Rebel FM
The Rebel FM Juneteenth Holiday Special!
Hello and welcome to our special episode, in which we celebrate America's finest tradition, Juneteenth! We celebrate by, uh, well. By doing the same thing we always do, except faster! We talk about games we've been playing, including a number of IGF competitors, Silent Hill Wii, the new Borderlands DLC and more. Then we talk about what you're all thankful for and close out with RELATIONSHIP LETTERS ALL THE TIME. Not really, but there really are some relationship letters. Remember kids, it takes a while for the dicks to stop spinning, so be safe out there.This week's music, in order of appearance:The Black Heart Procession - The SpellShe Wants Revenge - TimeJason Mraz - If It Kills Me (Acoustic)
(upbeat music) ♪ The right for the bell ♪ ♪ The right for the bell ♪ ♪ Who should I turn to ♪ ♪ The right for the bell ♪ ♪ The right for the bell ♪ ♪ The right for the bell ♪ ♪ The right for the bell ♪ - Hello and welcome to the Juneteenth special of Rebel FM. Juneteenth! - Tell her just can't even give a straight face. - I don't even, when I was trying to write it out earlier, and spell it, it seems so weird to spell it Juneteenth afterwards. - How'd you do it? Was it apostrophe? - No, I just said June, and then T-E-E-N-T-H. - That makes sense. - Seems like apostrophe should go before it because the apostrophe takes place at the nine, so it's like 19th, Juneteenth, 19th. - So anyways, this is our Juneteenth special. - 'Cause Juneteenth holiday is upon us. - Unlike all of our other specials, it's actually not recorded on the portable recording system, and you won't have to listen to us eating. So I'm Anthony Gallegos. With me is Arthur Gies. - Hello. - Tyler Barber. - Happy mustache month. - And that's about it. - It's November is the mustache month, right? Or is it October? - It's a facial hair February followed by mustache march. - Well then this is all over the place now because in February, and then you cut it all into just a mustache for March. - I mean, last month was beard tober. - According to some people. - Okay, see, so now there's no official standing. - No, it's facial hair February, mustache march. - He's for once Anthony speaks logic. - No, I mean, that makes sense because it wraps up really nicely with like the F in February, and then-- - Yes, thank you for explaining that to us. - And you cut it off into just a mustache, and you have a nice one going at the end of March. - Yeah. - And then it becomes who can stand the shame the longest and keep it like the whole month, because most people give out. - It's like that bet and knocked up, how they bet their roommate that he can't leave his beard growing for a year. - Yeah. - They talk about him being Kat Stevens and Osama bin Laden. - That's right, that's right. - Exactly. - It's a good comedy. - It is. - It's a good comedy. - So games we've been playing, Tyler Kickett. - Oh, well-- - How are you bling boogie? - I've been binging boogie. Played a lot, you know, I'm playing Modern Warfare 2 in my spare time multiplayer. I had an unfortunate accident with my Assassin's Creed 2 disc. - Yeah, did you turn it? Is that how it happened? Or did your console just fuck your disc up? - Well, it started when I was gaming my Assassin's Creed and my Xbox started making a lot of loud noises. And I was like, oh shit, sounds like red ring of death noises. So I unplugged my system and moved it to a different shelf on my console and placed it horizontally. - Did you wait to move it? - I mean, well, it was off. - Yeah, I mean you unplugged it and then how long did you wait after unplugging it to move it? - I don't know. - What are you doing there? - What are you doing there? - Because it takes the disc a while to stop spinning. - Well, I'm sure it stops spinning by the time I turn the system off, went behind my console to unplug it and then around the front. But, you know, so repositioned it horizontally. When I did that, I noticed like my disc tray. The way I describe it is it feels like a loose tooth when you're in elementary school. Like your tooth's about to fall out. Like my disc tray, you can literally like jiggle it. That's the noise of jiggling. Back and forth. - Maybe there's some sort of spring or something. - Yeah, something, I haven't it. So I've decided to, what's up? - How long have you had this 360? - I've had it for over two years. Well, probably about two years actually just on it. So it's out of warranty. - Are you sure? - Yeah. Called Microsoft and asked. They said they wouldn't fix it for free. So basically what happened was after I played my console horizontally, I tried to install Assassin's Creed thinking that might help because it was making loud noises when the game was loading. And then around the 53% mark installed, I got a disc scratched error. Which didn't surprise me at first because I've tried to install fallout, fallout three multiple times on my 360. And every time around the 53% mark, I get a disc scratch error. - That could be when it changes layers. - So you put my fallout three disc is not scratched at all. But I noticed after that happened, I just tried to reload the game and that's when I got like this game disc is unreadable. - You should take it to someplace a little to resurfacing and see if that-- - I mean, but at this point, if that's happened with other games, there's a good chance that your disc drive is just burning. - Oh, yeah, that's true. I'm just saying for the sake of having Assassin's Creed being able to run better. - Yeah, it sucks. - I mean, at first I thought I was completely shit out of luck, but then I'm just partially shit out of luck because I find that it runs Assassin's Creed, but all of the audio is out of sync, like all of it. Imagine playing Assassin's Creed where dialogue and everything. - Yeah, I mean, go to like a mom and pop video store and ask if they'll resurface it. 'Cause usually they've got good resurfacing stuff 'cause it's worth their time. Or somewhere that sells used CDs, like they'll usually have resurfacing stuff in the day. - They'll resurface on it. Like if how are we definitely had a resurfacing? - Yeah. - But what have you actually been playing now? - Baby games. - Baby games. I've been playing a lot of independent games that are in indie games that are in the independent game festival running. There's a big judgment going on now. - Let's talk about don't shit your pants first. - Yeah, so one of the games is actually titled Don't Shit Your Pants. And some people might be familiar with this game because it came out I think last spring. And it's basically like a text game. - Yeah, it's class text adventure, except you have like really, really pixelated art that goes along with it. It's like the, for people who've seen the movie big, it's like the stupid text wizard adventure he's always playing at the beginning. And it's like that accepts a dude that needs shit at his pants. - Yeah, and the game's only like a minute and a half long. - Yeah, it does suck that once you figure out how to beat it, that's pretty much it. - Although I heard there are different awards you can get for different ways. - I mean if you type shit your pants, he'll just shit his pants. - Yeah, you lose. Like I played it, I solved it two different ways. - I mean, don't you win, really? - He always win, he always does shit. Did you ever try to fart? Like he'd be like released? - Oh my God, the pressure's getting extreme so you're like fart. And if you fart, he shits his pants. But if you say fart softly, 'cause it'll be like the pressure was too great when you fart and you shoot your pants. But if you say fart softly, it'll add 45 seconds to the timer. It'll be like, ah, that worked. - No way! - Oh man. - You're blown Anthony. Why am I not surprised Anthony is the fucking Zen master, don't you? - You know like when you're just like, I just got too little and you're like doing the really tight bow, but I totally do that in that game too. But the first time I did it, I was like, pull down pants, all right? You've taken off your pants. And I was like, shit, you need to shit on the floor. It's like, hey, congrats, you didn't shit in your pants. - Yup. - Like that counts as winning. - Yeah. But yeah, I've heard there are other ways. The only ways I've ever won is shitting on the floor and shitting in the toilet. I have successfully shitting the toilet. Although one time I definitely sat on the toilet without pulling down my pants and still shit my pants. - Well of course. - I just didn't think about it. I just had to sit on toilet thinking he would naturally pull down his pants. - And the little guy, he's so funny looking. He's just like this balding tubby guy and like a wife beater and sweats. - Blue sweat pants and some fucking flip flops. - And he's so happy, like puts his arms up when he shits like not in his pants. - Yeah. - Hey, that's a success for most people. - Yeah. So that game's pretty awesome. You can play that for free online too. - Yeah, it's on new grounds. - If you just search don't shoot your pants. - Yeah. - It comes up. - Yeah, I mean that, you know, it's up there. I wouldn't consider it winner of the IGF awards, but it's got a certain novelty too. - Yeah, for sure, for sure. But there are some genuine really good games in the running so far. My favorite one that I've come across is this game called NUDNUD and it's a tower defense game. - Is that like a download game? Like you download that one instantly. - Yeah, yeah. You download it and install it, but it is like, I believe it's, I don't know if it's technically a flash game or whatever, but you just play it in like a little booty window on your PC. It doesn't even go full screen or anything. And the graphics are actually a lot like Captain Forever. But the whole thing that makes this tower defense game interesting is that like your adjacent towers can give the towers next to properties and benefits. Like this tower increases, other towers range around. - So there's a reason to group certain towers together. - Yes, exactly. And so that one was actually, it was actually a lot of fun. Yeah, it was really competent and just real basic graphics, really cool. Some other ones that I played that were okay. There was one called Broken Brothers Deluxe and it was the beta. And it's like a real time strategy game that uses like vector stylized graphics. And you know, I don't know. It's kind of fun. I don't know. It really didn't impress me too much. Like you basically just reminded me like a little bit of mix of like company heroes the way you're collecting resource, capturing resource points instead of. But you also do harvest stuff. So it has a little bit of that. But yeah, I don't know. I didn't play it long enough to really catch what was this game's special little thing. - You're not so cool. - Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was cool was every point you captured, you got an upgrade on your units and you could choose what it could be. So like you could get three tanks that spawn in a group instead of two or you can unlock bombers or you can unlock different units and stuff. So I don't know, kind of add something to the capture points. - Sorry, isn't that just reminds me of the original Command and Conquer, which I think is the only one that did this. But in that, like you use engineers to take over buildings like you do in all the Command and Conquerors. If you sent an engineer into a building that constructs vehicles or units as an end, like on the other side, a lot of times it would give you a completely new and previously unavailable unit. Like that only that combination could build. Like if you were not and you took a GDI helicopter base, you could build a kind of helicopter that was the only way to build it. Like the GDI couldn't build it and some other stuff too. - That's my off-topic bullshittery. - Bullshops, what else you got. I played another game that's named very similar to the Tower Defense game. It's called Node in ODE. And it's like a puzzle game and it's based around hacking. It was really complicated and really hard. Like I got my ass kicked pretty immediately, like I don't know, it's very abstract. All the graphics are just like these little round balls that like once you place one, it'll move forward in that direction. Like basically making sort of a pro necklace looking thing. And yeah, it's like trying to describe it's really weird, but basically you want to get your horde of little pro necklaces over until you playable. - Yeah. - By people at large. - Yeah, some of them are actually. I want to say NUD is available to the Tower Defense game and I believe Node is as well. But I don't think Broken Brothers is because that one's a beta, yeah. And I played some other ones too. I played this flight simulator called the New Zero, but I want to play it again because, I don't know, I just crashed a whole bunch. - And that can be me sucking. - As happened in the flight simulator. - Yeah. Cool. - So in addition to that, ridiculously addicted to Captain Successor. - Highly that. - Which we didn't get to talk about last time because it came out the day we recorded. - How different is it from Captain Forever? - A lot. Well, the basic game is the same. It's kind of like saying how different is Gears of War 1 and 2. Like I'm not saying that there's good, but I'm saying that they're the same basic premise. So because we have talked about Captain Forever on the last three podcasts, perhaps you could give me a reader's digest version of the changes. - Yeah. - That have occurred in Captain Successor. - You know, they add new pieces basically. There's more of every type of piece, so there's like more thrusters, there's more weapons. - Yeah, before there was just one type of thruster, it shoots you one direction only. Whereas now they have some that are like omni-directional that works sort of like on the Halo Marines stinger. It has those little omni-directional things. - Yeah, the way you work with the VTOL aircraft. - The way you see a space shuttle has like a three-way thing that can shoot out gas in each direction to keep it daily. - Yeah, those two. - They worked a lot to be able to like make it to where you're not just like pushing yourself forward, but you can really have a spacecraft that can strafe and stuff like that. - And really just like all the parts make the game even more of, I don't know, in my mind, I can't break the fact that I think this is just like an evolution game. It's just about adapting, surviving, evolving, always. - That's fair. - One thing that we've never talked about about that game that I really like that is such an easy thing to overlook is that each gun type of gun makes a different sound. So sometimes I've found myself outfitting my ship with even lesser cannons just because it almost makes like music. - It does. It makes a melody. There is a melody. - Boom, boom, boom. - Yeah, like because they have different tones. I just think that's interesting. It's not important to the game at all. - Exactly, yeah. - Oh, but I mean it's important to the experience. I think that's totally valid. - It almost sounds, the melody, it reminds me of the Jaws melody. It doesn't go duh, duh, duh, duh, but it just sounds like you're tracking something. I don't know. It seems like you're acting hard. - It does add an intensity when you're hunting down or you're being hunted down. - And another thing that Captain Successor adds is it adds pieces that aren't offensive, that sort of augment your other. They have repair pieces where any part attached to that will be repaired when it's damaged and they have another piece that alters time. - So if it's a thruster or a weapon, it'll increase the rate of fire or it'll increase the output of the thrust. - And having things like missile launchers or boosters that give you a temporary speed boost, all those things are very cool. - And the background is actually geometrical now. It's not just a word. - I noticed that you discovered how to take screenshots. - Yes. - Because you were emailing me screenshots of your ships. - Yep. - So I appreciated that. Speaking of which, was that Swashtica's ship you sent me? Was that one you made or was that like a computer one that was spinning around? - A user sent that user, a listener sent that to me. But what happens a lot in Captain Successor is the enemy ships will blow themselves up because some of the weapons are so crazy. - Yeah. - So probably what happened is this ship blew itself up in the shape of a Swashtica. - Yeah. It was probably way more elaborate looking. - A fucking likely story. - Well, sometimes you'll see that they'll get blown up and the computer doesn't have to recover so they'll sit there and spin it all the time. - Yeah, yeah. - And lastly, the other important thing to mention is since Captain Successor is out, Captain Forever is free to anyone. So now anyone can play the first version, which in some ways I feel it honestly is the better version. Because I feel like the end game in Captain Successor is just a war of attrition with shields. Have you gotten to the end game in Captain Successor? It's just, it's just the blinking guys flying around with a ridiculous amount of shields. - I think that makes sense. I mean, a lot of people, I mean, in some ways I prefer the first Geometry Wars retro evolved to the second one because the way that the multiplayer is factor in sort of just changes the way that you progress and... - Yep, yep. But yeah, so that's my Captain Forever all. I'll try not to bring it up again too much, but I'll fucking love that game, dude. - Oh, I'm away from you. I like it too. - It is such a good way to like, if I'm just like waiting in Steam to auto-join a game or something, for me it's like that game that I just play and if it gets... - We're waiting for press to go back to you. - Yeah, it's just like, it's like the same way I played Geometry Wars, it's a time killer. So, is that it for you? - Man, that'd be a doubt. - Art there. - Well, let's see, I played some Island of Dr. Ned today for Borderlands. - Oh, the DLC? - Did you fight zombies? - I did fight zombies. War did I fight zombies. There were fucking zombies coming out of every orifice. - Could you tell the difference between like zombie AI and supposed enemy AI that's supposed to be good? - I mean, they don't have guns, like they all just rush at you. - And there are a few different kinds of zombies, like some of them will spit. And there are suicide zombies that basically carry elemental barrels on their back and rush at you. - Mm-hmm. - And there's like these other like huge zombies that carry like an endless supply of elemental barrels. - Does the DLC raise the level cap? - No, a DLC does not raise the level cap. - It doesn't add achievements. - Which is nice. - Yeah, that's good. Always. - Which is an enormous amount of content. Andy Eddie, my boss was saying it's like 40 to 15 new missions? - Jesus. - I mean, it's a gig download. It's not small by anything. It's like the install for Borderlands is three gigs. So, I mean, that's a pretty substantial amount of content. It's very narrative driven, like there's an intro cinema to the island of Dr. Ned, and there are frequent cinemas interspersed throughout it, sort of describing the story. And it's totally tongue-in-cheek and ridiculous in the way the Borderlands is. - The fact that it's coming out so close to when the game's coming out makes me wonder if it was supposed to be part of the original game or not. - I mean, it's a pretty giant chunk of content. I think that it's... - I mean, when I talked to Randy Pitchford before the game even came out in the first place, he had told me that the first chunk of DLC then would be coming out like it would hit before any other game would typically put out DLC. - And I think that I would like it if they kept up a stream of content like this, because it is the only way I'm going to keep playing the game. - The way it was insinuated to me by the 2K people that I talked to was that as long as the game continues to... - The game solves a while, which it did. And then if the DLC keeps selling, they'll continue to dedicate resources to supporting it. - I mean, I have no interest in going through the entire single-player game, like the entire standard single-player content. Again, just to do a second playthrough. That doesn't interest me. - No, if I did it, it would be to play a different character and only be a friend. - Yeah. So this is a good way to get me to take my siren, my level 36 siren, and go back into the game and play something new. - Oh, okay. See, that was going to be my next question, is what level are you going into the DLC and do you scale? - It doesn't scale. It is a level 35 quest. - Oh, it is? I thought it scaled. - No. - Like, we were there with... We were in Brent, who is the creative director for Team Xbox. He hosted the game, and he's level 22. And Tom Price was level 15, and I was 36, and Andy was 42. And it definitely seemed like it was tailored most towards me. - Hmm. Seems weird. It seems like a bad idea to not have it scaled. - Right. Yeah. I mean, I was just thinking, like, there are probably a lot of the people who would buy the DLC are probably the same people who are, like, level 50 right now. - Well, I mean, I imagine that if you have several level 50 people in, it'll get a little harder. - Yeah, more enemies. - Maybe there are quests in there that are higher level quests. But I don't know, it's clear that it's end game content as opposed to, like, just random DLC. - Right. - I at least, that's the way it feels to me. So, I mean, thus far, it's not without problems, though. I mean, I don't know if I mentioned this on Rebel FM, but we definitely talked about it when I went on co-op. That when the game is dark is often when it's least fun, like, how I know that most of a lot of us would wait until it got light out again before we started playing, because it's hard to pick stuff out. And it's just, like, there's no real easy HUD element to identify enemies in the dark, and they sort of blend in with the background. - I feel that same way about most games that don't have artificial light throughout the whole level, if they're big open worlds. - And this is all dark all the time. Like, the first time I saw zombies, they were, like, smudges of black against black that slightly changed the outline of the scenery in front of me, and that's how I knew they were coming. - Yeah. - And also, there were often times in borderlands when the framerate would get really bad when there was a ton of shit going on and a ton of vertical fun. - Yeah. This throws dozens of zombies at you, and there's just so much shit going on that the framerate literally drops to the single digits in parts, or it did with us, playing with four people. And that was always the hardest points in the engine is when you have, like, a fucking siren or two that are setting off their phase walk with giant explosions coming out of them and elemental explosions everywhere. It just, like, it doesn't perform particularly well. But that could be a network issue. We were having really bad latency. So that, I mean, that could be part of it. I'll have to play some more of it to sort of get a better feel for it. But as far as amount of content for the $10 they're charging, it seems reasonable. - Man, it's only $10. - I mean, $10 is kind of a lot for DLC. - What was the fallout of DLC? That was like 20 bucks for the LLC. - That DLC was $10 each time. - It was $10 each time. - Okay. - Okay. - I played some Tropico 2 or Tropico 3. - Tropico 3? How's that? What'd you play on? - On 360. I played the 360 demo to do impressions for Team Xbox. It's, I mean, I had fun. It doesn't seem to have any serious issues going to the console on your face. So I'm actually looking forward to it coming out here. I guess it's out in the UK already. Which is why they released a demo here for some reason. - The 360 version? - Yeah. It doesn't come out in February. It's all February here. - Weird. That happens a lot with more European games they think are going to perform better, I think. Just like Blood Bowl is already out in Europe. But that's not coming over to the US till like the same time Tropico does. - Yeah. - It's just there are certain games that they know that this isn't necessarily its prime market. - I think the thing that's going to be proved the biggest hurdle for Tropico is the price. Because it's just going to be a rough sell as a $60 game when it's a $40 PC game. - Yeah. - But I mean it's different than Civ. And other than Civ Rev, there's not really any other strategy game quite like this on the console. But it occupies this niche really well. And it's definitely got its own personality which is all about manipulating and fucking people over to pad your Swiss bank account. - I mean it's very much the same game that I talked about. - Yeah, exactly. Except it's on the 360 and you use a controller. It still looks pretty good. The frame rate can chug at times, but that's to be expected. But yeah, it's a lot of fun. So I'm looking forward to using my religious zealot to force Christianity on everyone. - Oh nice. - I'm taking the anti-anthony route. - Nice. Yeah, I sometimes do it too. Why not? I think I'm all crazy. - It's a little fun. - And then I'm trying to, I mean I played some Saboteur which we will talk about next week. - Once the embargo lifts. - Yeah, it lifts in the third, which is next Thursday. So we'll record on Wednesday and then it'll go up when the embargo is up. - That way people just don't feel like you're teasing them. - Yeah, no. It's all embargo. So like I would talk about, we haven't even played that much. Because Anthony and I are both reviewing it for GameSpine. - It does suck, but they only got it to us this week though. - Last week. - Last week even, sorry, last week. But it's like, and there's like the holiday week which almost doesn't count people. - Do you feel about that like having like nine or ten days for that kind of game? - Doesn't seem long enough, to be honest. I mean, most games we get though, we don't get them in a time frame that I would say as long as, I mean it's never as long as you'd like almost ever. - Assassin's Creed II was an exception of that and I think that the reviews bear that out a little bit. - So, I mean it is really a lot of times like, you know, I don't know. It seems like it would be in everyone's best interest to get it to them as early as possible. You know, a lot of times it comes down to the wire for a lot. - Right, yeah. I'm sure on there and the developer and publisher and two, they're like, "Well, we would love to get it to you, but..." - Yeah, prove the processes. - Yeah, I mean it just went gold like a day ago. - Right. So, I played a little bit of Shadow Complex today because we're talking about Game of the Year considerations. - Nice. How do you feel about it? - I don't think I've played enough to really continue the judgment. - How far did you get? - I'm like right just right at the beginning. I think I've played for maybe like half an hour. - Nice. - And in some ways I like the ways it controls and the way that it works, but in others it just, I mean, I think that maybe I made a mistake putting it on difficulty three or four instead of leaving it on normal. - Yeah, man. - But I don't know, I'll talk more about it. I feel a little bit like a sellout given our previous conversations talking about Shadow Complex now needing to play it. - Yeah, well, but you know... - I didn't buy it. - I didn't buy it. - Yeah, and you know, like one thing I wanted to mention last year when we were talking about our big regrets of last year was this was one of them. The fact that like I started playing Shadow Complex, but then when I started really thinking about all this shit, I was just like, you know, "Oh man, I'm just going to feel weird playing this game." Like I'm just not going to finish. - Yeah, I'm trying to come at it with as open a mind as I can to be as fair as I can as a game. - Exactly. - But I still have a lot of reservations about Orson Scott Card and chairs continued involvement with him and whether or not that indicates a sort of tacit approval for some more political beliefs. - Yeah, and for me it was like nothing that had anything to do with the game. I mean, it was just like some of the quotes that Card has gone. - I mean, I just can't get that shit out of my head. - Yeah, it's all that. - Yeah, it's like, "Oh, come on." - Like if someone said that they didn't want to play a Tobinobu in a Gaki game because he seems like he's super big-headed and arrogant, then I would get that because he absolutely seems super big-headed and arrogant. But I'm watching Anthony's cat bite the shit out of his hand. What else? Is that it? - What is it? - I forgot to mention because a lot of people have been emailing me about Captain Forever and we're asking about the song and the YouTube clip and it was made by Andrew Lays. And you can listen to it on farbs.com, which is his blog. There you go. - So yeah, that's it. I mean, honestly between the Saboteur and Borderlands and having like 8 million things to write over the last week, I haven't had a lot of time to play stuff. And we're recording early this week too, so that's a whole day. - I played some Fallout 3 or Fallout 3. - Oh, shit. - They did the Anchorage... - Operation Anchorage Anchorage and Mothership Zeta. - You played a lot of fucking Fallout 3 in the last week. - Yeah, that's a lot of content. - What'd you think of Anchorage? - You played like a part-time job. - Anchorage made me realize that you guys were definitely right when you were talking about that Fallout 3 as a shooter would have been a terrible game, like it was just a shooter. And that, in a lot of ways, it requires the Vat system to be fun because shooting and stuff like that. Like I use it a lot of times in the regular game too, just like non-Vat shooting when I run out just to finish guys off. But that whole part is so run and gun, especially because on the normal difficulty, you're pretty invincible, but you're pretty damn hard to kill. You take a ton of bullets. - I mean, by level 18. - And you're rolling around with all those guys, and between that and just the fact that there's health stations all over the place. It's just like, it was fun to see the narrative of it, like what's going on in what happened in Alaska, you know? And to have that different dynamic of like being commando pulling off missions, rolling around with the squad of guys. - A squad, yeah. - But beyond that, it was just the right length too. Like if it had dragged on for any more, it probably would have gotten old real fast, especially because once you're in it, you can't back out. - Was the, were the previous fall outs on PC? Were they squad based at all? - No. - No, it was mostly-- - They were isometric/stop damage. - I think you could get a dog with you, like dog me. - Oh, okay, okay. - I was just curious. But yeah, so, you know, and that was weird because, you know, then you do that and then, you know, spoilers if you haven't played it, you know, the guys all turned on you. But I didn't see it coming because I was just in there looking at the armor and all of a sudden I was getting shot and was like, what the fuck? And all those guys, it seemed like they were shooting each other too. Like everyone just went apeshit. - Yeah, it's because there are some people that wanted to defend you and the knowledge keepers there and the other guys want to take it, like take all the stuff and just do what they need to do. - Right, yeah. Defender Shibley and his guys. - Yeah, if you run out in the hallway, you can catch their confrontation. - Yeah. - Yeah, I ended up just shooting everyone. Like I didn't understand that there was a difference. I just started wasting. - Well, I mean, some of them were highlighted in red or whatever. - Yeah, some of them, I killed anyone that was red. But I didn't say, afterwards, I couldn't find anyone else. - I mean, they might have died. - Yeah, they probably could. - Everyone seemed to have died. - That's one thing about Fallout and Oblivion both is that they're just so willing to let fucking story important characters die. And in some ways that's cool, like that you can affect the world that way and otherwise it's just a royal fucking pain in the ass. - I usually just roll with it if it happens. The one time, I've only reloaded once, which is like that star paladin cross died. And I didn't know that she could. So then I reloaded because I was just letting her go in. I didn't even help her because I just assumed she'd get knocked unconscious. - Yeah. - What happened to a lot of people? - The only time she ever died for me is there's a ruined city that has this alleyway that has a guy on a megaphone talking. And basically you find out that he's wired this entire alley with mines and grenades. And if you walk through it, he detonates it. - Yeah, I mean, I'm not much to reload. Honestly, if someone dies a lot of times, I kind of liked the idea that if she were to, like now that I know she can try the next time she dies, she's just dying. I'm going to take her hollow tag. I'm going to take it back. She can never story told. Basically, the only purpose she serves for me is a mule to hold stuff anyways. She's pretty worthless in combat, so. - And it's all about Fox as far as hirelings. - Yeah, and the mothership Zeta content was really cool. At first it was brutally difficult. But once I had all my armor back and I had one of their alien rifles, that was like a piece of cake, those aliens all died in one shot. - The whole thing without my original equipment. - Oh, did you not realize that you could have picked up the equipment? - I just went the wrong way, I guess. When it told me I could get my equipment and man, that was a punch in the balls. - Yeah, I mean, basically, once you have the alien rifle, it's like the wind gun. It just kills everyone in one shot. Headshot just bought some pieces. And I eventually was rolling around with one of those drone cannons too, just blowing up everyone with that. - Which are kind of cool, those are the ones that fire the arc, like in an arc. - Yeah, it's like a grenade launcher. - That you're loping your basketball or whatever. - Yeah, the mothership Zeta content was really cool in the way you meet all those guys. And at some point I was like, am I going to be able to talk to this samurai guy? Like, am I going to find someone that can speak Japanese to him? But he totally ends up meeting up with you and defending the bridge with you. What the fucking samurai? - How did you like the space battle? - For what it was, it was really cool. - What was the space? - I hadn't played this content. - So eventually you take over the mothership, and when you do another alien mothership rolls up, and then you have to use the death ray on the mothership, your mothership to kill it, and you have to sit there and be like full power to shield, full power to death ray. - Or half power to shield, half power to death ray. - Oh, weird, it's like a little mini. - Because if it nails you when your shields are down, basically you'll have to run around and reset all the power switches. - And meanwhile, you're being attacked by some aliens, trying to retake the bridge. - Why'd they beam on board? - And like the cowboy and samurai that you freed that have been frozen for a long time are defending you. This blows my mind the fact that there's a cowboy and a samurai. - There's also an astronaut that is trying dead. - Yeah, he's dead. But yeah, you find people throughout time. - You actually take the astronauts' clothes and go on a spacewalk on the surface of the mothership. - Red. So yeah, I mean, it's really cool. That spaceship battle's pretty basic. It's just like full power now, full power to the... - It's just cool that it's in there that like... - Like I said, it's cool for what it is. The game's not supposed to be a space battle thing. It's kind of unexpected that it happens. And then once you have it, you have a spaceship you can always return to. Which is pretty badass. And the guy that makes special weapons for you. - Even when you exit the content? - Yeah, you can walk back to a homing beacon and transfer back up to someone. - Oh, I mean, once you finish it though, but once you're in the mothership, you have to finish the content. - You have to finish the content. - You can't leave until you're finished with it. - But you get some badass health things too, these like bio gels that are basically way better than Stimpex ever are. - I think you can fuck yourself up though if you take too many of these. - You can if you before they're modified. Like before they're modified, they still heal you. But they'll also have side effects where once you find this medic guy who you can modify him and make him usable for humans. - Right. - So. - Yeah. - It will fall out. Still kick in. - I mean, he still hasn't done the two best pieces of DLC, which are point like out and broken steel. - Yeah, I haven't beat the game yet. - And there's so much other shit to do in that game. - Yeah. I mean, I've done a ton of side quests too, but I just don't feel like getting into it. - It is fucking mind boggling how much shit is in that game. - Although it still feels a lot less content rich than Oblivion, which isn't a knock against it. It just feels like Oblivion had so many more random side quests I would pick up than this. Like I don't picture myself spending the hundred hour they spent Oblivion. - Right. - I wonder how much that has to do with the fact that there are like guilds and shit like that in Oblivion. - I just think that this is like a more focused experience and that's not a bad thing. - Yeah. - Well, I think that also there might be a lot of places that you haven't come across yet. Like the People's Republic of Dave. - I haven't marked in my map. I haven't been to it yet though, but yeah, I mean, it's fall out as a totally. - Then there's Oasis, which is also amazing. - I've seen Oasis. - Yeah. - If all it is a totally great game, it's really cool, but yeah, I'm enjoying it immensely. You know, I'm of the opinion that the game itself, even though it's like a destroyed landscape, that it has this, I don't know, there's something like huge. - There's a majesty to the landscape. - It's pretty. That game has some of the prettiest sky out of a lot of games. There's Skybox in that game is really fucking good. - I agree. - I don't know. You've also been playing Silent Hill Shattered Memories. - Yeah, although I can't probably talk about that too much. I mean, everyone's seen it a little bit here and there at previews, you know? So I don't want to talk about that. - Which one is that? - Like, I don't want to get a review here or anything like that. Silent Hill, it's the remake of the first, or the remake is wrong. It's like the way that it's like a relaunch of the franchise in some ways, because it's like, it's like Batman begins to Batman to burn. - Right. - Like they're totally different. - What platform is it on? - It's a Wii. It's a Wii game. It still follows the basic premise, Harry Mason looking for his daughter after a car crash, except it's totally different. There isn't the fog, isn't there? It was a big deal. Now it's all about snow. And when it turns Silent Hill on you, the whole town freezes over and you watch it happen, because it just sweeps the land and everything gets frozen and car runs as well. - What was that? - It looks actually really good. I mean, that was-- - I mean, I was watching you play, and I actually thought that the game in general looks perfectly serviceable, especially for a Wii game. - It does. It looks really good. And one thing I really love about it is, you know, it's not-- it doesn't, like, a lot of struggle horror games are doing these days. There's no more of the-- you know, you hit a door to escape, and it loads through. This one's not like that. You know, it's all continuously going. - Nice. - And so when you open a door, you grab it, and then you use the stick to determine how fast you're going to open a door. So like if you're holding forward the whole time, it'll just like finish opening the door, that you can like nudge it to where you can like slowly open the door and pull your flashlight through and look around before you commit to going through. - Awesome. - And if you see something, you can just pull the door shut and run the other way. - Can they open the doors? - Yeah, they can open doors and come through a lot of times. So yeah, they do a great deal of making it like really scary where, you know, you do what you would be. You'd stand on the door with your flashlight and be like, "Is it okay?" - What do you think it is that they're doing this on the Wii instead of the next-- I say next time, the HD consoles? - I don't know. That is a good question. It's because of like how, I mean, Silent Hill Homecoming didn't sell that great. - I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I assume it didn't sell that great, though I don't know what type of numbers it actually did. - So, I mean, maybe it's just their attempt at doing a cheap reboot seat to sort of test the waters. - Or maybe some other company had some idea of a flashlight game that they were already working on there. Like, you know, maybe we could just redo Silent Hill. We have that license. So who knows, but it is really cool. And the cell phone now, it's got like a modern take on like your cell phone plays so much more of a big deal. Use your cell phone to call people like other characters you meet. You can call random billboards you see and they actually work, you know. And you get random messages through your cell phone, which is also your Wii Remote speaker, but that's actually not like, it doesn't come off as gimmicky to me when I play this. - Right, yeah. That sounds like a cool little working on that speaker. - And the flashlights all link to the Wii Remote pointing, which is really nice. But uh... - Problems, any problems? - So far, you know, just, there's been a couple of points where enemies killed me and it was like I didn't know where to go, but it's so early on. And they do some really cool things with like psychology and stuff in it. I don't know. It even warns you at the beginning, this game has psychological terror, blah, blah, blah. People with blah, blah, blah, should not play it. - Should blah, blah, blah. - So it's pretty cool. I think that game has a lot of potential to be like maybe not who knows like how great it'll be. But I actually think that it could be a really cool game. And as someone who's never been loyal or a fan of the Silent Hill series, that's one of those games that seems like every time I turn around, it's like there's another Silent Hill coming out like... - For a while, they were coming out every year pretty much, really, every 18 months. - And like all over the place, like cell phones, card games. - Oh yeah, well on survivor titles. - Yeah. - Yeah, those are pretty much Japan exclusive. But yeah, I mean, pretty much it's been like every 18 months for the console with like maybe like two and a half years between like Silent Hill the room and Homecoming. - That's because they were sort of disappointed with how the room did. - Yeah, the room was kind of a weird game anyways. The room, I don't even think was supposed to be a Silent Hill game when it started out. So it was very different from all the other games. But you know, but in between the room, I think, and Homecoming, they also had like that PSP version. So yeah, I mean, it's a pretty cool franchise, and it has some of the best music in video games in my mind. That guy is such a great composer. So that guy, because I don't remember his name, but he's that guy, the guy that does the Silent Hill games. - He's like creative advisor to all things Silent Hill at this point. - Yeah. So I just like those games over Resident Evil a lot of times, just because they are more of a psychological horror. They're like Jacob's Ladder tonight of the living dead, oftentimes. - Yeah. - I just hear you say good soundtrack. And for some reason, my slightly tired brain wanders to Assassin's Creed II again. - Yeah, there's a lot of games with great soundtracks out lately. - You know, honestly, I actually bought the Assassin's Creed II soundtrack. - I didn't like a lot of the music in Assassin's Creed II. I felt like a lot of it sounded, um, sounded a lot like Mass Effect music, the music in Assassin's Creed II soundtrack. I think I did the Hitman games. - Oh, really? Man, yeah, I thought that was good. I mean, there were parts that I liked, but when they started working on synthesizer stuff, like the futuristic sort of sounding stuff, I felt pulled me out of, even though I fully understand where it fits in, the fact that they're kind of going back and forth between like-- - That's the Matrix. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, I understand that, but maybe I wanted it to be all period piece. I mean, yeah, the orchestral stuff is the stuff that I really like about this. - Yeah, and I agree with that, yeah. - Hi. - You've been playing Modern Warfare 2 on PC. - Yeah, and been having a lot of problems with Cheaters bastards. - What? - Yeah. - On PC? - Yeah, I definitely know that there are-- - They cracked it? - There are a lot of-- there are a lot of hacks out there. - Yeah, yeah. - Hacks-- - While Hacks being the most prevalent. - Really? - Yeah, and it's only obvious, like, even in hardcore deathmatch, like I told Arthur like the most obvious one was I played this hardcore deathmatch one, and the game went in kill. It was like this dude rolling around with dual magnums, and he was just the whole time in slow motion shooting at this dude that you never saw him, and he was just locked on underneath the floor, like just tracing him, everyone, and everyone was like, "Oh, bullshit." Like everyone over their headsets at once was like, "Oh my God." And the guy also went like 43 and 3. Come on. - Ugh. - Yeah, yeah. That is pretty hilarious. - I mean, it's possible to do that in that game. - Yeah, no, yeah. It totally is. It's just-- - Yeah, we both hacked it. - When people saw that, it was like, "Okay." It's not just skill. - Welp. - So. - Infinity Ward, all of your excuses have now disappeared. - Yep. - And you were basically a bunch of DLC trying to sell assholes. - Yeah. - So, yeah, I mean, you know, and beyond that, I've been playing company heroes, which the only reason I've been playing lately is we found this gimmick, which they'll probably be upset that I'm giving away online, but there's this-- well, I won't even tell you specifically, but there's this one map, and it's a 3v3 map, and if you're playing allies and you're all playing American, the map is designed bad, and so there's an unequal amount of fuel on the American side. And we discovered that if we do it just right, which is pretty easy, like we don't even have to worry about taking the victory points because we can let those all fall and let them think they're winning, because within our current record is 5 minutes, 36 seconds, we can have a tank, which is like everyone rolls out with their first Sherman at 5 minutes, 36 seconds, and like no one by that time has any AT at all. And then you just roll on them, and by the time they're starting to deal with the first Sherman that has now entered their base and is blowing everything up, the second one rolls in, and then they're just like a constant stream of Sherman's. - So basically, you fucking assholes set up a game and why in wait for people to come in? - That's fucking right, dude. - Right? - You set a fucking trap from this fucking news. - We tell them beforehand, we're like, are you ready for fun? Because the game's always called like here comes the fun, and so it's like, and then when they join, we're like, we'll start saying three, two, one, fun, and right when we say fun, that's when the first Sherman rolls up, and you see him like, and there's this new program called Gameplay Analyzer or something like that, Replay Analyzer, which like, you know, when you watch a replaying company here as normally, you can only see what you typed, you can't see, but this Replay Analyzer actually lets you go in, see every move they made, like every click, every order they gave, when they gave it, and it lets you see anything their team said to each other. - Whoa. - So some of the people I play with like to go in and look at their dialogs, first time the tank shows up and they're like, oh fuck, oh fuck, I have no ATD you, no, oh we're fucked, I'm quitting. - You guys are assholes. - I'm not playing anymore. - Yeah. Yeah, five minutes, 36 seconds, the current record of how fast it could be playing. - You also play with the biggest group of fucking sorb losers on the fucking internet. - Are they sorb- are your friends who are losers? - They can be sorb losers at times, that's for sure. - Oh man. - That's like half the reason we don't play League of Legends in my mind, is that they got tired of losing, so. - Now that the peasants can play. - That's all I've been playing. - Oh it's a, it's a big way to play. - Assholes. - Assholes. - Assholes. - Okay, okay, okay, okay. ♪ When in this maze I never return ♪ ♪ You swim away ♪ ♪ Till I let the discuss in my play ♪ ♪ So please forgive me ♪ ♪ For this spell I am under ♪ ♪ Why lose myself ♪ ♪ I lose myself ♪ ♪ I lose myself ♪ ♪ So please forgive me ♪ ♪ For this spell I am under ♪ ♪ Why lose myself ♪ ♪ 'Cause my soul ♪ ♪ When they smell like nothing ♪ ♪ I'll be the smell I'm in need ♪ ♪ I'll be the smell I'm in need ♪ - What are you thankful for? - That's what we're gonna talk about. - And actually by Anthony Gallegos. - I am thankful, I am thankful for all the things that have happened to me this year. So, last week we asked you about games that disappointed you. This time we wanted to know about things game related and stuff that you're thankful for. - The thank God. - And honor of June 19th since that's this week. - This is God. - Wolfie75, our first commentary. I'll read you 'cause you were first, firsted. Says I'm thankful for the return of 2.5D games. Try and shadow complex, Bozeman, try as HD. - Yeah, second debt. But I don't know if it's officially like the return because like Bonnet Commando was last year. - That was a remake. - Yeah. True. - New Super Mario Brothers Wii. - Yes. - That's true. What are you guys, what are you guys thankful for? - Man. - I would like to hear more listener comments before we elaborate on ours. - I was trying to give myself time to find it. - Oh, okay. - No. So, SDF says I'm a, oh God, I'm never mind. I'm not gonna say he was, he's like, I'm thankful public healthcare. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is that out of pocket or not out of pocket? Whatever, we don't need that with healthcare debate. - We can as long as we're once. - No, no, that's not very Juneteenth. - That's not very Juneteenth. - Universal healthcare is Juneteenth. - Formula One, Formula One Frank says, I'm thankful that I lived to see the day that a video game let's you kill innocent civilians while they run away screaming. - Oh. - Pretty sure GTA let's you do that one. - Yeah, that one's been breached. - But yeah, Naruto 180 says, I'm thankful for the PS3 price drop and all the good games that have come out for it and beyond Naruto 180. - Was that a joke? Like the beyond part? Was that a joke? - Ah, who knows, man? - I mean, this is the year of Netflix, right? On the 360, that's something that I've been extremely-- - And the year of Netflix on the PS3. - Yeah, yeah, now it's on the PS3. We gotta give respect, but I mean, that's something that I know provided me with a lot more hours of entertainment than I thought could have. - And, yeah, and-- - True. - True? - I have used that a lot. - This is angry candid. This is something a lot of people said unsurprisingly, being that this was the venue that we put the question out. You know, our podcast. This is, I'm thankful for having a job girlfriend in our first child, but he says-- - Oh, congratulations. - Congrats. Don't raise them wrong. I am thankful for the aftermath of the EGM/1 up meltdown creating Rebel FM co-op podcasts. - A long time listener, first time commenter. You guys are great. Love the discussion of the end and f-words. - There actually were a fair amount of comments that we're glad to have heard that conversation, but that's actually one of the things I'm thankful for is that in the aftermath of the one apocalypse, which hopefully will be the last time I ever say that, it seems like most of the people that we know have more or less landed on their feet or in the process of landing on their feet. - Most, not all though, sadly. - And I mean, when you look at like co-op, I mean, those guys are in a pretty cool spot where they have a lot of control over what they do. - I mean, they're making the show they want to make. - Exactly. - And I'm glad that they have that opportunity. - Yep, yep. - All right, Craig Kays says, "I'm thankful for Steam's love of PC gaming. "Revenue has gone up double digits in the past two years. "Thanks in large part to Valve's vision. "It was looking like the trusty PC would be relegated "to MMOs, The Sims, and Flash games. "Now it seems that everything has changed. "Most AAA titles are releasing on it. "And it even has its fair share of exclusives "of playing on consoles. "But I also appreciate the cocoon-like experience "of having headphones and a monitor in front of my face." - Yeah. - The 360 to thank for most of those games coming out on PC. Just 'cause it's so easy to port back and forth. But I mean, yeah, Steam has done a lot. I like that Steam has encouraged a lot of companies to be more flexible with their pricing, to experiment with what they offer, especially with the Steam weekend sales. - And like, yeah, their sales are so ridiculous. - Oh, son of a bitch. I just realized that Steam is probably gonna do something ridiculous on Friday. - I looked, they're not saying if they are doing anything, but right now, through Thursday, you can get plants versus zombies for five bucks on Steam. - I think Paggle is $5 on Xbox Live Arcade today, too. - Yeah. - Crazy deals. Steam, we're thankful. - Yes. - Chris Davidson says, "I think the greatest thing for me "has been bitmob.com. "I feel like there's this huge impenetrable wall "into game journalism, especially in the current economy, "so it feels kind of nice to write alongside people "I look up to like Dan Shoe and Greg Ford." Just being an observer kind of told my enthusiasm about the industry. But having my stuff recognized and getting in with that community has really revitalized my interest in games as a whole. Sorry if this comes off like a shameless plug or something, but it is genuinely my favorite game-related thing in 2009. - Chris, you would know if you listen to our podcast every week, we promote bitmob anyways. - Best buy why he's some female, maybe. - And you also have the Watchful Live, Jason Wilson there to help guide you occasionally, and that is incredibly invaluable. - Yeah, and bitmob, didn't they break the Mercs ink? - They did, bitmob did break the Mercs ink thing. I'm pretty sure that bitmob's story is what caused EA to spill the beans on it in the first place. Considering their fucking press release said more about the saboteur than it did about Mercs ink. - And strangely enough, they said nothing about the platform which we both were debating what it might be. Yeah, I don't know, I guess I don't even know what I'm thankful for this year. - You should be thankful for copy editors. - Yeah, I'm thankful, but game-related stuff. I'm thankful for working alongside like Ryan Scott, that's been pretty nice. Just 'cause having someone that's genuinely experienced that actually knows about doing copy that really needs to stand the test of time, I feel like there's a certain throw away quality that a lot of people put with internet writing, even though it's even more permanent, the magazines in a lot of ways. But yeah, having someone that used to just be so concerned about having their shit in print is nice working under someone like that. It's a different sort of mentality that is good to have for perspective. Oh my God, Airtard says, "With all the major fuckies, "I as a PC gamer received this year "from all kinds of publishing developers, "I'm trying kinda hard to find something to be thankful for, "but I would have to say thanks to studios like Dice, "and of course, all the wonderful Eastern European devs, "CD Project for one, for giving me as a PC gamer "a better selection than ever." I wouldn't say it would ever necessarily, but, and I also appreciate that most developers actually do make an effort with their PC versions these days. That is true. - You should be thankful for BioWare as well. - It's so easy to just port directly from the 360 and be done with it, like Bionic Commander did, but most devs actually implement new stuff and better graphics. I think that's admirable considering how little money PC games usually make. - Agreed. - Yeah. Xboxster says the PS3 Slim because the price and redesign is attractive enough for me to get one, which just anecdotally, I've noticed that's a common thread amongst my friends, actually, friends that I don't talk to that often, but because they know what I do, they think I somehow have some great insight. They're like, "Do you think I should get a PS3 now?" I'm like, "What?" I even brought that up and I don't know. I saw commercials about Price Trump. I'm like, "Maybe?" Whoop. Like a lot of 'em already own 360s though, so I tell 'em, it all comes down to whether or not you want those exclusives. - I mean, I think at this point, that's the market that Sony is sort of selling to, is a lot of people that already have 360s, and now Microsoft needs to figure out what market they're selling to. - Yeah, I just tell 'em, it depends. Do you want all the PS3 exclusives and do you want Blu-ray? Are those two things driving your decision? Otherwise, I'm like, "I don't know." - I'm thankful to this year. It's not hard for me to recommend a PS3 anymore. It's easy for me to say that you should own a PS3. - And there's a lot of great Black Friday deals that include PS3 bundles. I saw like Walmart has a really badass one. - Or some, yeah, there are quite a few. - Do you feel, do you agree with Martin Penwald, Arthur? He says, "I am happy that Capcom, after 10 years, "finally gave us a new Street Fighter, "not just some rehash or a re-rerelease." Probably talking about Super Street Fighter, Turbo HD or whatever, remik? - Or Alpha, yeah. - And then it turned out as awesome as it is. - I am thankful that Street Fighter 4 came out and was awesome. Unfortunately, it seems like Capcom has taken that as a sign to go right back into the same habits they'd developed when Street Fighter 2 came out, right down to fucking the three new characters that I guess are gonna be in it that are announcing Famitsu this week, were Street Fighter Alpha characters, which are Guy, Cody, and Adon, right down, and God damn it, Cody has his stupid outfit. The fucking jail outfit. Anyway, but yeah, so it was nice. I think as a fighting game fan, you should be thankful this year, 'cause there have been a lot of really great fighting games coming out. And Xbox 360 owners finally got good fight six and good fight pads. - Let's see. Calvin says, "I am thankful I have a steady job "since they are hard to come by right now." And then he says, and all big letters, dick sucking warning. And he says, "Since it's not an ideal job, "what I really am thankful for is my sanity "and the people that help me keep it. "Working alone for eight hours a day "in silence will drive anyone insane." So if it wasn't for podcasting the people behind them, I'd be in a mental institution by now. I've come dangerously close a few times. So Anthony, Arthur, and Tyler, thanks for keeping me sane. Dick sucking completion. - I'm satisfied, you satisfied? - That was like a common thread throughout the comments, probably 10 or so, 15 comments were generally about podcasts there think, for including a life while wasted, including us, including co-op. - Really, why else do you think that I suggest that as our topic? Please control for God. - Let us praise upon us. - Exactly. I'm grateful for the Giant Bomb Cast this year. I have, honestly, the Giant, I get sad when I've used up Giant Bomb Cast 'cause I feel like I need to listen to that when I go running. - Yeah, their whole website and everything kicked off this year, didn't it? - No, I mean, it started last year, but it really seems like Giant Bomb has become more of a presence this year than they were last year. I mean, it's nice to see. And I happen to think that they have the funniest podcast that is an hour. - Yeah. - Audesty. - I do think that we should go around to one more and then I'll end with a comment just because we'll keep it as a shorter podcast in the tradition of our specials anyways. And I don't really feel like reading a bunch that are like, I love real often. - Oh, God, you've got all my plans. - I'm thankful for those. I really am. - You know, I don't know. Who wants to just hear his lavish praise upon yourselves? I don't even want to hear it. - All right, Tyler. - I'm thankful for my gaming PC. By far, all of my favorite gaming experiences this year have been on the PC. Save Battlefield 1943 on the 360. - Which could have been on the PC. - Yeah. I mean, definitely by far. Just the fact that I can play PC games this year because of you guys. - Yeah, my number one, PC gaming is the shit. - That was also totally planned so we could get more compliments. - Yeah, please, Tyler, tell us about your. - Tell us why we're awesome. - I mean, yeah, I mean, I just, yeah. That's the last monest answer. - I'm really glad that we could, not even us, like that's, I'm glad that this has provided you with that opportunity. - That piece is... - Yeah. - I think I'm pretty much thankful for the same thing that Arthur is, which is that we're both employed now. You know, after the layoffs and everything, finding a job in this industry, I honestly didn't think it was gonna happen for a while. So it's nice that I was able to be proved wrong. And like I said, the biggest thing is just thankful for people that continually work with me to help me improve 'cause I don't pretend to be like, you know, I throw out criticism and stuff, but that doesn't mean that I think like, I know everything 'cause that's definitely not the case. So having friends that even though they aren't in this industry anymore, that will help me, that's a really big deal to me. Arthur. - I'm thankful for you guys. - Oh, you had to go fucking say. - I did, but I mean, it's not just, I mean, it's just this whole like this podcast and just every opportunity that has presented itself in the midst of the shit storm that was the beginning of the year and the sort of difficulty that the year has been. It's just been like somehow I, I'm dealing and approaching the end of this year in a much better situation than I was. - It's true, this podcast is both almost tour me and Arthur's friendship apart and also brought it together in a lot of ways. It's great. - So I suppose that's one reading of it in some ways. - Well, things involving the podcast, how about that? - Yeah. - So Carl Taylor has a nice little one, which is why I wanted to end with his says, "For my wife being 24 weeks pregnant, "now all I need is a game collection I can play "was feeding the barn at 3 a.m. one-handed, "one-handed gaming, huh? "Sounds like you need some wee light gun shooters." - Mm-hmm. - It's our sift. - Sift, rev. - Or you need to get yourself a baby Bjorn so you can just hang off your fucking chest. Now where you can still use both hands. - There you go. - That's what I would do. - I know, that's what we're gonna do. - Yeah, baby Bjorn, look into it, love it. And then see if you could strap it to your dog so it's like you don't even have to bring your baby to the house or anything. - Or is it like a same Bernard? Like have it bring baby to you instead of fucking gin or whatever? - Nah, just get one of those fucking little swing things for it and just put it up in there all day. And get it like a little hamster thing and teach you how to lick the ball so water comes out. It would be fine. So put milk in there instead or some shit. - Don't teach your child to lick the ball. So that won't go anywhere good. I'm also thankful for the audience, both the people that like us and the people that hate us. - I'm actually pretty thankful for the people that hate us because it's been good to be taught how to sort of continue on in the face of virulent, unrelenting, completely unreasonable hatred. (laughs) - All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back with a few letters. Some relationship points to you with Bjorn. (upbeat music) ♫ And then on the hours they pass ♫ ♫ By ♫ ♫ At their attention ♫ ♫ If I thought it was worth the time ♫ ♫ I'd tell her easy builder ♫ ♫ I'd say find a way ♫ ♫ Contising passion for the long thing that we crave ♫ ♫ The lack of reasons that we know won't stand a chance ♫ ♫ Watching her shoulders like a memory from the past ♫ ♫ I'd tell her easy builder ♫ ♫ I'd say find a way ♫ ♫ Contising passion for the long thing that we crave ♫ - All right, we're back. Our first letter is from Hannah. - Hannah! - And I love Hannah. - And I love Hannah. - She's the same Hannah, right? - Yes, that is the Hannah. That's her last thing that starts with the scenes. - Who we met at the meetup and whose name and face I actually remember. - Oh yeah. - Her and Ziax. - Let's see. Just wanted to let you know that Ziax is from the Bay Area, isn't he? - I don't know, I don't. - I feel like he is. Anyways, you guys don't remember Rad Devon? I remember Rad Devon and I also remember Jess. - You mean Radabon? I also remember, I also remember Jess English. (laughing) - I don't even think that guy is a fan of ours. - Oh, Jess, yeah he is, Jess. You had emailed the game spy, like contact us email, asking for books about religion. I need you to email me at chuffmoney@eat-sleep-game so I can give you specific recommendations. Not just the game spy contact us, it was a miracle I even saw that. Amongst all the emails about flight sim and shit like that. - Somebody else was like, do you wouldn't fucking take this? - Yeah, I just didn't understand it, so. - Religion? - Yeah, so he says, sorry, Hannah says, just wanted to let you know that I entirely blame you for the fact that I found myself spending $25 today on a collection of Expanded Universe Star Wars toys. I could be like the other moms and read People Magazine and Buy Shoes, but I listened to Rebel of him instead. So if I'm wandering around next year at a Comic Con, just like a slutty version of my WoW character, that's also your fault as well. - This is all your fault, Anthony, none of this is my fault. - I don't play WoW or if it's your fault. - I know you just said you're a mom, but I can't remember if you said you were married. Preferably you are because that's what I like. - I like women who are unavailable. - I like to be a home wrecker, so I'm just kidding. - Hard to pine ceaselessly. - So Ryan wrote me because he said, "Dude, you were looking for relationship letters "in the latest episode and totally didn't see this one. "I sent back in late October. "I humbly resubmitted for use on your podcast." So he says, "For all those listeners out there "looking for a lady to game with, "I wanted to share my experience. "I've been with my lady friend for over two years "and in the time she has come to accept me "as a very prolific gamer. "Basically the thing to do is be as honest "as possible about your gaming. "Don't say you were playing poker "when you're really DMing D&D. "Don't wait until she is out of the house "to play Mass Effect for six hours straight. "If the girl you're with doesn't wanna be with someone "who plays a lot of video games, "better she find out sooner. "Also if you're honest, she won't waste her time "trying to change you or hoping you'll grow out of it." At first my girlfriend would just make fun a lot of my gaming, then the first time she saw me playing rock band she just stared and said, "You know what would really impress me "if you could play real guitar." Ouch. Now she regularly gets 100% on hard. The first time she saw me play points versus on me she said, "What the hell are you playing?" Now this is her Zen Garden. This is what her Zen Garden looks like and there's a pretty cool picture. I mean, it's impressive. So, just like any kind of entertainment you'll find common grand. You'll have things that you can't agree on. Just don't try to force her into playing something she won't like and don't hide what you're also into. Also know that when to put down the fucking controller because there are things you can't save and play later. So, that was not as much a relationship letter that came out to everybody. - Sex! - Just him throwing it out there. Yeah, that guy basically says everything we've tried to tell people that are like, "I'm scared about people finding out about my gaming." So, I mean, honestly, like, was that ever even like a point in 10-year-old? - I was saying you're afraid that your parents are gonna find out that your day. Like, was that like something like the Jodie you're about to find out that I fucking love video games so much I wanna write about 'em? - Nah, no, 'cause at that point I was already, you know, when she met me, I was already working for the free press writing reviews. - Yeah, that's right. - That's right. And she's like way into copy editing too. So, she would actually help copy edit a lot of my shit. - Cool. Chris writes in Chris P and he says, "Hey guys, love the podcast. "Just wanted to know what your take is on accents and games. "Why is it that in AC2, "Oobesaw feels the need for every character "to talk with an Italian-American accent?" I mean, obviously, resident Italians in the 15th century Florence didn't speak English. They spoke Italian. If Oobesaw wanted to break the illusion by having characters speak English, then why not just have them speak normal with English? Either speak an Italian or completely break the illusion and have them talk normal with English? - I think that having them speak normal colloquial, modern English, would have been distracting. Whereas speaking with an Italian dialogue, while not speaking entirely in Italian, is a sort of middle ground that I was comfortable with. I tried playing the game in Italian and I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I also felt like the delivery in Italian felt more wooden. I just think that it's a compromise because not everybody wants to read subtitles while they're playing their games. - Yeah, my only complaint is that I felt a few of the voice actors weren't very good at the Italian accents, whereas it felt like some of the voice actors in the games are excellent. - No one North Italian accent is perfectly serviceable. - Who's no one North? - He's Ezio. - Oh, no, that's good. - He's totally fine, yeah. - But he's also better known for. - Fucking uncharted and that's the thing that distracted me about Assassin's Creed is that I kept for the first hour or two. I was like, why the fuck am I listening to Nathan Drake speak with an Italian accent? - So Corey writes in, and this is something that if you guys have a good answer for, I think you should, and you guys meaning the listeners, you should chime in about it in the comment thread for this podcast. He says, is there any way to meet up with other listeners of the Rebel FM podcast? I got several good friends, but none of them are hardcore gamers like myself. I figure if I could find someone who lives near me or who was a fan of your podcast to be the best way to get to know, to, best way I know to get a lot, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. - You want to start over at that sentence? - I figure, yeah, sorry. I figure I could find someone who lives near me or who's a fan of your podcast, it would be the best way to know I'd get along with them. Not only is it a podcast about video games, it's a podcast about good video games, and you guys are hosts with moral values very similar to my own. If you could read this on the air, and anybody living in the Lexington, Kentucky area, could message me on Xbox Live Gamer Tag, Poobone, P-O-O-B-O-N-E, I'd really appreciate it. - That's awesome. - Dad is pretty good. - His brother hasn't been banned. - He says I'm 24 and married, a big fan of games in general, especially Halo, Half-Life, Silent Hill, Universes, so if anyone out there's looking for a friend, message me, which leads me to an additional comment. For an upcoming game club, you guys should play Halo 1 or Silent Hill 2. Thanks a lot, guys. - Maybe start a Facebook group? - Yeah, dude, Poobone, if you wanted to take the lead and start a Rebel FM Facebook group, I would join you. - I think there is already a Rebel FM Facebook group or an Eat Sleep game Facebook group. - Well, hopefully we-- - Which I am not a member of 'cause I don't use Facebook. We hope to find some pals, man, I hope so. - I tweeted it a little bit this week. You saw that? - I got some tweets. - I didn't because you're not doing it enough. - So, Michael writes in with a really simple letter. He says, "I'm 30 in feeling nostalgic "for the video game magazines of my youth. "What's a good magazine to subscribe to? "I hear good things about Edge, but it's pretty expensive. "Is it considered the best video game magazine available?" It depends who you ask. - I think it's probably one of the best, if not the best, at this point. - I, it's kind of highbrow. So, if that's where your tastes lie, then I think that Edge is appropriate, I think-- - But play is also good. - Play is good at covering games in development. I don't particularly put a lot of stock in plays or views. - I would be very interested if I was you to maybe get a subscription to GamePro in the next year. - Yeah, John Davidson. - Check out now that John's there in charge. There could be some really good stuff coming out there. - And like as, you know, it's not the greatest magazine, but a lot of times the best exclusives go to Game Informer. - I mean, everybody at this point probably has a subscription to Game Informer that would ever have a subscription to the Game Informer. I never got my epic Mickey ever. And then when I got the new covers, have you seen the new covers, right? - Yeah, they're good. - Except I got the worst one, which is the fucking GTA 3. - Oh, I haven't seen the new one. So this is a relationship letter. This is a real one, though. This isn't like the last one where the guy just told us good things. - So basically, this is just to make sure that that douchebag in the comments unsubscribed. - Yeah, Harry writes it and he says, I'm currently a sophomore in high school and have had all of a half a girlfriend my entire life. When I say half a girlfriend, I don't mean I-- - Empty. - I don't mean I dated an amputee or something weird like that. - Oh, hey, they're Apatimna files, man. That's the second-- - He says, I mean that we went out on two or three dates and made out for five minutes. As it turns out, I was the rebound guy for her and as such was quickly tossed aside when she realized that I was not in fact liked by her. Time went on and we didn't speak much, but as she is now in my acting and directing class, we have started talking again and I have found myself quite infatuated by her despite her seemingly constant insult whenever we talk on the interwebs. As it is the interwebs, I am unsure of how these are to be read and in real life she seems quite neutral towards me. Before this girl and I hooked up, the most I kissed a girl was for play, for was for a play. I did this being a senior when I was a freshman and she had some very nice titties. - It's hard to read that part, didn't you? - It's so funny. - Yeah, man. - So what should I do about this girl? Should I continue my pursuit or just cut it off in case it ends up like the first time? - Well, this guy's in the drama department, he's in a theater arts, right? - So she, apparently. - So she, I'd say whatever, don't even pursue anything, you're in drama, like wait 'til your senior year, you're gonna have had gotten it on with half of the girls in there. Anyway, if it's anything like my drama experience. - Really? Honestly. - Man, I hope Jody listens to this like-- - Honestly dude, I would just not talk to her, or play the hard to get rolling. If she comes background, then kick it to her and if she doesn't. - That's always hard though, and it seems like a girl is sort of interacting well. - I know, but you came-- - And then she plays fucking hot and cold with you in person. - Yeah, I know. - I recently had that happen with somebody else. - But motherfucker, Harry, you came to us, and that is my advice. - Right. - To play the hard to get rolling. It's gonna be hard, relieve steam the way you gotta relieve steam, and just stay the course. - And plus, I mean, it's classic, like I mean, people stay-- - And taking advice from George Bush. - Stay the course. - Like people-- - Stay the course. - Guys and girls alike love a chase. No matter what, all you have to do buddy, flip the script. - Yeah, it's just one thing hard to get, now you play hard to get. - Mm-hmm. - People love a chase. And next time, when you make out with her for five minutes, tell her you're not into her. - Oh yeah! - Be like, "Man, I kissed someone better last week." - Do us all favor and cover your boner when you say it. Otherwise, it doesn't work. - Don't stand-- - Anthony's right us up with the follow up. Anthony M writes in and says, "Dear Anthony, Arthur and Tyler, "some friends and I are wondering "if you're going to be at PAX East Coast, "which a lot of people have asked, "but more importantly, I am, "we don't know about the rest of everyone, "seems like it might." - At this point, I'm pretty sure I'm going. - Is there any advice you can give to first time convention goers? None of us are press or insiders or anything, just lifelong gamers, and this is our first time going to a gaming convention. What's the best way to approach guys like yourself who were fans of about, without seeming like crazy fanboy types? Just approach us. Most of them don't approach us at PAX, it was fine. Some of them, we ended up even just like, spending the day with a lot of times. - Just hangin' out. - So, don't act, don't act weird. - No, I mean, just recognize that these people are like, once you're like sitting where we are, like not to make a scene, like we're sitting in an ivory tower, but I'm saying like, you realize that everyone is just normal people. Like when I first got a job of one up, I was so intimidated people like Shane. Nowadays, I really Shane's just a dude. He's just a dude like everyone else. - With glorious biceps. - So, and the one thing I would say, if you're going to go to the first time convention, is like, try and see everything, have a good time, do not consume an excessive amount of caffeinated beverages. Sleep, you should make it a vacation, but don't make it something where you feel like you gotta get every minute out of it, that you feel like you're just going from appointment to appointment, like... - You mean panel to panel. - Panel to panel. Like all that just takes time. - Just really figure out which panels are important to you and make it a point to get there early for those. Otherwise, just see the games. - And spend time laying in the bean bags, playing DS with random people. Everyone there has a DS. You flip it up and say download games. Like there's always something to download and play with it. - Where's PAX East taking place? - In Boston, I'm not sure though. So, I just think, you know, it'll be, it's really fun. But take time to enjoy other gamers around you. Like one of the best things I had when I went to PAX before I was involved in press, was chilling in the line before they even let us in. And you know, just, you end up because you're in line for like four hours before, you know, like that's how we did 'cause we were kind of crazy, but we ended up making buddies with the dudes around us. Inevitably, we might sit there and end up talking with the guys next to us about Warhammer or our favorite games. You know, there's just a lot of opportunities there to make friends with cool people, even if they're superficial friends for that day. It's just like an experience. - Also, try to get some fucking sleep where you'll be mobile. - That's what I'm saying. Yeah, make it a vacation. Don't take things like, don't think I can't sleep. Sleep, eat well. Do not drink a bunch of caffeine. Like, just enjoy yourself. Like, it should be a vacation. You guys get treated like a vacation. - There's not gonna be anything there that you won't be able to play a firm. - Soon enough afterwards that you need to fucking break your balls. - And if you wanna see certain panels, like any of the larger ones, like the keynote or any of the Tyco and Gabe, like art panels, you gotta get in line at least two hours early. - If not sooner, depending. - That's my advice too. - And get your Mac game ready because that's where you could find hot gamer girls. - It's true. - With boyfriends. - Sometimes. - Virtually every fucking cute girl at PAX was there with a childish guy in tow. If you are a cute girl and you are not going to PAX East with a boyfriend and you are over the age of 21, you can email me. - All these modifiers. - Well. - You have to be hot though. - I said cute. I don't want hot. I settle for cute. Settle. Settle. Sorry. So anyways, you can find me at Twitter.com/chefmoney as well as my writing at GameSpy.com. And you can hear me on the GameSpy at Everything's each week with Ryan Scott. You can find Tyler at Twitter.com/32 and also on GameSpy.com doing news. - All right there. - You can find me at Twitter.com/AEGIS. I was on co-op this week for the Assassin's Creed 2 fucking Felatio Extravaganza. An entire episode of just all Assassin's Creed 2 and that was only like half of our conversation. And I also write for teamexbox.com. - Last but not least, you should listen to our fellow HammerSoup Partners podcasts, the mobcast at bitmob.com, the geekbox@geekbox.net and I'm sitting here spacing and you should also go to area5.tv and listen to co-op or watch co-op rather 'cause it's a video show. - But you can be also found at revision3.com/co-op. - I will also be on the GameSpy at Everything's week and it's remembered. - Yeah, you will. Subscribe to our podcast, review us positively and dig us if you see fit and all that good shit. - And if you're gonna complain about relationship letters, don't. - Yeah, sorry. It's a shorter show this week but it's especially before we all do the things, the other things. So have a good Juneteenth. We'll see you all next week. - Have a good Juneteenth. ♪ All I really wanna do is love you ♪ ♪ A kind much closer than friends use ♪ ♪ But I still can't say it after all we've been through ♪ ♪ And all I really want from you is to feel me ♪ ♪ As the feeling inside keeps building ♪ ♪ And I will find a way to you if it kills me ♪ ♪ If it kills me, if it kills me ♪ ♪ Mm hmm ♪ ♪ I think it might kill me ♪ ♪ And all I really want from you is to feel me ♪ ♪ It's a feeling inside keeps building ♪ ♪ And I will find a way to you if it kills me ♪ ♪ If it kills me, it might kill me ♪ (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) (gentle guitar music) [BLANK_AUDIO]