Rebel FM
Rebel FM: The PAX Back to School Special
As we dragged our semi-swine flu'ed carcasses back across the California border, we finished recording a special little podcast just for you! In the first section (recorded from the comfort of our hotel room) we discuss the games we saw at PAX both hands-on and from afar and our thoughts about them, including Mass Effect 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Shank, Death Spank, L4D2, and a lot more. Then, as recorded in a piece of metal hurtling down Interstate 5, we talk about our human experiences at PAX, including our thrilling, truck stop drama on the way up to Seattle. We apologize for the sound quality in the second segment, since, you know, recorded in a moving vehicle, but, well, you don't HAVE to listen, do you? Mobile penis!This Week's Music, in order of appearance:Nine Inch Nails - 1,000,000Phantom Planet - California
[MUSIC] This is going to be a lower quality podcast because we're in our hotel room. We only have two mics because our third one won't work. Originally, we were going to try and get Sean to participate, but some gurgle get took him out of it, man. So now he'll be chilling on the bed. He's going to fucking Twitter to the world. No, I'm just kidding, Sean. So we got done with our three days of pecs. And I don't know, that's kind of where we're starting from this with. Did you guys, who's also something that impressed him, especially? >> Well, I mean, I'm sure we all saw stuff that that's impressed by. So I just want someone to launch off that right there. >> I mean, we have to go straight into games. I mean, there's a lot of other things, fun things to talk about. >> Okay, what, I mean. >> Like what? >> Yeah, fucking fail. >> Long lines. >> I was most impressed by the immense weights it took to get into anything. >> Fried macaroni and cheese balls. >> Yeah, those are good. I had some of those. >> What's the first game that you played on the show, Florida Tyler? >> The very first one, Lost Planet 2. It was just the one that I happened to run to first and it was open. >> And that's the four player co-op sort of skirmish? >> Yeah, yeah, I mean, I believe it's on the demos on Xbox Live Arcade. So a lot of people, well, someone on this floor showed told me that today. And I was like, really? They're like, yeah, it was up two weeks ago, so. >> What? >> Maybe, I know, it's right. >> I didn't hear anything about this. >> Yeah, yeah, neither of I, so. But I mean, whether or not it is or isn't, still played it. And it was cool, but it's like one of those situations where you're on a four player team and you all share lives. So it's like even though me and one other guy knew what the hell to do, the other two are just like. >> Totally, yeah. >> Hopefully, so we did not tame the beast. We did not slay the dragon. >> He didn't flush the floor, is it where? >> Yeah, so did you play into getting a chance to play the four dead to other? I did not. That was like the one game that we all played that I did, or the YouTube play that I didn't get to play. >> Well, I've played it before and talked a little bit about it. What did you think? >> It ain't no fucking expansion pack. That's what I think. There's just enough differences, both minor and major, for it not to feel like something that could have been released is DLC. >> Such is. >> I mean, there's nothing in the new environments that was like anything that we saw in the old environments. The swamp is something that's definitely different than anything before, and like the new kinds of undead. There were three new kinds of undead just in the one section that we played. >> And you don't mean special undead, do you? >> I mean special, in fact. Like there's ones that are considered uncommon, infected, I think, that are quite special. >> Which are like, at this point, the ones that they've revealed for that are the clown, the special biohazard suit one and a swamp person thing. >> I'm not even talking about those. I'm talking about like, then there were three new kinds of special infected. >> Well, yeah, those are the three they've shown one at a time. The only new one for PAX was a- >> The Jockey? >> The Jockey. >> Yeah. >> What was his thing? I didn't even- >> So, the Jockey sort of comes out of you, sees an, that would be the angry dwarf. He sort of comes out of large groups of zombies and jumps on your back and sort of guides you toward bad times. >> Oh, ah, that's clever. >> And I mean, that sort of introduces a new dynamic with special infected where, I mean, most of the special infected, when you're shooting at them, there's no chance that you're going to hit one of your team, but with the Jockey, you need to be much more accurate. Otherwise, you're going to damage them as well as the Jockey. >> Awesome. I don't know if it's like a melee attack knocks them off instantly, kind of like a certain kind of- >> I never tried because it always guided them away from the team so quickly. Just like the charger, which is another special infected that they've shown before, but I guess they changed a little bit. >> I wasn't paying enough attention though to see if they made it to where you actually can shoot the guy while the infected's on the two, or if it just does the damage to the infected and doesn't bother to hurt the guy. >> I mean, it just seems like such a no-brainer that that'll be important. >> It does, but I mean, people might get pissed about that too, right? So maybe they wouldn't. I don't know. I'm just saying I can't- >> I mean, they don't do a ton of damage by themselves. It just seems like their potential is to split you off from the group. And that's something that I'm noticing with a lot of the special infected that they seem to be adding is increasing the times where there's something that's going to take you away from the rest of the group and separate you and make you vulnerable. The charger will crash through a horde of zombies and grab you and just charge you away from everyone else and then slam you into the ground and pick you back up again. >> For now. Who knows if that's how I'll stay because earlier before he used to just smack you like the tank would. >> Yeah, like Anthony. >> And you go flying. >> And you go flying. >> Anthony said that he definitely behaved differently the last time he played, and that wasn't that long ago. >> No, I mean, and they said even when I saw last time that they were going to be changing things fairly consistently, so. >> Which is sort of a valve thing. So. >> In terms of like the stage specific zombies like the hazmat suit zombie that we already know of, what's the clowns. >> I never saw the clown one actually. >> I've seen him in the screenshots, but not in a. >> Yeah, I think one of the guys from Valve told me and I just, I don't actually remember. What is the thing? >> I know that the hazmat suit dudes are immune to fire. I imagine that the clown things do something, but I just don't know what, but as far as like, I mean, the environments are a lot different. They definitely have much more sort of devious, puzzling type sections where you need to be careful, even more careful where you shoot, because there might be a lot of cars that are alarmed. I really like the new weapon selection. Like the weapon that I got that seemed like it was replacing the hunting rifle. Are there three tiers of weapons now? >> I don't think so. >> I just think that there are other weapons, so there will still be a hunting rifle, like there's still a sniper rifle and it's way better than the original one, like it's faster. There's that gun you got? >> Yeah, which is like a sort of semi-automatic assault rifle, which does a pretty good level of zoom, but not quite the same as a sniper rifle and it fires as fast as you pull the trigger. Like it's no bolt action or anything like that. There's not a lot of delay, but it's not fully automatic, but it's, I mean, I'd fire that like I typically fired the assault rifle in the last game, Anthony is getting texts from what I presume is Sean Elliott. >> No, it's not. >> Okay. >> I never picked up the sniper rifle in the first look. >> The sniper rifle? >> The sniper rifle, so like what, you know, like what are some effective strategies at a sniper rifle? >> I never really saw them. Like a lot of people said that you could take out the tank pretty quickly. >> I mean, basically the only reason people like it is because it would, it would one-shot kill zombies. >> Okay. >> But for this, because there are so many zombies that like pick you up and take you away from the group, like having that, having the semi-automatic with the scope meant that I could like nail smokers from far away and take out people with jockeys and still be effective and close. >> We really only got to play though for like 10 minutes. >> I was like 20. >> They kicked us off pretty fast, I mean, we got to do one chapter and that was a part of the part. >> I mean, that's what everybody was getting. >> Yeah, but I don't know, I mean, they've sort of, it seems like they've got more stuff going on visually, like, there's a lot. >> For the first time that was not Anthony, that was actually Shawn Elliott's part. So people who've been asking us to have Shawn Elliott on the show, there you go. >> That's what you get. >> That's what you get. You get the part of war. Like, graphically speaking, there's a lot more, it's just, there's a lot more stuff going on. I think it's a more visually interesting game than the last one was. >> Yeah. So I mean, what was like the worst game you saw on the floor? >> The worst game? Damn. >> What's the one that looks like it came from fucking Cinco products? The dance-off game, man. >> Oh, we saw a dance-off game. >> Yeah, we watched that and me and Tyler were saying it looks like something out of a Tim and Eric commercial, because even like the digital person in the background is kind of like the slightly overweight dude, and he's all done up like predator vision almost. >> Yeah, like rainbow neon's almost like. >> And the people were dancing, and it's only we were about nunchucks, so there was no need to move your feet. >> To do the full dance move. >> Everyone's doing it. >> People were doing the fucking full dancing, yeah. >> Yeah, it was really embarrassing to watch. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> It was very embarrassing. >> Yeah. >> I don't feel like anything was so reprehensible awful that I can label it as the worst thing I saw. I mean, I think the games would not be the worst thing you would see it. >> Yeah, no, not at all. >> All right, so what was the worst thing I saw that wasn't a game? That's fine. >> I mean, I was still underwhelmed by Darksiders, Anthony and Joey played, but it's the same stuff that they had on display before, and I'm not seeing what makes it special. But they were pretty clear that the stuff they felt makes it special wasn't in there. All right, get to the Waja, that's what we've been. That's what you've been waiting for. >> No, I'm just wondering. Was there something you guys saw that was particularly shameful? >> Did you just tell me Darksiders about that fucking bull ride? >> Yeah, there was a bull ride at the Darksiders thing, which is actually like the PR guy. I was like, yeah, we got one of the guys that made some of the dinosaurs on Jurassic Park and the Terminator from T2 to make that for us. And as he walked away, I told Anthony, I guess I didn't pay him enough to make legs. >> So he said the first day they had it up too high, and it was hurting people. So they had to lower it for the second day, which is lame to me because I wish I'd, because I was thinking, I was like, man, they had that thing on like really lowness. Like it wasn't like at all like a bull you see, out of a bull, like a rodeo. >> Right. >> So. >> What Anthony wanted to see was nerds rocketing out of the Darksiders section like in crashing into the Stardock presentation every half hour. >> I mean, I did. I wanted to see someone get hurt, basically. >> Man, the most shameful shit I saw was, and it has nothing to do with the GFW panel, but it was afterwards. I went into the restroom, and I said, kid, you not, dude. There was tracked human feces on the fucking floor to the sink. I was just like, God damn, how do you, I mean, how does that happen? >> I mean, I just want you to think, like, Pax in a way is like a, is like in one way, it's like this really cool thing where a bunch of people that are into a certain subculture get together and do it. >> In another way, it's everything you fear about nerd culture. >> It's a ecological disaster where all these nerds come and put their fucking foul asses on these toilets and just put up a nasty shit into their lives. >> Man, the toilet situation was not nearly as bad as it's been in the past. >> No, it wasn't, but I'm just saying, this year it sold out, so just think about how much poop that means out of this place, man. I feel about the nasty shit you can imagine. And also, I mean, today was like the last day, right? And it was also the, I would say, like, the chilliest day, you know, the previous days were-- >> It was a little simply. >> The previous days were pretty warm. But today, for some reason, was a tassel, all some kid just like walking around with no shirt on inside when it was like air conditioned and like he was not-- >> Is that the asshole from the gunner optics booth with the fucking fake-ass tattoos covering? >> So some guy walks up to me and he goes, hey, stop sucking at games and hands me a 20% off coupon for those fucking pro gaming glasses and I just, I was like, wow. >> Did you show him your battlefield too, bad company trophy, and fucking tell him you don't suck at games? >> No. >> The worst thing about playing in the battlefield tournament that Tyler and I did was that the first time we played, my screen was the one that was also being videoed out to the front where I was walking by, so I could hear the announcer keep saying things like, actually you want to run when you throw a grenade and I'd be like, you fucking dick, dude. >> He just stops halfway. Guys, can we change this video to someone else's speed? >> They should have. >> I was like learning the controls because they're not the same as-- >> Yeah, they're all 1943. >> Crime era. >> And there are odd tweaks. Like I was trying to recall what the right bumper does, the right bumper pulls up your pistol. >> Yeah. >> I mean-- >> What? >> Yeah. And it'd be one thing if the controls didn't match up and they weren't, but this is the same company, right? >> Yeah. >> Making us a game in the same-- >> It is the same engine. >> That's what I'm saying. That's why I was like, why don't these-- >> It's odd. >> But still, you know, it's not a good time playing in. >> I like that game, but I actually felt that some of the spawning was kind of borked on the attack-defend thing because it seemed like there were times that I would, you know, just like old school times, right, where you'd spawn and there'd be like three dudes running in front of you. You'd kind of maul down because you just magically appeared there, or I'd magically appear in front of three guys and get killed. Like, I didn't feel like the spawning was always the best. I don't know. I mean, that happens a little bit in 1943, but I think part of it maybe, I don't know, I mean, it just seemed like because they focused the objective to like one specific spot, right, whereas in 1943, there's all these objectives across the night. So you're never going to get a spot where all eight guys are there, you know, and that happened a lot in this. Well, yeah, I mean, the only time I really had a problem with like spawn dying was obviously when I would like spawn on squad mates, but it seemed to me like if you, you know, squad like back at your base, they put you pretty far back, you know, behind the sort of front lines of the battle, whether you're attacking or defending. Sometimes they seem like that, and then like I said, sometimes, I don't know, and I do not always feel that way. But I mean, I was fun and, you know, they're, I mean, we could see the option for a lot of different weapons that weren't in previous, a battle for bad company games, but they had the bad company cactus, you know, yeah, yeah, I mean, did you guys notice they had the M1 Garand up there, or it looks like it looked like them, you know, all you saw was a silhouette and that's what it was an M1 or was it like the M14 from Colorado? No, it was an M1, I'm pretty sure. I mean, it looked like an M1. But it could be an M14. Could be. So yeah, what else did you guys see? I mean, I, all the shit I saw was mostly the same shit that we talked about at E3 because a lot of the builds were E3 builds. I think a lot of them were comic-con builds. Well, one game we all got to check out that is new to E3 was Game 3 from Team Behemoth. Yes. They're, I think it was the Behemoth, not Team Behemoth. Oh, oh. They're not from Japan? The Behemoth. The Behemoth. The Behemoth. So yeah, it's, I guess it's their own name game, which is why it's called Game 3 for now. It sort of feels like a party game in some ways. It, you know, it reminds me of some like, it, in some ways it kind of like reminds me of games like Bubble, Bubble, and. Yeah. Okay, so the premise is that like you and whoever else it's playing up to four people, you sort of assemble a little character out of a head, a body, and legs, or a head, a body, and an attack, and then it throws you all into a, into this, this room. It looks like a, it looks like a theater or something, or I don't know. Yeah. We're like, there are these different doors and if, like the doors that you go into determine the kind of like the level you're in and, and some other stuff, and sort of let's clear the level in the game. Yeah, the level in the game mode. So like the first time we played it was Anthony and I and basically you're in this arena where there's this golden humpback whale that's floating around dropping money. Yeah. Kind of like the cloud character in Mario games that would. Yeah. Yeah. Like lack of two. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So he drops money and the goal is to, is to take it within range of this safe with wings. See that was Anthony, not Sean. And I like for sure, I'm like, dude, Wildo is like, one foot per watch. So I mean, you get money from this whale and you're supposed to go near this safe with wings and like the money will flip from you into the safe and then you can attack the other people in the room and knock money out of them. And like the interesting thing to bring up like is like the attacks are all kind of interesting. Like there's some like, like the Frisbee attack that, you know, there's like proximity mines where you have a fan that blows people away. Like, or, I mean, if you've got the fan and let's say I had the fireball, if I threw the fireball and some interned on the fan, it blew the fireball back into me. Yeah. So that's fun, divisible. And then the other game mode that we saw was you're competing to see who can touch the most blocks and turn them to your color. And there's like three or four rounds of that. And the interesting thing about this is like once you activate a block that's to your color, it blinks. And so for a short period of time, the other teams could come back and touch it. And then it's their block. So it's like, you know, like one, one tactic I was playing against Arthur at it. You know, I just like, you know, I noticed he was winning. I was like, ah, if I can, I'm just going to follow him. And like, I don't think you noticed, so I don't think he was on to me for a while. I didn't, but I still beat you. Yeah. So that's fine. You did. But I, but I had a tremendous comeback for me. Or actually more specifically, I noticed, but I wanted you to feel better about yourself. When I was thinking when, when I, when I farted in Tyler's elbow was close to my, my ass. I was thinking about have you guys ever heard of the term spot welding? I mean, it's not in relation to farting. Why don't you do a welding? Yeah. Well, back in the day, me and my friends, like if someone was sleeping, such as, or kind of almost a sleep, like Shawn is, like someone would walk up and use their full body weight to hold them down. And then they would like try and either with their bare ass or at least there's their boxers would fart against them like close to like skin to skin as they could. And that was called spot welding because it was just a quick blast of force on that one spot. So that's what I was thinking. I just wanted, but I wanted to say I spot welded you, but no one, I didn't think people would get that. Because I wasn't sure if that was a universal term or if that was something. Yeah, no. So I got welding flash burned from that, that's what it was. We're keeping Shawn up with quality entertainment, sorry. We also saw, of course, the game that everyone's talking about was a shank. Yeah, I mean, it seemed to be that in Death's Bank, similar names. Had a lot of talk. Like, Death's Bank because it was Ron Gilbert sort of returned the game. And it looked good. I mean, it wasn't really good. I mean, there could be times that someone returns to games, right? And then maybe they like lost touch with what would make a good game and it just comes out and you're like, okay, but with Ron, it was actually like, it was, it was actually really cool. It's not like John Romero's Death's Bank. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, yeah, I had like a one on, I had like a one on one demo of me and Ryan with him, you know, it's just an action adventure game. Well, I mean, it's kind of like Diablo plus an adventure game sort of mixed in. Right. Yeah, and it's weird because, you know, both the shank and Death's Bank, they won't announce what systems it's for, but they seem pretty obvious to me, like, at least in the case of shank, it's a, it's going to be a, they said it was going to be downloadable, but it seemed like it's going to be like an Xbox Live arcade game, right? Or steam. I think it's just that they were using a 360 controller to demo it, but they could easily translate it. Right. But I'm saying back in the past, their last game, Klee, did Xbox Live arcade and steam is why I say that. So, um, but Death's Bank, I don't know if that's going to be a downloadable game or not, right? Because it is kind of cartoony looking and your immediate impulses to think like, oh, this kind of looks like it's a downloadable game or something. But if the world is like the way when he showed it to me, like, and he showed us like the area we explored during the demo compared to like the whole world size, like it seems like it, it would be really, really big. I think he said that it would probably be pushing the biggest downloadable game mark if they did it that way. So I don't know. Yeah. I mean, could you really see people paying $60 for that game? Depending on, I mean, depending on how, like, really full, like, like, big of a game it was. Yeah. I mean, just because it looks cartoony doesn't mean that it isn't like a game. But I feel like the greater game buying, like, populace has sort of been conditioned to think to see a game that looks like that. I mean, it's relatively unique, but it still has certain qualities to its art style that indicate a type of game and a type of pricing tier. So I'm just curious as to whether or not you think that people would-- Right, but it's like LucasArts adventure games back in the day, like, it's almost like I feel like if they were to release a new adventure game these days, people would expect it to be a downloadable game because, like, when people see cartoony animated graphics, they don't think, like, a retail release. I mean, when was the last adventure game that came out that wasn't-- That's what I'm saying, yeah. Like, Dreamfall? Right, but I'm saying that also, like, you know, things like Sam and Max that are these downloadable games also only take, like, an hour and a half to beat, and it looks like Deathspank is going to be, like, this multiple-hour game. And it's not episodic. It's, like, a single. Here's one big-ass game. So I don't know. I mean, it still has all the branching dialogue trees, and they were really funny. Right. You know, and the voice acting was good. Like, for just being, like, the first show, it made quite an impression. I just think they're going to be fighting an uphill battle. It was a very beautiful offering as some would say. Sorry. It's pretty late when we've all been eating foul food. So that one was Arthur. What? No. Sorry, Ty. I'll stop that. I'll stop that. 'Cause you are right next time. Oh, man, it doesn't bother me, really. I'm OK. Um, I also got to see you. It was on the balcony. [LAUGHTER] I hope that was off, Mike. Yeah, enough. So whatever. But yeah, so what else did you guys see? Like, I mean, you know, all the Star Wars stuff, the Halo stuff, that's all been shown before. So it was kind of, that was kind of the zaz of it was lost. I mean, I did have some, that was the first time I played ODST, and I did make some observations to you about my concerns about that game. Right. I mean, the sharing of lives. I mentioned it in the preview I did, right, was like the sharing of lives with someone who's just going to throw themselves in the day they actually get themselves killed, kind of makes the whole team pay for it. Yeah, like the, it uses, it uses campaign scoring, it's not basically or anything like that. It uses campaign scoring from Halo 3. And the thing about campaign scoring in Halo 3 was that it rewards you for taking risks and for dying, basically, like you got penalized slightly, but you would still, your risky behavior would pay off with higher points. And in ODST, since you all share lives and it rewards risky behavior, basically the person that uses the most lives and fucks everyone else over is the one that will come out with the highest score. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. I mean, it's like I was telling you, I can't see myself playing that with people who aren't my real life friends, like otherwise it'd just be too frustrating for me to deal with people like that. And the two people you and I were playing with, I think, were really young. And they just kept throwing themselves into enemies and dying over and over again. But they would get more hits on things and get more kills because they weren't playing strategically. They would just run up and get aced. But yeah, I mean, I don't think firefights, the reason people are going to buy that game anyways. Maybe. I think it's a pretty big selling point. I don't know. One new mode, like to me, isn't necessarily the reason to pay $60 for a game. Like for me, it is very much the single player campaign that promises to be something different than, you know, with the previous Halo games. I don't know. I think taking what was arguably the best mode from Gears of War II and pairing it up with what, in my opinion, are more refined and responsive gameplay mechanics seems like it's like a pretty big deal. Like, that's one of the things I'm interested in. Yeah, it's true. I just don't think that that's necessarily a selling point for a six. I mean, a selling point, yes, but not the selling point for a six-day guy, I think. No, I mean, I still think that they wouldn't have put all this time into a single player game if that wasn't the crux of the game for them. When we store all of them, why would most time they put it into the single player game? We don't know how long that can't be. I'm just saying I asked why when they've just released a multiplayer game disc, you know, like five new modes and here's multiplayer. Because they can get away with it and people will pay it. That's what I'm saying, but they put a single player component in it, so I can't imagine that Bungie being the studio they are would want to mar their reputation by releasing anything that was like a half-assed single player component. And you know, maybe they've worked so much in the Halo universe. That's why they did this ODST thing that could be quite different. So I actually I'm hopeful. I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing and I'm not arguing with you, but there are people out there that would when you bring up Bungie would not put out a half-assed single player component. A lot of people would throw Halo 2 in your face. No, I would disagree with them. And that's fine. They're entitled to their wrong opinions. Well, I mean, they're not wrong in that Halo 2 basically came out unfinished because Bungie didn't have enough time to finish the game. Like, they've said as much on the documentary stuff for Halo 3 that they just didn't have time to finish. I mean, I never felt like Halo 2 was unfinished, that's a thing, so I mean, but that's a whole nother conversation that I don't really care to have. Fair enough. This is not the Halo podcast. We've dedicated enough time to ODST for a show on PAX. We didn't talk at all about Shank, I brought it up, but we skipped over it. So Shank is a 2D side-scrolling action. We'll do the PRMatspeak action brawler from "Clean Entertainment" makers of Eats. They also did like the Xbox Live port of something that was kind of big. I don't remember what it was, though. They made a lot of comparisons to "Double Dragon", which I didn't really see. Yeah, I mean, you know how "Double Dragon" was obviously a 2D game, but you could move kind of up and down. There was a plane. There was a plane, yeah. And this doesn't have that at all. This is still very much 2D. Well, kind of like bad dudes. More like Shinobi. Yeah, actually. Shinobi are, like, strider, like those games. And so it's got, you know, it's very tongue-in-cheek over the top with, you know, you switch quickly between using a knife, pistols, and a chainsaw. It's almost kind of like if someone way back in the day tried to make a Devil May Cry game with a not-crappy story and made it 2D, like just said. Well, to be fair, we don't know that yet. Well, no, I'm just saying the way the action is, you know, the way, like, you roll up, you can hit people in the air, hit them a bunch, shoot them with your kind of Thanksgiving story. I'm referring to the story. Like, we have no idea what the story in that game is. Okay, that's true. But I'm just saying- I mean, the game made a really great impression. I'm hoping, you know, I mean, I don't really know how much they did say they wanted to do storytelling, and they do have a relatively famous animator that I can't remember what he did on board to do their cutscenes and stuff. Well, I mean, yeah, to me, it's not really about, you know, whatever the player's motivation is. It's just like, it looks kind of like that cartoon samurai jack and like- That's exactly what I thought. It's just the animated scenes are just really vulnerable and, you know, look really cool. It bears a lot more visual resemblance to something like Venture Brother. It's like old Johnny Quest type stuff. Yeah, all the Venture Brothers is like, it's like somewhere, I guess, let's say- I mean, your character is basically Brock Sampson. Yeah, but the way he's drawn is not Venture Brother. So let's go hybrid. Venture Brothers meets Samurai Jack, but you play as Brock. With a chainsaw. Yeah, and without a mullet. So I mean, it is- It kind of seemed like you had a mullet with that bandana. I mean, you know, and you get more weapons throughout the game, and it's still silly and violent in the way that games like Alien Hominid were, where you're gonna like pop the heads off of people, but it's like, it's just humorous, it's not gratuitous or anything like that. I know, like Alien Hominid, which is all about busting your balls this seems more like it's about making you feel like a badass. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how they had the demo tuned, right? But I didn't have any trouble getting- No, yeah, even if you died, there was like a checkpoint. Like I did die once in the checkpoint. Oh, you did? Checkpoint popped me like right to where we're supposed to be. Yeah. I mean, I think he like, like was hoping that that would happen because he wanted to show how the checkpoints worked. So and, you know, on top of all that, then it still has some cool terrain that navigation the way you can scale walls with your knives or like do wall runs by, you know, stabbing your knife in and running, which is kind of a Prince of Persia thing. And it's super, super atmospheric and visually interesting like there is a part where it turned everything in the foreground into a black silhouette against a bright sky in the background. Yeah, like kind of like you were a son was behind you. So much to where you were a person looking at it, and all you could see, you know, you couldn't see features because you were blinded by the sun. So I mean, I thought that was one of the, you know, for me, I guess the reason it's like double thing. Like not only was that a really cool game to see, but at the same time it also excited me because I mean, it's something new, you know, and you don't typically see new games and now it's dead-packed. Right. And again, I mean, that's another game where they haven't announced a platform or anything like that. Yeah. And I was talking to, I'm not sure if it was a PR person or someone actually on the development team. But I was, you know, I was asking them about the development cycle and they said they've been working on the game about six months. Was it in the hotel or show floor? No, it was in the show floor. And you know, which seemed like, and they said the demo that we were playing was, you know, the result of like two months of work. So it seems like, you know, and that it might not even end up in the final game. So, you know, it seems like a short amount of time they were able to whip up something really entertaining. I mean, did they kind of ask you a bunch of questions, like, what did you think about this? Like, did they kind of, okay, yeah, see, because when we did the private hotel demo, it was very much like them almost using us for like really, really, really early focus testing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I even asked them about co-op and they said that they've gone as far to concept a second character, a female character named Bubbles, but they would have to just test, play around with it. To do some pretty clever level design for them to work. Yeah, yeah. Because to me, the problem that it seems doing a two-player game in that sort of style is just the fact that you don't have the up and down playing to move on. Yeah. So. Jesus Christ. Yeah. So we both played a Mass Effect 2. And this is the first time they've actually what? I mean, E3 judges could play Mass Effect 2. Right. I mean, that doesn't really count. So this is the first time that. Well, I guess it's not the first time I bet you, my guess is they probably let people go hands-on at Gamescom. I don't call. None of us went to Gamescom. I mean, I didn't read any Gamescom previews of Mass Effect 2, so. My guess is that it was probably hands-on at Gamescom, so. So this was the same scene that they've shown every time they've shown the game, which is like you on an alien, like, planet with a busy cityscape in the background and you're being ferried to this complex by an Asari that's telling you about this assassin that you're trying to recruit for your team. And then it sets you into infiltrating this complex, and that's where the new combat controls come in. What do you think about the new controls? Well, it's been so long since I've played the first Mass Effect. And to me, I think some of the differences and the controls was that they mapped a lot of the commands for your squad mates on the D-pad. I don't remember that being in the first one, I could be wrong, but to me, one of the things that stood out to me more was it seemed like in the first Mass Effect a lot of times you would have enemies just charged straight for you, like in a B-line, like right in front of you, and you just hose them down, and it seemed like I didn't see anyone doing that at least. I really remember that. For me, the only enemies I really remember rushing at me were Krogan, like when they were-- Oh, yeah, I definitely remember at times there was, like, Geth, you know, and all the characters just like-- And Husks. Like Husks would run at you, because that's all they did. Right, but that's, yeah. Early in the game, I remember the Geth would run at you quite a bit, straight at you. I remember through the entire game, I distinctly remember even in the last level where you're kind of inverted, or you don't want to spoil it, or whatever, when you're-- Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. And it was always like the high-level officers that would run right at you and just take out the-- Did you feel like now it controls closer to what you would expect out of, like, a stop and pop kind of shooter game, or was it still, like, you know, not necessarily quite that, but you still have all these RPG elements and the more that makes up for it. You know, I'm wondering, like, did you feel like it was, you know, for lack of a better word, tighter, because I can't think of anything right now. Right. Well, I mean, so I had two different games, say, is that I played through on Mass Effect I had one, that I kind of used, you know, some of the add-up powers, and I also-- And then I played again as a soldier class, because the soldier class was good with all the weapons. And so what it felt like is, it felt like they just give you the benefits that the soldier class would get. Now, when I was pulling up the powers, I didn't notice any, um, add-up powers, they all seemed to be like-- I mean, the only add-up powers that you had, the chance to use, were from another squad and-- Right, right. Your squad mates did, but all you had was sort of, like, different ammunition and stuff, which was different, like, in the first Mass Effect, you had to go into the menus and actually like assign that stuff. Which was just another reason to go into the inventory that you hated. Yeah. Um, I felt like the aiming was more responsive, like, in the last game, it was really hard to be accurate, but it didn't matter, because as long as you got your gun in the crosshair, like, in the circle area of your cross area, it would hit them. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that bothered me a lot about it was that I mean, I know it's not supposed to be, like, a shooter, right? It's not, because you're getting all these RPG things out of it as well, but for me, that kind of bothered me enough that I felt like, man, it made me feel like I'm not good at it. It was perfectly aiming, like, I should be, and it just was like, my guy was for being whatever, whatever, what is he called, sorry, he's a, whatever, you know, he's like a hero of the universe, and I'm like, man, he can't handle a weapon for you. Yeah, I mean, like, it was dependent on dice rolls, and it's perfectly reasonable for you to say, well, why the fuck doesn't this feel like a shooter, because that's how it's framed, like. Yeah, I mean, they have, they have cover mechanics, and yeah, um, I don't know, I mean, it's just like, the aiming felt more like I was aiming. Nice. You guys can hear that and there's, uh, and there's also, um, other games that I played another indie game, PB Winterbottom. Oh, dude, I've, I, uh, I have a read about that. It came to the office before packs, let me get see it. I've heard cool things about that, but I still have zero clue what that actually is. We'll see. If you guys remember the levels in braid, where you would sort of like record yourself and have to play yourself back, it's like that, but when you play yourself back, you're actually, like, a physical entity. And you can interact with yourself. Yeah. And so like some of the, some of the ways they do different puzzles is they throw in some like physics based puzzles and like some of the ones I saw were like simple, like, they're teeter totters, right? And so you record yourself jumping on one end and you run back to the other. And then when you play it back, you know, you're doppelganger jumps and launches you into a higher platform. Yeah, I was going to say Ryan showed me something supposedly like where you would jump a bunch and record it. And then you would go and like jump off your jumping cell, like, just to get like extra bits of height. Yeah. And I mean, you know, there's a lot of games out that are coming out that are playing with that time mechanic. But one of the things that makes this game sort of stand out is the, is sort of the art style. It looks like a very, I don't know, Arthur, it looks like the silent film art style sort of like no, our films or something. No, no, no, like, it looks, I mean, it's illustrated. It looks sort of like, it looks sort of like a French illustrated. Oh, sort of like Art Nouveau or like early century French illustration. Yeah. So it has like the silent film, like film rules with the text in between and like with the text cards for the story in between. Yeah. So, I mean, that was a lot of fun and it's actually the guys who are making it. It's their first game. Is it an indie gamer? Is it a Xbox Live Arcade game? It is an indie game and I think it's coming out. It's coming out for PS3 and Xbox Live Arcade. I think that's what they told me. I don't have it in front of me. So it's like an indie game then that's, that's definitely like a normal one. But it's an indie game that's getting an Xbox Live Arcade really instead of an indie really. I just hear when I hear like indie game on console now, I just think of like Microsoft marketing has done its job because now I consider indie games. Right. Oh, no, no. I mean, I mean, I don't mean it's an X and A game in a tiny studio. Yeah. Like I was talking to the artists and he said like it was a, you know, he found out the job, you know, through a Craigslist posting or something. It's like, you know, they don't, I don't even know if it has a central of an indie game, right? Even though it came out on Xbox Live. Right. But yeah, man, that was actually a lot of fun when I played it. I mean, yeah, that's the cool thing, right? These smaller, like more stylized, unique games, it wasn't like anybody trying to blow us away. I mean, to be fair, there were games that were like really cool looking, right? Like let's talk about red dead redemption because we all got to see that now. Finally, you know, you guys got to see the content that I got to see a while back ago. There are some fucking awesome bugs in that demo. Right. I mean, you know, I feel bad because you could tell like that guy Steven, like Steve, he was like really feeling like really like, you know, when all of us laughed because there was that part where a band of Cowboys rolls up and tries to drag a guy, the guy went flying in the air. It's like he was a kite. He was like a hunter, balloon, or a kite, yeah, attached to a rope. But I mean, really, that's like the best possible bug they could have had in that game because instead of like someone being like purple or missing textures or something, like which later on you did actually see someone. But I mean, but yeah, I mean, all that stuff in the matter, I mean, they'll clean that up. But you know, there were things that were like, like really impressive. Like the first time you see someone get shot in the gut and like take three steps back before they fall down. Like the way that, you know, any of us trying to keep ourselves up have like fallen on our ass. I thought it was much cooler seeing people like it shot in the lay and having that knocked out from under them and seeing them trying to study themselves and failing. Yeah. Well, there was one in particular. I don't know if you guys thought this stood out to me. It was when it was in that same fight, there was a guy standing by like an abandoned saloon and he shot him in the chest and you and the guy like took it really hard. And then when he was dying, he fell forward and like nailed his head on the beam and it just the way I could all came together, the way he responded, the bullet shot, the way his face responded to hitting the beam. There'd be a lot of points where someone would fall and they'd try to like shoot again as they were falling and dying. Yeah. I mean, yeah, a lot of the death, you know, I know these sort of rage engine for a lot of physics. It's a much improved sort of implementation of like the physics based stuff from GTA 4. Yeah. I mean, it just stuff like that. And one of the things he kind of implied but he didn't really show is the way like eventually people just freak out when they see like you roll in and kill six dudes and they'll just take off running. You can shoot him in the back. The incidental stuff happening in the world was kind of cool like seeing the dude get attacked by mountain lions was funny like having those little things will make it to where. Seeing people get robbed. You don't get bored riding in between locations. And also unlike Grand Theft Auto, like any Grand Theft Auto game, it seems to set up this environment where you can actually be a good guy like you can be a hero like you can save people from getting robbed like you can intervene in these horrible situations. Right. I mean, yeah, because it's the Wild West, right? So in Grand Theft Auto, there wasn't really like you were the person perpetrating all the crime. You didn't typically see people robbing other people. You didn't see people on the ground. Yeah. And there's even when you did, if you intervene, there was no sort of system. There's no, yeah, there's no feedback really for becoming involved in crime. Whereas here, there's actually like some, what do you call like a, I don't know what they're. He said Mark is an honor system. Yeah. I mean, you know, I just think that that that those like procedural occurrences are going to be important because there is a fast travel system. It's like you can ride coaches between cities and trains and steamboats between those times when you're just like exploring and finding something maybe for the first time, you know, having those things will make it to where it's, I mean, literally like the idea of like if they had tried to go altruistic, right? Like here, I drew a horse across these plans. It would have been horrible. I mean, it was interesting to hear him say that, that stuff like bodies would be persistent when you, when you shoot them, like because vultures would eventually circle and, and come down and start picking them apart. And I'm just like, it seems like, I mean, most developers leave that out because it can be such a tax on resources to have that shit stay in the game. Right. I wonder how persistent it is. Like it's like after you reach X and miles in game from the thing, does it really stay persistent or is it like it gets rid of that shit eventually? Sure. I mean it. I mean, after like 10 minutes, I'm sure it, sure has to go away somewhere, but, and there was also a, you know, one, one thing I was thinking watching it was it might have been just for the demo, but it seemed like the stuff that you would sort of stumble across. Mm-hmm. It seemed like, I wonder if that, some of that stuff wasn't maybe a little too frequent, like I understand you want to have a lot of things out there, but the sake of the demo is like your guy rode past like in, in like one 200 yard span, it was like a guy getting mauled a robbery. It was like prior to the Caribbean in the old west. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I mean it didn't seem like he was on the theme park ride, right? Right? Or it was just like, here's like-- Welcome to the horrors of the west! Here's all the things you might see on the west, but I mean, I still think, I still have like high hopes. I mean it looks like it, it, it's the best looking game that I've seen come out of rock star easily, like it is easily like visually that, that interesting to look at. I mean, I think it's a great looking game just saying amongst games, like the way that characters looked, especially your character, like the way you were saying, like how everything was modeled on his back. Like how it, it, it's just like there's all this equipment that looks useful that you can see is immediately available like a lasso that you can use to like rope while horses and shit like that. And, and, and, and little things like a, remember how Tim Schafer wrote that long thing about Nathan Drake having the half shirt tuck, and how it said like so much about his character. The same time it was like this little subtle thing that said like the way he keeps the hat shirt, half tuck said he's like this cool guy, but at the same time he's, that he's like, he doesn't really care. I kind of feel that way about the dirty pants in that game. Like I think just something like that. I was really impressed by that. I don't know why it was like his demi hats. To me, it was just, to me the fact that he had these, these uh, these uh, these cinco de pants. It was like a, you know, they, they had a poostains on the bottom, you know, his pants were dirty and everyone had like dirty boots and stuff and it just made them like so much more real characters than people that were just participating in an environment and never actually having any consequences from it. And then like just the general, like everyone in general looked more like people than games from Rockstar have in the past. Did you guys notice a little like text box, text box that popped up and said you can save anywhere. You just like bust out your whole camp. Yeah, you set a camp. And so, I mean, that's great to use. Yeah. And it's like no more Rockstar like safe houses, you know, yeah, anywhere. So, um, yeah, that looks really good. Um, I mean, I'm surprised that, well, I'm not really surprised, but it seemed, um, that the games I came away most excited for and most impressed by were a lot of the downloadable smaller titles. Yeah, like we saw some, some pretty impressive, um, like we saw some of the dream build play stuff that got entered, um, for indie games. It's easy for all that shit to get overshadowed at E3, right? When people are making announcements of things like Natale and stuff. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was going to say that not this most recent E3, but the one previous, I mean, I walked away from it as well, being most, the most impressed by the smaller indie games. I mean, that's when, um, you know, that's when they were showing that first summer of arcade, you know, sweet with like Castle Crashers, Braid, uh, that was all the same one, right? Yeah. Yeah. Got a gala good too, right? A geometry wars two. Yeah. A geometry wars two, you know. Um, yeah. No, I mean, like the, the two that flower can't leave out true. The two that we saw that, that were new, that looked really cool, were, um, Anthony, you were playing kaleidoscope, which, uh, is this really sort of, I mean, I hate using the term quirky because it's so overused now and like it's such a marketing term now, but it, it was a very quirky sort of world that's like, you're like this little black spot with legs in this black and white world that's sort of trying to restore color to it. Yeah. And so you collect these balls of color, like a, a red, a blue, yellow and, and each button that corresponds obviously to the buttons on the 360 controller. You have a finite amount of these paints that you then use to activate special abilities, like floating or shield or the ability to run really fast. Like to charge, um, and there's like sort of physics based puzzles and those are kind of cool. And I mean, it's just, it's very charming, which is another fucking word that's used too much, but it is quirky and charming. Yeah. The, the art I was saying, like immediate to me, it looked like something that people that made Katamari might make or something right. It looks like it's from a children's book. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's doing a lot more than I think what a lot of people are used to seeing and in like a indie game, X and A game, um, and then to add on to something you're not accustomed to seeing from an indie game, there was the, uh, Odin sphere for furries. I don't know what that game is called. Dust is what it's called, which is, I think the one that people were most impressed with visually speaking. Um, it follows the story of a, of what looks like a pandaren, but it's a fox. Like it's like a guy with like a, uh, what are those hats called? You know, the ones that typically you've all of us have seen in Vietnam movies, um, I, I don't fully, I mean, we called them coolies here in America, which is really, that's not some kind of racial epithet, no, but that's what we're here in America. It did, right? Because they wore these hats and then it became racial slang and called Asian people cool, like coolies because Chinese people, because they wore those, but I don't know what their actual term is. Um, and so yeah, he's wearing one of those and branching a sword and he runs around with this little fairy, the gigantic boobs. That's a fox. Like, but I mean, the art is really well done and the animation is actually pretty fucking fantastic. Yeah. I mean, it really does. I mean, Odin spear furries and I was standing. Right. It really does. I didn't see it doing anybody or any other anthropomorphized boobs on an animal. I don't know. I did see him in the, in the text box. I will do you. I will do you. Do or get done. Yeah. Oh man. What was that in? It was a piece that we heard. We can't talk about that. Oh okay. Why not? It was, it was a different game. It's a barcode. Oh, I will do you. No, do or get done. We can talk about how we'll do you. Yeah. I think Pax has been an adventure for us. I mean, you know, we drove here. I feel like we should keep the games to this and then tomorrow on the, the drive back. We can talk to the trip in general. Yeah. Talk about our, our Pax experience outside of it. And then put it all up as one podcast. Yeah. So I just want to reemphasize again that I apologize for the audio quality. I mean, there's obviously going to be times where it goes quiet because we are trying to be semi courteous and keep it down because Shaun's asleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trying to keep it low. Keep it low. Even after he said that picture is your desktop wallpaper. Yeah. With the ominous shadow. So we're, were there any other games that you guys saw that you found interesting? Like I saw, I find, I got the chance, I got the chance to play split second. Oh man, Mitch, Mitchy detail makes that, but that's that. That's Disney studio, the one, the studio that did pure last year. Oh, Marvel. Like, they were actually like, got a lot of, like really good feedback last year, a lot of good critical response last year for, for pure, I like to, I like to pure a whole bunch. Especially because like we grew up fucking riding forwarders all the time. Yeah. So I mean, basically take the old burnout games that were on tracks that weren't open world games and then add to that these environments that are constantly going ape shit with shit exploding and collapsing and, and make it so that you can trigger that at certain points to fuck over the other people racing and that is split second. Yeah. Or you can, you can option to, if you don't want to trigger an event, then it builds up the next trigger. Yeah. So like the next trigger you do will be even like crazier. Exactly. Like the game looks really good and it, and it, I mean, spectacular endpoints. It looks really, really amazing in points. Control wise, it does not control at all like how you would expect, like you would expect it to control like burnout or you're ricocheting off walls and all that. But it's like a, a drift racer or like hitting the brakes, send you into a slide like where you have to, where you're expected to take corners that way. It feels like your car's got a big fat ass and that was fine and it was fun to control but there's like a lot of rubber band AI where they, when we got halfway through the second lap, they all started slowing down and I pulled up and then halfway through the last lap, all of a sudden they all fucking bounced back and shot past me. But it could be interesting. Like it has a lot of promise. It's just, I feel like there are so many racing games coming out this fall. Like there's fours of three, there's fucking need for speed shift, which looks really fucking good. If you like semi-games. I mean, I think need for speed shift will be a game in between blur, which is from the Project Gotham guys and Forza. I mean, we'll see. I played it. It can be, it can be just as, as simulation as Forza, if you want it to be, like literally to where you're adjusting the pressure of your tires and all that stuff. They really want to enter into that market and make a simulation game. If you want it, there's also different modes. Yeah. I feel, among all that, Jesus Christ, did you just shoot your pants? I'm sorry. It said, yes, you did. Dude, it's okay. It's okay. Deep hands. No loaves, loaves will rip the lining. I just feel like out of the, there are like four huge racing games coming out this fall and I feel like it's going to get overlooked. Like I don't see any racing games getting pushed back next year. Whoa. When is it coming out? Because I think Shift is coming out this month. It is. So Shift is September 4th. Forza is October. I think. Right. So I guess at least Shift, you know, since it's going for the first need for speed someday. I'm pretty sure Boar is in November. So that doesn't leave much in the way of space. And also, Shift, Forza 3 is a game that you could spend hundreds of hours in. Like that is a Gran Turismo level of commitment. Maybe the whole point I'm trying to make is that Shift comes out first. So that probably gives it some sort of a vanish. Perhaps. I mean sort of covers the bases. It's also coming out against ODST. I mean it's a need for speed game though. And I think that having that name on it helps and it is done by most people. Most people won't realize the pedigree right. I mean. Am I right? Am I right? I is like twitching. I feel like it's closest to Anthony. Like maybe his fart fumes are giving you some guy calling some kind of nerve. Who particles? Nerves, spasms. I mean. Okay. I mean maybe. Maybe it has a chance or maybe Shift will do better because it's coming out first. But it's going to be a driving game bloodbath this fall. Was there. It sounds like a box quote. It's a driving game? It's like Armageddon 2000. Yeah. Notice this whole time Arthur's been full of those man. Am I? I'm sorry. No, no, no. You were the one that keeps pointing out every time you do it. You're like it's charming. Fuck. Yeah. It's like all these words have been co-opted. It's working. Goddamn it. Yes, sir. Wilbur, what was a game that you wanted to play and just couldn't, like for whatever reason you didn't get the chance? I mean, there were a few that I actually... Like the one that was most disappointing. Oh. Most... This hop-on team. Maybe I would have played Starcraft if there hadn't been lines. But I just didn't have the patience for that because I had too many other things. I mean I didn't get to play Uncharted. I wanted to play Diablo 3. I also wanted to play Diablo 3. I did not. I'd say Uncharted 2. I didn't get to play Uncharted 2 single player and that really bummed me out. Right. Yeah, I mean, actually I really didn't visit much of the Sony booth because a lot of... The Sony booth is really small and everything was crammed in so tight. A lot of the stuff they were showing, they had already shown it E3. Yeah, I mean... I mean, heavy rain that had some new stuff, but like I don't want to see any more heavy rain. So I was like, I'm not going to play that. We saw iPad at the Sony booth. Oh yeah, you guys saw that. Which was also quirky and charming. The Sony booth was actually... it wasn't too small, right? It was still pretty big. No, it was like footprint-wise. The Sony booth actually did not take up a lot of space they just had on shit crammed in there. Right. They had the new ratchet game. I mean, I really feel like talking too much about iPad, but you should read my preview of it on GameSpy, which will kind of break it down. And you should watch the trailer for it because so the thing about it that I said in my preview was that when you watch the trailer and you see all the things that you can supposedly do with your pet and people interacting with it, you're like, yeah right, probably bullshit. But I was actually surprised. I mean, from like rubbing shampoo and or pet's hair and stuff like that, all these things did work. Like I watched it do it. And it was cute. It's like, you know, it's boring watching someone play with their pet. You know, it's fun playing with your pet. Yeah. So I mean, you know, it's a very silly game. It's not like there to... I mean, it's like such a nice contrast, right? It's just this little delightful thing where you have this thing that actually reacts to you. It's no Milo or something, right? It's not going to speak to you, but it does have the ability with the camera to scan things in that you draw. It's just it interprets. And then he very cutely puts a crown in his mouth and draws it with his head. And then it animates it and he rides around on a car, like he rode around a car that Arthur drew. And then if you like make an airplane, he'll ride around on an airplane. You can control the six axis. So it's just like, it is a really cool, unique thing. I just, you know, I can't, I'm wondering, it's like, you know, people have criticized me in the past for saying that, you know, I think a lot of PS3 owners, not all, obviously are also the people that buy a lot of sports games, you know, and they want like the sports games and like the Call of Duty. And that's like, that's like kind of like two games for the year. Right. And so I still wonder like, you know, how well this will do, like it's $60 bundled with the camera. It's cool for me. I'll do that. It's like a late gen PS2 game, like they were releasing a lot of really like weird esoteric stuff near the end of the PS2's life cycle or near the end of last gen when there was a huge install base and they just don't have that this time. It is, it is a really weird game, but it does look great. Like it doesn't look like a late gen PS2 game. I could see the, the sequel to Dust using some kind of like not, not, not tall camera where you put shampoo in there. Oh, the God damn you Tyler. Oh, man, on that note, I think Anthony is going to fantasize about playing avatar in 3D and we're going to, yeah, you know, I'll talk, I'll talk about avatar tomorrow. Okay. We're doing the, I would call, but we've already recorded for like 50 minutes, we've been like an hour and we still have to like kind of do preliminary packing unless you guys want to do it all in the morning, which I know, I'd really rather not. I, I played, I put on 3D glasses at a Resident Evil 5. So how was that? It looks cool when you see in 3D. It does cool, but like after like three minutes, I don't know if it was what I ate. I started to fill a headache and nausea. No, that's like a normal reaction to 3D. So like the 3D that avatar uses doesn't do that, but the 3D that Resident Evil uses where the type of 3D I'm talking about is like when you see avatar, you can look at the screen when it's like going and it doesn't look like red, blue, like obvious, like image, like breaking, like, you know, like multiple images stacked. Like the one that avatar uses, I don't know the name for this, but he uses like the really nice 3D that movies like up use. So it's like the type where it's just. It's stereoscopic. Yeah, stereoscopic. So it's crazy. It's weird, because I don't know if it seems like almost like the lenses have some sort of digital read out or something, because when you put it on, you look at the screen and I would look down at my notepad, the lenses would change like tints. Like they'd go from dark to light all of a sudden, like I could see normal when I'd look down. I don't know, it was weird, but you know, I think all that 3D stuff's really cool. It's just, it's like, who has that? You know, it's like such a small thing that I can't believe they're doing it in a way. Part of the technology where they're just dipping their toe in. Right, I mean, like with the Avatar thing, you at least didn't need a special monitor, but you did need special things to shoot that type of image to you as well. Like, there was like these obviously special sensors along the top, you know, and with those 3D for like Resident Evil, you needed a special monitor with like dual LCD panels. So. Look at that. Yeah, I mean, all those things are cool, but it's like, so is an IR track headset. You know, all these things that people don't use. And a novint falcon. Yeah, I mean, the novint falcon was like another badass piece of technology. Never heard about that again. Didn't see it. I mean, it's still out there like a certain game supported. That's the thing. Yeah. You don't have the support. You will die. It's like guitar. Here's like one of those only games, right? They can work for like two games and be perfectly fine forever. Um. Yeah, I think, I think we'll, we'll, we'll take a what for you will be a break and what for us will be a sleep. Yeah, the next half of the podcast will probably be questionable quality because we'll do it while we're driving. So hopefully you won't hear like this podcast when like someone finds our dead bodies and puts it up. It's our black box. Yeah. And so it's you just here like, yeah, well games and balls and I don't think masturbating will keep you awake while driving anybody. No, let me try it and then, and then after all the anarchy is settled, you hear very faintly in the background. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's, let's talk about the experience. It's high fucked up and been recorded about 10 minutes of fucking golden brilliant best dribble if I'm ever, that none of you will ever hear. We didn't record puree all 8-bit, 8-bit puree health. The basic synopsis of what was talked about previous was that a lot of people got sick, including myself and Shane and Jeff Green, Sean Elliott, Tana Sachez, we had been talking about this 8-bit wine and how it didn't really make sense that this wine was called 8-bit other than it was just someone being like, look, I'm a gamer and I make wine, but there's nothing 8-bit about this wine. It's not like it's like the most basic of wines or anything like that, and it's like a… Hey man, that was like the pinnacle of graphical fidelity that came out. And so as opposed to like a Charles, you know, a two buck chuck, which is like a 16-bit wine. This is like, this is like, you know, we were talking about how we needed to brand like a nerd away, like… Error disinfectant. Yeah, or just like an airborne, right? Something that you take, it looked like pop rocks, you put it and drink it with some soda and it pops in your mouth and it also gives you a boost of vitamin C. An extra carbonated airborne, perhaps. And just to keep it in the scheme of nerd things, it would also be extremely caffeinated. With Guo Rodna, no, no, no, no, no. So Tyler, if you would do it again since I spoke to that, how do you feel about your first visit to PAX? I mean, you said before that you went to other conventions, and so it's not your first convention, but I mean, I've been to other conventions too, and PAX is pretty different as far as like the general atmosphere and such. Yeah, I mean, what do you think about the experience overall, you know, since we drove up here and whatnot? Well, yeah, you know, driving out to PAX was really cool, it kind of gives, you know, we had that road trip filled with match San Trine and Jason Bertrand in the back seat with us, so we were five people pretty packed up in a car, you know, so that was eventful. But, you know, we had plenty of truck stop stops, and one in particular was pretty eventful. We pulled into this one truck stop to get a little bit of lunch, and while I was ordering, Anthony comes out of the restroom, and he's like, comes up to me real close, he's like, "Man, I think someone was doing meth in the restroom." And I was like, "Really, oh man, this fucking crazy." And, you know, a little bit later on, you know, didn't think too much of it. I look over and I see Jason Bertrand's talking to this guy, and he looks like a homeless dude, in this… And a method. And he looks like a method, you know, shrunk and cheeks, bulging eyes, you know, crusty lips, signs, tears, and so I see Jason's talking to this guy, and he looks up at me, you know, after the guy leaves, he's like, "Whoa, what was that about?" And I walk over there, and he was like, "Yeah, man, this guy was asking for a ride, you know, I told him we were full up, though." And we're like, "Oh, okay, cool, so eventually we're all sitting at this table and the homeless guy comes back and sits at the table right across from Jason Bertrand." And it just starts mad, dog, and the shit, how do you know? I'm like, staring straight at him the whole time we're eating and mumbling, and I couldn't make out what he was saying, because I was further away, which we later heard, some of the things he was saying, but from my experience, what happened was towards the end of our mill, you know, wrapping everything up, and then Jason leans over to this guy, and he's like, "Man, you got a problem with me or something, and you're staring at me all day," and he's like, "And the guy starts getting pretty fucking angered." Yeah, this is when I walked away from the table to get a refill thinking, "Okay, I'm going to be gone while Jason gets stabbed." Right, and you get Arthur left us all to die. Yes, Arthur. Well, Arthur is good at conflict of void and swear possible. And so what was he said to Jason first of all, he was like, "Yeah, you got to get me a respect, and then I'll respect you as I do you." He was talking about what does respect me, this and that, and then he starts standing up talking about how he's from like, "Shytown," and uh... Is this when he threw his ID on the table? Yeah, yeah, he threw his ID on the table to prove it, and it was really hard to understand what he was saying. And he was like, "I got my gags!" And I thought he was saying, "I got my gags, like his band of merry men." But I got my gags. And so I was like, and so he was talking about respect, and I was like, "Yeah man, I know what that's like. I'm from Texas, man. We go to the sippy, you know, we run by the same code, respect one man, respect another, you know, whatever. I was bullshitting the guy. I mean, it's not like anybody fucking, you know, it doesn't, whatever. And so he just looks at me, and he starts going, "I will do you, I will do you." And then here I am, I'm really confused because I thought he was talking about his gaze, and then he's going to do me, and previously we were talking about truck stop hookups with glory holes and foot taps. So I mean, that was a trip, and then eventually the, I guess he, you know, he was getting pretty loud, and the manager came over and basically had him chunk the deuce. That was kind of weird, that was a weird experience. Was that, was that your first experience with a, with a meth head and a truck stop, Tyler? Probably, but yeah, and a truck stop specifically, yes. Meth head in general, no. So, so there was also discussion on the way up about ways to stay awake while driving. Was there a consensus as to whether or not those were effective, or I think people, we actually asked some listeners at PAX about this too, about their, for their input. We, I don't remember asking anyone at PAX. I think it may have, may have come up. Well, Anthony. Anthony, do you wanna- What's the origin of the story, his friend, was it was- I think it was Anthony's, I feel like, was it- No, it wasn't. Or it was a J, it was a- It was a, it was a friend of one of the guys at co-op. Yeah, yeah, it was friend Jason's, and he said that masturbating while driving helps you stay awake, and we, uh, doubted that. Well, we had questions about the efficacy of that statement, uh, luckily, or, I mean, I'm, I'm quite grateful that we did not prove whether or not that was the case, although I, I don't know, most people seem to think that maybe during, if, if you were, if you were going at it vigorously, it might help, but, but toward the end, things get a little dicey. Right, and then like, what happens if you finish, then you're tired anyway? Perhaps. So tired. Yeah. I don't know what, and so, so our idea is like, eventually over the weekend, we had just a bunch of like, uh, myth busters episodes we wanted to conduct, like, Revlev film branded myth busters that basically all deal with, um, factulents or, uh, penises. I mean, that's just a lifelong dream. Yeah. That doesn't even need to be something real fun. We also wondered how many concentrated parts it would take to kill a person in a, in a, in a closed room. And so I was like, was I gone for that? Was I asleep? Yeah. You, you, this is when you passed out when we were in boys club. Oh, thank God. And so I was like, man, just imagine if flatulence were one of the seven deadly sins. So in seven, they'd have to have someone die with the farts. I feel like, uh, like all this was a lot funnier to us when we were, uh, it was 2 a.m. And Shawn was in the room and the lights were all turned out. And we had the, you know, a way camp sort of feeling. It was like a boys slumber party last night, which is less gay than it sounds. I think. Well, I don't know what type of boys slumber party is you had. Dude, Anthony, man. I was not talking about that. Anthony, you two were ripping ass all night, dude. Well, so I was like doing banjos. Jonathan, a lot more than I was, let's be honest. Fuck. Um, okay. So, so other than that, I mean, that, that would, on the way up, it was, it was just a really long trip. So it was, it was nice to see the, uh, the American West, like, along that kind of stuff. It was fun, man. We had some trust exercises and we pulled over to the road and did some catching. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we arrived in Seattle Thursday night, um, super super late. Yeah. Yeah. We, we ran into Tiff Chow. And that was the last time we saw her for the rest of the event. No, no, we, uh, we actually bumped into her on the way to the convention center the next morning. And I saw her a couple of times. Ah, okay. She was there with her brother. Yes. It was very nice. Um, and then we went to the tap house if you, if you went to, actually probably know what the tap house is because they were in the only place that was still open when everyone else would leave tap back. So the meetups. I don't feel like people necessarily want to hear a blow by blow over a hotel. No, no. I mean, the only thing about the tap house is that that's where like the, the quote, unquote celebrities tended to go because they had a shit ton of different kinds of beer. So the first night we went there to get food because everything else was closed. And I think we saw, uh, Jonathan Colton, Tim Shafer, uh, two of the dudes from the guild. It's chilling. Uh, man, that was louder than anything else on this fucking podcast. Sorry. I mean, the pink. Um, so, uh, so, so, so, yeah, I mean, I guess at this point, like thoughts about packs as a show as opposed to the games you played. I like seeing all the cool costumes. I like, I like a good costume. I thought you were just complaining about the costumes. No, no, I'm complaining. I like the costumes. Yeah, yeah. Some, some are more embarrassing than others and some are like really badass efforts. Like, well, one, and some of them are sort of corporate sponsored, which takes a lot of the spark out of it, but did you guys see the explosion man costume? I fucking did not. Oh, dude, it was so good. Was it the one straight out of the video at the end of the game, like the real life explosion man? Oh, I, I don't, I don't know. I haven't seen it. It probably was. Yeah. It was like felt just a bunch of layered orange and yellow felt. Yep. Oh, okay. It probably was. Oh. Oh. Oh. But, uh, the jetpacks was a lot of fun and, um, because, you know, I've been to a lot of nerd conventions in my live comic book conventions, anime, one anime convention. With your brother? Yes. To clarify. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm not, I'm not an anime fan myself, but I went just, you know, to bond, hang out with my brother. It was cool. I was underage and like got into one of, uh, one of the hotel parties, man, where they were served in alcohol, getting ship-faced. Underage drinking. Oh. That's touching. It was fun. Um, so we went to, I know that we went to a few panels, Tyler, not so much, but, uh, Anthony and I went to at least a few. Yeah. I really only went to two panels the whole time I was there. But the, the, the meet, like the, the future of games journalism post, EGM, post-end guide panel. Yeah. Anthony is, is being diplomatically silent about that panel. I think it's particularly interesting necessarily to like recount the events of that panel, because it was kind of like you had to be there to see it, because even I don't pretend to be able to like restate what their opinions were necessarily, like I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. I think a lot of it came down to stuff that we talked about on the show before about the problems with the game's press and the writing and all that shit. Um, we saw the wrong-go-word keynote, which was fun. Um, I, I had some issues with it, although it seemed like you guys didn't so much. Right. Right. Right. I mean, what issues did you have with it? At the end it just sort of boiled down to the same, like I'm okay, you're okay, it's awesome to be a gamer and we have to feel no shame bullshit, as opposed to like dealing with anything. The keynotes are almost always like that. That's just the point of the keynote of PAX, right? They're not there to give a message to change your life. It's just like, this is what we're here to do. We're here to have fun. It's PAX. I just don't know that I need to go to like a gamer sort of like self-affirmation, like speech, I wish that they would do something more interesting with that, because so many of the people that they have do those panels have so many more interesting things to say I'm sure that, I mean, it's okay. Yeah, I mean, that's so, I mean, that we want to hear them go off and riff on some random important issue that's important to them that might just be super boring to everyone, right? I don't know. It's a, it's a hard balance to strike. Well, I mean, you know, on, on one hand, I mean, you know, this has been sort of a controversial summer, you know, it, it maybe it could have been, you know, I can kind of see what you're saying, Arthur. Like, it might have been a missed opportunity to talk about controversy in games and social controversy. Where do we stand on, you know, how we view ethics and, you know, who, who makes games and, you know, what's ethical, or boycotts ethical, maybe, and that's so, but, but, but again, Anthony, I could also see what you're saying. Like, what everyone's sitting there who wants to hear, just an entertaining, funny speech and just be like, bummed out. Like, oh man, you got me all set and thinking about stuff. I think the point of the panels is to go into the more serious topics like that if you want them to be that way. And I think the point of the Pac's keynote is just to be like a funny thing. Welcome to Pac's. It's like a big welcome to Pac's blowout, basically. It always is that way. And then that's why it leads straight into the funny, Taiko and Gabe, extravagant hands though, really. I mean, maybe it just, like, is something that's as what seems to be growing into the sort of premier conference or, like, convention for gamers to attend where you don't have to be meaty or whatever. Right. It seems like they have a sort of soapbox there to do more. Right. And again, I think that's what the panels are for, not the keynote. But even at the panels, it seemed like they were, they were too worried to really make any kind of controversial statement or, or... I cannot speak to that as a whole. I mean, I only went to two and one of them was the rodeo and no one was trying to make. Sure. Although, I mean, they did say some pretty candid shit that might surprise people at the rodeo panel. But, I don't know. I mean, even at the post-DGM panel, it seemed like rather than sort of really weighed into the issue of readership and like what part gamers have to play in our culture and the way the games are covered, like the closest someone got to saying anything about it was saying that you get the coverage you deserve but didn't want to go any further than that. So, I just would have liked to have seen more discussion about that. One interesting thing about gaming culture is you realize going to events like this, how much, how much we love like free shit, you know, because like I know at our meetup, there was probably, I mean, maybe about half of the people at our meetup were there because IGN were handing out flyers that were basically like free drinks at game works tonight. I don't even know if that's fair though, I don't know that half of the people there were there. Well, I mean, you know, I don't know, I'm just throwing out a little exaggerated estimate for dramatic effect. I don't think that that's necessarily wrong. I don't know. We don't have exact figures but it wouldn't surprise me. I mean, it was funny because there was this one moment where I was just kind of sitting up against the wall and, you know, I had a couple of people come up and, you know, introduce themselves and, you know, we chatted for a while and they were like, "Hey, you know, enjoy the show." It was really cool. And then the girl standing next to me was like, "Turn to me," and said, "Should I know you?" I was like, "No." And I will probably make you dumber. You don't want to know me. Aww. I don't remember. I thought that was a funny scene but what you have with the meetup, the meetup, would you guys think of that? That went really well. I thought so. Yeah. I also thought it went very well. I mean, I enjoyed it a lot. Yeah. I mean, my only slight sad face about it was that it was so loud. Like, it was hard to really have conversations with people with that. Okay. I didn't have a problem having conversations. They weren't even really playing music. It was just allowed because a lot of people were talking. If anything, it was just too hot. It was too warm because the air conditioning went out right before we, uh, that day is what we were told. Right. But I wasn't having to lean into anyone's ear to talk to them or anything. Right. It's really because I was doing that all night. Well, you also don't have a voice that carries it all. Right. So they just surprised me. I would, I would just sit there and talk a foot away from these people or two feet. We'd have no problem. So yeah, that invalidates my wish that it was quieter. I can't hear a word you're saying and I'm like one foot away from you. We're also in a car. Yeah. Um, did you guys find it interesting, like, uh, some of the selection of the, of the, because we had a big giveaway, right? And did you guys find it interesting at all, like, some of the things that went when they went, for example, we had the Logitech guitar hero guitar that was like a $200 guitar that was like, what, the sixth item that was picked up? Someone had to be coerced to take that thing. Yeah. I just don't think most people realized what it was. They just saw a guitar hero guitar. No one assumed it was expensive or made out of wood or anything like that. Most people probably don't even know that a $200 guitar exists. Because by all rights it shouldn't. Or it could very well be the case that everybody's like, I got too many of those fucking things already. Yeah. And luckily the person that got it, uh, lived in the area so they didn't need to check it on the plane or anything like that. Yeah. I'm surprised by how fast the prototype putty got taken. Oh, really? Was that a quick grab? Yeah, it was going pretty quick. I mean, really the best things that were there that were like the prototype putty, the orange box fleece and the Starcraft bag and that guitar. So that really doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah. The guy who got the orange box fleece, it fit him perfectly. I was really happy to see that that worked out for him. So it was like a perfect fit. It was meant to be. Man, but I don't know. My favorite thing out of the whole bag was the guy who got the Statue of Happiness. From GTA 4. That would have been rad, but I enjoyed that. Um, but just the meetup was a lot of fun. Met a lot of cool people. And some people managed to get their shirts and time for the meetup, which I was glad to see. Um, I'm sorry if you didn't get your shirt and time for packs, there wasn't any much I could do about it. I was talking to this one listener, Trevor, what's up? He, uh, pulled me inside. He was like, man, I want to buy you a shot of whiskey. I was like, all right, let's go do a shot. And this was like right when the shit got started. And there was a pretty long line to, you know, to come into our meetup. And so that resulted in a pretty long line at the bar. And you know, I guess Trevor had a few drinks before he came out and just walked straight up to the front of the line and was like, two shots. And like he handed me the shots and I was like, oh man, I think there's a line back there and the bartender was like, there's a line here and he was all perturbed. And at first he was just like, well, whatever. And so he took our shots and we were like, ah, talking and then, and then he looked at the line and he was like, oh shit, the line is really long. I was like, yeah, buddy. Well, free shit. It was funny though. It was good. Put me in a happy place. Yeah, I mean, it went, I don't want it to sound like I thought it was, it sucked. It went really well. And I'm, I'm really glad that people seem to have fun and it was really nice to meet so many people. No one was an asshole. So that was kind of nice. I have expected people to come up and say, who the fuck do you think you are to be on this podcast, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, that was the first day, um, what about the second day? I mean, was, I guess, was the big thing on Saturday, just the Brodio green. Yeah, I was pretty much it. I mean, I was working the whole time. So anything I would have to see about PAX is really boring. And appointments, appointments, Brodio, like that was pretty much my whole time there. So my, that first segment was pretty much my time at PAX, right, me playing games. I really didn't get to go to panels or anything like that. Um, okay. So as the, the Brodio member that was not on the stage, um, what did you think of the panel? I mean, I, I think, uh, if you guys go and listen to the panel or they're, it kind of speaks for itself, right? People were laughing every, every other minute. I think it was really, really well done. And it went really well. I mean, the, the crazy thing about it, I mean, it's surprising and in some ways it's not surprising at all is, uh, I mean, it felt like listening to an old episode of GFW Radio, you know, Sans Chuff Love, but, uh, fucking, um, you know, they were right back in, you know, they were into the mix just like that, you know, it was good. It was very entertaining and some, uh, and then, and like you said, Arthur, some candid answers specifically on like, you know, what happened when GFW magazine got shut down and it's not. So, and I think, uh, I don't know if we want to plug. How we can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to go up on a geek box on their website. Yeah. Geekbox is going to have the, uh, the full audio feed from, uh, from the GFW reading recording. Uh, and one up is going to have a video like split into three parts of the entire thing with the exception. Maybe like 45 seconds where David was changing the tape, uh, but, uh, yeah, David Ellis was recording the whole thing and Ryan Scott somehow got an audio recording of it. So people will be able to listen, uh, including some of the, the wash out questions that got asked in the, uh, the QA session, uh, but uh, yeah, I mean, it's hard to, to talk about like so much of the stuff that was cool about, about packs for me, which is like hanging out with people and like getting to, to like do the road trip up and like hang out with friends and, and meet listeners like it was really nice every time someone came up and said hello. And listening is where we horribly butchered the name of the gamer tag. I mean, to be fair, meeting listeners who, whose names I have horribly butchered. That's pretty much all that happens. I wasn't going to be accused of Tory. No, no. It's fine. It's not accused of Tory. It's a fact. But I am the guy that fucks up people's names on the podcast apparently. We rectified the situation. We tried. Rad Devin is the guy's name right along. Yeah. Um, but I mean, like it was just, I think for most people, like the cool thing about packs is just the social aspect of it as opposed to like panels or stuff like that, like the ability to go and hang out with people and play games and talk about games. Yeah. I mean, it was cool, like, uh, I mean, I don't know how it happened, but I was hardly ever with you guys for packs. I mean, Sunday was the only day I really hung out with y'all. And so like what I would do when I was by myself, like, I don't know anybody that would just like say what's up. I mean, we would just sort of like roam the floor together and I just kind of check this random stranger for like 30 minutes and check out some games and then, you know, go our separate ways, rinse, repeat. It was kind of fun. It was cool. Hang out with a bunch of listeners. We had a listener bias dinner on Saturday against our will. Yeah. Yeah. I believe your name was Arland. Thank you. If I'm fucking your name up, I apologize. Yeah. You sneaky son of a bitch. What was the tattoo of? I didn't get a good look at it. It was, um, it was like a human turning into a tree. Um, and man, he, you would, I mean, you might know the artist or something. It was, it was inspired by something, but I forgot. Well, uh, do you guys have any, like, closing thoughts? I mean, it's going to be a shorter podcast, obviously, and it's going to be, uh, a much more quality podcast that will import your house, but, um, we wanted to get you guys something out of packs. I wanted to have Sean Elliott on the, uh, on the podcast, but he was in the film last night. And he was exhausted. I mean, he's on the three hour time difference. So he was laying down. And I think also his, uh, his deep hands were pretty full up, so he, you know, he wasn't too comfortable with that situation either. I mean, he did make a special guest appearance that if you listen close, you can hear during the first section, but, uh, uh, so I think that's it. I think, I think we're done and I think we're going to record another podcast later this week. And this will hopefully go up sometime in the next 24 hours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ♪ California, here we come ♪ ♪ Right back where we started from ♪ ♪ A battle to the floor thinking of the war ♪ ♪ Got to get us to the show ♪ ♪ California, here we come ♪ ♪ Right back where we started from ♪ ♪ A battle to the floor thinking of the war ♪ ♪ Got to get us to the show ♪ ♪ California, here we come ♪ ♪ We got to get us to the show ♪ ♪ California, here we come ♪ California, here we come, right back where we started from, California, California, California, California. California, California, California, California. California, California, California, California. California, California, California, California, California, California, California, California. California, California, California. [BLANK_AUDIO]