Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 17 - 5/06/09
Majestic Bacculum! Welcome to Episode 17 of Rebel Fm, where Gamespy/G4's Sterling McGarvey and Gamehelper.com's Jose Otero join the usual cast of Anthony Gallegos, Tyler Barber, and me, Arthur Gies as we talk about Killzone 2, Red Faction: Guerilla, Plants vs. Zombies, Wolverine, and more, then get into times where we've drifted away from gaming, and your letters!Mammalian reproductive organs! This week's music, in order of appearance:Ben Harper and Relentless7 - up to you nowThe Generic Tribe - In Guns We Trust (pay close attention, and you might notice why this is here)Deftones - Simple Man
You are now in possession of the rebel captain. Thank you. [Music] Now I have a son of a German woman. Welcome, bienvenidos. You and grande, penis, you. Gordo, penis movie Gordo. Somewhere my dad is crying because his son is like the most shameful Mexican of all time. It makes me feel any better. I'm just shaking my head in shame. So welcome to Rebel FM episode 17. Anthony, would you mind if I pictured your dad as Edward James almost from? He is kind of like Edward James almost with a... It's so much shorter. Edward James almost is a very short guy. Edward James almost from which movie? I was going to say Stand and Deliver, of course. Okay, hi Masculante. I was going to say hi Masculante much better Edward James almost than say Blade Runner. Yeah, well my dad's closer to the Edward James almost from Blade Runner in her way because my dad is Mexican but he's very whitewashed except for the times when he's like around other older Mexicans. Then all of a sudden he like brings out that facade like I'm totally down man. I'm totally Mexican. It's like that suit you only wear to funerals. But he's grown up in the Navy for 28 years so he's so whitewashed because you know the Navy isn't very... like the Navy is very much more like a black and white these days. Like there's a ton of black people in the Navy and... You know a lot of Hispanics in the Navy know that? Man, every time I'm out in the Navy base it's just a bunch of young white kids and young black dudes. Like I never see hardly any Hispanics trust plus my dad see what did see when he'd like take him under his wing. Immediately he'd be like reverse racism where that kid would get like the inn just because he is Hispanic. It was affirmative action. You know people see a lot of themselves and somebody else and they decide to take them under their wing. Exactly. So joining us this week of course is Arthur is normal and Tyler and then also we have Sterling McGarvey. Who current game spy editor soon to be former game spy editor soon to be current G4 editor. Something like that. And then we also have Jose. And now Jose for some reason I don't know your last name. Jose Otero? Jose Otero. We just brought the Mexiclorian count of the podcast up. Hey hey Puerto Rican. Latino, but Puerto Rican. Latino, okay. That means you got... That's a damn shame because it would have been awesome if you could use Mexiclorian more often. Well that's what Miguel used to tell him. Miguel Lopez. He used to say your Mexiclorian count was really low and I'd say man you're Cuban. He'd say we count for ten Mexicans is what he says. Well then he said something he was asking about you and he was like oh it's Puerto Riclorian. So when I met Miguel I admitted that just Puerto Rico ate off the Cuban flag. I was like I'm sorry we copied it. We did. I'm sorry. It's okay dude. I just cracked it. That was a pretty good Miguel impression. Yeah. It's all good man. So we're going to go around and talk about what we've been playing and then we'll probably have a shorter middle segment. Which is fine because with five people what you've been playing things usually go on for quite a while. And then last we're going to end with the letters because you guys came through. You guys wrote a ton of letters to me. And more than one which was surprisingly about wookie penises. Because remember how we talked about that. Yeah we sure did. I'm excited to get to the bottom of this. And some people really got into the idea of wookie penises. I'm a little scared that someone brought up the whole mammalian bone penis. Exactly yeah you know like apparently I didn't know humans are like the only mammal. No well there's there's certain other mammals that don't know. Nick Suttner was telling me yesterday that humans are the only without a bone. Well Nick Suttner is wrong. So I think he's wrong too because I doubt chimps have it. And for second of all Nick wanted me to give him credit for the wookie tattoo penis joke because he said he copyrighted that a long time ago. And he was really pissed that I did not give him credit. So I'm giving credit. And last before we launch into what we've been playing. I just want to thank so I don't forget Darren C from Reno Nevada who sent me a copy of Tetris DS because I didn't have one. That was really nice to you considering it's like super super hard to find. Darren C that's gangster. That is gangster. Like I'll have to find some way to reward you. So yeah I don't know. Thank you so much. Alright Arthur kick us off with what you've been playing. I've been playing a lot but so much of it is stuff that I don't know if anyone cares about anymore. Like I finally got my PS3 last week and proceeded to play through Killzone 2 in 6 hours. Alright. And yeah I mean is there anything left to say about Killzone? Well what do you think of it? Yeah there you go. That's what people want to know. I think what I said on Twitter is that I see what people who really liked about it found in it and I see what what say Tom Chick was saying about it when he gave it like a 6 or a 7. I mean it kept my attention and I don't know if it would have kept my attention if it were longer. But it was fun while it lasted. I have a hard time remembering specific parts of it. I don't know what that says about it. I kind of agree with what they said in the Eurogamer review. You know it's like a copy paste kind of game where like each stage could have been like... It could have like jumbled up the order in like the chronological progression of that game and it still pretty would have felt pretty similar. Yeah I mean I liked it. You know I overall liked it and I actually thought it was like a... in a way it was more of like a like a tight experience than the first one was. Because in the first one you really jumped all over the place. But I still felt like the storyline in the first one was a lot stronger. So I don't... The mechanic of different characters and different ways to take on levels was interesting. Exactly you got to play as different characters. If not necessarily well executed as well. And they had like more interesting characters in my opinion. Like the character you play in this game is basically like the guy from Call of Duty where he's like... You know you play as the characters from Call of Duty but a lot of times they're just more like the soldier. And the first one you played is that Templar guy who was much more of an interesting and conflicted character. Like he still was the focus of the story which sucks because like in this game they kill him. That's spoilers. Well yeah sorry. In this game they kill him at some point and it's kind of like it's done like so nonchalantly and I'm like... Dude he was like the main guy you played in is in both the first game and in the PSP game. They have been presuming they were like well we're trying to attract this new audience and maybe not everybody played Killzone. Yeah in fact I would assume most people didn't play the original Killzone which... I was still greatest hits. I mean it did do okay. Were the controls an issue for you guys though? I mean how did you deal with that whole momentum? I didn't play it the way I play most shooters. I thought they were a little daunting at first but then I quickly got used to it. And while you guys continue talking about the window so we can turn out that person that's playing trumpet. Fair enough and then at that point I almost wish I could go into like my past storage of like tweets from like three months ago. Because like the amount of hate that was levied at Killzone 2 during like the first two hours of me playing that game was absolutely monumental. Like I sat there as I was playing through it and I was like these controls are absolutely horrible. How in the hell could anybody like this game? Yeah and for me it felt like there was this weird input lag in the acceleration of the controls when you're moving the stick is strange. I think a lot of it is because when you play most first person shooters you move the right stick to move. Whereas Killzone it was like they programmed it where you move the right stick to begin the emotion of your character moving. Yeah and I mean that part of that could be because you're attached to an actual character model and that's something that a lot of shooters struggle with. Like that's one of the problems with the shooting and riddick is that for some reason they needed to factor in the body movement and how long it would take you to aim. But I just didn't play it the way I played most shooters. I actually played it the way I feel like Anthony plays most shooters which is that instead of hanging back from a distance which is what I usually do. Like I call of duty or halo like I like to take things out from far away. I just ran up to everything and slaughtered everything up close because the trying to track targets as they ran across my field of view wasn't a problem. So here's what's interesting because I hated the melee combat. Oh I didn't melee. I just shot dudes up close. Like I was the one that killed them. Here's the tagline for Killzone game of the year edition or like special edition like the what is it called greatest hits greatest hits. Yeah edition will be Killzone not for punk bitches. That's my core right there. I don't think that I think that there was a lot of hype and buzz around Killzone too when it came out and there were a lot of people banding about the whole early game of the year contender thing. I just don't I think by the end of the year it's going to be largely forgotten as far as a contender for those kinds of awards. That happens to any game that comes out at the beginning of the year. Yeah I mean just like looking at the caliber. I mean I mean there are some games that managed to withstand that like burnout last year. It was managed to stay a talk about it but it didn't get anything. Burnout was also helped by the fact that they can just they continuously kept it in your face with updates. Yeah they made sure that burnout no matter what was going on last year burnout stayed relevant. Yeah but is the preeminent shooter on the PS3 as far as like levels of awareness anyway. That's what the cover system was really take it or leave it like you either used it or you. Yeah I didn't really use it very often. I saw that really frustrating to use it because every time I got behind cover it's like okay this is first person and I cannot see as well as I was before I got behind cover. Look at the way Rainbow Six handles cover. The minute you get into cover you go to a third person camera you can assess and you can say okay I'm going to pop out. I'm going to pop that guy. I'm going to shoot that guy. You don't want to limit the person's vision while they're in the act of like trying to keep track of anything. I think they were just trying to go for the same thing that Mears Edge does which is where they're like trying to make it feel like a first person experience the whole time. So that when you pop down to cover you didn't have a very good perspective but that is how it would be popping down into cover. I don't know. Also the way I sort of looked at that it was their way of sort of increasing the intensity of the firefights where you know when you are behind cover you can't see what's going on and you know if you got surround sound blast in you know all here is like bullets whizzing all around you and it's you know for me the cover specifically I felt they were really inspired by like action movies and the way you would see dudes in you know in action films jump to cover like really fast like moving from one piece of cover to another really quickly whereas in Gears of War you tend to jump on one piece of cover stay take out a few guys and then move. Yeah. You know. Yeah but then it's forgotten in like multiplayer and it's just cast aside. Exactly. Remember Ghost Recon was a advanced warfighter also did that? Was the first one did? Yeah. I think it's in the second one put the cover back in I want to say. I don't know but even still most people don't use it when you're putting multiple players. In years like how often does the cover really get used in multiplayer? Just to hide but yeah not to shoot from necessarily that's true. That's true. It's who's an awesome roller. So what else have you been playing so we'll move on from Killzone. Let's see I played the new Fallout content and when I started playing the new Fallout content I mean I completed the quest. How long is this? I think I spent about three and a half, four hours on it. And it's how much? What? Ten bucks. But it also as everyone knows raised the level cap and I started leveling up again right away. Did you level all the way to the level cap through the content? No. No definitely not. I'm on level 23 right now because I was level 20. Yeah I was level 20 when I finished it and as a listener so kindly pointed out by which I mean was kind of a douche about it. I was incorrect as far as my reading about what Pete Hines said at the event in London as far as the amount of experience it takes to advance level to another. But it does slow down. And I mean the only reason that it speeds up is because we're before Super Mutants are giving you like ten experience points. You're killing all these Enclave troopers that are giving you 15 and a hundred now. But it's good. I mean I didn't buy the last DLC because I wasn't interested and I was under well and buy Operation Anchorage. But I definitely think that if you haven't gotten any Fallout DLC this would be the one to buy. And they could have charged more for it and I would have felt okay about that. And I mean it takes away the ending the game never ends and there's still stuff for me to do it. And they added perks that open up different parts of the game for you if you didn't have them before. Like there's a perk to send your karma to neutral instantly. Tyler you've been playing it. Yeah yeah actually I have and as I mentioned on the last episode I reached level 20 in the middle of the pit. And now that they've raised the cap I finished the pit and so I'll be moving on to Broken Still tonight. Hopefully and interested to see that. But yeah it's a shame that Operation Anchorage turned you off of the pit because it was really cool. For me the pit the thing that turned me off to the pit was the it being broken for weeks. Right yeah yeah yeah. I wasn't interested in paying $10 for that. But the new content I haven't had any problems other than it seems like the performance has kind of taken a hit. It's stuttering a lot. Yeah it seems like my game's loading slower. Like when I go to my save screen the time it takes for me to see the menu of you know saves that I have. It seems I noticed that like this might be like two or three seconds longer. From what I've read about the way that Bethesda implements DLC and Oblivion and Fallout it just takes more memory to load that content in and make it active. So that could be why. Yeah. What else have you been hitting up? I started uncharted since. Good for you. I goddamn that game. That game has driven me closer to throwing my controller than any game has in quite some time. Really? This is including the last battle in Killzone 2 like that. Well that was insanity. I was perfectly patient with that and got through with that. Well this is the last battle I got a question for most everyone to insanity. Well I got a question for you in Sterling. When y'all were playing are you playing on hard and Sterling did you try Killzone 2 on hard from the game? I play hard. I usually as a general rule lab at Tennessee I like to play games on normal. Because you know people like oh normal is the new easy but you know I just I like playing on normal. I play on normal too. Maybe it's because like I'm older I'm a married man but I don't need to like get my ass beat. I don't need to prove anything. I mean there are certain games that I play we're all put the difficulty up because that's like I know. It wasn't on hard because I thought it was going to be too easy. Yeah. The first time? Yeah the first time. Like Halo 3 I played on heroic right off the bat because I know that the way the Bungie does their difficulty makes it a more interesting experience. As opposed to a more arbitrary and frustrating trading experience. So I don't know if that's what Killzone did or not. All I know is that I didn't find the frustration that a lot of people had with the last part. It took me two tries and that was done. It drove me. It took me about 50. It drove me absolutely nuts. Like I feel like to me you're talking about how you would summarize Killzone game of the year. Like to me it was it's basically like Killzone Euro Trash Gears of War. Do any of you check your stat for how many times you died on the castle? I checked how many times I died overall playing it. Yeah I died overall I died like 92 times. See I died like 43 times. See I was looking at like a lot of levels and I was like one time or two times. That last encounter 18 times. Well that's what I'm saying so I died 92 times and like 45 of those were on that last encounter. I just felt like the part where you're fighting just Radik was really stupid and arbitrary. But I didn't I was never at the point where I wanted to fucking spike my controller the way I am playing. So where are you stuck in my chart? It's not it's not that I'm stuck. It's just that the gun mechanic and uncharted sucks. Really? Do you ever have a problem with it at all? Maybe I just need to get used to it. Maybe I need to readjust to the PS3 controller because I I've gone and I could just saying that it cramps my hands and I don't like it. Which actually may lead me to buying a third-party PS3 controller that has 360 stick placement. But no no tilt controls which will be the problem at various points. Yeah I mean I don't know maybe it's just from playing so much like during PlayStation 2. But the only thing I didn't really care for was like the way that the bottom shoulder buttons like the secondary shoulders are that little clippy noise they make when you tap them. That bugged me a little bit but in general I don't know controller ergonomics haven't driven me nuts since like I tried to play like on fight night on game. Uncharted is still my favorite PS3 game today. Hands down. Hands down. Hands down. I've got there a little though because I struggled with the aiming mechanics when enemies got closer. They were just far away. I was just picking them off. And immediately comment the game sucks. Awesome. So it's like impossible to actually win me the combat. And the guys take so much damage. I mean Jesus Christ these aren't locust I'm fighting. They're skinny like higherlings. How the fuck do they take off? First of all if it doesn't make any sense why locusts take as many bullets as they do either. Or humans and the gear war universities accept it. They're big lumps of muscle. So I'm just saying so yeah these guys take a lot of bullets too but you also miss a lot because they do that fucking like wily side stuff. Doth down the way which is funny because like I remember Uncharted is one of those games. Do the shoulders work the shoulders. It's funny because Uncharted is one of those games where I distinctly remember following it from like the first time they showed it all the way until like when they reviewed it. Which is something I normally don't like to do. Not to get into like a wanky dissertation on now like I review games but like usually I don't like to be judged during an execution or on something. It's just a hard and fast rule. I don't like to preview games in general. Yeah and so like but I followed it and I remember like the first time I played it I was like this game looks great. It's kind of fun to control they really need to tighten up the shooting and why the hell am I like why am I shooting this dude in the face and he doesn't die. And they're like we're working on that. So the next time they showed it they're like okay we kind of tightened up all this stuff based on like what everybody was telling us. And I was like can I shoot people in the face and they die now. They're like yes. Only if you shoot them above the nose. Because if you shoot them in the mouth they just get really upset and sad. It depends on the distance. I just remember like then at one point I think they fine tuned the difficulty. This is like maybe the third time I saw it. They fine tuned it so much that it was like so hard that like I was at this demo and everywhere I was for like an hour all you kept hearing was that. When you die yeah it was like a string of just. I mean did you hear that over the weekend when I was playing it like the fucking oh Nate Drake died again. I mean it's just that I mean I just think that game like on top of like the shooting isn't the best or whatever but it also has like I just enjoyed the the platforming. Well you also like it because the general tone strokes your firefly boner. Yeah I just think that the voice acting in the game is great and the music is. It has a lot of really good personality and I like it but the shooting makes me want. And the story in general is just cool like it tells a cool story like the two major games when I play them I typically wasn't like like interested in their historical stories or like the way. But I'm saying in this one the way that they talk about Eldorado and stuff it actually is like a story that engages me in a way that those games never did. You weren't into the monomyth. Well it makes me think of like you know everybody used to always compare Lara Croft and like all the Tomb Raider stuff to like Indiana Jones like oh it's like female Indiana Jones. And after I beat Uncharted I was kind of sitting there soaking it in my wife was the one who pointed out she's like well it's like romancing this stone is a video game. It's very pulpy and I'm just saying well and it changes tones at other points too that you have gotten to. Or it's just like it goes from like doing crazy jungle combat to doing crazy jungle platforming to like parts on like a jet ski to parts on like I don't know in parts that are scary. The parts where you're just like whoa whoa whoa hold up what did I just sign up for? Yeah exactly. I just think that it's a start to finish it was one of the few games that I wrote a guide for that I was like alright I still want to play that. You know I was really kind of taken to by the mocap performances I just felt like that was some of the best motion capture I'd seen in a game like I didn't play Heavenly Sword because I just didn't buy into that whole concept. But what I played of Uncharted I was really impressed with that performances like out of a lot of the games that I play. Yeah I mean and what originally drew me to was like I think reading either a one up preview or a game and former preview where they were talking about the way that he freaks out when he gets shot at and stuff. So he's like an every man in a way. If you're listening you did hear that right he did just say he got into something possibly from reading a game and former preview. Yeah well back in the day I mean I we used to get a game and former all the time so. I think that the thing that surprises me that out of all these games I've been playing and I'm also playing burnout because you grab burnout for me and burnout is burnout it's fun and small doses. If there's a way to restart races if someone could leave it in the comments that'd be really great because I can't figure it out and it makes me really sad. Oh shit it's a D-pad yeah D-pad. What part of the D-pad is I hit every direction. I'm pretty sure it's right on the D-pad pulls up the menu and then there's an option to restart race. You got to do a little bit of digging and probably it could be a little easier. Did you follow the introduction booklet? No. Yeah they don't. Oh no I thought that that's something that they. I remember Nick talking about that like months ago and thinking. You didn't. Where the fuck is the restart? You didn't type restart burnout race into Google and see what the internet could tell you. No I just finished the race and got on with my life. You just kind of wish they'd prompt you though like you fail a race just right on screen okay press X if you want to restart. Press circle if you don't. Which is interesting it didn't bother me at all when I played through it. Like I feel like the way that they paced the events and burnout it was designed so that it was like. Basically everything flowed like it was like a river. It was like a series of like rivers or whatever so it was like okay you messed up this just jump into this stream. It'll float you right back down to where your start point was and if you don't want to go do it that's fine. And granted I mean if I'm in a race I don't want to do it's only going to take two minutes of my life to finish it. But the west I hate the west side of the city where it's like a hair. Where it's just like here is a long straight away with some curves but no streets to branch off and go back to the city. You enjoy that fucking scenic route. It's true I just think some people like the idea of trying to navigate a crazy mountain road. Totally I just I don't like driving over there. But my point is that with all these games it's really weird to me that out of all of them the one that I'm enjoying the most is playing red faction gorilla. Because if I had if you if you had told me I would say that six months ago I would have called you retarded. But red faction gorilla is really really really really really good and really I mean. Yeah I don't know how much you can really say about it. No I think I said that once that article was up that it's all good. So I mean do you want to talk a little bit about I've only I've only played like the first hour so. I don't know I just feel like that I didn't enjoy the demo I think Tyler said you said you didn't enjoy the demo either. Right like I saw the potential to me you know the demo just really seemed like it was a poor presentation of the game. Or not a poor presentation just not a good what you're trying to say is it was not a good example of what was to come. Yeah I don't know just the the geomod mechanics actually work really well to the point where I feel kind of like a cartoon character sometimes if I'm doing something wrong and I chop a tower and it falls on top of me. Or sandwiches my car. That one comes out what June. During E3 or right before it's like is it during I thought it was like two weeks after. Yeah I thought it was at the beginning of June. So it's probably pretty close. Yeah I think I'm going to wait to talk about that until I play the retail one because that's definitely like I'll say I like it and it's definitely a game I'm going to buy though. Yeah the only problem is that. I think it'll be a good summer game for people. One thing I have a question I didn't play the previous red faction you don't need to. Did they have like ground like where you could destroy the ground and stuff like that kind of like. Most of the district until you hit like the unbreakable like a bad thing but most of the stuff in the old red factions was you were in so many dirt tunnels that a lot of times it was like you shoot and blow out the side of a tunnel. It's like an ant farm. It's like being on an ant farm or like on a pie in a pie tin like eventually you get to the tin and you can't do any further. So am I correct in understanding that there's no destruction of the ground and. Not that I've seen no I mean in there like you can't destroy rock. That's what yeah okay I thought I'd. But everything else is pretty much fair game. Which actually I think is way better. Yeah I would much rather do like being able to dig a hole is like is fun for like a minute until you realize there's nothing to do with that hole. But to me like when when I get games like this that are this style of sandboxy like I really almost want it to behave like a chemistry set almost like the new pixel junk game where you know you apply things with different properties and then react according to how they would you know like. You know fire would react with other things I don't know. Yeah unfortunately there's no like setting explosive and then watching as it starts like secondary fires or something like that. Right yeah. No there's really not any fire or anything like that. You can chain explosives and they go when you set explosives they detonate. But everything on Mars is pretty much made of metal or stone as well. They don't pretty much they pretty much don't go like cloth or wood rafts. Yeah it's just I imagine mercenaries to if they did mercenaries to write. Yeah I mean well mercenaries to you can blow up whole buildings but you couldn't do like like damage slowly on a building or anything like that. Like you can't on this like you'll set explosives and damage the foundation and you'll realize like it's only being held up by like two points and you'll just roll up with your sledgehammer and fucking whack it and then it'll all come collapsing. I mean they'll they'll call it'll collapse after a certain amount of time if it's only on a certain amount of support like it'll you'll hear the the buildings start to give before it falls on top of you hopefully. So is that it for you that in plants versus zombies. All right well we'll talk about plants versus zombies when I when I come around so Tyler what you've been what you've been hitting up. I'm still playing through lost in the damned a lot man I love that I love that piece of content I don't know. I don't know I'm just really yeah yeah which is really doing like to me like lost in the damned is the point that broke me like I've been ever since I like I downloaded it it's kind of killed between that and operation Anchorage. It's like a coin flip now for like what version of what console I'm gonna play a game on because I don't know it's like I enjoy GTA 4 I played through it and it's kind of killed it for me like what do you what do you dig about it. To me I like the missions the type of missions that you get like even the secondary ones like the gang wars I'm going through and doing all of them just because for me the ambiance of like riding with a crew of like a gang like I don't know I love gangs always have. I don't know why this sounds so bad. Tyler are you surprised me on a regular basis. Like I don't know I just love like you know riding in with a pack of dudes and all of a sudden a gang is a little kid Tyler like you and your friends did you make a gang. I don't know. And just and just how they really push. You know they they push the action with all the missions one mission that really stands out in particular is the one where you were you sabotage a bunch of guys rolling up to a toll booth you know and you know you're sort of waiting for them and you get this amazing automatic shotgun. And I just love you know it seems like they really push the technology to with getting. I don't know it seems like there's more characters on the screens and lost a lot and lost and down I could be completely wrong about that but just you know I guess the atmosphere and the overall action on the missions is really what what I liked about it. So you're saying you don't like being a white biker. Sterling. Maybe not. A Jewish white biker. For me it was just it kind of I don't know I I guess maybe when I played as Niko I didn't ride on the bikes as much and occasionally when I did it was like okay cool I think it was just to get the achievement to be honest. It's like you know I did a little dabbling on bikes but in general I preferred cars and there's something about the bike handling and lost the damage just kind of a turn off for me and some of the missions I did it was just kind of like the missions just they didn't really they didn't really do it for me and I think what really came down to maybe it's because every time I played it it was super late at night but I was just kind of felt like I was like Jesus Christ am I there yet. Right. I'm driving I'm driving and it made me realize oh yeah GTA 4 broke me of the whole like I'm driving I'm driving I'm gonna listen the radio I'm driving it was like no no no taxi. Yeah exactly. You know a lot of people still take taxis. Yeah and it was just like it basically to me it made Grand Theft Auto manageable and it was a little small elements I think a lot of people take for granted but the ability to make it. For granted but the ability to skip over like the minutia of driving was like it's an invaluable asset to why GTA 4 is awesome so like go back to like. Fast travel makes things better. Fast travel always makes things better when you have such a huge sprawling world and like to go back to I'm riding my bike and it was like okay oh wait I fell out of the little orb the little hologram symbol thing oh shit the pacing is off let me adjust my brakes. It was just like man this is like a lot of micromanagement and these characters are kind of unsympathetic scum bags and that's why I like Chinatown Wars more but more on that later. Right. See it's funny though that you said you would did you prefer cars in Lost in Damned as well because like when I played GTA 4 as Nico you know I almost exclusively stuck to cars but I feel like the bikes that they introduced with the DLC were you know just gave me the the perfect amount of control and acceleration. I never felt like I was flying off of the bikes as much as I was was as Nico maybe they sort of stuck some super good to you. They're heavy. I mean I feel like the Lost in the Damned is the only GTA content where I've enjoyed the driving part. Really? Yeah. I just felt myself bored with it and I got the idea like I felt like they did a good job tuning Clebitz like so that he's like a lot heavier. Like you feel like this is like a 260 pound guy who runs slower than Nico. He runs a lot slower, he's just kind of bulkier and you feel it when you're on the bike too. Like it's definitely like Nico is a lot lighter but when you get on this like you get on this chopper it's like it almost feels like it's like a car kind of but not quite. It's definitely can take more of a hit than a regular motorcycle. Yeah they can. Yeah. But again it was like I don't know what it was I just kind of got to the point where I was like you know the irony of listening to like Jodicey while I'm shooting a dude in the face. Finally I was like all right I'm a little over it. Right. I could see that. So else you've been hitting that. Other than that also I played some Left for Dead last night with a couple of listeners who wish to remain anonymous but wow why they wish to remain anonymous. I don't know if they asked me to be fair enough. We had a lot of emails from people that are like I don't want you to read my name on the air. But yeah they were super fun to play with and we played through survival mode and lasted a good amount of time. I think we lasted up to like six minutes one round which was that's good. That's yeah it was pretty good like we we played in the hospital levels and and they had a really good technique they were setting up in this one room. And then we went on to play just some dynamics though. I still feel weird about this. If we can read Enzo's name on the air we should be able to read anyone. So I got more from Enzo this week. Oh did you? Yeah. We're not reading the dude that wrote in about Enzo are we? I don't know maybe. We'll see. We're rather not. That guy was kind of not kind of that guy was an asshole. That's why we read it and then we tell him he's an asshole. Alright continue Tyler with what life or dead you were in the hospital level. You. I was just thinking how man that Enzo that's such a cool fucking name. That's like pulled. Is it? He is Italian. Yeah. It just sounds fast. Yes it does. It's the association. It sounds like you could do tricks on bikes. Enzo you know. He's a free walker. Terrible. Yeah I know that other than that you know I haven't been playing much. I've been reading a lot of 1984 because I have never read it. We don't talk about the book anymore. That's a good one to knock off the shameless. Yeah yeah like I've been really like hooked on this book you know. It's weird that I haven't been playing games. That's okay. Yeah. I've been playing a little bit of resistance retribution for PSP. Nice. I found out the way you have to hook it up to a PS3 controller is way more convoluted than you and I thought. Right. So you have to hook it up to a PS2, your PSP. Then you have to insert a. Yeah and then you have to insert a copy of Resistance 2. Yeah. So it requires all that and then you can play with it. And then it also requires that you have a PSP 2000. It's Resistance 4 Swords. So yeah. Yeah. I was like fuck it. That's a good one. But I think it's still funny. It actually has like a lock on mechanic that kind of threw me off at first. Like it does like the Tomb Raider thing where it's like you just hold down the fire button and it like does the red cool, ready cool on the enemy. And at first I thought that was like hardcore cheating. But actually it works really well since you don't have a second analog stick. And it's balanced that way to where it actually feels pretty fair. And it has a cover mechanic as well that works third person fairly well because the whole game's third person. So so far I'm actually really digging it. The storyline to me isn't it nearly as good as the storyline about Nathan in the first game. I was playing through it and because I reviewed Retribution it was like I feel like mechanically it's fantastic because they built so much on what they've done with Two-Siphon Filter games. You know they worked their best with what they were dealing with on the hardware. And then it's like I was playing Resistance 2 and I was like man this targeting system is cool. And then the plot started coming in and the deal breaker was like when it was him and this giant mech thing going I'm James Grayson bitch. And I was like oh my God shoot me in the face with a fucking Patriot missile. Yeah that's the thing. That's the thing. That's really specific. I don't find the character very likable either. He's a douchebag. A douche. And he's not even like a douche like the way like I'm trying to think about other games where he played as a douche. The guy from Assassin's Creed comes to mind immediately. Yeah but like this guy is like a douche and he just has all these dumb one liners and I don't know. He just feels like he just feels so cliche he's just making fun of the French people he's around the whole time. He's like alright you just get tired of him. And yeah so the storyline stuff I couldn't really care less about but for as far as like a shooter on the PSP goes is probably one of the best ones since the siphon filter games. So it's actually a lot of fun when I'm just like laying in bed killing time. When I don't play Broken Sword which is the other game I've still been playing a ton of. Which I saw some news article the other day apparently they're thinking about turning that no movie nowadays. Like I mean it's just it could be it is they could capitalize it does about the Knights Templar and shit like that so they could capitalize on all the stuff that DaVinci Code has done for that. So I'm just saying yeah I mean it is a totally awesome game still enjoying it still has way too many adult themes that come out of nowhere for me that I'm just like this is a DS game so I don't know it's like in the scheme of mature versus mature that we talked a long time ago trying to tell him wars may be a mature game in that it has swearing and drugs and stuff but this is much more of a mature game. It's a adult game to get it's a very much an adult game like it when it deals with sex and stuff it's never over but it's like very undertone and stuff that in a way that you're like man that was clever. So I'm still enjoying that a lot and then I played Plants vs. Zombies which both of us played which is a man that shit really like becomes like Normandy Beach for zombies. Yeah where there's a good Plants vs. Zombies is awesome. It is pretty much really great. I don't know how much replay value it'll have. It is pretty much like a tower defense game and so I guess if you've done that you've done it a lot but killing zombies is really fun first of all and any game of zombies in the art direction is super adorable and awesome and it's got enough going on constantly that it isn't just setting your towers and watching and just hoping it goes for the best because there are different ones you set up that are just like a wall that slowly gets eaten so you're like use that to stalls on which is a walnut yeah it's a walnut spell w a l l dash nut you know and you'll have to like take up certain slots that could be used for guns but you'll use a sunflower wall it does generate income and eventually you get so many like every for the first 10 levels or so you get new plants right and then eventually you have to pick the seeds you're going to take because you can only take so many seeds you get like you start with six slots and you can buy more slots over time eventually so I mean there is a lot of though to it's like what 1999 I think it's ten dollars on steam right now ten dollars on steam right now but normally I think off the pop cat sites like it's twenty yeah yeah but it's it's super fun I mean eventually I'm sure like all pop cat games it'll hopefully come to the DS because it would be great there using the touch screen as well or just having the top screen be the battlefield and the bottom screen being your grid of how you put your plants up or something I almost wonder if there's too much going on on it for it to be on DS I mean they might have to adjust it in a way but I'm just saying it as far as it is another game that I think pop cap has another hit on their hands and people give pop cap a lot of shit for like basically just making clones of other games which to an extent is true but they just do it so damn well and I think this is a some like one dude's idea that pop cap picked up and and helped him do right and it is a perfect example of a game that is awesome because the first time anyone heard about it was like a teaser trailer a month ago and here it is now it's out in retail it's like I love that that's how I love it when they market games yeah don't don't dick tease me for nine months especially something like drip feed me shit yeah something like this doesn't have to one of the reasons that like there's the perpetual gaming cockties is because publishers have to get retailers excited enough to stock the product and figure out what they're carrying for Christmas or as yeah digital distribution just they don't have to worry about that like they they make fucking music video of a flower singing about zombies in a month later they release it yep sometimes you need something that weird and you just need to spread it around YouTube yeah kind of like the slap chopper remix exactly yeah I hope everyone's seen that slap chopper remix go youtube that shit um so yeah I've been playing a little bit of zombies versus plant plants versus zombies I will get like as soon as we're done with this I've also still been playing more wow which was interesting because I had a guy randomly messaged me and asked me if I was Anthony from the podcast which was funny because I've never told anyone what server I play on so that just means that this dude was just like I'm gonna add a chuff to my friends list and see if that comes up is this is the right server so that was kind of interesting you were very nice person the other day offering to help me in telling me all kinds of shit since I still don't know all the minutia of wow like at all like I play a lot but I'm I'm like people can still have wow conversations that go straight over my fucking head you should see you should use the armory to see how many chuffs there are in the wild so you know how much the so far I've never had a problem starting on any server and starting up a chuff but I do have a funny wild story in the scheme of things my friend Ian used to play with us and he always played a dwarf priest named Grungny which was the which is at one of the dwarf gods and Warhammer so anyways Grungny was his dwarf priest in Everquest and then he made a dwarf priest in in work Warcraft and then we all moved servers and Ian hasn't moved his priest over to our server yet so he hasn't had to change his name so my friend Joe wanted to make a dwarf priest named Grungny on that server but he didn't want to like betray Ian like that so he called Ian on the phone and asked Ian like left him a message like hey Ian can I make make a dwarf priest named Grungny and he in to send back a test message that said you have my blessing my son so I thought that was funny so why did Joe want to use his character name because it's a it's a badass dwarf name if you played Warhammer basically that was the only reason there's no good reason so you had to get it sanctioned you had to get a sanction by inks it's always been his name so I'm surprised someone else hasn't taken it at this point yeah you well I mean there are like 50 wow servers so maybe not on that server because we tend to always try and play on low population servers like whenever they offer a free move we always take it so I could like I kind of like playing on the servers where when you see someone it's like it's like the Wild West or like you stop and you'll be like hello stranger so I tell you that when I when I signed up for PSN last week my handle was taken yeah I'm so pissed I'm sure the reason your handle was taken is because Arthur just uses his name is just his first name middle middle initial last name but a lot of people probably took it as like a play on the spelling of like ages like a shield or something yeah so I mean which is not why he has that name which well I mean it did occur to me when I say but I'm just saying that that isn't it's much more simple than that it looks more much more clever slash dumb than it is so yeah I haven't been playing much because of wow and handheld games I've also been playing iPhone games drop seven I'll just throw a shout out for that one if you're looking for an iPhone game drop seven it's an excellent puzzle game as is flight control which I picked up because I saw Nathan Philian talking about it on his Twitter I talked about it on co-op a couple weeks ago as well that's also an excellent game and what is not an excellent game is the Silent Hill game which I picked up just because I love things that's terrible game is terrible so now that's origins right no no this is the isn't the silent hill shooter origins is the piece that's the piece and that one's actually good yeah for a PSP game especially and uh but no this one I forget what it's called Silent Hill shattered no shattered memories of the remake I don't know fuck it's it's terrible though some janky shit on iPhone not someone home money grab exactly exactly and I bought it so I contributed to that money grab I feel the same way about MGS touch so I haven't yet so I've been playing very much lately I'm gonna go check out a bunch of new EA games for pre-e3 stuff so hopefully I'll have something to talk about tomorrow weeks yeah it's tomorrow so yeah hopefully there'll be more to talk about soon what are you even playing sterling um I've been playing god like I swore I wasn't gonna have to play that game yeah I swear I wasn't gonna talk about Wolverine anymore and I'm gonna hold myself to that like I finally got the review up I don't want to talk about Wolverine anymore did you finish it I got really really I got close enough it was like alright I got I got enough of a feel for it I went through enough like mediocre boss battles and sad pieces so Sterling talked about that on the game spider briefings where you can see that as well as he talked about extensively on an upcoming what will be an upcoming episode of co-op also in addition to jeez like there's so much stuff it's like in addition to when I was on listen up a few weeks ago I believe Patrick Kleppik referred to we were talking about how it was a lot of influences on its sleeve here I go even though I swear I wasn't gonna talk about it the weapon X facility in particular you went up to these little laptops they had like you know listen to this log and I was like wow it's bio shock and that's crammed up against like a little bit of God a war against something else and I was like from the CDs like this little cheerleader mega mixes or just like a sample of like to live crew to like don't stop getting it mashed up against like Britney Spears and like a siren and a dog bar and a break are you ready for this are you ready for this all that and then like Kleppik goes and yeah and then somebody shouting out the name of their school and then Kleppik goes oh it's like Girl Talk I was like Jesus Christ that's it it's like Girl Talk all slam together and like shot into your veins so so what I what Nick Center seems to think it's a it's like one of the God's gifts to summer gaming like when I was talking to him yesterday he said it was like excellent was it I don't know that I would say excellent I there's a whole argument about standards and lowering your standards but I very much been of the argument that licensed movie games are like B movies like seriously do you really expect like a game that was slammed together in nine months to have the same level of quality of like a highly polished I guess that's that's the difference though with the rate with this one is that Raven was making it before the movie was being made in that shows to a degree it's just to a degree it's got more polish in your average movie game but then there's stuff where it's just like they blew it like there's a huge Sentinel fight where you're just basically it had the potential where I was thinking oh my god it'll be like Shadow of the Colossus where like I can start stabbing at the sentinels foot and work my way up and I was like am I hurting him a lot of it's like tell us right and there's a lot of quick time events and it's like not just quick time events but like obnoxious like carpal tunnel inducing quick time events where you're just like mash mash mash mash okay you know what I'm going and putting some ice on my thumb I can't take this shit anymore like there's quite a few moments in the game yeah it's it's really a shame too that you know how could you mess up a sentinel battle like you just have Wolverine climbing up the sentinel with his claws you know yeah I mean I don't know what it was in that boss fight but it's anti climactic you know yeah it's funny uh you you bring up how you know the B movie aspect of it actually they guys I was playing left for dead with last night we sort of came to the conclusion that they should use the the Wolverine engine to make like a a Rambo video game oh my god the new Rambo movie that's basically the conclusion we came to because of like all the severing limbs and that's oh yeah all the like severed limb and like the Wolverine issue the listener was saying like like check this out he was saying like that a part of the game they should have Rambo run up to somebody he killed and like pull their intestines out and like make a bandana out of there in history Wolverine just uses unreal engine 3 this I mean it's Gears of War might as well be Rambo at this point yeah but Wolverine very much like does more of the limb severing yeah it's just same with the idea and then shows the guy like on the ground like wriggling like trying to move and he was missing his legs I feel like there's definitely some cool stuff they did with like I like the lunge effect because in a way you could spam the hell out of it yes you could you could just sit there and do it over and just travel from guy to guy like lunge lunge lunge and bounce all over the map but at the same time is interesting is like Wolverine's kind of like short range Kratos for the most part it's like yeah you can get out there and you can like beat the shit out of some dude and rip his head off but at the same time you didn't get nearly the distance you could get with like blades of chaos so they added the lunge factor in and you know you started to kind of see how like lunge work where you didn't just have to lunge at a guy and claw him you could like lunge at him and like do like the grab move and then like fling him at a wall and break his neck and there's like little there's little subtle things that I liked about it in terms of the combat and I feel like the combat was the core holding it together I told Anthony today that to me like Wolverine is like having an awesome home theater system in a house in the middle of the fucking hood like everything at the center of it is awesome and then everything around it is like oh that's kind of sketchy what's up with the magic t-shirt every time you level up like well you look you he's wearing that wife feeder like it's just it seems so often just pulled me out of it oh there's my t-shirt again I like regenerating wife beater and subsequent power cord or like my favorite two things every time you leveled up it was like full blown like correct you level up you're Wolverine you know I find it super amusing that I went out to get pizza and you were still talking about the game you said you weren't gonna talk to us see how easy it is that coax me into stuff other than that you can read Sterling's review now yes by that should be up it should be up actually listening to you talk about iPhone games Anthony makes me feel slightly guilty because I downloaded drop seven and it's kind of been sitting there but like given the choice between like playing drop seven and playing how much crazy shit's going on on Twitter before I go to bed I always find myself inevitably Twitter it's funny you just need to try it I mean drop seven is like one of those games that I wasn't sure about Nick Center turned me on to it and but now whenever I sit down and play it I always play it for like way longer than I thought I would Tyler tried tried it right I mean mm-hmm definitely yeah it's I mean it's one of those games where you want to keep playing you know it's like a it's got all the classic like puzzle tropes of pretty sounds and you know and it's only two ninety nine on sale it's two yeah it's two ninety nine and it's like ten meg download it's so small I don't know it's just it's just like one of those iPhone apps that's like to me it's like a if you're gonna only pay for a few iPhone apps it's like so worth it and it's one of those games where you compare high scores yeah exactly me and Nick compare high scores all the time so you know I mean in general I think the other thing is Chinatown worse is kind of like destroyed everything else for me because you know I have on PSP I keep saying oh you know like I've been meaning to download Pat upon - I like the first Pat upon a lot of my peers seem like I think a lot of people missed Pat upon and so it's like oh everybody's discovering this game for the first time and so there seems to be like this whole oh my god that upon I'm like that's cool you know I reviewed versus instruction beauty and it was good up until the point where I was like this the deal-breaking douchebag hero and then I get to like Chinatown Wars and I'm like wow the hero in Chinatown Wars is arguably a bigger asshole than the guy in resistance retribution but oh my god this is the best rendition of drug wars I've ever seen in a game yeah it's like I'm in seventh grade again it's just like oh man just the whole like the way the ecology works with like how everything like this pool of like you got to go up to like whatever like fake Harlem is to go get like some acid from this dude it's outside the projects to like sell it to like fake little Italy to like get something there and it's just like the way it all bounces off of each other it's really tight I love how it looks I'm a sucker for cel shaded games on the DS I was probably the last person who like loved a Tony Hawk game when everybody else gave up on it because I was playing the hell out of them on DS like Proving Ground and Skate Land or like totally in my opinion like under very under-appreciated games for what they did and like Chinatown Wars just like grabs that aesthetic and runs with it certainly but could I ask you something like did the traversal method I mean like the driving with this you know isometric camera did that bug you know I mean that was really starting to irritate me like I was trying to go from place to place and drive around you know to complete missions and I was just like I can't really see that far ahead so I can't really drive as well as I'd like to see I felt like it was more forgiving that's what I liked like I felt like the car handling in Chinatown Wars was significantly more forgiving than anything on the PSP which they were going off of like the Grand Theft Auto 3 school of like clunky ass driving and it was definitely in a lot of ways more forgiving it was like they had driving assist kind of turned on so there was ways when you got a police chase going and you could like weave through traffic even if you couldn't necessarily see where you were going like it was so much more it's exciting you know whereas police chases that you do in GTA 4 it's like oh oh how the hell am I going to get these guys off my back whereas Chinatown Wars they turned into a mini game everything's like a mini game so cops are chasing you figure out a way to make them like eat it against like a guardrail or something and I thought that was much cooler you get rid of the cops was actually making them crash yeah I thought that was like a fantastic way to reduce your stars it's more fun and it's just like exhilarating once you get that sense of speed and you can actually weave between cars without like completely wrecking out like there's a lot of that that I like that can understand how it would be an issue but then you can even turn on like GPS so that you even have the arrows in the car when you know that was there when I saw video with that down I was like oh I should have just yeah you gotta dig into the options and try that but that's like an invaluable asset for playing the game like I'm sure there's people who you know said well you know why do you have to turn on GPS to like enhance the experience but no it really does like why not have it there well it helps to because you don't have to keep you know glancing over to the mini map and then risking a crash that's another thing that kind of again was really like bugging me about playing that game just like it's on a separate screen I've got a glance up oh I just crashed into something again I think in particular what I love the most about Chinatown Wars was you can really see the difference in terms of handheld GTAs between like pre GTA 4 and like post GTA 4 and so when you played through Liberty City Stories when you played through Vice City Stories they weren't really games that were tailored towards a genuine handheld experience you're in the middle of like a long convoluted mission that you normally do on the PS2 and all of a sudden it's your stop you're like okay let me put my PSP to sleep when you get back on wherever you're doing whatever you're doing like whatever's going on you flip it back on oh fuck why do I have a three star rating oh shit they're not to kill me I'm gonna hit first in a little old mission ah whereas do it all again do you rock me over here wasted god fuck your checkpoint exactly hi UMD meet the wall bam and when you're playing it on DS everything really lends itself to the DS it's like they learned a lot from doing that it's bite sized missions but the G like the GPS structure the way they manage like your life meter and again the thing I love the most the taxi system is all crammed in there and it really really shines on handheld just a damn shame that it's not selling very well you know I mean I think I'm the only person in this room to bought it though yeah I bought it I bought it all right yeah I mean it sucks that it's not it definitely sucks that it's not selling I'm hoping it'll catch on but you know it's kind of weird like watching all these normally I don't really get super into like the business analyst stuff because I feel like following too much business analysis NPDs is like sports shit and I watch soccer that's enough for me like when you get down to it everybody seems to be going nuts about GTA it's like a chicken or egg scenario everybody's like why did it fail is it because the DS is like too much of a kids platform or is it because you know people are tired of GTA or this or that and there's no easy answer but I kind of feel like the DS is so mainstream that in a way you know what was the marketing is like I don't think it was it wasn't nearly but it did it need to be I mean there are so many DS's out there and I mean GTA is one of the most highly visible franchises out there I think that's one of the reasons why people expected it to do well that's why it was a test you know not to jump into anecdotal evidence but it also makes me wonder like how many GTA like how many hardcore like GTA gamers have a DS and when I say hardcore not just like hardcore gamers but the kind of people who like buy three games a year like they'll buy it's one of them yeah they buy mad me and a shooter yeah which is either a halo or call of duty for exactly I bet those guys have a PSP before they have a DS precisely if I got to go with any kind of hypothetical scenario I'm gonna go with it's probably because of that but I mean did I don't recall Liberty City stories or by city stories setting the world on fire with their cell they did want to become great hits the city stories is still the highest selling PSP game how many copies is that over 2 million oh well that's I mean for PSP game that's phenomenal yeah yeah right on so and in grant that thought I was always one of those franchises like they it'll sell strong until the next one comes out you know and even beyond that sometimes well you know actually now one quick thing I should say I'm hoping that like with the push for a digital distribution if they do announce another GTA on PSP I hope to God it's downloadable I really do I'm a good maybe go top down yeah I mean there'd be an argument I'm sure somebody'd say that's impossible because you can't stream it off the disc whatever but like I just want to see those damn games like I want to see people playing stuff on PSP again like buying stuff on PSP to play it this year will be make or break for PSP with all the with the software push yeah I think it'll be make make crossing fingers and toes so what are you been hitting up Jose I recently played a Metal Gear Solid 4 again I've finished it the second time I mean welcome back to June 2008 yeah I've still never beaten it so I'm on the last chapter and it lost me really well yeah I mean a lot has to do with just how heavy handed the narrative or at least how they try to deliver so much narrative I mean those cutscenes are so long and but I mean it makes sense right this is the last of that solids next storyline it's got to be big it's got to end you know with a big bang so they're gonna you know do everything they can to just make it a big experience but this time I played it on a higher difficulty so when I first played Metal Gear Solid 4 last year I played on normal and it goes back to something you said earlier where normal is the new easy and I just when I when I put the controller down it was all over I was like oh this is it was a it was big and it was you know it was it was definitely Metal Gear but something didn't feel right so I went back after we were at GDC you remember when we saw the Kajima Kino and I was like you know I want to go back I want to see what hard difficulties like I want to see if that really affects it and what a difference that difficulty makes when you play that game like on normal you can get into a firefight and you can basically just hold down one spot and just wave after wave enemies enemies come at you and you're just like oh I got this I got this and it doesn't feel like a stealth game anymore you play hard you have to play it like a stealth game like there are certain portions certain rooms where it's like you better not make a fucking peep because they are going to find you just whittle your health down just just make it so difficult like some rooms dying four five six times I was like man that's what I liked about Metal Gear Solid 4 was a broader sort of set of options to take on the game as opposed to this very narrow did you feel like it was broader though or did you feel like it was more like you just turned into action game the whole time though that's what I thought I heard a lot of people complain about it. Well in Act 3 it puts the brakes on I think it was really like jarring for a lot of people what happens in Act 3 when you have to do that you know you have to think about it's okay. Oh yeah well in Act 3 I mean I I thought that that I thought that whole part of Act 3 the part you're following the guy in the streets I didn't enjoy it at all but I did the part the only part where I used stealth and enjoyed it was Act 4 in the factory against robots as opposed to against people but I don't feel like and again this is something that people got mad at me for saying before I don't feel like Metal Gear has done a good job of using stealth mechanics since Metal Gear Solid 1 and a lot of that is because there are games that have come out since then that have done stealth in a much more compelling much more organic way but you got to admit with Metal Gear Solid 4 like it definitely was the most splinter-celled Metal Gear like I mean they did borrow ideas I mean let's look at that you know the older shoulder shoulder aiming when he's crouching and he can you know walk through the environment I mean I felt they borrowed the right ideas from the right games I just think that if you were someone who's played Metal Gear and you played it on normal it just kind of felt like the stealth wasn't you had to hide because you couldn't progress the story not because you really had to hide and the enemies can come out and just you know kill you really quick and that was something that the older games maybe you know the MSX stuff you know did really well where like if you came out or if you got spotted you know you were killed like really really quickly and it just kind of lost that because it got easier I mean I felt it on that point I felt like Sons of Liberty was really punishing in terms of you know if you're out there causing a lot of noise and getting a lot of attention from the guards it was really hard to sort of bounce back and and get your ground again almost almost like the way you're describing hard for four well yeah and at five was the one that like blew me away because like when you so act five if you remember how that starts where you land on what is it out of Haven is that what it was called that big thing that came out of order I know that there's always going to be a summary and every day with the worst the worst idea for a boarding operation let's slingshot people onto the deck of a moving ship and see how well that works yeah sounds sounds genius and so I landed and like I'm normal you know I was just okay take out the biggest weapons you have and just kill everything until you get to that door and that's it like again it was like stealth was just an afterthought on hard you try that you will die and you will die quick like the gecko once you see one of them they're just going to take you out so fast it's like okay how am I going to get through this and then it becomes that stealth game where it's methodical and you have to be very careful with the moves that you that you take advantage of what you try to do to traverse just from one end of this boat to the freaking other and that like just blew my mind I was like it's a stealth game again I'm actually enjoying this even though it is frustrating in some respects to get killed so easily I mean is it a stealth game again or is it just that there the only way to trial and error your way through the level is to try to use the stealth mechanic I think there's some of that too I mean I'll definitely say that it's definitely like it becomes trial and error but again like then you look at the level design you see okay well I've got to use this catwalk to then move down towards this area stop here you know check where all the guards are then go to the next section like it's a lot I feel that the level design is open enough that you can find different pathways even though it's one contained section and that is something I appreciate about Act 1 about Act 2 and about part of Act 5 I think in 3 when you're just it just put the brakes kind of a little too hard and I think that surprised a lot of people it was more of them trying to express a tone than anything gameplay you know for like 3 didn't the Act 3 didn't bother me at all like I love the fact that he was in a trench coat you know like I've you know been subscribing to GQ for like four years so like you know I was just like loving like I look at him I guess you look carefully when you're playing Act 3 you can see the thing following you too like the thing that the hand the eyeballs with hands that are the best in if you look really closely apparently you do see them following you hmm spoilers it's been a while for me so it's been like it's been like almost a year since the game came out it'll be it'll be a year at the end of next month yeah see and I think the reason I picked it up again is because I recently just realized that I'm just playing a lot of games and I'm buying just to get through them that first time like do you notice that you just kind of like you're playing out of that fallout or you're playing especially if you play games as much as all of us do yeah I need to get through it yeah and it's a one-time deal and I look at like when I was a big fan of movies how that second time that third time you know you just certain you pull certain things different this time where you're willing to try different things at least in games and movies I felt that you just absorb something different or you notice something different and I think certain games that extends to definitely not all of them because they're certain games just so linear games have a harder time maintaining a multi-layered experience that way the movies do and for a while it's a lot of especially campaign or single player type games like it it blows its wad like upon that initial playthrough yeah I just I want to I want to like revisit some of the games that I've played in the past and just say okay you know it's been a while it's been six months it's been a year and just like try that experience again and just see how different it feels now and you know sometimes it's obviously not going to work but the problem with you know or the at least the problem we have you know being the gamers that we are is that we don't always have that time you know like Metal Gear can be a real long game especially if you watch those cutscenes I mean forget it right I love Pajima Crazy but the craziness disputes yeah that's how you feel about three like three is one of those games like I really wanted to go back to it and I'm like how long did it take me to play through that and like I remember I had to burn through that a long time ago and I was like I didn't have much time so I started playing on it like easy and it still took me like 22 hours to get all the way through it that's a long game yeah it's a long game and it's like so epic and it's so good but god damn 22 hours I mean that's one reason why I don't play through Bioshock again is because it's so long like yeah Bioshock only took me eight hours I don't know through Bioshock and about I think is I mean I don't remember keeping track it's probably felt like it's about 10 or 12 I feel like when I played through the first time it was like a 16 hour game yeah I've just been kind of like I the idea of playing through Bioshock again is appealing but the reality is that I'm probably going to be playing something else very very soon yeah I want to go back to Bioshock too but it just creeped me out I was like I don't know if I can I like I gotta be in the mood for this because this is going to scare me for a consistent what 20 25 hours or whatever so you're gonna hitting up anything outside of Metal Gear Solid or is that been pretty much I can see when your times it's been consumed my time for the most part I mean I also played I've been playing a lot of rhythm heaven actually I finally decided to to take that on and I have to say some of that game like we'll just make you crazy like you're gonna want to throw your DS against the wall because it's just so it's so hard like it like you really have to have a sense of rhythm and some of the many things saying that you don't have a sense of rhythm I'm saying I have only so much florida clurry and campus went down I only have so much because like take I mean you reviewed this sterling take a lock step oh good God there's so I heard I heard the ping pong one is especially the ping pong one I hate it yeah God I hate it yeah that is like the one mini game there's been a few I think I was saying this when we were recording the debriefings yesterday like I straight up that's the only game I've ever taken the stylus and thrown it across the room yeah like I got so pissed off playing that game but it's good it's just that like it's punishing and it's punishing in like that old school Japanese game like you're not good enough practice more fuck you is it really even an old school Japanese thing I think there's still a lot of Japanese games that are extremely punishing in a very arbitrary and heavy handed way but I think the lost planet comes to mind oh you're knocked down you're gonna stay on the ground for a while and we're gonna keep hitting you it's just really evokes like it's just really evokes this kind of classical feel infuses it with like it's almost like Wario where where it's just like a less frenetic Wario where in a way until the remixes yeah yeah and then the remixes come along you're like oh shit this is the guys you made Wario where and it's like everything those guys it's like oh everything that was kicking your ass before well you get it in two second doses bitch and like that's what they throw at you and it's just like oh you didn't you weren't good at this one fuck you oh you weren't good at this one fuck you oh this one yeah you did okay next one fuck you and it's just like continuous like bam bam bam bam bam but then like there's a couple of them where it's just like it sinks in and you get it and it's like it's fantastic for some reason the lizard one was the one I got really good at see I was actually really bad at that one I like the do you remember a frog hop the one where you like that background singer out from the answer and the frog man I thought that was really funny and it's just so weird how like it's very Wario where like the charm of it and definitely the artist that it and you know I really find that I'm liking it I finally finished the six remix and I'm like okay now some extra stuff showed up like the extra side parts of screens and I'm like okay I want to try this out outside of that when I was at Namco I played some Tekken are you a Tekken fan well I mean I was at one point but not like that 10 hit combo fan just that guy who like played it are you a fan enough that like when you opened up your namco gift bag and saw your fucking face plate and shrine picture to like add to your hair doll collection like you were really excited not so much no no but it just bugs me out because they bring a build for us to see and you know we're all there members of the press you know ready to write up the game and there's four characters in it out of 40 yeah I heard somewhat the giant bomb guys were bitching about that too I mean they were talking about it's a fucking arcade game that's been out forever in everyone has seen every character why would you only let us pick four years directing us I want to play as the Michael Jackson look at motherfucker you guys won't let me do it and they've never dropped the character like the character selects me is huge I was like am I gonna have to unlock this is this going to be like all the complaining that went on after Street Fighter 4 was like oh I got on my boss's characters are going to fear Capcom kind of learn their lesson because Marvel vs Capcom 2 on Xblon PSN is going to have all characters unlocked right off the bat yeah so I think they figured out that ain't gonna fly anymore maybe Namco is listening hope Namco is listening please like this there's so many it's 30 plus don't don't make people have to unlock all that I of course there's the fans that will but yeah remember because it's been so long I downloaded dark resurrection when it came out on PSN two years ago and like I'm not really into tech and like I tried it out just cuz I'm like oh cool we'll be downloadable let's see how it looks and then I remembered why I don't like Tekken but I'm trying to remember if all the characters were unlocked I'm sure somebody's gonna email you guys be like yeah they were all unlocked dumbass or they weren't but fuck that guy I can't completely I can't completely I feel like at this point if you don't like attacking if you don't want if you haven't liked Tekken before it's safe not to play Tekken again you know it's interesting though it's like soul caliber kind of like ween me back in and like also last year when I was at TGS we were at Namco headquarters which weirdly looks like a fucking spaceship for launching Gundams or something it looks like a stage from Tekken it's ridiculous no seriously you go inside the building and I was like wow like if I were on the top floor I could punch a dude he'd go through the glass and land on the floor oh wrong fighting game but when you go like I sat there at the machines when they were showing off um oh what was the name of it like I think it was like bloodline rebellion or something like that yeah that's that's wrong but it was like I was like messing around with the crazy dude with the Swedish name and the big red cape who looked like what's his face from um what's the show Tekishi's castle the guy at the beginning he was basically dressed like that dude and all red and then I was playing and then it was like the Miguel the Spanish guitarist guy when convinced somebody was like hung over after drinking all night and saw like Desperado was on TV and were like oh my god it's a new character and pitched at the next day at the meeting I've got the best person like just run into those characters at a street going and it was bizarre because I suck at Tekken I don't know if that means that the other of my fellow gaming press members suck worse than me at Tekken but I was like damn I'm getting like a sense of confidence here like I'm whooping people's ass maybe I got this Tekken thing all wrong I think it was more like a uh it'll let the Wookie win situation because you're a fairly large man that has no idea when you roll when you rolled in there and sat next to them they're like oh shit all those fools know me no they know Tekken is a kind of mashing friendly fighter though isn't it I mean if you're any Gordo maybe yeah it's so funny because it is totally mashy and at the same time when you watch somebody like unleash a gorgeous combo it's like god damn I couldn't have done that yeah I'm sure high level play is pretty ridiculous if you see it like two high level players doing it I don't think it's as beautiful as watching Virtua Fighter but I think that's because Virtua Fighter. Virtua Fighter is like a martial art yeah Virtua Fighter like the bar of entry is so high that when you watch somebody like snap out like amazing Virtua Fighter combos like if you play VF you can totally appreciate it you're like just wow all right so I guess we'll take a quick break and then we'll be back with the second segment that is gonna be shorter than normal but that's okay because right now you just gotta get with over an hour games have been playing anyways to eat that bitches ♪ It's a place to blame ♪ ♪ It's up to you and now ♪ ♪ It's up to you and now ♪ ♪ Don't wanna be your broken dream ♪ ♪ We run out of faith somehow ♪ ♪ And it's up to you and now ♪ ♪ To you and now ♪ (upbeat music) - Welcome back to the second segment. It's Tyler's still eating this pizza. The rest of us are eating out. - Away from like, not too much too much. - That's good. So we're gonna talk about some times in our, or I guess the time in our life when we kind of walked away from games, which at least for me, and Tyler does seem to be around that time when it was like high school. And we had hobbies that were productive. - Yeah, skateboarding. - Yeah, skateboarding. - Physically active. - All that kind of shit. - That was it for me. - Yeah, it was like-- - They were starting bands, skateboarding, music, stuff like that. - Okay, so why don't you tell the story instead of just naming off bulleted points? - That's what I'm saying. So like when I got into like junior high, it was like starting-- - I think we should just throw out a bunch of nouns. It's so word to say. - Skate, skate, skate. - Skate is new journalism. (laughing) - But yeah, it was just a, started skateboarding and had friends who encouraged me to be more into girls than caring about any of that other shit, like sitting in my room playing video games for myself. And it was kind of like that time the Super Nintendo had faded out and the 64 was kind of in, but I played like a couple of 64 games. Sorry, Sterling just had to battle 'em off. (laughing) And so, yeah, I mean, I played some 64, but it was like such a more of a curse so you think like all me and my friends did, it was like after skateboarding, we would all play a little bit of Goldeneye. - I was about to say. - But like you say into the 64 friends. - Exactly, like we played some Goldeneye, but none of us were like really into games. Like for me, I think what pretty much brought it back though was like, I mean, I guess we still played games, but like I said, they were more like a social thing, but the game that all brought us back into like hardcore gaming, but at least for me and my friends was the original Resident Evil. When it came out, 'cause like none of us had ever played a game like that that actually scared us. I remember it was like an event, we'd all get together to play it and be scared together and take turns of who had to play. Like when someone pussied out basically and couldn't handle it anymore, (laughing) I was hardcore, I mean, I even rented a PlayStation so that I, from a video store, so I could play it and I was too scared to play it by myself. So it was like the most wasted like $30 rental of my life. - Not at all, I did the same thing except back then I didn't realize that like PlayStation's needed memory cards. And the video store was like, oh yeah, the guy at the video store didn't give a shit so he didn't tell me I need to rent a memory card alongside my game and my console. And so I got all the way to the giant snake you had to fight to get the diamond, I think, and I died. And I didn't have a memory card, so I lost everything. - Fuck. - That was a painful PlayStation console rental I remember. You just made me think of that and I was like, oh, painful memory. It's like forced rage quit. - That's more like sorrow quit. - Yeah. - So what was the, why did you give it up, Tyler? - Well, for me, you know, it was just a combination of, you know, the girls around me started growing boobs and I started. - This is part of this K-Man, I didn't have a good time yet. - And at the same time, you know, started really getting into like skateboarding and music and put the game that really brought me back was when my buddy lent me his PlayStation 1 in the Zone of Vendors demo of Metal Gear Solid. - Wait, that was PlayStation 2. - I get what you did. - What did the, what, oh no, the first PS1 demo came with PlayStation Magazine. - Yeah. - Yeah, I'm sorry, correction. - Zone of Vendors had a Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. - Yes, Zone of Vendors had, yeah. What demo I played was definitely Metal Gear. And from that point, I was like, fuck this, like, I gotta get a PlayStation, I gotta go buy this game as soon as it comes out. And from then on, I pretty much watched new release lists and renewed my subscription to all my magazines and, you know, that was it. It really was Metal Gear completely. - Yeah, I don't know, I guess I had other times in my life when I kind of walked away from games too. Like, even for a while in my Super Nintendo, I didn't really care 'cause all I played was Mortal Kombat 2 with my friends, and then the game that brought me back then was a Donkey Kong Country 'cause Nintendo shipped me a fucking VHS cassette from a video for randomly being, like, I don't even know why. Like, why I randomly got selected for that. It was just, it came in the mail randomly and I watched it and I was like, I will buy Donkey Kong Country the day, it comes out, like, I don't know. - Yeah, I remember that promotional video, one of my friends got it too. - Yeah, it was random. I didn't subscribe to Nintendo Power or anything like that. There was no reason for me to get it. - Could you ever register your copy of a game? - Maybe. - At some point, maybe, I don't even remember. I don't know, I remember, I definitely registered my Sega Genesis though because when I bought my Genesis, there was some crazy deal going on where you got, like, a game for free, and the game I ended up getting was a, like, what was that game, like, Eternal Warriors or something? - Eternal Chain. - Eternal Chain. - Oh, dude, you could play the guy in the dinosaurs mouth and he'd chew 'em up and shit. - How did you get it worked? - I was gonna say, but how did you know how to do that? - You had to learn the very specific parts with a certain kind of move. - Yeah, it was like one of the original console games with the straight up environmental kill. - Yeah. - Did you find out how to do that, like, phone like a cheat line? - No, that's a magazine. - Yeah, see, that was the thing. I never subscribed to this magazine, so I only got lucky to buy 'em at a store randomly and talk to my parents into it. So I remember distinctly, like, since there wasn't internet and guides, like, I used to be, like, kind of into playing in the arcade. What was that really terrible fighting game with the dinosaurs? - Primarily. - Primarily. - I used to, I remember, I probably somewhere in my parents' house have drawn in marker primal rage guides for how to do moves, 'cause I wrote it out by hand, so I could remember. - I think it'd be hilarious for you to go through your archives and find that one, where, like, the thing could, like, piss on the other guy and don't dissolve 'em. I'd like to see your crayon drawn rendition of that one. That would be pretty hilarious, I'm sure. - I'd like to see him do it now. - Yeah, I mean, he would probably look about the same. My artistic ability has not improved with age. - Dude, draw it in a split picket. - I'll have to do that. Yeah, that was, I was, I was guess I was always into the shitty fighting games, like Mortal Kombat. And-- - I'm not having any of that street fighter, primal rage, thanks. - Yeah, yeah, I didn't really play street fighter 'cause I did play primal rage. Fuck, where are these moths coming from? - I bought clay fighter. - Oh, wow. - I always remember the theme song. - Clay fighter? - Clay fighter? - Clay fighter? - Yes. - It could be worse, you could have bought Rise of the Robots. - Ooh, yeah, that's true. - See, I'm sorry, I know you said no street fighter, but this just reminded me that I was street fighter. - He was saying that. - He was saying that I was the dumb ass that didn't play street fighter. - Oh, no, see, this is a running thing because my fucking sister can do a dragon punch and Anthony has no idea. - Oh, what, what, what? (laughing) - You can't do a dragon. - It's like what, down forward. - Are you playing with a pad? - Down forward, something forward. - Forward, down, down, forward. - Yep. - You fucking wretch. - They got it. - Out of this discussion. - Grab like, do you have a copy of street fighter for him? - Yes. - Or if there has a copy of him. - All right, I have a 360 and he has a PS3 version. - No, no, no, no. - I don't even remember I gave to you because I said I would never play it. - That's right. - Oh damn, that buns me out 'cause I was gonna open that up. - You guys just reminded me when I was picking high schools as an eighth grader, they had the school that I was looking at, I had this VHS, and I popped it in. It was from like-- - You got to pick high schools. - Yeah, yeah, I got to, well, I went to a private school. - Where did you go? - Where did you grow up? - The Bronx, Bronx, New York, and I decided to settle on this small school in part dress that I actually ended up teaching at, but that's a whole different story. I'm not going down there. But the VHS, when I put it in our show, the school, whatever, but the thing that stood out to me when I was watching that video was they had a Street Fighter II arcade machine in the lunchroom. - Whoa. - And I was sold me. - And I was sold, I was in my, I'm applying. This is it. - Damn, that's hard work. - Who doesn't that sell? Fuck, even if you didn't like video games, but they have a fucking video game in the lunchroom. - Oh yeah, shit, I'd take Street Fighter over like a bunch of soda machines. - To me, like the goal of college was the fact that they had rec rooms and arcade cabinets and like arcades at school. - Oh yeah, I remember like, I guess, like I went to college in Atlanta and I'm pretty sure like at the time, like Georgia State University was like the place where you went to like play Marvel versus Capcom at that point. - I think that's how UC Davis was. - Yeah, the only arcade game that's in UC in the city of Davis, I think, are at UC Davis. - Well, not specifically that you could always play most of them except for the Marvel versus Capcom games always had a line in them. Like any time I went down today. So, but I, when did you, when did you stop playing games? - I think there were like a couple periods where I slowed down a little bit. I think the transition from Genesis and Super Nintendo to Saturn in PlayStation. - See, that's pretty much the gap. - Yeah, kinda stuff. - 'Cause I was such a Sega kid and like seeing the Saturn, I wanted it so bad and it was so expensive. Like that was the point where-- - How much was it back in like $600? - $400. - $400 at launch. - Wow. - Which in 1995, money? - Yes. - Is a lot. - That's a lot more than giant enemy crabs. - Yeah, for real. And I mean, you had to buy controllers and the games weren't expensive and it was just, I mean, I remember playing some games then. Like I still have fond memories of Guardian Heroes even though it's not that good. And Patrick Ooon and some other crazy shit and I also rented a Saturn more than once and wasted my time with Robotica. - It's okay, I rented a Sega Saturn. Or no, I rented a Sega CD so that I could play Super Shark. - Ooh. - So I've worked over time last time. - Wow. - Anthony wins. - No, at least it wasn't Night Trap. - Yeah, well. - No, you know what, Night Trap at least occupies like a place in the video game Pantheon is like something that people remember. Super Shark is like, oh, that game. And no one remembers anything else about Super Shark. - Weirdly, yeah, I kinda remember Super Shark and then I remember like the remakes your own Chris Cross and Marky Marky about videos. - So you see music factory? - See music factory, yeah, get ready to wince out there internet that you thought you had it in the memory hole, you don't anymore. - Man, so I fell out a little bit then because like money was tight and those things were fucking expensive. And I made it, I made it a point to play a few games. Like I definitely played through Symphony of the Night and I tried to play Final Fantasy 7 and really didn't like it and stuff like that. When Dreamcast came out, I got super stoked and bought a fuck ton of games over the course of that console's life. And then when it died, I became very sad. And then I didn't get back into games from like, I kind of fell out around 2000 and then around, I didn't get back into them until 2001 when I picked up Halo and Halo sort of rekindled my love of games. And after that, like I've been pretty hardcore into it. Like I think I bought more games for 360 than I bought for any platform before though. I don't know what that is. I don't feel like I'm the first person. - 'Cause you have money? - Maybe, I mean, it could be the disposable income but I don't think I'm the only one that's that way though. - Again, I think it's 'cause people have money and I do think that's what it is. We're in a generation with disposable income now. - Yeah, as you get older, you actually do. And you know what's funny is you're mentioning like your gap. It totally feels like that was where I came in. I was like, I think everybody had that wall and it was exactly at that point in the mid 90s when all the new hardware was coming out. Everything was going disc-based except Nintendo of course. And like you were still stuck in 16-bit and you're like, man, I want to play station but like either like you were still in high school or in my case, like I, my lull was, it was really short and it was only, it was like, I don't know. - It feels like longer than it was, like was it back. - Yeah, but it's like when I think about it, there was never a lull. Like I've been gaming all my life and it's just like it's a matter of like how fanatically maybe is the varying degree but it was like, when I had my Genesis and I went to college and like I didn't immediately go out like buy a PlayStation or anything like that back when I was still being like a good student and trying to get a 4.0. Like there wasn't any of that. It was like if I wanted to go game, I'd just go hit the arcades and like bust out some Marvel versus Capcom. But it got to the point, I guess there's some time around like fall of '98 where it was like the combination of like Parasite Eve, Metal Gear Solid, and I'm totally ashamed to say it, but. - No, be ashamed. - WWF Warzone. - Dude, the WWF games for the '64. - That was it. - And WCW games were some of my favorite games to play. - No joke. - They were fantastic. Those are like this, there's been nothing that's ever touched it since. But yeah, those were, that was like the unholy trinity that sold me on getting a PlayStation and ever since then like it's never stopped. So it was like, okay, eventually got it in '64 to play wrestling games. And then like a year and a half later, it was like, okay, I'm getting a Dreamcast because I wasn't one of the people as an early adopter. I think you were a better man than me about that Arthur. - What about the Dreamcast? - The Dreamcast 'cause I was one of the scavenging bastards that waited 'til they were 50 bucks and then swooped in to get like third strike and Marvel versus Capcom and she's played it 'cause it was such a strong system for 2D fighting games. So that was like exactly what I swooped in for. And then it was just like, it's always been some kind of progression in some way or another where like gaming has always been just this attached part of my life. And it's always been something in conjunction with something else. So when I used to be a music journalist, like I would, you know, it's like hardcore about making sure like I knew like what were the DJs playing, like what were the latest tunes but then at the same time it was like, I could like immediately flow from talking to somebody about oh, so and so set into like, holy shit dude, I was playing Marvel versus Capcom the other day and you won't believe like the combo I've busted out with like Spider-Man and Wolverine, you know. Like gaming is just, it's in my DNA, it's in my blood. - What was the first system that people bought on launch day? I know what yours is, your story of shame. - I don't even know what my first one is, I guess. The Wii. - Yeah, I thought you have the Wii as the first game that you bought on launch day, right? - Yeah, I don't think I've ever bought a console on launch day before that I got my 64 launch Christmas but even that was a fucking task for my parents and then I got my PS2 in the launch window as well. But again, that was like $400 or something. I remember when it first came out because-- - It was $300. - It was $329 when I bought mine because KB Toys had some and they knew they had some so they charged a little bit more. So, and I remember amongst me and all my friends, I had to buy the system, another person bought the memory card, another person bought the game. - Was it SSs? - And another person bought a second controller. No, we bought Kango 'cause we were such a-- - Oh, that's right. - And Kango was so terrible. Like coming, we just ended up popping it out and putting Bushido Blade back in, so. - I mean, I want horse on that one. - Yeah, it's okay. I can shame myself more on that one. The first system I bought when it launched was Dreamcast and my first game purchase for Dreamcast was Blue Stinger. - I don't know what that is. - Do you have, do you just want that exactly right? - I just win by losing. - Damn, I mean, like, for me, actually, I never bought a console at launch and if I would say there's anything I bought on launch day, I feel very strange saying it, but it was when the 360 Elite came out. That was like the first time I actually, like, stood outside and waited in line. I don't count the PS3 'cause I had to stand in line for work. - Yeah, I might've gotten a GBASP too when it came out. - But, like, I waited for the 360 Elite because I remember, like, I was, I used to have to, like, borrow a console from the office to be able to play stuff and review stuff and I was just, like, I'm so sick of this shit. I want my own 360 damn it and then they were like, "Okay, 120 gig hard drive." And I think that was around the time that, like, Microsoft had announced they're now completely disappeared. They don't talk about it anymore. The IPTV initiative from, like, CES, like two years ago and, like-- - Well, no, I popped up in the UK, I think. - No, that's the PS3, I think. It's PlayTV. - No, they're, I'm pretty sure they have IPTV in a couple really, really limited markets in Europe, but-- - But that was what sold me on buying an Elite, was, like, the promise of that. And even now, it's like, well, you know-- - Gotcha, bitch! - It's fine, I mean, I'm glad I have it. I'm glad I can install a lot of games. - Yeah, I suppose you made it so long without buying a 360. - It was, yeah, I would have pretty long time without buying one, but, like, I guess you could say, like, any time I really needed to play it, I could borrow it. And, like, I remember, like, December of '06 when everybody was playing Gears in Rainbow Six, it was just kind of like, hey, guys, uh-- - I'm gonna play Final Fantasy 12. - You guys care if this 360 stays out a couple more days, you know, and played it there, but, yeah, the Elite was, like, the only thing I can actually recall standing in line for, to, like, personally buy it, not just to buy, like, a shitload of 'em for everybody in the office to be able to review stuff. - I don't even think I'll buy the next generation of consoles day and date. - No, I guess so. - I, uh, it will, I will have to be convinced of some amazing launch title before I'll do that. But chances are, if I'm still working in the industry, I'll just get to play the game anyways. - I mean, in general, like, the problem with buying stuff day and date is, like, at this point, like, if you look at the last two generations, whoever was first in market has always had the clunkiest ass hardware. - Yeah. - So, like, you know, some people are, like, I've had my PS2 for eight years, and it never died on me. Like, good for you, God bless you. - You're the outlier. - Yeah, I know people who've been through three of 'em. - Yep. - It's like with the 360, they're the first ones to market, and let's face it, Red Ring of Death is now, like, common, like, everyday terminology. When you, when you're an early adopter, like, yeah, you get the privilege of being like, I got the hot new system, and then you're the first one. It's like, my shit broke. See, like, I bought my 360 in the middle of the desert at the launch event. - Oh, you went to that? - Yes. - How is, uh, how did it hold up? - Uh, I'm on number six. - Oh, wow. See, the first console I bought, well, really, it was a portable, actually. The first one I bought myself was a PSP, but growing up, my first system was in NES, and my mom managed to snag that, the first fall that it came out, and it was in New York only. She managed to pull that down. Now, I don't know if she got a launch date, I don't know how she pulled it off. My mom was great at tracking down. - Did my habit at that toy store that isn't open anymore, like, the trailer is short? Yeah. - Maybe, I mean, I've never asked her. I mean, I guess if I do ask her about it, she's probably the toy store from Big. - Yeah. - That's what it was. - It was the last thing I expected, 'cause I really wasn't into games, and I unwrapped this thing. I was like, oh, wow. And then when I got older, I found out, well, that was really hard to get back, and I want to say '87, but it could've been '86. - It's probably '86, yeah, I think it was '86, but I think first Christmas. - So, if you want to feel really guilty, ask your parents how much the cartridges they bought cost. - She was good at getting those two, man. - Yeah, I mean, I felt guilty for my '64. Like I said, it was like 199 for, I think for the system when it launched, which was the 64. Yeah, I think it was more expensive. And then I remember it being an expensive one. - I think so. - Maybe it's 249. - It was cheaper than the PS1, which was still-- - It definitely wasn't 300, and most it was 250. - Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was 250. - And so they paid like 250, and then it was $90 for a Shadows of the Empire in that launch window. - Was it 90? - Well, not everywhere, but my parents got it from-- - From 90. - My parents got it from a Target for $90. - Wow. - So that with the system, that was my Christmas, and it was still the greatest Christmas for me. But I was saying $90 for a game. - That's love. - Yeah, well, that was love. That was a Christmas for everyone. That was literally the only thing I got between my grandparents' parents' everything. It was like that, but it was totally worth it, 'cause I loved Shadows of the Empire, personally. - You know, it's funny. This may sound like a weird question. How many of you guys had parents? Your parents take a picture of you on Christmas Day when you got your NES, with that massive, huge ear-to-ear grid on your face, 'cause it's like-- - I mean-- - I went through my family photo albums, and I found the photo of myself, Christmas of '88, holding up my NES pack, and straight up, I was so, so happy. - I got my Nintendo before that hype train had really gotten moving. So, for me, I was excited, but I didn't understand it, as well, as I think. - Yeah, but the time I got my Nintendo was, they were already, my blaster was orange. Like, I don't know, in the scheme of things, I didn't even have a grey blaster. - Like, I got a Genesis for Christmas several years later, and there was so much other shit that happened that morning that it would not have been a photo opportunity to remember. - When your parents brought you games, did they have a good track record of tracking down the hits? I mean, did you tell them, "Hey, I want--" - Well, I told my parents, like, three months in advance, I went, "Oh, as far as buying games, "my parents never bought me games." Maybe that's why I buy them so often now, 'cause literally all I did is rented games, like a fiend back in the day. - My mother was the shit. She was really, really good at that. - Yeah, mine too. Like, she'd come in with Metroid Zelda. I didn't even know what they were. And I was like, "Wow, this is great." - My dad actually had a pretty good track record. Like, the second Nintendo game I got was, Gradius, he got Super Mario Brothers 2 the day it came out, and who could know that Super Mario Brothers 2 was barely a Mario game at that time. Everyone's like, "It's Super Mario Brothers 2." - Well, Nintendo Power Heights did have-- - Oh, yeah. - The Clay Sculpture magazine. - I still like Super Mario Brothers 2. - I had that, yeah. - I did too, yeah, that was crazy. - My brother is like seven years older than me, and he's like a super nerd, so when I was born, he was already Planetari and everything, and by the time the NES came out, he was 15, and he was working at Six Flags Astro World, and the Lemonade Stand, and so he was buying, like, every cent of his paycheck went to NES games, and so-- - So you got the hookup? - Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, it's basically his influx of games, and then with me, Mo, and Lonz, you know, every six months I'd go and buy a game, what's up? - Did he make you beg before you played it? This was paid for with Lemonade and Money. - No, we would be grateful. - No, we got along well with that, but yeah, the first system I bought day in date was the Wii as well, because I knew that it was gonna be in short supply, and that was really only a reason, and it was just last week, I was sitting there thinking, "Man, my financial situation's getting so dire, "I'm like, fuck, dude, I need to put my Wii "and my whole setup on fucking Craigslist, "'cause I never play this shit." But yeah, it's funny, that's the one console I bought. - Don't do it. Don't do it, Nintendo will do something in six months, and you'll be like, "Oh shit, that's why I bought this." - Yeah, and then you'll play, you'll go, "Oh." See, it's funny, like-- - I've never gotten rid of a single, sorry to cut you off, but I've never gotten rid of a single system, I've owned, so I don't wanna, I don't wanna do that. - I ended up abandoning my Genesis, when I moved to college, I had to leave it behind, which is-- - I traded in my Genesis, and my Super Nintendo. - I got rid of my Genesis. - I had a ton of shit for those, by the end, so. - Man, I even grabbed the NES out of my neighbor's house who burnt their own house down for insurance money. We ran in there after it was burnt down, and they had a warped NES and a bunch of porno. - They didn't. (laughing) - And so-- - Those were the only things-- - I'm kidding when this happened. - Yeah, I was probably like eight years old. - Those were the only things-- - You're just like, like, whatever the title is, you're like, "Whatever, some BHS tapes cool, I'm in town now." - And here's the other funny thing, like your old factory system, you know, smell is your strongest sense with memory, and so it's like, all these porno mags were half burnt, so it's like, I would associate porno in sex with, like, the horrible smell of, like, burnt house. - You had to, like, move a cushion over your lap anytime there was a fireplace in the house. (laughing) - Yeah. (laughing) - Porn, fire, and insurance money. They all had a hand in hand. - I find it amusing that the only things in fireproof boxes were apparently porn and Nintendo games. - They had his, their son's name was Little CW, and CW stood for Country in Western. (laughing) I'm not joking. All right, do we have anything to add or we have to take a break and then finish up with some letters? - Yeah, all right. We're taking a break, we'll quick one. - I don't know where to go from here. (laughing) - That's pretty mind blown. - We're coming back with letters. CW. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - With some letters, which I'm gonna start reading. (upbeat music) - All right, this first letter. - Don't be too excited. - Just trying to, okay. So this first letter is from Brock from Canada. Hey guys, this is a long time World Warcraft player. I started listening to podcasts looking for more information on WoW. I discovered Legendary Thread, which led me to GFW. I regularly listened to both until they ended. Tier face. (laughing) Okay, so you finally bought an Xbox, Brock Band of Fable 2. So he said, "What is the problem?" You ask, "Well, the problem is that I cannot play consoles." For some reason, I am having this really huge learning curve with the whole waiting, looking with both joysticks. I end up looking at walls facing the wrong direction, and turning a complete circle before I realize where I am and what direction I should be going. Sorry if it makes me sound like a complete and total noove. - It makes you sound like Anthony's mom. - But don't have this problem at all on PC. It's very frustrating because I want to play the Xbox, but I always ended up popping back on the PC since that is what I'm good at. I'm having a hell of a time, any suggestions. - Oh, actually that was Shawna Bowman. Sorry, so Shawna is a girl. - Oh, okay. - Which then just makes her sound like the people are just gonna be like, "Cause it's a girl." I don't know, stick with the PC, I guess, or don't give up. I mean, my friend Ian's dad used to have a really bad time playing two stick shooter games, and now he plays every first-person shooter when it comes out. - Pones, noobs. - And he's like 60, so I'm just saying. - I watched my roommate play Left 4 Dead for the first time, 'cause his brother came over the house, and his brother is younger than him, and he was just owning it. I watched my roommate playing. I almost got sick. Like, he could, and he was a hardcore, hardcore PC guy, and I was like, "Oh, he should be fine." I turn around and he can't turn to shoot the zombie in time. He's getting beat up, and I guess we forget from time to time that just some people just don't get the console controls that well. - Yeah, two sticks have always been a daunting thing for my dad, too, so I wouldn't feel that bad. - I mean, practice, like my sister was in a similar position. - That's part of it, and I think if you just segregate your gaming, I mean, if there's stuff that you know you're good at and you're comfortable playing on PC, play it on PC, but I mean, you go out at 3.6, do you have Rock Band? Like, play some Rock Band? You don't need two sticks to play Rock Band. Like, play the Trillist out there. - I'm just gonna throw this out there. There's a damn good chance Fable 2 will come out for PCs within the next 18 months, so if you really want to play. - Fing out my first party game, yeah, I mean. - Call it a feeling. - Yeah, it's okay. - It's a hunch. - So the second letter is from Brock from Canada. I was wrong, the first letter, you know, Shawna, okay, so. - You're sure this is from Brock? - Yeah, on Monday of this week I decided to break up the monotony that is my daily life and lay down to enjoy your podcast. The listening of your podcast was also to be accompanied by the eating of several cinnamon-coated donuts. All was well until you started to describe getting a tattoo of Chewbacca, and how not only would your penis be your penis, but also that Chewbacca. At the same point in time, I had just bitten off half a donut and promptly lost my shit and began laughing uncontrollably. It was not long before a donut became stuck in my throat. I was frantically trying to cough, it's no avail. Sadly, I was the only one at home at the time and in desperation, I frantically opened the fridge and grabbed the first liquid I could see. This happened to be my mother's soy milk. Needless to say, by the end of the ordeal, I and the floor were covered with disgusting milk. Thanks for providing me with the most terrifying five minutes of my life. Fat penis forever and always, Brock from Canada. - It could be, at least it wasn't like a urine sample. - Seriously, there's worse stuff than soy milk. - Yeah, I don't know why you, I guess he's from Canada. I don't know, do they not, in like a weird-- - Soy milk is good, right? - No, I'm just saying, we're in San Francisco. Soy milk is like such a common-- - Soy milk, and soy milk is actually pretty good here 'cause my wife is from Europe and she's always like, "Soy milk sucks there," which is like in America, the soy milk almost tastes like milk. So, I don't know if it sucks. - That makes me sad for two reasons, though. Like one that we almost killed one of our listeners and two that donuts, the thing I probably love the most on the face of the earth, almost killed one of our listeners. - Dude, if we kill-- - Makes me sad. - Then I'm fuckin' right in the Guinness. - So, the second letter is from, I mean, this other letter is from Billy O, who says, "I hate to go all physics nerd on you, "but the distance from the sun does not significantly "effect how high you jump. "It is 99.99999% affected by the size "of the planet you were on. "Otherwise, you would jump higher at night "and only jump floaty on the moon 50% of the time. "It is called the Inverse Square Law, "and it basically says that things are never really far away, "that are really far away, have no gravitational pull on you." I think that was because of what game were we talking about? - We were talking about red-faction gorilla, and I don't remember who, but some-- - I was talking about how floaty the jump-- - And I said that the gravity on Mars is different, and Anthony being a dick decided to say, "It can't be that different." - Yeah, so, the size of the planet, not the distance. - And yeah, the distance from sun effects like ocean currents and the moon effects as well, and the gravity on Mars, I guess, is like half of what it is on Earth or something like that. - The next letter is from Klaus, and he says, "Yo, why do you guys "always take such a hardcore stance against drugs and shit?" I remember on the episode of GFW where Sean was all like, none of us have ever tried pot, and it's kind of weird to act all weird like that when pot is mostly harmless, blah, blah, blah, blah. So he goes on, the point of the matter is-- - You should read it. - If you wouldn't-- - I wanna hear this. - He just says, "It pot is the most harmless "and non-addictive substance on the planet," which that's a little bit of hyperbole, I don't know. - I thought that that would be like ice cream or something. - And even most other hardcore drugs are not gonna destroy your lives. Even some hard drugs are okay if they're not abused, taken every day, whatever. The funny thing about Sean is, I'm pretty sure you'd ask him. Sean has smoked pot before his life. Sean, we always took a hard stance like that because we worked for Ziff, and so it would probably be bad if we were on a podcast talking about doing drugs, but the fact of the matter is that I can guarantee you that most everyone that was on that podcast at one point in their life has done drugs. So, I mean, and we live in San Francisco. - And they definitely like a legal pot clinics. So I'm just saying-- - Anthony might be the only person who worked at Ziff that didn't like to drink. - So I think if he ever thought that we were taking such a hardcore stance, it was mostly out of context, and he should've seen a joking tone do it. - Yeah, Anthony hasn't done anything, I haven't done anything. I don't have a problem with people doing drugs. - I'm confused by the nonchalance about Coke in San Francisco. - Oh, yeah. - Because you'll just be talking to someone and they'll be talking about like, "Yeah, I was out at the club and we were dancing so that somebody was doing Coke in the bathroom and then this happened." I'm like, "Wait, rewind that." - See, when I used to go out to clubs, I used to make a joke. And for somebody who's never played wow in my life, I used to always say, "Oh, I'm in the bathroom. Oh, fuck, there's an enixier raid in the stall." (laughter) That one's a keeper. - That's a good one. I like that. - Let's see. So another one is... So this was from Enzo. - Enzo is the heartbroken Italian boy as he emailed us for his time. - Hey, guys. - Is he like from Italy? - He's from Italy. Hey, guys, still loving the show. Last week, I had my letter read and I wanna clarify on some points the US questions about. Yes, I am Italian, but was born in the US of A. Yes, I speak Italian. I already play World of Warcraft, but continuing on the reason I actually wrote this was to tell you that Anthony was somewhat correct and his assumption of how he broke up. I was with the girl for a year. I injured my toe at work one day and decided to come up early. I neglected to tell my girlfriend of my injury because I thought she was at work too and I would want to leave early. So to my utter surprise, I walked through the front door to find them on my couch naked. And here's the amazing part. Midnight Club LA was on pause on the TV on my saved account. And just to add insult to injury, they were lying on top of my $60 Resident Evil 5, which had broken underneath them. And I wondered why the whore winced every time I sat down on the couch. Oh, and thank you for reading my last name on the show. Much appreciated. So I remember how I was like, maybe he hates Midnight Club 'cause that's what they were doing. Doing it too when he came home. He said that that was true. So, I'll just leave you guys all in stock. I feel like, I just felt like part of me died. Yeah, I feel so bad that I'm avoiding the hot coffee joke. And it cracked his disc. That's... I don't know, yeah. I'm hoping it just broke the case, right? I don't know. Hope it ain't all. And so, let's play some Resident Evil 5. I can't. Okay. So... Okay. Hello, I was listening to episode 16. I was intrigued by your discussion as to how Wookie's mate. I am no expert, but I believe the apparent lack of a dong could be explained by the absence of a baculum, B-A-C-U-L-U-M. I'm gonna say baculum is fine. Which is essentially a penis bone. Wikipedia has the following to say. The baculum is a bone found in the penis of most manmills. It is absent in humans. Equids, marsupials, legomorphs, and hyenas and cetaceans, among others. It's used for copulation, blah, blah, blah. So, that's what his theory was. You know, Judge Baca didn't have a penis because it showed because his bone wasn't like working. - 'Cause he didn't-- - But the thing is, is that actually our coworker, Alex, brought up another point, which is that it's silly to apply earth assumptions about mammals and stuff and culture baca and mammal, 'cause we don't know that. Sterling said for all we know he pees out of his toes or something. - Yeah, I mean, we're not confined to these rules like seriously, like, just because it's some seven foot tall motherfucker walking around in a rug, shooting a bowcaster, does not mean that if you really go beyond that and you want to get pedantic about the cannon that Chewbacca's gotta have a regular shlong like human beings. - So, I mean, have you talked to Star Wars fans? - I used to work with one. - Oh, yeah. - How can you say with a straight face, like, why do we need to get the pedantics of wookie reproductions? - Because you know what, because like-- - This is a planet where people speak Klingon. - 'Cause I get a big grin on my face when I talk about the Pedantria Star Wars stuff, because my emotional investment in it is minimal at best. - See, I'm just gonna ask, I was interested to hear Anthony's take on this, but, you know, do Yaddle and Yoda get it on, and if so-- - Yeah, I don't even know. Yeah, I mean, I-- - If you could make something about that. - I'm sure, I wanna believe that they're humanoid and therefore have a penis and they're contrary, but-- - You don't want to consider it. - They might fuck through the ears for all of you. - That's what I'm saying, exactly. - You don't wanna think about Yoda milk? - That's what I, so now that I'm thinking about this, it's, you know, it's just, I don't know that we can apply that same thing. For all we know, they're so attuned with the force that they actually breed through the force. - Maybe they have classic-- - How do you like that? How does fucking bleed Tyler's mind? - Well, I was thinking that, to me, it seems like Yoda would be celibate. - It would be the next sex, what? - I don't know, to me, it seems like they would be celibate, Yoda. - Monastic. - Yeah. - Maybe they just change, like, Yaddle's obviously much younger than Yoda, so they change sex to different points in their life. - No, it's Yaddle, Lay's eggs, and Yoda drags himself over them. (laughing) - Okay, okay, so the next letter is from Daniel Franson, and he's-- - Wait, just going back, about the mammals, the penis bones thing, that's, I actually knew about that, although it didn't come to mind when we were talking about Wookiees, but just as an example, Walrus's, I guess, have like four foot long penis bones? - I've seen, yeah, I've seen the bones. - Like, they can be used as clumps. - Yeah, they're pretty ridiculous. - Has anybody ever slain a walrus and used its savage slong as like you went up in? - No, you know what, you don't want to see-- - I'm sure there's an archeology situation. - Oh, I bet. - You don't want to see Eskimos kill a seal and eat it in-- - It sounds like a weapon on Postal 4, so Daniel Franson, I think he writes to us, and the reason he wanted to write to us was to let us know about a game he'd made called Olu, which is his XNA community game that's coming out the summer. How do you spell it? Olu, the trailer's found on YouTube, so you can look for that. It sounded pretty cool though, it takes much of its style from Rez and adds a duality element to enemies and weapons similar to Ikaruga. So, he's wanted to get a little exposure for his game and because he managed to mention that his game was somehow like Ikaruga and Rez, that made me want to read his letter basically. So I don't know if that's at all true, but he says if you can at least take a look at the video and judge yourself, I would greatly value your opinions, which I haven't done. - So, I guess it makes me-- - Holler me on Facebook. - I tell a terrible person. Yeah, Holler, it's Sterling. - Holler's Sterling on Facebook. - Or Twitter. - Or Twitter. - Well, don't worry, we'll expose your Twitter name at the end of the podcast. - All right, on. - All right, let's see. So, Logan, so this guy's name is Logan. Hello Rebel FM people. I've been a listener since episode one. I recently heard you guys go off on a mini segment about game tattoos. I myself am a tattoo artist in gaming enthusiasts. I recently just posted my second ever podcast in iTunes under the name Electric Cigarettes, and it was actually about this very topic titled Tattoos vs. Gaming. I wanted to thank you guys for bringing this up on your show and also not acting glib about the topic or drumming up the usual crap about gaming tattoos being something one would regret later in life. Since we've all been gaming for as long as we remember, it's hard to imagine that after 25 years of loving games, we would suddenly move on to regret a reminder of these times, unless you're inzo. I have a tattoo on my left foot that reads-- - You really regret it in that Resident Evil 5 tattoo, right about that? - I have a tattoo on my left foot that reads minus 150 hit points. This is to remind people that when I kick them, they are taking significant damage. (laughing) - Oh, I would rather like tattoo like plus five or something like that. - So, he says, I have a group on Facebook tattoos in art by Logan Sexmith. If you wanna check out some of my earlier tattoo work, and I hope to have a full-fledged website up soon, love the show, keep up the good work, you know, one final note. Anthony, I think if you dig HP Lovecraft as much as I do, or you do dig HP Lovecraft as much as I do, so by the esoteric order of dig on, I slap you with a mean tentacle high five. I mean, I do like, probably not as much as you. Like, you probably have a tattoo or something. I don't, but anyways. Let's see. - That is a really fortunate last name for a tattoo artist, I gotta say. - What, Sexmith? - Yeah. - Yeah. So this other person, I'm not gonna read his whole letter, his name's Brian, but I just wanted to read that he said, I want to mention, I'm glad Arthur is still around. Arthur is a better person for podcasting. Also, it's great when you guys go off topic, so continue to do so. I just like that because, you know, Arthur gets a lot of internet hate. So, you know, I thought it was-- - Well, it seems to have subsided somewhat, but maybe because people are just not listening anymore. - So, this next letter from Pug, he just wants to know if any of us have a good idea for an MMO, and he said not wow, because he finds it boring. - Like an MMO to play? - Yeah. - Does the requirement, is there like a requirement that it be around in six months? - Right, exactly. Like, how long is he willing to wait? - I have a Mac, I have no access to a PC, and I'd quite like to try an MMO that's a bit more exciting. - It's like-- - It's like-- - It's a dual boot. Like, seriously. - Yeah, it's time. - As soon as he said Mac, I was like (grunts) it is time to put Windows and partition that hard drive. Seriously. - And then if you were to do that, I don't know, maybe you could try it. If you want to try something that I guess is quote unquote more exciting, maybe the Warhammer one, it's a lot more PvP focused and action focused. - What about APB? - Or APB. - That's what came to mind when he was a console based? - Yeah. - We're pretty crap. So early. - It's been so long now, I mean, God, I saw like-- - They were hiring and talking about it at GDC. - Yeah, I mean, I saw like character sketches for APB, like over three years ago when I went to like real time worlds in Scotland. They're like, this is what the game's gonna be like. And now I'm like-- - And then we got this other thing called Crackdown. - Yep. - We hope people will like it. - We hope people will like it. Oh, we liked it. - Just dig up, dig up, you know, GDC, what is GDC 2008? - Yeah. - And find the coverage on Dave Jones, APB, if you haven't heard about it. I mean, as someone in that audience, and I'm sure you were there as well. - I actually missed that one. - It's usually GDC stuff, there's always an awesome panel. And there's two other ones where you have to go to for something. - Yeah, it's a gamble, yeah, agreed. Yeah, that stuff, it was crazy watching what you can do in that game, but you're right. They haven't specified if it's console, if it's PC. - I'm pretty sure it'll be both. - So I thought so, that's what they originally said. - So I'm not gonna read this guy's whole letter that he wrote for Enzo, but he did ask us to read it. - Wait, wait, I mean, did we address that question at all? Like, are there any, I mean, I mean-- - Oh, Enzo, I mean, yeah, that's, I mean, Warhammer is much more interactive as far as like-- - What about-- - You know, it was like-- - Do you try someone's like maple story? I've never played on-- - I'm sure I mean, if you wanted to go free to play. - The free to play, the free to play route, we actually got a-- - Or Age of Conan, I enjoyed Age of Conan. - I mean, I don't know how long Age of Conan is gonna be around, so I don't know how attached someone should get to their age. - I bet you they'll keep Asa, like a couple servers up of Age of Conan for a long time, I mean. - I got an email from someone complaining that we've never talked about Guild Wars or how-- - I saw that too, but I didn't even-- - Don't talk about Guild Wars and that is-- - And because no one here's played it. - I mean, I'm not particularly interested in Guild Wars, but I don't play WoW either. - What about City of Heroes? Does anybody play that? - Yeah, City Heroes I played when it first came out and it's okay, but it's another one of those like, like, I don't know, it basically comes down to that it's not my nerd, like that's not my nerd room. I want elves and shit and I don't care about superheroes as much. - It's elves asshole. - Right, yeah, my brother is like way into comic books and play has probably played more City of Heroes than he has played of WoW, but he's like equally or-- - That's what I'm saying. I think it comes down to like what your type of MMO fantasy is. - It's kind of tough 'cause out of everybody in the room, like, I just, MMOs just don't really hold the interest for me. It's just like the commitment level is just a bit much. - It's a job. - See, for me, the reason I play it is I basically don't play unless I'm playing with the friends. So like, it's a way for me to stay in touch with my friend Joe, who like I lived with Altar College and it's nice to keep in touch with him and like-- - It might as well be a Firefox plug-in friend. - Exactly, exactly, yeah. I'm most of them I'm watching something. I'm only like half playing and I only get really into it when I'm with him and we're actually doing something otherwise I just chat with him. You know, and it's weird that I, in the scheme of things though, MMOs have taught me about news, either personal or related to the world. Like, I remember I first heard that we invaded Iraq because I was playing Everquest at the time. - So Anthony, you're not like big into like guilds or-- - No, I mean, I'm in a guild but it's a guild of nothing but real-life friends. Or everyone at least is real-life friends with Joe. So when Joe moved to Jersey, he's added some people in the guild that were Jersey friends. But literally, we all know each other. So yeah, I mean, most of the time no one, we don't call each other by our fucking usernames. Everyone knows each other's actual names. And we don't-- - Earth is rules 31, what did you do today? - We don't really go raiding or anything like that. - Well maybe another thing that will help address the question is that, you know, the reader has to just, you know, find a buddy online 'cause it seems that that's what keeps you hooked to an MMO, right? It's your friends. And it's, you know, the relationships that you make within that space. - Yeah, I just think that if he wants an action-based MMO, I just think the age of Conan or Warhammer are much more like action-based. - Is planet-side still going? - Or if he really wants to get hardcore in an MMO and to lose his life, he could try Eve Online. 'Cause that community's still going six years later. So, but yeah, I'm not gonna read the whole letter from the guy to Enzo 'cause it's super long. But I just wanted to say that-- - I wanted to say his name. - And give him gist of his email. - His name is Calvin. And he says that basically Enzo needs to move the fuck on and he's not saying that in a mean way. - I thought he kinda was saying it in a mean way. - No, he just means, it's like a, he just means that, you know, he just thinks it, what you're going through hurts, but it doesn't have to. He just thinks that you gotta kinda work through it. But he even is nice and he suggests that, you know, if there's one game I could suggest to you, not as an escape, more of a relaxation tool would be flour. Even if this means you have to go drop $400 on a PS3, just do it. It didn't help me deal with any issues I had, but it definitely helped me to calm down and de-stress a bit. So, and he gives him a more positive note, which is like, since his breakup, 'cause he went through a similar thing, he's met women, had lots of experiences. He went in the hat if he was still with that girl. So basically, he's just trying to tell Enzo there are others. - His experience is code perception. - There are other fish in the sea. - Possibly. And he's got a good point. You know, it sounds like it's pretty messed up what happened to Enzo, but like, you can't let that scar you. Like, you just gotta buy another copy of RE5 and like, just know that in like five years, you will have finished RE5 and in five years, you'll probably be in a far shittier place. - And trade in the nightclub. - Living well is the best victory. - There you go. - Best revenge. - That, doing her sister. - Yeah, if you can. And also there are websites where you can, you can order dog shit by the pound and have it mailed to them. - I thought you were gonna say websites where you can post naked pictures of it. - Or if you pay me, I would probably shit on her porch if she lives within 100 miles. So, but she don't 'cause you're in Italy. So if I ever come to Italy, I would shit on this girl's porch for you. - No, I think she lives in the US. - No, he's from the US. - He's born in the US, but I don't think he lives here anymore. - Oh, let me see. - Maybe I'm wrong. We're making you have to be way cooler than you are Enzo. Enzo the Italian. - I'll just say, based on our reaction, 'cause I can speak some Italian. Que storones a díme a dá. - And dá? - Something about shit. - And so, yeah, I guess we're done for this week. Thank you. So let's do where we can find each other. We'll start you guys off. Where can people find you on the internet, Sterling? - Well, starting like next week, I'm kinda gonna be packing my life away, but technically g4tv.com is where I'm going. I'm on Twitter, Twitter.com/Stirling_M. Or, yeah, I'm on Facebook. Not as much as Twitter though, so. - Facebook is for people you know. - Yeah. - It's gotten to a weird mishmash. I've been managing it much better than MySpace, where MySpace was just like, anybody was like, "Hey, you really like going out to clubs? "I'm a shitty promoter in some small town. "Why don't we be friends?" And it's like, "No, let's not." You know, Facebook has been much, much, you know, it's much more manageable. We can tailor it in, but yeah. So, I guess, holler at me on Twitter because it's probably the best way to get ahold of me over the next few weeks. - Follow Sterling, especially Hugh Lake Soccer. - Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. - Shoot it. - All right, all right. Where can people find you on the internet, Jose? - You can find me at systemic.gamehelper.com. I didn't mention this at the beginning, but I'm an associate editor there. You know, I'm also trying to do some freelance. And you can also find me on Twitter, twitter.com/joedaprofessor. That says one word. And that's where you can find me at? - You. - eat-sleep-game.com. Twitter is A-E-G-I-E-S, the same as everywhere else. I have more freelance stuff coming up for PC World. - All right, I thought you still had something to say. You ended that on like a inflection that made me think that you weren't done. - I like playing with your emotions. - Tyler, I have a Twitter, and it's me, the motherfucking dirty tea. Dirty tea is in the drink. God damn it, Tyler. - That's too long a name for Twitter. - So yeah, so, Twitter.com/chefmoney is me. You can also find me on the Game Spy debris things, like gamespy.com, as well as you can find some of my writing if you're willing to sort through the fact that we don't have bylines on the front page of our stuff at the moment. So, that'll do it for this week. Please review the show on iTunes. Dig the show if you feel so inclined. And-- - No, just do it. - Yeah, we'll just do it. Like, I would like to see a power diggies or get behind it and fucking jack the system like you. - So you have to edit that out, 'cause once you say it, it'll never happen. - I'm just fucking kidding. Whatever. - Unless you say their name in the mirror five times. - Yeah, and send you money. - And a big good luck to Sterling, right? I mean, out to LA, good luck, man. - Yeah. - Make some noise. - Thank you, hopefully. I'm not gonna, I'm being all mute about it, 'cause I'm not gonna, like, try to say, "Oh, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that." But I look forward to, in some shape, all my fashion, hope you can guide me in the future. - Yeah, we'll see you in the video, honey, else. All right. (upbeat music) Dr. Manhattan's ginormous blue shalom. (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, it's kind of me ♪ ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ ♪ If you can ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, what you do the most ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪ ♪ Oh, what you do the most on your side ♪