Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 18 - 05/15/09
Welcome to another episode of Rebel FM where we tried to do a short one and ran over 2 hours! It's just Anthony, Tyler, and me (Arthur) this week as we talk about Resident Evil Degeneration, how I learned to love Uncharted while hating its smoking, er, I mean shooting, and Cryostasis, plus your issues with gaming media, and a lot of letters, some which are about video games. I'm not up to making any leprechaun jokes, but someone will I'm sure. This weeks music, in order of appearance:Metric - Too little too lateAt The Drive-in - ArcarsenalKillswitch Engage - When Darkness Falls
[Music] Welcome to episode 19 of Rebel FM. I believe it's 19. 20, fuck if I know. You're going in the wrong direction. Is it 18? Yes, it's 18. We're legal. I forget. I mean, you know, I have to remember this and then a game spy. It's like up in to the 80s for some reason. Hello, hello. My mic's not very sensitive at the moment. Does it just ask for dinner and not say thank you? It's a bitch. So we're back again. We're going to talk about games we've been playing. And then we have a topic about game journalism. I'm more just like gaming media. That's what I mean. And then we have a ton of letters to read because you guys have been good in writing a lot. So I'm writing some pretty funny shit here and there. Along with some actually legitimate serious questions. And some dumb ones here and there. We're going to talk about what we've been playing. This week, we're not going to talk about buying a commando. But next week, me and Arthur will both have beaten it. So we'll have that to talk about. And I'll probably have a good chunk of it done as well. I mean, we're not doing the, we're not trying to do the typical. No, we're just playing it. It's coming next week. It's coming next week is the point. So it will be, you know, and by then, by the time you guys hear it, some of you already have it in your hands as well. Can we say anything about it? I just don't think we should. Just because I don't know what we can and can't say. And I don't want to overstep something. So, you know, but uh. Testicles. So let's talk about games that we've been, we've been hitting up. Games we've been gaming. Next week, I should also be able to talk about red dead redemption too. Oh shit. So we're not trying to cock these just their embargoes. You know, it's good to stay up. Some of you bitched about it on our pre-show question. So maybe we can talk about that a little bit. Um. Yeah, it's just we're genuinely excited to talk about these games too. So it's what's in our heads. So I haven't been playing very much except the same games because I'm still parsing my way through them. Um. I mean. I should corrupt World of Warcraft on your computer. No, I haven't even really played World of Warcraft at all since the last podcast at all. So it's just been more of resistance retribution. More of a broken sword, which I'm like eight hours in, but it's a really long game. So and I only play it before I go to bed, which was funny because I was talking to friend Joe, right? And I was talking and he didn't have a DS. I was like, man, how do you not have a DS? Cause like for me, a DS is like what I do before I go to bed. Like some people read a book and then put it on the night, stand and pass out. I like play DS and he's like, no dude, I just watched porn and masturbate. I was about to say that kind of seems like what Joe would do before he goes to bed. So yeah, I just thought that the DS requires two hands. Yeah, exactly. Joe doesn't actually have any handhelds anymore because he traded his PSP to help him get a 360. I just think that's weird because Joe just seems like the type of person that needs entertainment on him. He's not his person at all times, but uh, I've also been playing. Oh, I haven't been playing some games. I will talk about them. I tried, uh, I've been playing games on iPhone. Damn it. It's just a different type of game. Like I've played, uh, I've been playing peggle on my iPhone. You motherfucker. It's a platform for, it's a different kind of platform. I've been playing peggle. And it's good. The thing that I was worried about the most was being able to do precise shots with the touch screen. And it is a little challenging at first because like when you're using the touch screen aim and you lift your finger, it's not uncommon for it to be like slightly moved when you lift your finger. Is it compelling in this room? But it has a scroll wheel that allows you to do for really precise shots. And it has 40 of the 70 challenge levels. It's not like the complete, complete game. No, they need something to sell to you later. And it doesn't have, uh, it doesn't have like music going on during the normal game, but it does duo de joy, which is the important part. Can you play MP3s in the background while you're? I don't know. Actually, I'm not totally sure. I doubt it. So you're the worst iPhone owner ever. I mean, I just, typically when I'm playing peggle, I'm usually playing it in silence. Like just sitting there like, you know, just like taking a couple of minutes break. So I've been playing that and then I tried out the, uh, the Resident Evil Degeneration game for iPhone that also released this week. Which is appropriately named. Degeneration. It's like a degeneration from the series. That's true. Like, I feel bad because full disclosure Capcom did give me a code to try it out. And I told the guy that, you know, I would play it and see what I thought and talk about on the podcast. And, you know, full disclosure, but the truth matters, I'm not impressed at all. You were talking about it. I think the game tries to do, uh, way too much. Like it still tries to do like RE4 controls, like where you're like running and shooting. And like, like, you know, like, or pausing and shooting like the way you didn't Resident Evil 4. Is it first person or third? It's a third person just like Resident Evil 4. And so you still have like the ability to do knife attacks and stuff as they get too close. And you still have to like pick up items because it's just like RE4 or RE5 when they die. They'll drop herbs or bullets. In a way, I kind of have to respect that because it didn't go the easy sort of Resident Evil gun survivor route. Right. That's the Silent Hill game. Right. And well, even the Silent Hill one did it terribly. But yeah, I mean, it's a, it's, it tries to do too much though for the touch screen. Cause like, at an even time you can only ever be aiming or moving. And you have to sit there and touch things to switch the, the stick, the virtual stick. You have to switch it between the two. So it just, it becomes cumbersome real real fast. There must be like back in the day with the Sega Genesis. If you had Street Fighter and you only have the right, the original Sega controller. The 3 button controller. You had to press select to go between punches and kicks. It was start and it was still genius. That was retarded. Man, I played the fuck out of Street Fighter special championship edition. So, so I do appreciate what they did. And the cool thing about it is I guess it follows the storyline of that really terrible movie. Resident Evil degeneration is awful. So yeah, I mean, that's, I guess it follows that storyline which I have no interest in whatsoever. It just shows how Triso got a hold of Umbrella's stuff. But yeah, so, so iPhone games, man. I don't know, I really do enjoy playing games on my iPhone when they're done really well. Pedal drop seven or that, that flight control game. That's still a ridiculously good game. Now I respect the fact like when I saw Nathan Filion in his Twitter when he'd be like 80. He'd be like 80 on flight control. I'd be like 80. That sounds like such a low scoring thing. The best I have ever done is 33. So, that game is ridiculously hard. You have another thing that Nathan Filion does that you aspire to. Yeah. But yeah, so other than that, I guess I've, you know, I've been playing by in a commando but I can't talk about it yet. And then I'm also going to be starting The Sims 3. So next week I could probably give some early impressions of playing The Sims 3. I'm pretty interested in that actually. Yeah. That sounds cool. Is that the Grand Theft Sim sort of game? Yeah. It's kind of like there's a city, a giant city. Yeah. So the way it works is unlike the previous ones where you just created like your one family and everything that existed outside your house just like didn't exist when you were in your house. Like this, the whole town is actively going all the time and they are doing their own things and you can check up on them. And it gets rid of a lot of the little like annoying parts of the original game like having to deal with the fact that like your guy wanted to go to the bathroom or eat something. And now you just have like one overall bar and they'll generally take care of themselves pretty well because now the goal that you're focusing on is focusing on like helping them achieve their life goals. So like you pick five characteristics when you create The Sim and it'll just be like is messy like wants everyone to love them or shy like really general things and then that creates a personality type and then that. Does it force you to pick good and bad traits? No. Use pick five. Anyone's you want. So you don't have to pick good or bad. Use pick five and just mix it together how you want. So I guess you could pick five really amazing ones and turn them into like Superman or something. Is there like a random trait, a signer? I'm almost positive. There probably is. There's like over 60 you can choose from and then that makes you like how it gives you an overall personality and then based off that you get life goals like the guy that I saw was a kleptomaniac and loved the outdoors. So he would constantly go to his friend's houses and befriend them and after he befriended them he'd start stealing all their shit and taking it back to his house. And his house had very few walls so that he could like get the outdoor feeling all the time. But in his overall life ambition was to aspire to be a master criminal. So you could do things to help him achieve that goal and it would give you like microquests along the way. And I'm like. So everyone that you're interact with these are like NPCs right? Yeah. Yeah and so like but unlike the old Sims 2 I'm pretty sure like this one you know your children will start off as children and eventually they'll grow up and your character will die. And stuff like that so it's taking the whole simulated life thing to a whole other level. And I guess I could also talk about Dragon Age which I checked out. Yeah the everyone's been talking about Dragon Age so it's safe. Okay yeah so I mean I just saw one battle it was like me versus a demon. From what I hear it is fucking not crackingly hard. See that's what I'm saying so you know it has AI that you can program like you can only control one of your like four party members at a time. And then after that the three that aren't you directly controlling if you haven't queued up enough orders for them the AI is just doing things. And the AI is super programmable like heal party member A if less than 30% health and then like always attack like strongest monster with this spell that sort of thing. So I feel like maybe the computer I had because I didn't lose a single character and I beat the monster. And I feel like maybe the one I had they had like really really hooked up with like the really really good AI like they really watched out for themselves I didn't have to worry about it. Because yeah I heard everyone else talk about how hard it was and I didn't think it was that hard. And I refused to believe. I mean they introduced the scene by saying this is one of the hardest battles in the game. So that's what I'm saying so for me it wasn't I didn't have a particular hard time and I've never really played the old Baldur's Gates games that much and stuff so I feel like something was on my side because I refused to believe that I was that good. Like I do think I am pretty good at games but not like that good. But I mean it's a very much a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and Dungeon Siege. So I think people that love those games will have a lot to look forward to and even if you didn't love those games if you love Bioware storytelling and branching dialogue it still has all that and it supposedly I think it has like the most recorded dialogue ever in any Bioware game. It's like 17 DVDs or something. Yeah who knows. It's first PC game released on Blu-ray. So you know that's looking pretty cool and coming out. I'll just talk about Dragon Age is making me want to play through Baldur's Gate 2 again or suggest plainscape torment for game club or something. Yeah Baldur's Gate 2 you can still find on like a download service is Dungeon Siege 2 for some reason you can't find anywhere. I don't know why that is. It's a Microsoft published game that's kind of weird. Yeah and you can't find on Direct to Drive it's not on Steam not on game tap it's like nowhere so and you know good luck finding it in a store like three year old four year old PC game not going to be there. So yeah that's pretty much really it for me I mean I have more games that I'll be able to talk about soon. No there's another game you've been playing that you didn't talk about at all. What's that? Cryostasis. Oh shit. Thank you for reminding me. Yeah so I tried Cryostasis which I know we had had some foreign people want us to talk about sorry I just had a brain fart there for a second watching my sound levels. So yeah I mean because you know it's published by a God what's in a company. One C. One C who's like you know the single biggest publisher developer in all of Russia you know and they also have like what would be considered a like what's it called like when it's the type of monopoly where you control every stage. Vertically integrated. Yeah it's like a vertically integrated monopoly. They're like a drug operation in Columbia. They develop the game they burn the CDs themselves they publish the game and they sell the game in one C stores. So one C stores are like the game stops in Russia. So I mean they literally control every part of it. I remember seeing this game like when I was like Activision owning stores in the mall. Exactly. So I remember seeing this game at when I still worked at one up with Sean Elliott. Sean Elliott wrote like a really cool news story about all the one C games and Cryostasis was this one that like a lot of people if you saw previews from that event they'd likened it to like a knock off of like Bioshock which is only true in the sense that it's a first person kind of horror game like an extremely atmospheric yeah exactly and like what platform is this available it's PC only. So I mean which is like you know the biggest platform in Russia anyway so yeah makes sense but it's it's pretty well done I mean it still has some some at least I need to update my drivers and shit before I can say that it has graphical issues for sure but I'm having some graphical issues but it looks really cool like it has like really cool motion blur and they they really do do cool effects but like the whole premise is that it takes place like you're this like scientist heading out to this this ice this like Russian icebreaker that's frozen in the in into the water and you don't know what's happened but the whole ships frozen over and then once you get there you start encountering these crew members that have like turned into some sort of monster great yeah and the way that health works in that game is whenever like your health will slowly drop over time if you're too far away from a heat source but whenever you get close to a heat source you can warm up so your health will only ever go up to like how powerful that heat sources so if it's like a fire you can get your health way up but if it's like a light bulb you only get your health up a little bit it's almost like a lost planet way of gaining life yeah exactly and and they do a good job putting heat sources in and that sort of thing but it just keeps it kind of like I guess they do a really good job of really getting across the fact that you're cold like when you're really cold you can't sprint see your guys like having a hard time moving around but the the cool thing that everyone always talks about is the ability to like play through a life of someone else so when you'll come up on a body you can like for some reason your character has his magical ability has been explained yet where he can like go back and relive the last few moments of that person's life and if you play it right which you have to make the storyline progress so far like you'll it'll change that person's life they'll disappear and something will change in your world so like you'll reach a door that's like been blown closed by an explosion and so and you'll find like a dead guy next to it and so you'll realize that like in his last few minutes of life he had to fix the boiler before it blew up but he didn't and that like fuck the door game yeah it's kind of like one of the game in a way so but uh how's the localization yeah I mean so far the dialogue's fine like then there's no like like poorly worded English that you're like no English person would ever speak that way so they've actually done a really good job with that it's probably one of one sees like highest production value games I mean so and I haven't really so far right now all I have is like melee weapons it kind of has a condemned to sort of combat system with it where uh you know it's all about like dodging blocking and knocking people in the face like the first weapon I found was like I busted a lock off a door that was lock and chain so the guy just held the lock and wrapped the chain around his hand oh man that was my first weapon and then after that I like found like a valve like a like a rotating valve for a door that I was able to break off and I just hit people with that but uh it's like you're in prison or something it is like prison weapons but in this one too like uh has a really cool combo system where like if you're holding like any two of the WASD keys together it'll do like a two hit combo so if you're like holding like a SND he'll do like an uppercut and then a right hook like it just has a pretty cool combo system I mean it's it's a pretty cool game and it's it's fairly cheap I think it's twenty nine dollars or maybe thirty nine for now but either way I mean it's it's on direct to drive right it's on direct to drive and it's also on steam oh so it's it is uh it's a pretty cool game I mean if you're looking for just a weird atmospheric game and you know one that no one's gonna I'd time be I bet you can probably find like two reviews in the internet for it here in America so I think it's pretty cool I would recommend it what was the name of it again cryo stasis cryo stasis that sounds really awesome just you know another another example of a game you would only find on PC and only from someone from like Russia you know or something you know like stalkers another game that I still man I want to play that so badly yep it's less buggy than stalker right oh yeah as far as I can tell but I mean even stalker nowadays if you get fan made patches isn't so bad it's a pain in the ass yes but hopefully the newest stalker that they're working on will be way better so you human actually let's do Tyler second in case the pizza comes okay Tyler what you've been playing practicality yeah so I've been playing punch out I'm working on the guide for punch out for one up calm and I'm not sure how much we're supposed to talk about it but they didn't say anything so I'm just gonna talk all about it about your freelance yeah it's it's it's fun like I've I you know I played punch out on the NES and I played it again on the Super NES and and really while I'm playing through it you know I'm glad that I you know I'm sort of doing it for a freelance gig because I'm sitting or thinking like man this is it's just a game like I know when I'm done with it I'll never have any interest in playing it again never like the only thing that's interesting about punch out is just the new boxers and like and once you know they're gimmick it's kind of over yeah and and like to be fair though like their gimmicks are like you know it's good like they're entertaining like there were a few times where I was kind of like laughing to myself to some of the new characters like there's this one and I think he was in the Super NES version I could be wrong but he was like a hillbilly character and overalls he has a really big guy yeah with the like it with like a beard he might have been in the Super NES version I'm not sure wasn't in the Nintendo one but I think it was in Super Nintendo yeah he they added a bunch of characters in that one but is this game like still as racist as ever well it's like it's like I mean it you know I mean it totally like plays off stereotypes but I I wouldn't say I'm I'm not necessarily I think it's racist to make fun of French people I think it's you know I don't know if it's inappropriate but it's like it's staring it's basing things on stereotypes it's stereotypical but it's like it's no more you know shocking than anything you might hear on South Park or Family Guy or something like that you know right well I mean so it's all in good fun in other words so as far as you play value though I mean is that really any different than any of the other punch out games I mean they've always we talked about this a little bit around GDC but when when it was on the show for there but punch out has always been more of a timing based puzzle game than an action game it's an action timing based puzzle game you know because because you know there there there is like the you know the quick action to it and you know especially when she's starting getting into the third round and and you're both really close you know it definitely becomes more than just a puzzle you know sort of game but yeah I don't know maybe it's just the fact that when punch out came out on the NES that mechanic was so fun like I just played a ton of that game and then so I bought the any of the Super NES version afterwards you know when it came out and again like just kind of played through it as probably as much as I'll play through this one which is once through and you know I mean I'm playing each fighter several times for the guide but in and and there is multiplayer and stuff but man it's just really it's fun but just nothing that I would want to continue continue playing afterwards and I mean I say that though at the same time while like riding the guide I am not frustrated at all like having to fight fighters several times I'm still having a good time with it you know for me I have no interest in owning that game particularly I think I'd rather just spend ten dollars on the virtual console of super punch out yeah you're almost yeah and just is I mean but some of the things that I you know I really like that the game does like number one is the art style I think it's it's really awesome like they do a really good job of making it look like the concept art and the characters they all have great animation they all have you know great personality all you know all these things we expect are there but yeah yeah it's fun are you using a traditional Nintendo style controls or using waggle yeah no I'm you I'm an adult I would say you're keeping it real yeah I mean it's not keeping it real I think I think I'm an overrule you on this one I think playing a Wii game with good waggle control without using the waggle control is not keeping it real I don't know is the waggle control I actually had fun with the waggle control and I played it all right when we get it we'll try it mm-hmm we'll come back to it maybe you're right I haven't played it I did not get a chance to play it on the GDC floor have you have you tried multi-paradole yet tower no I haven't so yeah I'm not I'm you know since I'm not reviewing it I don't feel like I need to play every mode you know like really extensively which is why I'm not playing multiplayer at all but yeah so I haven't played that but apparently it's just you fight like another version of Little Mac and like you can get power-ups to make Little Mac bigger you know to where he looks like the regular contenders that you fight so I mean that that could be interesting but yeah punch out I don't know other than the fact that it lives in a warm little place in my heart you know it's not really nice to play a Wii game that I actually feel compelled to finish yeah I there was part of me that really wanted to finish Red Steel but I didn't that was like a grudge though and I finished I finished Super Mario Galaxy really I love that game that is still yeah I mean yeah still my favorite Wii game that was in a half ago that game is super fun and it's like one of the few examples that can wiki as well I still need to finish but I want to yeah I mean but most games on the Wii I really get annoyed by the waggle controls because like you know like I'm a designer and I'm on the computer lot so I'm using my wrist a lot and like you know what I'm just like twisting the controller my wrist saw popping and showing and that's why my wrist fucked up to yeah like I don't have a girlfriend but other than punch out I've also I got back into a puzzle quest put that a needle back in I was wondering about this though a whole longer is like you know because people always talk about the wrist being fucked up masturbating and I'm just wondering like who's using their wrist when they masturbate I want you to picture it this is a forearm motion yeah or or it's and also it's not like one constant thing but I'm saying I'm just saying I'm imagining in my head right now and I'll bet you are my wrist my wrist is not participate in this passion I just don't understand how people's wrists yes I mean maybe like if you're working the top for a little while I feel like we could probably look at the size of my forearms and I should do like a before and after picture of when I give up masturbation for something we'll do like a six weeks down the line we just look at your right arm versus your left arm yeah exactly and what combined with that we'll take pictures of the stains on my bed - oh man one time um my buddy my buddy my buddy was just saying about all the guys and punch out they did this to you know when my friend was moving out of his house yeah I want to help him move and um we moved his water bed oh man and he had like a shirt back there but it was more like a piece of cardboard you know you could throw it like a frisbee yeah yeah I know what you're talking about here it's like when Arthur did my did some of my laundry for me the other day because he was home in red I was like gonna be like do not wash my socks yeah I was gonna get him the preparatory warning so my friend john his fiance one time my silence is not encouragement to keep going john john john john's fiance screamed at him one morning she was like john you masturbated and used my sock like one of her nice black dress socks and my friend john just looked at her and said I jizzed on your sock that's amazing oh shit anyways um so what else you've been playing beside a chest puzzle quest is what he was talking about puzzle quest on your masturbatory tangent the jeweled with RPG elements and combos and shit yeah um I've been playing Xbox live yeah yeah actually that's that's where I have been playing it and um so like I played through a whole bunch when it first came out and I kind of got frustrated with it because I felt like I was leveling up my character in a very inefficient way so I decided to reroll and start over again I appreciate that and it's one of these games where you have to you have to grind in order to reach beat certain bosses yes like it is punch you in the balls they will get because normally you just have to like match up three colored jewels but you know if you go up against some of these boxes bop bosses they'll you know they'll give four jewels in a row yeah one after nine I mean there are certain certain skills that are completely overpowered in that game and if you if you have up a certain way and take those skills you will just completely blow through it right but early on especially with certain classes like warrior and stuff feels like some of the bosses just cheat yeah yeah that yeah that so that's what I'm rolling right now is a warrior and um in my previous game I was just up to the point where I could like siege cities nice but when I would try just get my fucking nuts kicked in like I don't know if you guys can give me any advice or anything but I'm having really trouble with that and I'm also trying to get the um the regeneration spell which is very hard to unlock you know like I've I've um captured the the troll or whichever monster where you can research the spell but fuck man oh even doing the spell release are like capturing a monster is pretty hard when you have to like make every block disappear yeah yeah I mean that's like trial and error or you can just look up guides like for a while like for the first few I just look you know I would try it on my own but then I was just like fuck this like I'm trying to get some achievements right here that and uh so you haven't been playing that man and I I don't know why that game is just it's really addicting and it's the perfect it is a podcast it's easy to say well I'll just do one more just one more fight that's for me that's why I bought that I had that game on DS so yeah I have I never bought it on Xbox live because I have it on DS but for me I mean literally for a long long long time almost like a period a year my DS was just the puzzle quest machine that's honestly until I bought retro game challenge that's pretty much what my DS has been man forever so we hear you on that one how do you play Galactrix no actually I haven't I downloaded the demo I hear a lot of bad things yeah it's just disappointing really complicated and it times overly so and they don't really fix a lot of the issues like one of the problems with puzzle quest is just like how completely random some of it is and the computer will get like 17 things in a row and just unfairly beat your ass yeah yeah yeah where I'm sitting there thinking like god damn it like this is seriously like they're trying to stack these moves against me I'm trying to do when so what else you've been playing besides a besides casual gaming so it's casual yeah so so I've been playing left for dead a lot and you know with generally with just a bunch of listeners and stuff every now and then I'll have someone message me and we'll jump in and then also jumping back into Gears of War 2 multiplayer just just with my friends man that game you know playing a horde motor yeah or or just any of the multipliers you know we we've been playing with bots and it's just like I don't know it's like almost like basketball to my friends like get together and play some gears you know like we don't have to think about what we're doing necessarily it's light communication you know just like hanging out with the guys like that's how we used to do when we played GoldenEye so that was our old nine be shoot a blade those were our those were our basketball games yeah that yeah that's that's been real fun to get and I'm not so many like competitive multiplayer game at this point like we did the same thing with halo land parties yeah halo at our place was always way more serious so I mean I mean yeah we're we're we're like you're getting heated like fuck it for people get mad yeah man I love halo like we did the halo game session and I'm sorry I guess we need to get another one going and setting her didn't buy a car that day some of a bitch yeah it's all it's all good we we got time for another one he mad at him okay then he found one in the city didn't he well I think he ended up buying the one that he didn't go look at with me so so the listeners can know that that Nick ruined that play through and he even told me he even told me something like about how if they were if they wanted to game with with fame they would change the time for him I'm just kidding me and Nick both said that jokingly yeah I'm not gonna sell Nick out completely uh but yeah with listeners we we need to set up another halo session because that was so fun I had a lot of fun gaming games and then lastly I'm finishing up uh the the lost in the damned DLC which still I love you know I'm still loving going through that and just uh like clay I love your homeboy clay because every now and then when you're rolling around with the mothers go I'm tweaking my face off like like guys that is so are you excited for uh the like luck and a four leaf clover or whatever the new one's supposed to be well I mean we don't know much about it but but of course I'm excited for it I it won't be I yeah I don't know when we'll be seeing it I there was a rumor that people were posting up that uh yeah that that it was gonna be shown at e3 it sort of started circling today didn't that that's pretty much not true yeah I mean yeah not gonna see it so did they show lost in the damned last e3 no when was that typically like that's the thing about rock stars rockstar doesn't even go to e3 they just do their own exactly just do their own thing before and afterwards I mean because they don't need to do e3 yeah they also um I was watching today this is kind of jumping topics but it's about e3 pre-events um the mass effect too they they started teasing what they're gonna show at e3 get me really yeah a new trailer went up today too like with developer commentary whatever yeah so there's also a new interview up with uh the the doctors I believe or at least someone from the team at game spy dot com so done by Gerald Gerald's a good good writer they still didn't that fucking teaser trailer they put up today still didn't tell people whether or not shepherd is dead yeah they said that they said that they are going to tell you what happens well yeah what happened like they're gonna say oh did they see I didn't I didn't hear them say we're gonna tell people email me whether or not shepherd is dead or not they just said that decisions you made in the last game will apply here like if you killed a character then they won't be there like if you killed rex yeah he won't be there yeah that's great I did not I saved rex oh I had two game playthroughs I yeah I don't know I mean I'm sure I know for fact e3 were review things like that's the big thing about all the games I've been showing right now was there was always some little tiny like cockties about what they were gonna show it e3 to make it worth your time to come see it again so I do have appointments to go see EA games so that'll be I'll check it out I'll let you guys know oh good thanks shit I'm sure I'll be there too I'm big man on campus yeah anyone who's going to e3 this year that's a listener or maybe runs a small blog or whatever like that you should uh hit up me and Tyler let us know maybe we can meet up some point do something um devious yeah to Ryan Scott yes geek box gives aids that's not what you said before I'm saving that one anyways anyways what else are you in playing Tyler um well I haven't been playing but I can tell you I'm going to get back into Call of Duty 4 like I've just watching those teaser trailers I'm gonna get back in and see if I can prestige one more time before modern warfare two comes out just to get because like I know when I was playing a Call of Duty 4 you know probably about halfway through my you know five or six month affair with it I got really really good so I'm hoping I can time it to where I hit my peak right when I heard from a person who heard from a person that uh it's like the best looking game of all time the new one so I don't know that I believe that but the uh well came from a very respected opinion but we'll see I mean I don't doubt that it looks amazing oh no no do I I was but I mean there were people saying that about the last game when crisis was at the same e3 right yeah that's true so yeah I mean I'm not saying the Call of Duty 4 isn't a great looking game no but like crisis is objectively a better looking game like I don't think you can subjectively say otherwise so what it would have what have you been playing right there because apparently this pizza is just never coming yeah man it's been 80 minutes we can call them after our segment our first segment um the man to refund I haven't been playing much new I finished the adventure in plants versus zombies that's a good one I haven't beaten that yet I'm sad which I mean it's not super hard but it's waiting for it for iPhone it is fun to go through it man that's I don't know that I'm just joking I I you might be joking I'm sure that they're looking at it so um and uh we were talking with Alice about plants versus zombie over the weekend when we were having dinner and she said something that didn't click with me then but does now which is that the mini game stuff and the puzzle game parts of plants versus zombies are uh are more fun honestly than the main game just because they're actually really challenging isn't there way you can do like challenge versions of levels or something like that too well I mean yeah there's like there's a mode that that gives zombies new abilities like one of the modes puts plant heads on top of zombies so there'll be a zombie body with a pea shooter head walking forward that's shooting at your defenses that's fucked up or a zombie with a walnut head you know what else is fucked up your cat look at that what she's a um she won't even get she she just refuses attention it's a very cat-like thing anyways she's she's nervous she's never said that before um plants are zombies is good and it's ten bucks on steam why why do I have to sell people on this game you shouldn't people should just buy it yeah pretty my check pop cap that's what I said in my new story too because I always say nothing but good things about pop cap games real uh let's see I also played some more Fallout 3 because I don't know what it is or I mean I do know what it is about the game but for some reason that game is the game where I'll be playing and say well I'll just play for 15 minutes and I'll look up and it's three hours later please follow up for 15 minutes well I mean I I'll have something else that I'll want to do or that I'll need to do and then I'll say well I'll just kill a little time of fallout and end up falling down the rabbit hole of of exploring the wasteland and in this is even after beating the broken still content there is still there's still so much in that game that I haven't seen word um like I finally dig dig no come on do you ever seen a you ever seen a I can't think of what it's called failing so hard right now it's my way or the old space highway astronaut Jones that's what it is I had to sing it for a second to remember the name it was Tracy Tracy Morgan yeah no I remember and that's what he always says whenever someone's talking like it really awkward points in the conversation yeah word dig mm-hmm sorry dig it was funny because it's completely derailing to what the person is saying exactly because he just wants to do him so do you realize what you just implied that I want to do you let that one sink in for at least all the suspense is gone now think about that when you're trying to go to bed tonight you're listening to the podcast sleeping and you hear and you hear the you hear your doorknob slowly rotating like someone's trying to do it without waking you up you've been really creepy today um it's actually frustrated um let's move on permanently at this rate um I like I finally found the base for talent company which is this mercenary group that's always chasing you around it's nice when you find that base did you kill them all I did kill them all yeah I love killing the talent mark they were in pieces by the time I was finished because I mean people I've had people message me on twitter and ask how I got through the fallout content as fast as I did because they're having problems because it's geared to be so much harder but everything about my character is just designed to either take things out from a distance and never get hit or fox runs in and destroys them while screaming at the top of his lungs mm-hmm sometimes on fire you fox that's the uh yeah the girl turns super mutant it's not a girl I thought it was no we covered this before that I was wrong uh but I wasn't the only one that was wrong there were people at Bethesda that thought fox is a girl and someone had to set them right there's so much content to remember that does surprise me is there a kind of a trick to get fox to following you no no no like a dog just make him befriend him no I mean how far are you well I've played with the game once already but I are is it the same super mutant that you meet up with during the uh during the storyline yeah okay yeah and it seems like he doesn't really follow you like he just says all right I'm gonna go all right there's follows him like a fucking to the end of the world yeah um basically I think you have to be a good aligned character I don't know if you're oh that's probably why because I've played through once as evil my first place okay I see there's totally good yeah he he definitely judges you pretty harshly he's like he's he's iron fisted about his moral judgments okay but uh you can't get him as a follower the first time you meet him because where you meet him in the vault you don't leave there of your own volition like you leave there and it goes directly into a story mission and that's as much as I can say without really spoiling any of yeah because people still have this thing about spoilers for fallout i mean you know it's kind of like lost like even older seasons of lost right they just haven't gotten around to it but they're really planned into it I guess we haven't hit the one-year statute of limitations yet with follow although we have with uncharted which is why we'll be spoiling the shit out of some of that in a minute um but uh yeah fox will come to you after you leave raven rock if you're good okay all right let's talk about uncharted uh okay I finished uncharted finally told you it goes it goes in places that you didn't like it turns like from adventure jump around game to like the fucking gears of war or into like yeah you're fighting zombies i was like okay Indiana Jones Indiana Jones what the fuck are the locusts doing here uh they i mean they don't have guns they're more like they're more like wretches okay yeah they are like wretches they're exactly like wretches and i it explains it it i mean it's a plague it tells you why i don't know that it does a good job of explaining it that's why that what do we what do you mean how's that not explaining i tell you there's gravity because there's some fucking guy figured it out sitting under a tree everything else in the game feels like it's taking place in like a normal reality with like a pulp sensibility like not like Indiana Jones without the magic and then it doesn't magic it's a virus it's like a disease that's all i feel like there's so little explained by it that it might as well be magic i i think it's just it's just be a piece um the way i mean the bottom i mean really what matters is is it like is it a clever design is it fun i thought it was fun yeah it is actually kind of unnerving to the way they do lighting and stuff in those parts yeah uh once i realized the whole run and gun mechanic they became much less scary yes you don't stop to shoot them you just shoot behind you while you're running or like you just run up straight to them without aiming and just fire right because they generally give you a ton of ammo for the mp40 exactly so the whole the whole segment later in the game where you're in ruins and ruins and ruins and then all of a sudden you find this nazi outpost i thought that was kind of cool no i thought that was cool like my my opinion of the game basically is that it's fun despite the shooting mechanic right i mean hopefully they'll i mean i thought the shooting mechanic wasn't quite as bad as you do but i it wasn't good i watching the trailer or the the gameplay footage from uncharted 2 that's floating around right now it does not look like they've changed much about i was still play at all because i love the writing and the story and the characters and one thing i did notice or one of the i noticed a few things which is that first of all Elena is probably one of the the better if not the best female lead i've seen in the game what you talking about from the perspective that she's modeled realistically yeah she's like a girl that's like uh she's like you're kind you think you kind of attractive physically she's she's cute she's cute she's cute and realistic like you like her way more because she's so awesome um her face isn't horrid and it never looks bad like when she talks a certain way it never distorts in a way that turns creepy yeah they did really good job with facial animations in that general um i don't understand why they made her blonde instead of brunette because originally she was like red haired or dark haired before how do you even know that um because they showed her that hair color and all the preview coverage right before i guess i don't i i did yeah in in the preview coverage like she she was a lot different right like her face was different she showed they showed they have concept art stuff and uh the lead designer started dating a blonde girl that looks like that he's like i'll make the girl look like you they showed they have concept art in the thing and the final render that they have of her is not the render from the game like it's a different hair color i don't know maybe they just felt that the voice fit better for that character possibly that or they just thought that a blonde was more marketable i don't know i mean i don't think she needs to be marketable at all because really Nathan Drake is the one that you're marketing uh she's the cover she's the sexy yeah but i'm saying they don't market her like in the ads and the ads they weren't they weren't putting her in them you know as always Nathan Drake i suppose i mean i don't think that the advertising campaign for this game should be applauded really because it didn't break into the mainstream audience the way that's it should have i don't know that there's a way for it to break the mainstream audience being p is three only so yeah well they could have tried so um but no i mean she's a good believable character um the story isn't super strong but it works really well especially as a game story like one of the things we talked we've talked before about narrative and gaming and all that i know that people a lot of people hate that but one of the reasons that i feel like narrative and games doesn't work very well is because so much of what you're doing in the game has nothing to do with the particulars of the story like in in gears of war like the story for part of it is finding Dom's wife and that has nothing to do with chainsawing dudes in half and shooting them other than the fact that you're walking forward in other words you're treading ground whereas the the gameplay and uncharted is fairly varied and a lot of it just feels mechanically like you're working towards something that's true um truth which is one of the reasons why it's acceptable to move i hate you so much which is why it's acceptable that the the gameplay isn't great because so much other stuff and it is compelling is great yeah i know like the the platforming stuff is good and the the puzzles and so far as they're there are fun um one of the last puzzles in the game where you're in the room with the numbered panels on the ground is clever yeah it's a little bit of a kick in the balls at first i see i didn't feel like it was i felt like i felt smart maneuvering around that room once i figured that out um i did get irritated with the magic book aspect near the end where it's just like wait this looks familiar let me pull out my magic book with the key to everything right in it it's a fucking journal but still there's no build up to any of it it was always you walk into a room he says this looks familiar and pulls out his book yeah um and he always remembers just exactly the right page but um he studied a lot yeah well that's probably true um but i mean the story works with the gameplay which is something that you don't see a lot in games and that was fun exactly it's like watching it's like it is like if if there was a game you were gonna play and have someone watch it's like watching a movie a lot more than a lot of other games yeah so although if they wanted that to happen they should probably make it so that you die a lot less truth i didn't die as much as you though i mean i don't know if that's true i died a lot in the jumping around parts so also it makes me think of like just in general it's probably a good idea for like the game setting to be a very isolated place like when you were talking anthony earlier about the um the russian game on the isolated ship like that's a perfect place for a game because then you don't have to worry about invisible walls or any of that kind of stuff you're like bio-shot right being on a ship made a perfect example of why there was really tight corridors and being in the jungle you know they could kind of like have control over like dense foliage to kind of uh finally use certain directions they do do a good job of not making it too obvious that you're like in a corridor yeah and there's a lot of room to explore and something that i found weird was for like the first few levels i was finding treasure like crazy then i went for like six or seven chapters without finding fucking anything yeah i think they made it kind of a kick in the balls later on and then well and then in the last part of the game i found i found like 15 treasure piece of treasure in quick succession but um i mean it's it's fun it's good it didn't do as well as it probably should have i would just wonder if that's the way that it was marketed or if it's the fact that it was on ps3 yeah i mean maybe it'll have a tail in the long run more people buy it and it'll be cheap i mean i assume someday it'll be like 1999 or 29 it's i mean it might already be it might yeah it's probably like 49 of it right now sure when the sequel comes out though yeah when the sequel comes out it'll drastically but i it doesn't i'm excited for uncharted 2 but not because of all the co-op stuff because again i just feel like so much of that is not what i enjoyed about the game um that's good because i don't plan i'm playing it with you i'm just kidding all right what else we've been playing or is that it uh it's time to call pizza people i think it's time to call pizza people i don't all the other stuff i've been playing is stuff i can't talk about or yeah i mean we'll have a lot coming up the coming weeks i mean i will also have retail of infamous and prototype soon so that's right so we'll be able to talk about those soon as well all right we can also try to um set up some community games yeah i want to talk about that we can talk about that in the final session we have a couple things to announce as far as community stuff so cool all right taking a break not coming back then middle class two. it's beautiful. right into the Bible. it's too late but we don't say no it's too much to feel. it's time right into the Bible. almost done welcome back bitches um so our pizza still isn't here because apparently the driver failed so now we're fucking hungry and delirious which means we're going to be angry reading your stuff so we're going to talk about your questions and fucking comments about game journalism so arthur's going to kick us off with the discussion okay so basically the the prompt this week your essay topic for this week you all failed to get a fucking half there's not a really good comments um was i wanted to know what people liked or disliked about gaming gaming media and what they liked and what they would do to improve it and of course since we're all so good at bitching about things as opposed to saying anything constructive there was a lot of focus on the negative and not as much constructive but i think that there were there were enough uh there was enough requests and enough and enough suggestions to go off of and do something interesting so hit us up at the first one okay uh this is from frank anderson i hate the way every magazine seems to cover the same big games over and over and over again and neglect cool smaller titles that could be the next big thing if they were not ignored i'm sorry my cat is losing her goddamn mind because they are uh and neglect cool smaller titles that would be the next big thing if they were not ignored because they are not the current big thing i understand why this happens people want to hear about these games i just personally and much more interested in finding out about games i don't know i wanted to buy them the ones i already know i do yeah i guess if you want coverage like that you i mean there are sites like ig in our game spot to do like comprehend a comprehensive coverage that covers every game out there but smaller places like games buyer one up with a smaller staff they have to be way more selective oh yeah so they will pick cooler games if they get a word on them but the fact of the matter is that a lot of times these smaller games too don't have like the pr budgets and stuff so they just go unnoticed because all these people are getting emails and phone calls set up for appointments and stuff that if you don't have that it's almost easy for them to get missed unless it spreads by word of mouth which i think that you know there's much better opportunities for that today so i mean you just have to kind of google search and look for other people that are writing about these games rather than just relying on like the names that everyone knows yeah i mean and try to try to involve yourself in communities that are about gaming because though in a lot of ways that's the way that these games get out there is that people on neo-gaf or whatever right i mean you can usually find more about it on message boards than you're ever going to find you know i mean the fact of matters that there are companies like this that are trying to get their games known but uh but uh you know that's the way it is yeah and it sort of uh immediately makes me think of uh of gun you know the game we've been playing for game club just about how um like if we weren't playing it for game club i probably would have never picked up the game just because it seemed like um whenever the reviews schedules hit you know it wasn't a very big game in people's minds all right next comment i mean are we done with that one it the only thing i would say is if as far as we go if there's a game that you're interested in that we're not talking about then you can always tell us about it and we'll try and find yeah information i mean or find a way to find information or to play it um next up we have Socrates with the z at the end uh i hate hate hate the snark you can offer editorial comments but don't be a dick about it not every post needs a pun or wordplay in its headline especially when it's insensitive yeah that's true i don't know that every place does it insensitively though but i'm kind of curious more who he's talking about uh he didn't really specify and i i'm really trying not to be specific or take take the piss out of any one particular with this unless it's directed at us and making fun of us um well i mean like snark yeah i mean it's like it's one of those things you can be witty without being snarky i think the thing is that sarcasm is such an easy shortcut to humor you know i mean it's easy to say something contradictory and a really obvious way and expect people to take it as sarcasm and sarcasm means that you're too cool and word uh-huh i just don't know i mean yeah i mean i'm tired of it too it's just a it's just a it's becoming like a cliched way to to make it sound like your opinion somehow cooler or something i don't know or also that you're the man on the street or like not stuffy but let me draw an example like a like a yachty at zero punctuation would you consider that like snark i mean that's pretty much well i think that people go to yachty specifically for his snark yeah exactly for his sarcasm so like my point is it can be done well i think if you've sort of warmed up to these personalities to begin with but if it's someone you really don't know who it is you know then it comes off as like well who is this jerk you know i mean i think yachty gets away with it in my mind sometimes not all the time because he only puts out a review what does he do it every week or every couple of weeks every week um so i mean that's a very specific dose as opposed to just a constant voice and i mean i'm not this is as close to specific as i want to get but in a lot of ways that's known as the gocker voice the gocker networks blogs are generally written with an incredibly snarky we're too cool for all of this vibe and that goes across all of their stuff not just not just uh games media and it's sort of an endemic thing for blogging you know i'm just head nod i'm wondering if you're get swallowing or if you're you're wondering i'm wondering i want the next comment um just a conspiracy says i enjoy the large reviews that really take you into the game but these are becoming fewer and further between if i could see more of anything it'd be these you know like i guess he means like multi-page reviews yeah and like everything i have a follow-up comment to that um from chris who says i hate six-page reviews of games specifically i chance reviews a six-page review where the first three are telling me the plot of a game is stupid it makes me think people don't know what to write about so they just recount the story and tell me what every single button on the controller does i'm inclined to go with the shorter reviews myself i think that there's a way you can talk about the overall structure of the game without talking about the plot at all and focus more on what makes the game unique or not yeah i i mean tyler do you have input on this one yeah i mean i i think functionally a shorter review is a better idea i mean just because a concise message is always better that being said i can definitely think of situations where i've sat down and read a really long review because i was personally interested and uh invested into the particular title it needs to be well written if it's going to be long and not just too long for the sake of making a word count right and and not like a you know uh not like a 1600 word review on like my sims kingdom for the way or something i mean like a substantial game you know like if it's a breakdown like a real criticism of the game that i can get behind something well and i think i think the right there is what you've hit on is that in a lot of ways i understand why some would want a longer review but it's not because they want a longer review it's because they want to read more about the game yeah and i think the problem is that a lot of sites feel like the only place where they can talk about a game is in a preview or a review and that's it yeah i guess i just don't i mean do you really need to go to a site and listen to them tell you about like the graphics and sound unless there's some reason that they are particularly noteworthy you know it's like or terrible like it just it's it's just get longer word counts to some degree with most people unless they're really talented at writing longer reviews or it's just going to encourage boilerplate writing would you care to explain the idea of boilerplate writing to the to the listening boilerplate writing is just like go and read previews and reviews at a lot of big sites and notice how like six of them read almost the same you could just exchange madden for fucking fight night for halo and they're all the same like it's just it goes like it's almost like they plugged in a formula like we'll spend 200 words talking about story we'll spend 400 words talking about graphics you know it's it just comes across like like they're stretching or they have sort of a book full of snippet review snippets that they mix and match together right so yeah i i mean i understand what both of them are saying i i just feel like maybe for me i i don't think i i mean i believe that the solution to to that kind of thing is to have actual pieces that are more dedicated to a game other than just telling you whether or not you should buy it i agree yeah and in this to me it's also it also makes me feel like the listener wants more coverage of their games sort of like what you're talking about beyond the preview beyond the review which is what i really enjoy like with what we do with the like game club even before i came on it it was just you know a way to talk about games that i was interested in that i felt like may have not have been a you know a critical just fucking spooge you know and you know of all the gaming journalists you know but but might have got uh left behind yeah basically if someone could do game club in text form and with less leprechaun talk it would probably work really well damn your leprechauns next comment um they make all the buckles for our shoes and why don't we i don't have any shoes shoes buckles i'm just not that fashionable i guess um you can laugh tyler it's okay there's a lot there are a lot of people that we're saying things like they want more post release coverage of games and and stuff like that and that go to bit mom that's supposedly what they're going to be doing ton of post release coverage is that what they're gonna be doing yeah and green pixels i mean they'll do release coverage as well but and green pixels dot com which is nijan property they do a lot of post release coverage on a lot of more casual and other games so yep uh the gig says two words number scores if you're even halfway competent writer you should be able to enunciate how much you enjoy the game number scores we do because we have to and uh anytime there's ever been a publication with the exception of maybe play now that hasn't done number scores people fucking rage so i mean cgab you tried to do non number scores they had to go back on it you know i know other publications have tried not doing number scores one up switched to letter grades because they felt it was easier to understand for people so one away that's almost going going in in opposite direction from no review scores like going to letter scores i mean i understand the dislike for for scores for games i mean i do but also understand that a lot of people will just look at review exclusively for that score for whatever reason so a lot of sites do it because in the end if they want to make the money on ads from page views and time that people spend looking at a page and stuff they need both the text and the the review score yeah but i i agree that there that it would be nice to see more reviews written where you can really get a feel for how they felt about the game without looking at the number score at the bottom right um and that isn't always the case i i have definitely read a lot of reviews including for games that i liked where it seemed in the text that they were sort of ambivalent about a lot of things in the game and then gave it a really high score right so that's bad editing by an editor well that didn't that didn't help make the score match the text editors can only fix so much though no but to in the end the score or the text has to change like if there's a discrepancy that's so obvious that's that's bad editing the editor should have worked with the writer to readjust the score or the text then i suppose it would make sense that some of the the scores were the text and the and the number were so incongruous were from higher ups at certain sites right i mean that's one thing Ryan and our copy chief chase moleston at one up or it was about like if they realized that your text was like totally not matching the tone uh like your tone didn't match your score they would always call us on it make us redo it that's bottom line that should happen so yeah lots of times isn't it kickin shit out of stuff and it really in that way i know and i would review games a lot um you know i write all the copy and sort of look at it and say well what score does this reflect and sometimes that copy didn't reflect the score that i felt the game deserved and so it's like that's that's right there like well go back rewrite and it's got to reflect the value that you think this game gives so did you start with the score and write text based on that is that i would do i would do it that i would do both yeah yeah it's one of the other um you know more of a organic process of like figuring it out you know then a you know you sort of decide but i could tell you that most of the games are viewed i mean you could tell what general score the game is going to get within you know plus or minus you know one point you know whether that's you know a plus you know yeah i mean tone should remain consistent yeah right so next question um alkaline salute says i hate the insane amount of hype journalists put behind games hmm uh two aberina when ever the quote unquote next big thing is being covered writers seem to get infected with the oh my god source syndrome i mean the bottom line is that oh i'm just gonna stop you for a second that we are not like game journalists people that call themselves game journalists are fooling themselves for the most part there are very few people i feel that are actual game journalists well yeah i mean we might as well say games press or games media or enthusiast media or enthusiast press that's what they should be calling themselves because that's the bottom line is that we are enthusiasts so like if i go see beyond good and evil i can tell you that the preview i write is probably going to be like sounding like a little ridiculous because the bottom line is that hype gets built up because these people are still gamers just like you you know and then do you consider people that write about movies or music enthusiast press not always i think there's kind of a gap between them to be honest even then like you still see hype in certain areas whether it's deserved or not you know like uh last year uh the dark night i mean hype was incredibly high about that movie everyone's still interested in like the dark night tower no no it what i'm saying is hype or no hype you know you should go towards you know what you enjoy and and you know don't let the hype affect the way you're gonna you know part of the hype gets built up because of great marketing campaigns well that's all that and also i mean a lot of a lot of companies especially companies that are heavily monetized tell where they're coverage to their audience and if the audience is demonstrating an obscene amount of hype and say we'll buy way more copies of the halo issue of their magazine then it's it's a good business decision to so yeah i mean uh to stoke that hype so that you can release another halo cover a few months later anecdotally yeah like gfw noticed i remember right here over here in the meeting that like every cover that would mention world warcraft or have a world of warcraft on the cover would sell like like a large percentile better on the newsstands than a non-world warcraft cover so it became common practice for them to find some way to get world warcraft on the cover yeah like i mean it's part of it's a business decision you know these people are trying to make it living yeah i i mean a lot of the things that suck are in a way their business decisions for these very large for these companies i have a very large and very expensive infrastructure behind them which is one reason why a lot of them are disappearing because money is disappearing for large infrastructure that way next comment yibbon i think it's yibbon why bn says i think there needs to be in-depth post evaluation of games i think he means post release evaluation games after they're released and forgotten i would love to have interviews and almost a thesis like investigation of how why unique features of the title work how developers came up with the ideas what are the things they were thinking of implementing but did not do to rest constraints i think he means that is a really cool idea um and there are occasional features written like that like uh you know in one up in like uh one up stem egms down gfw's done where they do like the afterthoughts pieces mordum like on the sutra does they typically call them afterthoughts pieces you know and you just get like their opinion about what they could have done differently all this stuff is really cool the reality of it is that a lot of the companies out there you know that are large they simply don't have like the bandwidth with all these games that are constantly coming out where i think they feel like i mean the sad point of it is just tearing the way business people commonly talk is that they don't feel like uh the return of the amount of reading that it's gonna happen from it and the money it's going to generate is going to be worth the time invested instead of going into the just covering games that are currently out and have hype i mean it's it's something that's present in in actual mainstream news press and newspapers too is that a lot of people complain about how a newspaper coverage is suffering and how it's a less in-depth coverage of events and it's because real investigative news and reporting is expensive and doesn't reveal that it doesn't yield as much copy as as something simple like well someone said this someone said that these are both their sides we have no opinion print exactly um so it's i mean again it's a business thing more often than not yeah a lot of what's being described in all these comments kind of comes down to a really shitty idea of what what makes money and a lot of these the the coolest things that that maybe appeal to a small amount of people or even a larger scale of passion the amount of people like it just doesn't necessarily resonate with people that are outside the hardcore audience and unfortunately most of these websites can't exist with with just the hardcore like they have to resonate the thing is the the major gaming sites that people like a lot or where people respect the writing they just don't they can't afford to commit coverage to smaller things like that because their infrastructure is so huge and i'm that it could be changing i mean there are sites that are that are popping up now that aren't just blogs that have the potential to cover more specific things like giant bomb is sort of leaning in that direction because it's just five dudes and it's a site that has a lot of credibility from where those people came from but and it's just hard like and if you're running a blog for free like putting that kind of time into it is hard and right i mean it's that's a harder story to write and getting people to take the time out of whatever new game they're working on to divulge that information to you i mean it's it's just very hard i mean it's just it it's it's a harder story to write than snarky news tidbits about dlc next um that doesn't mean we don't want to see it and it doesn't mean it's a bad idea no i mean i speak i speak very sadly that a lot of what i'm saying is true um let's see ziax says this is a slightly different one uh the game's press is 90 dudes which brings with it its own host of issues but it's not as if stop being a dude is reasonable constructive uh female game journalists are often presented female game journalists are often presented more for their appearance than any sort of journalistic merit um this creates the problem that those interested in such journalism can be pushed away from not being usable as i candy and less in credibility for those that make it regardless of any actual proficiency part of the problem is that there just aren't as many girls that play games and want to do the game journalism thing yeah well i think that's the part there are lots of girls that play games but they don't play it in such a way that this is something that they want to do is a career like that's the thing is like is is it is a male dominated thing and it's not because males are pushing out the women it's just because it's it's just not something that women are necessarily going for in the same numbers as men i mean uh and it doesn't i mean to to sort of go off in a tangent it doesn't help that any i mean yes a lot of the female voices that we have in the industry are are physically attractive but it doesn't help that i mean obviously there's an audience for it there's a reason that it happens and not only that but it doesn't help that that if someone's not attractive they're torn apart and if they are attractive their credibility is instantly called in the question like people talk a lot of shit about morgan web but morgan web isn't an idiot morgan web actually is pretty knowledgeable about what she talks about and right has a lot of interesting things to say when she's not posing half naked in maxim i don't know i i do think that there are women out there that really do know what they're talking about but again i just i mean a lot of them don't end up deciding to do this as a career i can tell you firsthand that one-ups hardly had any women that interviewed you know allis was one of them allis got a job you know what i mean it's like it's just it it's just the applicant pools typically male i mean overwhelming so yes and typically white male also true and i mean it's good to have voices that aren't male i mean lee alexander does some interesting stuff for gamasutra all like there are a lot of green pixels is almost all all of their permittables that is is is all female and they actually write a lot of really good stuff that comes from a different perspective than a lot of male focused journalism is right like i said again i mean i can just look anecdotally in the ijian offices you know there's hardly any women that work in editorial and again it's not because they're a company that doesn't hire based on like gender or something it's just because there aren't that many women applying for the other hand i mean if if there's a suspicion in your head that that there's a move to sexualize female employees it's it it's certain gaming organizations that's not a suspicion that's without merit in some cases i mean not to get into specifics but every place does it yeah but it's not just i mean it's not just women anymore either i mean right well i mean if you have a tv network it's it's an obvious thing they typically i mean it's an american thing to pick a very good looking person yeah so yeah for real man they're always trying to put me out there in front i'm just like i don't want basically that's what we brought tylor on the podcast we use you for your mad rhyming skills at some point is at some point when we have to put like a calendar up it's just going to be like 12 pictures of tylor rolling around in sand and with a CD of you rubbing my cat on his chest oh yeah just trying to lure tylor into my room to do the photo shoot tylor is that the tylor is that the closest to Chester you that you have i have chest hair okay i don't or eat little it's i don't i have like none it's it's almost eerie in a way it's because i have i have both of your uh i have both of your quotas of chest hair is why that's a new drink beer the beer will put hair on your chest at least that's what i had and babies and belly that's what some Mexican guy told me when i was in middle school next question um joko i uh i had a follow-up that actually no it actually it fit right into that i'm just trying to find it uh to follow up on that a little bit Logan asks or Logan says very little bothers me about the gaming press besides my confusion stemming from gf kelly being at the very top of it i have absolutely nothing against the guy i i just don't understand how such an average guy who says yes he is at the top of it certain who's book other people i'm just saying in whose book um what record is he going off of yeah i i don't know in my book because in my book i would put something like i don't know an end guy or someone else on top i'm just saying that's his opinion i would say the g of kelly is more well known i mean you see well because he's definitely like i profile it's just anybody that's involved in video as well way more well known too i mean when you have a face on it the reason that certain sites like GameSpot or IGN they the editors aren't as well known as because all you see of them is a picture sitting next i mean a a by line that's all you know about the wow that was dated everyone um all right you know like one of we had pictures we had blogs that's attached to him it wasn't until videos and podcasts that people really started to grow right so that's what i'm saying so these people that are attached to video like Adam Sessler uh jif kelly these are the people that are really well known because people are seeing him well he asks why i mean jif kelly is ahead of other people for one thing i mean jif kelly is an extremely knowledgeable guy about gaming i mean he's been around for a long time yeah and he's been there are a lot of reasons that people come out on top he's worked his ass off and he's uh you may catch a strange vibe off of him but one of the reasons you see him on tv a lot is because he's photogenic and also you should be glad that he is because he's a good voice for for the gaming community out there amidst the public he doesn't look like the dude that's sitting in his mom's basement like the the fox news stereotype during the mass effect thing so for him to be our representative during the the sex scandal for mass effect or whatever from a couple of years ago that's a good thing yeah definitely i mean so basically it's not necessarily bad thing but i also don't agree with you that he's the top that's your opinion i think he's pretty up there nope it's okay you're allowed to be wrong on friday friday wrong next comment uh the editor asks why be discounted if i say non-adimic ads are something he'd like to see and a reduced basis on quantified scores um those ideas just make sense to me they make sense to us but non-adimic okay so just to clarify for anyone who doesn't know endemic ads are video game ads from video game companies right and non-adimic ads would be stuff Doritos Doritos or deodorant or music or whatever um it would be awesome if we could have non-adimic ads that's the holy grail of the gaming it is i mean that's the thing that's going to keep sites alive i mean you know people really freaked out when like i always talk about one up because that's where i worked uh you know they laid off a bunch of people but the reality is is that when you're paying everyone on average a salary of like forty five thousand dollars a piece or more plus health care plus health care you know all these other expenses uh you know paying rent on a building like that's a lot of overhead and just relying on on ads from game companies especially when you're competing for those campaigns with competitor sites and ad prices are dropping and ad prices are dropping it's like you need those that you have to have those other ads these days to succeed i mean it's just like anecdotally you can look at the way malls are these days malls are no longer existing on just retail stores they're having to get churches and like uh like insurance businesses anyone they can get to rent a space like it's just the money's not there yeah to support these things in the same way i mean every website every gaming site wants non-adimic ads it's just that they're they can't they will take ads from wherever they get it's just most of these ad campaigns for like watches and stuff they're like what's the point you know they they need the they need the proof that there's a that there is a reason that this will appeal to that audience yeah and that's why we only see like Doritos and Mountain Dew and and and fucking Chick razor blades to Chick razor blades yeah um as far as less less emphasis on review scores i mean again we'd love to see that but it's a practical way to offer a serviced or readers beyond saying we'll give you stuff i like to read yeah i mean metacritic does a lot of traffic review scores will never go away nope never in the meantime i mean we'll just try to to encourage good writing so we don't need to look at the score to know and like a part of me just says like whatever like they're fun like bullshit if you don't agree with the score like you know so what like yeah i don't know it's just just like sitting out on the uh it's like sitting out on the you know and in gyms sitting around and you know arguing which sports team is better than the other you know it's just fun like just don't take us so serious um moving on right MG 310 says i wouldn't mind seeing more brutal honesty similar to what i saw from joystick with the velvet sass interview or non-review as the case may be uh just to to establish or anyone who doesn't always talk about joystick posted a story talking about the first half of velvet assassin and saying that they wouldn't be playing any more of it because they thought it was garbage right i mean uh you know a lot of sites would love to do that but a lot of places also have an editorial policy of finishing the game yeah for review well not just that i think that he just like seen this is something that other people express i know but i'm saying i'm saying a critical writing i would argue that there are great examples of that you can find some really i mean what does he look i mean the fact that matters is that he what he like brutal honesty like he just wants more scathing reviews yeah like those are really those are the easiest reviews to write you can go read a lot of one up reviews go look and to search by score what's harder is writing like reviews and reviews for things that you thought you'd hate and ended up kind of like or even things that are just mediocre like it's just like like the new Wolverine game i have to imagine a lot of those reviews were hard to write because it's like it wasn't bad but it wasn't great well no but those are the i i would only disagree because those reviews have a hook of it's a movie game that doesn't suck yeah okay but i'm saying in general mediocre scores are the hardest one to write yeah and and just speaking from my own experience everyone loves to hear really strong opinions until they disagree with those really strong opinions and at some point it's it's it's it's a fine line that has to be walked and you're writing brutally honest between being brutally honest to actually have a critical opinion and being brutally honest because you're trying to stir shit yeah all right we got time for like two or three more yeah uh let's see i'm making the show run along because we have a 10 15 to go see angels and demons bitches uh let's see yeah i'm just going through here um sorry we're going back to where um we just lost one right there you're an asshole moojin i think it is uh what i hate about gaming media is that they take their audiences opinions into account too much i prefer for the gaming media to give their honest opinions on games at every stage of their contact with it previous reviews etc and to where they're biased with pride um yeah i i'm wondering what he's talking about that's an extension well in a way that's an extension of the last question um i think that he's saying people tailor their opinions to their audience which i suppose i mean i i understand the accusation i don't know if it's true and again like it's all fine and good having an opinion until you disagree with your audience on something that they really don't want to hear um yeah i mean he's not talking about the whole thing where if you're a fan of this genre you will like it he's not you know that you've spoken about that do you no no i think what he's saying is that we'll like say so maybe he thinks that people were enthusiastic about like halo or grand theft auto and even though he's not a halo fan he's going to write like it was so cool yeah i don't know i think i think i think you should get more people a little more credit for being jaded and enthusiastic i mean because a lot of these demos especially when it comes to previews if you end up like seeing like go look back at kane lunch previews you'll see some really happy ones and then the reviews came out in the game suck it's because they show you these slices of the game well not just that it does look really cool but i there there are some other comments too about people saying why are previews positive and then the reviews suck i feel so betrayed it's not because they want to mislead you or they want to be overly positive there is there has been sort of a policy for a long time of maybe too much leaning on giving developers the benefit of the doubt because a lot changes in the last few months of the game's development and there are a lot of things that are just broken code that could actually turn out to be bad game design right so so one of the reasons that you'll see previews that are a little more optimistic is because they think well a lot of stuff could be fixed before it comes out having a healthy does the skepticism is good too because i have no doubt that some of those previews come from being friends with PR people also true um so i mean it's it's hard to write them off just arbitrarily but i see what you're saying and it's taken into account take us out with one more um goddamn google desktop i'm on a notebook and it's asking me about google desktop and i don't care about google desktop um the desktop there's one in particular i was looking for um i'm bothered by some people always trying to say i'm a journalist and it's great to take your job seriously but the only thing that fucks that up is that same dude or website accepting trips to i don't know Monte Carlo in london um yeah and it makes you look like you're in the pocket of the publisher i can pretty much tell you that is every site now with the exception of joystick um and also just as someone who recently went to an event the fact that we were in london and it was being paid for did not affect anyone's opinions of the games we saw in any way shaper from whatsoever like it was just now like like what's he trying to say like i think someone's gonna offer you a trip to london no i'm gonna turn it down because i don't want to look like a douche well the idea of impropriety is a big deal um it's just that it's just that people have to i mean i guess you can i think rather than the fact that something's being paid for is going to affect impropriety it's it's more personal relationships that are the issue more often than having people pay for you because i don't think people often feel indebted to them for paying but it's when they develop a personal relationship with that person it's like imagine like i don't have to fly to London to be friends with game developers it's like imagine like having to like tell your friend like your friend comes to you and he's like it's like dude i like this girl and you're like man this girl's a bitch and you're like i gotta tell him this girl's a bitch how am i gonna tell him this it's hard you would generally just tell me that you're a jeers a bitch but that's because like you i know really well but a lot of these pr people and and reviews people they have like a a like working friendly relationship where it makes it hard to just be a dick to them because you don't want to fuck things up that's the other thing is that they're both you know these these companies become kind of indebted to people in a way because they want to make sure they get that next exclusive or that next coverage that they do kind of you know make sure that they're friendly to them it's it's a hard balance to strike i mean that's part of the problem with uh with the way it works currently um and i mean honestly it's not the stuff that they tell you about that you should be worried about it's the stuff that that happens otherwise because there are lots of stories of things that have nothing to do with junkets about journalists getting payola or compensation or or undo influence through gifts that have nothing to do with travel yep so gifts are the bigger problems in my opinion rather than paying for travel expenses to see a game i mean it's it's awesome if you're working for a company that has the resources to say we're not letting you pay for anything like i understand where they're coming from but it's just not a practical reality for a lot of people basically no one especially yeah i think it's a it's a total new new media thing like it's just it's different it's changed it's not the same anymore um there are a lot more comments on the site and there are some really good ones and we're taking all them to account because we're actually i mean we might come back to it next week for all we do because there's more than enough and that was already a half hour so and also we will be doing new stuff with it so it came very very soon and and it's good to hear your opinions to uh have some input on the direction that we're taking it so thank you for your comments so we're going to come back in a minute with the letters [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we're back uh how does girlfriend Jody is going to read the uh the first letter so here you go the first one i haven't had a chance to prepare so let's see how i do okay this isn't exactly a video game question but it is something very important to me i trust your opinion on this matter fully if you were able to travel back in time and while in the past you jerk jerk you're such a dickhead okay okay let me start again no we're if you were able to travel back in time and while in the past you jerk off your past self and while in the past you jerk is that gay or is that just masturbation thank you signed be nuts so um i think that's straight uh gay yeah it's experimental at the very least it's definitely not masturbation it's experimental right but he's saying but you're jerking yourself off so it's still another physical end it's different from going into the bathroom right now it's another physical entity performing sexual acts that if that might as well be sex as far as the bible's concerned i think it's pretty gay i mean you're not even getting off yourself now that there's anything wrong with that no i mean even if you are into the idea if you're you jerking yourself off as a separate being i mean whatever i have a question about this though does your past self know that your future self is also you or like how far separated are you is it like you 40 years ago so because if it doesn't know what you look like if it doesn't know then that's safe if it doesn't know then it's totally gay yeah that's what i'm saying 100% all right i've got to read some more questions all right all right all right if you want to you can come back because there is there's a ton all right i'll hello do you get no others on masturbation please yeah yeah it's fine hello and greeting mr. gay ghost i would like to extend you this greeting i have been a fan of your show for a while okay let me see but i digress i have heard and he spelled heard h-e-r-d like i heard of animals i love it i love when that happens i've heard that you yourself are a writer and would like to know if you're interested in leaving your publication in order to start up a new venture with me i think the world needs a magazine that sheds the truth about leprechauns you see i'm a midget or little person i believe that i myself am the descendant of a leprechaun clan who else other than me could do a magazine about my distant relatives i can pay you five cents a word for now but once we hit the big time i can make you a very rich man mr. gay ghost if you're at all interested please write back to me and i will fly i find a way to fly you to irish land did he say big time regards yeah regards and fat green penis for all truly yours patty mcfaddy one more his one more patty's big time come so i'm just saying that guy is a leprechaun and you can pay more than five cents a word you cheat bastard no shit you make it gold it rates one right one ireland all the time one gold all the time one gold docket per word yeah i want a fucking a buckle a gold buckle per word plus like my theater arts teacher in high school was a leprechaun and yeah she didn't give me shit moving on okay leprechauns could be female um i'm just going to skip that third one okay i just wanted to let you know this is from jay i just wanted to let you know that it you guys are awesome and keep the good work your show's a really great night has paid everyone please skip the deck sucking i'm just odd on it's hard for me because i just copy and pasted them all um i just wanted to say i thought i was the only person in the world who let my socklin on fire i'm glad to know i'm not alone also besides being dwarven cheese chuff is what Brits use for a train sound rather than chew i thought that was interesting chuff so they go chuff chuff chuff i'm picturing a little children chuff chuff and they also when they're excited they say i'm chuffed well this is not okay dude that's crazy yeah okay uh so this person Cody Hewitt is asking us about movies and i actually thought this would go well because we've seen these uh we've already had Wolverine Star Trek come out what other movies are you guys excited about uh myself a few on top would be Transformers 2 and uh Harry Potter uh public enemies i hope this movie does well uh he says i'm a sucker for Pixar Tekken yeah video game movie but i love the Tekken series so i'll have to go see it but i think at the top of my list might be in glorious bastards um what the hell else could be better than Tarantino and Pit and World War 2 um those are the big ones me of course there are many more but that would take a few upstairs to get through um movies this year yeah you know i mean i'm looking forward to englorious bastards i like Tarantino district nine district nine is a big one that was actually one i was going to say i'm looking forward to Terminator Salvation next week although my little nerd heart is up in my throat about it hoping they don't talk about it don't disappoint although from what i hear there are some pretty horrific stuff in there that they manage to squeak past the PG-13 so i mean i watched uh Beowulf and that was another movie that i was like PG-13 really so i mean maybe they will get away with quite a bit um i am also looking forward to Transformers fuck the haters i enjoyed the first one i mean i don't understand what people wanted from a cartoon based on toys designed to sell more toys all right also hey whoa what do you mean all right you have to talk about movies too motherfucker there's another no no i wasn't going to go on i was just a brother from another um also planet because that's a movie this comedian um Zach Gallifen i get Zach Gallifenakis i like a whole lot and um he had a movie come out last year that's in my Netflix queue that i'm excited to see called The Visioneers and uh and he's also in a movie coming up with um one of the guys from the offices in it is that the bachelor party yeah that movie does look pretty weird and Zach Gallifenakis is in it and he is so fucking hilarious like he has the guy from the daily show too whose name escapes me i'm excited to see angels and demons in in an hour in one hour all right uh the next question Anthony i am from Wyoming and we do exist and we even listen to your podcast be nice to us or we will not bail out the economy with our stockpiles of gold great show keep it up Cameron O'Sheamus first of all i would like to say that while he did like say that Wyoming exists which is something i still don't believe um but remember how we said that Wyoming if it does exist is where the leprechauns live like Cameron O'Sheamus stock piling gold he's a fucking leprechaun you leprechaun bastard male you are never picking letters again i just picked every single one jerking off in leprechauns is what we've been answering so far you you are off to what the listeners don't know is like we've been collecting a list of leprechauns to like hit you know so we're actually a leprechaun hit squad so in fact no matter where the letters are gonna be chaining and there are some gaming ones mixed in i just went into them in sequential order of when i got them and lately people have been talking about leprechauns you should get to a gaming one all right i just wanted to so this guy is a vasev from finland he says Tyler is the bomb i thought the band he has is just something to do while he's bored i instantly recognized his voice when the music started playing during episode 17 it was way better than i was expecting don't know why really seems like a really nice person i can't imagine him to deliver such badass rhymes is there any way buying the in guns we trust in a physical form i hate to buy digital music i think the booklet is essential to cd experience and i don't know if cd baby ships overseas but that was when you can answer yeah actually there are like ways to order physical copies of our cd we just had to like we sold out of in guns we trust so we just had to order some more so i would say like wait a week or so but i i'm pretty sure cd baby will ship you a physical copy um it's not overseas overseas may probably you weren't listening to over yeah i know i know for sure overseas we've sold cds before overseas so yes and yes um there versus local artist um he's amazing he did our cover art and i did all the coloring for it um tim dorsey uh did these really great drawings for our uh design that you would you might enjoy if you enjoy cover art okay this next one is from kcs atomic that's his gamer tag he didn't want us to read his real name and uh he says i know i'm a little behind the times in writing but i wanted to throw my two cents regarding past topics you've discussed uh i'll try and make him quick and paraphrase paraphrase and with that here we go homosexual outing gaming i myself am i gay gamer a gamer spelled gay with dash m-e-r if you will and have been impressed with the overall acceptance of homosexual themes and games fable two allows you to marry a person the same sex by a home and then bug the hell out of you until you're forced to kill them there are different moments of don't ask don't tell love an army of two men is a joke before everyone gets all in arms about it my question is when do you think video game developers will be comfortable enough with the issue of homosexuality to allow for an openly gay protagonist in their game also if you'd ever like a gay man's insight in a game i'd be happy to offer my offer my services um until other media forms are comfortable with openly gay protagonists in a in in a lot of situations i don't think the gaming is gonna say is there even a gay like lead in any like tv show like they're gay characters yes but a gay lead i don't want to say no right off the bat because i'm not a big tv watcher but i mean here the trouble is most entertainment that video games pull from are like action movies until we see an action gay star you know or i mean i mean it could happen like yeah like like one of my favorite sci-fi authors just wrote a book that's like really violent fantasy with the protagonist who's gay um which is the steel remains by Richard Morgan and he wrote a book called author carbon if you like sci-fi you should check it out um but i i just don't think game game makers aren't going to be the ones to push that not big game makers i mean they're independent game makers who could conceivably do stuff like that but i just i don't really think that that's what he was asking i mean i think with like just the prism of characters that like rock star typically deals with in the way they handle their dlc i could definitely see them maybe like throwing us into the role of a gay person for maybe a short dlc content like that would be interesting you know i mean there's definitely been um you know gay characters in the grand theft auto series you know do they die painfully sometimes yes sometimes no there's gay tony in the lost and damned i think but you shoot him all right marie this one which is more uh geekbox fodder than our father says christ so he says uh so have you seen star trek yet if not stop reading it now go see it and come back i saw it twice in two days i went in not imagining it could be my expectations basically okay wait stop if you haven't seen star trek yet spoilers yeah uh based on what i heard about it it was very pleased he doesn't spoil anything and you guys like lost right they've been they play like they like walking theme music around four seconds near the end of the movie i guess yeah that should have gone to geekbox i don't watch lost i feel like i'm the only person who knows that if you want to talk about the movie amongst yourselves for a moment go ahead thank you for permission and then he but the best part about his letter is that he says that was a great discussion we all went and saw star trek last decade i it was good yeah the story was so so but yeah i liked it a lot i mean it's good like i really feel like there are very few bad things you could say about the movie like the next day i sort of jokingly told jody i was like i felt like star trek was like muppet babies in space and like i don't mean that like is a bad thing but that's right like i exactly not a bad thing he wants a star trek video game based on the movie it doesn't need to be based on the movie or have the movie license just the course of events in the movie that would make a great game what i mean is and this is spoilers the action of the movie mealy combat shooting skydiving space combat both ship to ship and hand-to-hand tactical shooter different planets with gravity weather and atmosphere there's difference dialogue trees and rpg elements it would have been bad it's too much usually that's just wait that would be an enormous bite to cheer for like a game that was in development if this game was in development for like five years maybe buy a company that wasn't be holding to a movie studio or they're really schedule yeah um play mass effect he says does anything like this already exist or possibly on the way or would something like this just have to have too many gameplay elements too perfect at too high a cost to ever exist right now mass effect is probably the closest you'll come to a star trek game that's good and what's up with the internet giving arthur shit i don't ever really frequent message boards or read comments i like arthur in the show and be the same without him best wishes ed oh so i try and read the ones that are good arthur once um you don't need to do that i usually if if i read emails that we so this i cut the oral sex out of them sam council i just i just copy and pasted them all because i was doing it fast um so sam council says i was wondering how to get into podcasting but i'm not sure how to go about it if you can discuss this on rebel FM podcast that would be very much appreciated i mean you can do it for super cheap i mean uh a lot of people like i know like uh chpd who does the cheap ass gamer podcast does it over skype right does it with yeah skype like he has a similar microphone it's it's a i think it's a mxl 2006 but there's like a usb version so it's like still a good quality mic and it and then he just says that and a mic stand and wombat the guy that does it with him just has like a usb mic as well and they just do it like a two-man thing over the internet i mean literally if with skype which is free you can go out and spend like less sub a hundred bucks get yourself an awesome mic and just do it over skype find people that you enjoy doing it with where it doesn't feel like work um because if you're not getting paid for it especially i mean it's it's we did a podcast before anthony worked for one up and it was it was fun but it's a lot of work yeah and you know you just uh i mean even with skype and stuff it would even be easier because just going straight into a computer and stuff skype's probably the easiest solution if you want to go more expensive solutions there are guides on the internet of like equipment lists and stuff that you can buy but uh you know for most people's purposes they won't really need all that so oh right okay i just wanted to email someone from the rebel with him podcast to tell you about an experience i had i usually keep up with my podcast listening but i fell behind and recently listened to the final bully game club podcast my fiance lives about an hour and a half away so it gives me ample time to listen well i was on my way home from her apartment listening to you talk about bullying something strange happen i like to not fart around my fiance so i tend to let it out in the car first of all i would just like to pause for a second and say if this is a girl you're gonna marry you'd be able to fart around her like yeah that's just i'm gonna test about that's just for him um in emergencies but i'm just saying like like i'm just saying you should i hope you at least feel comfortable enough to do so um it just so happens that as soon as i let out a particularly pungent fluctuate fluctuation which thunderbird tells me is not a word someone i have no clue who at the moment let out a particularly loud one everyone on the podcast commented on it and i sat and spelled my own cloud of yuck it was as if you'd crossed the fourth wall of podcasting into extremely uncomfortable territory that's a pretty terrible suddenly the fart was coming off from my own body but from my ipod thank you thank you for a truly immersive experience so now Anthony's farts are so bad that you can smell them over the podcast Steve Jobs hallucinogenic trips are becoming realized like manifesting it's too bad that the name steam has been copyrighted already all right so i thought that that was kind of that was a good funny letter i mean farts and masturbation of the letters that you picked this week and there's game ones but first of all these are letters that are entertaining and if you can't realize that then uh we might have been the same in your sense of humor levels of comfort i mean like out of this one guy who got married and he still can't like poop in the same building as his wife he makes her go down to the lobby of the apartment complex for half an hour while are you sure he's pooping yeah he's not like dressing up like a lady or something no it's really that weird he's pooping dressing up like a lady would be less weird kind of really would okay that was a great entrance back into the conversation um um my name is phil and i have a few questions when watch me came out as well as 300 i became interested in graphic novel counterparts i enjoyed them and then checked out book one of series for the accira it's fucking awesome are there any certain action type graphic novels mango is fine that you would recommend checking out second while i was thinking about this question and also because u3 we're talking about a certain comic book series about a semi-superman type character i realize that i have never really read a comic book i live in chicago where there's a comic book store downtown but i also know that barns and nobles has omnibus's of uh batman superman etc with that said what comic book series should i check out i don't want a piece of shit i'd like something that's entertaining and has great art that's really hard oh well we can just throw out a couple check out preacher and walking dead those are yeah yeah i would definitely say because like anthony turned me on to preacher i mean it was i was sort of interested to begin with i really didn't know what i was getting into but you know if you feel like art there's definitely really interesting art like all their covers are from sort of the 90s it sort of gives you like a peek back into the the visual style of that time and both preacher and walking dead you'll be able to find it your barns and nobles yeah walking dead too is amazing i guess i'll throw out the the slightly more obscure ones uh phonogram from image is really good it's about it's like music and magic and stuff like that it's really cool and uh i'm transmetropolitan is one of my favorite graphic novels series of all time lesson that's called transmetropolitan obscure though i mean it's not i had it's not obscure whatsoever i think it's probably more obscure than preacher but yeah i've never heard of trans you haven't but everyone's heard a warn Ellis i mean as far as comics right he's very prolific um okay as an australian i have to deal with some high prices for games and what's his person's name well i he's it is the end i was going to read his name at the end oh okay when people say their name at the beginning or either name at the beginning but sometimes i say at the end so as an australian i have to deal with some high prices for games and hardware usually i can find a good deal at a glorious jb jb hi-fi great story i guess it's kind of like best buy never heard of it but okay uh but for games themselves but the prices for hardware are exorbitant compared to the united states the ps3 was a thousand dollars when it was released and now won't go for less than six ninety nine usually and the we hasn't budged from four hundred bucks since release the 360 arcade is at a fairly reasonable two ninety nine man's for the arcade too ehm i guess my question is do you have any insight as to why the hardware is so much more here compared to the software which for a new triple-a title can be as high as a hundred nine dollars and if you find a good deal as low as seventy nine in case it's in case it wasn't clear these prices are in australian dollars so or whatever their their monetary value is what else is left from the left hand is miles coast miles cosmo okay so first of all miles if you would like things to be cheaper in australia then you should jump off here i went and push it closer yeah that's i mean they have to import it all yep uh shipping discs or discs aren't are pressed usually in fairly close geographic uh proximity to where they're being released like here in the u.s. i'm sure we have plants i thought they have plants in australia usually in the u.s they're printed in mexico um sometimes in the u.s um but there are always manufactured in asian countries and aside from the fact that it costs a lot to ship to australia there's also that i don't know what import taxes are in australia but i imagine they're pretty high um so import taxes exchange rates and uh cost of shipping all can so that's why they're more expensive time to move yeah i mean it it would be easier if the companies would open up like distribution channels there but they they don't do enough business in australia to to justify opening up that kind of thing okay the next letter is from bill shibley bill says i'm emailing you in search of some advice i recently won a contest through machina machina uh how do you say the word machinima machinima machinima you know machina i do but i have a hard time pronouncing machinima.com and inside gaming all i had to do was follow at inside gaming on twitter for a chance to win a trip to this year's e3 to my surprise i was picked as the winner and i'll be heading to e3 with my best friend that's awesome yeah that being said i'm curious as to if you have any advice for first time e3 attendant what booth should i be checking out what bars restaurants are popular what are the best parties first of all i'd like to preface this that i've never been to e3 i've been to e3 okay several times i'm just gonna i'm soon to start be starting my final year college and i'm hoping to break in the industry as a journalist analyst or even hell and intern i know this trip would be a ton of fun but i'm looking at a chance to propel my potential career hoping to meet some cool people make some connections however at the same time i don't want to come off as a douche to everyone i meet any advice on the subject would be greatly appreciated okay um well for one you you probably will not get invites to parties even though you are going to e3 you probably unless you're gonna get them through that group that's sending you there yeah press get invited to specific parties usually when they're making appointments to go see other stuff at e3 that being said there's nothing to say that you can't start your own party with the copious amount of of free alcohol at e3 as long as you're within walking distance yeah i mean i i it's to be i haven't really i've been to la but i have not really too familiar with the area around the la convention center so as far as uh what booth should check out i mean you'll have if you're going to e3 and they're paying for it you'll have like hours on that showroom floor and if you're not having to do appointments and go back and write a bunch of shit trust me you'll have time to see everything go wherever you feel pulled i mean unfortunately the coolest shit like like seeing mass effect too and shit like that you won't get a chance to do because that stuff's only done by appointment only behind closed doors so um that's just the reality of it um that's you if you want to talk and network with people like industry people do yourself i mean yeah have a business card if you think that there's stuff you can put on it or maybe just something with your name and email address um don't ask some questions if there's a shit ton of people in line don't be the guy that's that's holding everything up to try to be the breaking into the industry at that particular point in time yeah if you can get in line behind someone that writes about games though and stuff and you want to talk to them while they're in line you're both waiting for something that could be a good idea um so you might feel tempted to introduce yourself to industry people you recognize and that's that's cool just if they seem a little weirded out by it's just probably because a lot of us are introverted geeks yep and uh i mean but it'll be i mean this will be like my fourth e3 yeah i'm tyler and uh and and it's just uh yeah business cards like that that cannot be said enough i mean like my stack of business cards that i have from e3 is basically like my lifeline into coverage for the games that i want to write about you know so that's basically uh you should also contact me or tyler or something and maybe we can meet up with you or something and do something devious yeah exactly that's that's the plan all right they i always like to when i first started to go to e3 like i you know i mean i really didn't know anybody in the writing industry you know i just started writing for um a newspaper in houston on my own and i always kind of felt like i was um eddy murphy circa Beverly Hills cop like calling my way into e3 you put a lot of bananas on tailpipes or yeah imply that you were talking to someone about your aids test yeah everyone i know used to con their way in d3 yeah it's not a people that did i just didn't it's exciting i felt like i was conning my way into gdc even though i really wasn't yep just make people if you come off as very professional people will take you on a much more serious sort of level don't come off as just a person that's lucky to be there necessarily and like has no right to be there you should go into it with the attitude that you belong there definitely and i think people will take you a lot more serious the self-deprecating thing gets old in about 15 seconds so all right this next letter what well you do one more this next letter is from uh tony scolimbrine all right i want to hear you arthur and tyler's pre-online crazy group gaming stories with most multiplayer games having robust online features the days of in the room gaming marathon sessions seem like they're dying but in college my roommates and i teamed up to be another group of guys to beat castlevania symphony of the night first the only rules were no faquis and the loser buys the winners beer doing shifts and working on a class schedule we were able to play almost 24 hours a day the ultimate prize a keg of natural light i took us a couple of days one of my roommates was terrible at games but ultimately we won when when the castle inverted both groups went crazy just wondering if anyone else had a similar group gaming story i i mean if you guys are thinking i got one right off the bat i can do which was i remember my friend joe had never played silent hill two we all lived in the dorms and uh he came by room he's like man i never played silent hill too and i was like really we should we should i play it sometime and joe said we should play it today and we should beat it today and that's about it that was about it four is that is joe's attention span that was about four in the afternoon so then from four till about seven the next morning we played silent hill until we beat it oh god that's intense i could definitely think of uh and this happened twice where we sat down in similar situation where but it was for the nes and rygar or we were like we're beating fucking rygar which you have to do in one sitting basically dude rygar is so fucking long and we got to the last boss and this happened twice god damn you like last boss curse you rygar dude froze like lion head boss that shoots all these crazy fireballs at you and then years later um like after we're you know this is during the nintendo 64 days we dig out our nintendo and one night we're all hanging out probably in wcw and we're just like fuck it it's played through rygar again played all the way through last boss froze same spot bitch ass rygar wack um when i was in college as a freshman gaming it's one of the ways that we we broke the ice with each other like before even i think my clothes showed up my my xbox is there so we definitely bonded over some halo and uh remember me and uh and a friend down the hall played some other people at the other end of the hall on our dorm for we played warcraft three for money um so we got the game together we put the money down and gave it all to someone else to hold and so for like an hour and a half we played warcraft three and uh basically we went into it thinking that we were going to beat their asses but uh they had apparently thought that this was like way before people used f_a_q's to fucking gain the shit out of warcraft three or like before everyone did that anyway so they thought that their their slick idea idea would be to uh build a bunch of orc guard towers with arrows and just completely surround us in our base and at the beginning of the map what they didn't know is that i stuck my hero out over to the tavern and started buying like really powerful monsters mercenaries yeah well not mercenaries like you could just buy it you can buy monsters spiders and stuff like that um well like the thing that most people buy is the uh i think the goblin woodcutter um but you can also buy like level nine red dragons from that particular thing so you guys were just sitting in your base hoarding money and buying like about awesome well they they were trying to build us in like basically if i were a ground unit and i had tried to leave um i would have been fucked but they were gloating about how they're going to kick us ass and all kick our asses and all of a sudden not anyone with a subwoofer that was playing there was like a rumble and all these balls of fire just destroying every one of their guard towers and they looked up in their light my entire population cap was taken up with red dragons and uh and yeah it was just so stupid like it's such a stupid thing but everyone on the dorm floor was excited and running back and forth and talking shit and taking bets and yeah we used to poopsock starcraft like that but there used to be a place that would that would do land parties first twice a week at the internet company and they had 10 computers land and they used to 24 hour ones and that was back when taco bell had like 39 cent tacos so we would buy like a hundred of them and he had like an r2d2 soda thing and we'd fill that up with ice and sodas and so tacos and sodas and fucking starcraft until our eyes bled that's gross that's what we used to do uh so if we didn't get your letter this time maybe we'll get to it next time i like to mix in a fair share of dumb ones along with gaming ones just because we do get some pretty funny and clever emails from you guys um so we do have one more thing which is that uh we feel like it's time for a new theme song oh yeah which we meant to announce a couple weeks ago and just having gotten around to it but uh basically we want a new theme song from listeners so i we're not going to announce the the prize tonight right just you guys can start submitting to us uh the only limitation should be that you don't use copyright material and making it um actually don't submit yet start working on it all announce submission details next podcast i'm just saying i have no doubt people are going to directly email it to me at some point too which is fine i i'd prefer people didn't directly email right away but uh but you can't stop them i know i can't stop but i can threaten not to read their shit i'll read it and i would like to cheese the prize it has to do with the location of certain articles of treasure at the end of certain prisms of light that are guarded by certain mythological creatures in a certain state that doesn't actually exist and might border utah and they may or may not may not make vocals for shoes leprechaun jokes decided it'll actually be fairly cool so it'll be worth a little bit of work yeah um so on that it's like to take a second to point out that you you're saying like gold a fucking pot of gold i'm saying your imaginary i'm saying your imaginary midget hand jobs aren't as good as actual legitimate prizes so you got a white dress there's more than it's some kind of fucking tech techin like we're done uh you know white dress before we've clever we're gonna go see a movie yeah we'll see you later our dreams are for men we are we are when darkness falls we are we are our dreams are for men we are ♪ The world ♪ ♪ The world ♪ (upbeat music)