with, like, and like with fable, though, at least someone could tell you who's making it and you would be more inclined to take some of what they're saying it will be. Whereas this game, it's like, no one really heard of who made it and it's like this game by THQ that looks like it could be shitty, but you're not sure. So you're just like, "Yeah, I'm sure it's like Zelda. Sure it is. Sure it is." You know, but it actually turned out it is like a really, I mean, and especially if you know you're interested in getting your money's worth, like, this game will be there for quite a long time. You know, and it's, I like it. I mean, I'd probably end up playing it again somewhere in a couple years, I imagine. And I am going to play the 360 version. My review is only up for the PS3 one right now, but I'm pretty sure the 360 version will get the same score. The 360 version just has moments, often where it's at running at a higher frame rate than the PS3 one, but it gets pretty bad screen tearing. Whereas the PS3 one basically never gets screen tearing, but it runs not quite as sharp and at pretty much like 30 frames all the time. But I actually liked it, like it didn't bother me or anything. I played it all the way through the PS3 version and loved it, so I would say either one is good. You know, it just depends what you want, if you really want those achievements going, the 360 version. Yeah, but yeah. And how about Ghostbusters? Yeah, I told Tyler you should play that on casual. If you're going to play it, he was there, Arthur was right. Like, I only ever died once in the whole game on casual. Like once, like twice, twice had to reload from checkpoint. But it's really hard in that game to tell when you're really hurt. Like, I could see if you were playing that on anything harder and easy. You'd be like, "Oh, I can still take a few more hits. Wait, I'm dead." I'd actually, I could see how if you played that on anything other than easy, you'd be fucked this game. So, I mean, but the whole reason to play it is because Dan Aykroyd and Harold Raimi's written this really cool story. Well, cool if you like to Ghostbusters. It's Ghostbusters fanservice. Yeah, I mean, you return to places and fight things from all these other Ghostbusters movies. Right down to Gozer's flat top. Yeah, I mean, everything is there. So it's like, you know, in Peck, the guy that's like the annoying environmental association guy that's always fucking rough. That guy is there. The real voice actor is there. You know, all these characters make a return and stuff. And it's really cool for that. And, you know, the shooting is competent and there is something really satisfying. Like, the shooting of enemies, you're right. The ones that you don't actually have to capture, that you just blast until they die. That's kind of lame. But when you fight all the ghosts that you actually have to capture, you have to like think about how you strategically place your traps and yank them into it and fight them to pull them in. It's just that's like a really cool thing in the AI and that game is surprisingly good too. They'll switch to weapons, the right weapon at the right time. Oh, the friendly AI. Your friendly AI is really good. Like, they are pretty good and they have a lot of funny things to say. And, you know, but, yeah, I mean, I enjoyed it. It's only like, it only took me like five or six hours. Like, it's not very long, but it's totally worth the experience. Like, to me, it's just playing through it just because the storyline is silly and it has excellent music. And it actually has moments that even can be a little unnerving at times when you're in the dark, looking through your little goggles and you're like seeing your little meter gunettes and, you know, maybe a chair floats across the room. But, you know, it is, it's really cool. I would encourage people to play it. And the PC version came out super cheap because it didn't have any multiplayer. Right. And who cares about them? Right. How about some people that care about multiplayer? Sure they do, but I'm saying the reason to play this game is for the single player. Like, go out and if you get it on PC, get it on PC, and even if you want to plug in a controller, plug in a controller. I mean, I think it was 30 bucks on PC when it came out. I imagine you could probably find it for 30 or 40 bucks now for console as well. But I'd probably less than that. So, yeah, I think it's totally a game. Like, worth playing, like, even a game to like sit down with a friend and just blast through together. And it's hard. Everything. Yeah. I think it even, did that game go out for PS2? Yeah. Probably. Yeah. I heard the Wii version, which actually pretty cool too, and I could see that. So, yeah, I highly encourage people to check that out. And then beyond that, I've been playing that much of other things because my PC's still been fucked up. Really? Yeah. And after Windows 7? I don't know. I haven't tried company heroes with you. Company heroes is how I base it. But I've been meaning to play a lot more League of Legends because Ryan Scott bought me the character pack. Aww. For Christmas. So, I now have access to most of the characters in the game. That's the nicest selfish present anyone bought you this year. I want someone to play with here to take some fucking characters of me to play. Oh, and I've also been playing more security monkey island since last week. You know, I already talked about that last week. My phone. Yeah. And it's great on iPhone. Are you almost done? Like, because apparently not. It tells me that I've played like more than six hours, which is a lot to play a game on iPhone, but Ryan tells me I'm not even halfway. Jeez. Oh, this is the remake. Yeah, the remake. And then you've got the episodes. Well, the episodes aren't on iPhone though. So those ones I'll play on Steam. I imagine that they'll come out on iPhone. Maybe. I mean, Sam and Max and none of those other ones ever have. They might be a little too much for the iPhone. Maybe. But yeah, I mean, I do want to play those episodes as well. I just want to finish because the only monkey island game I ever played was the one that came out on the ground. The one that came out on the grime engine, which is the engine that was made for a Grim Fendingo and for the escape from the monkey island. It came out for PS2 as well. And so that's the only monkey island game I've ever played. So I'm going back and I want to play this one. And it's hard, man. The puzzles are so out there. Like, it's great that there's a shake feature for clues because if there wasn't, I would never get anywhere in that game. I just come home and find your iPhone in the corner shattered. The puzzles literally make no sense to them. Like, how did people in the 1980s, or actually 1990, I think is when the game came out, 1990, how did they figure this shit out? Like, without a guide or anything. You know, it's like, Jesus Christ. I don't know. It's so obtuse at times. But yeah, that's what I have. I've been thinking. And let's take a break. Maybe we should drink some hot tea. Yeah, fucker. Bear back. So do you think I should feel this? And I will always bring you lots of do you put to? Because I am. Because I am kind. And I will always share with you a few good memories. Because I am. You're blind. And I gave you my body. When I said I did, I meant it. Okay. We're back with our topic of gaming resolutions, which was thought of by Tyler. Oh. Why? What's wrong with that more? Don't blame me. No, it was good. This could very well be Tyler's last podcast. That's a good spur of the moment. What's your gaming resolution, Tyler? Man, I actually had two this year. And I might have solved one of them already. I'm not joking. Like, I made this one before I played Bayonetta. And one of my New Year's resolutions was to like a Eastern game this year. Like one and not hate on it. Did you eliminate Mario from that resolution? There's probably, is there going to be a new Mario this year? Oh, Galaxy 2. Oh, yeah. I didn't. Dude, in my opinion, the great thing about Mario games is on a 2D plane moving left to right. It keeps that constant momentum. It keeps it fast. It keeps it fun. When you throw it into a 3D world, I take my time. I look around. I explore. I lose that forward moving momentum. I wasn't. I mean, I had fun with Galaxy, but I don't know. I've never really dug the 3D Mario games. I loved Galaxy. I haven't played the other three games. There's also New Zelda supposed to be coming up this year. Yeah. So I didn't enjoy Twilight Princess. Well, I'll read some comments of our users' gaming resolutions. One was from Warren C, who says, "Bye, Bayonetta, and Darksiders into the year when they're cheap. You can buy it now." That's what I say as far as Darksiders go. And Bayonetta tried out, dude. I'm having fun with it. He said, "Basically, spend less. Last year was rape. Last year." Really? It was like being pinned down in an alleyway. Having someone breathing on the back of your neck. Fucking violently hurting you. That's what I'm saying. I don't think it was good for games. That's what he's saying. That's what he's saying. I don't think that there were as many high profile releases. It's just that there was a consistent, real schedule. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but the idea of spending $60 a month for people even on games, I think it's pretty hairy. Maybe. Shit. Well, man, that gets hairy for a lot of people. Dude, you're the same person that would be like, "They're going to raise the price of a bus ticket by, like, $0.50, and you're like, "That adds up," or something. I'm confused. I'll say it. I can't remember the last time I played regularly for a bus, yeah. Like, because in Davis, our student ID's got us on the bus for free. But I don't know. It's just, you know, people always, you know, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's like the tiniest little hike and stuff they always talk about how much is going to affect them. I just figured that it would be easier to pay $60 a month than like to end load $500 worth of games you want in November and December. Yeah. And, I mean, this year is so front loaded with so many good games. Oh, man, there's a ton of shit coming out of there. That's what Christmas is for though, so you don't end up spending $500 a year. You spend like $100. I think it's going to be a great year. I didn't get any games for Christmas this year. Neither did I. Yeah. Well, someone doesn't love you and his name's Santa. Jason says my resolution is to find a balance between gaming and raising my newborn son when he ships in February. When he ships. Right now, right now he's just gone gold. He's at the fact. I think that must be Jason Wilson, their life that comment, actually, 'cause he... Really? He's expecting his child in February. So that's... That's when Jason, if you left a comment, you crafty son of a bitch. Yeah. You should leave it under Jason Wilson, though, so I know it's you. Dude, I think one of the most, like, to me, I am not at all excited about like the prospect of having kids. Like, I'm not the type of person who, you know, is waiting for that. Mass Effect 2, boy. No, no, but like, one really, really amazing thing is like, if I do have kids, they will probably be into video games, and like, I'll be completely able to bond with them. You know, I... Just to factor with that. But there's a chance they might not be, 'cause my, like, my dad was super into sports. And I think that's the reason why I'm not really into sports. But I know, but video games, there's just something about them. It's like, I don't know, there's so much ingrained into our everyday entertainment now. I think... Yeah, but I could say, yeah, his old thing is finding a balance between raising his newborn son. I don't think that'll be this hard as he thinks, 'cause when they're newborns, they're gonna have to sleep all the time. You feed him, they pass out, you let him sleep on the couch, like a foot away from you. You keep gaming. But they only sleep for like, a couple of hours, and there's... I know, so that's what pause is made for. And then you fuckin' eat, or you shits himself, and then you fuckin' put him... Right, I mean, if anything is lucky, we got memory cards now. I do not think that taking care of children is as simple as you're reducing it too soon. No! I'm not taking care of a few babies. Dude, you can, they're basically on auto drive. So do I fall out of time? Well, when they're little, when they're really little, when they're infants, when they get old enough to start moving around, that's when it becomes trouble. But when they're infants, and all they can do is fuckin' wiggle on their back. He's just like, "Feed him, lay him back down." I don't know if she takes something in their face. Whatever. Having a friend who has a newborn, I do not think that that is her experience thus far. Yeah, well, she's not prioritizing correctly. Um, she doesn't play a lot of video games, it's true. But do you have any resolutions, Arthur? Um, come back to me. Well, one of mine is to get around to my next Fallout game, which, you know, I missed out on Fallout in 2008. So for 2009, the game that I want to come back around to at some point and then Poopsock is going to be Dragon Age. Yeah, I was expecting that. So that's the game I haven't had a chance to do, and I don't really want to try and sit it down and do it until there's like a timeframe where I know. So what happens if they always Fallout New Vegas at the same time that you're getting ready to Poopsock Dragon Age? This is a good question, but an easy one to answer, and Dragon Age waits first, unless Fallout's awful. Dude, I mean, it's an untested developer, like, where's Alpha Protocol? Dude, Obsidian is not an untested developer, Obsidian has made a lot of really awesome and supremely bugged games. That's... Well, okay, maybe untested. That's why Obsidian is known for releasing really ambitious, yeah, but I mean, not just that. Like, they did... I think that they did a Baldur's Gate game as well, and Icewind... Yeah, one of the sequels or expansions or something? Maybe Black Isle did Icewind Dale, but, I mean, Obsidian is known for doing, like, really great, but fucked up stuff. Yeah, that's a... Just the company I want to be making my games. I don't know. No, it's like, we really had buggy shit. Buggy good shit. It's like, I don't know. Awesome. Well, how much worse could it be in Fallout? How much Bugger could Fallout be? Fallout wasn't that bad when I played it. I never actually ran into anything but two crashes ever. The stability issues you had, though, were all, like, straight out, straight out Fallout. I mean... They were, but it was only in the DLC, you know. Either way, what I'm saying is, like, Alpha Protocol was supposed to be out last year, where the fuck is it? Alpha Protocol is never coming out. Fallout. It's my guess. They're Vegas, you know, so let's come out this year, too. That's my fucking 2010 prediction. Alpha Protocol canceled. Vaporware? Vaporware. I don't think they can afford not to ship it. Yeah. But, well, well, that's your prediction. Muddern, Bill Muddern, who does the art for things like the GFW poster, as well as he's too long for you GM, as well. He's a Muddern or Muddern. Muddern, I thought. He used to do our games by pictures. I've always heard the "Hey, buddy." I've heard Ryan Scott say it's Muddern, man. Muddern! Ryan works with him, so, and has in the past, so I'm gonna go with Ryan. He said that his resolution is to buy less downloadable games on impulse. He says, "I can't count the number of XPLA PSN WiiWare games I bought in 2009 that I only played for 20 minutes and then never picked up again." That's the same truth for me. It's Steam, yeah. But I do not regret that. I love having those games around just for some day in the future. Did anybody else succumb to any of the Steam deals that were going on? Oh, for Christmas? Yeah. Oh. Yeah, gratuitous. Space battle's 50% off. Which is what? Ten bucks? Yep, ten dollars. How about trying for five dollars? Oh, how's that? I haven't played it at all. Trying's really cool. So maybe I should invoke his New Year's resolution as well, because they're definitely things that I bought on Steam last year that I have not done before. No, trying is a really cool game. I played the first hour of it, and I was really impressed. I just, again, it just fell by the wayside. I mean, I just kept waiting for it to come out on PS3, and then once it did, I heard that it was such an inferior version that I was like, "I guess I'll buy the PS3 version." Right. I could see it being fun on... I mean, I don't know if you can plug in a controller on the PS3 version, because I could see it being pretty cool with the tools, the two sticks at times, for certain kind of choice. Death. But it's not as accurate as a keyboard mouse. Several people commented that they wanted to finish their backlog of games, but I don't even know what my backlog of games is at this point. Like I just... Paul of them. I just have... What are you talking about? All of them. You have a pretty big backlog. Red Faction, Batman. You just finished Ghostbusters, Dragon Age, Assassin's Creed 2, Left 4 Dead 2. No, I beat the Shadow Left 4 Dead 2, what are you talking about? Okay. Then that's one out of the list of five or six. Yeah, but I'm saying why would you even say Left 4 Dead 2? I reviewed that. Did you finish Infamous? Yeah. I finished Infamous. Ratchet and Clank. All right. But let's go back to why you mentioned, why did you say Left 4 Dead 2? I don't know. Actually, I know what Left 4 Dead 2 is on my pile of shame. Yeah, that's online. Because I've only played that shit on an hour. I want to play more of it as well. It's just I need to have a night where I have enough people online to do it. Also, we need to play with people who don't suck. Yeah. Because that shit is no joke. I know it. It's a lot. Sorry. It's a toll cover. Tyler, were you going to say something? You did a sharpen. Take a breath. No, I'm not. No. No, say it. Because you're talking about people playing Left 4 Dead, playing Left 5 for you, motherfucker, you just run out, you just stir up all the gaunt zombies before anyone gets a damn chance. As I think I've mentioned before on the podcast, Anthony takes, assumes the general chef persona. Yeah. Which is similar to general Patton. Yeah. Yeah. But we get in there and we get it done. This is true. When someone, we don't. And either you fight with me and you fight well or I find out that you're a loose end and I never play with you again. So Revasalot is toll cover. No, we just call him Revasalot. He commented as Revasalot. Therefore, he's Revasalot. If he wants to be called toll cover or Mark, he can comment as toll cover. Revasalot says he wants to buy games new instead of used and share the experience of gaming with others whether they want to or not and make frequent use of the audio sample Ryan Scott saying what the hell. That last part is totally a toll cover thing. Revasalot is a student in college, so somehow I wonder if he'll be able to keep that resolution of what? Being able to buy games new instead of used. I don't know. Maybe he's got the hook up with money selling drugs and stuff. I was going to say black market connections myself or do you need to tell us a gaming resolution? I'm still thinking. No. I'm thinking. I have two. I don't know. I don't really have much of a backlog although I'd like to tackle the few that are on there. Yeah. Try. Okay, I've got one. Play more PSN games. I mean there's a lot of good ones. Played virtually none last year. I tried fat princess and didn't like it. Yeah. I tried some fat princess. It was okay. I don't even want to play with quick tea loss interest for me. That's one of those games where it's really interesting but the community, I don't know, it didn't catch on fire like other multiplayer games this year or last year, like 1943 instant. You could resolve to play some Killzone too, Anthony. I know we should go back and play Killzone and revive our clan. I don't even remember what it was called now. Do you? Man, my buddy's an h-town. Was it something unicorn? No. It was something else that was totally a podcast meme. It was a femoral phantasia. Yes, it was a femoral phantasia. A femoral phantasia clan, yeah. That's right. Yeah. I don't own Killzone too. A lot of people commented that their resolution was to play games to completion. I guess that's a pretty common thing that people don't complete their games. I mean I know I don't. A game has to pretty much capture my interest to make me finish it. For me, a game really has to lose me for me not to finish it. What was the game? Brutal legend is a game that I didn't finish last year because it just stopped because I was not having any fun anymore. Which made me sad because I really wanted to find out what happened. I really wanted that game to blow everyone away. Instead of just sort of making a slow farting noise with its mouth. Instead of being the big man wolf, it's just like horse winning noises. Wheels says out of 52 games I've ever played on my Xbox 360, Assassin's Creed is the only game I've ever finished with a complete gamers core of a thousand. This year I hope to end that turn by starting Assassin's Creed 2 tonight. If it's as good as Anthony says as I say Arthur, Arthur says it's good, Anthony doesn't know yet. 50 achievements. That's much more suspect now. 50 achievements should be a rewarding task, I mean I did finish AC one after all. Yeah, and you know what, it's actually not that hard to get your AC. I wouldn't just make sure to kick the fucking guy on the flying machine as soon as you can. He says if all goes well I'll do my best to complete every game I buy this year. I wonder if damn complete means get a thousand achievements, that's fucking hard. Man, I move on. When I see credits, especially when you started getting into the multiplayer achievements, fuck that. I see fuck multiplayer achievements, I hate multiplayer achievements. If it's all single player, maybe Dragon Age is pushing it. I like multiplayer achievements because again, I'm not going, I don't care about them that much but when I get them during multiplayer it's kind of cool. Some are cool, but like the years like crazy one where they're like 10,000 kills or whatever. And then there's I think NBA 2K or NBA, NBA 08 from EA, there's an achievement to have a certain number of people online and they're closing the servers for that game. But what is it that bothers you about multiplayer achievements? Is that it forces you to play multiplayer if you want an achievement, which is an optional thing? Not only that but it's like you can play and play and not necessarily get it. There's no way to get it unless you're gaming the system in a way that you're not supposed to. The other thing that annoys me is our games that I complete and then they add new achievements and also that it's not complete anymore, I believe in being. Tom Wiesner, Wieser, Wieser, Wieser, says one resolution suggestion for Rebel if I'm changed the kills on a two background at some point in 2010. Captain, so to be fair, to be fair, Captain Forever would make a really colorful, pretty background. Yes, it would. But why is that a veto? You don't have any logic behind that Arthur? I don't need it. Just veto. CF. Arthur's just a captain forever hater just because of how much he had to hear about it. It has turned him into a hater. You know for a fact that there are games that you have not played or lost interesting because people wouldn't shut up about them. Oh, 100%. That's why I'm saying Arthur is a hater because he's had to hear about it so much. I don't hate it. I just don't want to hear about it. Well, you wouldn't have to hear about it. You just have to see it with your eyeballs every time you loaded our page. That's better. At least it'd be a game that one of us played. Oh, man, we played Killzone for a bit. Me too. I played it online. I put that up because Phil and Anthony were in love with that game for like a period of a week. Hmm. Yeah. Oh, he actually wheels then corrected himself farther down and said, "I meant to say Arthur not Anthony." So he did catch it. So Chris Roshor says, "My resolution is weird. There are a few games to a hardcore nature again, so no big seven-hour gaming sessions. The most I'll actually play is 30 minutes at max." I also quit while I got rid of my 360. I only have my iPhone and DS light left. I wish to become hardcore casual. Why don't you just fuck, just join the priesthood while you're at it. It sounds like he's 30 minutes, man. Yeah, I mean, there's a different style. I mean, if you got to do that for a while, right, to like break yourself of like the type of person that realized they were getting bed sores from not moving or something, like I can understand if this is the measures you have to take, do it. But like limiting yourself to like 30 minutes, like just limit to yourself to like, "Hey, when something else comes up, don't put it off," or like someone invites you to go out and do it. How about some personal responsibility? You know, it's just the ability to realize that like, "Oh, certain things will be better than continuing to play this game." Maybe you take a chance, even though you think they won't be better. I mean, more power to you, I mean, if there are things that you can do that are much more productive than gaming, then I strongly urge you to do them. But getting rid of your PC and 360 and limiting yourself to half an hour to stretch seems a little extreme. That's what I'm saying. This has to have been someone that was like realizing that he could no longer walk from any like distance longer than the bathroom or the microwave. Maybe the girl he's dating threatened to withhold sex. That was the main reason I never started playing wow after it came out. Man, any girl that told me I couldn't play a game, like, I'd just be like, "Yeah, you know where the door is." It is that thing over there that I hope you don't walk out of and stuff having sex with me when you do. Yeah, but still, if they were gonna, if they would like make it like literally a relationship ending thing and you didn't have it like you, you don't even have like a history of being addicted to MMOs, that's kind of a ridiculous statement. I have an excruciatingly addictive personality, though. It's true, but you, but you, but there's no, we have no cause to believe that you would play an MMO and all of a sudden be like, "You know what, I like this." No, I, I have played wow. Did you like it? I hated wow. Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. I loved it for what it was, which is fucking Diablo 2 with slow skill progression. Well, it's weird, this one guy commented more than once and he said, "My res, oh, never mind." I got fucking. He says, "My resolution's there 19, 20 by 1080, hey 19, 20 by 1200." And I was like, "What does he mean?" And now I just got it. See what, I'm. That's his other comment. He cut, oh, I saw another person that commented, "My resolution is this." And I was like, "Why do they put numbers?" And now I get it, cause resolution, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, I guess that means they wanna tighten up the graphics in level three. Yes. Ah, Peanut says, "Try to stay up after a wife and kids have gone to sleep to actually play some games." Um, dude, why can't you play with your kids? Like, I don't know. I mean, if it's like something like gratuitous, like Bayonetta's gratuitous, or something like God of War's gratuitous, like, okay, that's one thing. I just feel like kids require more supervision than you were acknowledging. Well, I'm saying, I'm saying playing games with them though. You know what I mean? Like, I work with my boss, Pear, at IGN, you know, he games with his children. So it is John Davidson. Yeah, you know. I feel like it's been made explicitly clear from a lot of people that have commented over the year that, uh, that they don't feel like they can game when they're with their kids, like, that it requires too much, like that their kids require so much attention that just cannot be diverted that way. Yeah, use condoms, don't have children, love or love them, like video games, like playing them. Yeah, um, for the vast deference, as they call it, I'm in fact, sorry, as we hear a positive because I'm searching for more comments, because there was a lot of good ones and I'm trying to continue saying fun words of science, scrotum, um, road. So he says, Bobby, the plumber has an interesting one. He says, do something I've meant to do since Duke Nukem 3D and actually creates something to share with other gamers. I suspect my fundamental lack of drive and creativity will again crush my dream. Maybe this year I can create a little big planet masterpiece about as likely as me being able to demonstrate the slightest sign of competence at Street Fighter 4. Ah, yes, this will also be the year I try to stop myself convincing myself that it's possible for a 29 year old who hasn't been able to play fighting games in Street Fighter 2 to ever learn how to play a fighting game. Dude, I don't know how to play fighting games. You can always be better. Yeah, you just need to find the one character where you can just, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. We'll find someone to teach you. Um, but if you want to make something, Bobby, you should make, uh, you should make levels in trials HD and then send them to me. Okay, thanks. I'm always looking for more trials almost. Um, you haven't finished the ones you have. Yeah, you mean the new ones? I played a shit ton of the new ones and- Why did you talk about that during the first second? I forgot. The new trial levels are rad, by the way. And some of them are fucking hard. A vast majority of them from what I saw seem to be in the medium level, which is fine. I enjoy medium because medium, it's just hard enough that you have parts that are challenging, but fun enough where you can do fucking spins and stuff. I was doing them and I would get like 4,000 some odd ranked, you know, which is alright, but then Robert Ashley and them would be like way above me. Like, like Robert Ashley would have like all these ones where I would have like 28 faults, zero faults. This is my time. Like I was like, what? No, that guy must have just become a savant at that game. So well, if a wife will waste an episode of her, I was late, then you know why. Yeah. Trials. Trials. Trials is intense. Man, I love that game, but I still wish that if they could do one patch, it would just be patching and the ability to share levels with people that aren't on your friends list. It could, that it doesn't have that. I'll pick a couple more from towards the bottom of the list and I'll pick one from Hannah because Hannah gets preferential treatment for no real good reason other than, you know, we always see her comment a lot and I appreciate that. Speaking of words, people are asking about how you get pictures. How do people get pictures? There's a site called Gravatar that you sign up for for user images on and that'll propagate across any site that uses Gravatar icons. Oh, and we do? Yeah. I mean WordPress does. So there you go. Gravatar. That's how you guys can get those cool icons that you see. They're not people that are so special. No, we haven't awarded them anything, although they'd be kind of rad if I could. Yeah. I suppose I could, but it would be a royal fucking pain in the ass. Hannah has some pretty hardcore resolutions. One of which is to get her gamer score to over 40,000 and she's currently at 28.5. What? That's going to be a double. No, 25, 28,500. So she has, she needs like 11,500. That is 11 and a half games worth of achievements. Right. And that's assuming you get all the achievements. Yeah. If you haven't played Ninja Turtles, now's the time. Avatar the last Urban King Kong is another one that you can get all of them in. And then there's also a few sports games from the beginning of it. I've been across the 40,000 threshold this year. That'd be kind of cool. She says she wants to play Bioshock. She owns it on three systems and has never played more than just the first five minutes. Man, you should get a thousand achievement more than that, first of all. They go for that. Although for that, you pretty much have to play through it twice, right, to get all the achievements. Yeah, you do, actually, because you have to do good and evil. Okay. And then her third one is replay, Knight to the Republic, and actually beat the final boss this time. What happened? Huh? That won't happen, Hannah. I'm sorry. Why? Because you can't go back to co-tour. No. I mean, it just came out on Steam and stuff like this. Yeah, I know. And I had this discussion a couple of days ago how co-tours are added and none of us will ever play it again. Some people have a much higher tolerance for that, for bullshit, you know, than we do. Like, like we do it because we have to for Game Club, but like some people like love that. I don't know. And then she has this SPS congrats on making it a year now. And now you've had time to think Arthur, and I want to know where I was- I just gave you a resolution. No, I want another. What the fuck? I gave you one. Yeah, you gave us one. You don't have more than that? I still probably gave one as well. I mean, I have like non-game related resolutions, like, I don't make a whole- I don't feel like I need to change a lot with my gaming behavior. I should probably buy less games. That's what I should do. I've spent a lot of money on games last year. Like, even though people think we get all our games are free, I buy a lot of games. Like, I probably buy one to two games a month, at least, you know. How about in the grand scheme of things, that's not terribly expensive. No, it's just there occasional times, and I'll walk into the store and all of a sudden buy five, you know, and then I have things like Silent Hill. I mean, I buy a lot of games that I've already beat, which is like, do I really want to buy them? Do I need to buy them? See, I don't think that you should resolve not to do that, because the reason you buy them is valid, which is to support the developers that make the games that maybe wouldn't be successful, like, saying, well, I'm not going to buy Modern Warfare 2 or whatever, because I got a free copy, or I beat it already is one thing. So I'm going to read one last one, it's really short, but this 3D VETP says, his resolution is to give his girlfriend addicted to WOW, and you think that's a good idea. But let me tell you, my friend Joe got his girlfriend addicted to WOW, and then, and subsequently a request to when they started playing that, and you would think that's going to be awesome. We're going to be able to play WOW, we're going to be able to hang out, but then there's going to be times you don't want to play WOW, and you want to hang out with her. Maybe in a more intimate way, but she doesn't want to, because now she wants the fucking raid. Which is especially ironic, given that Joe has issued sex or, like, departed sex to raid and WOW. Yeah, and so, now it's just like, you know, it's just you've got to watch out, because if they get really addicted to maybe even more so than you, now it's like, not only like, there will be times that you get tired of the game, but she won't be. Weren't you last my request to this month? Or last month? Yeah. There you go. It was okay. It's, that's a game that I feel like it's hard to go back to, because graphically it doesn't hold up very well. Really? I mean, it doesn't look terrible by any stretch, it just doesn't look that good either. And it's, it's, I don't know. I don't know. Or saddle frog. And I got power leveled, so I didn't really even get to feel out how my career was, but that game is complex. Like, WOW is like, three skill trees, you know, you can say it's a baby game, whatever you will, but when I jumped into a request, and there was like, time to put points into trees and shit, that shit gets overwhelming. I will say that since every quest, every quest to you, and subsequently with the release of WOW, they've done a ton of streamlining in it, to make it more like WOW, in the sense, you know. But yeah. Because they like it when people pay to play their games. Yes, they like it when people continue to pay to play. But yeah. Let's take a quick break and come back with letters. And you'll drink more tea. 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