Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 29 - 08/13/09
Salutations! It's Anthony Gallegos, Tyler Barber and Arthur Gies this week as we talk about Shadow Complex, Operation Flashpoint 2, Fable 2 and more in what we've been playing, then we move on to talk about good and bad game design in the second segment and close out with letters. Fat penis to you, John Hughes. Thanks for getting it.This week's music, in order of appearance:Sunny Day Real Estate - SnibeRise Against - Long Forgotten SunsSimple Minds - Don't YouThanks!
Hey everybody, this is Arthur, your regularly scheduled Rebel FM will be starting in about 15 seconds, but this is to let you know that our T-shirts are finally on sale at StoreEnvy.com. You can find our store at RebelFM.storeEnvy.com. You can check out more information, including sizing, where we're shipping and all that at eat-sleep-game.com, and we hope you guys like them. Enjoy the show. [Music] Speaking of cats, welcome to Rebel FM, 2019. [Music] Nice save. So we're here to talk about video games. I'm Anthony Gallegos, associate editor of our game spy as well as our contributor to EatSleeveGame.com. With me, as always, is Tyler Barber. Hello, howdy. And Arthur Geese. Greetings. [Laughs] You're welcome. Hello and welcome. So what are we talking about? [Laughs] We're going to start with what we've been playing. As per usual, then we're going to go into good and bad game design and close that with letters. Per usual, I believe. All right, Tyler, why don't you kick us off? God damn it, don't talk like that. [Laughs] [Laughs] [Laughs] Tyler, we're watching some Jim and Derek. Jim and Eric. Yeah, but Jim and Derek is their personas on Vimeo. They're Panama Beach, spring break personas. Turbo fuel. Turbo fuel. That's what I wish I had right now because trying to decide if I'm even going to sleep tonight before QuakeCon. So, try turbo fuel gas. [Laughs] I'm sorry. Tyler, what have you been playing? Tell me about Shadow Complex. Right, yeah. Can you talk about Shadow Complex? The embargo went up today. Are you sure? Because I'm pretty sure it goes up next week. Boo. Boo. I thought I could have sworn in the amount said that it went up today, so I'm a bitch. Do you want to check your email really quick? Yeah, maybe we need to do that, I guess. Well, here, check it real quick while I talk about what I've been playing. I've been playing, I played some Civ Rev for iPhone last night. Yeah, I saw screenshots of that. How does that compare to the DS version? I think it's pretty much exactly the same. The graphics looked much better than the DS version. Yeah, I guess it is sharper than the DS version. No, I mean, even just the whole art style was much more closer to the revolution art style of the 360 and PS3. Yeah, I guess I haven't played too much of any of them is the problem. Ah. But I mean, as far as I can tell, it's like still the full-fledged game. You know, you still make guys, you still build in your cities. You still compete against all these other civilizations. You can save your game midway through, I mean, which is an obvious need for us. It's an obvious need for a Civ game. And right now, it's on sale for $4.99. Oh, shit. So for me, it was beyond worth it. I mean, for people that just want like a Civ light, basically. Yeah. To take along with them. Or just sort of an intro to Civ. Yeah, I just think it's like Civ light. I mean, they strip away a lot of the things that maybe like the more hardcore players aren't going to bother to do anyways. In regular Civ, they'll probably just automate. They'll just kind of auto-automate to them and you have advisors in Civ Rev to help you just make decisions. Like before you go to war, you can be like, what do you guys think? And they're like, yeah, we probably can't do this. Yeah, that was something that I kind of wished Civ 4 for PC actually had. Just because it, you know, it made me give me more informed decision about what I wanted to do. Right. And then I guess beyond that, I've been playing Trials. Which when this podcast is being recorded, my review isn't up yet. And my review is kind of hanging between a four star and a four and a half stars. And what it's hanging on is whether or not, because it has a really cool level editor in there. Build your own levels, but it doesn't, like as far as I can tell from the partner in that version, I've been playing. The only way you can search for levels that other people have made is only people on your friends list. You can only share them with people on your friends list. And if that's the case, that's like, why do you even put the level editor in there? Because at max, people are going to have 100 people on their friends list. And of those 100 people, how many of them got trial and of those, how many are going to actually make levels. So for me, it's like, yeah, I mean, how many people on your friends list are going to be the super obsessive trials nerds that decide that they're going to make ridiculous levels. So it says, please note that all reviews are under a bargain until Monday, August 17th. But it is the same thing about impressions. That's true. And I've only played like an hour and a half of it today. I just watched a lot of people on Twitter over the weekend go, man, Shadow Complex is... Oh yeah, I can't talk about it. It's been the big Shadow Complex Cocktees all weekend. It's driving me insane. Whatever. Why would they not want people to say like, wow. I don't know. I mean, the embargo is still there. Yeah. Well, putting up reviews, one thing, but talking about impressions of it, I mean, haven't they? They've talked about it on other shows and previews have been written, probably based off. I mean, basically, Tyler didn't see anything more than you could have seen at E3. Right. Yeah. But yeah, Trials is... If that editor, you can't share it with people like the Internet at large or download maps from the Internet at large to me, that's like... Like, I'm waiting on confirmation from the team that made it. But if that's the case, man, that's a fucking... That's a heartbreaking game to me. Yeah, 'cause I mean, really, the game's great either way. Like, four stars I still consider, you know, it's a great game. You know, and it's funny 'cause like, when I play like a punitive game... Like, punitive isn't necessarily the right term, but a really difficult game like Ninja Gaiden, it's just not for me. But like, something like Trials were... Like, in Ninja Gaiden, sometimes I die and it's because I'm just not good enough. But with Trials, it's like, never 'cause I'm not good enough. It's just 'cause I haven't quite figured out, like, what I need to do. Like, when you... And each time... And every time I fuck up, I fuck up knowing that I fucked up because I fucked up. Like, it's not the game, it's not the game being overly punitive. Or it's just like, because I didn't do the exact right thing. I don't know, and it's really rewarding. I kinda compared it... People are gonna, in the review that I'm going to post, the way it's written right now. Um... People are inclined to compare it to things like Excitebike, because when they see it in their mind, they see a side scrolling dirt bike game, and they're like, "Oh, Excitebike!" But it's totally not to me, I think it has more in common with games like... Donkey Kong Country or Braid. And the reason I say that is because like, the premise, let me just say like, the basic idea behind it. Like, there aren't enemies you have to deal with. But like, when you play Donkey Kong Stage, the point is to get from A to B, and you'll have to deal with some harrowing shit along the way. Except you have to collect bananas. But you don't have to collect bananas in Donkey Kong. And ride animals. But I'm saying it has more in line with those games than it does to something like Excitebike or MX versus ATV. Like, what? I don't know that I agree, I think that in a lot of ways it is a lot like Excitebike, because Excitebike is strictly getting from point A to point B in like... Excitebike is a race though. Like, this isn't a race, this is more like a puzzle solving. I mean, it can be like a race, but there are lots of different ways to clear courses, and there's a right way and a wrong way, I just... Yeah, but Excitebike, the point is to get, is to get like... to see this place within a certain time. And Trials, I feel like the most fun part of the game is just completing it. Like, you'll play like a hard-ass stage and like something like breaking a big fuck man. I cannot believe I just did that. I mean, I can believe it's more, it has more of a platformer sensibility than a racing game. That's what I'm saying. I just think people see it and they think racer, and it's not at all. Like, it is like a platforming game with a bike with fucking crazy physics, and you got to use those physics to do crazy shit. Like, basically, if you've ever watched the X Games and seen the people that do like the urban biking, where they go vertically up onto boxes and ride along rails and stuff like that, yeah, it's like the same thing you have to do like precise... The people that should be riding Fixies... Yeah, exactly. They do precise little movements, and Trials is literally all about that. And in the later stages, they become so difficult that, really, I said also that it becomes more like you're playing stages within a stage. We're just doing like one tenth of the stage is like a fucking like... I can't believe I just did that. All right. Yeah. The other downside I said is that you only get a... I mean, people scoff at it, but you only get 500 tries or 30 minutes to do a level. I watched you rack up like 80 tries in about 90 seconds the other day. Yeah, because later on, once you really have an understanding of the way the bike feels, and like you understand exactly what the level is trying to make you do to get past something, like there will be a series of things that look like little stepping stones that are only big enough for one tire at a time. So you'll realize, oh, I need to do all these on my just my back wheel. And so you'll do like the initial take off and realize in the first two seconds that you're not... that your speed's fucked up. So you'll be like, so your immediate thing is to be to reset. And so I'll do that like 10 times before I finally get that one that even gets me on the first one. Then I'll fuck up, I don't go and do it a second time. So I'm saying it's so easy to rack up things. Like for me, half the fun, I'm not really caring about where I play some leaderboards the first time through. Like I just want to actually complete the level. So for me, it's like don't limit me to 500 tries or 30 minutes. Give me like when I've worked my way through like the first like, like, you know, 5/6 level. You know, I only have like one little chunk more to go. Like it's frustrating that like after like 20 something minutes of agonizing like, you know, victory, like I finally just get cut off. I mean, I can comprehend the mindset behind it, which is to say, well, we have to have some kind of challenge. But at that point, adding a challenge at 500 tries just seems like the only people that you're going to affect by that are people that are just going to get so mad. Because for me, the thing is that 500 is already such a high number that it's like, it feels really arbitrary. Yeah, it's like the person that's willing to try that long, like I was, just let me keep going. Right, the challenge is the level. Yeah, exactly. I just wanted to get it because I mean, like, for me, it's like, like, yeah, it's like the first one minute. Like the first section, no, the second section of the very last level in trials, I've probably spent 200 tries trying to do and still not been able to do it. Like just the second section. So it's like, I don't know. I think it's a great game. I think that a lot of people should buy, like, of all the Xbox Live Arcade games, Shadow Complex, I haven't really played it. It's the best one out there coming out this summer. Like, Shadow Complex could easily be way better. What I'm saying, Trials is such an easy game to jump in and out of because then even on top of all those standard things of getting through, there's all kinds of bonus modes like riding one of those fucked up steel balls that you see at, like, Vegas shows. You know, with the dirt packers riding circles, except this one's on rails and going all round on roller coaster. So you have to, like, manage your gas so that when it goes around in a flip, you have enough momentum to not lose control. Like, it's just got all these really cool games. They're like, you'll ride on top of those balls and so you'll have to, like, engage your brakes just right so that it rolls forward. So you can jump onto another one and then, like, engage your brakes so it rolls forward while you're rolling backwards. Like, it says all these cool little tricks that I just think it's really clever game. So, and if you already have Steam, then you should just go get Trials 1 and 2 on Steam 'cause I bet you could probably get them both for, like, less than $20. So... But achievement. Well, but achievement. Yeah, good luck getting on a bunch of those anyways. Well, um... I was gonna ask about that because that's one of the selling points for that game for me is the achievement. Man, they just... I don't even care. Like, I honestly, like, I probably didn't even get that many from doing it. The achievement was me, was just being able to, like, if someone looks on the leaderboards, I have a placement for the last level or something. Ooh! And digestion. Sorry. That's the pizza fucking. You had your pizza fast. I don't know. Fast stuff, a little birdie. You know, the thing is, is that there's, like, the achievement for me is someone being able to look on the leaderboards and even see that I have, like, an assigned number for the last track. Like, hey, I fucking finished this. Like, because a lot of people don't even do that. And yeah, I mean, we were talking about this before where you were looking at the leaderboards and over time you could tell when reviewers would stop playing the game because the leaderboards would have less and less people. Yeah, like, easy and medium. I was placing, like, on the 500s. And then when I got into Hardin Expert, I was, like, in the top 50 every time. So I was, like, okay, a lot of people obviously got started to get fucking frustrated as hell with this. So, but yeah, it's a great, it's a great game. I like Shadow Complex. It's not associated with an unknown bigot. Shadow Complex, so she was a bigot? Orson Scott Card. Oh, I didn't know that he wrote the story for that. Uh, it's, he didn't, it's based in fiction from his books. And I think it's written by Peter David, who's a pretty famous comic book author. Yeah, then it's hardly associated with Orson Scott Card. I mean, it still sends money to Orson Scott Card. Eh, whatever. And he hates the gays. Yeah, well, so do a lot of people. I'm just saying. Really like them either. I don't like them either, but... I'm not saying it's going to make me boycott Shadow Complex because I have a ten foot boner for that game. Right, well, I mean, there's probably plenty of games. Thanks, Tyler. That if you knew more about the people that were behind them, you'd find out all kinds of unsavory shit you weren't happy about that they're involved in. And, you know, it's not like Orson Scott Card put out a press statement that was, like, all money from Shadow Complex, I'm going to use to hunt down and kill the gays. That's just money to hate the gays. This is the only reason I accepted this, because I thought I don't have enough gay-hating money in my account right now. Exactly. So, so what do you think of Shadow Complex so far? It brings me back. You know, of course the immunity thing people talk about is like Super Metroid 2.5. Or Castlevania. Yeah, or Castlevania 2.5. You know, like those are the immediate things. Super it reminds me a lot of like Flashback in a way. That's what I think when I look at it. I feel like they've been on record as comparing it to Flashback. Although I do have to say like punitive, because in Flashback you would like turn a corner down. Or out of this world, I think. Yeah, and out of this world too. There are especially some graphical things that remind me of out of this world. Especially like when you're pointing your gun, the laser, just the way it looks. Your little laser gun in out of this world when you put down a shield they look very similar. I often mix out of this world and Flashback up in my head a lot. Flashback is the one that looked a lot better. Is out of this world the one in the jungle? No, that's Flashback. Okay. And that's only the first level, but everyone remembers that, because almost no one finished the first level. It's hard. That's really hard. Well yeah, because when you first start in Flashback you head to the left and something chases you. And you have to do like that. See what I do? My mind is blending two games into one. Which is the one where like you'll encounter the little piece of black goo. And all of a sudden you're just fucking out right. I think that's out of this world. That was probably my favorite game for Super Nintendo. I played it several times over and over and over. I don't know. That one in Mario Paint, I probably played them. Animated cutscenes. That was the big selling of Flashback. Yeah, I love the vector cutscenes. But yeah, I mean, but with Shadow Complex, you know, I really got that impression of Flashback. Although I do have to say like the character, I think because he's a 3D model. Maybe the way he's animated, like doing quick turns and stuff isn't as graceful, you know. But you know, as I guess a vector drawing would be. But still just like very smooth in that sense of being really agile in a 2D sort of platforming role. Responsive. Yeah, yeah. But man, they just have a bunch of other clever things in there too. Like, you know, you have this flashlight with you all the time. And it's great because, you know, you have it turned on and it also helps, you know, see which way you're aiming. So you could, you know, immediately start firing your gun in that direction. But it also sort of highlights different areas of the levels where it's like, you know, if it's yellow, then you need to shoot through the vent with your gun like that. Well, that's what will penetrate it. Or if it's green, then, you know, you need grenades. God damn, that reminds me of Metroid. Right, but what I liked about it is the fact that they color code it and they just say straight out. Like, this is what it is, you know, it's not like a guessing game where it's just like some kind of crazy rocks you can tell that are different and so you're like trying all these different things. It's like, no, you know, it's green, you need grenades. So it's just got stuff like that and even parts where you're like swimming. Like, were you going to water it? It looks so, I mean, like, the graphics are really good. They're really impressive. Like, when you turn on your flashlight in the water, it looks like 100 times better than a game like Under Toad. Well, I mean, that's what I was going to say, but I mean, 100 times actually. It's known for looking really good. Yeah, I mean, both of those are unreal sidescrolling games. But this, oh, it looks really good. That would surprise me that it would look way better Under Toad because I'm sure the engine's been iterated up on considerally. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So, I mean, just stuff like that. And like, even the swimming, it's not like, you know, you'd figure it's like you just match the A button, swim as fast as you can. But like, no, there's like a rhythm to it and like, you have to watch your guy and like, how is, how is arms voting? That's when I'm effectively even. And just the way that your character is always building XP, like none of the Metroid games ever had XP. I didn't play the castle of any game that everyone always compares to. That's what Xbox Live Arcade did. Yeah, but this has like, you know, an XP thing which also like tweaks my RPG boner, you know. Yeah, you know, I just really love about it. And like, everything from the sound effects and the level designer wanted to bring this up too. Every little section of the game feels like a unique place. And that way reminds me of the way, like, Valve games feel or, or like, Bioshock feels. You know, where every room feels occupied. Like, those crates are there for a reason. You know, it, it, so far, like, and again, I've been, I've only played about an hour and a half in. But every room that I've been feels different. And, and, you know, it's cool. Like, you know, it's one of those games where they give you a flashlight and there are dark rooms where you need a flashlight. And like, you know, like Call of Duty, you know, you get your night vision, but never use it. You know, stuff like that. And it's just badass. You know, I don't want to say too much in fear of stepping over any embargo toes. But, I mean, it's, I think it's, it should be a day one purchase for a lot of people. Anyone who is interested in any of those games I just mentioned. You know what a game I'd like to talk about for a moment? What's that? Operation Flashpoint. Oh, my God, what are you? Dragon Rising. Because, man. Meaning you would like to review Operation Flashpoint on our podcast? I did not review it. I merely said that I could tell, like, you know, there are times like, people hold back because they think that previews can't be opinionated at all. And that's never been the fucking motto when I was at one up and I've carried that over with Ryan in the game spy. So the way that you're in a brig game spy is previous Cherry is by taking one of the great sacred cows of PC gaming from the last seven or eight years. If it's really one of the great sacred cows of PC gaming, they should have shown us Operation Flashpoint on PC. But they didn't. They showed us the 360 version. That does strike me as odd. So why don't you paint the scene? Operation Flashpoint, for those people who don't know, is like a hardcore military combat sim. The guys that made the original one left and went on to make ARMA. So this is made by a different team. So ARMA is actually considered like the real sequel to Operation Flashpoint by a lot of like fans from my understanding. And this one is this new company trying to like make a game in that vein of like hardcore military sim where it's like you land with people. You can roam anywhere that isn't like a call of duty or a kill zone where you're on like a set path and there's being a narrative being told. This is like here's your mission. Kill guys. Like kill guys and take out your objectives. If you're playing on assisted mode, which is the easy mode in that game, it actually shows you objective markers on normal and on hardcore, no objective markers. It's just like use your minimap and figure out where you're going. Your minimap won't ever show you where enemies are. You'll just have to be able to get eyes on them. So essentially imagine the most rage-inducing parts of Ghost Recon the first Ghost Recon and then take the most rage-inducing part to say Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater. Yeah, my boss compared it actually to the original Ghost Recon because you know the original Ghost Recon was very sim, I guess. Well it was Rainbow Six in the jungle. Right. And so, you know, and so yeah, so it's not even like, you know, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare where you have like a little triangle that paints them after a while. And those to an extent are very linear as well. Right, well those are still guiding experiences which I've discovered that, you know, there's something to be said about a really well crafted guided experience. It's fun. Like it's just like the guys, I think someone from Finnie Ward said like the best shooters you'll play will be on rails, but they'll try and hide the fact that you're on rails like really well. You know, and this game like, like even Crisis like gives you like freedom to go explore, but it's just channeled enough that you always feel like you're going somewhere. Whereas in this game it's easy even when you're heading towards an objective just to feel bored. I mean there's, to give an example of a really good shooter that's not on rails that has problems because of it Far Cry 2. Yeah. Is a game that a lot of people have a really hard time getting into because it's not guided because it is very much, oh well you go wherever you want. Yeah, but imagine Far Cry 2 where you'll just be driving in your car and all of a sudden you'll just see you are dead. And it's like because a random bullet hit you in a vital place and you die in one shot. You know what I mean? Like that is, that is Operation Flashpoint because it's so easy to die. Like at least on assisted mode when you hit a new checkpoint your team revives. But like people like, you know, we're complaining, you know, I knew they were going to complain like that I didn't order my team around very well. But the fucking radial menu for giving orders in that game on 360 is so convoluted. You hold right bumper and it brings up a radial menu of like four options. Then each of those menus probably goes into like four other sub menus. Like it literally goes like four menus deep. It's the expression menu from Fable from Hell. It is, it is, it is like that. And so they go so deep that in the whole time you're like standing still while you're doing this. So it's like, it's like most of the time I would just be like, move here. If I can, I hope you guys live. And it would just be like, you'd move them forward. They wouldn't necessarily jump right behind cover. Like they, in a lot of ways the AI to me was not even as smart as something like Ghost Recon. Like Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, you tell them like, you know how nice it is in those games. You just hit A point to cover an area where there's cover and they'll naturally jump in it. Like in this game I feel like they were doing way less intelligent things which really broke me out of the sim aspect of it. And then on top of that, the nasty parts of the sim aspect would come out when they'd take a bullet and die. And be like, all right, now I'm down a man. Or like just so many little things on it that break up the sim. Like if you tell them just to follow you, any time you move it's like you have this fucking magnetic bubble around you. And they have reverse polarity so they constantly keep this distance between you and them. So like one of them got injured and I wanted to bandage him so he'd stop being bleeding out. And so I was like, but I didn't tell him, I had him unfollowed. Someone I'd run towards him, he'd just back up. And so eventually I had to be like fucking cover this spot. Now I can fucking bandage you. Like, I... I mean and that's all fine and good if it's a niche PC product because there are people that fucking gravitate to that shit and love it. Oh man, those are like rule lovers, like people who love to love rules. And I mean there is a marketable audience for that on the PC. I'm gonna get lots of hate for this and I know it. But I don't care. Like I said, that game isn't for me. It's for somebody out there. But I was just not impressed. And I just don't... I like guy to experience the only thing I would say that game has going for it that might make it something that I would play. I got other people got is that you can play four player co-op for the campaign. Playing with four people that, you know, there's no AI, you're just doing this together. That might be fun. Like, but I don't know man. I was just dying all over the place and having to redo huge chunks of it. And so such large chunks where you're just running and not even in combat until like you see a guy from like quarter of a mile away, he shoots you. And he hits your leg. Now you can't sprint anymore because your leg's been injured. So sprinting is disabled on your guy. It's like, come on man. And I don't know. Yeah, there's people out there listening to that description saying man, that sounds badass to me. Yeah, you know, that's just not me. Have all you want. That's like the same guy that was talking about how he'd love to be like in a game where he could like fight on a battle star and be like the fucking mechanic that just fixes things. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it always makes me think like when we used to play paintball a lot, there would always be like these one guys, I considered them role lovers. And they'd always like try to get everyone to agree to these terms of like basically what you're saying. If you're shot in the leg, then you can't use that leg. If you're shot in the arm, you can't use that arm because if you were shot, it's like whatever the fuck this is paintball. It's like a Renfaire combat. It's a game. It's not like supposed to be war. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's for you. For me. It's a game. For them, it's a similar, it's still entertainment, but it's less a game and more a simulation. Right. Yeah, and it's just, you know, the simulator thing runs into the same problem. A lot of sim games run for me, which is anytime you have sim, any non-sim things really break you out of it. And the dynamic voice acting, just like an armor, is still hilarious at times when you like tell them to move to an area. So there's like one pre-recorded thing for like move two. And then it's all dynamic for the letters and numbers that he says. So it just sounds like, like, you know, 10 steps better than like a speaking spell. So. I want a game that has speaking spell dialogue. Yeah. Awesome. I just wonder what they're thinking, putting this on the 360. Like, I don't understand. You know, well, speaking of another, like there's, it's just a weird thing going on where people are putting games on 360. I mean, on the one hand, I understand it because 360 third party sales are really good. And there's a really high attach rate. And the system is actually the only system this year whose sales are increasing. Right. But there, I would say there's, so I didn't mean to interrupt you. But I'm just saying third party games like, like, I don't know, call Juarez and stuff I can see that on. But like, operation flashpoint, dragon rising, you know what I mean? Like, something from like a niche thing, like, it seems like even that'll have trouble. Or like, for instance, this other game I just wrote a preview on called Tropico 3. That is a game I cannot believe it was coming out on 360. Like, I know the original one's an old game. It's kind of like a blend. This, even the new one's kind of the same. It's a blend between like, Sims. The SimCity meets like, make your own dictator. Which, that's actually why like, when I sat in on this demo, I wasn't excited. But you guys know me from listening to my stories of Civ and stuff. This game is like, for me, it's like, real a nation, a tropical nation. With an iron fist. With an iron fist if you want, or make the people love you. But like. With an iron fist. You know, you start off and you have to like, manage the construction of buildings. And you have to manage like, your debt and your profits. And so like, if you go into debt too long to like, United States and stuff they might invade you. Or try and cause a coup. So the whole point is to like, Civ is like, the way it's like, Civ is that you have to last for a certain amount of time. And then this, your only goal is to make sure that your dictator stays in power until the end. And so like, you might have to like, like, at one point I was doing this construction project to build more housing. Or the guy, the demo that was giving, the guy was building construction project to give more housing. And he was like, you know, I don't like that. So he sent out one of his soldiers and just had the guy killed. Like right there in front and all these people lost respect for you. So when it came time to election time we like, did some polling. And the guy was like, 75 to 25 against me. So it was like, you know, you can tamper with the polls. You can announce edicts to try and boost your popularity. Like, announce that same sex marriage is okay. Like, stuff like that. And you have to like, worry about everything. Even like a building, building like things like power plants too close to like your beautiful areas. So that you won't decrease tourism to bring money in. You have to worry about like, if you have oil on your land. Like, how much oil you restrict from the United States to the USSR. So that they won't try and invade you. Like just, it's a really intense game. Can you invade other nations or your own? You're like your own nation for what I can tell. But another cool part of it is being able to like, invent your own dictator. So you like, choose their appearance and then you choose like their background. Like, hey, this guy is like an immigrant from, you know, from Cuba. Who is now. And then like, you can say like, how he got his rise to power. Like, he was popularly elected. Or he like, killed a bunch of people to get to power. And then you have to choose two qualities. Like, he's incorruptible. And then you have to, you have to choose two faults that you have to live with with your guy. Like, alcoholism. That's cool. Or he's like a womanizer. And they all have like, stat effects. Yeah, that's kind of like some three stuff. Yeah, so like, if you guys, a womanizer, like, smart women is what it says. We'll have 10 less respect for him. So you'll always have to deal with that amongst your populace. So, you know, it's just like, it seems like a really cool game. And like, it's, it's pretty. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, what are the visuals? It looks a lot like a, like a modern day SimCity. Like, they made a SimCity where they, like a building, but it was like modern day graphics. You know, not picks, like, sprites. Right. Like the last SimCity game. Oh, yeah, SimCity Societies. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of like that except, you know, it's on a beach. It's cool looking, but I, and I, and I see like on PC how it could be a lot of fun. Like, I'll definitely want to check it out. But I just don't see like on 360. Like, I don't think that that's going to resonate with the audience as well. I think that there is an audience there that could really find something to love about it. In Europe, maybe. I still think that there are people here that, assuming that the budget to put it on 360 isn't very, isn't very high. I mean, is there a PC version of that game releasing here? Yeah. The, the only other reason I can see where, where these companies would be putting these games on the 360 is that they don't have obscene graphic requirements. And the 360 is extremely easy to port code to from the PC. Right. It's just, yeah. I think the distribution costs and printing discs and all that. Like, I wonder how profitable it really is. Plus, plus with the game, like Tropico, where there's like so much going on. Just, I just wonder about how that's all going to translate to using analog sticks. Like, I don't know. I mean, you figure that they spend like a couple hundred thousand like putting together a 360 port because they're doing the most bare bones port that they can from a game that didn't have a very high budget anyway. Maybe. You guys think, you know, you know, I sort of wonder if there might be a, a large portion of 360 owners that are sort of old retired PC gamers that might remember these games. You know, I don't know, like maybe guys who don't really PC game anymore, but remember some of these. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting hypothesis. I don't know that. I mean, the game has a hardcore cult following. So, I mean, just, I don't know, 360, like, you know, you look at some of the titles that were predominantly like PC related, like what was the Elder Scrolls, some of the old Elder Scrolls titles weren't they PC only? They were all PC only. The first two, the first two Elder Scrolls games were PC only and then Morrowind was on Xbox and was really popular. Right, yeah. And then look at like fall out the way now. You know, I was just thinking about for a second while it came up was that last week we made a comment, like just kind of off the cuff about how we seemed like to us, like just anecdotally PS3 owners tend to be the dudes, like a lot of PS3 owners tend to be like the dudes that by Madden called do do that sort of thing. People took that to mean that we thought every PS owner was just some like idiot person, like, that just bothered me because I don't think that that's what we meant at all. I feel like that's, I'm gonna throw out something that may make PS3 owners angry and, you know, at least this time I was saying something intentionally, although not to make them mad. I mean, they are the hypersensitive Nintendo fanboys of this console generation. Yeah. You did not say anything about like, about the console market without offending a Sony fan. Yeah, I just, I just didn't mean to make it come off like we thought Sony, Sony, like people that are like hardcore into Sony consoles are dumb, but it's just like, I think that Sony tends to have a better niche in that market with those people than a 360. That's only from last generation because everyone had a PS2. So in their mind, they're like, PS3 is the thing to get. But in a way, I don't know. I think that's changing. I think that's changing too. Oh, I think it's changing too. 360 is now... I'm gonna tell you what changed it a fucking $500 price tag. Yeah. Because those people cannot, the bulk of those people that bought onto the PlayStation brand that made it what it is. $500 price tag, because the, for the fact that price of a PS3, you could get 360 with Call of Duty or with Madden. Or with both. Yeah. I mean... I mean, Nielsen released some studies today that, you know, tracked the most 360 owners. 360 owners play their 360s more often than PS3 owners play their PS3. Or I think it's, isn't it that 360s are just seeing more playtime than the other systems? Well, yeah. They had two different measures and that was one of the other ones. Like, I'd be interested, like, per system, like, you know, like, this is how many 360s are out. This is how many PS3s are out. I would be interested to see how sports games do, like per console, like, ratio wise. Because, like, you know, like, the dudes are on the corner at the corner of the corner store, right? They have a fucking dream. And they are always playing a PS3 sports game specifically. Like, fucking, I've never been in there once where they're not playing games. Yeah, I've seen them playing Night Around 4 and the show and... Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I was just wondering, like, how much, how much, how well sports games seem to do on PS3? Because, man, even the people that live down the stairs from us, they have a PS3 there. Like, playing a fucking sports game, too. It seems, from looking at the EA's numbers anyways, it seems like sports games debut and sell for the first few months a lot more on the 360. And then they have a slightly longer tail on the PS3. Especially after, like, the big seasons, like we were talking about last week and the beginning of the year, catalog sales for PS3 games, the first sports game seemed to jump. Yeah, look at the spike in June. I mean, or June or July, whenever it was, you know, that's like Fight Night 4 was out, Tiger Woods was out and CAA was out. Well, and those all sold better on the 360, like, initially. But I'm talking about, like, EA says that their sales numbers for the PS3 were a much bigger percentage of their profits than they were for the other half of the year. A couple of, that reminds me, a couple of the little things that I also played over the week that I could talk to you about now is I did play a little bit of Tiger Woods on Wii. And that game is really cool. It's pretty crazy, like, with the motion plus how, like, even the angle of your wrist, you can actually, like, you know, do the draws and stuff, like, on the shots. But man, the putting, like you said, is fucking difficult. Like, yeah. Putting in the other console versions is hard, too. Yeah. Right, well, you do it with the analog stick swing, right, on the console one. Yeah, but it's not. I mean, you have to adjust the angle of your shot and, like, you set, you set a certain point so you know, like, how hard you want to hit it. Right. That's, that's kind of how it is on the Wii one, too. My mom ended up having to set the Wii one to where the putting, at least, was classic style. Like, you know, instead of, like, the more, like, the more, like, like, motion sensitive one. The rhythm gauge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My, my, my parents are having a really sad. So your parents would have fun on the drive and just at the putt, they would just hate it. They got better with it after they switched it to the classic one. But yeah, and the driving stuff, they were totally into it. Yeah. I, I actually got much better at putting on the Wii with the motion plus than I did on a PS3 or 360, although I did eventually get better on those two. It just took a lot more. I'd like to go back to play Tiger Woods on 360, but I just feel like I'm caught in the cycle of releases. Yeah. Even on the Wii, it still looks pretty good. I was surprised that's a game. Like, I mean, Grant is not doing a bunch of crazy shit. They've been saying it actually, like, looks pretty good. Yeah. Like, especially playing on a standard diff to television, which my parents have. So, but yeah, I also, I also played some sacred to talking about older games. Since I bought that the other day, I created a, I like ancient protector. I think is what they're called. I can't remember. It's basically, it looks like a newbus and it's like this like guy made of like magic and metal, basically, like a little animated statue that can shoot lasers out of his god damn arm. And the reasons, like sacred to has some really bad frame rate problems at times, like really bad, but like, and I'm playing it on 360. Why did you buy the 360 version instead of the PC version? I have it for free on Steam, but I got it on 360 because I thought maybe you and me could play local co-op at some point. Because to be fair, like Baldur's Gate and all those games for PS2, local co-op is how I played them all the way through. Can you play local co-op on sacred? Yeah. It's Jason Wilson. Yeah. So that's why I was kind of into that thought, which is why I didn't play it on PC, because I like to play those games with another person. Like, even when you create your game on Xbox, you have to say that you don't want to play, like allow other people to jump in your game, otherwise it just makes it to where it naturally can have that happen. Or it's just an open lobby for any random motherfucker that wants to jump in. Right. And it's, so far it is a pretty cool game and you got like, you know, it's got like the WoW element with like doing quests for people with exclamation points above their head, and it's got like that easy ability to get into and be like, "Ah, I just want more quests." Remember when that used to be a Diablo element and not a Diablo element. Well, okay, that Blizzard quest element. Right. Yeah. And, you know, it's really easy to get into, but like, the way that had me sold, like, I still think it's like only a so-so game. But if you like those, like, over the head, like, I symmetric for you, like, just fucking beat on thing games, it's the best you're going to get for 360 right now. But the reason it had me sold is like, if you don't hit start in the beginning, it goes into like, you know, like the trailer cuts, like, opening thing. And it's got like all the classes killing all these fucking skeletons on the battlefield. And the whole time it's playing like the most, like, Dragon Force-esque metal song with, like, high-pitched vocals and fucking squealing guitars. Is this a Korean game or a European game? Yeah, it's CDV, I think it's a European game. Like Russia. Yeah. That explains it. So yeah, that's why I was like, I was like, all right, these guys know what they're doing. I've never seen those things. Like, stupid fantasy shoes. Have you seen The Kingdom Underfire games? No. Those had the fucking most ridiculous metal music. The Kingdom Underfire Circle of Doom. Tits everywhere. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that game was odd because, like, out of the characters you could choose, you know, I had all the different characters. And, you know, there was one female character, and then there was, like, one character that was supposed to be sort of, like, part, like, bowl or something. I don't know. Uh-huh. I interpreted him as sort of the legends in 13th Warrior, that movie, the 13th Warrior. But um... Which is an interpretation of the Grendel myth. Exactly. Um, but, like, so you figured the girl, they'd want to put her in some, like, skimpy, hot clothes, you know? 'Cause, like, she was all, like, round and volumptious, but, no, she was, like, really covered from head to toe. But, like, the guy had this loincloth with such a fine strip of cloth, like, that covered up his buttcrack and his creamy white, ash cheeks hung out on both sides, so big. So you had, like, man-ass on one side and moose it on the other. Like, who looked at those conned, those character designs, and said, "Let's go with this." Which is funny, because the other Kingdom Underfire games are completely gratuitous. They're... They cover almost nothing, and the way that the Darko females walk is, like, halfway between the porn, high-heel strut and a runway model. Right. Oh, boy. Those are... Um, you also saw Muramasa this week, didn't you? Yeah, but I can't talk about that. It's embargoed till Friday. Oh, okay. So the podcast will be up unless you're gonna put it up at midnight on Thursday. No, I think I'm gonna put it up tomorrow, actually. So, yeah, I mean, you know, but Muramasa, we played it at E3. Yeah, we did, and, um, that, you know, that game was really, really fun. We gave it our E3 game of the show for games by, and I was still standing by that as far as, like, what's coming out and... Like, we... We game of the show? We game of the show. Our game of the show was Scribblenauts, which I'm waiting on, like, retail of right now. So I'm... That is... That is why I... Yeah, I'm super stoked for that, too. I'm super stoked for that. Man, I... That's one of those games. To me, it just feels like the calm before the storm. Nobody's really talking about it. I feel like when... I mean, well, people aren't talking about it. Like, you know, it is getting a lot of hype. You know, the tacos do, and they're a cool thing, but, um, yeah, I feel like when that game hits, it's just gonna be... There's another great... Oh, that's really great. There's another great game coming out soon this month, uh, Professor Layton. There's new ones coming out for DS as well. Oh, this is cool. Okay, good. Oh, really? Yeah. It comes out August 24th or 5th. I have yet to play the first. Along with Metroid Prime trilogy for Wii, if you care. Mmm. I mean, if you never picked them up and you're interested in them, three games for the price at once. And they also support... Progressives. Wait, do they support Progressives? I don't know. I'm not sure. I think the first Metroid Prime game did, but it would... A lot of people, including me, didn't get GameCube until they took the component output off of the system. It's actually a pretty busy month for releases towards the end. September gets really busy. I mean, you know, we got... There's that Final Fantasy, or the City of Final Fantasy game for people who care. Really? Fuck. I can't play that game. It's not out yet. PSP fighting game. Final Fantasy characters. I don't know. I mean, that's not my cup of tea, but for some people I'm sure there'll be all about it. I mean, Christ's Chorus sold well. And then even on September 1st, man, that's when a bunch of shit drops, so we'll have to check out, like, Section 8 for those who care. I'm naturally good. I'm interested in that. I saw it at E3. I was overlooking it. You know, Mermasa comes out September 1st. So... One thing I thought that was the interesting thing about Mermasa is, bless you, there was a news story that came out last week. It was the... Man, I forgot. They were talking to one of the devs. I can't think of the guy's name, but he mentioned how. They create all their assets sort of in like a high death. Oh, the Mermasa people. Yeah, yeah. And that, you know, the Mermasa is going to be on Wii, but that there's... You know, it would be just like a hop skip and a step for them to do something in HD. And I would love to see this team do a... It doesn't surprise me. I mean, he hand paints the guy that's like the president of the company hand paints everything that's in that game. Man, that's awesome. I think an Xbox Live Arcade was mentioned as a possibility. Yeah, that would be a mate, or hey, man, it's so up a PSN exclusive, you know? Yeah. It sounds good. PSN. That's some good exclusives. Who knows? Yeah. Anyway, but... I don't know that it's quirky enough for PSN. Right. Oh, you know, it just... I mean, Castle Crashers wasn't quirky enough for PSN either. Yeah, but they did, you know, I guess their last game was PlayStation exclusive, so... Are there a game before their last? I think their last games. Yeah. Well, yeah, but that was just a PS2 game, because why the fuck would you make it for anything else? That's what I'm saying. I guarantee those were done in high res, though, originally too. They are work for that, but, uh... Yeah. Maybe fast to see them do an HT game, man. Yeah, September's gonna be insane, though, just like, since I do the reviews schedule. Like not only do we have, and then, like, Beatles Rock Band, how can this whole caliber PSP game... Oh, yeah. PSP game. Although, there's talk that that might get delayed. Yeah. Which one? Uh, Soulcalibur PSP, because no, I don't think anyone's seen it. I mean, we've seen it before. I mean... We've seen it with eyes on. Yeah, I don't think anyone's played it. Yeah, I don't know. When does Madden come out, is that... Oh, Madden's out this week? This week? Friday. Woo! So, reviews can actually already go up, so I think a lot of sites already have the reviews up. Um... And just to clarify, because I know otherwise someone will mention something in the comments, I know that Castle Crashers is coming to PSN, which is just funny to me, because, originally, Sony turned the Castle Crashers people down. Is what we were told. Just to clarify. I'm not like you can find that written anywhere. No, you will not find that written anywhere, but I am 100% sure of my source on that one. So... Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm thinking about... Also, I know it's not what I've been playing, but I'm thinking about playing some more World Warcraft soon. I don't know, any Temple is Con rules around. I start thinking about it. Are you going to Blizzcon? She's nostalgic. I am not. But I heard that the new races they're going to announce at Blizzcon for the expansion, like, people. They're the goblins and the furries. The internet is so crazy to me. Like, the people that, like, looked at the latest patch, data mined the latest patch to find the information that's already being sent in about new races. Yeah. Kids on the internet, man. They're fucking too powerful. Yeah. What's that? One guy's superannuation? Superannuation? I'm not sure. He gets a lot of fucking... He looks at all of those patents. Yeah, patents and shit. That's the literature. How do you find that? I know. But yeah, I mean, just seeing that, like, yeah, the new races they picked, I don't understand if those are the races. But... There's the goblins in the furries. The goblins doesn't mean make sense to me because to get fucking Warcraft on you, like, lore-wise, since Warcraft 3, they've been neutral. They've been a neutral faction. I think they would be a no-mish equivalent for Horde. Right. But the whole thing is that the goblins are already in the game and the goblin towns throughout the world are all the places that both Horde and Alliance can go and be okay. Like, the guards will attack either side of the attack, but they're... Their name made the goblins are going to be something new, maybe. Well, Ryan Scott's theory was that this is a goblin clan that is not related to those other clans. Yeah, just like the undead or a separate undead faction. From the rather undead you fight. Yeah. So we'll see. I don't know. But yeah, the worgen, like the werewolf people, like, come on, man. I don't know. It seems like such a weird thing. But Ryan says that for him, he's all but confirmed that the worgen are the race because recently... Okay, so I'm going to get really nerdy in you guys for just a second. I promise won't last long. Nah, let's do this to it. But it's just an interesting thing from Blizzard's point of view. So people on hunter message boards, hunters, the class and world worker where you get to take pets from... I'm familiar. Well, I'm just saying for people that don't know. You were familiar. I don't know. But lots of people don't know. Oh, sorry. So hunters in the game are, you know, like ranged tech guys who can basically beastmaster fucking random mobs, like creatures around the world. So like, they'll see a turtle, it's an enemy, and basically make it fall in love with them towards now their pet. And so they can use that pet to help them. So hunters on forums and stuff and wow, we'll find like random enemies, you're not supposed to be able to make into a pet and figure out ways to make them into a pet and it'll become like all their age to be like a hunter and have like that fucking pet that Blizzard found out and killed the ability to exploit that. And the precedent set by that is that Blizzard always let people keep those pets, you figured out those things, and just stopped it for the later people. So there are people that run around with like the one of a kind pet and stuff like that. Yeah, that's kind of cool. So there was this one of this enemy quest mob, which the way that someone figured out is obscene. It's like you have to fight them. And then when he's like below a certain amount of health, only then can you get him as your pet like Castle? I'm gonna figure this out. But he's a warden. He's one of the, the werewolf people. And so unlike every other precedent they've set Blizzard actually like basically made it toward now. He's not a pet that you can use to fight at all. He just, he still takes up your pet slot. But when he appears, you can't give him orders or anything, he just follows you around. And which makes him useless essentially. Yes. And so Ryan was wondering why that precedent but set down and now he read this and for him that all but confirms it because he's, he's heard around the block that Blizzard has the thing about having any of the playable races be able to be made into pets because it'd be the equivalent of in-game slavery. Right. Yeah, I was about to say that, that makes sense. That's, that's, yeah. Yeah, I can see that. That's definitely, I was a certain while, sorry to get more news on people just that they had to switch out a lot of the graphics recently to make it able to be played in China. So. Did you see the graphical changes that they made? No. They replaced shit like skulls and bones with boxes. Right. Because they can show bombs. And they're all sort of skill things in the, in the skill trees that are just like random shapes. You can be game sure they're going to do it though because when they China like temporarily shut down, like its servers, they would like drop the subscribers from like 12 million to like five. I think they, they account for half. So, and I also heard that the, you know how like how everyone's been wondering if Blizzard's going to announce a new IP, blah, blah, blah, blah, I've heard around the block that some people speculate that the next Blizzard IP is going to be a free to play MMO. So to try and garner that Asian market. So we'll see. Makes sense. It seems like they're the only company that doesn't need to do a free to play MMO to garner the Asian market. Well, they have China and stuff, but I just think that they really want to get like a ton more of the world. Like they want, it's not even going to be like a hard, I don't know, from what I've heard from people, it's not going to say hardcore game. Like a, it's much more of a casual or sort of game that's not even going to be competing with WoW in any shape or form. Like a battlefield, heroes, equivalent, like the way you can get a more hardcore version of Battlefield. Yeah. I don't know. Anyways, that was just me nerding out with you because that was some shit I learned that I thought was actually interesting for people that have a vague interest in WoW. What else has anyone else been playing? Was there anything else you wanted to tie or was in the middle of his talk when he got in the game? Oh, no, no, no. Sorry. I mean, I did play Guitar Hero 5 Thursday before I left the Houston. Thoughts? Um, having a, it's, you know, I don't know, to me, it seems like there's not much improved. It's the party-friendly Guitar Hero 5, basically. Does it play better than the last Guitar Hero game? Like, I've, I, for one thing, I've never, I don't own a Guitar Hero game. I've never owned a Rockman game. It should make you play Guitar Hero 3. I mean, I've played them at several parties, but it's like, yeah, they play, like the note tracks are fine. It's like all these things are standard. Like, you just, they should be. I mean, the HUDs cleaned up, that's one thing I really like, and the graphics are much, much better. Like, they no longer look like they're made out of clay, and I don't know. They don't look like the fucking like, possessed muppets that they did in the last couple of days. Yeah, yeah, they look much better. And really, you could tell they just straight up are curbing like rock band style with really smooth edges, and it's got, instead of a, instead of like a glossy finish, they have like a matte finish. I don't know, it's how, how I would describe it like a- Yeah, yeah. Like a glow. It's not shiny, it's- Yeah. And, and, you know, so, so that's cool, and, but, but really, they, it didn't seem like they were adding much in terms of like, gameplay, what you actually do. I mean, it's just stuff like, you can have four drummers. If you want, you can have two drummers, two guitars, you could have, you know, any kind of, and that stuff's cool because, you know, like, like one thing I wrote in my preview for Ganspie was like, there was a moment where I sat down with one of the guys demoing the game, and there was just another attendee, and it was myself, and we were all obviously confident drummers because we were all playing on hard and, like, hitting it in time, and like, brought me back to like being in the fucking drum line in high school, and it was badass because like, you know, the drums make audible noises when you're smashing them with your thing. The drums are the most, require the most finesse out of anything in that game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so that, you know, that, that was really cool, but, you know, I've, I'm not the type of guitar hero of fishing auto to be like, oh, well, the note tracking is better in this than, in that game or the other act, to me, you know, sure it feels like I'm playing the songs, you know, and, and it seemed like all the improvements were just, um, host sort of things, like the, the sort of party mode, which they described as like a jukebox mode, jukebox mode, where you can just set up a playlist and have it playing in your background, in the background of your party. And if somebody wants to- Really? Cause they were going to do that in rock band two, I think, and had it taken out because of licensing issues. Yeah, that, that's the way it is. They had TV sets up the way they had the whole night. I mean, there were kiosks where, you know, there were times where nobody was playing, but the songs were still going, and you just walk up, pick up, pick up a guitar, hit the on button, pick up, you know, your instrument, you know, you want to do bass, you want to do guitar? Go for it. So that's, I mean, that's cool, it's, it's user, you know, it's like user things, you know, you, you know, it makes more user friendly, but as far as like gameplay, mechanics, nothing new. I mean, they did it. They did it nice. Very, very little. Some pretty big value ads for guitar hero today, which is that first of all, if you buy guitar hero five, you will get guitar hero Van Halen for free, which is pretty much the only way I would ever consider buying guitar hero Van Halen, because I, I'm not that end of Van Halen in B, there are only like 45 songs in that fucking game for 60 bucks. And B, they're doing the rock band thing where you can transport the content from Guitar Hero World Tour to Guitar Hero 5. And with one rock band, you have to pay a fee. There's a $5 fee. Yeah. So you pay five bucks. But you just pop in the original rock band disc and it exports, whereas this, the Guitar Hero World Tour will use a code from the instruction booklet. And once it's done, you can't do it again. And it re-downloads the songs because they're improved quote unquote versions that have expert plus modes. So I mean, that's all, that's all extremely friendly to me that signifies that Activision is fucking terrified of the Beatles rock band, because they're basically saying, we will give you so much game if you buy this instead of that Beatles game that's coming out around the same time. Also, what do you think it's, it could also be a response to them. Maybe looking and saying, dude, we have a shit load of Guitar Hero games coming out like we need to push some of this stuff, man, you know, like it seems unreal. I mean, Rock Band and Guitar Hero are both coming out with two major platforms this fall. Like they have their, you know, Guitar Hero 5 and the Guitar Hero Band or the Band Hero, right? And Guitar Hero Van Halen in December, I think. Yeah. And then Rock Band has the Beatles and they have Lego Rock Band, which, you know, I keep forgetting about Lego Rock Band. Yeah. Like Lego Rock Band is supposed to like the quote unquote casual, and then Band Hero is the quote unquote casual, you know, I guess kid friendly, you know, like probably songs with no profanity and stuff. Yeah. Or I'm not sure if they... More family-friendly fare, more accessible stuff, more pop stuff. Did they show the in-game models of famous dead musicians while you were there? They were not, no. I mean, you saw them in the clips, like you saw Johnny Cash. That shit pings me. Like I, I'm not, I don't mean to talk shit about Neversoff because they're nice dudes, but that I feel there's a scene for Johnny Cash and Kurt Cobain, like to, yeah, Kurt Cobain is in fucking Guitar Hero. I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with that. And Johnny Cash, I didn't see the Kurt Cobain picture, but they picked a, I like, I like the time period they picked. So help me Christ. If I see Johnny Cash in front of a bunch of dancing Red Bull girls, I'm going to go and sell my copy. If I were to buy that game, I would sell it. What's a fucking game? Right. Well, one, one thing I had to say, the, they, they showed little clips of the avatars and they, they felt like they fit in with the world pretty well. It didn't, it didn't come off as disjointed as like the Meese looked in the Wii version. The Meese, they look kind of weird. Because they're Weevil people. Yeah. So, so yeah, I mean, I wasn't, I was, you know, it's guitar here. I'm sure it's fun. It's, but. I don't know. I mean at least. It's not the regulatory experience. Yeah. Or rock band Beatles will be. And, and like Beatles. The greatest thing. I mean, the great things about is course this Beatles number one, like two, I think the great thing about the Beatles is like the vocal harmonies, three part vocal harmonies. I feel like that's a significant gameplay edition. And they're really taking presentation to a whole new level with that shit too. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm biased. Well, I am biased. I mean, no doubt, but. Robodobo, Dibodobo, proto-doby-dobo. Hmm. Right. Wow. So people been playing. Are you, is that a free title? Um, I also played, try to survive the Texas heat. And failed. Over the Wii. Yeah. Almost failed. And it is really. Fuck. Cause you didn't need drinking enough turbo fuel. Yeah. Let me see your tan though. You ain't brown, bro. Nah, bro. You ain't brown. Better look closer. Let me get my peep dip. What are you, what are you playing? Are you playing anything or what? I saw you playing something cool. I'm playing. This is the urge to kill. Thanks. gouache. Fun. I, I have also played some a fairly meaty chunk of Batman Arkham Asylum. Ah. Um, the demos. Is that the one? Oh, no, I wasn't playing the demo. I was playing the same build that Anthony played last week. It, the combat, I, I think the thing that I worried about the most is the combat and the presentation. And those are both really good. I was worried about the combat just being button mashy. And then last week, Anthony gave me hope that maybe he'd be a little more rhythmic. And essentially it takes the best parts of the really complicated action games, like St. Ninja Gaiden and the best parts of the button mashy fighting games, like God of War and mixes them together and that you can use a certain amount of finesse to really manage a large number of foes who will attack you at the same time and feel like a badass. Like just having that, that Y button as, as a timed counter move whenever they're coming at you, like at the appropriate time is, is a really great addition. And you don't ever feel like this, this even happens in God of War at a lot of times when you're doing a move, you feel like you're stuck in that animation until it's finished. And I don't, I never felt that way of playing Batman. I always felt like I had complete control over him. You are stuck in the animations. If you're just mashing A, but if you hit Y, it breaks you right out of it and really fluidly it doesn't look like a mechanical robot, like breaks. Yeah, no, you can tell that they did a lot of work on making the physics and the skeletons work together with the animation system do something really interesting. I still think that Batman looks a little weird and he runs really strangely. Does he run like Steven Seagull? I feel like he runs like you would expect an action figure to run. He runs like the guy from the animated series runs, in my opinion, like if they ever just showed him running, how you expect him to look when he's running, he runs like that. Which I guess that's a little... I disagree. I don't think that he looks like that at all. I think that the animated series Batman looks much more graceful than this Batman looks kind of like a tank. Well I disagree the other way. Which, I mean, it's an Unreal Engine 3 game and... You're wrong, bro. Let me show that hat up your ass. Yeah. But it's fun. The characters are really interesting and I mean, granted they go a little too far to the extreme end of the spectrum at times, like I still don't like Harley Quinn's new outfit. Yeah. Everybody's character designs a little over the top. But the detective stuff is fun and not annoying. I'm really looking forward to getting through the game and I hope I really like it because apparently these are the people that are working on Hitman 5. Right, I saw that. Which has got me stoked. I don't know how I feel about that. Right. I mean, let's see, let's see. Yeah, but the things are just because they make a good Batman game doesn't make a good Batman game. True. But if they can pull it off, if they can do a game that's paced well for 15 hours, if they can do a game that has a lot of different mechanics in it and a lot of sneaking and good action, then they might have the chops to do a really awesome current gen hitman game. Yeah, I know. I'm just saying it's like if Halo 3, if I had found out that was being done by Infinity Ward or something, I'd be like, if any word makes great shooters, but it's not bungee making Halo. I don't know. It's like the rumors about Gearbox making Halo game. That's what I'm saying. It's like, you know, it's like they can make good games, but I don't know, you know, it's a wait and see for me when it comes to like something that's, it's always been IOs. So I don't know. So I mean, there's not much more to say about Batman than what you said last time, but I'm definitely looking forward to getting my hands on the final version. It's just hard to get into that, to that build knowing that it's like four hours and then it stops because it's just cock teasing me until it comes out and I have to start all over again. It's like two weeks you got to wait. One week. It's that next week, isn't it? Twenty-fifth. Balls, but they're sending out review code this week and next week, I think. I won't be getting it. So you're waiting two weeks. I contacted the people to see if I can get a hold of some stuffs. Good luck. I finished fable two and I say finished because I don't think I'm going to be going back to fable two and I saw an ending. You saw an ending or played an ending? I mean, I got an ending. You have a choice to make it the end of the game. Okay. I thought maybe you were saying you like youtubed an ending or something? No, no. I got to the quote unquote end of the main quest line and saw an ending and that's fine. I had a lot of fun during a lot of my time during fable, but I also, in a lot of ways, it is one of the most frustrating experiences to come out of last fall and not in places where I would expect the places where I expected fable to to be the least interesting would be in the combat and in the the dialogue and the story and all that and all that was great. The dialogue was pretty much uniformly excellent. The combat was really fun until it until there were a lot of enemies on screen at which point the combat literally wags to where you're what you're doing on screen will be a few button presses behind what you're doing on the controller, which makes me wonder why they ever decided to put that many enemies on the screen. It wants to begin with because it was always a conscious decision on their part. But moving around the world didn't feel very good. It takes the character second to turn around it when you input it on the on the stick and yeah, they have a very wide turning radius like they do that thing where their shoulders lean inward and they're like yeah, it's like it's like you're turning around some kind of like strange robot and they get caught on the environment in a lot of spots and it's hard to move around in in narrow areas and if you run across grass, there are a lot of spots where you'll just get stuck and stop and have to go around and it just feels frustrating like you lose control and one of the things that happened a lot in the last gen for open world games or just games in general where there were NPC characters walking around as you might get stuck in small areas because they would block you in and that's something that almost never happens now in games because everyone has learned that that sucks and that is definitely not the case that failed to there just a lot of situations where it feels like there were lessons from last gen that they did not learn or that they actively ignored and just a lot of technical issues like I definitely had to redo the I guess it was the last fight more than once because it just it required a cutscene to trigger and it just wouldn't and the jobs were fun and they were a cool way to earn money but even those in a lot of spots felt broken like they were weird technical issues like you always have to hit within this little colored bar inside of a curve and sometimes that colored bar would start at one place and then instantly teleport somewhere else and it didn't seem like that was intentional it seemed like it was a bug that never got fixed and there are some people that couldn't progress past the basically the first major quest because it was bugged and for some people that just never got fixed and it makes me sad because it's so different than everything else that came out last year it's very bright and it's very much a beautiful storybook fairytale kind of game and there's a lot of fiction in it and it's it it has all the makings of something amazing and the ambition is there but it seems like the execution was was lacking in a lot of areas and that makes me sad but I'm glad I played it but I have no interest in going back and buying the DLC and playing it again right what didn't indeed wasn't DLC supposed to have like some kind of crazy twist ending like the see the future one or I guess and people thought that that was some kind of hint that they were going to announce fable three at this year's e3 and that didn't happen or something like a direction that they were going to take this yeah there was a lot of there's a lot of rumbling because I think it was a slow new cycle but I mean it's I would recommend it to someone but I would definitely have caveats and if you're easily frustrated with a game then and you're a hardcore gamer that demands a lot out of your games and you're easily frustrated then it's then I could see where you might actively dislike fable to I feel like them and and and and this is real nit picky but I feel like the menus were really slow and going into your inventory and ugly and ugly like doing all that stuff was like way like I made these giant blades coming down like yeah if you wanted it does look like the blades interface from the last Xbox interface like if you wanted to go in and use an item you would go into the item menu and then go into the food sub menu and select the piece of food from the top of the list and eat it and it would kick you out of the menu and then if you wanted to go back and do something else you would have to go through it all over again which is really strange to me because this generation it seems like European companies have had their eye on the ball as far as really interesting and effective and efficient design work for interfaces and this is not that at all and again it just feels like a throwback to the last console generation in a lot of ways they're really working on that dog the dog is good though the dog is excellent the dog does everything it's supposed to do anytime anyone hit my dog I was like you're gonna fucking die now I'm gonna catch you in half my dog's evil because you were evil I'm fat and evil fat and evil you ate a lot of meat yeah I'm gonna get sorry yeah I'm I'm you know I'm in a spot where I was for a while and where I was in fallout where I stopped in a really awkward place of a quest and you know like maybe like mid quest or something and I kind of don't know where I need to get back on track but I don't know pretty early in the game I don't know if I'll ever go back I mean I could create a an IGN length review of all the things that I found to be a problem and fable to and that's not me making fun of IGN I'm just saying that like I could make that long of the laundry list of problems with that game yeah and the fact that most of that was glossed over last fall I definitely had people on Twitter asking me why did nobody complain about any of these things when the game came out and the only thing I can think of is that fable two came out between dead space and fallout in a bunch of other games and people blew through it as quick as they could and moved on to the next thing true yeah last Christmas was redunk a dog brutal I mean I I picked this game up in October and I touched it for 45 minutes and hadn't touched it since so and the other game I'm playing right now is also from last year which is Brothers in Arms Hell's Highway is that what it is yeah that's a World War II game it's hard to say more what are you talking about it's hard to say more there's cover mechanics and you know there's a guy I think things that people don't know anything about it Brothers in Arms has always succeeded less as a super hardcore first person shooter and more as a tactical action game in a setting that doesn't see a lot of those from the first person perspective and they actually tone that down a little bit in this one there's not as much of the squad management it seems like I mean in the last games wasn't there the overhead map where you could assign people to go to or get a good idea of where things were and most of that is gone in this there's still an overhead map that you can see where enemies are if you've scouted but you can't assign points called situational awareness map yeah that most of that is gone so now you just direct your people to cover and you try to tell them to take out specific things or suppress specific areas it's a very streamlined implementation of what the other Brothers in Arms games are known for and that's fine and when it's doing that and you're in these giant battlefields that are essentially puzzles that you have to figure out how best to overcome that works but when the game tries to hedge more to the action first person shooter end of the spectrum is when the game doesn't hold together as well the guns aren't accurate and that's intentional but it's not very fun when you're about 10 feet away from someone unloading with the bar and you're missing with almost every shot and if you get in close to the enemy and they come at you you are fucked it is very much an Unreal Engine 3 Gears of War 2 type situation where in close you don't have options in Gears of War you at least have a melee attack or the chainsaw but that's not something that you have in Brothers in Arms so someone will run past you push into you and then run past you again and just shoot you in the back with the exception of the overhead thing though I still feel like it requires just as much ordering your guys as the first two games did like you still have to tell them like in the first game it wasn't like besides the overhead menu it wasn't like you had all these other options to tell them do things it was still shoot at these guys and suppress them or attack them you manage more squads in the last ones only over two at a time okay so I want to say in the second two at a time maybe and there was a time you got a tank yeah a tank which you can like you can also get a tank in this yeah yeah and you can climb on top of it and man the machine gun and all that but I'm just saying it's still the same as just you don't have the overhead for me like give orders Brothers in Arms is a series where like they do some things that I really like like I love their concept of suppression I wish more shooters would actually have like I mean I you know I'm not saying like completely curb or show me a gauge but I wish they would at least take the the tension of the enemies and you know it's a good firing on their position they'll stay undercover you know I like that in a shooter I in a lot of parts this is the first shooter I think I've ever played where I was like man this has as many cutscenes as a fucking Japanese RPG because when you start the game you will literally be watching a cutscene for about 10 minutes before you move at all or have any control over the camera and part of that is because these games have been telling a story since the first one and this is the third game or the fourth game the third game so they want to cover all that ground and catch you up as much as they can which is good because I never finished the first one and didn't play the second one yeah well I mean if you play this when you don't need to play the first two yeah um and in some ways that's kind of cool because a lot of World War II games just don't have the sort of attempt to do something serious but in in a lot of ways it's just not done well enough that it comes off as something more than a not half-assed but but insufficient attempt to create a band of brothers saving private Ryan type of thing in a game um the framerate is awful in cutscenes um installing the game definitely helps some of the technical issues that I noticed while you were playing it last year um like last year as with most Unreal Engine 3 games there was some really seriously awful texture pop in where everyone looked like burn victims uh and that's not as present but the character model still like the face is just a really weird um and still kind of look like burn victims um but I when it's doing what it does well which is those those combat situations where you're ordering your troops around and trying to figure out how to how to get past these puzzle areas that is where it's really fun uh and I mean that's how I'll probably finish the game and enjoy it for that but the other stuff they tried to do like they have I don't think they did this in the other games where there are sections where you're on your own in these very sort of traditional cover based first person shooter moments yeah I don't think um where I don't I don't think you were ever on your own not that I can remember I don't know I didn't beat either games but I did play both of them a lot and got frustrated at some point yeah but um but that it just doesn't feel as good when you're by yourself as it does when you're working with your squad you know I'm screaming but all too cheap to use me wish that in the market place we'd come to the right of the heart rate the world. So we're talking about things that make for good and bad game design because we were always making reference on the podcast about poor design choices or good design choices and how they help or ruin a game for us so people pointed out those were always so vague those those things are we say that this has good or bad game design and don't specify so it's one of those vague terms I think I specify have I mean game design fucked up save points or or not having save points would you say that that's your game design pet beef yeah I mean that's the reason I never played more than a couple hours of dead rising the fucking archaic save system and no check pointing that broke that for me and a little king story right that was a big the little king story actually engaged me enough that I wanted to play through to the end and dead rising did not for me hmm so and that rising also I mean you could lose so much progress well you couldn't little king story as well you could lose some horrendous amounts of progress if you were dumb and didn't say but at least the little king story you could you could like push a button to return to your throne to save like it was a pain in the ass but in dead rising there was no like fight to get there was no instant transport yeah so that is a that is a big big no no like just give me checkpoints or auto saves like I want to see a disk spinning in the top right corner so I know that shit's saved I don't know you know what else is a poor design twist to me despite all those other people said fucking the lack of a tutorial these days all right I don't want to read the instruction booklet that guy it was DK or whatever that was complaining about fucking hand holding and stuff like that like I don't know like I just don't get it like it's not that I'm saying the games that the play themselves for me which I think is kind of the attitude he took I don't think that games need to play themselves but I do think that like a tutorial that teaches me some of like the most important parts of the game is a valuable thing yeah and you know like one thing that kind of struck me weird about shadow complex is they do the whole like Metroid thing where they start you off all badass and then they sort of nerf you and so they start you off badass and you have all these controls you know and at your hands they don't really tell you like what to do with them and then and then after they nerf you and your your this other character they walk you through a really nice and well designed here you know we're talking about a well designed tutorial where they're introducing new concept to concepts to you in a clever way that makes you realize okay they want me to use the flashlight in this way and so you know exactly yeah and so I felt like why then insert the first part like when you could have just you know just start with you know just teach me into this world but you know it was also a story thing that they want to introduce like it like like to get like an anecdote like in Gears of War if I had just read an instruction booklet and that was how I figured out how to throw grenade it was like okay I throw grenades but it didn't teach me like through the game like hey grenades blow up emergence holes you know what I mean like it's nice to have game that teaches you like it doesn't just educate you on the push the button to do this but it educates you on something that's going to be an important component of gameplay when it does that yeah and Gears of War actually was really good about that there are the way that they taught you the mechanics of that game were very organic right and you know if nothing else have it like Gears of War right or if I want you can fucking skip it skip it okay but it doesn't but I just think that the having anything game tutorial has been shown to be such a good thing especially when it's well designed that it should be there these days I don't know I don't think that that's such an absurd thing to ask I think that guy's just one extremist like over the other side the people that want the game to fucking play itself so I'm not saying Final Fantasy play itself but I want some fucking game to teach me main mechanics did you find any good user ones yeah yeah actually Corbin brought up the tutorial thing as well and he brings up a good point which is a tutorial bad game design for me or tutorials that don't cover everything or that covers so much that it overloads the brain yeah that's the other side of it that calls in to focus the idea that yeah a good it's a fine line to walk in in doing tutorials in a game I mean to be fair there are games where there are tutorials that feel like it's just holding your hand for entirely too long like they're the thing that drives me insane or when you're playing a game and you can't do something until the tutorial teaches you how oh god yes like you can't you can't fucking jump you can't run you can't do anything but move until it says oh did you know that if you hit this button it does this and all of a sudden it works mm-hmm I think a hard time coming up with games like that off the top of my head just because I try I think I blocked him out but and then conversely though it could be done that way very in a very creative way take for example fallout three the way that they put the training wheels on what you do like for example they start you off you're being born and all you do all you can do is look around because you're literally out of the and then and that's how that works you know but where you know if it's like an action game and and you know you you're who you're going to be through the rest of the game you know I mean uh like there's some games like like that where you can integrate tutorial in the story it's good the tutorials to me that always stand out is like the most boring or stuff like that are the ones where there is no story and it's just like you got to sit through like fucking basically a small school lesson the most one that I played out in my mind that stands out the worst for that which it's like it's kind of like a necessary evil in this game was like a uh UFC had like a pretty grueling tutorial because it's like nine stages yeah but you need it because there's it's a very complex game at the same time it's like I don't know like if there's a way that they could have done that yeah it's in in in when you want to go to the tutorial it's almost like sitting down to study like okay that's what I mean like I'm gonna put you know I mean another game that's kind of like that is company of heroes company of heroes is a pretty involved training regimen that takes place in like a boot camp type series of love right but there's I felt was fun I felt you know because I was very intimidated by the game and I felt like they held my hand as much as I wanted it to how do you guys feel about like maybe like the first level of Halo Wars because that's kind of like a tutorial like you start with move your guys around the boot camp now tack this one unit now take out this power generator it like does like these like it's still integrated into a storyline introducing the important mechanics like sea infantry can pass through energy shields but such and such cannot like see I think that that's generally like a good idea of a way to do it like it's like yes they're hand walking you but that level is obviously designed as the hand walk level and then after that they're cutting you loose you know what I mean I don't think that there's anything wrong and then occasionally they'll introduce new mechanics but they're very clear on on how they work and what you need to do yeah I would rather have it integrated like into the story where they introduce you to mechanic instead of like something where it stops the game completely and pops up a screen with a wall of text for me to sit there and now learn about some unit and another thing the Corbin brings up is an example of good game design is when the game is a tutorial like portal yeah portal is a good example or braid where it's like throughout your learning new you know I'm gonna be honest with you I have not played braid ah so fun yeah well how many Xbox live points do you have still I could buy braid or I could just wait and buy it on PSN I guess man braid is so good or buy it on steam yeah but if you don't buy it on 360 you're not gonna get your fucking precious achievements I was I wasn't gonna say that but that did occur to me dude that game is um I think portal is just a really good example because I mean fuck you think when you're playing through you think there's only so many levels and after you realize that most of what you think is the game mid first are tutorial levels right and see that's another game where it's like first you can only shoot one type of portal they break you into that and then now they introduce you to doing two types of portals and then they introduce you the idea of what objects carrying and then momentum and yeah about the portal tutorial is that they're all things that you could always do but it's introducing these gameplay situations that force you to realize what you can do or maybe there are things you couldn't do but it wasn't because your character wasn't capable it's because the level specifically designed where there was never it wasn't like you said where it's like there is a ledge you could jump but you're not allowed to jump in this it was like there was no chance to do momentum because there was never any big drops and that's just because that's the they didn't want you to even think about that yet like that was just really clever um this is kind of related to tutorials Melissa says one thing that really gets to me especially with open world games is a sense of direction I don't want to feel like I'm blindly blundering my way through the world I want the game to be clear as to where I need to go next if I have to work to get there that's fine but don't leave me groping in the dark um we bitch I bitch like crazy about fable but one of the nice things that fable does and a lot of people talk shit about this but they can go eat shit is the bread come trail I feel like that is the most progressive forward thinking game design element in there because I I don't I don't want to spend time lost I don't feel like spending time lost wondering what I'm supposed to do is fun but man you say that dude I swear we can go pull up my game save right now I'm fable and my bread come trail literally leads me in circles I followed my bread come trail for like hours I'm I'm not sure it's it's where the bread come bread crumb trail is broken mask for everybody like the uh the gargoyle side quest I don't know if you did need that oh maybe I was doing do you guys feel like uh like with open world games like you know this is kind of like like oblivion right she's kind of like the game that I've heard a lot of people complain about when it comes to that as oblivion I've had friends that are hardcore nerds about fantasy stuff but they said they got into the oblivion and even though there was a main storyline to follow they still found like the openness of it like too jarring like they didn't like it I mean like for me I think oblivion is an example of a game where people are either going to get it or they aren't because as as a player I never felt like I didn't have something very clear cut through like you know like I so so we got it yeah just like we're saying like and maybe there is a better design solution but I always understood that you just look at your little compass and your main quest line were like a certain sort of icon on the compass yeah and I mean fuck god bless oblivion because oblivion took one of the things took the thing that Melissa is complaining about which is not knowing where to go and in a lot of ways did away with it because there were a few places that you could fast travel right off the bat too fast travel fast travel is a fucking genius thing that I am so glad camera about in this generation the world games that don't have some form of it nowadays it's like I don't think Far Cry 2 has fast travel in a lot of ways it suffers you can travel to like you don't do not count but that's what I'm saying that's that's the closest thing but for me when I reviewed it that's one of the things that I was not a fan of was there yeah and that's one of the ways that Far Cry 2 suffers I feel like is because there's sort of a guide to go where you need to go but it's really hard to get there and you're being attacked the whole time and also just the way that the roads are it's it's really difficult to plot a course to get you in one direction for any period of time that game could have dealt with a bread come trail if I could have just had a trail on the road showing me like where the next coming curve is like almost like a thing like an assisted mode and need for speed or something in dead space is another game where the designers talked about how the the nav trail that you that you put down on the ground that was something that they put in because people were having hard time finding their way around the levels and it was something that was already there because I think that's that's actually an AI pathfinding trail that they decided to to modify a little bit I love I love the fact that that is in dead space I mean my enjoyment of dead space I feel it might sound exaggerated but it could be doubled because of that just for the fact that I am not having to pay attention to everywhere I go everywhere I'm going I just sit there if I want it and not if you don't yep and it what's the make a more interesting organic ship where they don't have to worry about making sure that okay well we want to do all these things but this person needs to be able to get to the end of the level and in his case as far as good design they've worked it in a way where it makes sense in the world it's not just like a magical breadcrumb trail right I mean like the bread come trails nice but in a scheme of the lore it might not make sense whereas in his case it's like he does something with his hand and because you've seen all this other technology you think that's within the realm of possibility in this world for him to have some sort of trail marking right like like you even see like they're the way they're they're monitored technology you see like certain monitors that are damaged and they're just like clear glass you know it's like all this displayed technology so you could imagine that exactly that's a good example of um that whole game it's a good example design yeah good design this this uh it sort of goes off tangentially from some of the games we talked about personally I like games this is from Mike G he says personally I like games with less filler fetch quests and item hunts kill me these days I know everyone else everyone likes more bang for their buck but I want a more focused experience and I love a good five to seven hour game I thought the last part I think could be a bone of contention for some people but I could see what he's saying I think there's a place for fetch quest games and the really good example of game design is fetch quest that lead one right into the other like we're talking about blizzard blizzard quest design man I mean in oblivion too like if you're on a quest in oblivion that shit just like leads to something immediately it's easy to just keep fucking going and fallout does the same thing I mean when we talk last week about how you play fallout differently than I do like the reason is is because it's so easy for me to jump from one quest to the other in that game like very rarely in oblivion was it like I finished a quest and be like man there's no one in town I can talk to for a quest it's like now I need to go all the way over here it's like almost never happened that way anymore if you did you could fast travel and it just be like 30 seconds of loading or like a lot of times maybe you talk to someone previously and they needed you to get someone from the town you're in anyway this is like well here I am exactly yeah take care of this this and that um xboxer says one simple thing is changing the controls in a game but doing it in a way that doesn't make sense um I think I'm not quite sure I mean he brings up the the fact that battlefield 1943 maps the vehicle controls in a weird way yeah a lot of people don't it is weird and but you can change those control but actually in a way I like it because it still keeps in my mind like triggers to shoot guns exactly yeah um a design thing that that annoys me that I'm that I'm seeing a lot is games that seem to discard standard control conventions for their genre for no apparent reason cares of war no I feel like years of war well those are the those are the genre conventions yeah no I would say halo 3 broke with genre conventions motherfucker I should be able to extra reloads oh that's a good point actually yeah halo 2 is a better example where halo 3 took something that was just so natural and which has become the genre convention which is you hit x to fucking reload and you I mean the other buttons may be different for everything else like halo is nice and that it was one of the first first person shooters on a console where you can change almost every control option but everyone used fucking extra reload yeah every game after that uses extra I know and now I gotta remember right bumper every time I go and play a multiplayer it fucks me here you're all I had a fuck I threw my equipment exactly exactly or then you'll be playing halo 3 and jumping to call duty 4 and you'll fuck I'm gonna really fuck I threw my my grenade and killed my team yeah that happens me all the time half life and left for dead reload is be oh yeah that's really fuck to me I don't mind why should also be switch weapons like the shoulder thing makes sense I like that I understand the necessity when you're do wielding but otherwise for me I'm just like I don't I mean the valve thing though the valve convention of making be fucking reload and x isn't x just action uh is pick up stuff I think yeah yeah why why would those be separate why I don't know it makes no sense to me because the guy that designed the game in the studio got to have his way he's like you know I like beat it better mm-hmm red means go to more and just fucking do it yeah I don't know all right sorry um I'm looking for more comments I mean is there anything else that occurs to you guys that uh stuff that bothers you in particular I feel like we talk about this so much uh I don't know rubbing rubadobo that was you about to say Tyler this seems more this is a god damn you both this is from SJS this seems more like a complaint about are you all right over there yeah I'm just looking at my my wall games over here to see if I see they're looking at your wall of PC games for things that'll know you yeah uh SJS uh this is more says this is more of a complaint I think about game developer priorities but uh uh I would like to see less multiplayer I won't play Uncharted 2 multiplayer I didn't want to play Call of Waras's ghostbusters red factions etc etc uh I understand what he's saying but it seems like he picked some of the worst games as examples well two of them are bad examples after the others are good ones yeah that's what I'm charging and red factions people really liked Uncharted's multiplayer and red factions multiplayer is fucking amazing yeah so it's like I I completely agree with this guy but there are always exceptions to the roles I think and you think the you just it just it can be a good or bad design choice depending on if the effort's being made to actually make it work don't make your single player suffer for multiplayer that is only going to be so so what by the time it releases I like that and then how do we think like a game uh like Bioshock 2 you know we don't know much about its multiplayer and Bioshock 2 has five fucking studios going on if the multiplayer component can't be at least just polishes a single player component then everyone who worked on that game might as well retire do you disagree that feels like a game that is going to be that's like a designed by committee title at this point and then look at like uh like grin like they're having troubles right now and they did a lot of their multiplayer with making terminator terminator salvation so better than bionic commando man that's a shame all you people about terminator didn't buy bionic commander should be shamed yourself not because I think bionic commando is that great because I think it's only so so but man and bionic commando pc what a fucking piece of shit man's like biotchy hi i'm gonna fucking play around with that one that's going in lazy ass port it's like it's like a after after uh you know it's a bad design decision porting your fucking console game to pc and not even trying to make it at least like look like you put any effort into it just don't fucking bother at that point because pc gamers are pretty savvy and they think you're retarded uh whoops r dashboard dot org i feel like i should say that now every time i say we're word retarded that's uh that's a website or we should everything on the podcast should just stop that's a website for you to correct yourself that's a website for non-profit that's trying to uh to get awareness raised about the word retarded and get people to stop using it in a negative way that's good someone linked that to me on twitter because I said tards on the internet i did notice that in your twitter in your twitter about that but i figured that you were in such a bad mood about it that i shouldn't bring it up good to see that people on the internet do not care about that though they don't care about your bad mood well i guess i was just you know thinking that maybe these people that criticize my flashpoint thing and thought that a preview was reviewed my brain damage my brain damage right i mean i would hope they have brain damage i hope they get brain damage or die i would go back in time and punch your mom in the stomach slowly from cancer while their family cries about it and watch us as it fucking drags out for months and months and months with your no health insurance and they can play flashpoint right before they fucking die and realize and then he was fucking right meanwhile they they contract that form of lifelong diarrhea space aids have you ever heard of that obidobo there's this type of diarrhea you can get where you have its lifelong oh man let's not even go there for life until you die i should say that for the letter section so my look i know it's true uh let's hannah c frequent commoner says when i die in a game i want it to feel like it's my fault because i need to improve my skills not because the designers have made it not impossible to get through a section i have made it cheap trials uh i mean trials is good trial ninja guide is an example of a game i have trials where you die because you're not good stuff is coming from off-screen seat ninja guide is no is one where ninja guide and two yeah feels that way yeah trials is another one where it's like you know you die because it's like you're not not do it precisely right where i'm i mean ninja guide in black is one of the reasons i love ninja guide in black is because every death in that game is because you just weren't good enough that you you have all the tools at your disposal to do this but you need to take off your take off your prosthetic vagina and and sack up and i'm sorry to our female listeners especially hannah you know game isn't like that ninja guide and on ds that's a game where you could close your eyes and strike at the screen and win yeah i mean it's a totally different kind of game um ninja guide and two on the other hand you are definitely getting nailed from stuff off-screen all the time and that is a bad design choice that is an eight-bit era bad design choice contrast is fucking high dogs and ninja guide into yeah grenade dogs grenade throwing dogs oh yeah the ninja dogs with the knives and their mouths and the fucking exploding shit oh i love it are we talking about ninja guide or are we talking about that fucking uh what's that game called there are ninja dogs and ninja guide and two see this just sounds like we're talking about fucking why can't even think of the name of that game that's it is so dumb looking to me that i've scarred it from my brain you get paid right about video games and you can't think of this shit man i've been thinking video games all day like i think video games more than most people like in 24/7 so anyway uh mark g in reply to hannah c brings up a good point which is i'm attempting to play call of duty world at war on veteran for the trophies and it's ridiculous i'm absolutely fine with the two three it kills that makes sense getting bombarded with ten plus grenades it once makes it a joke the the call of duty games on a on veteran or sort of notorious for being cheap and broken design wise although grenades have always been a problem in that hardened even is just stupid guys do throw grenades like like they're fucking discovered head to toe it's like everybody gets a box of grenades with them to bring out into the field and then they're runners with wheelbarrows full box of grenades yeah um yeah i i agree i i do think that it's it's frustrating and pulls you out of the game when you die and it feels like something that you couldn't possibly have avoided when i was playing don't ace inferno comic con one of my problems with it is there were definitely parts in the build that i played uh where i i was insta killed or almost insta killed in a way that it doesn't feel like i could avoid poorly hidden monster closets or another bad choice of game design like doom three did noise have the best like they obscured ones it was like blatantly obvious like oh there's that panel on that wall really i didn't feel i felt like doom three was actually one of the first games to do monster closets where it wasn't obvious like that i think it did then less obvious but i'm just saying that even call duty four times had times where you'd be like up there's the spawn cabinet oh well that's different okay doom has monster closets in that you walk past an area you walk in an area and monsters appear they're preset what you're thinking of are monster generators like gauntlet which is like call of duties fucking modus operandi yeah um and they stop once you pass a certain point one of my favorite moments in my my playthrough of rainbow six vegas on the 360 was um i i got to this one point and one of the casinos that was supposed to trigger like a big battle and you know there there were like basically two monster closets on the other side of the room that probably spawned about eight guys out of each of them you know i i guess but one of them did not trigger and you know and so i like i went to the door and i did my snake game that's like eight dudes right there so i was like see four and blue the whole fucking room away it's amazing and at least in rainbow six the monster closets weren't really monster closets so much is in a lot of cases oh there's a skylight and a bunch of people are going to come through it so that at least that made sense in the world right yeah but there was still plenty of like dead-end janitor closets that like what guys came out of yeah that kind of man logan was going on back there it's especially bad terrorist hunt mode more so than single-player where they're where enemies will literally just appear after you trip certain areas how can you kind of changing gears a little bit here how do you guys feel about games that sort of become self-aware or sort of like break the fourth wall in some ways like uh it's definitely in shadow complex there's some really great moments where like they the enemies say like oh how you know i feel sorry for that for this hapless guy breaking into our base there's no way he's gonna get through us where it's like yeah whatever you know in the hero you know of course i am yes i'm trying to think other games that that do that kind of psycho knots i think a Tim shafer is actually pretty pretty commonly a breaker of the fourth wall yeah these games are goofy enough it makes sense like it's you can do that without it seeming out of um there's talk that raven might do a deadpool game based on the movie that's in pre-production right now and that would be a game where breaking the fourth wall would be common because deadpool in the comics breaks the fourth wall all the time oh does he i've never read a deadpool comic it's really funny never in comics with deadpool but i've never read a comic where deadpool was the focus is it like the burn notice of comics i mean do they break the wall and burn notice yeah i don't really break the fourth wall and burn noticed so much as the guy narrates as if someone were listening to him talking about being a spy it never says this is a spy show he never fairs feels like looks at the screen and is like nope that's what's going on no something so yeah yeah i've never seen burn notes so i um i saw the spy tips i mean who should definitely watch burn notes i know it's on the list we gotta get through mad men i don't know we are never gonna go and talk about burn notice on this show i just want that to get a rule that's laid down that's fine it sounds that's a geek box thing yeah i don't want AIDS that's exactly god damn it we can talk about mad men when i watch mad men that show makes me want to drink no wait this we talk about the wire on this show it's like when i worked at a cast when i worked at a gas station after i worked there for six months i had this overwhelming urge to smoke lucky strikes for some reason when i played grand theft auto san Andreas i would have the overwhelming urge to smoke sweets because everybody was smoking yeah oh god you are so like like man you got soul that's your fucking that's your birthday again come in there i think so i don't know what's happening i just love sweets um is there any other ones or should we react to it i think this is a good example of a of a bad game design that i like because it specifically applies to a game we've done for game club uh ziax brings up the idea of context sensitive buttons that do too many different things oh yeah that's that uh x ai ax yes okay uh yeah that's spelled how it sounds i guess kind of yeah i mean if that's how you pronounce it um i'm okay with this uh for the game club reference hitman with the same command it's possible to press a button on the wall or what draw a bomb in public view and find it in this case uh fable is also really bad there was frequently times in fable too where i was trying to take a potion and would tell my dog that he was a very bad dog yeah um or where i didn't know if i was giving a good or bad reaction to a conversation i mean i think it's just context sensitive it just you know it's not it's not a perfect system he brings he says taking that complaint a step further an example of good design would be developing an overall principle that the user should always have a reasonable expectation of what they can do how it's done and what will happen if they do it wrong uh which i agree a lot of games will present you with these situations where they expect you to do something that you've never had caused to ever do elsewhere in the game or even understand that you can do in a game yeah hitman kind of does that sometimes i mean there are times that there's just like i didn't know i could do that cool but that game was cool finding those things yeah i mean in that game some of the other things are random shit like dialing a cell phone or that's what i mean yeah like a hot dog i mean how do you have a tutorial for that right yeah um one one genre in particular that seems like you can almost if if you wanted to give a class on game design you can almost just solely look at the stealth genre and base an entire game as well one side of stuff to do and metal gear on the other is things not to no because someone thought metal gear has some great stealth i mean i don't feel like metal gears stealth is they do things they have their own strengths and weaknesses both games where your self's primary strength is that it's not metal gear i just i really don't like the stealth in the metal gear games i feel like it's it feels much more contrived and weird and not really all that stealthy i think it worked best for the first one for metal gear solid i mean people say that they got through metal gear solid core all stealth and i'm sorry i would not have fun playing the game that way all right take a break and come back ladies sure we're heading to shore because it's really late right now i'm sorry i guess and we're going to the sun we want to fix the work that's you but we're back he should move your mic since we're obviously gonna turn away from your face talking to Arthur um so this is a letter from mic he says i've been playing around the observable commando and inspired me play force unleashed beat that in two nights anyhow i want to ask this with how hard it is to kill jedi's and unleashed and how badass they always seem isn't the order 66 moment in episode three just the least climatic in for jedi's as a child and teen and young adult with all the followers i always imagined the clonores to culminate in the empire cloning jedi's to kill their counterparts which would not make sense because then they'd still be around the whole point was to get rid of them my rationale was that only a jedi would be badass enough to kill a jedi i always imagined the prequel movies within this way that there would be just balls out of jedi fighting and that would end up with almost all the jedi's eradicated along with their clones when i saw episode three i was very let down by the eventual slaughters of the jedi what are your thoughts on this i feel like if you read any of the extended star wars stuff or like the old republic's lore it'd be pretty clear to you that jedi's die all the time from stuff that isn't inflicted by another jedi and i think the the thing that we're trying to get across was that the jedi's were so used to trusting these clones as just like these people that would follow them in the battle and the clones didn't portray their feelings because the clones never the clones didn't weren't like premeditating this and thinking about it and having like evil thoughts they just knew it was a contingency it was just like it was just like the order came through they carried it out like jedi's aren't going to sense that because it's just fucking it happens there's no malice to it it's not like something they can sense it's why it comes out of nowhere and catches them so off guard i think in the fiction like the extended fiction that's been written says that certain clones didn't carry out their orders right and i have to imagine the emperor was fucking blinding their abilities to perceive what was coming i think i think i think i think maybe the listener is more speaking to like the way it was treated you know because it was just done in a really quick montage but man i thought that was some heavy shit yeah i mean yeah it was heavy but it was very fast you know it was kind of just a like and this happened i i don't know i feel like out of all the star wars prequels revenge of the sith is the one that's paced the best yeah yeah oh no no yeah i'm not saying that just the actual order 66 is quick whereas like i could totally like picture a badass hbo mini series that's dedicated to order 66 that is like all these build-ups and you know leading to like this grand moment you know in a perfect world so where lucas isn't this i'm not sure if this next email is supposed to be from obscurment because he says at the end fat penis comma obscurment but uh i'm i'm assuming so that's like sincerely all right i guess we'll just keep it with obscurment then uh he says gentleman i would like to thank you for your weekly podcast as they've helped save my young marriage um my beautiful wife and i are an opposite attract couple she's a little bit country i'm a little bit rock and roll she's a nerd and i'm a dork so you're a bro i love horror flicks she's scared of the commercials we come we compromise and we'll try to try the other's hobbies once in a while she'll play video games with me explosion man plants versus zombie and on one fun evening left for dead i in turn go garage sailing every once in a while that makes sure her nerd garage sailing she's not so like a nerd to me no she sounds like like a normal girl yeah the point of this email is that if it weren't for this podcast by now one of us would have killed the other during our road trips long hours in the car listening to a type of music you don't like is borderline torture you should listen to some there's some good country out there just not new country you should listen to the Watson twins that's a good middle ground or murder by death or murder by death my wife who is in a gamer will only listen to your podcast she won't listen to listen up even she even she thinks garnets kind of adoosh and can only stand dignity for a little while however she loves hearing about lips fattiness i sucking red factions dick and of course both are favorite today today so thank you for putting together a great show about video games that we find entertaining also thanks for recommending the graphic w e three it's freaking great what's that oh we three oh we three other guy yeah i recommended we three yeah we do use that bed oh it can't say anything i like good it's it's not bad i thought it was okay but i i was not a big fan of the way we three ended was a thing i don't know what's the thing in the stuff and i i like we three a lot and i thought the art and it was phenomenal i want really it was really emotionally intense in spots right and then it just thought the ending i don't know anyways so how did you read any sleep or yet no i have not so i'm reading i'm reading the rings halfway through the fellowship other rings i could never get through the order of the rings i always tried and i just got a lot of loving it he also says uh love it my wife wants to know when the girls are going to be back on the show so i mean we've had lots of girls on the show they all live they're all scattered on right no they're scattered on opposite ends of the country well maybe we'll get jody on or something or jody we'll get jody to do some sync start with us i told tyler that oh yeah if we do some live performance sync start we need to get jody in some like yeah she wants to fuck a metallic pants i just feel like people are mostly asking about kathleen and jane and kathleen is in seattle and jane is in boston so yeah um well we might get tina or alison sometimes soon i really hope that we can get alison not tina though screw that chick well maybe um maybe uh that was totally tongue-in-cheek by the way i don't hate tuna okay um well i was just gonna say like maybe maybe when kathleen's in town for like a PR event or something oh god man some of these emails sometimes where you can imagine people write in about the idea of this one was titled dual penises that i'm not going to read because there was a lot of reaction to the tail dicking and there's actually a comment that i didn't approve that said the link to don't touch my tail deck dot com that i put the show notes doesn't work it's because it's not a real website we just joked about don't touch my tail deck so this guy says uh his name's kurtis and he says uh i am aspiring game designer have been told that i need to look more into analog game design as in board games what board games would you recommend is there any board game in particular that you think i must play considering the subject matter i'd prefer if it was a board game that i could play with my family as opposed to getting something like warhammer or dnd also i am saving for post secondary education so i would prefer if it wasn't overly expensive um first off dnd can be a family thing yeah but unless your family's in the nerdy shit it's gonna be hard to get them into games man yeah it's it's it doesn't have that hook uh similar to cotann or maybe uh arkham horror would be i don't feel like that's a family-friendly well the only reason i would say that that can be family-friendly is that it's cooperative play there's no competitive play with each other you all work together to an end um so people might be able to get behind that risk i would say um man when i when i was in college we in in my advanced graphic design course we had this project where we had to design our own board game and our professor linked us for reference sent us to this site uh it was like a german enthusiast site for board games and like german's are sort of known to be hardcore that's where cotann came from and so um man i don't i can't think of the side-off hand but like look look for like german forums but you know it was obviously in english so i could read them but i'm just going to make the suggestion again like we talked about last week go to a gaming store in your area and talk to the people that work there usually they're people that work there because they love that shit and they will definitely be able to say oh yeah people really like this or we all like this it's simple or stuff like that munchkin is a game that that you might try and that's a game that you can zombies zombies with three exclamation part marks um so but i would also say don't don't just limit yourself to like to sorry no i was taking board games but also um there are also a lot of really creative card type games and i'm not just speaking like magic games um can i get the magic is a is a good one yeah yeah i mean this is going about like uh games that are just really designed off of uh very simple concepts you know that oh no mm-hmm so now is a oldie big goodie kill doctor lucky that's another good board game um uh let's see this is from seth and he says i just thought you should know that the anti-whioming sentiment in america seems to be on their eyes i am in a play written by one of my friends and though he is not a gamer nor does he listen to the podcast there's a line in his play questioning the authenticity of the so-called state the characters are unable to decide if it is real or not but that neither is here nor there the point is Wyoming with its number one export being shh shilagis or however you spell that gayly chileles or that or if you spell that gaylic abomination of word is rapidly losing its grasp in reality while the question of its very existence is gaining mind share in those who are outside the gaming enthusiast lifestyle do you want to be careful throwing gaylic around as an insult we're not anti-Irish or anti leprechaun yeah um and it seems like around that time t-shirt said that fighting the gaylics since 2009 right it seems like around that time we made we we started that talking about Wyoming oh no no the daily show's doing a lot of that since 2003 so this next letter is from berry berry says uh he's from ireland as well so he says i'm writing responsible letter from shane last week his he's uh 17 and living in ireland comma is completely understandable having been in a situation much like him i moved to college with no friends who played video games and ireland the campus residents residences red dorms don't seem to be as open or laid back as american dorms maybe it's just the way we are but a lot of our gaming indoors indoors with the door shut it is still an activity frowned upon by many who considered a waste of time which is odd considering the ireland has one of the highest rates of ps2 ownership in the world mostly for fifa and big party sports games knowing this land parties with open doors are an invitation to griefers and drunk gobschites who have nothing better to do than pick on nerds the best way to meet other gamers is to join the societies in ireland freshers week a week dedicated to societies is held in the first month the semester those are clubs yeah by the way and it's easy to join at the society's tent and they just have a badass word for it um yeah i don't know what college he's going to but this is universal across the country i was never nerd enough to join went for ultimate frisbee instead but for land parties and the like they were definitely the way to go also try out boards.ie and set up a thread there much better than using craigslist in the emerald isle to refer to its leprechaun name i'm just snickering it though ultimate frisbee thing it just reminds me of that david tell joe it must suck to be good at a sport that can't get delayed um let's see i'm not saying it can it just reminds me of that joke so this next part about you tyler this is his opinions on you it's it sounds like he's being like mean at first but he's not okay okay okay also i have a theory on tyler's apparent success with the fair sex when i first saw him and co-op i assumed he was gay however i soon realized it was actually more of a hipster thing which i still don't think is fair i may be on the way out but i reckon despite having a girlfriend he's always had a lot of female friends the easygoing demeanor puts girls at ease and they let their guard down at which point the diminutive seemingly vulnerable and take home to your mother style tyler barber moves in for the kill with a super secret never revealed approach just thought i thought the idea that he's a pop that he's popular simply because of his relaxed attitude and see what he had to say about it i will say i was recently rewatching i think your first appearance on co-op are one of them because i'm trying to get pictures of you guys for drawing and stuff like that and i think what made people think you were gay was the limp-risted sort of hands moving around yeah yeah a lot of yeah i don't know my family is uh we have a lot like we're very like matriarchal like the women i don't know for some reason like the women are very dominating and like a lot of the men in my family is very like a little southern family kind of thing in that regard i think maybe well like definitely like my dad's just like i don't know chill laid back and like my mom wears the pants for sure but yeah he's he's he's right to the t about my approach it's all about you know i'm just like working your way towards the massage the back massage i see i get girls to live their guard down to and then i puts you out about ever taking the necessary steps i get there and they're like give me a back massage and then i do and then afterwards they're like there's that moment where they might look at you and be like something gonna happen then i'm like uh i'll see you later what are eight million other things i can do for you yeah so uh let's move on oh the next question is from Nicholas which this is one arthur wanted to read do i know well you wanted to make sure that we got you's one of the ones you specifically forward i have kind of weird question for you guys i know that you guys said you are planning on going to paxis here and i am too my only problem is that i'm not really going with anyone fucking sucks standing line by yourselves when you don't know anyone so i was wondering if maybe i could meet up with you guys before the show on friday i probably won't line up too early the other days and basically just hang out in line with you guys i know it's kind of a strange request but it would be totally awesome if i could hang out with you guys or if you are just before the show starts i love the show and i'm glad i donated right away so you guys keep making it Nicholas so the thing is is that we're gonna have press feathers and so we're gonna be douchebags and not wait in line yeah um but we will do a meetup and we'd be happy to meet with you Nicholas like when that comes down but uh if you want to meet more people to like hang out with at pax doesn't the penny or cadeboards i mean our cadeboards are extremely active not only the exchange that but i'm pretty sure they have a specific section dedicated to people that are like hooking up for hotel rooms do you see worries from hooking up for rides uh no because there's like apparently there's a train originating in sacramento that goes all the way up to Seattle and there's like a group that does pax on that train every year and they just like they also used to do car trips the same or from san diego i think all these people like their power outlets on train so they basically have like they take over an entire car and like hook up tv's and video game systems and shit like yeah so just check out the pax thread about it because i know there is one on the penny or cade third and you can find people that organizing groups organizing hotels um maybe when it's closer to the show i'll just start a post so people can comment and network about wanting to meet mm-hmm yeah because i mean we we should really make plans to make something more concrete than we could with e3 and like one thing i'm worried is like will we be working pax like what if like i would just hate to be a situation where we're like too busy to do cool community stuff man i honestly all the stuff at pax stops at like six or seven yeah which leaves the rest of the evening i mean usually there's something going on in the evenings but we'll find ways for sure like there are parties and stuff but there aren't preview events that go on at that time yeah um we'll figure out i mean we'll do at least one meetup uh i mean but there are things that go on in the evenings only because i know that like the gfw reunion things like at nine o'clock at night on saturday you know in a room at pax so there will be some things going on um are we gonna record a podcast well we should we will certainly try i don't want to promise anything since i'm going there for work is the problem so and by problem i mean it's not a problem at all i'm so happy to be going for work um the challenge is that you're going there for work yeah i mean i i am happy to be going for it because it's awesome because i i got a hotel it's being paid for i can't fucking complain about that you're getting paid to go yeah um but the reality of it is that that might it'll present some complications at least time constraints so um let's i mean i just hope it's not a situation where like the quake con where it's just where they expect you to sort of cover everything well i'm at least going there with ryan so um so we can have a geek box rebel FM throwdown or just pick warriors from our fan base doesn't have them fighting a thunderdome this guy this james james asks a question two men answer one men leave james asks a random question but it's one that's easy for us to answer it's just really sure has a gaming podcast how do you view other podcasts such as giant bomb do you view them as a competitor or someone you can share ideas opinions and info with uh i don't think we view them as a competitor and i don't think that we necessarily view them as someone we can share ideas with because we don't directly talk those guys in regular basis we're friendly with people on listen up totally i mean the thing is is if we talked on a regular basis i'd share opinions and info with them all the time i would go on their show and share opinions and info but i mean certainly don't view them in some sort of malicious light like i was fucking guys like i i i've except for geek box uh i think i say on a regular basis that i listen to giant bomb every week yeah and when i when i was in london i actually talked at length with jeff about a lot of stuff including podcasting yeah i've had great times with those guys and look back for me three and stuff i mean man i do the ones that my regulars are the igans man three red lights um the idol thumbs guys i i i don't have a chance to listen every week to idol thumbs but i like it a lot and they do different stuff again we're friends with some people on listen up yeah uh p_r_k i love it when they do their little podcasts the level and it's a little weird i don't think they're uh it's sort of director's commentary yeah i love it it's so great jody and i um i mean they they used to do them a lot more regularly than they do now and uh jody and i would just love to listen because i mean you know they just they're really intelligent guys and they use they use like really it's gonna sound dumb in text and i mean maybe but like really big words like they use sophisticated language yeah and it's fun they use fun words like you know i feel like we use big words like penis mm-hmm that's two whole syllables but if we make it a fat penis it becomes a big word because it's fat it's actually two words fuck that's one word i'll be dobo fat penis that's a gibberish gibberish so marco let me let it on you marco marco says uh marco says great podcast plus i can't wait to order the tea soon quick quick question you've mentioned in the past about playing games on microsoft's partner net which debug units do you have and how easy and expensive is it to obtain one um so marco basically there's this PR company that does all the PR for mike soft called edelman and you have to be basically a recognized press thing going on and have enough credentials and writing that you can show them to where they'll recognize you as press and consider sending you one without that yeah i don't even i mean it's expense is not the thing yeah you can't buy them you can buy dev kits for like a bajillion dollars right but those aren't even the same thing like the things that we play on are not the things that games are made on they look like they look like 360s i mean i i i wrote i wrote reviews for about two years for a legitimate paper in houston like and this is with like edelman sending me review games and me sending them our reviews before they would send me a debug kit it took me asking several times like you know hey can i get a debug can i get a debug did you just ask the same question over and over over and over yeah and they and and and sometimes that you'd previously asked yeah yeah yeah i would ask the same person every time and you'd be cordial every time i mean in in a lot of times it's not necessarily their decision you know it just has to go through them and sometimes it would be like oh well i mean at least this is what they would say we don't have any debug units right now we've got to wait for our next shipment and then we'll get you on stuff like that but yeah i mean they definitely want to make sure you're a legitimate writer but i was like please give me a debug it will get me more work yeah i mean it is a little hard to get one you know the only reason i was able to get one uh for me and arthur was people knew me from one up and so when i was laid off it was the idea that i wanted it for freelance was not the big of a deal and i believe it was a who a person who was now an IGN who gave it to me so um let me see if i can find a good letter to close the shit out with um so i had another irish person recommended boards die i don't know i guess is that with just like Ireland such a small country they have like a national board fireland i don't know it's probably like a bulletin board system hmm and you know what now that that that that listener sort of mentioned about how gaming is still sort of shunned a little bit i can see that because when i spent time in ireland like a lot of the irish people that i met felt very very social like the thing to do i mean not just because it's a stereotype but like go out to the pub even but there were a lot of people that we would meet in the pubs that weren't drinking like they were drinking you know soda or whatever in the you know they they just might just be the fact that they're a very very social culture like they're some of the most friendliest people i met and all my travels them and Canadians so cool Australians are great kiwis are wild so this guy his name is ryan and he says uh he talks about dick sucking and then he says on the most recent show arthur said that he's never intended for become complementary but the problem is that listeners and letter writers are using it in something of a mockingly complementary way the gaming world at large is both misogynistic and homophobic most of whom would say they have no problem with queers but then sine discussing these two dudes kissing in the street and actually that just makes me think of bilber and how he was talking about how it isn't necessarily how am i he was saying that he isn't think it's homophobic that he sees something and it doesn't sit well with him but he he has no fucking hatred or fear of those persons because they're doing that just don't sit well with him just like he's like he kind of made a good point of you know you've got to imagine that is there not a gay person that's seen two people that are like straight going at it a guy and a girl and just been like ugh i know for a fast guess that a lot of gay friends that i've had have shown open discussed at straight people making out so that's what i'm saying i mean i don't think i mean i'm not particularly interested in watching straight people making i don't know why these old people that's the thing is i don't think it's necessarily homophobic or fair to say it's homophobic but that's definitely because i hate old people i don't think it's necessary fair to say it's homophobic when you see two it's something that you're just not down with seeing like i don't give a shit what people do behind closed or people gonna be dressed up in furries and be going at each other in fursuits but it doesn't mean i fucking want to see it right so yeah i mean i i i think most people feel the same just about like pda in general like no one likes to see yeah once he's got over the age of like 13 yeah you know um i did not believe you guys are misogynist or homophobic but that doesn't mean you aren't involuntarily reinforcing negative stereotypes to an audience that is already famous for its bob mentality when it comes to misogyny and queer rashing um let's see the last thing the internet needs is another gaming podcast to start taking on the easy and unfortunate way when it comes to being funny i had stop listening to giant bomb cast after two episodes because those guys just can't hold back on using women and queer related insults in their commentary um i don't think when we say dick sucking we're being we're being yeah related well i feel like we're one of the the last podcasts on the internet where you would think that we were marginalizing a minority group i mean fuck of all the podcasts i listen to i feel like we are the most some of the most offensive and verbally and actively so of of groups that are typically discriminated against and secondly i don't know what the fuck he's talking about with the giant bomb thing because i've listened to every episode for almost a year and i've never heard that yeah i don't know it's uh this was a few months ago just in case they've changed their ways if they said they didn't mean it is it an insult or they were taking back the insult in a positive way where you can't take back something that never applied to you even if Tyler was gay it still wouldn't help things for your audience and the gaming world in general if he started to take back queer insults on the podcast listen to by a predominantly straight male white audience but i don't think we do any you know we can say dick sucking like dick sucking i think joking about dick sucking is like making fun of our own sexuality and like we think like if a girl was going down on me that i would be like ha ha this is funny no i feel like the the off limits words are obviously calling things gay or saying the word fag unless you're british and you're talking about like a cigarette yeah but other than that i don't i don't feel like talking about dick sucking equates with making fun of gays except for like because gays do dick sucking yeah like okay maybe calling into question our own late and homosexuality i was gonna say i mean it's probably obvious by now that between all of us we comprise like one gay person probably right like like there's enough gay in this room to like make up the that's hilarious i'm just kidding i think there's enough gay in your seat to make up a gay person well that's hilarious i made a gay joke anyway i don't know i mean we just um i feel like of all the complaints that could be made against this ain't like homophobic or even moderately i just don't even feel like the dick saying dick is anyway homophobic or anything like that like we're not even saying it's a negative stereotype i mean it's like we're saying gay anal sexing like i mean i'd be all i'd be all over that shit if i thought that there was anything on this podcast that was homophobic yeah i don't know sometimes i feel like people are so used to being picked on that they find shit that's there when it's not i don't know i i think it's totally legitimate to ask the question or bring it up but i'm just saying i don't see it yeah i'm just saying that i disagree um you guys are your most hilarious when you aren't pulling that kind of crap i still chuckle when you think about press x for chimp attack although fucking people will say that we're anti-chimpancies and i hope that you can pull back on the use of misogyny and queer insults in the cast misogyny i just don't know what the fuck they're talking about i we say punk bitch but and i i call people bitch let me be clear that i have only my life once called a girl a bitch like when i say bitch it's 99.9 to time to guys like to me has no sexual preference well i can see how someone would take the word bitch as aimed at a guy and think that you're trying to emasculate him by comparing him to a woman but i don't know for me it's just easier rolls off the tongue than asshole maybe in a bitch yeah no i just don't equate bitch in the context that we use it with misogyny a homophobic and misogynist really and and also funnier when we're not talking about dicks do you listen to this podcast right i mean half the time they were only entertaining when dick is involved yeah that's weird well this is not even a gay person either so his name is right wrong i mean i i totally appreciate that you felt the need to talk to us about it i just don't see it well that's what we're ending uh really you can't give us a funny letter instead of the downer letter all right let me let me see let me see uh he said uh i can't pronounce french but he says like sukaj de penis constant and he says sheeeet my title means constant dick sucking in french for use he didn't know oh yeah he just wanted to throw out some french uh dick sucking no he wanted to throw out some french anti-gay words there oh um in your last episode i was astoundingly aroused by one of your reader's emails fucking joking one of which was from roger did you say that yeah i'm fucking joking like yeah um one one of which was from roger talking about his recent arrival to the beautiful land of video game delays and french manuals aka kobeck assuming he's a montreal i would highly suggest going to a game store downtown and talking to people during our long and lonely weekdays waiting for customers i'm one of the managers at a local game store and furiously fat each time a girl comes into my store in the dark fat penis fat does that mean masturbate yeah it's shorthand for the sound that it makes when you're jerking it i guess man how do i not how do i not know this that is an excellent question um he says one of the best ways to learn french and kobeck is to go to the ymca or places similar to these they usually host several language classes he actually said dick second classes but he says i mean language classes maybe he you fail at picking a good follow up letter that last one yeah oh man all right i'm just gonna stop this one further and further exactly what we said we weren't uh one time on my travels i hooked up with the girl from kobeck and she didn't speak a fucking drop of english it's a way to speak with drop of how did this work it was the international language of making out it was you fairly understood dreadlocks you pure this is just a physical thing did you guys just like play with each other's hair laugh about it yeah i mean we hung up for several days for like did you communicate like ants through smell yeah i don't understand what do you get had you fucking get along with someone for that one when you can't even speak making out her friends spoke better and so like one of my friends also i would start to treat them like a puppy after a while like because you know my dog we don't speak but we have a good time yeah it's like that movie enemy mind except more erotic i know you're saying to yourself how could it be more ironic but somehow yeah what oh man oh man that place lugasa junior just gets me going island of core food grease before getting on the beach i'm trying to find a good letter sorry guys but i'm not more organized with i'm not more organized with the letters because uh it's fine time and i am entertaining ourselves because i i normally i try and like go over all this and pick out them but i've got a hectic time at work so i failed um later on i'm gonna cut myself just to feel something also when i was i've got a my chemical romance record you can do that too when i was on that island in core food grease it was my first time to have it's a traditional uh greek liquor oozo if we have any greek listeners out there it's pretty good uh yeah yeah it's kind of it's got a licorice taste and like we did this crazy ass tradition god is if alcohol couldn't get anywhere right i'm not a big licorice fan but it it worked because i mean when people say licorice they don't mean like fucking red vines they mean black licorice yeah yeah i mean sort of like yay your mister but more minty i don't know kind of in between like yay your mister and absinthe me and arthur understand everything you're saying to the listeners i mean i i know the the technical details i'm more familiar with the immediate effects but we did this really crazy tradition uh that they would give you a shot of oozo and then break a fucking plate over your head and they would seriously do this shit you just walked into my big fat greek wedding yeah i'm gonna be honest i'm looking through all these letters and uh i'm not really seeing any that are fucking happy they're all either fucking obscenely dirty or like serious um i guess i'll end with this one this is from jamie um he says dear rebel of him crew he says palatable blowjob palatable blowjob yes i how long has has domestic removed how long has domestic violence wednesday been going on since we moved in yeah september if you thought i mean i've never heard anyone crying out in physical pain or the sounds of an actual fight it's pretty much just like yelling at the top of lungs for hours um and if you consider trying to ease the couples pain if the violence is alcohol field you could always offer the attacker a prairie oyster to sober him up some balls that like isn't the prairie oyster like bulls bulls testicles yes um either that or it could be a lack of satisfaction in the bedroom in which case tyler could offer them some pointers i was about to say i'm not gonna go have sex with those people um i'll take one for the team on this one i mean domestic i don't know it's the guy that's yelling more domestic violence has been going on for a while very rarely do i ever actually lose my shit like there's only been like two instances where i've yelled like shut up or kill each other yeah that's the one that we talk about yelling that rarely do we have the balls to do so which is just like shut up or fucking kill each other yeah well them i don't even know where they are they're not in the same building no they're right they're in the building like across the street and we can fucking hear them so i mean like i said i honestly and when i've tried to listen to like what they're yelling about it's fucking nonsensical just some guy being like motherfucker blah blah fucking fuck it's just like it's almost like mad about everything maybe it's not even domestic violence maybe it's just fucking Tourette's Wednesdays and we just don't know it so i used to be domestic violence friday and then domestic violence saturday and they've just like over the course of the past four years it's just become domestic violence every day yeah so that's it you've wasted fucking two and a half hours with us i'm sorry um sorry i keep telling you with these explosions of laughter time or where can you be found on the internet this week uh twitter.com/darnity and you can find his news and a preview of his guitar hero 5 at game spy you can find my various writings at game spy as well as hear me on the games by debriefing's podcast as well as find me at twitter.com/chufmoanyy we're either doing up your heads on co-op this week no no none of us were on co-op in this week so we all that was a good episode i watched it might as well not exist no no please what the intro is hilarious i really recommend it i watched it today you can watch it at area 5.tv or revision 3.net i believe or if you're on a virgin air airline flight you can watch it and see can you watch it for free or does it cost money it's free as far as i know so you can find me at twitter.com/agis obi dovo, dovey robo, fuck both of you, obi dova roba dova, grab them like a man inside and out and love strange so we learn the part think of container things that we were working on slow change made pullers apart when i'm not getting any of your heart baby don't you forget about me don't don't don't don't don't don't you forget about me do you stand above me look my way you never love me rain keeps falling rain keeps falling down do you recognize me call my name or walk on my rain keeps falling rain keeps falling down down down oh oh oh