Rebel FM
Rebel FM -- Episode 38 (A Special Show)
This episode is very special for us. While it starts off with the standard game talk, covering things like Captain Forever, Torchlight, and some Civ. Rev., it transitions into something unlike what we've ever done before. We recently traveled to Houston, Texas to tour a Children's Miracle Network cancer ward. While there, we interviewed children and their families, and have put that, along with a talk that includes Doc from SarcasticGamer.com, into a special second half that is great to listen to for information about pediatric cancer, but also about how you can help.Donations stay in your area, and if you're interested in contributing, you can go to Thanks for listening,Chuf
[MUSIC] To all the people wearing headphones, say what's up. >> What? >> Welcome to Rebel FM, episode 38. If you're listening to this episode on headphones, I'm actually thinking about getting one of the new iPod shuffles for Christmas. >> Right now it sounds like Tyler's licking your e-drums. So, I'm Anthony Gallegos with me is Tyler Barber. >> Hello. >> And Arthur Geese. >> Greetings. >> And we're all here from the website that you either download this on or from the land of iTunes where you found us. >> Or possibly Zoom. >> Or from the outcast aisle of Zoom. >> Yes. >> Keep-sleep-game.com. >> We have more people do direct downloads from the site like right clicking and save as than we have downloading it from the Zoom marketplace. >> From Zoom, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about the, so this podcast is a little unusual as we stated in the post. But for you, those of you that don't view our site or follow us on Twitter, this podcast is not going to be the standard format. It's going to be the first segment, talking about games we've been checking out, just like we always do. And then the whole rest of it is going to be a special thing we did for Children's Miracle Network. We went to Houston, interviewed some kids, families with cancer. It's cool, you should check it out. And then if you feel so inclined, you should donate, which there will be a link in the post on EatSoupGame.com with the information for our personal websites. Got a cool layout to it. >> Yeah, there's a ton of information in the actual recording. >> Yeah, so basically this is your warning that after the first segment, if you're not interested in hearing any of that, you are more than welcome to bail out. We don't, we don't, begrudge anyone. >> I begrudge it. >> There, well, I don't have any. >> You don't have to say warning, we can say this is a heads up. >> Arthur doesn't begrudge. >> I don't begrudge someone not wanting to see that. >> I want you to explain to St. Peter when you're dead, though. >> Yeah, well, anyways. >> Or whatever, DeeDee represents at the gates of your afterlife. >> I like that with the book. >> I like to imagine that there's any- >> We got it with the book. >> St. Peter's just there for all of them, just because. >> Yeah. >> He goes, St. Peter died and went to heaven. And then he appears and he's like before Vishnu, and he's like, "What?" >> Really? >> I had it wrong, so put all those churches. And he's like, "Look at me, I got an elephant head. What do you think about that?" Anyways, let's start by games and playings. And let's start off with me and Tyler because we're by chomping at the bits, talk about this game, called Captain Forever. >> Captain Forever, what did you think of the website, first of all? When I first sent you the link? >> It looks like a website from 1992. >> It's like all ASCII. >> It looks like a Geocities website. >> Yeah, someone just put in the very basic HTML for a color background, and then for the color text, and then it's typed out color text. >> Which was shut down this week, actually. >> Geocities? >> Yeah. At the end of an era, although its era was ended a long time ago, really. >> It's relevancy ended. >> But I mean, I know tons of friends that was like, "Check out my home page." There's like a picture of a clown and big old, like- >> Animated gifts. >> Yeah. So, but yeah, this Captain Forever game, we both checked it out. >> How much does it cost? Because you and I were lucky enough to be hooked up with it by the creator. >> Yeah, so it actually costs, I believe it's $15 if you get in on it now. But when the next version is released or something, it goes up to 20 bucks. Or maybe it's 20 bucks now, I'm not too sure. But basically, they're releasing what's out now, you can pay for it. >> But by now means you get in with all the content in the future? >> Yeah. Yeah. So the creator plans two additional sort of different takes, you know, I'm not, he's not even sure- >> I don't even understand what the game is. >> I don't even understand what the game is. >> Yeah, yeah. That's right. I understand about the game, but that's one of the cool things about it is like all the text on the website is all written like in a- >> Like you're like a transmission from a spaceship? >> Yep, yep. Like it's like NASA space control. >> So the way that the base of game looks is it looks a lot like a, like you've, it's almost like the first part of sport when you're running around. >> Or like flow, if you're familiar with- >> Or floating around. >> Yeah. So you're like, you know, but you have your thrusters, but it has like, you have like inertia, like you would in space. >> Yes. >> Caring you along. >> So you're in. >> Yeah. You're in this little heart. You're in this little pod. >> Yeah. Like the command module of a ship. And then you get some warning that like it just drops you and it's like now it's a browser base game and it tells you like other piracy is going to be very rampant. Some explosion occurred. You're ready. And then yeah ships start attacking you and if you kill their heart, their command module, all the parts off their ship go flying and then you can quickly assemble those onto your ship. >> Yeah. >> And so you're just building off of your main command module and creating a ship around it with their part. >> Yeah. But the cool thing about it is like there's different types of parts. So it's like first the weaker enemies you encounter are like green and so those parts are really light. But later once you get onto other colors like yellow enemies or purple. >> Purple. >> Purple. >> Like they're really. >> I mean, they take kind of damage. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they have like really, really heavy parts. And physics is a major part of the whole game. Like when you're steering your ship or whatever like if you have a. >> Or like if you. Sorry, go ahead. You have like a heavy piece on the right side of your ship that weighs down the right side of your ship. You'll be like doing like this big circle or even like the thrusters like so the basic parts are that you have like your hulls, thrusters and lasers. That's basically it, right? >> So is it like a twin stick shooter with an upgrade mechanic is that? >> It's not it's not like twisting you control it with WASD and you shoot with space bar. So it's it don't mean it's only shoot in the direction they're pointing. >> So it's like asteroids. >> Yes. >> Also like what was that one game you showed me that you said was like one of the first video games ever the NASA simulator. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Looner lander. >> Looner lander. Kind of like that. The way the inertia. >> Yeah. >> The ship. So I mean you really have to like when you when an enemy vessel rolls up and you immediately like look at it because everything has very distinct looks you're like, oh he has three lasers on the front. So now I just got to like crazy maneuver my way knock out his blasters. So then he can basically can't or his thrusters and then he can't maneuver and then work like sometimes I'll go out of my way to like look what's the shortest route like what are the fewest pieces I have to kill to kill his command module that way because I want to get those pieces that he has. >> So you have to sort of balance between destroying them and destroying them in a certain way to preserve certain parts. >> Yes exactly. So like the hard part is is a lot of times they'll put their lasers on the front of the crafts and they all look different. It's all sort of what I gather it's like procedurally generated like gigantic behemoths coming. >> Yeah, it's so crazy. The designs are really are all really interesting and the ships look cool it's all like really abstract. It's just like basically like a bunch of blocks and shit but you know I don't know it's really really fucking fun. >> It is addictive. Yeah, I mean I started off, you kill your first couple and then you have something that kind of looks like a fighter and then I got up to about something I would imagine is like a freighter size. I'm starting to put like thrusters on the side so I can do like crazy side thrusting stuff like that. And then it almost sounds kind of like banjo, kazooie, you know it's in bolts yeah I don't weigh it is because except it's like if banjo kazoo if any every enemy you kill drop things that you could immediately throw in your ship but the thing is that it gets pretty intense pretty fast. I mean like I ran into some battleship type fucking things and then people just annihilate you. >> Yeah, I'm like sitting there thinking hmm if I put a piece here oh my god you just rolled over me and blew me up. >> Yeah, that's the thing. That is the thing. There is no sort of I mean there's a pause but there's no pause in the action like okay let me stop all the combat and just think how I want to make my ship it's all like right there you have to go and basically you'll get these sonar blips from off the side of the screen where other ships can come from and I don't know if you notice is Anthony but there's actually like aggressive and non aggressive ships did you notice that like some ships you can approach and they'll just and if you look there's like a little message fields that appear in the message fields but I never paid attention if I just assumed everyone was aggressive and sometimes it'll be just something like docking 305. You know it's like it has such a cool charm in this constant little like blip blip blips and bloops. >> Yeah, I definitely got fucked up by this one ship and it like blew away my whole right side and I just had the left side of my ship and I was spinning so then I just ripped everything off of it and just went back to my command module and was like now I got the edge because I'm so fast on you. >> Exactly, you know what yeah I actually found that exact scenario to be really helpful earlier today when I was playing it was the same thing and I felt so proud like I had this pretty big behemoth like built up I even had some purple guns on there I was like oh shit and I got a purple gun dude I got pretty far today but man then this one the big fucking ship came through and just tore tore my whole ship apart but I was I was just the one little square piece and I managed to wedge myself like in between these little arms that stuck out by his command module and just stayed there. >> So he died yeah basically yeah it's so fun and then there's like the subtext of the game that's really weird for an indie game because it's like it almost seems like the ship you have is evil or something. >> I mean the way it sounds like you're playing it you are evil well you're destroying anything you come across. >> Sounds like the ship is like the ship that can't actually die and that's like why every time you die it blows up and then there's that quick thing and then it's you're alive again. Like if you see the first message to the guys talking about how he's in a ship and no matter what he does it just won't die and whenever you fire your lasers I don't know if you can see but in the background there's always this hooded visage in the background the whole time. >> None of the images if you read some of the texts on the website it's actually like a reflection of you and they say they do that to make the pilots not get disoriented or something like they shoot a reflection on the cockpit so it's actually like a picture of you as a pilot with your little goggles on in your helmet. Like if you look at the silhouette it's trippy it's really is it's crazy I don't know but >> It just made me feel like you will. >> Captain Forever man it's like all man. >> Is it worth $15? >> I don't know like you say this is a browser game so you you have to go to their website to play it and you just sign up or log in or whatever. >> It's like a registration thing and if we want to understand like there are two different sort of modes or some or ways that he's planning that the creators are planning on expanding upon but we don't know what it is like he even said like it might be something like you know I could even do like a tower defense sort of variant on this. >> Like we were talking about world of goo being on sale I think it was last year the week before and how there's like a price point where I couldn't bring myself to pay it for it and I feel like listening to what you're saying the the $15 is sort of like >> Right I guess the whole thing though is that if you support him now you get in on the future things this guy creates I guess I mean that yeah I mean I'm glad to have played it for free. I don't know exactly I think $10 is really what I'd feel comfortable paying for it. >> Yeah yeah I'd have to say the same but I don't but it is like incredibly fun in that geometry wars like the original geometry wars. >> You can go back to it over and over again. >> You can start from the beginning and go. >> Yeah. >> Captain forever. >> Captain forever. >> Is that just the website Captain forever.com? >> I believe it's something like that. >> If you Google it. >> If you Google it. >> I can't imagine the Captain forever. >> There's a really cool YouTube trailer for it too that has awesome music. >> So I guess I can finally talk about Bioshock now. >> Oh sure you wouldn't play multiplayer? >> No I didn't play multiplayer I'd believe before then to record our show actually. But I did play single player for like a half hour. >> Nice. They just released the new single player trailer as well. >> I still didn't watch that. >> Man it got me excited for Bioshock too. >> I played it and I will say that when I played the whole single player chunk I played it was the same like I really enjoyed this that I got when I played part one because for all intents purposes it really is like more part one really does feel like Bioshock 1.5. >> It doesn't hurt that you ended by I mean spoilers you ended Bioshock in a big daddy suit. >> Right. >> So now it's just like and you know they've done a few things to make it yeah like it almost like a better shooter in a way because they've done the thing of giving you more options. Like you know now there's it's just like Halo in a sense that you know or every other melee like shooter you know you have a dedicated melee button you don't have to switch to a wrench you can just melee with the gun you're using. >> Melee. >> Melee yeah and then you can also use plasmids and guns at the same time it isn't switching between one. >> Right yeah yeah I noticed that in the trailer. >> So it does a lot and you know they even have added the ability to combine plasmids so you can like lay a wind trap like the ones that throw them in the air and then shoot lightning on it so it'll shock them as it throws them in the air. >> Nice. >> So you know these are all things that you would like these are like stereotypical what you'd expect in the sequel sort of things. >> The bigger, better, more badass school of sequel design. >> But it does you know and then on top of that you still get the world like the team I know at least I think the artist from the first game is there. >> I mean a lot of people that worked on the first Bioshock are there. >> Right and it's like and so they still have gotten that like you and you're seeing new parts of Rapture you didn't see before. >> And I like some of the enemies are more interesting than just yeah that's that's you know that's one thing when we were at PAX we had a really interesting conversation with Sean Elliott about how the enemies in the first Bioshock there was none that really forced you to try different tactics like pretty much you could use whatever you prefer to use on anything. >> Yeah and now they're clearly like there's like a enemy I can't remember he's like basically like a Hulk like a big ass guy that takes a bunch of shots. >> Okay. >> So you'll tend to pull out you know like that's exactly when you will be like you know anti-personnel rounds like you need to save them for those guys. You know. >> And that's sort of a like a throwback PC shooter school of design. >> Like the different ammo types. >> Like you hoard like your specific weapon type for certain encounters. >> Yeah I mean it's true and like there are new guns as well there's like a rivet gun which is pretty cool. >> Well that's I mean that's the big daddy weapon right. >> That's a heavy rivet gun. >> You just have a rivet gun. >> And didn't I see I thought I saw in the trailer a mini gun. >> Yeah you get like they were all kind of a machine gun like a heavy machine gun that was like a hundred rounds. >> Yeah. >> And then a spear gun which is like my favorite because it sticks people to the wall. >> Nice. >> That is mechanic that does not get old in game. >> Never. >> For whatever reason. >> I just I think that the things that made Bioshock special were things that didn't really become super apparent. I mean everyone was there when they saw Bioshock when they saw the demos they're like this could be something really cool. But it wasn't until that demo where it just starts out so spectacularly and the way that it introduces you to the city is so striking. >> Right. >> And that combined with just the way the whole game goes through and like these amazing moments and this just the way that it builds up. Those are the things that stick with me as to why Bioshock was so was so amazing. >> Right. >> It's hard to really get a feel for that based on what they've released so far. >> Yeah Arthur I see what you're saying because where the first one really captured me with the whole atmosphere of the place and the mystery of it all. To me I'm approaching the second one where I just want more of the gameplay. So I'm I might be looking at it a little bit of a different angle. If there's a great story there if there's some really great twists you know that'll be an extra surprise to me but I'm also someone who is excited about the multiplayer like that stuff seems cool to me I guess I was never like the guy who was like man that what Bioshock is missing is the ability to shoot people with a nice plasmid. >> Yeah but I know that you can have that sort of attitude but if it's done well it's done cool. >> Yeah. >> I mean you know I don't even think gears if I'd play gears without multiplayer I wouldn't really care but that it's theirs and it's good. It's awesome. Yeah I kind of do feel that the same like the same way I felt about it when I was playing it was you know I was like all the mystery and allure of how this happened and why this city is this weird blend of 50s and stuff all that's gone now and it's like so they really have to come through like really deliver on a cool story to me to make the single player like something worth playing start to finish because you're not seeing like the story of how this fell apart you already kind of know how it fell apart. >> Like exploring like sort of figuring out what the world was and Bioshock was a big part of it and now that you don't do that well in a way aren't you still doing the same thing experiencing what it was in a sense that it's a prequel right. >> No it's a sequel. >> It takes place after? >> Yes. >> Oh that's right. >> It does take place after. >> The multiplayer element is situated during the sort of rebellion. >> I'm interested to see I mean I'll you know I'm going for the gameplay I'll see a false date for the for the story. >> All right what else is everyone playing? >> Is it just that it's but it's can you talk about what you played today or is that embargoed? >> It's embargoed. >> Till? >> I don't know. >> Okay. >> You've also been playing torchlight. >> I have it's a Diablo clone but a very good one cartoon graphics music straight out of Diablo because it's done by the Diablo person I don't know I mean you know clicking through dungeons and all that is still a lot of fun but I guess I'm just skeptical about how long it'll take before I get bored of it playing by myself because I never played the Diablo games by myself I always played with other people so I mean I feel like that's kind of an obvious thing and not only that but I kind of wish there were more character classes too you can only pick between three characters. >> Yeah but I think the thing that I noticed is that it seems like you can specialize each class in a very specific sort of direction and also they're all much more proficient with every kind of weapon than Diablo character classes typically have been like as if you played as a hunt like an assassin and Diablo 2 you were never going to use like giant axes or or like a bow or whatever because that's just not where your specialty is way and in this they've indicated that it's much more open as far as what you can use and like you can do you can use two weapons at once and I don't mean like switching between loadouts I mean like I had a pistol on one hand and like a stave in the other and I would alternate between firing pistol shots and firing fire blasts from the stave. >> I mean there are still weapons that certain characters can't use. >> Are there? >> Yeah like the big warrior guy can't use pistols. >> He can't. >> No but he can use rifles. So you can still have like a ranged loadout and like a. >> There's too small for his big meaty fists. >> Yeah I guess so but yeah I mean so it does seem like there's still some exclusive weapons but yeah you do have the ability to quick switch loadouts like you did in Diablo. I mean it does a lot of smart things that Diablo didn't have you know like the ability to break items and get your gems back and. >> Or destroy the gems in it to get your item back. >> Right and resocket it with something else. Just little things to make it more user friendly sometimes you'll find merchants in dungeons instead of having to go back to town. You can load up everyone gets a pet that runs around with them. >> Could you put your daughter a cat? >> I picked a cat and you can load it with items as well. Not just items to wear but also just like use it as a mule. >> And you can also send him back to town. >> To sell the stuff. >> Yeah. >> He'll come back. A lot of stuff you've seen in Diablo 3 like is here like you don't pick up gold. You just run over it and it automatically picks it up. I mean I don't you've never played Diablo 2 did you? >> No. I mean the only Diablo type game I've played are the Baldur's Gate. >> I should just give you my copies of Diablo 2 and Lord of Destruction. >> Man we got so many games right now. >> Diablo 2 is so good. See where you've never really played single player Anthony like on Diablo 2 I definitely spent way more time playing single player on Diablo 2 than I ever did playing multiplayer. >> Yeah I think part of it is just that honestly I just I don't like clicking on enemies to kill them as much as controlling them with like I've played all the other Baldur's Gate games for console and it's basically the same thing run around collect gold mash on enemies but using a controller to directly control my guy rather than telling him where to go with the click somehow makes it more engaging. >> I think eventually I mean in Diablo 2 this was the case. I don't know that I played Torchlight enough to be sure yet. You learned that there were different strategies to the ways that you would use your powers and the way that you'd click as stupid as that sounds like the Amazon had an ability that would split an arrow into like three or four arrows or however many points you put in it. The closer to your character you would right click with it the further the spread would be of the arrows and the further away the more narrow it would be and stuff like that so there would be variations on the ways that you could use your powers and it seems like it's that way in this too like the first power that the that the female class gets which is basically supposed to be specked as an archer or a pistol or whatever her her attack goes through and bounces off of enemies and walls so if you want to hit as many enemies as possible you would bank it ideally like in a way to get the most people with your shot. But I don't know it does it definitely does loot better than any other Diablo clone I played. >> How much is it? Do you know? >> 1799 on Steam right now. >> Okay good. Yeah. Game should not be a full price PC game. >> I mean it's a tiny tiny game. It's like a 700 megabyte install. >> Right. And it's just there are a lot of things about it that make it like you can tell it was done by a smaller team like they're like there's like inconsistency with when there's going to be voice acting when you get a quest and sometimes there's not and then some of the voiceovers and particularly great. >> Usually I mean there's not voice acting for everything like you'll get like a greeting and and then it'll be like text and occasionally you'll get the full voice and people have like the full thing yeah I don't know I mean but that being said it's like you can tell this was something done by not a lot of people and probably not even a ton of time and it's still really fun like it is it is very good and it probably has a pretty good range of PCs or run on because they go with the really stylized sort of Warcraft 3 graphics rather than you know trying to make it ultra real. >> They have a netbook mode in the settings. >> Hmm. >> So I'd be curious to throw that on your wind and see how it runs. >> Yeah. I mean it is you know there's a lot of fun I mean you know there's just even little things to do and yet that there weren't to do like there's a fishing mechanic and- >> Have you figured out how to fish? >> Yeah. I have you have to wait till the in the game it's like when you fish you throw out a line and there's a big circle and a little circle and you have to do it once the big circle matches the little circle and shakes like for a second then you can pull it and there will be a fish on it. But you have to wait for them to come together. >> Is that in the documentation they sent with it? >> No I didn't get any documentation I just watched someone do it. >> Oh that's weird. So yeah I mean you know it just has these little things that are like almost little MMO tropes that work really well in this sort of game as well and give you little things to do when you don't feel like going and grinding through another dungeon. >> Like what? Just the fishing and stuff? >> Yeah that's what I'm saying. You know just those little things that you can break it up just the way you do in an MMO. >> Like one thing that they do that I haven't seen before and I mean part of this is I didn't get to play mythos like it mythos crumbled when flagship crumbled. >> Well mythos got sold to the Korean company. >> Well yeah but I mean it's not running anymore because they're trying to turn it into something else. >> Right. >> But this is a lot of what mythos is doing is what torchlight is doing. >> Mythos also had multiplayer. >> Well it was an MMO basically wasn't it? >> Yeah. >> Like one of the cool things is that you can buy maps from merchants which are basically like these mini dungeons that you just click on the scroll and it opens up a portal and you go in and like there's a there'll be a ton of bosses and like really challenging mobs that will drop better stuff. So like you can always if you're tired of what you're doing you can just go buy a map and dive into a different kind of dungeon. >> Nice. >> A variety. >> They place an emphasis on finding weapons instead of buying them now like weapons aren't worth much gold and it doesn't seem like they're ever going to be. >> Yeah although I mean in Diablo you always found every weapon used to I mean well I mean in Diablo the way to get the most powerful weapons is generally gambling and I'll be curious to see if that's what happens here. >> Gaming gambling system where you would like do it and then quit if you lost and well you could but then they patch the game so that it saves as soon as you leave like the items screen or whatever and you also share your stash between all the characters. >> But well you can there's a shared stash and a character stash. >> Okay. >> So in the center of town there's one specific that character and then there's a shared one so you don't have to make me old characters. You can just hook other characters you have up with items. >> I mean you can't make me old characters. >> Right. >> Because there's no multiplayer. >> Yeah I mean I do think it's it's a cool game and for me it's nice to hear that it's in the United theme because to me that is a game where the value proposition comes into play. >> Yeah and I think that like the game matches I think $20 so that game is reasonable. >> Yeah I'd heard that they were making this game to try and raise money to make an MMO but I don't know if that's true. >> They're already working on the MMO. >> So it's just to help fund it. >> But I mean that's not coming out for a year and a half to two years from now so. >> Anyone that tells me they're making an MMO is just like why? >> I still feel I was free to play MMO no less. >> Oh well they they can work here America free realms has proved that so. >> I did have some technical issues with it and apparently there are some other people on Steam that have the same issue where. >> Yeah they're using Windows 7 as well I wonder because I mean I haven't had any characterization. >> Every Windows OS that it runs on that you would create a character and it wouldn't save like at all so I got like two and a half three hours into it multiple times and lost the character as soon as I ended the game and that sucked but the way that I was going back and forth with the tech guy at Runik today getting information about the issue and it seems like setting the game to run as administrator has solved the issue for me but we'll see if that sticks but yeah as long as you can get over the single player only aspect of it it's super good like it does loot better than any any game since Diablo in my opinion. >> Nice in what way why do you feel that way? >> It has all the same kinds of loot that Diablo had more items are socketable items that are socketable can be re socketed basically that you can take the gems out or. >> Try to think of other games that do loot. >> Titan quest to human borderlands like tons of games. >> Kingdom on the fire circle of doom monster hunter fantasy star online all that stuff like there are a lot of games that are tried to do loot and I guess you just named only one game that I actually care about and or have played. >> I mean it's just like you start the game and you immediately feel powerful even as a level one character like you're just murdering enemies left and right and it's only once. >> True yeah I was playing on like normal yeah and on normal it's like I have the threat of dying has never even appeared so far from like one to level five. >> Yeah I mean I imagine once you get further down it'll become more of an issue but the thing about the Diablo games is always been that individual enemies never pose a threat and even small groups of enemies don't it's when there are a ton of enemies with a boss. >> Or just a boss that you have to die like 20 times fighting to kill. >> Yeah honestly that when Diablo 2 first came out there were no bosses in it like that and they patched the game and made it harder and harder and I don't know why. >> I don't know probably the hardcore kids that stuck with it and played like crazy on battle net one of that. >> Like duriel is one of the stupidest most fucked up boss designs in any blizzard game. >> Right you just die like 80 times fighting and then go back over and over. >> Like he freezes you and then destroys you like over and over again but I mean other than that like in the general areas you just feel powerful and you can die but I mean you'll just be annihilating swaths of enemies and you do that in torchlight and also now instead of having this inventory with a grid and like a suit of armor will take four slots or like six slots and a spear will take three like everything just takes one slot and there's no book of identifier, book of town portal like you just stack your scrolls in one slot up to 20 in the same thing with potions. >> Yeah so far I haven't found a way just to go up to somebody and have them identify all my items. >> No there is nothing like that. >> That does suck in some ways having to buy a bunch of scrolls and do it myself. >> I mean Diablo 2 you couldn't do that until you found Kane which was like cool out of the way I hope there is something that addresses that. >> I will say that there's just not going to be as much mission variety because it all takes place in the mines like it's all underground so in that way in that respect it sort of resembles Diablo 1 like there's no outside areas or anything like that but yeah I'm enjoying it a lot and now that it seems like my safe issues have been fixed hopefully I'll get to put more time into it. >> Excellent. >> I other than that I don't know we both played some siv rev right? >> Yeah. >> Because you played it on my iPhone didn't you? >> Yeah yeah you know what man it got me to thinking about you know we were talking about like man what is Fraxus you know what are they doing with siv you know they're doing this Facebook version and all this. I'm really glad that they're doing these different pared down versions of siv because like one thing I noticed the iPhone has you know it has like a so well thought out presentation of all the information that you need to know so like for example like your troops if they're hurt you need to heal them right and normally on like the PC version you know that'll all your commands like if you click on your troops they'll all show even if you don't need to heal him but for iPhones since everything has to be like context sensitive it really they're really efficient with the information they display so it's like you know the hill option won't even show up if you don't need to heal or anything like that and right and so I you know I would bet that these smaller versions of the game are going to influence whatever the big thing they're doing next just make it real streamlined I guess yeah I'll be curious to see what direction they go if they're going to make more console type games after the Facebook channel is done yeah I mean Facebook channels that being said siv rev is really good I heard you talk about it a lot but I hadn't really put much time into it and it is a fantastic game mmm still takes just as people always ask me is it like a good way to settle and in some ways I don't really even feel like it's settling you still get like all the experiences of siv and it like almost just does like what siv 4 does when you're playing like when I play siv 4 even a lot of times I let the computer manage a lot of like the minutiae of city stuff and all that and siv rev just like kind of does all that for you it just does a lot of the insane micromanaging shit that a lot of people don't enjoy anyways yeah and you still get the experiment the experience of like guiding your culture and taking over other cultures the important part it's for people with less of an attention span or just or just people that don't like think that that's fun to look at numbers and figure out like how to optimize best yeah I mean it's you know I mean you know we you know we've played both so it's like the really really like finite stuff that I don't know or just and it has the advisors that guide you the whole time yeah like if you're if you're fucking up and not producing enough culture that's something you wouldn't even realize like we would be like why am I losing territory on the PC one but this one will actively tell you we're losing territory or something cuz you're fucking up our culture yeah and I mean there and it even gives you the options to go into your cities and and direct like which tiles you want to put your workers to emphasize if you want but it's like I was just leaving on balance yeah yeah I mean but yeah those those games are crazy good to play it all the way out on the plane ride all the way home till your iPhone ran out of batteries I also spent some more time this week playing killing floor and that was free to play this weekend and not only that but they released a bunch of new maps and new weapons and stuff for free and then and then and then they sold character skins like did I bet I bet that went over well man people love character skins it did so the whole point of it was like if you like the new maps and shit we're giving you for free buy our two dollar character skin pack like basically they're just asking people to pay two dollars for maps really or to pay them back for the maps like just help keep them going which is rad I think killing floor is not the best looking game but it is really fun in a completely different way from other games like left for dead because you know the zombies generally move slow and it's all about how they're gonna hoard around you because there's so many different types and you know surviving it's like very arcade and that you survive you drown and get money for kills and then spend that money in the store at the end of the round but it it does it does have some funny moments like I didn't realize that some people are on my steam friends list that I've started that are listeners and there was this one I think is named Coyote Gray and I didn't realize that he was on my friends list and it joined our game and at some point like everyone went to run to go to the doors to buy weapons and stuff and you know in traditional goon fashion Rory was like blocked the door don't let the newcomer to our game buy anything so they all lined up so you couldn't get into the door first immediately the guy was like hello Roy and Roy was like what the fuck so how do you know what I'm going to do before I do it yeah you know just it is really funny fucking with each other in that game to like where like someone will be stealing all the kills running out way by themselves and then get overwhelmed and they're like I'm coming to you guys my trouble and you'll just be like nope I'm gonna weld this door shut in front of all of us and they'll just arrive in the door will be fucking welded shut how's that happen to you I know I stick with the group there are some other people that like to just like get all the kills and hoard all the money that will run out there and do that and so you're just like or they'll come running back and they'll be in trouble they'll be like help me help me and everyone will just not shoot we'll just watch them until they die and then we'll start shooting yeah you guys are princes princess among men you're a man yeah I was really bummed out like I totally saw on Monday morning that it was a free to play weekend I was like damn I missed out miss my chance it is a cool game and it is that's another game I think it's only 20 bucks or something I mean it you know it isn't it is a mod it's not like a I mean it's a mod that you buy in its entirety but it is a mod of a game red orchestra I believe is what the game comes from what else you guys been hitting up I have been playing the get window 7 retail installed and going again and that is the most boring game all the time that is the most frustrating that is a really poorly designed game I'll tell you what out well not window 7 no windows okay functioning window 7 as an OS is great I really like Windows 7 and if you are a PC gamer according to the benchmarks with more recent titles Windows 7 has substantial improvements in a number of titles over Windows XP SP 3 so it's not just like oh well it's better than Vista Vista this is sucked blah blah blah I mean in some games Vista outperforms Windows XP but Windows 7 performs admirably especially on games that are designed to take advantage of multi-core systems which my system is but also for 360 owners like just as a side benefit the the video codecs and files that it supports natively both in media center and from the dashboard or just like way expanded I have yet to come across videos that it won't play like whether they're mpeg movies or avi files if I can't expand that sort of support into Windows I mean maybe they're XP maybe they'll do it with Windows XP with the new the next version of Windows media player if they release it for XP or Vista but it's it's extremely uncommon for me to come across a video format I can't play now with the exception of MKV files and VOB files man speaking of PC gaming I just want to say or apologize if I came off as dismissive last week about the modern warfare two stuff yeah only because I didn't mean to be dismissive I just didn't really know anything about it at the time we're recorded so I didn't really want to get into it when I didn't know anything about it I still don't feel like the facts are completely out in the open as to how the setup is gonna work for which what are we talking for no for PC for the PC version modern warfare I still don't feel like that's been described adequately for me to to have an opinion yay or nay but my major I don't have a knee jerk reaction of negativity toward yeah I have a knee jerk reaction negativity but I just I didn't mean to sound dismissive last week just because that's like my number one thing is I hate when people are like don't play PC games don't care you know I don't know that is whereas I have a pet peeve that's like it just I hate watching PC gamers like float their outrage from one title to the next like every couple of weeks right but I mean I just feel like it's common for every game to get some rage from every scene you know what I mean like console gamers will make petitions to you know I mean I just that's why it's easy to become dismissive because eventually you see it so much you're like oh yeah another group people raging out about something I think it's because they it's easy or not easy but there are certain groups of gamers like fans of certain platforms that feel more marginalized and they see things happen and they that sort of praise upon that fear being marginalized like PC gamers have sort of been had an onslaught against them for a while now as far as like well consoles are now the lead skew for almost everything I mean that there's an operation Flashpoint 2 on Xbox 360 says a lot about PC gaming at this point well especially I mean yeah I mean I'm sure like in Europe the primary skew is still PC for operation Flashpoint but here in America it's like it's got to be console if you wanted to be an FPS and be successful in my opinion if ARMA 2 is on Xbox 360 then that's when you can start singing the death knell PC gaming but just like it was it's PC gamers who were the most upset about the left for dead to existing but I mean then you have like the PlayStation 3 petitions about things like how they were pissed off the Devil May Cry 4 is coming out for the Xbox 360 and how they feel like their console gets short shrift and how it's always a developer's fault the games don't perform as well and right that's that's that's the unfortunate side is that you hear community talk Cry Wolf so much about shit that doesn't matter that yeah I mean when something comes along that does it's easy to be dismissive just because you're like oh Jesus shut up and everyone just leaps like jumps to conclusions about how things are aren't going to be so like my immediate reaction is to just like give some something the fish eye when it has outrage attached to it and blogs don't help like the blog voice is to stoke outrage and anger so that people comment in pages page use page use so let's go back to games that we've actually been hitting up yeah because there's some good ones I want to talk about what's that tell me oh man here about that so man I played the demo of this game I want to get the full version new Floria yeah I meant to try that so we could talk about it but tell me what it is I said again you you Floria just so everyone's clear it's a play on euphoria yes so um in floors so flower again this game the way what this game is is basically they call it straight up they call it an RTS but what it looks like like Bruto legend no it looks like everyday shooter when I see pictures of it yeah and the art style is similar to like everyday shooter or if you're familiar with pixel junk Eden or also this the graphics are similar to flow I mentioned that earlier comparing it to captain forever man those are three totally disparate art styles in my head well they're all top down well okay except for pixel junk Eden but in the way that it's a smooth vector graphics just solid colors sort of things big shapes put together yeah yeah but basically the whole point of this is that there are all these little sort of floating planet toys and you play these little you basically like plant seeds on them and they grow trees and those trees sprout like flower petals and the flower petals are basically like your units and so they so they're constantly like sprouting these units and and all the graphics is it they're they're small like they're there they're really small and cute and you know you or I don't know if cute's the word but they're quaint like you zoom out really far away I was telling Anthony it kind of looks like you're controlling like a bunch of fleas or something so basically what it would with the gameplay is like these petals will orbit around this planet and you want to spread out to the other nearby planets and you know you know read the area of all the enemies so you basically send out the troops the other planets and it shows you if there's guys there or not are the enemies also flowers yes yes their flowers are different colors so we realize that this makes it sound like you've been smoking the pot I yeah I mean it's it's one of those games that it sounds like it's heavy on visuals and sound it you know it's it's very mellow like I like real mellow games you know and and even though it's an RTS and sometimes the combat can really get heated up when you're controlling like you know four or five hundred of these little petals and and they have you can get petals with different stats and everything like some of the planets you'll get to and this will be a planet that so there's like three characteristics like it's high in speed so that means your petals will be really really fast or strength so they'll be slow but stronger you know obviously and so uh and you know it you really do get that whole strategy aspect of like I'm gonna send this type of troop to this planet toy do a decoy attack and while and while they send all their plant all their petals to that planet you know I'm gonna sneak around to this other one you know while they're exposed it's just are there a really radical or is it just like you play until you lose no there yeah so this game has levels proper and it like even has a little story that goes along with it that basically you're you're like this peaceful little culture and all of a sudden there's some kind of like sickness spreading across making like evil petals I guess evil little petals but it's all just like abstract images and mellow music it's really cool you can zoom out really really far so when there's like 500 of them it just looks it looks crazy like this wild flea circus what are their badass games you've been playing um man I also got to check out for the first time this weekend a few games one being explosion man and also world world at war zombie mode the zombie mode in world at war actually talk about those two finally beat explosion man today ah yeah did you get your avatar uh reward I did although I won't be using any of them when you get a dashboard theme reward yeah among other things yeah very good very good yeah but that again it's fun we we played the multiplayer multiplayer it's cool because it's different levels the levels aren't you don't just play through the single player yeah I mean they have to be different levels because you're using like the double jump thing to blow up together yeah yeah I mean I think we talked about that a little bit it back when I reviewed it yeah I mean we've we've covered explosion man ground I mean you guys guys are feel free to hit it up I just I mean I feel like that game makes such a great first impression and then it's so relentlessly charming but that first impression and it being charming or what got me through the very last section of the game because there are parts where it just feels so arbitrarily difficult and and not in a oh well this is still a puzzle sort of way it just feels like oh well I'm waiting for things to fall in exactly the right way in in a luck manner for me to get past this right although you can always take the way of the coward and just skip the level and it gets like that I mean I don't even know if you get credit for beating the game if you do that oh I don't know I didn't know I mean I never did it if you I don't care I mean I didn't take the way of character that was reviewing it but I don't know you know it wouldn't be an issue of mine like for as far as like the achievement or whatever but you know it's still a great fantastic little game I still think it's one of the better XBLA games out there yeah it's all I mean it's super fun the personality is it's doing so much without even a character that really even speaks and stuff you know just takes like that way that pics are so good at having characters mannerisms be so telling rather than words I mean he does speak yeah but I'm saying he's like he hardly he hardly speaks but even him just babbling he doesn't communicate says so much about his character that like more than like him giving a diet driver with him just going you know and it's it's and it's that combined with what he's usually doing you know his characters avatar when he's running around there's always doing something absurd mm-hmm he does a bunch different like run animations I noticed yeah it's more than one like he runs like a monkey and he runs like an like he's doing the airplane yeah sometimes it seems like he runs as if his uh his arms have no bones in them and like he's like running so fast or like flapping behind him or something yeah um what do you think of that zombie mode I you know I do zombie I mean it was fun my friends were all stoked on it and they had never played left for dead I was like dude this is like left for dead chopped and screwed like well you know it's kind of a different feel it's like left for dead with only the hold out stuff yeah and I mean it never ends yeah and this one's also made to just be like super arcade like it was yeah it was fun for a little while but I don't know there's there's better multiplayer zombie games out there for dead I mean it's there is a certain appeal to it but I don't feel like the level design is particularly good and right I mean it you can tell originally it was just thrown on there is like a yeah here's this thing I mean the story is I haven't downloaded the I'm curious what the DLC ones would be like whether or not they've put time to actually make them kind of wake cooler I mean the story is that basically it was some people that were done with their chunk of the game that work concurrently like on their own time and other people throughout the course of its development would like contribute their own time to finish it yeah and it got added at the last second because of that what what what part of that first level though that like don't you like that makes you feel like the level design kind of stuff I just let me see if I can enunciate this I just feel like the it's too easy to bump into things it's it seems like you're fighting the level as opposed to using the level to your advantage and it just rewards sort of doing things in a very specific order I don't know I just right I mean yeah you definitely do have to have like a game plan to survive like to like try and go for a high school and when we were playing with with Tyler's friends who have like basically nailed down to a science it's basically get as much money as you can until you can try to go to the random weapon chest and get this one gun and if you don't get it then you're not gonna yeah and just keep going back try to get yeah I do think it feels a lot like that when you're especially when you're playing two-player now playing four-player and stuff it's a little bit it's a different yeah thing but we were playing split-screen so and but what what I really like about the game is some of the environmental stuff that includes like you know you can re-board the windows you can you know clear the path and you know open up okay now we can go up to the ceiling you know up to the roof area right but doing it always also always has a negative consequence of more entry points and yeah I mean it is a really cool mode I'd be curious to see what they did with some of those other ones I'm sure there's like multi-floor barns or something I don't know I mean I had fun playing yeah I just but I mean it's it it's weird because when I played it with them now my feeling is I want them to realize how good left for dead is and just play like why is like that's so weird like don't play this game well you got like three weeks to get them into left for dead before bed two comes in I know that's what I'm gonna try to do to I think to some people they love it because they already are like super into world at war that's true for them it's like they're playing world at war and a party with their buddies and they're like yeah let's just play some zombie mode and exactly and and really these guys I can guarantee you they're all going to get modern warfare too and then it's got like spec ops mode and who knows what else secrets are going to come out between here and they're very adamant though that there will not be a Nazi terrorist mode right yeah sure more fair to for sure there will be no zombies in modern warfare to adopt infinity ward any once anything to do with that with the zombie game what else you what else what else what else what else is that or anything what else what else uh what else uh just some more um borderlands I played some more games started multiplayer I came across a new wrinkle in borderlands with my character class wrinkle yeah like a like a weird issue with my character like what character class I'm using the siren uh and eventually she gets to this point where she sort of like emanating elemental damage like if you get hit like she'll spark off elemental damage yeah yeah and occasionally it seems like it just erupts off of you for no reason and for some reason this is happening and it's blowing up barrels next to me so me getting hit in that elemental damage coming off of it is actually fucking me over like I'll get rocketed across an arena because my my ability blew up a barrel and and did that the same thing happens when I come out of my face walk like I need to be careful because well that would make sense because it's a giant explosion yeah man I haven't even seen this yeah like apparently the pc one has some problems with people connecting to each other and really experienced I also played an early press build though I hear that the main problem is game spy it's what I've heard too I know people were like I know what game spy isn't commenting on this because the game is game spy technology man if game spy technology money meant that game spy the website got that I would never worry about my job because game spy technology does super well but I'm done we share we share a comp we share a logo and that's it right like man I did several write-ups on borderline glitches this week and last week but not the pc one I've done right I mean the three one that's pretty interesting and then there was also the piece three one had the problems with being to join people on your friends list and uh and I guess there's a glitch where it'll delete your game if someone joins your game or something yeah the problem with multi-size from reviews is like you pick one that's going to be your main one and then you usually only play like an hour or so of the other ones to make sure they're the same like you know even on the pc one the interface things are obviously designed to its consoles but they're not like an obstruction enough to me that I felt it warranted a different score or anything and I mean borderlands is a long fucking game right like just for one place right if I had to I mean if I had to play through one like and if I expected every freelancer to play through every platform of every game and we'd be paying them like absurd prices for reviews so yeah you had to start out way earlier then not just that I mean they don't have that I mean in you know in the schema thing even as a salaried employee they don't have the budget to pay me to put that much time into any one game you know or else we would only cover like nothing like we would say I mean the only solution to do like reviews of every platform is to have different people review each one and unfortunately that doesn't service well I mean and if you're going to review all of them then invariably you would want to make comparisons as to what's what yeah I mean that's the thing is that uh you know but that Quinn IGN was focused on having all these people at different teams they could do that but I mean you know or like when Ziff Davis owned a PC magazine and like had a website it was easy for them to have a PC review you know but that's just that's just not the reality of how things work these days mm-hmm I don't know but uh but man about borderlands so guys you know man I um I'm like level 10 do you guys have any low level characters y'all could y'all want to game with me you know but I could make one and get them up to least man we need two hours we need to do this or I mean you could also have one of us play with you and drag you through Arthur needs I don't want to drag well man I like to take time yeah we only have one copy in the house oh like you have the Xbox version of the PC the X the Xbox the Xbox Xbox yeah Arthur Arthur does not have his own just yet so we could only play one of us with you at any given time at the moment I mean I could buy it I can do that today who hasn't talked about something they played everyone everyone got theirs because I got I got one more but I was just gonna man I'm trying to think if there's anything else like I know that I wanted to try to play the Castlevania revival on Wii where but I didn't get a chance I mean I played uh I played a little bit wretched clank how is that future cracking time I mean I've only played for like an hour and a half so you know I'm not ready to make like a judgment on it but I've really I mean Ratchet Clank Future is like one of my favorite games like I loved it a lot um you know uh how does this compare so far so far it hasn't quite grabbed me I don't know why uh you're not alone in that I just I just not quite as grabbed by the storyline immediately because it's it's like all these different storylines I think they're introducing that hopefully will come together at some point kind of I feel I feel bad saying this but Ratchet and Clank the new Ratchet and Clank seems like this year's resistance too um resistance too I didn't mind it all though it did well critically but fans didn't seem to latch on to it um like there are a lot of reviews sort of said we're not really sure how we feel about the direction this went yeah you know like I've I was telling Anthony about this earlier like I've always had a hard time catching you know like figuring out why I need to latch on to the Ratchet and Crank Clank like it's just never been and I've never played one but they've never been a great feeling they've got some really great from afar platforming to them that does some really interesting things with the gadgets you have and it really does almost have at least in the first future almost some like Prince of Persia-esque moments where you feel like a badass when you like do a series of things all in one shot you know like between like swinging on ropes and just like you got through an obstacle course really cool way this one so far doesn't have as much as that has a lot more shooting which I think I've seen it's kind of like a like I think that's what the guy that Joe Rebecca who reviewed it for us said you know it's much more shooting focused in combat rather than than the platforming stuff what did Joe give it? Joe gave it a 4.5 Joe still really really really liked it I really want to see you know the storyline come out more because it does I mean that's one thing that I've always really loved about that like the first one that I played future was that the characters are just like so good and the dialogues usually really witty and it just kind of almost feels like the that first one felt a lot like watching a really long Pixar movie in a way because they had so much quirky characters and dialogue with them I mean even the enemies are like these absurdities that could be made into like a you know an animated movie so I'm hoping that it delivers I'll talk about it more next time around because I just don't feel comfortable with what the time I've spent with it at this point that's fair um I know that I just played more Forza which continues to be super good I haven't come across my my racing game nemesis yet though like there's this one track that's in racing games that is always the giant biggest kick in my balls like I don't know if you played Gran Turies Mill a lot or not I don't play racing games really it's Laguna Seca which is a I think the thing it's most known for is the very last turn before you go into the finish line has this giant sand pit and it's like a 90 degree turn so it's super easy to over shoot the turn go into the sand and lose all of your momentum but uh I'm wondering when I'm going to come across that track I think it's in it but I'm not sure but Forza 3 is super good all right I guess uh we will take what will be for you a break but for us it's the end of us recording for this episode um so listen to the next segment if you are so inclined you know and if you feel compelled to donate you should do that um you know the money stays with your local charity or not your local charity but your local children's miracle network hospital so you put in your zip code and it stays with you so it isn't like you're gonna go benefit Houston you know because who the fuck wants to benefit Texas and watch it all right the the Houston Children's Hospital doesn't seem like it particularly needs it well I'm well I mean to be very I mean I'm sure that they still need you know they still need money because they provide long-tearing and well they still provide a ton of unpaid health care yeah that everyone could use money for but it would be nice to see more hospitals all yeah yeah it would be good what you can hear us talk about if you keep listening so there's some interesting stuff it's not all downers we hope that you guys get something out of it we hope that you appreciate it we we wouldn't have done it if we thought that there wasn't a sort of place for it for you guys to know to hear about it so sad penis like how long have have you known that grants had cancer he was diagnosed on and may 24th of this year and with pH positive ALL which is Philadelphia chromosome positive and leukemia how did you find out that grant had cancer and there's kind of a fluke he on a Wednesday I noticed that his stomach was kind of hard something was up just instinct and so we took him to the emergency room and they drew his blood and he said it's not coming back normal and I was kind of almost arrogant and said what is it cancer and he looked at me said it could be leukemia I just hit the floor there was just no way and my father-in-law is actually a pathologist and he came up and reviewed the slide and broke down he knew immediately you know what is it like finding out you know from a doctor that you know your your three-year-old son could very well die yeah it uh it's it's overwhelming say what you will but the time that we feel why we're only never in a million years do you think it is your kid that kid get have cancer any kind of cancer you have so much appreciation for the fact that your kid is healthy and you think there's no way thank god it's not us then your doctors tell you hey he's got a rare form of leukemia and it's not the one that's the curable easy kind he's got this funky Philadelphia chromosome and he's got about a 20% chance of surviving it's awful we're driving down the down the street the other day and he saw a family walking their dog and he said when will I walk again never in a million years what I thought my kid would end up with cancer it could be possible and here we are and so if you have a moment to donate the dollar whatever I mean time money blood anything please take the time to do it because you just never know what's going to be your kid and they're going to need it when the cloud in the sky starts to pour in your life it's just a story breathing well don't tell yourself you can't let on someone else because we hold me saving we are only saving some time I keep trying to keep a positive attitude about the whole situation and this sounds bizarre but if it doesn't turn out well I um so if it doesn't turn out well there's a reason for it I don't know what the reason is it's not my place to know what the reason is but I know he's changed lives of others because of it okay so we're here in the Texas Children's Hospital in the Cancer Treatment Center in the infusion area where people have chemotherapy treatments done and we are here with Tim and his family Tim who you're recovering is that what it is yeah maintenance okay and we're going to talk to Tim a little bit about his experience with his hospital and what it was like going through and finding out having cancer at such a young age so when did you first find out to you had cancer it was about last year November 7th what did the initial diagnosis like how did that affect the family and it was shocking for at first and then we kind of just accepted it and we looked at it like we were gonna beat it had anyone in your family had previous history with cancer or was it just out of left field uh my grandfather had cancer he had bone cancer and Tim how old are you I'm 13 so you so you were diagnosed and you were 12 yes was there ever a point when you're that young was there ever a point that you've kind of felt a sense of I could die yeah there's always a sense of that but you just gotta gotta look at it with a positive attitude so was there anybody at your hospital in particular that kind of helped you get going and and stay with it more so than others yeah there's one doctor that that I think of when you say that um his name is dr. Thompson he really looked at it and encouraged me to keep going and just like kept joking with me and stuff and made it made it kind of fun for me to like made it made me realize that it wasn't over and that I could get through this so yes so yeah and there's this nurse that I had one of her I was admitted she was a from baytown where I live and she had cancer like how same age yeah when I was yeah so so Melinda what is it like finding out that the year son a 12 year old has has cancer that could be terminal well I'll agree with Timothy it was very shocking at first there's a lot of fear but we are Christians and it it kind of tested our faith and God has proved good throughout this whole situation uh how did you how did you find out how did the diagnosis come about well it started right before hurricane Ike hit our town and we thought he had asthma our family doctor because there was difficulty breathing so she put him on some asthma medicine then we had the storm we came back about two weeks after the storm and during that time he was having pains different parts of his body his arm was locked in a bent position he couldn't straighten it he couldn't close it up he had would have pains in in a foot today and in a leg tomorrow and one morning he woke up with his his face swollen on one side and his tongue was numb and so the doctor the family doctor finally sent us here and at first she thought she sent us to the rheumatology department Texas Children's Hospital and they um did some tests and determined that we needed to see the oncologists what kind of cancer was Tim diagnosed with it's called T cell lymphoblastic lymphoma and it's it's similar to leukemia in that it travels through the bloodstream and deposits tumors all over the body and he had tumors all over different bones in his body on his his ribs and his face and his spine both legs and so that's why he was getting the different pain and in the different places he had a large mass on his elbow which locked his arm so when Tim was first diagnosed what did the doctor tell you was the outlook good for Tim or was they told us the prognosis for for this particular cancer in children is good and what did they say probably 90 to 95 percent cure rate of course you don't want to be in that five percent have you uh found that you know your hospital the environment and stuff has has been equally important to the recovery process as much as they offer chemo yeah but i mean the environment and everything here seems so much more geared to you know absolutely i think i feel like we're at the best place in the world for this particular illness and they have just been i have full confidence in all of the staff from the people at the shared desk to the nurses to the doctors and if i have a question about anything i can call and they return my call you know within an hour or two if i have to leave a message they have been there no matter what um i'm just curious how it affects the family dynamic of learning that your child has cancer especially or you know going to dad you know taking the stereotypical of i'm the man of the house and then all of a sudden that's your child has cancer and there's nothing you can do you have to sort of just be there for them like i don't you know what that experience would even be like after the initial diagnosis we were just as we devastated a lot of tears um when the doctors came in and talked to Timothy and explained they're very good here to be upfront with the children i appreciate that they don't hold anything back and so when they explained to him you've got cancer um they got to the question time and they asked him do you have any questions and his first question that he asked uh he says am i going to die and the doctor said well Timothy everybody's going to die and we're all going to die from something but we're not going to talk about death we're going to talk about life and living and you're going to beat this thing and his second question was am i going to lose my hair and that was probably this biggest fear and the doctor just looked with the big smoths that start shaving and uh you know after several weeks that happened but um you're really on a roller coaster because you don't know what to expect and the doctors are very good to explain but also in the dynamic one of the biggest blessings is people here and other people who learned of his situation who have had children that have walked this walk would call us and and just really help us in tremendous way so it made the journey easier i was sharing with the lady just a few moments ago um her little son has just been diagnosed first day here in the clinic and she says you all are the first people that i have even talked to about this and um we were able to just share with her you know you learn you're not alone coming here we had no idea how many children have cancer um in our community even at his school you know nobody knew of it there was one child who had cancer when he was was born with cancer so in their whole school and uh so when Timothy was diagnosed it's like the whole community just came together and ministered to us in ways that i can't even explain i mean people would call there was a guy john hunt uh a marathon runner said look uh i've heard about your son there's people in the community they're concerned we wanted what can we do to help we want to be a part of a marathon can we do fundraisers we don't want you to do anything about it we just want to do this for your family and and uh this group of people got together and they sponsored a team in the Houston marathon last year it was uh for Tim the number four and Tim and it was called run for the roses and they had a bunch of people with shirts and all that ran and then uh there's been people in the community they've come out and done uh barbecue briskets and things like that and really helped raise um the substantial amount of money just to help with some of the cost then of course our church has been phenomenal and um and just looking out Tim you know he's grown up in the church i'm a pastor and uh so it has had a special um effect on our church because they've seen him uh from a baby who's born Texan born in the church we've been at the same church for 16 years and so uh it's like he's their kid too and um and then i'm kind of curious too Tim like uh you know school was brought up a little bit like how did that change your dynamic with your friends like did you feel like you didn't want to tell them you know i'm like curious like was it something you really want to talk about it i guess i kind of told him i don't remember exactly how i told him but everyone kind of found out and the cool thing is they were with me with like they were with me like pretty much the whole way and they were just like they would call me and just like text me and just to see how everything's going and it uh really helped because it made me feel like they still they didn't forget about me and like it really meant something they liked to visit in the hospital they liked to visit him in the hospital when he was on morphine and and he had no clue what he was doing and they would sit there and just laugh and his sister took pictures videos so that so that she could prove about that but they also um shaved their heads his friends at school and youth group uh so many of them shaved their head so that he wouldn't be the only ball went around that actually segues nicely into this next question which is actually for Sarah after your brother's illness uh how do you feel do you feel like that's changed your relationship with your brother i mean um yeah sometimes it's difficult for us to get along just you know sometimes the medicine messes with his emotions and stuff and so it'll be hard but in all i think it's really brought us closer and we talk about a lot more stuff now we really care about each other so it's been nice this is actually a question for Melinda it's um Melinda do you find that like uh you know since it's uh cancer treatment that you look at you know things like birthdays you know things like special occasions you guys get to spend it with each other more precious yes we've learned to appreciate the good days and and uh pray to make it through the difficult days uh but yes we he turned 13 in january and so of course he couldn't be in large crowds because he was right in the the midst of severe and harsh chemotherapy but we invited his two best friends to come over and spend the night and they played all night course he had just had a treatment and a spinal tap that morning it was on a friday night we had the party and so he he hung in there as best he could yeah and he would soar the next day because they had a lot of fun but his friends at school well that all of the school went together and um collected money and bought him an xbox 360 so that he could um then we and a bunch of games so that we could get him with the um hook him up with the live xbox live and he with his headset and so even on those days when he couldn't go to school when the kids would come home from school in the afternoon all of his buddies would go on and they'd all log on and play the same game and talk to each other and it really kept him connected i was gonna say yeah i mean you would think that you know having uh the things that he has going on it would make it really hard to keep up friendships and maintain feeling like a normal kid i mean so that helped yeah so did you has it affected like your like your like your education did you have to like drop out from school or were you able to go to school normally Tim um no like i had to drop out and i was home school for the rest of the year and it kind i was like way behind so it took me a little longer to finish all the work but we had one of my friend's parents who who was like a stay-at-home mom she came home and she kind of helped me with my schoolwork and stuff so i didn't i didn't stay like too far behind like i learned the same stuff my friends did and so i wasn't behind when i because i'm back at school this year so i'm kind of caught up with everything this year okay so in keeping with that a little bit how did you how did you try to pass the time how did you distract yourself during treatment and then recovery like at home or yeah i mean what did you like to do at home what did you do here i mean obviously there's a lot of stuff to do at this hospital depending on the day some days i was like really tired and i just want to sleep some days i would just like where i was on print zone i just wanted to eat and then i mean it just depended on the day whether what kind of mood i was in i mean it kind of affected me because i didn't want to i didn't have enough energy to do all the outside stuff that i used to so i had to kind of stay inside so yeah and uh Texas children they uh gave me a dvd player to bring like on the long days i'm up here like whenever i have spinal taps done and stuff like that um so this is sort of a broader question um there are a lot there are going to be a lot of people listening to this and um as someone who are listening where to think to themselves that this isn't their problem that they this is an effect on what would you say to that i mean any of you guys can answer i mean you know it's like you know for people that i mean i'm sure you guys never thought that it would affect someone you knew i mean i'm sure you all heard about it you know people getting cancer but it really can happen to anyone like we we were just living basically a normal life and it just hit us and it can it can happen to anyone so like you can't just think that it's not your problem because you never know if it could happen to you or your friend or because i mean cancer is a big thing there's a lot more people that have it than what you think so do you guys think that uh children's hospitals like this you know like are really important in the sense that you know cancer treatment is not cheap i mean i mean i can't even imagine a family these days you know especially in these times you know trying to deal with the fact that you know chemotherapy can cost tens of thousands of dollars you know trying to hundreds of thousands trying to save their child you know i mean but you can't you know can't ask a parent to put a price on their kid i mean that's right i mean do you guys how how is this was you know your hospital been important you know helping you guys deal with with that one of the first things they do is really sit down in the financial area and offer support uh the leukemia lymphoma society grants and things like that that you can apply for uh we've learned and then like i shared people who just out of nowhere have come for just because they heard of his situation our newspaper has featured him uh wow multiple times four or five times that they have stayed up with his story um we use the care pages which is a great tool they have here at texas children's and so his entire story of his cancer from day one along with pictures of the him being in the hospital when he was diagnosed all the way up to the present uh is on the care page uh you know for people to see so when they see that um people just come out of the woodwork and say we want to help and apart from that um we're the typical family that gets lots of letters from creditors and we pay what we can and and we pray a lot and we realize you know this bill is going to be something that'll be there for a while and we'll just chip it away but um there's no amount of money uh when you're looking at your child's uh welfare you do what you have to do so i mean was there ever a moment where you know like like the hospital made it seem like the like what was their first priority when they you know told you about and they sat you down was it Tim or was it you know that you were going to be able to afford this money it's always Tim they didn't even bring up money for a long time and even when we do have an out large outstanding balance they are quick to say if you know if you cannot handle this or if this bill is over two hundred dollars and you want to call and schedule payments they give us a number to call and they are so agreeable to work with whatever we need them to work with they're not high pressure so Tim this is a question for you or do we're just curious what type of games do you like to play and you know how did those kind of help you deal with your treatment um well i pretty much play any game from sports to uh action to shooting to whatever i have pretty much all of them and okay what do you want to do when you you know get older and start looking into doing a career oh i have no idea about that that's a good answer for someone you're glad you say that um i'm going to go to a&m where takes you so well well you have high aspirations why don't you tell me about how a&m has really reached out to you yeah um well what do i start with well man quick i'll be right yeah you can Tim is uh he is a an Aggie convert from uh from UT uh he got to go to uh a game and he came back and all of a sudden and he he's Aggie and he's so much so that his bedroom is uh maroon and i mean but it's it's everything is Aggie anyway word got out to uh a&m about when he was here one of his uh carrying doctors at care for him actually gave him his Aggie ring which is the most sacred and prized possession and gave it to Timothy to wear through the weekend and i mean he had that ring on and it was just met so much and uh everybody teased him because while he was in the hospital he always had Aggie pajamas Aggie shirt Aggie so they they he got a reputation well that went to somehow to the university he started getting contacts from uh members of the 12 man kickoff team he has from the 1980s and they have just about all contacted him been to the house one day he was in the hospital he had to have a blood transfusion he was very sick and it just so happened that they wanted to come and meet him so they really got to see him in true fashion they you could see these big old guys and they were just broken hearted seeing him uh he was wanting so much to just visit with him but he was so sick he could hardly talk and get into blood transfusion but they just hung tough and encouraged him and then Jackie Sherrill the former coach from uh uh A&M came to our house and uh he and another uh gentleman who was on the 12 man kickoff team just came to our house uh they were going to the bowl game uh to the on the way the sugar bowl and visited with us for 45 minutes to an hour just sat there and talked with him gave him a football that was signed by all the team members and uh took pictures so it's been pretty neat and he has gotten letters from uh president bush both uh hw and uh so thanks um so yeah this one's for mom um you know you guys mentioned that you saw a family today getting the diagnosis uh you know for the first time you know what sort of advice could you give to a family sort of going through that right right off that's what we were doing just it just previously to coming back here uh and they had just gotten out of the hospital on wednesday having gotten their diagnosis and this is their first clinic visit and well the the best advice somebody gave us as far as helping with the medicines is the prednisone um i gave her some tips about the nasty tasting prednisone and how to make it taste better so some more like practical things yes things that people had told to me but and yeah that was the next thing i was going to say hope um you know there is hope and there will be rough days and as a mother you know there are days that i just want to cry and and just you know why does my son have to go through all this but then there are other days that you know i i see hope and how do you keep it together as far as like you know balancing you know being realistic with tim but also you know like keeping it together not you know letting tim see that you know it's affecting you as much as it is i mean obviously you know you got to stay strong for him but i can only imagine you know my mom i know she she'd have a hard time not crying you know every right and uh i pray a lot that that gets me through most of it and my husband's very strong too so i i rely on him to get us through a lot of it i'm more emotional he's more rational and that's just the way it is if you you know this can go to either you know if but if you guys had to think about why people should consider donating to their hospital i mean not obviously not everyone has access to a hospital that is quite as wonderful as this but you know you know why why do you guys think it's important that people you know donate to their local hospital to help children you know with cancer besides the obvious you know helping children with cancer but a lot of people think about it but won't do it you know i think one of the things that has amazed us is just the love and it really is these um nurses and doctors when we we've never been here that we felt oh this is a job they this is you know they really love these kids they pour their lives they do activities with them and so when he comes to the clinic they know him it doesn't matter whether they're it's the person sitting out at the desk who's taking the appointments oh hi Timothy you know they just they know who you are know things about you sunshine kids it's a great organization that has been a blessing he's gone to chicago with a group of cancer kids to um uh see the rockets play and got to meet all of the rockets he said he was getting an autograph and he saw these knees in front of him and what happened Tim why don't you tell him uh i looked up and it was yummy and he stood like way taller than me he's uh you've been on on a lot of trips uh he's met the astros uh been in their locker room and then he also after he was diagnosed his um his diagnosis the doctors said was was different than normal it didn't present itself in the normal way that this cancer does it they had a hard time really nailing what he had and so they asked timothy would you be willing to undergo some research um this isn't going to help you in your treatment but later on it may help another child and i was proud as a father because he immediately said if i can help someone else i'll do it and and so he um he came and went through some extra stuff um uh some extra blood work and things like that so that that they could do research on him to help some so i was glad that as a 12 13 year old boy that he was thinking you know still of of others so i mean would you guys i mean how do you think that you know even after timothy fully recovers and stuff how do you think that this will shape your life in the future i mean do you think it'll be something that you guys will always be involved with i mean absolutely i think for all of us um we were not aware of like the texas children's fund run uh we will participate we will look to sponsor other children uh be involved in just like encouraging today and certainly um long-term relay for life type of events that before you you saw about it you heard about it but it takes on a different dynamic when when you're you're touched personally by it so you uh definitely much more awareness and he has another sister that um is in college at wash talk baptist university and they're joined at the hip so she had just gone off to college her first year when he got diagnosed and um i think for the sit you know the the siblings you know they they have really uh become much more aware of cancer and uh you know the effects of it so uh i think for all of them they too will be more involved okay so uh going back to town um one you know we are a video game podcast so one thing i was kind of curious you mentioned on the way up here that you're playing your psp what are you what were you playing on the way up here just just kind of curious what kind of games really baseball baseball yes and i'll be cool cool all right and um do you do you have any like heroes and you know uh you know i don't know if the Aggies or you know some people heroes yeah like even like a hero that's like maybe that you think you could point to someone outside the obvious people of your family that helped you know kind of get you through your cancer um i think like everyone in my family could be my hero for sticking with me and even like some friends and even some of the doctors who were just encouraging me through like the whole way through this uh yeah i got some favorite baseball players and stuff we're good you know let's give ten the last four ten will you a little more chance they have a pretty big audience of gamers they're listening you know right now you're gonna have the chance to talk to all of them right now i'm telling them what they should give just even if it's just one sense but everything why why is someone who just completely disconnected from you why should they give to their local children's hospital yeah um because it helps just in pretty much every way like this is the way this hospital was put together it's really helped me i mean everyone it's they care about you and the research that's another reason why she gave because like there needs people need to help find a cure for cancer because it's a lot more of a popular disease like more people get it than what most people think and so just to improve the hospital and like make it more child-friendly would help yeah thank you so dana what what exactly is uh the child life like what exactly does it mean to work in child life in a hospital well basically we have a degree in child development so we specialize in how children develop normally and on top of that we also kind of concentrate on how hospitalization and illness can impact that development so our goal in the hospital setting is to keep the children developing as normally as as possible despite what they're going through and so we do that through preparations explaining their diagnosis to them medical play just familiarizing them with medical equipment and just helping them with coping and just dealing with the hospital in general um how do you help children deal with the thought you know that something could be terminal i mean you know there's obviously it's much easier to deal with a parent who maybe has a better understanding with that but how is it you know how do you work that same sort of mindset with children well with children i think we we definitely focus more on a cure and there are lots of medicines there to make this better um i know we we also focus and let them know that they may hear of a lot of adults that have children i mean that have cancer but um there are also children that get cancer too the good thing about the children that have cancer is there are a lot of treatments out there whereas adults don't always have as many treatment options but for children there are a lot of options so we try to focus on you know the the many options there are there for children and that you know and we try to take it day by day and just help them with any of their fears and questions and concerns and just explaining things to them and we encourage the parents to be very open with them as well and okay so why don't you talk to us about the idea of medical play um for medical play um when children come to us a lot of times they're not very familiar with a lot of the things that are being done to them so even simple things like a blood pressure cup could be very scary for a child who's never been in this type of environment so just showing them the equipment letting them touch it manipulate it you know it just becomes less threatening so that way whenever things are done to them it's not as scary and we also use dolls and so that the child can perform the procedure on the doll or the child can practice taking the doll's blood pressure and so that it's not as scary for them uh what during your day what what's the kind of thing that that tends to give kids the most anxiety as far as their treatment like what is what is the sort of thing that you have to work the hardest to help them through um i think for me a lot of my um patients get uh lumbar punctures or spinal taps and so and so that's a big one and for here in the clinic they're not um they're given sedation medications but they're not totally asleep so that is very anxiety provoking for them and so i spend a lot of time with those patients just preparing them for that procedure explaining to them exactly what's going to happen as well as um just providing normalization just things to do to keep their mind off of what's going to happen because oftentimes um they have to wait you know for a few hours while they're getting ready for the procedure so they have all that time to think about it and so a lot of times i've spent just um just providing movies games things like that are so important in this setting just to help make this environment more normal and it keeps their mind off of what's about to happen so that they don't get as anxious so you know like what your job involves in a lot of ways you know the way it sounds to me is kind of like i mean i would never say that you're being their mom but you know in a lot of ways you do the same things that you know my mom did you know do their best at trying to make sure that i grew up okay and developed right and you know you're there to help facilitate that as well you know uh do you find that that makes you know your job especially hard you know when you bond with these children become on a first name basis and you know i mean obviously not everyone is going to recover right it definitely it definitely does get hard and it's and especially in the outpatient clinic like for me in the population that i follow they they come here weekly and so you really get to know them well the whole family oftentimes the siblings come as well and so you really get to know them very well over the course of their treatment and and it is it can be very difficult yeah and what would you say is then is like the the hardest part about you know doing your job i think for me the hardest part is that there's not enough of me i mean for for me that's the hardest part is is that um we have so many patients here and i know that i can't see all of them and so i just worry like i hope you know they're all coping well or i just you know i worry that that they're not all getting the services that they would need or that would benefit them what do you think then in the opposite side of that what do you think is uh the best part you know about having your job oh the best part is um you you truly get to see um your impact and the difference that you're making like you know from a child coming in that they come in and they're crying and they're so nervous and scared and then when you just sit down and explain to them what's going to happen or just spend a little time with them you can just see your difference and their anxiety decreasing and then getting through a procedure or you know you can just truly see your difference right away and so i think that's the best part um so we took a tour of the hospital earlier and we were told that you know we sort of it was brought to our minds that the texas children's hospital here in houston is really sort of state of the art and has a lot of facilities for children and um but you mentioned you know you wish there was more child life specialists here and it seems like this is this uh this particular location is sort of the exception to the role where they have a bunch of uh a specialist you know do you find that other hospitals don't have enough specialists as well or oh definitely definitely we are and you know we are not a service that makes money for the hospital and so truly our our contribution is definitely patient satisfaction and so definitely there are definitely a lot of programs out there that could use a lot more child life specialist for sure is um is your involvement with the patients here is it all in the hospital or do you ever you know go to their homes you know for home visits or anything like that or we do have a um there is uh one another child life specialist in the clinic she has a program where she sees um patients that are at the end of life or that are on hospice care so she definitely has a lot of experience with that i um personally do not because the patients that i follow they're the diagnosis is um the prognosis is very good so there's not as big a need but for her she definitely does and it is a wonderful program and it definitely impacts the families and they help um you know she goes and makes visits she visits them like every other week and she just and she works on building a legacy so that that child will have something to leave behind so whether it be if they're into skateboarding recently one of her projects was helping a child design a skateboard so um you know just depending on what that child is interested in she really works with them to help them create a legacy or something you know like i said to leave behind for the family and and also while she's making those visits she helps you know addresses their fears they're concerned she also continues after the death to see the sibling and that sort of thing to help to help the family adjust i feel like a lot of people you know they whether it's that they see commercial about children suffering from whatever disease you know or they see things online you know they see these things and they think you know that's that's not that's a terrible thing but they don't really feel you know compelled to do it like i mean i'm sure you must see families all the time who think you know like who repeat the words you know i never thought that this was going to be us you know i mean do you think that what would you say to people you know who who kind of just continue to go on and never think about actually you know ways that they could help i mean because they just think you know really it's like it's it's this thing that affects a bunch of other people it's a small thing i mean obviously it's not it affects a lot of people pretty drastically i would just encourage people to to donate um even if it's not monetary even if it's their time if they could volunteer at a facility or even put together craft kits or donate games puzzles just anything like that would help would make a difference it doesn't have to be money but there's other ways to give as well and so i would just encourage anyone if they had the opportunity to spend time at a children's hospital they could see the the difference they would make and the impact they would make hello and welcome to the uh to the uh second part of the rebel fm sombre edition um that's uh that's a little grim thanks to that no i mean i we're so we uh we're in texas right now at the texas children's cancer center um as part of the texas children hospital which is a pretty amazing facility i mean uh i don't have a lot of experience visiting hospitals but this one's pretty outstanding from what i've seen i mean everything's even right now where we're sitting we're sitting in the infusion center where there's literally uh children getting chemotherapy around us you know doing things like watching dvd's or running one we saw earlier was writing a tricycle tricycle her her her ivy behind her yeah while her mother ran with the ivy behind her that was pretty adorable um but yeah i guess you know let's just talk about kind of what it's like seeing whoa i think first we should uh we should introduce our our host and benefactor for this little excursion right so uh with us is uh he works for god why children's miracle network obviously i've said the name a billion times today but uh his uh we call him doc so doc is joining us and you may also know him from the sarcastic gamer podcast yeah which is that what's a sarcastic gamer dot com so we'll we'll name drop it so uh um so yeah so let's you know who wants to kind of kick it off with i mean i know we were all kind of feeling weird about the whole trip to begin with just because you know i mean you don't know what to expect like when someone says hey let's go talk to some kids with cancer yeah we all make crash jokes and we're we're all we're all kind of recruited a lot of times but yeah it's funny there hasn't been a real opportunity to make a fart joke yeah entire time we've been here so far just like seeing all this is like i don't know maybe humbling in a way sobering sobering yeah i mean i guess i generally don't think about the fact that you know i'm not i never you know when i was when i was like like that kid that was 12 years old i was more concerned with uh doing dirt dirt bike jumps dirt bike jumps then you know whether or not i could have cancer that could relapse and i could die when i was 15 or something like that you know it's just crazy meeting these parents and children where they they think to themselves like you know well they try not to but they think you know maybe their kid won't be around um i mean there is that but i think the thing that's that's most striking about the time we spend here is that there's not i mean for what this place is which is a hospital to treat children with cancer which is a rough topic obviously to bring up and it's a difficult thing but there's not there's not really any negativity or there's not a lot of openly demonstrated fear there's a lot of positivity a lot of hope right that uh that sort of ubiquitous around here and i mean just about every single hallway that we went down in this building had something that made us go like oh wow like that's cool like they're genuinely um very exciting interesting things going on it's like not a downer sort of hospital at all like you might be picturing in your head like there's all these really really cool things like we went um to that one floor and saw there's a a DJ booth setup where they do um like radio drives and stuff called radio lollipop yeah doc do you want to do you want to sort of explain what radio lollipop is radio lollipop say uh um kind of like a radio station that's set up in a closed circuit inside the hospital and uh so a couple times a week they go live on radio lollipop and these kids get this broadcast into their rooms they can call into the show make requests just like over the regular radio station and the volunteers from radio lollipop go up into the rooms and take the show to them have them do a craft or something that goes along with what's going on with radio lollipop and then uh the kids can also come down if they're helping feeling well enough they can come down and be on the radio and it goes comes through comes out of their television so it's there's a certain channel you turn on uh that you get to see and listen to radio lollipop and right now it's only in three three uh three cities in the US which i didn't know till we took the tour yeah like one of the like the raddest things about the radio lollipop is that the door leading into the booth like there's a normal like man sized door and there's a Tyler door yeah it's like a it's like a slightly large cat door it's straight up out of like a Alice in Wonderland where there's like a mini door inside the door it was so i mean just like little things like that at every corner and stuff like uh the counters all the counters are child height they're really low you know there's every step of the way they've they've made everything with children in mind which is kind of what makes this facility an exception to the rule i mean you know all of us have been to plenty of hospitals and you know you can tell like here every step along the way has been taken to making you know this this place opened to children there's video games for them to play you know and each of the like intense and like the harder like the rooms for sorry i'm stumbling over my words because that's hard to talk about uh the rooms for children with that are gonna be here for a while you know i'll have like xbox 360s in them which is awesome but you know that this is not how it probably is around your area kids and you're you're probably being treated right next to you know parents and you know i mean obviously the reason we're doing this is because you know we'd like to encourage everyone to donate to turn children's miracle network to help out local hospitals i mean obviously financial donations to the children's miracle network would be great like donations of even like ten dollars a month or or what obviously whatever you can spare but ten dollars per month would be great um it's also been stressed repeatedly by by family and by employees here that even something so much is donating your time to to a local children's hospital or things like that can make a big difference and and i think something that's striking about this place is that this is a non-profit hospital that there's not everyone that we've talked to has has made it a point to stress that they felt like they were a priority instead of uh instead of the money that they could bring to the hospital like like how much treatment would cost or anything like that the money was was addressed quickly but it was always in a way of how can we help you how can we break this down right i mean it was never that your child may not receive the care i mean all the children's miracle network hospitals always make sure you receive the care and then how you get the payment comes as a as like a secondary thought you know um but the important thing is you know people that would donate right i mean even if you did donate like ten dollars a month i mean the reality is that that is that comes out to like a hundred twenty dollars which means that two crappy aims that you're going to end up buying and hating you didn't buy i mean that's and and more specifically the any money that someone donates to the children's miracle network particularly through this uh it remains local it goes to to the the children's miracle network hospital that's closest to you i mean do you have do how many hospitals are there's 180 children's miracle network hospitals we have hospitals in the United Kingdom Canada Australia and of course all over the United States and so when anytime you give to children's miracle network we don't own any hospitals we're an association of hospitals so um if you if you live in portland Oregon then your money staying to your portland children's hospital if you live in seattle it's going to go to seattle children's here in texas in houston we go to texas children so when you buy a balloon in a walmart or you or if you give to this to this effort here that that you guys are doing and thank you for doing it um you're you're basically reinvesting your donation not to these guys is not going to to rebel fm it's going directly to your local children's hospital to help kids like the ones that you're going to meet here in a few minutes that you guys got to talk to a few minutes ago now can i interview you guys for just one second to ask you a question sure what were you expecting today versus what you saw today um again i think that i i just expected something not not necessarily dire but a slightly more somber sort of environment because i mean it's a children's cancer hospital and you there's just this certain expectation that uh it's going to be hard for people and they're going to have a hard time dealing with it and and that's not at all what i found i mean i mean they are going to have a hard time dealing with it like you know i imagine that there will be a fair share of people that you know when they first hear about what we're doing with our show beyond the games we played part are going to be what feel like they need to turn it off you know and i would hope the only reason that people feel they need to turn off is because it's really hard to hear and not because they're just going to blow it off because i mean the reality is that you know we as gamers have proven before like that we are willing to donate to things that we care about like everyone that we think that donated to us to help us get our podcast going i mean child's play every year obviously millions of dollars to child's play as a group i mean that's that's just it right there right you know people often feel like they don't have some amount to donate but you can really donate a small amount obviously and then have it stack up to mean something that can change the life of people i mean the kid we met earlier you know he would like to write about games someday you know he'd like to kind of do the things that we're doing but you know without hospitals like this that can give parents like his that couldn't afford it otherwise care i mean like going going without two to Starbucks trips a month would be enough to really help um Tyler what did you expect when you before we came yeah well it was a trip for me because you know i've grown up here in Houston Texas and i've always you know i mean we have a huge medical center like the first thing when we were driving up here last night you know Anthony and Arthur were like wow i didn't realize when you said medical center it's like almost sort of a mini downtown but even though i knew that like i had no idea how um just how amazing this particular facility is and uh and how you know in my mind i was picturing sort of just a bunch of white walled hospitals and just sort of a sterile environment but it's not that at all i mean really every single corner is tailored to kids and and that's what makes it special and like you know that's what helps you know that that's what your donation dollars helps and like and like people like the child care specialist you know we were talking to Dana earlier you know um having funds to where you know these people can be of of you know a source of ease for the kids you know it's it's it's it's it does a tremendous help in their recovery yeah i mean just everything about this place is sort of focused around treating children like children like understanding their fears sort of helping them through it in in a very particular way that's catered to to them and and not just this sort of general dry sterile hospital kind of treatment that you expect like there's no breast sort of bedside manner it's all everyone everyone we've talked to every family we've talked to has said that everyone we encounter here knows knows our child's name even the receptionists that have seen them once or twice they all remember and the only time they don't remember is when the kid is getting better and they they have hair again i mean well it also blew me away too like the way the the the mother we were interviewing earlier it said you know she would get calls back you know she calls hospital you know they'll call back like in an hour or the same day i'm like i can think of like calling my doctor just to like find out about some mundane checkup and it's like i'm lucky if they give back to me in a week you know i mean it and you know one thing that came through everyone we've talked to you know is you know in general people always think you know i don't really want to donate i i probably do something else on the side because you know and it's not really gonna affect me but i mean just the amount of children that i've seen just anecdotally walking through the hall to have cancer like is kind of mind-blowing because you know we tend to think of cancer as an older person sort of thing um you know but obviously even donating money even if you never plan on having children or you know you don't think that this could really affect you obviously the research i mean it doesn't just help kids that are like here get treatment it helps kids in the future i mean because people are doing things like participating in experimental research you know things that could in in the future help cure cancer i mean like there were certain forms of leukemia that we learned about today that you know like 20 years ago we're like what what was the doc it used to be like 20% or 15% uh your your chance of survival uh with leukemia now there are some forms of leukemia they're carrying an 80% cure rate which is fantastic unless you're in the other 20% and then that's that's not good news right but the the reason that those things change and the reason the peg moves is because people get involved and it could be just somebody who's a gamer who's listening to their rebel FM right now going what the heck are these guys doing now and the light goes off and they decide that this for once this is the thing they're going to get involved with and do um that that helps them to move the peg ten bucks a month i mean you can you can do that easily and how about it and you'd be amazed how how fast the peg can change i mean we were talking to Melanie earlier and her her son Grant when her son was diagnosed at the age of two with a specific and more rare form of leukemia they the doctors told her that her son's prognosis was 10 or 20% chance of survival and apparently there was a a new a pretty much brand new treatment that they put him on and his odds of survival went up to about 80% um so yeah i don't i don't yeah she did yeah yeah yeah doc was was playing with grant because he was really interested in the microphone um i i mean you know i i i just i still feel like we we need to emphasize you know like i mean yeah this is a podcast that you don't you know you guys may have donated to to help us out we really appreciate that you know and it's not easy for us especially during these times to encourage people to you know give out money to these sort of things or to the fact that matter that we're that we're in a way forcing you to listen to something that's not what you would come to us expecting to get i mean it's not your standard game talks thing but you know we also feel that this is something that is important and you know worth looking at you know and uh you know everything can go back to games at any given time but i mean we'll be back to to dicks in a week but i mean i'll be back to dicks right after this but it's just it's just that you know i mean what we're seeing here is is it's it's just that right it's it's hard to get across in a podcast you know hopefully the interviews that we include on the show we'll kind of get across that but i mean you know i'm not gonna lie i almost cried when that melanin lady started crying when you almost made melanin cry yeah well um yeah uh but it was a rough question i mean you know i mean it is it is crazy right i mean talking to parents that had to consider you know Tyler just had a you know his first you know you have enough you know has like two days ago literally down the street one block and like all i'm thinking the entire time is like a mustister's kid and like whoa just that's what i'm saying i mean this doesn't even have to be your kid i mean it's just you know i mean if we really want to get technical with it what if what if you guys don't donate and save the life of somebody that's gonna invent the next call of duty that's all i'm saying he might he might make some game in the future that we all really like we that was well played sir so we might i'm serious though i mean there's systems in every room so it's like there's kids that are all three video games they love it you know it helps distract them i mean i mean Tim was actually pretty shy about it but apparently Tim plays a lot more video games than he was letting on that his parents were just relentless about saying he is up all night playing those games and and i mean it seems like honestly it's not something that's brought up a lot but the sort of ubiquity of seeing them everywhere like there are game systems all over the place around here and it's it's definitely something that that is being seen as i think it's seen as as a way to to sort of as a therapeutic means to sort of distract people or to distract the kids from from the sort of ordeal that they're going through and in a way that is more engaging than a movie or a book could be yeah i mean i i guess uh i don't know if we will but it would be cool right now if we could i'll leave a pause in case we edit at him interview i mean it's a it could this can all be edited um yeah fancy style i can get crazy with it uh you know i mean ah sorry i'm having a brain fart for a second it's been a heavy day i mean yeah this is overwhelming and it's really need to watch you guys as you came in and you know Tyler had a cup of coffee that he's still drinking after like after six hours you finished it did you guys came in with a pep in your step and in a way i'm kind of sad to see you're kind of slowing down you guys are getting a little but i and i understand that this can bum you out but i mean you got you guys are the most depressed people in this whole place because everyone else is up right because these guys are used to it and the kids they don't they know they got cancer but they don't care right they're just hanging out i haven't really seen a frown on anybody and i mean honestly uh i don't i don't necessarily think we're depressed so much as there's a two-hour time difference oh yeah that's true um and you're so so very sober it is it is it is overwhelming in some ways to to come in and to see this and to think that the lot of the i mean there is a a great chance that most of the kids that are here will go on to live productive and normal lives um but the the challenges they have in front of them is are daunting and and they have a lot of pain and a lot of sort of adversity to overcome before they get there and it's sort of hard to process that i mean it kind of yeah it's like it's like a we're talking with doc before you know it's kind of like you see this stuff and then it kind of puts in perspective the people that are raging on our comments right now or or raging somewhere in a message board about how somebody didn't stick up for some game that they didn't like you know it's like uh how about how about how about you shut up because you know if there's probably some kid in this hospital that's going to die today i mean i mean thanks for that captain awesome that's just the that's just the reality of it i mean you know yeah and and it's not because he didn't get treatment but you know even if even if that kid did die from cancer you know it's places like this that through donations are able to hire people like the child care the child life specialists you know that have enough money to do that and therefore can at least improve their quality of life you know and i mean this isn't to make people feel guilty i don't want people to assume that that the purpose of this is to sort of guilt you into giving money because you shouldn't i mean that that's not what this is about like you should not feel guilty about this i mean it if anything we hope it would make you feel motivated motivated to think that you can contribute i mean even if you can't contribute money or even time i mean like spreading awareness of of things like this and just sort of keeping it keeping awareness is if if nothing else at least that you know so i don't i just don't want people to think we're antagonizing them and also like to some of like the younger listeners out there that you know you feel like well you know i'm 13 and i don't even have a job i mean they're you know doc mentioned the little balloons the little yellow and red balloons you might say walmart you know if you're a walmart in the checkout you know ask your mom to buy one and they have like cancer walks they have like walks and marathons and half marathons to benefit stuff like the children's miracle network and you can get sponsorship or things like that there are a lot of ways to sort of contribute i think um i think it would be good though to just let people know that right now on your site there are there is a way to contribute as they listen to this yeah there will there will be a link in this post and later a badge on the site to contribute to the children's miracle network and it's it's really simple the donation in order to keep it in your local area when you go to make your donation there'll be a zip code you'll put your zip code in and it'll it makes sure that the money that you donate stays right there in your neighborhood or if you're in the uk and your con i mean it's not leaving the country um and it's it's real simple takes two seconds is this paypal or you can do paypal credit cards whatever you want okay and uh and you can if we're talking about ten dollars a month if you just want to do a one-time gift of any kind that's fine if you want to just do five bucks whatever you want to do it's there's a little drop down you guys can do it it's really simple and easy um yeah you like you said there's no need to antagonize you don't have to feel bad about this is a good thing this is a good place i mean it's sad as pediatric cancer this is a wonderful place and so this is just don't think of it maybe as as you contributing your money to somewhere else think of it it is your opportunity to be associated with something this awesome right i mean like like you know like i was saying earlier like every hallway had something that was like totally rad and totally lifted your spirits the thing is like we just want to make it to where other hospitals around the world and around the country have the same sort of uh have the same facilities i mean i guess it is easy for it to come off is you know people can come off is like i'm trying to guilt trip them into donating which isn't the case at all it's just that you know people have shown in the past that they care about our opinions on things and yeah you cared about my opinion on a video game and stuff but i mean i'm asking people to you know at least just take the time to listen what i have to say you know this one time about something else that is totally worth you know worth their time um i mean yeah you don't even have to necessarily give money because you know everyone probably knows somebody who said cancer i mean i know i have i mean my my grandpa died from lung cancer so you know it doesn't even have to be that you're giving because you're trying to say person x you know it can be that you're giving in honor of uh a person that already died i mean we saw that a lot today that even these people that said once their kid beats it you know and or they're like we saw one person whose cancer was in remission and they were just in recovery you know even them they said that they will be involved till the day they die because it is just such a life-altering experience that people feel so removed from you know but uh that's just not i don't know i just think that sorry i got distracted by the camera just getting knocked over that's uh they're children prowling around us but we are sort of in their space to be fair yeah describe the area tell them tell them about this this infusion area we're on small chairs elementary school chairs at a children's table that's covered in crayon bits and uh with toys around us as punk trucks rocking chairs i can see kids sleeping on a couch getting chemotherapy um it's got a pretty awesome view of downtown houston though it's pretty beautiful i mean you know and in general it looks like a daycare center and exactly a really cool really big daycare center and parents and everyone are here as well as staff i mean there's a kitchen in the corner for people to make food and just relax a little bit yeah i don't know yeah i guess it's it's hard i don't want people to feel like i'm beating them over the head with donating but i do think it's an important cause and i and i do think that it's important to keep perspective i mean we all think games are important clearly like i'm not saying that games are unimportant or the games are stupid or that you should feel bad for playing a game or getting mad because like you disagree with someone i mean that's all like that's part of life but another part of life is caring about other people or like working within your community in one way or another and this is definitely one way to do that yeah this is the way i look at it is there's probably um a reason i think i don't know i'm kind of a big believer in karma and i believe kind of that you know what is it the Beatles lyric it's like the love you give is equal to love you make or the love you take is equal love you make it so i feel like opportunities like this come along maybe for a reason like maybe you're supposed to be listening to this right now maybe you're you know maybe you're not a don't consider yourself a selfish person but you can't think of the last time you did anything for anyone you're kind of feeling down about yourself as a result of it or maybe maybe you're supposed to hear this because you're going to be the next oncologist and this is this moved your life and you're going to change your educational plans or whatever the reason is but just be open to the experience of helping other people um you guys have a lot of younger listeners too and you know some of them may not have had a chance to maybe never been presented with with something like this before an opportunity to get involved yeah i mean i think uh you know you as gamers as a group of people we've proven that we are like a group of people that are willing to help out i mean the child's play charity and stuff like that prove the folding at home thing on the playstation 3 and how many people would dedicate their system to sitting there doing that even though and those things feel so arbitrary right like folding at home like what am i really doing am i really helping something but you are i mean you're you're putting forth some sort of effort that helps out even if it is through a medium that you care about like a video game you know using your video game console i mean uh you know but the bottom line is that all these places function is nonprofits and i mean they do need money i mean to to continue to exist i mean it's like you said like the children's miracle network hospitals they they get like 600 million dollars a year of non-paid health care and they do that to help people out to save kids lives the kids aren't turned away if their family can't pay they're like so we're going to treat your kid you know we you have cancer we're going to treat that we'll worry about the money later so i think that's a that's a generous philosophy that takes support from other people there's no bailout for these kids you know i mean you GM got how many billion dollars to bail that company out there hasn't been hardly a government dime spent on pediatric cancer research they don't have a unified body like uh like like breast cancer is another very important cause and a lot of people are very involved with them and that is that's great but there's there is no unified pediatric cancer voice like sujan gcoman is you know and so that's why it takes people like like you guys it with rubble FM and just individuals that are listening to the show who are going to turn around and go do something about this in their community it takes that that's what it takes because if you get enough of us we're as big as anybody else we can we can move a mountain together and i think it's important to stress that that the money that the children's miracle network raises also helps to sort of build up more pediatric cancer programs more more treatment facilities in addition to what exists already i mean it's just trying to to spread the availability of care yeah that that's what's really important because there's a disparity i mean this complete this compared to what's happening probably 150 miles from here in a little town it doesn't even have a children's hospital they just have like a floor of the hospital or like five rooms that are painted pretty and they call that their children's hospital you know but when will you like to all get all of them there you know one day have them all all get to that point and you can do that in your own community and you don't just have if you don't have ten bucks go find ten bucks go ask your mom and dad you know i mean go go look in the iPad i could probably find five bucks in my couch right now i bet i could loosen that in or get or just spread the word because a lot of the that's a great thing about gamers because they're so hyper connected how many Facebook friends as they average gamer have a ton right you can spread the word that way you know you can just get involved in some way but link people to this show just go tell a friend to listen to this episode of rebel FM if they're a gamer they never listen to it send them and say go check this out this is important to me you check this out listen maybe they should listen to the second half and not the first there'll be a lot more childish if i childish you mean talking about dicks yeah a lot of these children that we've encountered today are are much more mature than we are and handle this stuff way better than we do i'm like getting ready to cry and he looks at me and he's like don't be a punk bitch sorry well anyway i appreciate you guys and i'm you know i work for children's miracle network and this is the first time every podcast has been asked to do anything like this and i'm really happy that that we picked you guys for whatever reason that was um i'm happy now i'm just kidding but i'm glad you guys are here i'm glad you guys got to see all this alphabetical and uh after see you know that your your audiences has proven themselves as you said you the first thing you told me in the email is we have an extremely generous audience so i'm hoping to see that generosity pour in obviously we'd like to see monetary donations at ten bucks a month it's very simple to do you can just go to eat sleep game dot com and make that donation um with uh with one click i'm going to go straight to your local children's hospital and never goes anywhere else but if you can't do that i want to thank you for listening this far into the show it shows you at least have enough of a heart that you care enough about other people to sit and listen to something that has nothing to do with games i know this probably came as a shock to you guys but i just want to tell you Anthony and Arthur and Tyler how much i appreciate you guys giving up a moment of your program i'm sure that in some ways you guys are going to take a little heat for this for doing this whatever fuck those people um i i you guys are my friends forever whatever you need and i hope i can get a chance to repay you for what you're doing for kids so thank you and thank you to your audience for for being involved in this this is pretty cool thank you Tyler do you have anything else to say thanks for having us this fun